 The pandemic has created so many issues for many people. I am sure like many of you, outings to restaurants have been mostly take-out, especially when we were at the height of the pandemic. We felt strongly we needed to support our friends who work in the restaurant industry even if we were not comfortable sitting inside for our meal, so carry out was a frequent occurrence here in the Carondelet Kitchen. As Omicron is starting to diminish, Big Guy and I felt like we could try to return to restaurant dining. I started to think about it and wondered if my past expectations would be overshadowed by our new reality of high anxiety as we started to rejoin the world. We enjoyed visiting restaurants again. Trying a new restaurant and revisiting an old friend. The food at both restaurants was excellent but the experience at Eleven-Eleven Mississippi was perfection! What a pleasure to revisit an old favorite and have the experience surpass any pre-conceived notions. Service, atmosphere, food, wine, everything was fantastic. We are looking forward to our next visit and returning to the great dining scene that Saint Louis offers. Saint Louis is blessed with amazing restaurants of world-class quality. You just may see this super cool old couple sitting at a table near you the next time you visit one of Saint Louis' great restaurants! 
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 I recently returned to the website of Swiss Colony looking for petits fours for the Big Guy as a special treat for his upcoming birthday. To my delight, they also had chocolate caramels topped with sea salt. I am sure I could wax poetic for quite some time about the merits of salt and sweet since they are the perfect combination. I was delighted to taste the caramels and discover they had the perfect amount of each ingredient to make it the perfect bite. Big Guy and I are looking forward to being able to explore The Lou again without having to rely only on the internet. I am confident we will be rewarded with outstanding treats with exceptional ingredients…made with St. Louis love!  I have written about growing up with food traditions that seem to come back to me when I see, or smell, certain foods. The good news is every time it happens, I am taken back to a moment in time to remember my loved ones who are no longer with us.
I am talking about stollens. My parents loved the ones with fruit preserves, and they often bought the larger one with distinct types of preserves to give their pastry variety for a few days. In my case, I was always partial to the ones with icing and pecans. I was thrilled to walk into Federhofer's Bakery the other day and see not only the large variety of stollens, but the personal size ones as well. Like all good bakeries, I walked in for bread and walked out with stollens and donuts too. My appreciation goes out to our friends at Federhofer’s for giving me a special day and great pastries to share with my Big Guy.  Big Guy and I just watched a terrific interview between Ruth Reichl and Fanny Singer. The discussion centered around Fanny’s recent publication, Always Home.
For those who do not know, Ruth Reichl is an American chef, food writer and past editor of Gourmet magazine…just to name three of her accomplishments…as well as a family friend. Fanny Singer is a writer, editor and co-founder of the design brand, Permanent Collection. She is also the daughter of Alice Waters who is an American chef credited with creating the farm-to-table movement and for pioneering California cuisine. The book is a series of stories and recipes by Fanny Singer highlighting her memories growing up as the daughter of Alice Waters. I was struck by the stories that zeroed in on the transformative power of food as love. We all eat to survive, but the experience of bringing people around the table changes food into more than nourishment for the body, but also food for the soul. If there is one thing I long for again is to bring family and friends back to my table. I miss sharing my love through cooking special meals for my loved ones. I am sure you do too!
St. Louis is a terrific place for food. With my recent forays into remembered meals, I started to think about restaurants from the past that no longer serve the people of St. Louis. I know you can google a list of restaurants, but here are three that the Big Guy and I used to love to haunt on date night.
When we first got married, we loved to go to Pelicans on Grand. The food was simple, delicious, and reasonable for two newlyweds. We also loved they had a piano player who would play and sing songs usually with the entire restaurant in full voice. Another favorite was Massa’s on the Grand. If you had the joy of Sterling escorting you to a table, you knew the night would be special. It eventually changed over to the Feasting Fox which brought another unique food profile to St. Louis. Brazie’s and Once Upon a Vine will also elicit special memories and stories around the dinner table. We cannot thank our friends at these two restaurants enough for years of enjoyment, special meals, and friendly banter as regulars. I know there are still great restaurants in The Lou, but I am feeling nostalgic this week. How about you? Any favorites places from your past?  I have been making different breads over the past few weeks especially with our recent storm. I never thought I would have bread on the verge of going stale as it is a staple in the Carondelet Kitchen. I realize that explains why it is a cardinal sin to run out of butter!
I was determined to do something with it and not just be lazy about throwing it out to the birds. Do not worry, they have plenty of seed to keep them happy. I flashed back to a memory of my mom making croutons. I did a quick search on the internet and realized it was an easy recipe of olive oil and seasonings. I was able to quickly cut up the bread, mix in the oil and seasonings and bake it in less than an hour. I was never a fan of my mom and her croutons. I could never understand why she was excited to make this one recipe when you could easily buy them from the store. I need to put the apology out into the ethos and let her know she was wise to repurpose her bread into a delicious food to enhance our meals.  In my early days of baking and cooking, I would get frustrated over recipes that I thought should be simple. The one ingredient that always sent me over the edge was yeast. I would buy multiple packages because I used to fail over and again to get my yeast to bubble and get happy.
It all changed when I had my “aha” moment that yeast is not hard, it is just will not ferment unless its bath water is a certain temperature. I used to run the water until it got hot and tried to guess at the right temperature. I am fairly sure I was “cooking” my yeast and killing it. Big Guy bought me a cooking thermometer and my failure rate is now at zero. I run the water until its hotter and wait for my thermometer to tell me I have reached the peak temperature of 110 degrees. Happy yeast and happy life because my bread is going to be perfect!  I cannot believe I am writing a Part Three to this delicious mix of mushrooms, but as the Big Guy started to add them to the steak, we realized there was still plenty more for another meal. I am obviously not complaining since it was excellent, and the price of groceries is sky-high right now so repurposing meals is a great money saver.
We left the remaining mushroom mix in the fridge for another day and pulled out hamburgers from the freezer. I love getting my burgers with mushrooms and cheese, so this is just a natural idea to make me a happy foodie. We added tater tots, and we had the perfect meal.  I wrote about the reward of making mushroom bourguignon. I did not share in my last blog that it makes enough for 4 – 6 servings. As it was so good, I was not about to throw it away.
What shall I make of this delicious leftover? I threw around ideas to add it to a noodle or rice dish. Instead, I went old school with a simple choice. Big Guy grilled up the perfect steak with the mushroom bourguignon as its topping. We added a side of roasted vegetables to round out the perfect meal. Just a quick note the mushrooms soaked up the sauce, so we added just enough dry red wine and beef broth to reconstitute the sauce. The great part about doing this step is we picked a lovely bottle of red wine as our beverage of choice with the meal. Win-Win!  Mushrooms can be the worst food but also the best food. I say this as one who recently did a food and wine pairing exercise whereby one of the foods was a cooked mushroom with no seasoning. Yuck! It did; however, remind me of the best of mushrooms. Big Guy and I started talking about a mushroom dish we used to eat at a now closed restaurant. Thanks to our friends on Twitter, we rediscovered the identity of the restaurant as Tokens owned by Ali Kasim. Mr. Kasim created a beautiful appetizer highlighting mushrooms. It was rich and beefy which satisfied our hunger, especially on a cold evening. With that memory reactivated in our memories, we started looking for a recipe that may be its equal. Thanks to Melissa Clark and the New York Times, we were excited by her Mushroom Bourguignon recipe. The recipe claims to take one hour, but I admittedly took extra time to really cook my mushrooms and pearl onions in smaller batches to make sure I consistently cooked them for the recipe. I was rewarded with a dish that created shouts of “Wow” and “OMG.” I remember Mr. Kasim sharing his joy and passion for food. I am not sure we recreated his recipe, but I would hope he would cheer on our efforts.
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AuthorJust a super cool old couple who love to cook and eat and drink in their Carondelet Kitchen in South Saint Louis, Missouri! Archives
September 2024
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