My last Think Local column in the Philadelphia Weekly came out today. Budget cuts led to the elimination of the second page of food coverage. For this final piece, I explored a local fruit cannery. Click here for the full story.

I recently hatched the idea that I was going to start making pizza. Still a young and impressionable food mind, I’m embarrassingly susceptible to trends publicized in the food magazines that I read.

It didn’t seem like it would be that hard. Get the proper equipment, and start baking. And the capital outlay didn’t seem like so much either: just that heavy stone that hangs out on the bottom of the oven.

My first effort took place about a month ago. I didn’t get very far. Not only am I an inexperienced pizza maker, I’m also a novice baker. Specifically, I’d never tried to make dough rise before. And, sure enough, on this first attempt, thanks to general ignorance about the process, I failed to flag a couple of early missteps. The result: my dough didn’t rise. Or at least it didn’t rise enough for my satisfaction. It went into the oven to make some half-decent breadsticks, and the onions I had been melting all afternoon long wound up dressing the pasta.

Undaunted, I tried again yesterday. Making something new is a learning process, right? Who am I to think that I’m a culinary savant? And I did get farther along this time. With a little supervision (thanks, Katy), the dough rose properly. And I managed to equip myself properly for the whole process. I not only had the stone, but I also found a pizza peel in my parents’ basement– essential for getting the pizza on and off the blazing hot stone.

With one caveat. This maneuver apparently requires some finesse. And yesterday, I didn’t have it. I stretched out the first dough (perhaps a little too thin in the center), stationed it on the peel, and distributed my toppings. Next stop, the oven. Well, the wheels got caught in the mud. A thin crust and a poorly floured peel meant that my pie wasn’t going anywhere. I fashioned it into a crude calzone and hoped for better results with the second one.

This time around, I exercised greater caution with stretching the dough, but to no avail. Timidity in flouring the peel led to a similar result as the first time.

But I won’t be stopped in this mission. I got closer this time than I did during my first attempt last month. So, I’m declaring Winter 2009 the season of pizza. I will master it. And there will be pictures in this space.

I can attribute much of the success of tonight’s stew to my choice of braising liquids. This was actually the first time I’d attempted a beer braise- the recipe recommended Stout, but after a half-hearted attempt to find a local-crafted brewed stout that I would want to consume the remaining amount of the six-pack, I resolved to braise using the big bottle of Kasteel Brown I had lying around.

Brown, or Donker as it is labeled, isn’t a wimpy beer. Weighing in at 11% abv, Donker wields an undeniable punch. Both the nose and the palate reveal serious stewed fruits: think raisins and prunes. Cooked for several hours as a braise, the liquid was still assertive. But it didn’t overwhelm the stew, Instead, the beer lent its distinctive flavor, while demonstrating that it could be well behaved when guests are around.

The stew also benefited from the addition of the lardo I procured yesterday. I’ve recently been indoctrinated in the school that argues that fat is crucial in “brokering” the flavors of other ingredients (something that certainly was not news to my tastebuds.) Well, what better fat that cured and seasoned hog back. A couple thin slices, chopped and cooked until translucent were one of my building blocks tonight.

Top Row (from left): One World Coffee, raw milk, lardo, bacon. Bottom Row: beef cubes, Pub Cheddar, Cow Pie, Parmesan, Orange Cardamom Sausage

Today’s trip to Hendricks Farm yielded an impressive (and wallet-busting) array of treats), as well as an opportunity to chat at length with Bob del Grosso, who prepared both the sausage and the lardo.

I first read about lardo in Bill Buford’s Heat, and I remember salivating at his description of cured pig’s fat seasoned with rosemary and other spices. Bob’s version did not disappoint. Upon his suggestion, I tried it thinly sliced on some fresh bread, heated for a few minutes under the broiler. Fat lovers: hunt this stuff down!

The Parmesan and Pub Cheddar are old favorites, which I wrote about on an earlier visit to the farm. This was my first encounter with the cow pie, though. This bloomy rind cheese was surprisingly acidic. Had I known better, I would have thought it was chevre. Regardless, it was outstanding.

The beef cubes are for tomorrow’s stew. I was kicking myself on the drive home, when I realized that the one pound I picked up was far to little: forget about even the possibility of leftovers.

Finally, the coffee is from local roaster One Village Coffee. Evidently, they roast right down the road from the farm. This is a blend roasted especially for Hendrick’s Farm. I hope it lives up to the standards I have for the rest of their products.

For better or worse, I’m unduly reliant on Mark Bittman’s cooking tomes when I’m in the kitchen. I bought the original How to Cook Everything soon after I graduated college, when I started cooking for myself on a regular basis. 8+ years later, it has pages falling out and food stains in almost every section. That’s a good endorsement, I suppose. These days, with a vegetarian fiance, I’m also making plenty of use of his newer How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Some culinary cognoscenti may mock Bittman for gross oversimplification of complex recipes and techniques, potentially an inevitable consequence of his philosophy that everyone can learn to cook anything. I for one have cursed the man more than once for flawed outcomes, even if user error was as likely to have been the cause as flawed directions.

Regardless of these faults, as a fledgling food writer, I was very interested to read this recent profile in New York magazine. There’s plenty of interesting insights into low one goes about building this unconventional career.

A shout-out to Michael McCaulley of Tria for encouraging me to finally read M.F.K. Fisher. I still have lots more to read in the omnibus edition of The Art of Eating, but Consider the Oyster provided a good start for writing this article.

I can’t understate the great happy hour deal at Ansill: $1 oysters at the bar between 6-8 Monday through Friday, in addition to $5 prosecco, $3 house wine, and $3 draft of the day.

Big Ten Burrito opened up in Ann Arbor during my second year in grad school, and they quickly became my top burrito choice in town. They offered appropriately large burritos with pretty high quality fillings, a giant step above Panchero’s, whose one selling point was its close proximity to my department during my first year.

Anyway, Big Ten Burrito had some expansionary dreams– they talked about opening up a burrito shop in every Big Ten college town– which put them afoul of the goliath athletic conference that was the source of their name. Apparently the conference could ignore one piddly little burrito shop, but a potential burrito empire sharing their name was a little too much. Even before any new locations were opened, the conference threatened legal action. The owners of the restaurant contemplated resistance, weighed the cost of the legal fees, and conceded– agreeing to change their name.

The resulting contest, in which Big Ten Burrito asked its customers to contribute new names for the restaurant offered a few winning titles. My favorite– actually the only one I remember– was “Fuck You Big Ten Conference Burrito.” Apparently, this was judged rather impolitic. Ultimately, they decided on the slightly redundant BTB Burrito.

Last time I was in town, about a year ago, I made a point of stopping by the rechristened establishment. The burrito was excellent, as always, but I didn’t give the establishment much more thought until today, when an old friend sent along this news clipping from the venerable Michigan Daily:

The Ann Arbor-based Mexican food chain has rolled out a red “party bus” that runs on vegetable oil and is offering the bus as an eco-friendly taxi. BTB co-owner Adam Lowenstein said converting the bus to run on vegetable oil took about three months and $4,000, but will pay dividends in the long run.

I thought the burritos spoke for themselves, but this still isn’t a bad way to get the name out there. Anyone in Philly want to try this? “All aboard the Geno’s Steak’s Party Wagon.  Only English speakers may ride.” Eh, not so much. Probably a little new agey for Joey Vento.

November in Food Land takes us to the world of tasty, tasty fudge. Ok, so I stole the adjective directly from the name of this month’s subject: Betty’s Tasty Buttons. That’s laziness on the part of this food writer. Find out about founder Liz Begosh’s move to some fancy new digs. Go to article. (Sorry that Philly Weekly screwed up the formatting.)

My latest story on Penns Woods Winery in Eddystone PA. Like I said in the article, the wines really were surprisingly good. And I don’t mean to damn with faint praise.

Anyone with any ideas on local food producers worth exploring? I’m afraid I’m begining to run low on ideas. Don’t tell my editor, though.

Provencal Daube (in progress)

Does this mark a return to (semi) regular blogging? Quite possibly– a reconfiguration of my working schedule, with a shift to the 9-5 may clear up precious minutes for more frequent updates.Immediately, I just needed to find an activity to distract me from monitoring the simmering progress of the dish pictured above, a recipe taken from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat Book.

Fearnley-Whittingstall insists that in cooking stews, “like boiling, simmering involves the rising of bubbles to the surface– but only just. The fewer the bubbles, and the longer the interval between them, the slower, and better, the simmer.”

All well and good, but I’m hoping to eat sometime this evening, preferably before 10 pm. Consequently, I keep tip-toeing over to the stove to inspect the surface of the stew, straining to see one or two bubbles in the brief period of time that I watch, while resisting the urge to intensify the heat, even a tiny amount.

I guess I can always rail at Hugh if it winds up being unsatisfactory. But it smells good, so far.