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Food, Wonderful Food: Youngstown’s Brier Hill and Greek Festivals

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013
August 21, 2013 By In the rabbit hole

I made a pilgrimage back to Ohio last weekend. Ostensibly it was to catch up with the folks and perhaps check out the Brier Hill Italian Festival. I’ve long loved local festivals of all sorts in any community, but I knew there would be bonus points if I stumbled on the making secrets of Youngstown’s famed contribution to the pizza dialectic. (I would share them with you here, of course.)

When all was eaten and gone, however, I flew away with something quite unexpected, if not as neatly original (and admittedly quite solipsistic). At one point in the weekend, my dad mused aloud how different things might have been if I had never left suburban Ohio–if, well, New York, and then later Brian Sacawa had never happened to me. It was a startling thing to consider after experiencing so much Youngstown community in the form of local Italian and Greek food festivals and making nostalgic explorations of now-abandoned or much-altered local landmarks. I came home to Baltimore slightly disoriented, as if I had stepped a little too far through an alternate doorway and failed to return at the appointed hour. I did, however, remember to take a few photos. It was all exceedingly tasty.

Things started out well enough with some dedicated sweets-eating at St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church.

Youngstown's Greek Festival 2013

Sample box of famed pastries at St. John’s Greek Festival.

Loukoumades: the delicious danger of fried dough bathed in warm honey syrup.

Loukoumades: the delicious danger of fried dough bathed in warm honey syrup.

Youngstown's Greek Festival 2013

It’s hard not to be joyful in a room filled with phyllo dough pastries and powdered sugar.

Later on, it was admittedly the pizza not the moon that hit us in the eye. What can I say? It was hard to look away and leave the last piece for midnight snacks. The sauce staining our fingers, we left Brier Hill feeling a little more Italian than when we had arrived.

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Fantastic greens and beans gave the pizza a run for it, and that’s saying
quite a bit.

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Campobasso Wine: $3. Raise a glass to Dee Dee!

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

Youngstown's Brier Hill Festival 2013

All of this eating resonated as a fairly powerful statement about the links between food and personal history. And so in my case, when all was said and done of course, it was the shared tea and biscuits with mom, and coffee and donuts with dad, that meant the most. (Awww….)

Columbiana's Barley Twist Tea Room

Columbiana’s Barley Twist Tea Room

Youngstown's Plaza Donuts and Coffee

Youngstown’s Plaza Donuts and Coffee

UPDATE: Dad throws down a challenge:

Dad's Brier Hill Pizza Pies

Dad’s Brier Hill Pizza Pies

Adventures in CSA Vegetable Preparation

haul_061612
June 17, 2012 By In csa & vegetables, eat me, mains, sides

This week’s farmers market/CSA haul is smaller than it might first appear, I suspect, piled, as it is, with leafy greens of all shapes and types. Regardless of its feeding power, however, it was definitely not going to all fit in the ‘fridge in its current state. Measures had to be taken.

Kale and I are historically wary kitchenfellows. I like it, but I don’t like the aerobic workout that chewing it usually involves, even when massaged with salt for raw salads (though I am impressed that leftovers will hold up for days that way). I was set to show it who was boss and pulverize the kale down into a pesto again this week, but then I caught this recipe for a vegan kale gratin that actually wasn’t playing a false game of “Look mom, I’m eating my vegetables!” by drowning everything in cheese sauce. I did make a traditional cup of béchamel sauce, but stuck with the suggestion for the nutritional yeast topping. And amazingly, when it was sauteed and baked, I had managed to get all that kale into a 9×13 Pyrex baking dish.

Healthy Kale Gratin

Healthy Kale Gratin
Based on the vegan recipe by Rosewater and Thyme

2 T olive oil
1-2 bunches kale, rinsed, deribbed, and chopped (my CSA bunch was very large–probably about 8 packed cups even after chopping)
2 large spring onions, chopped, including light green part
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup béchamel sauce (your favorite recipe, or see below)
1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1 T nutritional yeast

Pre-heat oven to 400F and butter a 9×13 baking dish.

Heat olive oil in a deep saute pan and cook onions and garlic until softened. Add kale. Cover with a lid and cook until wilted, stirring every couple minutes. When kale is ready, add béchamel sauce to the pan and stir until all vegetables are evenly coated. Transfer this mixture to the prepared baking dish and evenly distribute. Top with bread crumbs and nutritional yeast, and bake until top is lightly browned and kale bubbling, about 18 minutes.

Béchamel Sauce

1 T butter
1T cornstarch
1 cup whole milk
salt and pepper to taste
couple scratches fresh nutmeg

Melt butter in a sauce pan and whisk in cornstarch. Gradually add milk in several portions and bring to a simmer, whisking continuously. Cook gently, reducing heat as needed, until thickened. Remove from heat and reserve.

Tomato, Fava Bean, and Spring Onion Pizza

Tomato, Fava Bean, and Spring Onion Pizza

This week’s shopping also included a new-to-me find: fava beans. If I had known about the labor-intensive processing required before they could be consumed, I might have skipped this purchase (or purchased more than just the scant quart box, which reduced to a mere half-cup of beans), but in the end this was probably the most manageable introduction. Once I had peeled them out of their pods and blanched them out of their exterior jackets, I suspected that my paltry net pile could be applied to little more than salad sprinkling. But I was already making dough (more on that later this week) and I was stocked with tomatoes and chopped spring onion greens (from the kale dish above), and suddenly pizza seemed like a great idea. Was there cheese in the house? There was cheese. We were all systems go.

Some notes when making pizza with fresh tomatoes that will allow you to avoid a soaked crust. 1) As early in the process as you can, slice and drain the tomatoes well (go ahead and give them a gentle squeeze over the sink) and then lay them out on a few layers of paper towels. Blot the tops with a few more. Leave them that way until ready to top your pie. 2) Pre-bake your shell for 8 minutes in a very hot oven (450F) before adding your toppings–on a pizza stone if you have one, or some unglazed clay tiles from Home Depot. Set the dough on a piece of parchment to make moving it around a snap (no sticking and safe to touch when hot), and use the back of a cookie sheet as a makeshift pizza peel. 3) Be conservative in the amount of topping (but not the type!). Return to oven and bake until crust has browned and cheese is bubbling and golden.

With a few grinds of red pepper flakes, this was a lovely and light use of fresh spring ingredients. There was no one but me home to enjoy it. #plusandminus

That Kind of Weekend

markethaul
May 15, 2011 By In eat me, three points kitchen

Yesterday, I bought a single tomato for $2.50.

“Where did they come from?” I asked the vendor, the small box of red fruit clearly hypnotizing me. Thankfully, he didn’t look at me like I was  completely crazy and just assured me they were fresh picked out of the farm’s greenhouse, not snuck in on a truck from Mexico. Glancing at the $5/lb price tag, I counted my dollar bills and said I’d take one.

Now, as a child of Ohio’s yearly tomato abundance, the insanity of this purchasing decision did not escape me, but the tease of what would be coming in the weeks ahead, produce-wise, was too tempting to resist.

I also needed some reward for having walked the 2 miles to the market in a grey mist of rain that promises not to give up on our fair neighborhood until Thursday. Once I returned home with my goods, however, I found I didn’t really want to cook anything too much, the taste of what it was already seeming like more than enough. So I roasted the asparagus with just a bit of olive oil and salt, sauteed garlic and the hot pink radishes just long enough to kill off some of their bitter bite, and made up a pan pizza smothered in spinach, mushrooms, spring onions, and my favorite dill cheddar.

Once the oven is hot, I find it nearly impossible to not just keep going, so I baked off a loaf of whole wheat bread for Brian and some muffins for myself. I’ve been eating poorly while the husband has been away, so a quick baked good stuffed with what I could find leftover in the fridge and pantry (in this case, carrots, pecans, cranberries, and a fist full of unsweetened coconut) seemed like a pleasant way to get back on track after weeks of only buttered toast for breakfast. Fresh yogurt and a batch of cold brewed coffee are setting up now, so the house is stocked full of welcoming treats and this week’s bounty has thoroughly been put to use.

Except for that tomato. It’s so damn pretty I’m kind of afraid to eat it.

Pizza Heaven

pizza
November 16, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

The apple, as they say, falls in proximity to the tree, so it probably comes as little shock that my dad is also at home running experiments in the kitchen. Here he offers his advice on how those of us living far from the Windy City can enjoy deep-dish pizza straight out of our home ovens.–MS

If you are going to be in Chicago soon, then stop in to Giordano’s on Rush St. for authentic deep-dish pizza. If you cannot make the trip, then try this. You need approximately $15.00 and about 3 hours. This puts the “pie” in pizza pie. You have to sit down to eat this 2 1/2″ tall crust with layers of cheese, pepperoni and sausage, tomatoes, more cheese, and more everything.

You can make a spectacular 14″ or two 9″. I prefer the two 9″. You can make one pepperoni and the other sausage.

The crust is unique. It is made with three different fats–olive oil, melted butter, vegetable oil–and also contains cornmeal for a subtle crunch.

The filling is Mozzarella and Provolone cheese, sweet Italian sausage, pepperoni, (you can sub sautéed vegetables, but make sure they are very dry), canned diced tomatoes, garlic, sugar, pizza seasoning, and grated Romano.

Do it right and you are in pizza heaven.

–Tom Sheridan