Butternut Squash and the Three Sisters approach to succotash

LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series #24. Follow us as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.

In Native American lore, three crops were always planted together: squash, corn, and beans. Legumes would wind their way up the corn and use the stalk as a trellis, and the squash would grow between the rows, under the shade of the corn.

Much of what we do here at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen is recover traditions that are in danger of being lost. While different people have different opinions about succotash and its contents, we base our recipe on the Ancient Three Sisters  model — and at the heart of our succotash is butternut squash.

This time of year, it’s not uncommon to see a harvested field with the corn stalks cut and butternut squash still curing on the vine. Our fall menu features the nutty-flavored winter cucurbit in the butternut squash soup. You can also find them in the Farmer’s Cart at the restaurant.

Fall for Something New! features Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Butternut Squash soup, October 3–November 13, 2012. Click here to see the new fall menu. 

One tough vegetable

We often joke that only three things are not allowed in this kitchen: Monkfish (we can’t cook it properly), mustard greens, and acorn squash.

Acorn squash doesn’t give you any more flavor than butternut squash, and it’s much harder to clean with its thick ridges. Butternut squash gives you a better meat-to-skin ratio and has a wonderful nutty flavor, and it’s easy to work with.

The cure: Conversations with farmers will teach you things 

Tobacco gets cured. Sweet potatoes get cured, and we’ve known both of those things, but we didn’t know that winter squash gets cured, too.

Curing is a heating process, to encourage the starch to sugar conversion. The process prevents spoilage and allows for longer storage.

The way we’ve heard it it told is that butternut squash needs to be planted at the same time as summer squash. Farmers leave it in the field and the sun heats up the squash. After a certain number of days in the field the vegetable is cured and you can put them in the cellar for the winter.

Take it home: Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Butternut Squash Bisque recipe in Savor NC.

The most popular winter squash

• Acorn
• Butternut
• Pumpkin

Some less popular, but even more tasty 

• Kuri
• Kabocha
• Cushaw

Easy ways to prepare butternut squash:

Roast and finish with butter and cinnamon

• Pick one squash, about two lbs.
• Split the squash from north to south, through the stem; scoop out the seeds.
• Lay it out cut side down on a greased baking tray.
• Roast until it’s tender to a finger poke (at 350 degrees for for 35 minutes-ish).
• Remove the squash from the oven.
• Flip it over.
• If the squash is small enough, put a little butter and cinnamon in the hole and take a scoop and drag it through the hole and eat it.

Braise with a little butter

• Clean and peel entire squash with a vegetable peeler.
• Cut the bell part out of the base.
• Scoop the seeds out.
• Cube it.
• Sauté it with butter and braise with a little water, to steam.

Do you puree?

Once it’s roasted and flipped, scrape all the flesh out of the skin, and puree with butter, sorghum, and call it a day.

Squash the bread 

Substitute butternut squash to change up your favorite sweet potato recipe. Or, substitute equal amount of roasted butternut squash for the main vegetable in any one of your favorite bread or muffin recipes.

• Zucchini
• Banana
• Pumpkin

Pick the perfect squash

Pick up a few butternut squashes and compare the weight. The one that feels heavier for its size is going to have a smaller cavity, fewer seeds and more dense fruit, and generally has a higher sugar content.

• Heavy for its size
• Unblemished skin

A word to the unripe

If you go to peel your squash and it has some green undertones to its skin, then it hasn’t been cured long enough. At this point, it won’t get more ripe. It won’t be as sweet and will taste more like a vegetable.

Give it a try: Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Autumn Succotash. Tweet this recipe.

Sauté the butternut squash as recommended above. And you can also replace the peanuts with crowder peas or black eyed peas.

Makes 4 cups

• ¼ cup butter
• 1 lb. butternut squash, washed, peeled, and diced
• ½ lb. boiled peanuts
• ½ lb. sweet corn ears, kernels cut from cobs
• ¼ cup water
• ½ tsp. dried thyme
• Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add butternut squash, and sauté 3 to 4 minutes. Add boiled peanuts, and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Add corn kernels and remaining ingredients. Cook until corn, peanuts, and squash are tender. Cover and cook 6-8 minutes (or until squash is tender).

For more about our seasonal recipes, see our current menu at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen and our Blog Recipe Index:http://lucky32southernkitchen.com/recipes/

Schicker’s Acre: Lucky 32 server Mark Schicker farms unique finds

LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series # 13. Follow us all summer long as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.

Sometimes the best farm find is in your own kitchen–if you’re lucky.

About 10 years ago, lacinato kale was the darling of the fine dining experience, an obscure delicacy found only in authentic Italian restaurants. The tuscany-grown green was less well known in the US. Even still, the full flavored vegetable is just a little off the beaten path, so to bring this green to a homestyle dining place like ours is really empowering.

Especially when the farmer — Mark Schicker — also happens to be a server at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.

About four years ago, Schicker said, “I’ve got some land, is there anything you want me to plant?” We literally handed him a seed catalog, rattled off a few varieties — such as the lacinato kale — and he came back with a small harvest.

Since that summer, he’s been providing the restaurant with a variety of vegetables we can’t find anywhere else.

As a chef, you wish you had that kind of connection with your farmers, who literally stroll through your kitchen. Every other day we ask him about the vegetables, what’s coming in, what’s not. What’s fresh? We know more about pests and soil and more about farming, because we work with him.

Here, there’s a good chance the guy serving you the daily vegetable actually grew it. Go ahead. Ask him next time you’re here.

Sample farm fresh vegetables from “Schickers Acre” at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen in the following dishes. Or, find Mark’s vegetables on the farmer’s cart outside the Cary and Greensboro restaurants.

• Rutabagas, pickled and roasted at the end of the summer
• Lacinato Kale, featured in the daily vegetable “Beans and Greens”
• Four different radish varieties roasted with salt, pepper and oil and served in the spring and the fall
• White cucumbers: we make pickles every two weeks, and we pickle these for the fried pickle appetizers
• Black cherry tomatoes
• Japanese eggplant (everybody else grows italian)
• Banana peppers, which we use for the pepper vinegar for your collard greens

Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Beans and Greens

This recipe is one of the Daily Vegetables at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen and uses lacinato kale from Schickers Acre. The texture of this full flavored kale cooks faster than most so it sautees easily in garlic and olive oil.

Most kale is woody and needs be braised first, stems removed. Not so with lacinato — you can eat it fresh from the garden to the pan to the plate. So not only is 100 percent usable from a chef’s perspective, it’s easy to prepare and it’s a little off the beaten dining path.

• 4 cups kale
• 3 cups dried black eyed peas
• 5 tbsp canola oil
• 3 tbsp chopped garlic
• 1 ¼ tsp crushed red pepper
• 1 ½ tbsp rice wine vinegar
• salt & pepper to taste

Soak peas overnight and then drain. Cook peas in salted water until tender, turn off heat and allow to sit until needed. De-stem, chop and wash kale. Heat oil in large sauce pot over medium heat. Sweat garlic and pepper flakes until aromatic. Turn heat up to medium high and quickly add kale. Stir rapidly to wilt down the kale. When kale has reduced in volume to 1/3 its size, add drained beans and vinegar. Simmer until kale is tender. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Makes – 1 ½ quarts

For more about our seasonal recipes, see our current menu at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen and our Blog Recipe Index:http://lucky32southernkitchen.com/recipes/

A wild recipe: Ramps harvested by hand in the Appalachian Mountains for this month’s Chef’s Feature

LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series #2.

Follow us all summer long as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.

It took 5 years, a 4-hour ride in a London taxi cab, and a tradition as old as the Appalachian Mountains to make this Pickled Ramp and Mushroom Relish. And it’s all for you this month at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen in Greensboro.

The prized perishable in the relish is the wild ramp. The heirloom vegetable still grows in abundance in the wet hollows and ravines of the Appalachian Mountains.

Favored in high end restaurants for its scarcity and garlic-onion flavor, getting your hands on a batch of ramps either takes some extra scratch – up to $25 a pound – or a sense of adventure.

Ramps are slow to divide and propagate. Its life-cycle is 5 years from stem to seed, and because ramps prefer the steep mountain side near ravines, they can only be harvested by hand.

Good thing Lucky 32 has a taste for adventure. We were recently a special guest at Foggy Ridge Cider and hunted ramps with Diane Flynt, co-owner of the community-friendly cider farm. Read about the ramp adventure here.

Taste the adventure and the spring tonic known as the ramp in this Pickled Ramp and Mushroom Relish. Ask for the Chef’s Selection of Fresh Fish, a special item on the right side of the menu.

And to get the full adventure flavor, try our new New Jersey Cocktail, made with Foggy Ridge Hard Cider or their First Fruit Cider, now available by the glass, made from apples grown in close proximity to these wild ramps.

Pickled Ramp and Mushroom Relish

Pickled Ramps

• 1 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 pound ramps, cleaned
• 1 tbsp sea salt

Wash the ramps under cool, running water. Drain the ramps well and place them in a mason jar. Combine the vinegar, salt, sugar, and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the bay leaf, and peppercorns. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the ramps in the mason jar and let cool, sealing tight and transferring to the refrigerator.

Pickled Ramp and Mushroom Relish
Yield= 1 qt

• 2 pounds shiitake mushrooms, weighed with stems
• 2/3 cup canola oil, divided
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1/3 cup tamari
• ½ pounds pickled ramps
• 1/3 cup pickling brine from ramps

Trim stems from mushrooms (and use when making stock). Julienne mushroom caps. In a large mixing bowl, combine 1/3 c oil with tamari and pepper; add mushrooms and mix well. Distribute mushrooms evenly on a baking sheet and cook in a 350 oven for 7-9 minutes, or until partially dried. Chop ramps finely (white and green parts); combine with mushrooms and remaining ingredients.

Adapted from Serious Eats

Read LOCAVORE’s DELIGHT: The Series.

• #1 Learning to forage for ramps with Diane Flynt of Foggy Ridge Cider
• #2 A wild recipe: Ramps harvested by hand in the Appalachian Mountains for this month’s Chef’s Feature
• #3 Slow heat to summer: Green Garlic Confit from Plum Granny Farm

For more about our seasonal recipes, see our current menu at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen and our Blog Recipe Index:http://lucky32southernkitchen.com/recipes/

 

Learning to forage for ramps with Diane Flynt of Foggy Ridge Cider

LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series #1.

Follow us all summer long as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.

by MOLLY McGINN

If we were in Canada right now, salting this pan of wild ramps, we could get arrested.

In Quebec, ramps are considered a threatened species. The appetite for wild ramps is so widespread, and the vegetable is so scarce, that it’s illegal to hunt the strappy, grayish green cousin to the onion. But here, salting ramps in a kitchen on a mountain top is a legal rite of spring. We’re in the deep back country of the Appalachian Mountains in Dugspur, Virginia.

Ramps are among the many heirloom vegetables still growing wild in the Appalachian Mountains. Cherokee and other Native American tribes hunted ramps here, and, thanks to their conservationist nature and a sparse population of community-minded Appalachian Farmers, such as Diane Flynt, this area is still rich in ramps.

Diane is co-owner of the community-friendly cider farm, Foggy Ridge Cider. Each spring she invites friends, chefs, “people I care about,” to hunt ramps, she says.

Diane makes the Hard Cider in the New Jersey Cocktail, and the First Fruit Cider, now available by the glass, at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.

“I like to help people understand the whole picture,” Diane says about hunting ramps. “This has been going on ever since people first lived in these mountains.”

There is one, rather serious threat to a ramp hunt, she says.

“Lesson number one: know your poison ivy,” Diane says.

For Native Americans, ramps were the first edible green after a long winter of eating dried and smoked meats. The “spring tonic” is a shot-full of nutrients with the same disease fighting properties of garlic, and ramps are high in Vitamin A and C.

High-end restaurants will pay as much as $25 a pound for ramps. Foodies and chefs prize the green for its scarcity, and unique, onion-garlic flavor.

The ramp life cycle is about 5 years from seed to harvest, and they prefer the steep, vertical mountain ridges near ravines and rivers.

Find them by the look of the strappy leaf, grayish-green, and dusky. Or by smell. Ramps are pungent.

Ready for the hunt? Keep a few key things in mind:

1. Know your poison ivy. “Leaves of three, let them be.” Ramps can grow in the same shady areas as poison ivy.

2. Bring a change of clothes. When you go home, take off your clothes and drop them into the washer. For clarification, see lesson number one.

3. Get the right tools for the job. You should have a ramp hoe, and a sack or basket to carry the ramps.

4. To find ramps, look for a “lily of the valley” grassy leaf above ground and a scallion, garlic-like bulb below ground.

5. Dig, cover, and conserve. Harvest only a few ramps, and when you do, put back the soil and cover the ground.

6. Oh, the odor. Store ramps in the trunk of your car on the ride home, or a well-ventilated area, such as a flat-bed truck. If you must travel with ramps in the back seat of your car, leave the windows open, or pick some honeysuckle to hold under your nose for the ride home.

 

Read LOCAVORE’s DELIGHT: The Series.

• #1 Learning to forage for ramps with Diane Flynt of Foggy Ridge Cider
• #2 A wild recipe: Ramps harvested by hand in the Appalachian Mountains for this month’s Chef’s Feature
• #3 Slow heat to summer: Green Garlic Confit from Plum Granny Farm

For more about our seasonal recipes, see our current menu at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen and our Blog Recipe Index:http://lucky32southernkitchen.com/recipes/

Featured dish: Grillades and Grits

If you were a dock worker or a high society bruncher in New Orleans in the 1880s, you’d know about Grillades and Grits.

Thing is, everybody should know about this dish.

That’s why we’re adding it to the new spring dinner and lunch menu, available April 4 through May 19.

A traditional New Orleans brunch dish, Grillades and Grits are usually made with beef or veal that is braised into submission and served with its accompanying gravy over grits.

We are big fans of pork around here, so we actually slow-cook local pork shanks until the meat falls off of the bone. We tried this once before as a brunch special with poached eggs, and it wasn’t too popular with our guests.

The staff, both in the dining room and the kitchen, loved the dish and we couldn’t understand why it wasn’t popular. After some discussion we realized the name, “grillades,” pronounced gree-odds, might be the culprit.

What exactly are “grillades?” A descendant of New Orlean’s rich meat history.

You may think of NOLA as a seafood town, but the city is known for its meats too, which started with the butchers who moved to New Orleans from the Gascony regions of France.

They and their descendents monopolized the city’s butcher business well into the 20th century and their influence provided a wide variety of meats, including the cuts which led to grillades, according to one source, “New Orleans Cuisine, 14 Signature Dishes and Their Histories.”

In the late 1880s, grillades appeared on nearly every brunch menu in the city. The “sailor’s breakfast” of grillades and grits was first cooked in modest homes, and eventually served in the most affluent homes, as well.

The “brunch” concept started in New Orleans for the city’s dock workers. Most workers finished work by 10 am and they still wanted breakfast, so boarding houses down by the docks created the second breakfast. Voila.

At Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, our new 2012 definition for grillades is slowly braised pork shank, served with its braising liquid over our cheesy grits and garnished with fried jalapenos.

We also know that a fantastic dish can’t remain unknown for long around here, so we’ve decided to re-introduce the dish (sans eggs) to the feature menu – at lunch and dinner – and believe in it until it gains acceptance.

We know that, one taste and folks’ll be hooked. Then we just need to keep up with the demand.

A great problem to have.

For more about our seasonal recipes, see our current menu at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen and our Blog Recipe Index:http://lucky32southernkitchen.com/recipes/

Posted April 2012

Introducing the Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen blog

 

Welcome.

Each week we’ll share the restaurant’s recipes and some tips — from how to wash your collards to how to pour your beer (straight down the middle of the glass). With over 20 years experience in this restaurant space, we’ve collected a few good stories, and we’d love to share them with you.

Established in 1989 in Greensboro, and expanding to a second location in Cary, North Carolina, Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen is a fine dining experience with Farmer’s Market fare.

We host recurring beer and wine dinners, cooking classes, and serve up local music — whether it’s live in the bar or music playing over the restaurant radio. The dining room attracts foodies, farmers, music lovers, CEOs in suits, and Yelping hipsters in skinny jeans. We have a table for everyone.

The restaurant atmosphere and its “Southern Kitchen” flavor has been a carefully-tended process that’s been tasted, tested, and tweaked along the way. Like any good recipe.

Since 2006, the restaurant has focused its creative taste to reviving Southern food traditions, which didn’t exactly receive a warm, southern welcome at first. There was a short time in this restaurant’s history when people sent the collards back to the kitchen.

Today, we can’t imagine the place without our signature collards.

But that’s another story.

The restaurant’s story starts in 1989 when business partners Dennis Quaintance and Mike Weaver opened the restaurant. Dennis named it after his father’s race car (pictured below). And since then, Dennis has stayed true to his original mission — to provide a rotating menu with locally grown food — and with a mechanic’s precision, he has finely tuned that creative vision along the way.

The result is uniquely southern — and uniquely delicious.

We hope you enjoy.

Posted March 2012 by Molly McGinn