Category Archives: Best Kept Secret

Put It On a Stick and Lick It

HOME COOKING

In this humidity, everything tastes better in popsicle-form. Start with these foolproof combos, then go crazy.

 

One afternoon, when I was a boy, my neighbor walked over to the corner of her yard where I was digging with her son and held out a funny-looking ice tray. She was a short and squat French woman who I’d become used to offering me foods I didn’t eat at home. This time, it was a popsicle. Made from orange juice. Blew my mind. I must’ve slurped down three or four of them. Naturally, I went home and emptied a carton of OJ into a couple of ice trays—they were all we had. Orange juice ice cubes are nothing like orange juice popsicles. It was an important day in my maturation. —Scott Edwards

Recipes and photography by Yelena Strokin

Currant PopsiclesIMG_2625
(Pictured, top) Serves six.
2 cups vanilla Greek yogurt
2 cups red or black currants
(or a combination of both)
2 tsps. honey or agave
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Strawberry Smoothie Popsicles
Serves six.
1 cup vanilla Greek yogurt
2 cups fresh strawberries, sliced
2 tsps. honey or agave
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Mango Popsicles
Serves six.
½ cup heavy cream
3 mangos
1 tsp. honey
Juice from half a lime

The directions are the same for all three popsicles: Add everything to a blender, then puree the mixture until it achieves a smooth consistency. Pour it into a popsicle tray, plant a popsicle stick in each mold and freeze for at least four hours.

Mango-Strawberry Popsicles
(Pictured, right) Serves six.
1 mango
2 cups fresh strawberries, sliced
2 tsps. honey
Juice from one orange
Juice from one grapefruit

Add the mango, orange juice and 1 tsp. of honey to a blender and puree the mixture until it achieves a smooth consistency. Then, spoon it into a popsicle tray, filling each mold halfway.
Puree the strawberries, grapefruit juice and 1 tsp. of honey next, and top off the molds. Plant a popsicle stick in each, then freeze for at least four hours.

Yelena Strokin is a Newtown-based food stylist and photographer and the founder of the blog Cooking Melangery.com.

 

[divider]What I’m Drinking Right Now[/divider]

Amador Whiskey Co. 10-barrel Straight Hop-Flavored Whiskey
(Limited Release) | $90 (750ml)

I can’t say I’ve ever met a whiskey that I haven’t liked, and I’ve met a lot of whiskeys. But never one like Amador’s 10-Barrel. Hits of citrus, toffee, clove, leather and hoppy spice weave together to create a bottomless complexity. The limited release is 60 percent straight malt whiskey sourced from high-end distillers and 40 percent hop-flavored whiskey distilled from Bear Republic Brewery’s Racer 5 IPA. The beer’s full-bodied flavor contributes a malty hoppy-ness without overwhelming the whiskey’s flavor profile. The components were aged separately for over two years in French oak wine barrels before they were combined and aged for another couple of years in chardonnay barrels. You taste every day of that.
On a lighter note, I’m not big on fruity beers, but Free Will Brewing Company’s Mango Wheat has just enough of a mango overtone to keep it refreshing. It also happens to pair really well with some of my favorite summer foods: ceviche, crab and corn.

ADAM JUNKINS
Partner/Sommelier
Sovana Bistro
(Kennett Square)

Third Time’s a Charm for Earl’s

DINING OUT

Peddler’s Village’s signature restaurant returns with a looser vibe and an appetizing, weeknight-friendly menu.

By Scott Edwards

Like a cat, the signature restaurant at Peddler’s Village, in Lahaska, is landing on its feet—again—after an ugly-looking fall. Earl’s New American opens Tuesday. This will be its third iteration, if you’re counting at home, following Earl’s Bucks County, which closed after a catastrophic kitchen fire in January 2015, and Earl’s Bucks County, the original.

And like the first rebirth, don’t expect much carryover. Both the interior design and the menu have been dramatically over-hauled. Gone is the stiff, special-occasion restaurant. In is its more personable, trendier, hungrier niece.

Rebekah Brown, of Bethany Design Co. in Valley Forge, is responsible for the contemporary farmhouse look.

“We’ve taken the opportunity to really brighten the entire space,” says Richard Slutter, the director of hospitality operations for Peddler’s Village.

Think Edison-bulb lighting, distressed-wood flooring, copper ceiling tiles and a fireplace set into a stone wall. Much of the wood that was used to craft the dining tables was pulled from barns throughout Peddler’s Village, Slutter says. And you’ll be able to appreciate every inch of them because they won’t be shrouded in white tablecloths, a staple of the restaurant’s predecessors.

Approachable is a term that executive chef Bill Murphy, a holdover from Earl’s Bucks County, references a lot when describing his new menu. “We’re doing more food that’s along the lines of something you can eat a couple times a week,” he says.

He goes to shrimp and grits, the traditional southern comfort dish, as his first example. The grits are stone-ground at Castle Valley Mill, in Doylestown. He goes next to the pasta because he’s making his own. The fusilli will be served with wild mushrooms from Haycock Township, in Upper Bucks, spring asparagus, roasted garlic and tomato sauce; the pappardelle, with duck confit, fiddlehead ferns and mascarpone.

Panko-crusted Griggstown Farm fried chicken’s also among the 11 standing entrees. The menu’s spotted with the names of local outfits, like Griggstown and Castle Valley, but none are closer by than Murphy’s own 1,800-square foot garden behind the restaurant. “I planted asparagus three years ago and this’ll be the first year I’ll actually have asparagus in a yielding quantity and size that I can use in a restaurant,” he says, with about as much enthusiasm as anyone’s ever mustered for asparagus.

Murphy was born in Chicago, spent his teens in Newtown and Holland, then left the area for the next couple of decades. He cooked in France, moved back to Chicago. “That’s where I originally worked for the Four Seasons hotel chain before I transferred to Philadelphia,” he says.

Murphy describes his stint at The Fountain at the Four Seasons as the most formative stretch of his career. “Jean-Marie Lacroix, Tony Clark, Martin Hamann were all very influential in teaching me how to cook, and not only cook, but how to be a gentleman and respect your employees,” he says.

“But I never pictured myself back in Bucks County for some odd reason.” It was a woman he knew in high school that drew him back here. They’re married now, just had a baby. “And for the first time in decades,” he says, “I feel at home.”

[divider]Ordering Off-menu[/divider]

Don’t be fooled by the steak frites, Murphy’s got some serious cooking chops. A pair of upcoming wine dinners will be prime opportunities to see him flex his muscle. The first, on April 22, will pair J. Lohr wines with a four-course dinner that’ll feature herb-crusted carpaccio and roasted lamb loin. The second, May 12, pairs Pio Cesare with the likes of goat cheese cannelloni and prosciutto-wrapped quail. Reserve a spot here.

 Photos courtesy Earl’s New American

 

World Domination, One Pie at a Time

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

If you’re a fan of SNAP Custom Pizza, good thing. They’re about to be everywhere.

By Mike Madaio

Rob Wasserman was among the first in what’s become a legion of prominent restaurateurs and chefs nationwide hurrying to open a gourmet-grade, fast-casual restaurant. Or, in Wasserman’s case, a bunch of them.

The owner of the Rittenhouse Square mainstay, Rouge, teamed up in 2014 with Pete Howey and Aaron Nocks, the owners of Peace A Pizza and New Hope Premium Fountain, to launch SNAP Custom Pizza in Ardmore. A second location opened in Exton late last year. And a third followed a couple months back, where Wasserman’s Center City burger joint, 500 Degrees, was formerly located.

And they’re just the beginning of what’s become a very ambitious expansion plan that encompasses 15 openings over the next 18 to 24 months.

“Each store is a limited build-out, unlike the multimillion-dollar budget you need to remodel a fine dining restaurant,” Wasserman explained over a couple of pies at the Exton SNAP. “Here, the turnaround time is 60 days, and we don’t need a big cash infusion.”

SNAP bakes its pies—600 degrees for about two minutes—in a conveyor convection oven—think Quizno’s—which doesn’t require an exhaust system. The so-called artisanal pizza places that have been cropping up like mushrooms in April need one, along with a wood-fire oven that’s usually custom-built. Both equal a lot of time and money.

Spurred by the popularity of Chipotle  and Shake Shack, chefs once relegated to high-minded concept dining—David Chang,  José Andrés —are reimagining the fast-food staples and presenting them among customizable menus and modern spaces.

“I can’t take any credit. It was all Pete and Aaron,” Wasserman says of SNAP’s inception. “They’ve been doing Peace A Pizza forever and started to see the writing on the wall. The era’s over where you walk into a restaurant and see slices sitting under the glass waiting to be reheated. With what you can now do with the ovens and the fresh, local ingredients, it’s a game-changer.”

Feel free to go bananas. Or maybe you prefer sausage. Either way, you’re the bawse at SNAP.

The SNAP experience mirrors that of Chipotle. Customers build their own pizzas from a buffet of ingredients as they proceed through the line. Several pre-selected combinations are also available if you don’t feel like thinking about it. The appeal, Wasserman says, is the freshness as much as the freedom of choice.

“We’re not pulling a frozen pie out of the oven,” he says. “Everything is made from scratch, using high-quality ingredients.”

That said, SNAP pizza isn’t necessarily an upgrade. The expense and effort invested in all those wood-fire ovens isn’t for nothing. The intense heat they generate creates that fresh-baked flavor and the crispy-on-the-outside, doughy-on-the-inside texture. SNAP’s conveyor convection ovens fall about 200 degrees short, and the crusts, in turn, come out as crisp and as flavorful as a saltine.

But there’s strength in numbers. If there are two or three SNAPs within a 10-minute drive, chances are you’re landing there for a fair amount of your cravings, whether you like the crust or not. It’s convenient, which can never be overstated in our have-it-now culture, and the ability to customize is a powerful lure.

The stiff crust seems to be a nonfactor thus far anyway. We grew up, after all, with soggy crust as the norm. As we talked, our conversation was twice interrupted by satisfied customers. “I paid them,” Wasserman quipped. There’s also the 4.5-star Yelp rating, out of more than 100 reviews, which is no easy feat.

“People love the fact that they’re not looking at a reheat,” he says. Which may speak more to our blind love for pizza than our standards.

Photos courtesy SNAP Custom Pizza