BBQ addendum

Florence has reminded me that I forgot about C. Withers! This place is in the restaurant strip on Broadway near 36th, and is relatively new--I think it opened last year. They are really cheap: $5 gets you a sandwich and two sides. I think the smoked cabbage is amazing. The mac and cheese was recommended to me, but it was overcooked and not very flavorful. The burnt ends were good but not amazing--I'll probably try the brisket or something else next time I go back. The $5 special is for lunch and possibly also for dinner (hopefully we'll find out tomorrow when we go back for Mardi Gras dinner).

Edit: The $5 special is Sundays only, and they are only open 12-3pm on Sundays. Still a great special, though. They do have an every-day special of $5 for three smoked wings (although we got four) and two sides, which is also an excellent deal.

BBQ in KC, post LC's

Wow, that's a lot of acronyms. To decode: Barbecue in Kansas City, post LC's (yeah, that's just their name).

LC's Bar-BQ was shut down on Friday by the health department. Since I considered them the best barbecue in Kansas City (and not just for their amazing fries), I suppose I have to re-evaluate. Here's my list of current top barbecue in this city.

1*. I have to include LC's up here still, just because it's (or it was) so damn good. The burnt ends are big chunks of meat, not the bits and pieces you get at most places. Their sauce is great--it's thin, spicy, and not sweet. I have no idea how they make the fries, but if and when they reopen, it's worth a trip just to have the fries. They're thick, square-cut, and extra crispy--triple-fried, maybe? Come back soon, LC's!

1. Oklahoma Joe's--The titleholder by default, since nothing but LC's ever really came close. Their fries and sauce are overrated (then again, this is true of most places), but their meat, beans, slaw, and pretty much everything else are fantastic. The Carolina Style is my favorite: pulled pork with slaw on a bun.

2. Woodyard BBQ--it's in a weird spot out on Merriam, but it's pretty cheap and really good. The pulled pork is in a light sauce (no tomato, more chilies and something else I haven't identified yet), and they have all-you-can-eat burnt ends chili on Thursday nights. Woodyard also sells wood if you want to smoke your own.

3. Arthur Bryant's--the original (or one of the originals, at least), and it's delicious. The sauce is a bit sweet for me, but the fries are fantastic (skin-on, hand-cut) and the meat is all good. The pulled pork is not in their usual sauce--I don't think it's tomato-based, and it's much lighter than most of their sauces. The sandwiches here feed two people (so $11 isn't so bad for a sandwich a fries), so don't overdose.

4. BB's Lawnside Barbecue--make sure to go for lunch, or in the summer if you're going for dinner. It's at 86th and Troost, which is not where I want my car to be parked after dark. They do have music at night as a compensating factor, but I wouldn't do it. The food is good--they have some intriguing Cajun appetizers, although I have no idea how authentic they are. The boudin balls were pretty tasty, though. The burnt ends are very good--they're chopped like most places in town do, and not too fatty at all.

The above four locations are all fantastic, and you can't really go wrong at any of them. It depends what you're in the mood for. Gas-station "ambience" and don't mind standing in line for 30-45 minutes? Oklahoma Joe's. Lard-cooked fries (so I've heard) and super-chewy burnt ends? Arthur Bryant. Something off the beaten path? Woodyard or BB's.

Honorable mention: Jack Stack. It's a bit expensive unless you're having a special occasion and/or want barbecue at a real restaurant, but their beans really are amazing--probably the best in town.

Places to avoid
Gates BBQ. Gates used to be a great place--last year I was convinced they had the best burnt ends in town. They were chewy, crispy, and very well-rendered. Almost no fat on them (burnt ends come from a pretty fatty cut, so that's not easy), and their sauce was, and still is, great. It's spicy, not too thick, and not sweet at all. I went back a couple weeks ago for burnt ends, and I'm pretty sure my sandwich was half-meat and half-beef fat. The sauce was still fine, but the fries are completely unremarkable (I'm pretty sure they're frozen, and not the good kind of frozen). I've read a few reviews that agree with me on the burnt ends front. I may go back to try their brisket, but I probably won't bother when there are so many other places I know will be good.

Smokestack BBQ. The table service is weird, the sauce is bad, and the meat and fries are nothing special. I've heard people like this place, but I don't know why.

Rosedale BBQ. I believe this is one of the oldest BBQ shops in Kansas City, so I hope it used to be better than it is now. My pork sandwich was dry and didn't taste like anything, and I think the fries were frozen. Skip it--there are better options, even if Rosedale is really cheap.

new to the FBTS bookshelf

Oh dear, it seems the long hiatus continues. Every now and then asriel and I will take some good pictures, and we're always making great recipes, but somehow there's a gap between doing those things and actually going onto the blog and posting about them. However, there have been good things going on in the world of FBTS, even though this post isn't about our cooking adventures. Instead, it's about one of my other favorite things: books.

I work a full-time retail job, and when there are no customers around I read pretty voraciously. In fact, I'm in and out of the public library so often that I'm sure they are extremely familiar with my face now, and are used to me coming in 3 times a week and checking out about 5 books each time. And, of course, because of my interest in food and cooking, I went through a stage where I was pretty much cleaning the library out of their stock of food-related books. It got to the point where my coworker would come in, look at what I was reading, and say "that's another food book, isn't it?". When I looked back on all the food books I read, I began to think, "wow, this would make a great blog post!".

Of course, I waited a long time to write the actual post. And I didn't actually write down which books I read, or anything about them while I was reading them. So last week, when I thought about writing this post, I came up with a list of just a few books (which I am about 85% sure is not the complete list of food books I read these past few months), and some scattered memories of what I thought about those books. So here you have it: what to add to your booklist if you're as into food as I am. :-)


I first read Bill Buford's Heat during my time in Italy (where I met asriel, incidentally). Since there were limits on how much I could pack for a several-month trip abroad, I wasn't able to bring many English-language books with me, and for a person who reads as much as I do the lack of reading material felt almost physically painful. Luckily, there was a small selection of books in English on a shelf in the campus center where I was studying, and Heat was one of those books. I remember enjoying it very much when I first read it, and when it came to mind earlier this year I decided to read it again. It's still a very good book, one that really captures the insanity and adventure of working in a restaurant (not to mention one manned by the infamous Mario Batali). What you really get from this book is a sense of the people you're meeting--sure, some of these characters seem larger than life, but the story is told in such a way that you believe it. Buford is a good storyteller in that way; the way he describes the personalities in the kitchens where he works, and in the way he describes life in those kitchens, you feel the whirlwind sense of pressure and excitement which he felt during those same experiences. Upon re-reading this book (with significantly more cooking experience under my belt than I had when I first read it) I was struck with both an appreciation for how things are done in large kitchens, and a sense of gratitude that I don't have to work in one. :-P


Cooking for Mr. Latte, by Amanda Hesser, was one of those books where I liked the book but not the author. I don't know, something about Amanda Hesser made her seem like the kind of person with whom I would have trouble connecting. I want to say that it's because she's an elitist, but that's not quite it--I've never known anyone's differing tastes to get in the way of my ability to relate to them. I was just never sure I liked the way she looked down on non-foodie Mr. Latte's (as he is called for most of the book) less refined culinary tastes. Being someone who recognizes a time and a place for both fancy, well-put-together food and simple, unrefined food (and even fast food, every so often), I felt like Hesser would look down on me as well. She was like a friend who you get along with really well on most counts, but then she'll say something that'll really put you off. But what can be said for her is that she tells a good story, and she makes what sounds like some great food. Her tales from the world of a food writer, her misadventures in the world of relationships, and especially her anecdotes of what happens when those two worlds collide, make for a funny and well-written read. Just don't offer to take her to Panera afterwards.


I don't remember The Saucier's Apprentice, by Bob Spitz, being a bad book or even a nondescript one--in fact, I remember enjoying it. Unfortunately, it's difficult for me to conjure up a good review of the book, since I'm afraid it was near the end of a long line of food books, and I think I was a little overwhelmed by this point. However, other peoples' reviews were pretty bad across the board, and sadly only leads me to remember what I didn't like about the book. First things first: Bob Spitz complains in this book. A lot. His whole mission is to go on a tour of all these international cooking schools, where he hopes to glean some kind of enlightenment about cooking and about life. However, he spends only a short time at each place he goes, and he rarely seems satisfied by what he finds. Additionally, one wonders when reading this book if Spitz was setting himself up for disappointment. His expectations seemed to be such that they couldn't be fulfilled within the parameters he set for them, and you were left feeling like very little of what he saw was given a truly fair chance. It's difficult to be truly sympathetic to his appraisals of these cooking schools, when you feel as though his opinion was not very well-informed. However, I did take note of many of the recipes he included in the book, which were very good. And when Spitz did manage to get past his whininess, every now and then he offered up a very worthwhile insight. Not one to put at the top of your list.


The real gem of this whole collection is without a doubt Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires. If each of these books was like a person you know, Ruth Reichl could be my best friend. Reichl and Hesser are both food writers, but while Hesser makes me feel like I would be uncomfortable eating in a restaurant with her, when I read Reichl's account of her attempts to dine out in disguise to avoid the special treatment food critics are given, I kind of wish she'd asked me to come (despite the fact that she doesn't actually know me). Reichl's book has humor and heart, and she creates a picture of the food world as someplace you'd want to be, even when she has bad experiences. I could read this warm, affectionate, and quirky book over and over.


Those are the most recent additions to my foodie reading list, and there are certain to be more--I've just put several new food books on hold. :-)

Ragu ragu ragu

Ragù Bolognese is something for which you don't really need a recipe - but the first time it does really help. For me it boils down to "cook aromatics, meat, and liquids for a long, long time." That may or may not be authentic, but it sure is delicious! Traditionally this ragù uses a mixture of meats, but ground beef is what we had, so we went with that. I believe beef, pork, and veal are all acceptable.

Ingredients
2 T butter*
2 T olive oil*
1 pound lean ground beef (we used 90%), thoroughly defrosted
0.5-1.0 pounds tomato passata - puréed, peeled tomatoes
1 onion, finely diced
1 celery rib, finely diced
1 carrot, finely diced
1 glass dry white wine (optional)
1 cup milk
1 cup water or chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Heat the butter and olive oil in a large, heavy, nonreactive pot (preferably a Dutch oven) over medium-high heat -- when the butter has melted, add the onion, celery, and carrot. Add a pinch of salt and cook until they are soft (usually 10 to 15 minutes). Lower the heat if the pot starts to scorch. Add the ground beef in one layer to brown (and turn up the heat!). If you have too much beef and a small pot, add 1/3 or 1/2 of the beef, brown it, move it to the side, and add some more. When all of your beef is browned...

Add the wine, if you're using it. Keep your nose out of the pan to avoid hazardous alcohol fumes, and stir around the pan to deglaze any brown bits that may be there. If you're not using wine, don't worry - tomato is a great deglazer too. Add the milk, tomato, and water or stock, cover the pot, and bring to a boil. Start with half a pound or so of the passata, and add more to taste as the ragù heats up. When it boils, reduce the heat and simmer the ragù for at least two hours, but more if you can. 3-4 hours would be great. As the sauce simmers, the fat that you started with (and any that is rendering from the beef, hence why to use lean meat) will rise to the top, giving you a rather ugly oily layer at the top of the pot. Skim off and discard as much of this as you want.** It's really not that flavorful, and the sauce doesn't need it for mouthfeel.

The ragù is done either when you want it to be done (it's almost impossible to overcook this), or when the beef has broken down and mixed with the liquids into a state somewhere between solid and liquid. I know you're supposed to use long pasta (specifically, tagliatelle) for ragù Bolognese, but we here at FBTS just don't like long pasta that much. You could say we have issues with it. So we didn't use it.

*What's that, you say? Butter belongs in French cooking, not Italian? Actually, northern Italy (including Bologna) uses quite a bit of butter. I think this is partially due to French influence and partially due to the climate not being so great for olive trees. For example, a classic Piemontese dish (from much closer to France than is Bologna) is ravioli dressed with sage and melted butter. No olive oil there!

**If you want to avoid the fat-skimming, drain 1/2 to 3/4 of the fat before you add the beef, and you should be good to go.

Attack of the food bloggers!

Food posting has been slow recently due to the impending FBTS duet recital (this Wednesday!), and the fact that I can't post any pictures right now because I lost the USB cord that lets me put my pictures on my computer. So, in place of an actual food post, I leave you with this picture:

Because we make good food here at FBTS. But sometimes, Asriel just gets very, very hungry.

The bounty of late summer

This is the time of year when the farmer's market is stuffed with vegetables. It gets to the point where I have a hard time choosing what to buy, because everything looks so amazing. But I knew that we wanted caprese this week, so I went for (among many other items) the tomatoes and basil, and fresh mozzarella from the Italian grocery next to the market.

First up we have beautiful Juliette tomatoes. They look like Romas, and I was told that they are similar - Juliettes also have (comparatively) low water content, so they should be great for oven-drying. I got a bucketful.



For caprese, you definitely need some basil. This is some of the prettiest basil I've seen all summer - huge, bright green leaves, and what an aroma!



Fresh mozzarella is expensive (around 11 dollars a pound), but so worth it! It's not chewy at all - it's soft, light, and incredibly fresh tasting. It really tastes like the milk it comes from.



Put all of this delicious food on a plate, and here you go! This eventually made its way onto what passes for a bagel here in KC, and made for a fantastic lunch.



As I told gingerrose tonight over dinner, I'm always conflicted over whether I prefer summer cooking or winter. I usually lean towards winter - I'm a stew kinda guy. I love meat, beans, roasted and braised vegetables, all that great stuff that comes with winter cooking. But sometimes you just can't resist summer's fresh bounty.

One last item: this morning at the market, I saw some peppers I'd never seen before. They were long, somewhat wrinkled, and the same dark green of poblanos. I inquired, and was told that they were called pasillas, were slightly spicy, and had a sweet, smoky flavor. I promptly bought several, and was even given two bright red serranos for free by an extremely friendly farmer. He told me that atypically, this year his red serranos were very sweet, and I should give them a try! I'm very much looking forward to it.

Vietnamese corn salad

Corn is one of those things that does not keep well in the fridge. It won't exactly go bad, but it just doesn't taste the same when you take it out again. Nope, corn has to be eaten as fresh as is humanly possible - it might be the ultimate seasonal food (although that could also go to tomatoes). Thus, the farmer's market is the logical destination, and ours has been absolutely brimming with corn for the past several weeks. We're talking pick-up trucks stuffed full of ears here. Of course, it's also a tricky thing to buy (you can't see the condition of the corn before you buy it), so getting those good ears is a matter of trial and error. We lucked out this week (although of course I didn't take any pictures) with six beautiful ears of a cultivar called "Montauk". We boiled two for corn-on-the-cob, and made the rest into Vietnamese corn salad - adapted from Viet World Kitchen's recipe.

I would have taken a picture, but it really just looks like a pile of corn. I promise.

Ingredients
Four ears of as-fresh-as-possible corn
1-2 fresh red chilies (we used Thai, but I'm sure cayenne work fine), seeds removed and chopped
1.5 tablespoons or so of dried shrimp (shrimp paste works too, or you can just use extra fish sauce), chopped
Fish sauce to taste
2 small onions or a few scallions, chopped

Directions
Use a large knife to cut the raw corn off the cobs, and scrape out all the remaining pulp and juices. Discard the cobs. Heat a few tablespoons of neutral cooking oil (not olive) in a large pan over high heat, and add the chilies, scallion/onion, and dried shrimp when it starts to shimmer. Stir-fry this mixture for 30-60 seconds, or until everything's aromatic and the scallion/onion becomes transparent. Turn the heat down to medium, add the corn, and stir everything together. Cook until most of the juice evaporates and the corn is cooked through - add the fish sauce until there's a nice balance of salty, sweet, and spicy.

Drying tomatoes

I love sun-dried tomatoes. They have all sorts of flavors that regular tomatoes just can't compare to - they're slightly bitter, very earthy, and have much more pure tomato flavor than a regular (80%+ water) tomato does. However, sun-dried tomatoes are very expensive. I can get regular tomatoes here for $2-3 per pound at the farmer's market, but if I could find sun-dried tomatoes anywhere for sale (which I can't), it would easily be several times that. Solution: dry my own! The oven works brilliantly for this. Simply slice your tomatoes through the middle (not through the stem connection), turn your oven to about 200 degrees, and put the tomatoes on a baking sheet or roasting pan. (Make sure to use parchment paper!) After 8-12 hours, they'll look like this:



I could have kept going, but by then it was about 11:30pm, and I had to go to sleep soon. These took ten hours - they weren't as dry as sun-dried tomatoes usually are, but they were chewy and delicious and homemade! We here at From Bach to Stock have a serious penchant for do-it-yourself cooking adventures: our current project is vanilla extract*, if that says anything. Here's another picture of a beautifully shriveled tomato.



I love how the skin deflates as the water evaporates. Several of these tomatoes were chopped up and thrown into baingan bharta the other night. There are no pictures of that, as I was too busy making sure my eggplants didn't burn up in the oven...although also, baingan bharta isn't really that pretty.

*We're infusing vanilla beans into a bottle of Bacardi. After two days it's already turning brown and smelling like vanilla! I've been told it takes several weeks to properly mature, though. I can't wait!

baking updates!!

First of all, greetings from Asriel's and my cozy new apartment in Kansas City! I've been here for a few days, and we are so happy to be here and together and cooking in the same place. :-)

But this entry is actually about the whole month before my move, which was a big month for baking for me! The kitchen at my house is mostly my mother's territory, so I'm usually busy enjoying her food instead of cooking and/or baking on my own. But this month I had several opportunities to get back into the kitchen!

First up: cookies! I went to visit Asriel and his family while he was still at home in New York, and I wanted to bring them a gift that would hold up in the heat (so: not flowers), since I had a 4-hour bus ride and then (though I didn't know it at the time) a brisk walk from Penn Station to Grand Central, and then a train ride! Flowers would not have been so happy by the time they got there. Also, the present needed to say "happy belated birthday" to his father, "congratulations on your concert" to his mother (the concert was one of the reasons I was visiting) and "thank you for having me" to everyone. With a task like that, the answer was definitely cookies. :-)

I used Baking Bites' recipe for Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip cookies, and they seemed to be a big hit! They were also well-received in my family--I gave half the cookies in the recipe to Asriel's family and half to mine, and they were eating them for days afterwards. Not that my friends didn't try to sneak some away--when I went to lunch a little while later with my best friend, I noticed her suspiciously sneaking around my kitchen looking for the cookies. :-P And more of my friends began asking me to make them cookies when I related the story of my successful baking experience. I didn't get to complete any more baking commissions, though. Maybe when I come home!

I did, however, make an apple cobbler for my church's annual picnic! The mix itself was actually from a package, which I won playing BINGO at church (don't I just have the most exciting life?), so it could have been more from scratch, but came out deliciously. I think the recipe on the back of the box called for one can of apple pie filling, but I used two because I wanted it to be particularly apple-y and delicious. I heard it was, but I didn't get to taste it because by the time I was done eating it was all gone! A good sign, I'd say. It even got the seal of approval from my preteen friend Paul, which is high praise considering he just makes fun of me most of the time and rare is the time when he compliments me on something. :-P


Here's the cookie batter waiting to be baked into brown sugar chocolate chip cookies!
The finished cookies.


The finished apple cobbler! I was very pleased with it--things from packages can sometimes be a little sketchy, but this came out very well.

More happy baking and cooking updates later!

KC restaurant reviews: A tale of three Vietnamese restaurants

First, the background: tonight I was going to check out New Peking, a Chinese restaurant in Westport I had heard was pretty good. The menu was not encouraging. It looked like a somewhat-overpriced American Chinese restaurant I could get back home, or probably anywhere for that matter. Instead, I decided to go to Mimi's Vietnamese Cafe, a restaurant I'd passed last time I was on 39th St. While I was there, I realized that it was the third Vietnamese place I'd been to in KC, and to emulate one of my favorite blogs, Eating Asia, decided to review them all!

First, Mimi's. While at the other two places I'd had pho, here I decided to try bun rieu ($8.15, but including the 10% tax) instead. The menu claimed it was a soup with chicken broth, chicken/crab/shrimp fritters, stewed tomatoes, rice noodles, and garnishes. Well, the noodles were overdone or precooked; the fritters were more or less chicken meatloaf; there was no plate of herbs to accompany; and it wasn't spicy even though I'd asked for it as such. It was more of a generically Asian chicken soup - tasty enough (except for the noodles), but not particularly Vietnamese. I'm beginning to think that most of the ethnic restaurants in the more popular areas here are not good. Clearly digging into corners is required - like the next place on my list!

I've been searching for Korean food in KC since I moved here. It was everywhere in Ann Arbor, so it's hard for me to adjust to a town that doesn't really have any. I thought I'd found my answer in Kim Son, up near the City Market. However, I arrived there and discovered that it was actually Vietnamese. I tried it anyway!

Kim Son's pho ($6-something, I think) was a pretty immense portion of flavorful beef broth, served over thinly-sliced steak, onions, and rice noodles, with a good big plate of herbs and bean sprouts on the side. Just the way it should be. The meat was excellent - it was obviously raw before the hot broth was poured over, as it came out very pink and quickly darkened. The rice noodles were chewy and the right width for pho. A delicious added bonus was a bowl of smoky chopped chilies in oil with garlic. I don't know if it was lajiao you or something else, but it added a fantastic earthy spiciness to the dish and definitely set it apart from the other bowls of pho I've had before. And of course, Kim Son is a bit off the beaten path - it's at 3rd and Cherry, right by the bridge that carries MO-9 over the Missouri.

Last (but the first I tried here) is Hien Vuong. It's inside the City Market complex, next to a bunch of other restaurants. It's also the smallest of the three, but they have some pretty quick turnover so it's always easy to get a table. And it's the cheapest! Just $4.50 for a bowl of pho, if memory serves me right. They have all the goodies - meat, noodles, herbs, sprouts, sriracha, hoisin, and some other kind of delicious chili sauce - but the real star here is the broth. It's just slightly sweet, but doesn't throw off the other flavors of the dish, and has an amazingly complex flavor that's hard to describe. It's beefy, well-spiced, and pretty addictive, to be honest. The portion is the smallest of the three, but that says more about the other two restaurants - this is still plenty of pho for one meal.

Mimi's Vietnamese Cafe/Saigon 39 - 1806 1/2 W. 39th St. (between Bell and State Line)

Kim Son - 315 Cherry (Cherry and 4th St., actually)

Hien Vuong - nominally 417 Main St., but it's really on the west wall of the City Market)