So they arrived, the guys from Travail Kitchen & Amusements. Or rather two of the three guys. The third guy might swing by later. The two guys, Bob and James, got out of their white pickup. Introduced themselves. We smiled at each other.
So they arrived, the guys from Travail Kitchen & Amusements. Or rather two of the three guys. The third guy might swing by later. The two guys, Bob and James, got out of their white pickup. Introduced themselves. We smiled at each other.
Billy Tserenbat arrives at our house with the odds stacked against him. We are here to create a kind of Baja California beach party as a way of getting to know Billy’s new Wayzata restaurant, a beach-centric, Mexican-influenced, fish and seafood celebration called Baja Haus.
Matti Sprague and I appear to be talking about fermentation. We are standing in Jon Wipfli’s well-lighted kitchen, and we are using all the words that you use when you talk about fermentation. We are talking about salting down vegetables, creating anaerobic environments, and encouraging the right kinds of microbial life while discouraging the wrong kinds.
The case for a more sustainable steak with Jon Wipfli and Erik Sather. I suffer from a chronic condition that I keep mostly under control. You haven’t heard of it. It’s called Sustainability Exhaustion. Most days I live just like you.
First you pour the arak,” insists Sameh Wadi. “Then you add the water. And only then do you add the ice. Outside the windows of Jon Wipfli’s kitchen, the first big winter snow sits thick on a pair of spruce trees. It is an unexpected setting for a round of arak—
Young Joni’s Ann Kim and Adam Gorski on new American food traditions. So there’s Young, and there’s Joni. Two moms. One attentive and skillful Korean family cook: Young. One affectionate and bibulous North Dakota family host: Joni. Right? Okay, so there’s this restaurant: Young Joni. Coming soon. Northeast Minneapolis.
Earlier that afternoon, just outside Jon Wipfli’s patio door, an entire boneless leg of lamb had twirled slowly on a string suspended above a hardwood fire for six hours or so, dripping occasional runnels of fat into the coals, and wrapping itself gradually in a cloak of char.
At some point early on Sunday afternoon, I looked up from my work as enthusiastic-but-mostly-unskilled sous chef, and felt a pang of concern. This was not coming together. We were all over the map. Jon Wipfli, The Growler’s resident chef, was downstairs fussing with his new smoker on the sidewalk
Chef Paul Berglund picks through the selection of knives available in Jon Wipfli’s kitchen, hefts a couple of them, and settles on his weapon of choice. Holding it in his left hand, he trues up the root ends of a row of scallions, rocks the knife up toward its tip, and with a single smooth forward stroke, lops off the lineup of unkempt onion dreadlocks.
The beard is magnificent. Untended and unfashionable. The anti-hipster beard. It streams down from his jaw in uneven rust-colored rivulets, and spreads high up his cheeks and toward his ears in a way that is tempting to compare to a blush, if we weren’t talking about maybe the least blushful person in this zip code.
An American couple living in a remote fold of southern France longed to become part of the local community. Then they got a thrilling invitation to a winemaker’s blending session.
The 40th anniversary of "Simple French Food" reminds us to slow down and enjoy the meal. The confusion arises not from what you might expect in a French cookbook — complexity, unfamiliar terms, technical difficulty — but from the recipe’s merciless spareness and simplicity.
For this Romanian family from St. Paul, the weekend before Christmas is a holiday unto itself: "Pull on your gloves, boys. It's time to mix some sausage." According to family legend, Eva Lapadat arrived in New York by ship from Beba Veche, Romania, in 1937, with three dollars in the pocket of her housecoat.
Because you were my milk swiller, my wild singer of rhymes, because you gave them hell from swing sets and the tops of slides, because the pendulum of a knee-length diaper called into question no part of your bossy authority,
Through a University of Minnesota program, novice beekeepers receive training and education – and, not so incidentally, improve conditions for the health of bees nationwide.
If figs look like foreign interlopers in this dry place, dusty green olive trees, with their voluptuous fruit and dark tropical greenery, look right at home. Which, of course, they are. One proposed definition of the limits of the Mediterranean region is simply "where olives grow."
The zucchini of the French countryside transforms the plate of everyday families. This is a hot, dry region. By all rights, it shouldn't produce anything as sumptuously lush as grapes and figs.
Steve and Mary Jo Hoffman of St. Paul are living in a small village in the Languedoc region of southern France with their two children this fall. Steve will write a monthly letter about their experiences, illustrated with Mary Jo's photographs.