Chef Starr's Blog

Week #2 Brunswick Stew and Chicken Noodle Soup

2012-01-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

It's late Thursday night; I've had a heck-of-a-week to be crowned off with two dinners and lunch for a good sized group coming up this weekend. Thank goodness for large winter caterings. The new lunch experiment is going well at Chef Starr To Go, if you haven't come in and tried one of our panini sandwiches, you don't know what you are missing. But enough about that, the two soups I've chosen for this week's blog are Brunswick Stew and Chicken Noodle Soup: two of my most popular soups at Chef Starr.
Brunswick stew has a special place in my heart. I remember many Sundays, after church, going to a local Savannah favorite BBQ/ greasy spoon/ seafood restaurant, and the way I remember it, no matter what you ordered, every meal came with two hush puppies and a side of the a fore mentioned shredded BBQ stew. A typical boy, I remember picking around the corn and lima beans but loving all the flavors dancing on my tongue. Depending on who you ask, Brunswick stew originated just south of Savannah in Brunswick, GA, although I'm sure the basic idea for the stew has been around as long as there has been fire, a pot, and meat to cook. One recipe I've seen actually called for squirrel (but chicken is an "ok" substitute.)
Now the basis for the recipe I follow, (albeit from my head and from my heart) came from one of my favorite co-workers of my career, Miss Janice. Miss Janice lived in the "rougher" east-side of Savannah for all 55 years of her life and worked the same position at the same restaurant for most of it. To her, I'm sure I was just another young executive chef with a culinary degree passing through. Despite our differences, Miss Janice and I developed a good friendship based on our mutual love of food, and we often found ourselves in long discussions over our cutting boards on various culinary topics. Inevitably, we got around to talking about this delectable stew of my Sunday's past, and together, we created a big batch of steaming stew as the soup of the day. At some point that day, I asked her if she had a recipe, she responded with a chuckle, "you don't need no recipe for the stew Mark, you just take what you got and make it work." At Chef Starr I promise we have never used squirrel, but what we do use is chicken and pork, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, lima beans, onions, Worcestershire sauce, BBQ sauce, and chicken stock into one of our big pots and slowly simmer for four to five hours until the meat shreds and becomes the thickness of the stew (YUMMMMMM!!!)
I don't really have an interesting story to go along with the second soup of my blog. Everybody knows this beloved soup for it's healing properties, but I say that it is good hearty soup for anytime. We start by sauteing in olive oil what we call Italian Mire Piox (onions, carrots, celery, and fennel in a 2:1:1:1 ratio) along with some dried Italian herbs and a little chopped garlic. Next we add white wine and chicken stock enough to cover (did I mention how important real chicken stock is. See week #1.) After twenty or so minutes of simmering we add in the meat from our famous herb roasted chickens (available hot weekdays after 4:30) and angel hair pasta torn into small strips. After several more minutes of simmering, we "shock" the soup with cold water to bring to the soup to the right constancy and stop the noodles before they over cook. (I know, I know, "stereo instructions")
With week #2 blog almost in the books, I thought I'd like to take a second to offer something special to anyone who has made it through this whole article. Well, a big THANK YOU for starters, (you must be my mom or my wife or someone really loves reading the musing of a self indulgent chef) but how about this, if you come in Chef Starr before the end of winter and say that you've read my blog, I'll give you a SOUP CLUB punch card which entitles you a FREE PINT OF SOUP. I hope you have a great week and don't forget to check the new sign for daily specials.

Week #1 Stocks

2012-01-22T19:18:00.000-08:00

The first two "soups" in this week's second installment (that's right, a short week for me with two blogs in four days, maybe I'm a work-a-holic or perhaps I just don't understand the the concept of a weekly blog.) Anyway I was saying, the first two "soups" I'm blogging about are Stocks, so they aren't truly soups, but a good stock is more important than any other single ingredient in any soup you make. The stock is the canvas on which the artist creates, or the foundation on which you build the flavors of a good soup . Plus to me, stock is the essence of the magic of cooking; to take what others might throw away (bones, trimmings, green ends of leeks, etc.) and make a wonderfully flavorful liquid that is the base for all soups and sauces. OK, technically stocks aren't soups, so maybe I'm cheating a little bit on the Soup Challenge but since I make up the rules...
At Chef Starr, we of course make our own stocks. Throughout the week we save the ends of celery, carrots, tomatoes, leeks, mushroom stems, etc. for vegetable stock. At the end of the week, we sort through everything we've collected, cut out any bad spots (garbage in-garbage out) and put them in a big pot, cover them with water, and simmer for several hours until the liquid is brown (my favorite flavor) and all of the vegetables have given all that is good from inside their depths. We then strain the vegetables out leaving only a the beautiful flavorful liquid. We use vegetable stock in several dishes at Chef Starr: soups (of course), but we also use it for blanching vegetables, cooking rice, beans, or anything that we would like to add a little extra flavor to instead of using just plain water. Vegetable stock is a simple and inexpensive way to add another layer of flavor to any dish.
Chicken stock is a similar process: we save all the scrap meat from trimming chicken breast (my grandfather would be so proud) and all of the chicken bones after picking the meat from our famous herb roasted chickens (available week days, hot and ready at 4:30 pm.) Like the vegetable stock we put the above mentioned ingredients into a big pot, cover them with water and bring it up to a simmer, but chicken stock is a little more complex a process than it's veggie counter part, but well worth the effort. While the stock is heating up, we skim off most of the fat that rises to the top, which makes the final product clearer and less greasy. Once the stock comes to a boil, we add in a few sprigs of thyme, several black pepper corns, a couple of bay leaves, and a bucket a large diced mire piox (a French culinary term meaning onions, carrots and celery in a 2:1:1 ratio.) We then reduce the heat to a low simmer and walk away from the pot for eight to ten hours. We strain out the solids and what is left we call Liquid Gold at Chef Starr. Unlike the broths available at the grocery store, real chicken stock has a rich flavor and the most wonderfully viscous consistency that cannot be duplicated by flavor cubes or canned broths.
I hope you liked my first installment of the soup blog. I'm still getting used to this whole process (witty writing isn't as easy as one might think) and I will try to make future blogs read less like stereo instructions. I suspect the more I do this the easier it will become or maybe I'll just rent Julie and Julia this weekend...

Soup Blog #1 The Challenge

2012-01-16T22:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, here we go. This is my first blog EVER and I guess the pressure is off because there is no one out there to read it yet. However, I hope that before long this blog will develop a faithful following of patrons wanting to know more about the food they are buying from Chef Starr To Go as well as anyone out there in cyberspace interested in a classically trained chef's thoughts and suggestions as he makes certain dishes.
For several months I have been toying with the idea of doing something more with the internet but Thanksgiving and the holidays were super busy (thank goodness) and I couldn't find the time. With the onset of winter and a slower season, I closed down for a week, spent some well needed time with my family, and re-charged my batteries. The new year has brought a new style of lunch, some new dishes, and a renewed energy at Chef Starr To Go, as well as a little extra time, so here I am...Blogging.
Winter is also soup season, and since we make the best, made-from-scratch soups in Hendersonville, NC, I'd thought it would be good to CHALLENGE myself and my staff to make two different soups a week and discuss them in a weekly blog for the remaining nine weeks of winter. That's 9 blogs and 18 soups in under 3 months, and of course, we will feature the soups being blogged about at the shop. If you like this idea or have a suggestion for a soup for us to do leave a comment, or email us and put soup blog in the subject line.

2012-01-08T14:53:00.001-08:00

Sample Blog

2012-01-08T14:50:00.001-08:00

this is a sample blog to see if all is up and running well. But soon Chef Starr will be doing a weekly blog. So stay tuned!!!