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My father is Norwegian by birth, and so some Norwegian characteristics have come to me naturally. Having hearty tolerance of long winters and cold temperatures has been truly helpful throughout my life. Even so, I have wished on more than … Continue reading
Last weekend when it came time to eat, both Bjorn and I were hungry for the same thing: “real food.” We’ve been raking tons of leaves, the air is chilly, it gets dark early at this time of year which is more than enough to make a person crave warmth and comfort. To us, “real food” is the food that we would have eaten as children. It is wholesome, homemade, hearty and satisfying– something Grandma would make. This particular meal is one I grew to love as a child but isn’t one that either of our Grandmas would have made–though amazing cooks, there isn’t a Ukrainian among them. I grew up in the North End of Winnipeg so many of my friends and classmates had a Baba. There is a large population of second, third and forth generation Ukrainians settled in the North End. Family recipes are preserved and propagated through their use at wedding socials, at social clubs suppers, church fundraisers and in restaurants that serve good, home-style Ukrainian food. I can say with assurance that even without a Ukrainian relative, any Winnipegger worth her salt knows a good perogy. 
To me, perfect perogies are filled with a cheesy potato mixture, boiled and fried with onions until they are golden and crispy and served with sour cream. Perogies can be the center of a meal on their own. When served with borscht, holobtsi, kovbasa and a slice of City Rye or Pumpernickel bread and butter, you are having a homey, North End feast. I set about to make perogies from scratch for the first time last week. I didn’t have the advantage of Hunky Bill’s Perogie Maker or a Baba’s recipe so I followed my instincts and took some guidance from a pierogi recipe by Martha Stewart. Martha is Polish so she uses the Polish spelling for Pierogi. Each Eastern European country has their own name for a perogy, and each family has their own variation on the recipe and favorite way to serve perogies. Whether you call them perogies, pierogi or varenyky the general concept of a perogy is the same: a soft, unleavened dough is stuffed with potatoes, vegetables, herbs, cheese or meat, boiled and sometimes fried, and typically served with fried onions and sour cream or jam.
I made half the quantity of Martha’s dough and potato filling, doubled the cheese and I channeled “North End Baba” while a I rolled, stuffed, boiled and fried. 
I found the dough forgiving and easy to handle. 
I floured the counter and rolled the dough to 1/8 inch thickness, then cut as many rounds as a I could with a juice glass. 
I measured the cheesy-potato mixture into each round with a scoop to avoid over filling any. The potato mixture is the consistency of dry mashed potatoes, since it contains no milk or cream. 
It was surprisingly easy to stretch, fill and pinch the soft dough to form tightly sealed, plump crescents. 
I boiled all of the perogies in batches of 8 or so. Not a single one burst open.
Some people stop here and eat perogies after boiling them. We tasted one, and found it tender and thoroughly cooked, but the next step of frying the boiled perogies with onions is my favorite preparation. After boiling the perogies, I froze half of the batch, spreading them out on a lightly greased cookie sheet and covering them with saran wrap to fry up another day. 
Roasted red beets are a good side dish to serve with perogies. So often I read recipes for roasting beets skin on and then slipping the skins off after they are roasted. I find this to be a messy way to nearly burn my fingertips and dye them pink. Instead, I peeled and sliced red beets before roasting them.
I coated them lightly in olive oil and sprinkled over some thyme from our garden that I saved and dried, and roasted the beets at 425 degrees for about 40 minutes. 
I love the way roasting a vegetable with herbs deepens its flavor and intensifies its color. The aroma of roasting thyme is the inside-the-house equivalent to autumnal the scent of fallen leaves.
I fried our perogies in butter with sliced onions. 
The results were exactly what we were hoping for– my perogies were homey, satisfying and so delicious that I could hardly believe I made them myself. The meal took me right home to Winnipeg, I will always be a North Ender at heart. 
In the summer we spend almost all our downtime at home on our patio that Bjorn built the first spring we had our house. We eat here, entertain here, do our internetting, gaze at the garden, plan our trips, rehash the day, daydream, read and occasionally we even get up to pull some weeds. I am serious when I say that I could spend 10 hours a day here from the minute spring arrives until the fall chill takes hold. Some days, I do exactly that. Still there are days when nothing is better than to have someone else cook for us and to return to our haunts from the days of apartment living when patio-dining was our best excuse to spend time outdoors.
I rank Salut on Grand Avenue, the Happy Gnome, and W.A. Frost best patios in Saint Paul for great food and drink. Relaxing through a meal while tucked into a private corner of these outdoor rooms is a magical summer escape. Sweeneys and Billy’s on Grand have solid bar food and are happening and fun. Anyone who has ever set foot in Saint Paul, Minnesota at dinner time in the summer already knows about these fixtures. This means they’re always busy. Today, I’m going to share a taste of two patios that have a certain popularity, but are a little lesser known. As a regular at Ngon and El Norteño who likes to be able to march in and sit right down at an open table, I had to think twice before tipping my hand. In the interest of encouraging the success of restaurants I like, I’m going to give their patios a public shout-out. For an escape and a reliably tasty meal, the patios at Ngon and Norteño are hidden gems.
Ngon Vietnamese Bistro – 799 University Avenue, Saint Paul, Minnesota Telephone: (651) 222-3301
I’ve mentioned Ngon on my blog before. We keep returning to Ngon and enjoy the authentic and inventive Vietnamese cuisine. Their use of local and sustainable meat and produce, their stellar selection of exclusively local beers and their house-made charcuterie that Bjorn has enjoyed on earlier visits have proven to contribute to consistently tasty meals. We found that we equally enjoyed these aspects of the restaurant when we dined on the patio behind the restaurant, hidden from the world by high fences and shaded from the early evening sun by grapevine-wound pergola. We entered Ngon through the front door which was a bit of an experience in inaccessibility due to the construction of the light rail on University Avenue. We requested a spot outside and were directed out of the restaurant and back to the sidewalk through the side door and then into the private patio through a gate under a mosiac sign showing the restaurant’s name. The hostess informed us that we could not have soup on the patio–it is too hot for the servers to carry this out. When I heard this, I was a little disappointed. I have ordered Hủ Tiếu with egg noodles almost every time I eat at Ngon. I am in love with this steamy bowl of squiggly egg noodles and thinly sliced carrot and daikon, halved brussel sprouts, grape tomatoes, whole green beans and bok choy, all still-crunchy, swimming in a light, tasty, clear vegetable broth. With a little encouragement by my wise husband, I got past my Who Moved my Cheese? moment and realized that change is good, and its high time I venture out into the rest of the menu because it was way too nice to eat indoors. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe eating a huge bowl of hot soup on a 90 degree evening wouldn’t be be too many people’s idea of a good time!?
We arrived hungry so we started our meal with crispy Vietnamese egg rolls, a crunchy, freshly-fried indulgence filled with vegetables and mushroom served with a little pickly shredded carrot and daikon.
I settled on Bún, a rice vermicelli salad with organic greens, cucumbers, bean sprouts with a generous amount of saucy fried tofu, garnished with more pickly shredded daikon and carrot, herbs and peanuts. It was refreshing, tasty and totally solid, but won’t oust Hủ Tiếu from its position as my Ngon favorite. Bjorn ordered braised pork shoulder with basil pasta which he thought was very good. I didn’t manage to get a photo.
El Norteño — 4000 East Lake Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota Telephone: (612) 722-6888
The patio at El Norteño is similar to all the others I’ve mentioned in that it is secluded. This particular patio wins hands-down for its foliage and flora, which is well-tended– obviously by a green thumb. There are potted plants bursting with herbs and flowers and thriving perennials layered several feet deep around inside the entire enclosure which creates a wonderfully lush atmosphere for a relaxing meal. There is plenty of room on the patio. The food is straight-forward, authentic Mexican fare. Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, flautas, tostadas and fajitas with chicken, pork, beef or veggies, served with beans, rice, fresh vegetables and traditional sauces. It is simple. Norteño isn’t going to win awards for culinary ingenuity, but the food hits the spot. The servers who also seem to cook, are few in number, so they aren’t going to win praise for attentiveness and speed, but when you are sitting outside on a gorgeous night, sipping a Dos Equis Amber, eating chips and fresh salsa while waiting for your food to arrive, who is in a hurry, exactly? El Norteño is licensed for beer and wine only, so wine margaritas are on the menu, but none with tequila. The only other limitation we’ve faced is our ability to gauge whether El Norteño will be open during dinner hours. With no website to check, we figure it out by taking a quick drive to Longfellow, and end up at the Birchwood, which is nearby when we’ve guessed wrong, which seems to be about half of our attempts. Though simple, their food tastes fresh and has good flavor. This is where I go for Mexican comforts- the lightness of lettuce and tomatoes, rich guacamole, warm fresh tortillas, the energy-giving amino acid balance of rice and beans, and seasoned meats for Bjorn. 
If you’re stuck in the Cities for the 4th of July and need a break from air conditioning, a tasty meal on a patio a little ways off the beaten track is the place to find yourself for lunch or dinner.
If it hasn’t already become extremely obvious, pasta is one of my all-time favorite foods. There are so many variations, from basic buttered noodles to whatever-you-have-in-the-fridge, to traditional recipes: stroganoff, Bolognese, or pasta all’Amatriciana. I’m usually a “concept cook” who has something in mind [e.g. pasta with veggies] and the actual ingredients I use depend on what I’m in the mood for or what needs to be used up. I haven’t been one to follow many recipes. I enjoy the freedom of my slapdash approach to cookery, but I have tasted enough really good food in my years to know that recipes, carefully chosen ingredients, timeless techniques and even a little precision are equally as necessary in the kitchen as passion and creativity. It also pays to take a few tips from the experts. I have long loved food blogs, food magazines, food television, cookbooks and hanging out in other people’s kitchens. Reading about cooking, talking about it and observing other cooks in action are my source of inspiration. These are as much my hobbies as cooking and writing about food. I became aware of the noticeable difference that good technique and ingredients yield in restaurant meals, but the breakthrough did not occur at home until I learned about the perfect pesto.
It was just another Wednesday night. I found myself watching short programs on the Chow network on our Roku on cooking and food. There was an episode on soup dumplings,* and on the perfect beer,** and then a segment on the perfect pesto aired and changed my approach to pesto forever.
Previously, I have only had a modest appreciation of pesto. The first pesto pasta I ate was a lunch back in my teenage years at the now-shuttered Grandma’s Restaurant in Fargo, North Dakota. It was so heavily garlic-y that I was afraid of both pesto and garlic for almost a decade. I still shudder to think about how much raw garlic I consumed before realizing it would be with me for days. More recently, I have tasted a pretty good silk handkerchief in a mild, dark green pesto at Bar La Grassa. Having grown basil in our garden, I’ve also made basil and parsley pestos at home that have been fine on toasted sandwiches and roasted vegetables. None of these looked anything like the marvelous green pesto I saw that evening on the Chow network.
According to the food writer, Marcia Gagliardi who appeared in the segment, perfect pesto can be had in San Francisco at a restaurant called Farina, on a pasta dish called mandilli al pesto. I do believe Marcia is right. When you read about Farina, you get a sense that they are better at what they do than everyone else. The chefs of Farina make known their belief that only Italians can cook the true foods of their region. I am not going to dispute that or attempt to prove them wrong. But I am going to try to learn as much as I can from them about making pesto. In the segment I watched, Chef Paolo Laboa of Farina explains the process of making pesto while shifting naturally from English and Italian, translating himself, and pausing to emphasize the importance of each detail of his approach. What becomes immediately clear even through the television is the fact that his pesto is different. It is bright green and creamy and is almost a perfectly emulsified, glistening paste. When Chef Paolo adds the pesto to the pasta, it melts, enveloping the thin sheets in a perfect, translucent, green coating. I’m guessing it is a meal that dreams are made of. Just looking at it makes you want to be in the Mission District for supper tonight. Or at our house…
Back to a winter day in Minnesota… I may never duplicate Chef Laboa’s pesto, but in listening to him, I learned a few things about how to make a better pesto. First, for a pesto worthy of freshly rolled pasta, you have to ditch the food processor and use a mortar and pestle. Fortunately for me, I just received one for Christmas from Bjorn. The one he selected for me is a nice small size that I can comfortably manage to hold. It is made of non-porous porcelain and a smooth wooden handle and a red exterior that I am happy to store on the open shelves in our kitchen.
I learned from Chef Paolo that the origin of ingredients matters a lot. Basil pesto universally contains basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and salt. Sure, you can make pesto out of these ingredients produced anywhere, but to begin to approximate Paolo Laboa’s pesto, you need basil that is similar to that grown in Genoa, Olive Oil from Liguria, Pine Nuts from Pisa, and carefully-selected Parmesan. And you need time. Lots of time. After watching the segment and trying to make it myself a few times I realized the making of Paolo’s pesto takes longer than it appears to take on TV.
I did the best I could gathering ingredients. It is winter, and the basil I found at the store wasn’t the best. I do believe that the Genovese basil from our garden will be an improvement on the basil available at the supermarket in a clamshell package in January. I didn’t spring for $18 Italian Pine Nuts but got some from Spain instead. I tried a few of Chef Laboa’s tips. Since Ligurian olive oil is not available to me I used light olive oil instead of extra virgin which is too strong and kills the taste of the basil. I soaked the basil leaves in water because, I learned if you don’t soak the basil there is too much chlorophyll in the leaves. I crushed the pine nuts with garlic and coarse salt and added 15 basil leaves. I put my heart into the process of grinding all of the ingredients together and then mixing in the oil. When the pesto was ready, I added a little pasta water to the pesto to melt the cheese before tossing hand-rolled handkerchiefs of pasta in the pesto. The end result of my effort did not yield the solid bright-green cream produced by Chef Laboa. Not even close. Even so, we thought the result was delicious and immeasurably better than the oily, basil-heavy, oxidized, chunky sludge that I’ve made in the food processor. If pesto is worth making, it is worth making well. Will I spend 45 minutes with the mortar and pestle to make pesto every week? Certainly not. It is a time-consuming process and a rich dish you can’t eat every week. Come summer though, when the basil is bursting forth I will make pesto again. I might not achieve “perfect” pesto, but delicious will be good enough.
*The segment about soup dumplings made me want soup dumplings which are little pouches made of dough that are stuffed with meat and fatty broth that liquefy upon cooking. Are there vegetarian soup dumplings out there? I want to try them!
**The writer of the beer segment claimed Supplication Ale by Russian River Brewing Company to be the best beer in the world. I’m sure I’d like it, but that I’d disagree about it being the best.
I often mention the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market. It has become a destination for us every weekend. We have a garden of our own, and so we have a daily supply of tomatoes, lettuces, peppers and many herbs throughout the summer and into the fall. Still, there are so many summer and autumn vegetables we don’t grow that we pick up in our weekly excursions to the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market. It is our source for corn, leeks, squash, melons, green onions, garlic and new species of vegetables to try for the first time. I had aspired to start canning this year, but by the time I had a free weekend, I was a week too late to do pickles, and just not as excited to make the effort for canning Dilly Beans. Salsa or pasta sauce would be fun, but I didn’t want to worry about pH levels in my first canning project. Pickled items just seem like a safer place to start. So, I gave up on the idea of preserving summer produce for winter. Then, as the summer wore on, I noticed that prices started to drop on large quantities of produce from $18 to $16 to $10 for a huge box and I couldn’t resist. I bought a crate of local tomatoes*, and planned to preserve them in the easiest way I know: blanche, chop and freeze them without seasoning to be used in sauces, chili and soups. I bought the crate of tomatoes on a late summer Saturday. My parents were visiting, so I didn’t get around to starting the blanching and freezing project until Tuesday evening.
I set up my blanching station on my handy kitchen table.** My essential list of tools included quart size freezer bags, 2 very clean plastic dish pans, one to be used for rinsing, and one for the ice water bath; 2 colanders; 2 cutting boards; a sharp paring knife; a bamboo-handled wire strainer (not pictured) and a large amount of ice for the ice water bath.
To begin, I washed the tomatoes and placed them in water in a plastic dish pan. I cleaned them up as needed with the paring knife, and cut a small X in the bottom of each clean tomato. When I had a colander full of cleaned up, scored-bottom tomatoes, I put them in a pot of boiling water on the stove, and left them there for 30 seconds. I initially set up two pots of boiling water on the stove, but soon realized that one pan of boiling tomatoes was all that could be tackled at a time with my small operation and two hands.
I removed the tomatoes from the boiling water with a wire scoop, and put them directly into the ice water bath. The hot to cold transition made the skins easy to slip off. I let them soak in the bath until they were cool enough to handle, removed the skins by hand and core quickly with a knife. I thought that cores came out more easily after the tomatoes were blanched.
Since most sauces are better with more of a tomato’s flesh than its liquid and seeds, I chopped the tomatoes and removed most of the seeds, and let the chopped tomatoes drain for a minute over the sink in a second colander so that my frozen tomatoes would be less liquid-y when thawed. The last step was to scoop the drained, chopped tomatoes into a quart-size freezer bag, and to remove as much of the air as possible before sealing the bag. Each colander-full batch of raw tomatoes yields a quart-size freezer bag filled about ¾ full. In total, I repeated this process for more than 2 hours and ended up with 9 quart freezer bags of tomatoes. It was some work, but 9 quarts of locally grown tomatoes frozen at the peak of freshness for $10 is a pretty good deal for the enjoyable effort that is involved.
Toward the end of the project, I got exhausted and I had to call in backup. Bjorn jumped right in and helped me see the project through to its close. I think it was the first time I’ve ever gotten wrinkled fingers from cutting up vegetables. Even though my Tuesday evening turned into a tomato-y marathon, the process of putting up food for the winter was rewarding. I’m certain that we’ll savor our favorite summer flavor preserved for the cold months to come.
*N.B., readers and self: this quantity is plenty for one person to handle in one evening.
**My kitchen table is a vintage enamel-topped table that I bought about 9 years ago. Through law school it served as a computer desk and work station. Last year we moved it into the kitchen for Thanksgiving preparations and discovered how nice it was to have some additional workspace in our tiny kitchen. I painted the table base flat black and Bjorn added casters. We use it constantly for cooking and baking projects, painting, sorting mail, as a place to sit for breakfast or have a guest sit while we cook a meal for them. I just love it.
