On chef Ian Redshaw’s 28th birthday, I had the good fortune of celebrating with him at his favorite restaurant, Sultan Kebab. You can read all about the birthday feast in this week’s C-VILLE Weekly. And, below are some additional shots from the meal, courtesy of excellent photographer Tom McGovern:
Of food at The Alley Light, one top area chef recently told me: “everyone else in town is a distant second place, myself included.” Jose de Brito’s food does indeed continue to dazzle. In 2015, I had dozens of dishes at The Alley Light that would warrant consideration for my favorite of the year. But, meals at The Alley Light inevitably become such a blur of deliciouness that it’s difficult for one dish to stand out. When friends ask me to recommend what to eat there, I become one of those unhelpful waiters who essentially reads the menu back to them.
My choice for the 2015 Dish of the Year is the one that stands out most in my memory: General Tso’s Sweetbreads at Lampo.
Chef Ian Redshaw has a passion for what some call Silk Road cuisine, celebrating the flavors of Italy, China, and the historic trade route in between. There is some debate, for example, over whether pasta came East from Italy to China or West from China to Italy.
Today, chefs are discovering that the flavors of regions along the Silk Road marry well. For General Tso’s Sweetbreads, Redshaw uses ingredients from Italy to create a sauce evoking the sweet, salty, and umami flavors of the famous Hunan sauce which originated at the opposite end of the Silk Road, more than 5,000 miles away. Redshaw combines honey, Calabrian chili, garlic scapes, and a fermented fish sauce called garum, which bears some resemblance to the fish sauces of Southeast Asia. Redshaw lightly coats morsels of sweetbreads in a batter of egg and cornstarch, fries them and and then tosses them in the sauce.
The result is wow-inducing. When I first had General Tso’s Sweetbreads in June, I called the dish “stunning” and said to my dining companions that it was the “clubhouse leader” for dish of the year. A crisp exterior, glossy with sauce, encases tender nuggets of rich, yet delicate, sweetbreads. While I’ve had many outstanding dishes since then, none stands out as much as Redshaw’s sweetbreads. I look forward to many more plates of them in 2016.
It ages for 70 days, and then cooks in about 200 seconds. In an oven as hot as Lampo’s pizza oven, that’s all it takes to yield a perfect steak, just short of medium rare.
It is the brain-child of chef Ian Redhsaw, one of the Fab Four who own Lampo, the Neapolitan pizzeria where the stellar pizza is just part of the fun. Redshaw’s wife Allie is executive chef at Timbercreek Market, the butcher, cafe, and grocery recently opened by Timbercreek Farm. Redshaw has been helping out at the market in his spare time, and with a longtime meat-lover in his version of a candy store, it was only a matter of time before he’d want to bring grass-fed Timbercreek steak to Lampo.
After-dry aging the meat for 70 days, Redshaw cooks it in Lampo’s pizza oven at temperatures nearing 1,000 degrees. Less than four minutes later, you’ve got something both primal and delicious. Redshaw allowed me a sample, and the texture and flavor were spot-on. Sometimes carnivores have a hankering for steak. Touched with just salt, pepper, and olive oil, and rich with umami, this is exactly what they crave.
“Dry aged beef goes hand in hand with our philosophy at Lampo,” says Redshaw. “Take good quality ingredients and do as little as possible to them to elevate the flavor.” What does the dry aging do? For one, it “uses air and the natural uric and lactic acids to break down sinew as well as create natural MSG,” explains Redshaw. “It also tightens fat structure and decreases the amount of water in the meat, making the entire product more tender and concentrated in flavor.”
The first steaks, rib eyes, are available starting today. There are less than 30 of them, and, at $14 for a 7 oz steak, they won’t last long. If you miss them this time, no worries. You can just catch the next round. In about 70 days.
