Yesterday marked one year from the first post on marthaandtom.com. What better way to celebrate than Simple, Good and Tasty’s dinner tonight at Brasa? Alex Roberts and his crew whipped up a sumptuous — and seemingly endless — feast of comforting local food, served family-style. (If you haven’t yet tried Brasa in St. Paul or Northeast Minneapolis, do!) Plenty of good food can be prepared with local ingredients even in the midst of Minnesota January, when everything is frozen three-times over. Just when we thought we couldn’t eat any more — Chef Roberts was generous with seconds and thirds — Brasa surprised us with three desserts.

Not a bad way to kick off another year of faithful blogging.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for your comments.

Have some cake!

As I’ll be stuck at work this afternoon, I decided to volunteer on my own this morning to get started on what Common Roots is calling the final harvest. Details below.

It’s been a great season for the Common Roots garden. The garden has already provided 1300 pounds of produce! Frost is predicted soon, so TODAY between 2:30 and 5:30 Common Roots will be harvesting most of what’s left, planting the boulevard strip on Aldrich Ave, and doing some weeding.

Danny would be happy to have as many hands as possible. If you’re interested in helping out, follow Common Roots on Twitter and give a tweet that you’d like to lend a hand, or email info (at) commonrootscafe (dot) com.

Common Roots Cafe
2558 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55405
(612) 871-2360

Update: “today” above refers to Thursday, October 8, 2009. If you are interested in volunteering in the future, feel free to contact the address mentioned.

As Tom mentioned, we had a lot of fun with his parents this weekend. They arrived on Friday in time for Surly Beer at Common Roots and dinner back home.

Saturday morning we headed to the Midtown Farmers’ Market. Though we had planned on tamales from our friends at Fireroast Mountain Cafe, they hadn’t yet arrived at the market before we were ready to bike back with our veggies. Instead, Tom and I decided despite the repeat that bagels and (more) coffee from Common Roots would be a great alternative. Both Amy and Kevin were tempted to buy more bagels to take home and share, but given their 2-day drive, they decided that perfect combination of crispy crusts and chewy centers probably wouldn’t make the trip. Finally fed, the four of us took a walk around Lake of Isles. By the end of our walk it was time for lunch. With rain on the forecast and feeling a bit tired, we decided to drive, rather than walk, to Punch Pizza near Lake Calhoun. Following lunch we drove to Linden Hills to visit some of my favorite shops in the neighborhood (besides Clancey’s): Wonderment, Creative Kid Stuff, and The Wild Rumpus. Tom and I each bought a new game and Amy took home a few surprises for family in Michigan. Still no rain, we started to return home and decided instead on a drive down Park Avenue to catch a glimpse of the American Swedish Institute and visit the Mill City Museum—a big hit. The photo at left was taken on the endless bridge at the Guthrie Theater, just next door to the museum. The rain hit just as we arrived at the Craftsman to share drinks and their housemade charcuterie plate. We were early, as we’d planned on dinner at home. Thanks to our friends’ great idea to roll-your-own spring rolls at Julia’s birthday party, we decided to try this out on Tom’s parents back at the apartment. Light and fresh, the spring rolls were the perfect end to a very full day.

Sunday morning it was brunch at Blackbird with eggs all around and a stop at the Uptown Market before our visitors headed back to the Great Lakes State. Thanks for visiting, Kevin & Amy. Hopefully we’ll have you back again the next time the weather’s warm—but not too warm.

This past Thursday I headed to Fenn Valley Winery with parents to sample a few Michigan wines on my last day there. While waiting for the Tasting Room at Fenn Valley to open (11 a.m. Eastern, sharp), we stopped for a slice of pie at Crane’s restaurant. They sell frozen pies at their counter and also offer table service in the dining room—word has it their bean soups are the perfect accompaniment to an autumn afternoon. I enjoyed half a mug of hot chocolate with apple crisp while my parents, Linda and Juan, had coffee and blueberry pie.

Crane’s main attraction is probably their U-Pick orchards of apples, peaches, and a lot of other fruits. I enjoyed wandering around the apple trees while Linda and Juan finished their coffees. It is important to know where one’s apple crisp comes from!

It’s safe to say we enjoyed the pie a bit more than the wine that followed. Just the same, hoping to support better years ahead I took home a bottle of Meritage, a wine Tom and I first had when we dined with his Aunt Ann and Uncle Don at Journeyman Café (again, formerly of Fennville). Meritage is Fenn Valley’s blend of their own Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. Of all of the winery’s offerings, it is definitely the best.

Tastings at Fenn Valley are complimentary. Of their wines, each guest is invited to choose five. When tasting with friends, though, it’s easy to share glasses around so that everyone can experience the full spectrum of the Fenn Valley.

Tasting Room Hours
Open year round for Free tasting and retail sales.
Monday—Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

July and August
Monday—Saturday 11 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

September and October
Monday—Thursday 11 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Friday—Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

As far as trendy foodie obsessions go, I am more of a pizza guy than a hamburger guy. I’m not as die-hard as some, but I have observed a number of the pizza-nerd pieties: I’ve eaten D.O.C. Pizza Margherita at Antica Pizzeria dell’Arte. I’ve waited two hours in line to try Roman pizza at Da Baffetto. During a short trip to New Haven, I ate at both Frank Pepe and Modern Apizza. I once walked across the Brooklyn Bridge in 100° weather and spent all the cash in my wallet to eat at Grimaldi’s. I have also spent a significant amount of time trying to perfect Neapolitan pizza in my home oven; some of these efforts are documented on this very blog.

Minneapolis, my home of one and a half years, is not known as a pizza city, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the pizza available here. First and foremost there is Punch Pizza, which makes the best pizza I have ever had outside of Italy—possibly even inside of Italy. I have eaten at Punch more times than anywhere else;we are very lucky in the Twin Cities to have not just one  great Neapolitan pizzeria, but a whole chain of them. I have also tried and enjoyed Galactic Pizza, which has the advantage of being close to my house and delivered in electric cars by superheroes.

My preferences in pizza run strongly Italian, but I’m definitely not one of those jerks who doesn’t consider deep-dish to be real pizza (in fact I strongly recommend the deep dish from Little Star in San Francisco). I like to keep an open mind; Dara’s pizza personality test classified me as ANCS-The Different Drummer. Apparently my  ideal Twin Cities pizza comes from Crescent Moon. I have yet to take the Afghan pizza plunge, I do like to try as many different kinds of pizza as I can. With that attitude of openness and thirst for discovery, this afternoon I tried for the first time what I have heard referred to as “Minnesota-style” pizza, courtesy of Red’s Savoy Pizza.

I’ll admit that my decision to try Red’s was largely a matter of convenience; I had been somewhat intrigued by the restaurant after reading a review on Slice, but it was not until they opened a location in the Golooney’s space only a few blocks from my apartment that I decided I would go and try it. I walked there, ordered a sausage pie (for control purposes, when tasting a new non-Neapolitan pizza I order sausage or pepproni, for Neapolitan pizzas Margherita) and after waiting a while I eagerly walked home with a piping hot pie.

Opening the box, I made two observations: one, this pizza was cut into squares. Apparently, that is a Minnesota thing—maybe they wanted make pizza more like bars. The problem with cutting a pizza into squares is that it creates awkward little corner pieces and a number of pieces that don’t have any crust to serve as a handle, necessitating the use of a fork. I was also surprised to see the giant brown spots in the center of the pizza; at first I thought they were some unrequested topping but then realized it was just huge swaths browned cheese.

Crust. If I had to compare the crust of Red’s Savoy’s pizza to any, I’d say it reminded me most of cheap frozen pizza crust. That is not a bad thing; I like cheap frozen pizza. And I’m not saying that it was actually frozen: I saw them tossing the fresh dough. Whatever is in that dough, it produces no puffy cornicione; rather, the crust is cracker thin and quite crispy and burnt on the edge. As one approaches the center, the crust becomes soggier, chewier and more cardboard-like.  Charring was limited to the edge, with the rest of the crust a pale brown. The crust was more of a vehicle for the toppings than an end in itself, but I did really enjoy the crispiness of the edges. I also thought it was overfloured, but I can forgive that because I am myself often guilty of using ample flour to ensure smooth separation of the dough from the peel. Still, raw flour isn’t especially tasty.

Sauce. This pizza is heavily sauced, so much so  that great pools of the stuff are visible on the edges and spill onto the pizza box. That’s okay since the sauce is delicious; very thick and meaty, like a red sauce you would eat on spaghetti rather than a pizza sauce. Its texture at times was almost squishy. It had good flavor: a little cooked-tasting but pleasantly spicy.

Cheese. The first thing to be said about cheese on this pizza is that there is a lot of it. I mean a lot of it. There is so much cheese that it bonds with the box and slips off of the crust as you try to pull a piece a way. There is so much cheese that it forms its own super-layer that is independent of the rest of the pizza. In fact, if there is one thing that seemed to distinguish this style of pizza it is the amount of cheese. As long as the cheese remained warm and gooey it was good and comforting but it became a bit disconcerting as it started to congeal. Must eat faster!

Sausage. The sausage was spicy and had the right amount of grease, which is to say plenty of grease. Red’s puts toppings on top of the sauce and covers the whole thing with cheese, rather than putting toppings on top of the cheese. I favor the latter approach since I think it actually binds the toppings in better (the cheese bubbles up around them). As it was, it was hard to keep the toppings and cheese on top of the crust without using a fork.

From the breakdown above you might get the idea that I didn’t like Red’s Savoy pizza, but actually I thought it was pretty good; definitely a case where the experience of eating it makes it more than the sum of its parts. Red’s Savoy probably won’t unseat Punch in terms of my favorite pizza in the Twin Cities, but I would eat it again. Particularly if I had been drinking. Based on this experience, my overall impression of ‘Minnesota’ pizza is: cracker thin crust, lots of sauce and even more cheese, and squares.

Martha and I celebrated our anniversary at Restaurant Alma last month. Alma is well-liked in Minneapolis and I’m not going to add my voice to the chorus by writing a review; suffice it to say that its reputation is deserved. Instead, I’ll just document our meal for your vicarious pleasure.

Course One: Parmesan Flan and Bison Tartare

I ordered the parmesan flan, which came with artichoke hearts, a kalamata spread, parmesan shavings and maple syrup. I have never had a savory flan before but I thought it was a great way to do flan—biting into the flan I got that perfect creamy texture and a cream flavor but without sweetness; then my mouth was suddenly flooded with the flavor of aged parmesan.  All of the garnishes on the plate are natural pairs with parmesan so I had a lot of fun constructing different bites. Martha’s bison tartare was very subtly flavored (at least from the bite I had) but was well completed by the salad of greens and radish matchsticks that came alongside, adding slight crunch and bite.

Course Two: Beet-Ricotta Ravioli and Black Bean Fritters

Each bite of beet-ricotta ravioli had a light beet flavor that wouldn’t be off putting even to beet-haters. Every other bite also featured the zing of horseradish; my coarse palate would’ve been happy with a much stronger presence for the horseradish but I’m sure the way it was prepared was much more refined. In any case, beets and horseradish is a great idea, as is adding prosciutto, which gave a burst of salt. And I’m just a sucker for ham. The black bean fritters were very reminiscent of falafel, maybe even southwestern falafel.

Course Three: Gently Cooked Trout

Normally I am reluctant to order the same dish as the people I am dining with but the description on the menu and our waitress’s hearty recommendation drew both Martha and me to the gently cooked trout. The trout was not only gently cooked, it was perfectly cooked—very moist and not flaky (when fish gets flaky it is overcooked, in this writer’s humble opinion). It came topped with a red wine reduction and a mushroom sauce that tasted strongly of ham hocks. I was at first a bit surprised by this combination because it seemed like such a hearty sauce would overpower the delicate fish, but as it turns out trout is remarkably earthy itself. The sauce, while definitely hammy, only butted up against the side of the fish without ever overwhelming it. I noticed this kind of restraint in all of the dishes—the cooks at Alma are real masters of subtlety.

Dessert: Marieke Super Aged Gouda

With the dregs of our bottle of cava to finish and no desire to move anywhere soon after such a delicious meal, we decided to order a cheese for dessert. Experience has led me to be skeptical about Wisconsin cheese, but the Marieke Super Aged Gouda was exceptional. It had deep flavor, reminding me more of an aged parmesan than the rubbery, milky gouda you tend to get around here (when your cheese budget is not what it should be).

We left with that feeling of perfect satisfaction that good restaurants are able to impart—not hungry, not full and already wistfully remembering each bite (several glasses of cava probably didn’t hurt our feelings of goodwill). Restaurant Alma is highly recommended.

If you live in the Minneapolis area, you may have noticed Common Roots Café is starting a garden behind (and around) two houses just behind the café. Much work has already been done: the two homes are undergoing major renovations, plenty of asphalt and contaminated soil were removed, and new topsoil and compost were brought in. A pile of wood chips meant for pathways awaits. But how to get it all in place?

Volunteers! The first volunteer day was this Tuesday. We enjoyed great weather for hoeing, raking, and shoveling: cloudy, grey, and cool. Even though it wasn’t an official volunteer day, I was back on Wednesday, this time in bright sun, to help some more. The forecast for Saturday morning looks promising; planting time is from 9 am–2 pm and a late-afternoon rain is predicted. Since our friend Peter is coming to town, we’ll be heading first thing to the Midtown Farmers’ Market and then back home with plenty of time to do some gardening. The plans for the garden, masterminded by Cathy (from Nature’s Nest Farm), include fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, and flowering plants—all to be used in the café.

I feel very lucky to have had a little part in this and hope to be able to continue to help as the garden progresses. If you’d like to keep in the loop on how you can help, try Common Roots’ events page, their facebook page (with photo gallery), or following them on Twitter @commonroots. 

Yesterday Martha and I had the pleasure of attending Urban Bean’s Patio Party (Martha heard about it on Facebook). Most days, Urban Bean is an unassuming coffeehouse located on the corner of Bryant Ave S and W 33rd st that, I’ve been told, makes great coffee. But with temperatures peaking over 80 in the Twin Cities yesterday the gloves came off and we had a party on our hands. A party featuring a carnival trailer serving up hot dogs, bison burgers, pulled pork sandwiches, french fries and a really broad condiment station. And free beer. Yes, free beer.

Given those choices, I’m always going with pulled pork. The pork itself was a little dry and not super-flavorful, but the Urban Bean crew partially made up for it with the quantity and quality of toppings available. I was really impressed with the extent to which they home-made everything: the purple cabbage coleslaw with raisins, pickled cucumbers and carrots, and bacon ketchup. Ever since my elementary school cafeteria days a big jar full of free pickles gets me pretty excited, all the better if they’re homemade.

And the free beer? Well, it was PBR, but you don’t look a gift beer in the mouth. Much less a couple of gift beers.

Of course, free PBR can’t help but attract a certain crowd, and the whole time I was there the patio was awash in tight jeans, wife beaters, big sunglasses, and irony, oh so much irony. 

With this 80 degree afternoon coming out of nowhere from what has been a pretty dismal week, Urban Bean couldn’t have picked a better time.

Followers of my previous blogging efforts might remember a summary of food I was eating in Egypt and a particularly appetizing picture of the Egyptian delicacy known as kushari. To refresh your memory:

I haven’t had kushari since I was in Egypt, which was in the summer of 2006. It is not something I have ever tried to make at home since it involves making rice and pasta and lentils and chickpeas and tomato sauce and fried onions and is nowhere near good enough to justify the effort. Plus, in Egypt, a bucketful could be had for about 50 american cents.  So imagine my joy when I walked into the Lyndale Grill & Grocery for a gyro but saw on the specials board “koushary”. Here it is, hot out of the microwave:

This was an especially felicitous discovery since I was working through a daunting hangover all day and there’s nothing better for it. Here’s a detail shot so you can see all the delicious ingredients:

So, how does Minneapolis kushari compare with the real thing? You can see that the only pasta here is rigatoni, whereas in the Egyptian version there were two kinds of vermicelli and something like ditalini. The smaller pasta shapes give the kushari a more cohesive texture. Also, one of my favorite things about kushari in Egypt was the vinegary hot sauces that came on the side and could be applied liberally. The tomato sauce on the Minneapolis kushari was very good and nicely spicy so hot sauce wasn’t strictly necessary but it would have been nice. On the other hand, the use of yellow (probably too much to call it saffron rice) instead of the plain white used in Egypt added flavor to a dish that is so heavy on starch that it leans to the bland side. Eating kushari out of a foam tray rather than a plastic bucket was not really the same, and a metal fork was no improvement over a plastic spoon but, such are the trials one must endure. In any case, kushari is not something to be analyzed, it is something to be shoveled down the hatch.

Ever since I noticed it opening in the old My-T-Fine (great name for a tea shop, why did it close?) on my way to work, I have wanted to try Cafe Agri. I think I was mostly drawn in by their logo and their slogan “from field to fork”. At the time I was under the sway of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (I still am, but it was fresh) and excited by the idea of another restaurant based on local and seasonal food close to my home. 

Reviewing the menu that was posted a couple of weeks later gave me pause. The food did appear to be local, but what was all this tempeh nonsense? As it turns out, Agri focuses not only on local and sustainable food, but also on vegetarians and vegans. Fair enough, but not the kind of place that calls my name. Still, I was intrigued and, after a few months, decided it was time to give it a try.

On entering the place, we couldn’t help but be impressed by the decor, particularly the many interesting light fixtures. Martha could probably say more about this but she’s not here so hah.  Anyway, Agri gets high marks for atmosphere.

They also have a very good selection of interesting wine and beer, mostly organic. You might miss this while trying to decipher their inexplicably centered drink menu, but there really are a lot of good, reasonably-priced choices. We both went beer.

And then there was the menu itself. Reviewing the six entrees, I began to despair. There was plenty offered to make the vegetarian, vegan or celiac sufferer happy: very limited meat (one entree with trout), tempeh and tofu aplenty, and as little gluten as possible. But, since I am none of those things, I wondered what exactly I wanted to order and pay $16 for. Butternut squash ravioli? Now where have I seen that before? Tempeh terrine? With pork or goose liver? Penne Primavera? In inverno? In the end we decided to just have a couple of appetizers and head for greener (well, less green) pastures. So keep in mind that this is in no way a fair review.

We ordered two dishes: the yam crisps with fresh guacamole, described as “baked—not fried!” which I assume was meant to be a recommendation rather than an apology, and the falafel (also baked) with cucumber salad and yogurt dill sauce.

The yam crisps themselves were good. Besides having beautifully curled edges, they were, in fact, crisp with a pleasant, not overwhelming sweetness. The guacamole, on the other hand, could not be described as good. It was severely underseasoned, resembling those awful supermarket guacamoles made with sour cream or mayonnaise. I suspect, had the lighting been bighter, its color would have been closer to brown than green, but I have no way of proving this. I also wondered from which farm in Minnesota they had obtained the fresh avocados, especially in winter. 

As for the falafel, I should never have expected to like it in the first place since it was billed as “Baked Falafel” and I don’t like baked falafel. This certainly was baked falafel, in all its sandy-textured mediocrity. It was topped by a tasteless tomato slice (did I mention it’s winter?) and yogurt sauce, which deserves neither praise nor blame. The cucumber salad was really a quick pickle of thick-cut, seeded cucumber slices and onion. Serving pickles with falafel makes good sense since pickles are very popular in the Middle East, but this was a sweet pickle rather than a sour-hot pickle as you might expect with Middle Eastern cuisine. Inauthenticity is of course not a fault per se, but I didn’t think the sweet pickles really did anything for the falafel. In any case I would have preferred fresh cucumber.

And that was all we tried. Hardly enough to base a review upon, even in these troubled economic times. But I think our reaction to the menu points to a problem with Agri and other restaurants like it. Local, organic and sustainable food are all good things. We really need more restaurants to make such food a priority; indeed, it should be the default. For that future to happen, however, food that is local, organic and sustainable has to appeal to the public: it should be relatively inexpensive (which should happen anyway because of reduced fertilizer, equipment, and transportation costs) but more importantly it should be delicious. Instead of seeing these things when he goes to a restaurant like Agri, average, closed-minded John Q. Public just has his presuppositions about this kind of food confirmed: bean curd compressed to various textures and shapes prepared in thin sauces by ascetic health nuts. Not for me. Organic and sustainable does not have to mean soybeans, and maybe it shouldn’t at all. Of course, Agri might not even want these customers. They may have intended to primarily serve vegans and vegetarians (god knows they could use a few more places) and not to be the ambassador of local/organic/seasonable/sustainable that I had made them in my mind. If Agri’s content to preach to the choir, that’s fine, but I won’t be in the pews.