What to do with too much mint?

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

June 12, 2010

In April I planted some mint in a container on my deck. I decided to go with a container so it wouldn’t bully around the other herbs and veggies I planned on planting in my raised bed. I also hoped planting it in a container would help me to, well, contain it in general. That has not really been the case. It has over grown it’s container and tarted to wrap itself around the posts on my deck. My mom and I have taken to calling it “Mintzilla”.

Monday we started studying all things bar and beverage related at school. About half way through lecture on Monday a lightening bolt struck my brain! Suddenly I knew how to take down Mintzilla. I was going to infuse Mintzilla into some vodka and then enjoy it in fabulous cocktails all summer! On my way home from class I stopped by the store and picked up a 750 milliliter bottle of vodka. Thursday after class, I came home and conquered the beast. Mintzilla is now happily residing in that vodka bottle, stored away in the cabinet above my refrigerator. Tomorrow I will taste my concoction and decide where to go with it from there.

It is only a matter of time before the offspring of Mintziila have once again taken over their container and my deck. Maybe a bottle of rum will spell the end for Mintzilla Jr, and some wonderful mojitos for me!

Day 1....maybe I should have thought about this a little more....

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

February 17, 2010

And so it begins, 40 days and nights of cooking vegetarian at home. This week is an incredibly hec-tic week to kick off the vegging out challenge. If I had to pick the craziest night of this hec-tic week it would most definitely be tonight. Tomorrow is my written and cooking midterm at school (I drew veal scallopini with Marsala cream sauce, herb roasted potatoes, sauted escarole, and another veggie of my choice). Still being without a car is not helping my situation because my ride showed up way late, we had to stop by the nearest Whole Foods on the way home because no place in my town (or for three towns over) sells quinoa OR silken tofu, and we got stuck in rush hour traffic. So it was 7p.m. by the time I got home.

Ok enough of the complaining. Moral of the story: I should have given more thought to what I was going to prepare for supper tonight.

I ended up throwing something together out of (mostly) what I had in the house. First I large diced some extra firm tofu and marinated it in some soy sauce with a few shakes of fish sauce. Then I diced some onions and sauted them with some garlic, added water and quinoa and cooked that. After the quinoa finished I drained and sauted the tofu. I tossed the quinoa and tofu in a bowl, added sun-dried tomatoes, olives, spinach and mozzarella cheese.

I am calling the end result a “warm Mediterranean inspired quinoa salad”...I know the tofu was marinated in soy and fish sauce and that isn’t Mediterranean in the least, but it brought a nice umami/salty flavor to the whole dish. For an impromptu meal it was really very tasty. When I started cooking I was really dreading not only the whole meal but the whole 40 days. (Honestly I was thinking about guilting my boyfriend into ordering a veggie pizza and calling it a night.) After eating I am actually looking forward to my 40 day challenge again. That being said I really need to plan my meals better.

All right enough stalling, back to midterm studying. Primal cuts here I come! In mind only of course) 1 day down, 39 to go!

The Guidelines

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

January 30, 2010

I have finally decided on some personal guidelines for the 40 days of vegging out. Being that I am in my 10 week protein class at school I will not be able to cut meat completely out of my diet. However, that is not the point of this challenge. This personal challenge is about cooking a variety of satisfying vegetarian meals at home over a lengthy period of time. Keeping that in mind I have decided on a few guidelines to follow for this challenge.

1) The only meat I will eat is what we cook at school. I will take the smallest portion possible.

2) I will only consume eggs and dairy products that can be bought from a local farm, directly from the farm itself.

3) No seafood

4) I can only consume fruits, vegetables and grains that I can purchase from a local farmers market.

5) Tofu is an exception to rule #4.

6) I will do my absolute best to eliminate all processed foods from my diet. If it is advertised on TV or can be purchased at a Wal-Mart/ other national chain store I will not eat it.

I think these are a few good rules to abide by during this challenge. The real challenge is going to be that I still do not have a car (it has been so long since my accident in October that it is almost normal to NOT drive. Oh well, saving the world one carpool at a time!) so I will be relying on my trusty, loving sidekick/boyfriend Sam to get me to and from the Soulard Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning.

Vegging Out

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

January 21, 2010

This week at culinary school we did some vegetarian cooking. A vegetarian life style has always seemed like a huge challenge to me. When I go out to eat I never see many vegetarian options. When I do see vegetarian menu item they rarely seem original or well thought out. Today in class me made a delicious vegetarian lasagna. While we were sitting in the break area eating a few fellow students and myself started discussing how hard it would be to feed ourselves satisfying vegetarian meals for an extended period of time. Then the discussion took an unexpected (not really) turn to about how lent was coming up. So a few of us have challenged ourselves to eat vegetarian (school meals not withstanding, we just started our proteins phase so it’s going to be 10 weeks of meat at school.) for all of Lent.

That’s 40 days and nights of no beef, chicken, pork, lamb, or fish.
We have decided to be ovo-lacto-vegetarians so eggs, milk and cheese are still a go. Everyone needs a good personal challenge so this one will be ours. We have a little time to gather recipes and prepare so if any of you vegetarians out there have any advice feel free to unload!

Pamamisu follow-up

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

December 22, 2009

I just found out this afternoon that the recipe developed by a fellow classmate and myself was selected by a panel of PAMA Cooking Contest Judges to advance to the final judging!!! I have to say that I am pretty gosh darn proud of Eric and myself. We had about 30 roughly 3 days from the time we found out about the contest until the time we had to submit our recipes. We only had one shot at getting it right and had to hope like heck that our brains and our palettes were on the same page.

We are truly honored apart of the final 20 recipes to be selected for judging. There are so many fantastic recipes in the final 20! I am still shocked that two culinary students in their 21st week of culinary and only their 11th week of baking could produce something like this!

Cooking is so much fun!!!

Also, I believe I have found the quintessential anger management technique: breaking down a whole chicken. I was incredibly upset last night and coped with it by breaking down a whole chicken, stuffing the breasts with goat cheese and basil for dinner, and making stock for chicken noodle soup (which is dinner tonight). I felt a ton better afterward.

Happy Holidays, I hope yours are as fun and exciting as my day has been today!

Check out the PAMA Judges 10 finalists - #9 Pamamisu]

Original Recipe- and I don’t mean KFC!

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

November 24, 2009

Last week a magical flier appeared outside of my bakeshop classroom door. It proclaimed that Pama Liqueur was holding a recipe contest on Facebook. The challenge: to create an original recipe using at least 3 tablespoons of Pama Liqueur. The recipe had to fit into one of three categories- appetizers, entrees, or desserts. The prize: An all expense paid trip for two, to the 2010 Food and Wine Class in Aspen. After a few minutes of excited discussion about how cool it would be to win, we read the fine print and realized we had 6 days to develop and submit our recipes. The time restrictions began to sink in. Many of my classmates declared there was no way anyone could develop, perfect, and submit a winning recipe in less than a week. Only two of us remained determined to meet the challenge.

In reality it wasn’t that dramatic. Myself and a classmate were just really super excited about the chance to win a trip to the 2010 Food and Wine Classic in Aspen.

We wanted to make a Pama Liqueur paper using a technique we learned from the chef that runs our molecular gastronomy. The plan was to take that paper and do some kind of a play on phyllo dough for a dessert. After two days of planning, and with two days remaining to gather our ingredients, test of recipe, take pictures, and submit it online, we realized how impossible that would be. So Pama paper turned into Pama ladyfingers, which turned into Pama ladyfingers soaked in a Pama simple syrup, and that turned into Pama ladyfingers soaked in a Pama simple syrup with a drunken whipped cream. Then we took a deep breath, kicked a few more ideas around and decided that some toasted almonds and a Pama chocolate ganache would be a nice garnish.

We felt our flavors and textures would be great together but we just had to figure out how to present it. That’s when my classmate came up with the idea of layering it like a tiramisu. The next day after class we set up in the back of our class room and got started. We only had one chance to get it right, and we had to remember to write it all down to make it a standardized recipe.....Two and a half hours later it was born: Pamamisu!!

So if you have a facebook page follow the link to check out my first ever recipe collaboration and don’t forget to VOTE while you are there!
Vote for Pamamisu

Thanks for all the support!

Duck, Duck,....Duck!

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

November 7, 2009

Every 10 weeks school holds a master class, usually taught by one of the chefs on our advisory board. The latest class was last Friday, taught by Chef Eric Brenner. For those of you familiar with the St. Louis area, he is the chef/owner of Moxy Bistro, and Chef Brenner is also responsible for the new menu at Molly’s in Soulard. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend his class.

Chef Brenner has a great appreciation for the flavors of France. The ingredient he chose for the class was duck. Prior to the start of the master class that was all I knew about the class and pretty much all I knew about duck. I showed up ready learn and excited to get my hands on my chef’s knife again. (the last 10 weeks have been baking...needless to say everyone in class has been itching to get their hands on a knife again! I don’t count using it at home because it doesn’t quite match the excitement I feel when I am in class with my chefs at school.)There was a nervous excitement about the kitchen as we waited for Chef Brenner to arrive. You could almost see the thoughts running through everyone’s mind- would he be mean or nice? strict, sweet, quiet our in our faces? And what the heck would we be doing with duck?

Our first indication as to the mood of the day was when Chef Brenner dashed into the room a few minutes late and apologized by he wasn’t used to being up so early. The whole room exhaled and I though to myself “Yes! Someone who feels exactly like I do in the mornings. This is going to be a great class!” Chef Brenner introduced himself and told us a little about his education and his restaurants. He then announced that the reason he wanted to work with duck was to teach us about cost control and because he loves duck.

We opened up our ducks, placed them on our cutting boards and tossed the neck and innards aside. After breaking our ducks down into breast and leg quarter pieces, we removed most of the skin. The carcasses were submerged in a steam kettle with mire poix to start a stock. Fat was rendered for the skin and used to confit the leg quarters. The skin was then turned into cracklin’ (for our purpose it was then snacked during the remainder of the class). The breasts were seared. Had we had time we could have turned the liver and kidney’s into a savory mouse or used them as a filling for a ravioli. The stock could have been turned into a base for a sauce or a soup. At the end of class I had learned a lot about duck and a few new cooking techniques. In that respect the class was a huge success.

However, duck was not all that Chef Brenner taught us about last Friday. As a restaurateur he told us about his philosophy on coping with hard financial times: Do not take out those hardships on your staff, and do not compromise the quality of your product. Take it upon yourself to utilize every bit of your product, like the duck we worked with. Then, treat yourself like your product and utilize all of your talents as a chef. One of the ways Chef Brenner has helped to supplement income for his restaurants is to do consulting work across the country (not to mention that he hasn’t taken a paycheck in months). And despite having never been to France he left me passionate about continuing my classical education at school.

Personally, the last three weeks have been hard. They have left me feeling a little defeated. I left his master class excited about the possibilities in my future, inspired to do more to further my education outside of school, and longing to visit France. Chef Brenner added much needed fuel to my fire and for that I would like to thank him, he is truly a master of his craft!

The All Star Game Pt. 2: Let’s Get It On

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

October 20, 2009

After a weekend of prep and transporting food from the kitchen in the basement of the Edward Jones Dome to the Hot and Cold Tents, more prep commenced on site. We plated and covered and garnished all manner of dishes. As we worked in the back Classic Party Rentals set up the main event tent. As Monday night’s Homerun Dervy party grew nearer, the tension in the tents grew thicker. We were divided into back of house and front of house crews. The back of house crews would stay in the hot and cold tents and continue to plate sides dishes, and desserts. The front of house crews would be working at “action stations” located throughout each of the tents neighborhoods. I was placed on a FOH crews and stationed in The Loop neighborhood (which was the Missouri Grass-fed Beef Carvery). After arriving at my action station I learned I would be one of the carvers, the only female carver....YIKES!!!! For the Derby party I would be carving a beef brisket butt. Hearing that made me considerably less nervous. The majority of my restaurant experience is in BBQ so at least I knew how to carve a brisket butt.

Once the doors to the tent were opened the night was a blur. Everywhere you looked there were MLB players, celebrities, local radio and TV personalities. It was a rush. 1:30 am rolled around and so did last call. The tents were cleared by 2:30 am and we all breathed a sigh of relief at how well the party had gone. Then we all took a deep breath and dove into set up for the lunch party to take place in less than 10 hours. The areas of the tent would remain the same but the fare would be lighter.

After what felt like the longest drive home and the shortest nap ever I arrived back at the tents. We were given our assignments for the day, I was to remain at the carvery station. For that I was very grateful! However, after I was told what we would be carving I felt like the floor had fallen out from beneath my feat. I was to carve a steamship round of pork....what??? After a quick carving demo, the tents were once again opened. 5 steamship rounds later (I believe all 7 carvers went through 5 steamship rounds, that’s a lot of meat!!) the tents emptied.

As we began breaking down a couple of men in sunglasses and suits came around and had us make up a few plates of food to-go. We all smiled and high-fived as we speculated where the plates were going cough Mr. Presidnet cough*cough Our Chefs informed us that they were bringing in a clean up crew, there was going to be an after party at Tuckers and that we were all free to go. Handshakes, hugs and thank you’s were exchanged and our part of the MLB All-Star Game was complete.

I was the only one of the volunteer crew to attend the small after party (mostly because it was only 15 min away from my house). It was great to relax, drink a beer and chat with the chef’s on a more casual level.

A few days later the event was nothing more than a memory for St. Louisan’s. It was a truly amazing experience and one I will never forget. I still get overwhelmed sometimes when I think about the amazing things I have already had the opportunity to do since enrolling in culinary school. I wonder what will come my way next!

The All Star Game Part 1: The Set Up

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

September 12, 2009

In July the big buzz in St. Louis was the MLB All-Star game. It had been decades since St. Louis had hosted the game so everyone was very excited. As the game drew closer the town was tying up lose ends, and cleaning up the streets. Restaurants were spit shinning the silver and putting out the good china (you know, the kind you use when company is coming!) The space surrounding the new Busch Stadium started to fill with sponsor tents, MLB activities, a small Cooperstown exhibit, and a very large hard walled tent. The very large hard wall tent was surrounded by two smaller tents (and by smaller I mean large, just not very large). A very large arch was painted on the floor of the very large hard walled tent. As walls went up on one of the smaller, large tents cold air began to flow into it.

While all of this was happening I was in a meeting two blocks away. There were about 50 of us corralled in the now vacant Bowling Hall of Fame. We were volunteers from the local culinary schools, and the Chefs de Cuisine of St. Louis. I had signed up, through my school, to volunteer my time prepping food and to work the Commissioner’s Gala and the V.I.P. party prior to the All-Star game. The meeting was a meet and greet with the chefs in charge of the events, a broad run down of the weekend prep shifts and the actual events. We got our pictures taken for our badges (which allowed us access to anywhere and everywhere food was being served).

We were not told anything about the menu but we were told how the main tent was going to be set up. The very large arch, painted on the floor of the very large main tent, would be the pathway that led guest around the tent. As guests worked their way around the arch they would pass through different areas of the tent. The different areas of the tent would be represented by different areas of St. Louis. Those areas included: The Boat House (located in Forest Park), The Hill (St. Louis’ Italian neighborhood), The Central West End (a very urban neighborhood), The Loop (a very eclectic neighborhood) , Soulard (St. Louis’ New Orleans-ish neighborhood), a Busch Stadium snack area and a St. Louis Sweets dessert bar section. After we were given all of that information we all knew the menu would be massive and that would be preparing 7 different styles of food.

Oh boy...What had I gotten myself into? Whatever it was it was going to be one heck of an experience. Keeping that in mind, I signed up for extra shifts!

Coming Soon The All-Star Game Part 2: Lets Get It On

ugh....oh and yay - biscotti!

From Maggie’s — Blog by Maggie Restivo

September 9, 2009

Well some joker on the stltoday.com’s restaurant review page is telling everyone that that BBQ restaurant I work for gets our ribs shipped in, already smoked, from the original location. Clearly, he 1) has not done his homework 2) does not remember the news coverage we got back in April when some lady crashed her car into our 2 SMOKERS and we had to shut down for the afternoon.

BBQ is a very subjective style of food. We are used to hearing a lot of “So and So’s was better” because it is the style of BBQ (or sauce or rub, or prep technique)that person has grown up on. But to spread complete lies like that is just wrong.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone on culinate.com for checking their facts and being opinionated and honest yet fair.

On a much happier note: We made pistachio biscotti in class which means I have delicious goodness to accompany my coffee in the morning. In fact, I am going to bed so I can fall asleep and get to eating biscotti sooner!