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From Our Chalkboard – Al Dente Pasta Recipes
February 1, 2012
We’ve gone through and pulled out some of the recipes that have been posted to our chalkboard and coordinating recipe sheets. Need an idea on how to use a product? Ask us! These are meant as a resource for ideas, not hard and fast lines to dinner.
This set comes from our friends over at Al Dente Pasta – some of the best pasta made state-side, we’re lucky enough to have them as our local pasta emporium. Thanks Al Dente!
So Simple Pasta with Roasted Chicken
2 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1 Tbsp. flour
16 oz. sliced mushrooms
2 red peppers, diced
2 shallots, chopped
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 cups shredded chicken meat
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. butter (optional)
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
chopped parsley
1 bag (12 oz.) Al Dente™ pasta
In a large skillet whisk together olive oil and flour over medium- high heat for 1 minute. Add mushrooms, shallots and red pepper, sautéing until vegetables begin to soften. Add broth, wine, lemon juice and salt. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add chicken and cook until heated through. Stir in butter. Toss with cooked pasta. Sprinkle with Parmesan and parsley.
Baked Pasta with Chicken, Mushrooms & Gruyere
1 bag Al Dente™ pasta
2 lbs. chicken, in 1 inch cubes
1/4 cup olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1/3 lb. gruyere or swiss cheese, grated
1 cup chicken broth
Toss vegetables with all but 2 Tbsp. of the olive oil. Cook pasta in boiling salted water until tender, but firm. Place pasta in baking dish greased with olive oil. Top with chicken, then mushrooms, then cheese. Pour chicken broth over all. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
Creamy Pasta with Veggies & Smoked Turkey
1 bag Al Dente™ pasta
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, dried
2 red peppers, diced
1lb. mushrooms, sliced
1lb. smoked turkey or ham, diced
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
In large skillet over medium heat, sauté veggies until soft. Add smoked turkey, evaporated milk & cook until heated through and slightly thickened. In the meantime, cook pasta in boiling water for 5 minutes, until tender, but firm. Drain. Add pasta to skillet, tossing with sauce, adding parmesan, salt & pepper.
Skillet Street Food – Spoonful of Bacon
January 30, 2012
The way we envision high-end street food – what with tattooed young, recent culinary graduates handing over food from far-flung corners of the world, dressed up and as fresh as a spring morning – it sort of started with Skillet Street Food. Rolling though the streets of Seattle in a rehabbed Airstream, Chef Josh Henderson forked over some amazing food from the small square window. It changed things. Sure, food trucks from New York City to LA have been making mind meltingly good food for years – but Skillet brought a new light to it all again. It gained momentum in a new and exciting ways, cities that had previously outlawed them were clamoring to legalize them (looking at you Chicago), others were having a hard time dealing with all the of food cart applications, fancy street food seemed like it was staying around for a while.
Skillet Street Food has grown, a lot. It’s opened a brick and mortar store, they still travel around the city in their shinny Airstream, cater events, and even package some of their famous ‘spreads.’
This is where we come in. We got ourselves a sample of their Bacon Spread. If you know us, we are no stranger to supple taste of bacon. Skillet’s Bacon Spread is like the sweet smoky meat concentrated into a container with a hints of spice but powerful baconyness. It’s perfect to use in pan sauces, a nice spoonful to pull your drippings together, salivation city. Make drool worthy mash potatoes by mixing in some into your next batch; bacon goes with almost everything – give the Bacon Spread a go. But Skillet Street Food didn’t stop there. They melded this bacontopia-in-a-jar with Fennel & Black Pepper – creating something worth the moniker ’aromatic and flavorful’. This mix makes an ideal addition to stuffing or turkey. Try adding a small bit to chili, added to croutons prior to baking, let your imagination go hog wild.
It is from here that we couldn’t help ourselves when skillet came knocking on our tummies with the Chipotle Pumpkin Sauce. A sauce we started using on everything in our abodes: from dipping our fries to taco meat to a slathering on top of pork loins.
We tend to think of these spreads and sauces as the swiss army knifes of our home kitchens. Try it in something, your bound to love the added complexity to your dish – we know we have.
Ethereal Confections Chocolate Bars – Beautifully Delicious
January 27, 2012
On a side street tucked into a shop off the square of a small town, closer to the Wisconsin boarder than to Chicago, a confectionary churns out magically tasty and stunningly beautiful chocolates. It’s here – in Woodstock, IL – that two women compose a symphony of sugar, nuts, fruits, and of course chocolate to create these wonders. They masterfully construct decadent truffles, impeccable meltaways, chunky chocolate bark, and more – but what caught our collective eye was their chocolate bars. In the wide world of chocolate bars, there are those few that we find so stunning in flavor and design, than those from Ethereal - their local to boot!
Most other bars would have the flavors peppered in trace amounts though the bar, forcing your tongue to do all of the heavy lifting trying to pull out the flavors. Ethereal’s Pistachio Cranberry bar has massive cuts of those tasty green nuts as well as hunks of dried cranberry, a feast for the eyes as well as the belly. All of the their chocolate bars have hunks of tasty treats trapped in smooth and rich dark chocolate – just ripe for the munching.
Grab a bar of these amazing chocolate confections and taste what locally made artisan “choco-love” tastes like.
Askinosie’s Sipping Chocolate – Taste Rich Obsession
January 25, 2012
When you pick up something off our shelf there is always a back story. Behind each item that is placed on our chrome wire racks has a deep passion and love. This is no more true than when picking up a package from Askinosie. In the store, it may seem just like a jar of super fine sipping chocolate. But as the label tries to portray, there is more behind just “simple chocolate on a shelf.”
Askinosie’s Orgins
Over a decade ago, a man was searching for his passion. He fell into the same grooves of his father, becoming a defense lawyer himself, but found himself wanting something else. Edging his way toward a cupcake bakery, and feeling his through a tragedy it became clear the cupcake biz wasn’t right for him. He dug deeper, turning a corner to creating artisan chocolate. Shawn found his place and peace buried deep in the rich and mellow profile of the world’s rarest chocolate. The progression from desserts to chocolate lends it self to think that Shawn loves to plunge himself into his work, to get a bit OCD on getting things, making everything ‘just right’ – it’d be a correct assumption. Crushing and making his own chocolate was only the begninning.
Flying into the jungles, meeting, teaching and learning from each and every one of his chocolate bean farmers; noting their work as well as turning the right fermentation procedures into practices, taking soil samples, moisture content of the beans, and are all pivotal aspects to Askinosie’s success. Delving deeper and deeper into chocolate, from the pressing techniques and packaging, shipping, down to the ground the cacao beans are grown in – when you taste Askinosie’s sipping chocolate you are not just getting chocolate, but heritage – years of developing sustainable agriculture and working from farm to store-front on ‘getting it right.’
Sip Your Chocolate
We’ve carried Askinosie for some time, from their bars to the baking chocolates and now the sipping chocolates, and we think this is the most concentrated version of their passion. A nice stir of warm whole milk and a decent helping of this will transfer you to San Jose, to a small bar buried in the starlight – a perfect sweet treat to put anyone to sleep. It’s rich and mellow, even and powerful. Pour up a glass at the end of a long day and it will melt away the worries and stressors. Take in a whiff and it will be hard not to unwind – draw in the potion of hard work and perfection.
Get a jar of Askinosie and start sipping, we’re sure you’ll be able to taste all of the greatness bottled into it’s inauspicious jar.
Red Velvet Cupcake – A Red Mystery
January 23, 2012
Since around the middle of this past summer we’ve started carrying Red Velvet cupcakes in our bakery. It started off simply as someone asking for some in a catering order, and developed into us enjoyed the slightly tangy and wonderfully moist bits of heaven so much that we decided to make it stick. We can all agree that red velvet cupcakes are delicious, and they sure settle nicely in moments when our stomachs don’t want to handle the thicker chocolate cupcakes, but the question is: what is the real difference?
It’s assumed that red velvet cake is some divine creation, and that the red color of it is some indicator of some deeply delicious secret. Answer is: red velvet cake is just another type of chocolate cake, albeit one that many flock to in moments of cravings and pure delight.
Red Velvet is claimed to be an American creation, popular in the south since at least the 1870s, and winning more than just a “Mama’s cookin’” reputation in the 1950’s thanks to New York hotels, particularly the Waldorf-Astoria. There’s evidence that the cake traveled across borders around that time (Eaton’s department store introduced the cake in the 60’s over in Canada), but otherwise the background of the cake is shrouded in a veil of scrumptious mystery. The red coloring of the cake was originally a simply scientific matter as opposed to a moment decorative ingenuity. Certain chemical reactions occurred between alkaline, found in baking soda and powder, and acid found in buttermilk and vinegar that browned the cocoa turning it reddish, and can even be seen in recipes with blueberries which then turn greenish. It also helped that chocolate has alkaline in it, furthering the red color that occurred in the cake.
Since then, bakers have enjoyed the color in the cake so much, they’ve sought to enhance it. The use of red food dye and beets is commonly found to redden recipes. This was an especially popular practice during World War II, because of food rationing. Bakers began boiling beets and using it in cakes, which of course reddened it and also helped to retain moisture in the cakes, thus making their cakes more appealing than perhaps the neighboring baker’s plain brown cakes.
Now, Red Velvet is popular at just about any social event, from birthday parties to weddings and even just casual strolls down the street. If you’re like me, you see them as comfort cake, and find the nice contrast between the deep red and bright white to be a little fancier than regular chocolate cakes. I definitely find myself more inclined to bake this particular chocolate cake over others in times when my affection takes the form of dessert-making, and needless to say, the moment when I revealed to my mom that it really is just chocolate I felt like a parent breaking the news that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real. (For all you Tooth Fairy believers, this is purely a hypothetical situation, of course!) Whatever the reason for their popularity though, the red velvet recipe has found a nice and cozy home in our bakery. It took several recipe tweaks and Natalie had quite a time making sure the cream cheese frosting wasn’t too starchy, melty, or sweet— but according to her she’s “made it perfect;,” I and our customers tend to agree. If you don’t see any in our bakery case, just ask one of our servers and happily scurry up to the bakery to grab some more.
January 2012 Chalkboard
January 20, 2012
(Almost) every month we put up some of favorite things on our massive in-store chalkboard: from the grocery, recipe ideas, and more. Here, in online form, is this month’s:
We featured our brand new Preserved Lemons with recipes(pdf) to accompany this marvel of tart and tangy.
After a short think, we knew Skillet’s Pumpkin Sauce had to end up on the board – it’s a bit sweet, reminds us of the harvest, and infinitely tasty. Our Habanero and Red pepper Jellies were other items we fell in love with this month, it’s hard not to what with it’s spiciness and awesomeness. The 4 Fortnights placed themselves in a nice section of the board where it will serve as a in-person reminder of the mid-winter hot deals.
An finally, SPG’s catering is an always easy way to host a dinner, bring a dish to a gathering, or plan a super-special meal. Chat with our chefs to get it personalized, order a stack of boxed lunches for your presentation, or pick one of meticulously crafted item from the catering menu.
Mirabelle Plum Preserves – Like Fresh Picked Summer
January 18, 2012
If you hear strange rumbles while in the back country – fear not. It is merely the sound of one of nature’s tastiest treats getting harvested, the Mirabelle plum. The rumble comes from the process usually used to harvest, that or a simple shake to the tree. Small and oblique in shape, but large in flavor – for those lucky enough to taste a fresh version know of it’s allure. That is why we’ve done a favor to those who seek this delicious treat, canned it.
We at SPG did not pull our plums from across the country, our Mirabelles are locally sourced from the farm. We got our preservationist made quick work of these delicious spheroids, bottling them fresh at their most succulent, saving the flavor. Roll out our Mirabelle Plum Preserves on toast, drop a dollop on cinnamon rolls, or add sweetness to a chili. Grab a jar and spread out the peak season.
Smoke Daddy’s Bloody Smokin’ Mary – Take ‘er Home
January 17, 2012
In a small inconspicuous red apartment-looking building on Division street there is a smoke house. A meat emporium of great magnitude, a plume of beefyness wafts in the area, spicy and smokey. Closer to the building the scent is noxious and hard to pull away from, inside: a symposium of barbeque - Welcome to Smoke Daddy. Sit down and order a drink, but not just any.
We know it’s [not] hard to believe, but we love ourselves some meat, and what could go better then a bloody mary with a plate piled high with tasty BBQ. Of course we pour some pretty heady bloody mary’s of our own in our cafe. But what about at home? The times you usually want to have a bloody mary are the times you don’t want to spend making it by hand unless you pre-made a batch. We’ve all been there. We can hardly find a better solution to this than Smoke Daddy’s Smokin’ Mary mix.
It’s a bit of smokiness – which they know all about, just the right amount of spicy kick, and nice even tomato. It’s a perfect way to bookend a long weekend, or to kick off a day out. But don’t just think of this bloody mary mix as only a ‘breakfast’ drink – it goes perfectly well with a pulled pork sandwhich for lunch, or a rack of ribs for dinner. Dress it up or down, Smoke Daddy’s Smokin’ Mary is always ready to impress.
Al Dente Pasta, Land & Sea – Two Worlds Unite
January 14, 2012
There are few pastas as beautiful as Land and Sea from Al Dente. Thin stripes of black and white bustle in a bag just waiting to be eaten. But this bag of local pasta has more to it than beauty – it also tastes phenomenal. We think it tastes great with just some olive oil and a quick cooking, or in a pasta salad with bright tomatoes and thick cuts of some kind of cured meat.
The idea for this organic pasta stems from an inspirational sea side visit by owner Monique. Between caws of seagulls and water splashing ashore, a light bulb went off. She bridge the two flavors, combining squid ink (sea) for the dark black noodles and eggs (land) for the light yellow. Tastes that bring out what is love about the coasts, fresh salty flavor and earthiness. Pick up a bag for an anniversary dinner, or turn an “everyday” dinner into a special evening.
Get a taste for this famous (and local) pasta it’s sure to do some inspiring of it’s own.
SPG’s Hot Pepper Jelly – Canned Heat
January 12, 2012
You’ve seen jars of hot pepper jelly in the far flung corners of grocery stores for years. We think it’s an unsung hero of food. Some of the big-store versions are questionable at best, loaded full of stabilizers, preservatives, and empty flavorings – so we took it upon ourselves to change that. SPG ‘s preservationist got to work creating two fantastically made jellies. We like to mix a nice spoonful of the Habanero Gold in with cream cheese for a perfect (and easy) spread with crackers. Use a dollop of the regular Hot Pepper Jelly on top of a frittata for nice smooth heat. Get creative, we’re sure you’ll love it. Pick up a jar today off our shelves and take some home with you.