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Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Texas Chef Tim Love Corrals Local Ingredients on Drive to Benefit Children
By Polly Summar
Of the Journal
It was billed like this: "Chef Tim Love on the Trail, The Culinary Epic as Big as the West." The press release said something about trail drives and chuck wagons and days of yore.
Except that the tour was coming to the Española Farmers' Market. (If you're having a hard time following, don't worry: So were we.)
Let us dissect it for you. Tim Love, 32, a good ol' boy with Texas and Tennessee roots owns a high-falutin' restaurant, the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro ("bistro" being the tip-off to the high falutin' part), right smack dab in the middle of the Fort Worth Stockyards.
With that description, we don't expect you to cotton to him right away. We were suspicious at first, too, but then he told us how he got his first job in college, making salads in a restaurant.
He confessed to the owner: "I've never made a salad, much less anything else, except a mustard and cheese sandwich, but I need a job." (Mustard and cheese? A boy after our own hearts.) Love got the job and was surprised to find, he recalls, that he loved it. "I loved everything about it," he says, "the cooking, the hustle, the pressure." A year later, while still in college, he was running the kitchen.
Back to the tour ... Last year, Love was going to the James Beard Foundation in New York City to prepare one of those 89-course dinners and he got to thinking about an old farm in Tennessee, where he spent some summers, that had some awful good watercress. Then he started thinking how great it would be to collect every ingredient for the dinner along the way to New York.
That ended up being the First Lonesome Dove Trail Drive. It was a big hit, not only to the folks who ate the dinner, but to his staff.
"They learned more in that week than they would in a year in the kitchen," Love says. "Heck, so did I."
Then, Love and his staff made a DVD of the footage they shot while "on the trail" and have started selling it. (Hey, he's from Texas: He thinks big.)
But back to the Española Farmers' Market. Love decided he wanted to head the other direction this year, west: from Fort Worth, to Santa Fe, Scottsdale, Las Vegas, Nev., and Los Angeles. But with that big gene he's got, this would be no small expedition. Picture three 45-foot tour buses, six horses, a staff of 25, the Food Network tagging along shooting footage for a documentary (to run next spring or early summer) and fund-raising dinners in five cities, including Santa Fe, for Spoons Across America, which is affiliated with the James Beard Foundation.
(Unfortunately, the whole thing got upstaged by a giant pumpkin here in New Mexico. See accompanying story.)
See, Love has this habit: He likes to give away money. "Last year, I gave away more money than I made," he says, but he can't really explain why, other than to say, "Seems like we all ought to be takin' care of each other."
(For this tour, Love contributed $10,000 of his own money and more than 20 companies are also helping, along with the hosting restaurants in each city.)
Spoons Across America is a program he particularly likes that brings culinary education into the schools. But if you're picturing colorful charts of the food pyramid, you'd be way off.
"There's this program they have called the Dinner Party Project," he explains. "I teach 10- to 12-year-olds how to throw a dinner party."
The first group of kids was from his restaurant's neighborhood, the stockyards, an area Love describes as low-income. It was a multiweek project, two hours a week, which culminated in, of course, a dinner party for the kids and their parents at Love's restaurant.
"They have to do everything, plan the menu, make the invitations, all the preparations," says Love. "If you could see the look on their faces when we get done cookin' and they put their good clothes on and wait for their parents to show up, you'd just wanna open your wallet and give money to the project."
Spoons Across America is a nonprofit organization promoting culinary education for children through classroom, after-school and community-based programs. For more information, check out www.spoonsacrossamerica.org.
The following recipes are for dishes that Chef Tim Love prepared in Mark Miller's kitchen for the fund-raiser dinner held earlier this month.
BRAISED LAMB SHANKS WITH THREE BEAN RAGOUT AND FRESH RICOTTA
Chef Tim Love's dinner menu
HORS D'OEUVRES: Braised Wild Boar Ribs with Lonesome Dove BBQ & Fresh Pickles
Prosciutto Wrapped Manchego Cheese with Lingonberry-Habanero Demi
Braised Rabbit Empanadas with Cranberry Cream
FIRST COURSE: Seared Black Sea Bass On Truffled Parsnips with Fried Shallot & Braised Garlic Sauce
SECOND COURSE: Roasted Beet, Endive & Watercress Salad with Goat's Milk Cheese & Chile Pecans
Braised Lamb Shanks with Three-Bean Ragout & Fresh Ricotta
THIRD COURSE: Seared Buffalo Tenderloin with Wild Mushroom Soufflé Pudding, Smoked Chile-Agave Sauce & Roasted Acorn Squash
FOURTH COURSE: Earl Grey Truffles
Tuaca Liqueur & Cappuccino Flan
4 lamb fore shanks
1 cup diced onions
1 cup diced carrot
1 cup diced celery
6 cloves of garlic
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 cup guajillo chile powder
1 cup white wine
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons butter, unsalted
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cups veal stock (see below)
Three Bean Ragout (see below)
4 tablespoons Fresh Ricotta (see below)
Method for the shanks
1. Mix flour, chile powder, salt and pepper together.
2. Roll the shanks in the flour mixture.
3. In a large roasting pan, heat the oil. Sear both sides of all shanks at the same time. Add onion, carrot, celery and garlic and continue to sear. Add wine, stock, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves.
4. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cover for 2 hours, turning the shanks every 15 minutes. Meat should be very tender but stay on the bone.
5. Strain the sauce and reduce by half and add butter. Serve shank with Three Bean Ragout, Fresh Ricotta and a little of the pan sauce. Serves 4
THREE BEAN RAGOUT
1/2 cup white beans
1/2 cup black beans
1/2 cup cannelini beans
4 ounces bacon
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon oregano
1 cup chicken stock
8 garlic cloves
2 jalapeños
Salt and pepper, to taste
Pick through all beans, removing any foreign objects. Put all beans in a large pot and cover with cold water. Put a lid on pot and let beans soak for 6 hours or overnight. Rinse beans and return to pot, add all other ingredients, cover with water. Bring to a boil for 2 hours, adding water as needed. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
FRESH RICOTTA
1 quart buttermilk
1 teaspoon ancho chile powder
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 quarts whole milk
In a 4-quart sauce pan, add all ingredients on low heat. Do not stir. After 15 minutes, check temperature. Continue to check temperature every 2 minutes until it reaches 180 degrees. When temperature is achieved, strain through a fine sieve and place in the refrigerator to cool. Use as needed. Can be stored for up to 5 days.
VEAL STOCK
8 pounds veal bones, cut into 2-inch chunks
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
2 medium carrots, coarsely chopped
1 celery stalk, coarsely chopped
1 leek, coarsely chopped
2 large tomatoes, quartered, or 1/2 cup tomato paste
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs fresh thyme
8 garlic cloves, smashed
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Arrange bones in a roasting pan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Roast in the oven until dark golden brown, about 11/2 hours, turning to brown all sides.
3. After the first hour, add the remaining ingredients to brown. Transfer the bones and vegetables to a large stockpot, 10- to 12-quarts.
4. Pour off the fat from the roasting pan and deglaze the pan with 2 cups of water, scraping up any particles that stick to the bottom of pan. Pour this into the stockpot with enough additional water to cover all ingredients by 3 inches.
5. Bring water to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 4 to 6 hours, skimming the foam as it accumulates on top, and adding water as needed to keep the bones and vegetables covered at all times.
6. Strain the liquid into a clean pot, pressing down to extract all juices. Reduce this mixture, over medium heat, until 2 quarts remain.
7. Cool and refrigerate in a covered container for up to 3 days, discarding any hardened layer of fat before using or freezing. Makes 2 quarts