-- Marion Burros, New York Times

We have to agree! Today, we are serving our newest Comfort Food Classic, our Lamb Sheepherder's stew made from all natural and organic Lava Lake Lamb.

And our Saturday night Comfort Food Classic our Bistro Lamb Shank Supper is now Lava Lake Lamb! If you are a fan of slow food, you'll want to try our slow braised Lava Lake Lamb all-natural and organic lamb shanks. We slowly braise them in our oven until the meat is falling-off-the-bone tender and then serve them with our Veggie Rice, Sauteed Kale and Burgundy Mushroom gravy. A Garden Salad and freshly baked bread complete this meal!

A bit more on why we chose to use Lava Lake Lamb, taken from their website information:

The lamb you buy from Lava Lake Lamb is 100% grass-fed, free-range lamb never placed in feed lots, never given hormones, never given antibiotics.

At Lava Lake, we believe there are many benefits to raising animals on a grass-based diet. First, lambs that forage over a large landscape are eating the way nature intended. Because they graze over long distances in the great outdoors they are lean, fit and healthy. Our lambs have a varied diet that is primarily a mix of wild grasses and herbs, along with an occasional stroll through a rich alfalfa field at the main ranch.

Second, a growing body of research indicates that eating grass-fed meat is a healthy choice for your family, because it is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin E and beta-carotene, and lower in fat than grain-fed meat. We believe that eating grass-fed lamb from Lava Lake is a healthy way to enjoy meat in your diet.

We look forward to seeing you for dinner soon!

One of the newest sandwiches on our menu is our Bistro Cheesesteak: a meaty, cheesy, pile of goodness that can barely be contained between two buns.  While neither of us hail from Philly, we do have a soul connnection with this sandwich, thanks to Jeff's youth.

When Jeff was in his early teens, his folks would send him packing every summer to visit his cousins just outside Philadelphia. Most of the time he would board a train at Grand Central Station for the two-hour ride to Philly's 30th St. Station, where he would transfer to the Paoli local line to his final destination. On one occasion, Jeff was picked up at 30th St. Station by his older cousin, Dana, who had driven in to Philly. Jeff had arrived around lunch time, so Dana took him to Pat's, were he was introduced to the Cheesesteak -- a memorable departure from the Italian style meatball grinders he was used to as a denizen of the Big Apple. Pat's became a must hit destination whenever Jeff was in Philly. Jeff had tried Geno's once, but preferred the melted provolone cheese to cheese whiz, which was essentially the difference between the two versions.

A classic Philly cheesesteak uses skirt steak, or any low-end beef cut, frozen then very thinly machine sliced and cooked on a flat griddle along with onions, sweet peppers and cheese. The key ingredient is the crisp-crusted Italian style roll the whole melted conglomeration is spatulaed into (we thought it was high time to turn spatula into a verb).

Our version....since we do not used a per order griddle......is to slow roast a naturally fed Double R Ranch top round. We slice it thin and combine it with fire roasted peppers and onions on fresh baked bread topped with our own cheddar cheese sauce. The grease factor on ours is considerable less than a traditional version, which hopefully will keep our customers alive longer without having to sacrifice taste and mouth feel.  You will, however, need to adopt a "wide stance" when handling this bad boy...but since we serve it on a plate, the more civilized among you can simply sit down and enjoy the experience.  Just be sure you lean well over your lap .

Now, if you'd like to learn more about Pat's and Geno's, just follow this link to the "battle of the Philly Cheesesteaks" -- then come give ours a try!

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/712611/philly_cheesesteak_restaurants_in_philadelphia.html

In our continuing quest to deliver new adventures in comfort food -- especially ones that we can put between a couple of slices of bread -- our latest inspiration takes us to a comfort food tradition from Latin America.

The term "picadillo" comes from the Spanish verb, "picar", which means to mince or to chop.  In many of the countries where picadillo can be found (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Philiippines, Puerto Rico) it is made with ground beef and served with rice.  Back in the 1970s I discovered a recipe in a Life Magazine Cookbook that borrowed from the Cuban version of picadillo, which typically includes peppers, onions, garlic, oregano, cumin, tomato sauce, stock, olives, and on occasion raisins, potatoes, and capers, and is usually sauteed in olive oil and white wine, depending on the region. Cuban picadillo is served with black turtle beans and rice.  That, and a cold cerveza, is good eatin', Latin-style.

We fell in love with the combination of flavors in picadillo, and it seemed a natural for a tasty sandwich when combined with our Double R Ranch beef.  We're not sure what the Cubans would think of serving this sandwich with coleslaw (the sweet/vinegary flavor and crunch of the slaw makes for a great flavor and texture counterpoint to the picadillo) and a side of rum pot beans and potato salad, but we'd like to think that it would improve diplomatic relations with Havana far more than any boring trade agreement.  Claro que si!  

Sarah Carrico enjoys a bowl of crawfish etouffee.  Hold the mayo on that!

Of course you would.  After all, she recently won a complimentary bowl of crawfish etouffee as a result of a Brick Oven Biistro Memory that she shared on our Facebook page:

"I'm 27, and for the first, oh, ~22 years of my life, The Beanery [old habits die hard...] was the only place I would eat mayonnaise. To this day, I still consider a turkey on white with everything and mashed potatoes [with a dollop of muffaletta!] the only candidate for my last meal - no joke. I used to get a Clearly Canadian every time, too, but... I drink alcohol now :D"

"My meals taste just as good as when I was a child - now I'm able to appreciate the goodness even more, and, shucks, I loves me some Brick."

Well, we loves us some customers like Sarah...not just beause they are customers, but because of their commitment to our local culinary scene.  Sarah, for example, works as a prep cook for our friends across The Grove at Bar Gernika (Bar Gernika owner, Jeff May, worked his first restaurant gig at the Brick Oven Bistro, we're proud to say) and as a wine sales person at Bueno Cheapo Vino up on Vista near Rose Hill on Sundays.  

Sarah has a big adventure ahead of her this October.  She is planning to visit a friend in Shanghai, China, to take in the culinary scene.  Turns out that her friend works at the legendary Peninsula Hotel in Shanghai, so Sarah plans to divide her time bewteen haute cuisine and street food.  We're jealous, but we're hoping she'll drop us a postcard.  Better yet, we're hoping she'll come back for a turkey sandwich when her adventure is through and share some stories with us.  

By the way...Sarah's bowl of etouffee was the first she'd ever had in her life.  Beats the heck out of mayo, doesn't it?

If you'd like to share a Brick Oven Bistro memory with us, just click here to tell your story.  There may not be any such thing as a free lunch, but at least we won't make you sing for your supper -- unless, of course, you don't mind seeing your performance on YouTube!

By now you've probablly realized that we love to come up with new sandwich ideas.  We'd like to say that these ideas are the result of some mystic revelation...but that would only be true for 98 percent of our menu.  Part of the remainder falls into the "necessity is the mother of invention" category.

In the case of our Gaucho Beef Salad Sandwich, both revelation and neceesity played their parts.  On the "revelation" side of the equation, it occurred to us that you just don't find too many beef salad sandwiches out in the culinary universe -- and our San Francicso Beef Salad Sandwich was such a success that we wanted to come up with another recipe in that vein.  On the "necessity" side, we found ourselves with an abundance of Double R Ranch beef that we needed to work into the menu board.  What to do?  As is often the case in such situations, we poured ourselves a generous glass of Sabes d'Azur rose (see our previous blog on Summer Whites), pulled out a bunch of cookbooks, and started "concepting'.

A few glasses (but who's counting) later, we came up with the Gaucho Beef Salad Sandwich.  What makes this a "one of a kind" sandwich, besides the quality of the beef?  It's the chimichurri sauce: a condiment that you'll find gracing steaks served in Argentina.  According to Wikipedia, the origin of chimichurri is as follows:

"The Argentinian gourmet Miguel Brasco claims that the word chimichurri originated when British were taken prisoner after England tried to invade the Spanish colony of Argentina. The prisoners asked for condiment for their food mixing english, aboriginal and Spanish (castilian) words. Che-mi-curry stands for "che mi salsa" (dame condimento) or "give me curry". Later "che-mi-curry" corrupted to chimichurri."

Chimichurri is made from finely chopped parsley, minced garlic, vegetable oil or olive oil, white or red vinegar, and red pepper flakes. Additional flavorings such as paprika (pimenton dulce), oregano, cumin, thyme, cilantro (coriander leaf), lemon, and bay leaf (laurel), and in the red version, tomato and red bell pepper may also be added.  It is the only seasoning for grilled meats, organ meats and chorizo sausages in Argentine and Uruguayan asados. It can also be used as a marinade for grilled meat; as seen in Nicaragua.

To give our Gaucho Beef Salad Sandwich its distinctive picante bite, we add green olives to our chmichurri sauce -- which proves that "spicy" doesn't have to mean "hot".  Much as we'd like to find some apt culinary analogy for this sandwich, comparisons fail us.  You'll just have to come on by and experience it for yourself the next time it's on the menu.

Ole!