Roasted Tomato and Ricotta Bruschetta

Yesterday, I wrote about our neighborhood's amazing new bakery, Bread Furst. I've been bringing home samples of their bread every couple days, which means I had to find things to do with it (other than just eat it immediately, which was so tempting). So, of course, one of the things I did was make toast.

Kitchen shears make fast work of chopping (or rather snipping) fresh chives.

Toast is apparently "hot" right now, which might seem strange until you realize that toast offers a lot of wonderful possibilities. You can top it with just about anything, from basic butter or jam to layers of savory goodness.

With a loaf of Bread Furst's dense, flavorful whole grain bread, I decided to make bruschetta, an Italian style of toast that involves garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper, sometimes with other toppings. (Please note that bruschetta is NOT a jar of tomato spread, despite what you may find at the grocery store).

Because this bread is so flavorful and tomatoes available this time of year are not, I decided to roast the tomatoes, which can bring out good tomato flavor even during their anemic off-season (tomatoes are best bought locally July through September). I also used fresh ricotta (not homemade this time) and fresh chives from my herb garden.

Roasted Tomato and Ricotta Bruschetta

7-8 plum tomatoes, quartered
2 tbsp. olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
5-6 slices of thick, crusty bread (I used a whole grain bread, but you could substitute other types)
3/4 cup fresh ricotta cheese, softened (you can soften it in the microwave for about 20 to 30 seconds at 50% power)
2 tbsp. fresh chopped chives

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Add the tomatoes to a roasting pan, drizzle with 1 tbsp. of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss with a wooden spoon to coat the tomato pieces. Roast in the hot oven for about 2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool a bit, then mash the tomatoes with the wooden spoon until they have a chunky sauce-like consistency.

2. Preheat the oven broiler. Place the bread slices on a baking sheet. Brush or spray with the remaining olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Broil until the tops of the bread slices are lightly toasted, about 2 minutes, watching carefully to make sure they don't burn.

3. Transfer the toasted bread to a serving plate. Mix the softened ricotta cheese with freshly ground black pepper and spread the cheese on each slice of bread. Then top each piece of bread with a generous spoonful of roasted tomatoes. Sprinkle with fresh chives and serve.

Bread Furst (Washington, D.C.)

I always thought a bakery would be a nice thing to have in the neighborhood. A real bakery. Not a window in the back of the grocery store. Not a chain coffeehouse that also peddles a few baked goods. An honest-to-goodness local bakery staffed by skilled people making amazing bread and baked sweet treats.

I got my wish when Bread First opened 2 weeks ago. And wow did I get lucky.

D.C. isn't exactly known for its artisanal bakeries. Despite our confusing street grid, this isn't Paris. With so much of the city's hot new restaurants going into places like 14th Street and Shaw, one wouldn't expect a new top-rate bakery to stake its claim 2 blocks north of the Van Ness Metro station on Connecticut Avenue, a commercial stretch best known for the great Calvert-Woodley liquor store, a car wash and UDC. The area suffers from an unfortunate lack of good places to eat (Glover Park, a little ways south of Van Ness, has surprisingly better food choices, despite its lack of Metro service).

Levain (left) and Palladin (right) breads with oatmeal cookies

Bread Furst is the latest business from baker/entrepreneur Mark Furstenberg, who opened his first Marvelous Market in 1990 (which he later sold) and the BreadLine in 1997. Furstenberg is no stranger to this corner of Upper Northwest D.C.: his original Marvelous Market location was 6 blocks further north on Connecticut Avenue in the same block as Politics and Prose, the notable bookstore formerly co-owned by his late sister Carla Cohen.

The meat case, perfect for sandwich makings.

When it comes to bread, Furstenberg clearly knows what he's doing. A 2008 profile of Furstenberg by David Hagedorn in the Washington Post describes the baker's training with Los Angeles chef and baker Nancy Silverton and a series of Parisian bakeries around the time he opened Marvelous Market.

So it's no surprise then that the bread at Bread Furst is the star attraction. Every loaf I've sampled has been incredibly good. If Bread Furst could replicate its quality on a large scale, the gluten-free fad would dry up in an instant. It's that good.

Whole Grain bread

The Palladin bread has a good crumb and a crispy crust. I ate a few slices as a side to shrimp scampi and enjoyed my first piece spread with butter, which was really good. This is would be a great dinner accompaniment.

The Levain bread is darker and has more structure. It's quite chewy. The crust though is amazing. Rich, dark flavors, almost like coffee. I don't recall every being as excited by bread crust before. Whole Foods carries a levain bread we get sometimes; Bread Furst's is way better.


When the young man behind the counter hands me my loaf of whole grain bread, the first thing I notice is it's heft. Did they bake a firearm into this thing? So yes, it's fairly dense, although when sliced the interior is still nicely structured. Like the levain, it also has a substantial crust, this time studded with sunflower seeds.

The already famous baguette, available only every 4 hours, has a perfectly soft texture with crackling crust.

Then there's the baguette. If you weren't impressed by the other breads, you couldn't deny that this is special. They bake them every 4 hours, and they're so popular that they sell out quickly. Due to lucky timing, on a recent visit I showed up 5 minutes after the latest batch had come from the oven. So I now only got one, it was still quite warm. Eating a slice of that soft warm baguette with its crackle crust topped with a thin spread of butter made me convinced I'd never eat another baguette as good as this one again.

Smartly, Bread Furst leaves its plate of cookies by the cash register, making it hard to resist adding a few to your bread order. Chocolate chip, triple chocolate and oatmeal are among the varieties available, all of which exhibit the appropriate buttery goodness. The triple chocolate are particularly good.

We've also ventured into Bread Furst for breakfast during its first Sunday morning service, on Mother's Day no less. We arrived about 8 minutes before they opened, which was a smart move, as we ended up being third in a line that stretched through the bakery and outside all throughout our breakfast.

Glazed donut, available for breakfast on weekends.

My favorite breakfast item was the glazed donut, which was chewy and yeasty the way a good donut should be with a thin layer of icing that cracks as you eat it. The vegetable quiche was also good and had a smooth texture and a flaky crust. Our one warm item, french toast with real maple syrup, had a soft middle with crisp edges and subtle spiciness of cinnamon and clove. We could resist adding a couple of cinnamon-sugar donut holes to our repast as a final touch. I look forward to eventually making it in for lunch to try one their sandwiches (on the menu right now: a harissa chicken sandwich on palladin roll with chickpea spread and watercress that sounds like it would be right up my alley).

If someone at Bread Furst offers you a caterpillar, don't worry. It's not an insect, but rather this puffy pastry confection with a creamy hazelnut filling.

The sweet treats, although all very good, don't excite me as much as the bread. I'm pretty good at making my own sweets, but apart from pizza crust and a few run-ins with a bread-maker, I have no experience making bread. So I don't think I could turn out a good loaf, let alone a great loaf, let alone the most stellar loaf I've ever tasted. Thankfully, now that I have an amazing neighborhood bakery, I don't have to learn.

Bread Furst, 4434 Connecticut Avenue NW (at Albemarle Street, 3 blocks north of the Van Ness Metro station), Washington, D.C. (Van Ness) (202) 765-1200.

Angostura Bitters Chicken Salad

Cooking with bitters? Why not. Their flavorful aromatic properties can be harnessed in recipes beyond just cocktails. Angostura's website has recipes for a number of dishes.

The Washington Post's Jane Touzalin recently wrote about cooking with bitters as a Free Range on Food chat leftover. (Coincidence? Not really. I was the one that asked about it.) Touzalin perused the recipes on the Angostura site, which mostly are for appetizers, entrees and desserts. She suggested that fruity bitters would be particularly at home in a dessert or vinaigrette.

I liked the idea of using bitters in salad dressing, although instead of going the fruity route, I stuck with the spicy classic aromatic Angostura bitters.

The Greek yogurt dressing I developed for this chicken salad tastes great without the bitters, but adding them gave the dressing a wonderful spicy dimension. Just like how bitters can pull together ingredients in a cocktail, the bitters in this salad dressing was the final touch that made the dressing really sing.

Angostura Bitters Chicken Salad

Salad:

2 tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. chicken breast cutlets
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 dashes angostura bitters
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1 apple, cored and chopped
2 celery ribs, chopped
3 or 4 scallions, white and green parts chopped
3 cups baby kale leaves

Dressing:

1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
1 tbsp. fresh lime juice
2 tsp. honey
2 tbsp. chopped fresh mint
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 dashes Angostura bitters

1. Heat olive oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and add to pan. Season chicken with salt and pepper and cook until browned and cooked through, about 10 minutes, flipping over halfway. Transfer to a plate to cool, then cut into pieces no larger than an inch.

2. Heat a small frying pan over medium-low heat. Add sliced almonds and toast until lightly browned, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Transfer to a plate to cool.

3. Combine apple, celery, scallions and baby kale in a large bowl. Add chicken and almonds once cooled.

4. Whisk together yogurt, lime juice, honey, mint, salt, pepper and bitters. Pour over salad and toss to combine.

Related Post: Cocktail Bitters: An Introduction and History

Food & Friends Chef's Best Dinner and Auction

Charity dinners are rarely about the food. They're more about seeing friends, being inspired and helping to support a good cause. There's an old joke about such events serving rubber chicken, which is, unfortunately, sometimes the case.

But not the case at the Food & Friends recent Chef's Best Dinner and Auction. The event had all the hallmarks of a great fundraiser--there were speakers, a live auction, a silent auction and a raffle. But for this food lover, the real attraction was the incredible food offered in abundance from over 50 D.C.-area restaurants set up in stations around the lovingly retro Grand Ballroom of the Washington Hilton.

I was invited to attend the recent event with friends and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Here were some of the highlights.

EatWell Mixology's Flight of the Bumblebee cocktail.

Start the evening with a cocktail? Why not. Mixologist Kyle McNeel of the EatWell restaurant group was mixing Flight of the Bumblebee cocktails, a tart-sweet gin cocktail with lavender honey, lemon and grapefruit bitters.

Clockwise from upper right: Urbana's salmon tartare, Teddy & The Bully Bar's smoked calamari salad, a server ready with Chef Geoff's shrimp & grits.

Seafood

Seafood was a surprisingly abundant choice at Chef's Best, one we seemed to encounter at every turn when we first entered the ballroom. One of the evening's more unusual selections was Teddy & The Bully Bar's Smoked Calamari Salad with Shaved Fennel, Pineapple Carpaccio, Coffee Buttermilk Dressing and Burnt Lemon Fluid Gel. Also offering calamari was The Fourth Estate at the National Press Club with its Calamari Cakes in Lettuce Cups with Lime Aioli. I'm not a big raw foods guy, but I did enjoy the salmon tartare served over fresh vegetables from Urbana. Chris isn't a major seafood lover, but he enjoyed Chef Geoff's Shrimp & Grits. I also want to mention Blacksalt's delightfully seasonal Fava Bean Bruschetta with House-Cured Anchovies and Ramp Pesto. Always up for good anchovies.

Clockwise from top right: Meridian Pint's brisket slider, Asia Nine's chicken wing and dumpling, Meatcrafters' salami, Taberna del Alabardero's pheasant over creamy rice, The Pig's pork vindaloo.

Meat and Poultry

We're meat lovers here at Cook In / Dine Out, and Chef's Best didn't disappoint us in the least. In fact, our first taste of the evening was the Pork Vindaloo from The Pig, a tender piece of pork shoulder served with spicy kasmiri chili and cool cilantro-mint yogurt. Tabarna del Alabardero's Pheasant Over Creamy Rice with Boletus Mushrooms reminded me of a good risotto. Meatcrafters, a local producer of salami, cured meats and sausage, offered six choices of salami ranging from mild to more flavorful choices. My favorite was the One Wild Fennel salami. Lettuce wraps were also a trend (sensible finger food at an event like this is appreciated), such as Charlie Palmer Steak's Pork Shoulder Lettuce Wrap with Compressed Melon and Pickled Ramps.

One of my very favorite meaty treats of the evening was Asia Nine's Bourbon Ginger Chicken Wing with Summer Chicken Dumpling. The combination of bourbon and ginger was fantastic, something I would definitely like to experiment with. I also swooned over Meridian Pint's Chipotle Barbecue Beef Brisket Slider with Coleslaw.

Clockwise from top right: Argia's bruschetta, Firefly's three bean salad, Farmers Fishers Bakers' pimento cheese with baguettes.

Vegetables and Other Non-Meat Items

I'm really into chickpeas, but I don't think I'd ever had fresh ones before coming across Firefly's Three Bean Salad. The fresh chickpeas were green, rather than the usual light brown color you get from the canned ones. Our friend Wendy steered us over to the Pimento Cheese, a Southern favorite, at the Farmers Fishers Bakers station, which I had spread on a chewy baguette slice. Newly opened Dino's Grotto, the reincarnation of Dino's in Cleveland, served a delicious cold Potato and Garlic Soup. For apple and cheese fans, Argia's Bruschetta with Gorgonzola, Ricotta, Apple and Walnut was a nice fresh taste.

Clockwise from top right: Westend Bistro's ice cream with ceviche, Washington Hilton's bacon ice cream, Shake Shack's lemon meringue ice cream.

Desserts

Ice Cream was the dessert of choice at the event. My favorite was Shake Shack's Lemon Meringue ice cream, which tasted so much like the pie that you wondered how they made it work. Westend Bistro has the most unusual ice cream: a mini cone of Coconut Lemongrass Ice Cream topped with Snapper Ceviche. For wow factor, the Washington Hilton scored with its Bacon Ice Cream served over Bacon Pralines.

Washington Hilton's Pulled Pork Griddled Cheese with Cole Slaw, House-Made Mustard, Grilled Pork Belly and House-Baked Beans.

Lastly, I have to single out a particular highlight of the evening, which was the food from the Washington Hilton hotel caterers, who served a selection of dishes celebrating all things porky. In addition to the aforementioned bacon desserts, their table featured Pulled Pork Griddled Cheese with Cole Slaw, House-Made Mustard, Grilled Pork Belly and House-Baked Beans--all of which was quite tasty. No rubber chickens from this crew.

Food & Friends really lived up to its name with this event. I had a great time with my friends and the food was spectacular. If you've never heard of Food & Friends, it's a wonderful charity that prepares and delivers meals and groceries to people in the D.C. metropolitan area living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses. This is an important service for the community helping to bring hope and sustenance to those for whom the everyday task of acquiring and preparing food can be a struggle. I felt fortunate to be in good health to be able to enjoy such a remarkable event as Chef's Best. I left the event happy, sated and yes, inspired.

Special thanks to Jason Shriner of The Aubergine Chef who let me use many of his photos which appear above--generally the better ones, since he brought a nice camera while I was using my iPhone. Jason also wrote about our evening at Chef's Best on his site.

Fancy Gin Cocktail (Boker's Bitters)

Monday, I wrote about classic bitters cocktails; Tuesday, I discussed the new wave of bitters. Today's drink takes a page from both of those ideas: looking at old-school cocktails through the modern lens of the cocktail renaissance.

The Fancy Gin Cocktail particularly benefits from today's cocktail craze. It's an old-school 19th century cocktail that could not have been easily made in the United States until recently, since its key ingredients--genever, curaçao and Boker's bitters--were not available here for quite a long time. In fact, as recently as 2007, when David Wondrich wrote about this drink in Imbibe!, two of the drink's key ingredients were not for sale in the United States.

In discussing the earliest versions of cocktails in the 19th century, Wondrich sets up three increasingly complicated (although by our standards extremely simple) drinks. First, there's the "original cocktail," dating to the early 1800s, which consisted of a base spirit (rum, gin or brandy), water, bitters, sugar and nutmeg, and, unfortunately, no ice, which was not a given for cocktails back in those days. Iteration two, the Plain Cocktail, adds ice, curaçao and the option to make the base spirit whiskey. I like version three, the Fancy Cocktail, best. It differs from the Plain Cocktail only in that it includes a citrus garnish and is served in a better glass, appropriate hallmarks of a fancy cocktail.

Wondrich noted that Boker's bitters was the leading brand of aromatic bitters of the late 1800s. He also noted that the product was no longer available and included a recipe if you wanted to make your own. Additionally, he said that he's partial to Hollands gin in the drink--Hollands gin being another name for genever, the style of gin made in the Netherlands that was popular in the United States until British gin styles came along and displaced it. After prohibition, genever was not available in United States and even by 2007, it still wasn't available. Wondrich suggested a substitute mix of gin, whiskey and sugar, but noted that it wasn't particularly adequate. Lastly, there's the curaçao. Sure, curaçao has been available in the United States. (including in blue form, which is not what you want for this drink), but it's not a good fit for the type of curaçao that would have been used in this drink the 1800s. Wondrich suggested substituting Grand Marnier.

The proper ingredients for the Fancy Gin Cocktail, long gone from the U.S. market, are all available today.

Thankfully, today you don't have to settle for substitutes and DIY measures. You can credit today's cocktail renaissance (and Wondrich himself) for generating enough interest in these products that they are all available in the U.S. now. Bols brought its brand of genever to the United States in 2008. Wondrich himself worked with a cognac producer to develop Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao with 19th century flavor. And in 2009, using historical recipes, Adam Elmegirab brought back Boker's bitters.

Boker's bitters are, well, really quite bitter. They have a bit of an herbal taste and there's some spice there too, although it's not apparent at first. They strike me as particularly medicinal among the bitters I've sampled this week. Nonetheless, they work great in this drink, which is really good.

Fancy Gin Cocktail
Recipe adapted from  Imbibe! by David Wondrich

2 oz. Bols genever
1/2 tsp. Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao (not the blue kind)
1 tsp. simple syrup
2 dashes Boker's bitters
Lemon twist (garnish)

Combine genever, curaçao, simple syrup and bitters in a cocktail mixing glass with ice. Stir until cold then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist the lemon over the drink, run it around the rim of the glass, then drop it into the drink.

Related Posts:
Cocktail Bitters: An Introduction and History
Old-Fashioned Cocktail (with Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters)

Cocktail: Old-Fashioned (Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters)

The Old-Fashioned isn't just aptly named because it's been around a long time. Its simplicity harkens back to the original cocktail, which I also discuss today. The Old-Fashioned came along a little later, in the late 1870s, during a time when cocktails were getting more experimental and asking for a cocktail that was "old fashioned" signaled something simpler, albeit improved with the addition of ice and a simple citrus peel garnish.

Some people make an Old-Fashioned that resembles a muddled fruit cup with a little whiskey poured over it. When you consider the origin of the drink, that doesn't sound very "old fashioned" at all. The simplicity of the Old-Fashioned is what makes it great. It's the essential cocktail: a base spirit (in this case whiskey) modified with something sweet (sugar) and something else (bitters and the oils from the citrus garnish).

Fee Brothers produces a line of bitters, including the Barrel-Aged bitters used in this Old-Fashioned

Angostura bitters is the typical choice for an Old-Fashioned, since it's been around a long time. But other bitters may be used, which wouldn't be un-traditional, given the plethora of bitters that would have been around at the time the drink originated. I made mine with Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters, which adds a bit of cinnamon spice along with woodsy depth to the drink. Fee Brothers makes a limited run of these bitters every spring, using charred oak whiskey barrels.

Originally, the Old-Fashioned was made with a sugar cube, so muddling was required even if you forgo the fruit salad garnish. Brad Thomas Parsons prefers simple syrup for his Old-Fashioned recipe in Bitters, and I'm with him. Since the sugar is already dissolved, it mixes better with the other ingredients. And you're still being true to the original recipe by adding sugar and water.

Old-Fashioned Cocktail

2 oz. whiskey (bourbon or rye; I went with Buffalo Trace bourbon)
1/4 oz. simple syrup (may substitute 1 tsp. of sugar and 1 tsp. of water if you really want to be traditional)
2 or 3 dashes Angostura or other aromatic bitters (I used Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters)
Lemon or orange peel garnish

Combine whiskey, simple syrup and bitters in a cocktail mixing glass with ice. Stir until chilled and diluted (about 20 seconds). Strain into an Old-Fashioned glass with a single large ice cube. Squeeze the lemon or orange peel over the drink to express its oils then drop the peel in.

Related Posts:
Cocktail Bitters: An Introduction and History
Fancy Gin Cocktail (with Boker's Bitters)

The Feed: May 14, 2014

The Feed is my weekly round up of interesting food-related stories from newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites.

Metro Weekly: “Good Taste - As the longtime restaurant critic for The Washington Post, Tom Sietsema has turned dining out into a fabulous – and enviable – lifestyle,” by Randy Shulman
As a restaurant critic, Tom Sietsema has to maintain a certain amount of mystery. That said, for someone who doesn’t share his face, it’s so nice to read what he shares about his life in this interview with Shulman. I’ve been reading Sietsema’s columns for 14 years, so it’s great to get a sense of the man behind the menu.

New York Times: “Books: Canny Taste Buds and a Nose for Sleuthing (Review of Ruth Reichl’s Delicious!” by Dwight Garner
I love Reichl’s food memoirs, especially Garlic and Sapphires where she wrote about her experience as a New York Times restaurant critic. Now she’s published her first novel, Delicious!, which unfortunately doesn’t get the kindest review from Garner.

New York Times: “Red Velvet Cake: From Gimmick to American Classic,” by Kim Severson.
Severson looks at how red velvet went from being merely a gimmicky cake to a food-inspired obsession. She quotes David Sax, whose new book on American food trends, The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up With Fondue, sounds interesting.

Washington Post: “Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine: The real deal,” by Tim Artz.
Artz tackles the misunderstood subject of Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, which many people (erroneously apparently) equate with Amish traditions, when it is really so much more (but not Dutch, since it's actually German-influenced). I know I'll have a slice of that shoofly pie.

The Cooking Jar: “Authentic Chicken Satay,” by Farah
I discovered The Cooking Jar earlier this week during FoodieChat’s 3rd anniversary Twitter chat (check it out every Monday at 8 p.m. eastern with #FoodieChats—great way to talk food and meet interesting people) when a few of us got to talking about wanting good Asian recipes. Farah has a trove of beautiful ones, including her recent post on chicken satay, which is one of my favorite things to get in Thai restaurants, mostly because it’s a great excuse to eat peanut sauce.

Wall Street Journal: “Pizzerias Seek Certification for Neapolitan Pizza, but Some Say It's Cheesy,” by Charles Passy.
If you’ve eaten in enough “fancy” pizza places, you’ve probably come across a menu sporting VPN certification, a symbol that the restaurant has shelled some serious dough to be certified as offering “authentic” Neopolitan pizza. But is it worth it? I’ve often thought not, although it does represent an important attempt at preserving a classic recipe. And let’s give the headline writer kudos for a great pun.

Eater National: “Take a Tour of the Sriracha Factory in California,” by Hillary Dixler.
Eater tours the Huy Fong Foods Sriracha factory in Irwindale, California, the plant that drew all the bad press recently due to eye and through irritation among the locals. Looks like a pretty clean place. Glad to hear it’s up and running again.

Epicurious: “Agave Is For Lovers: The Return Of Blanco Tequila.”
Reacting against the darker oaky tequilas, which this article indicates were created with Americans in mind (but have been very popular in Mexico too), blanco tequila is making a comeback as a truer way to taste the agave in tequila.