Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Memphis Chefs Personalize Barbecuing: Part 1

If you’re a Memphis chef, chances are you’ve thought about creating some kind of barbecue. Or maybe you already have.

But what would be your “signature” barbecue? Even if the idea is still in your imagination?

Tamra Patterson, chef/owner of Chef Tam’s Underground Cafe: “If Chef Tam created her style of barbecue/meat, it would be barbecue catfish stuffed with a barbecue jambalaya. No matter what I cook, I always have to infuse my love of Cajun food and Cajun culture.”

Jonathan Magallanes, chef/owner of Las Tortugas: “My style would be twice-cooked for an extra texture. First, braised like carnitas with whole orange, bay leaf, lard, lime, and green chile. Then flash-fried in peanut oil. At Tops Bar-B-Q, I ask for extra dark meat on the sandwich. That bark and meat crust is divine. Then I would use a chipotle salsa. Pork is braised in a huge copper kettle. Chipotle, cilantro, lime, and onion for garnish. I like to do the whole rack of ribs this way, or shoulder. Crispy pork is the best pork, as it accentuates and concentrates the porcine flavor.”

Mario Grisanti, owner of Dino’s Grill: “I make my own barbecue sauce, but I make it sweet. I would make a beef brisket and smoked pork barbecue lasagna with layers of meats, mozzarella cheese, etc. Thin layers of each covered in barbecue sauce.”

Chip Dunham, chef/owner of Magnolia & May: “One of my favorite barbecue dishes I’ve created is our Tacos con Mempho. I smoke my own pork shoulder for 12 hours and serve it on two corn tortillas with American cheese melted between them, avocado salsa, and tobacco onions. At brunch, we simply just add a scrambled egg and it’s a breakfast taco. Another one of my favorites was our barbecue butternut squash sandwich. We roast butternut squash and toss it with some Memphis barbecue sauce. It’s a vegan sandwich that satisfies the biggest meat-eater.”

Kelly English, chef/owner of Restaurant Iris and The Second Line: “If I were to try to put my own fingerprints on what Memphis already does perfectly, I would play around with fermentations and chili peppers. I would also explore the traditions of barbacoa in ancient Central American and surrounding societies.”

Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh, Poke Paradise food truck owner: “I made a roll with barbecue meats a long time ago. Made with Central BBQ ribs. I made them plenty of times when I hung out with my barbecue friends. I did it in my rookie years. Inside is all rib meat topped with rib meat, barbecue crab mix, thin-sliced jalapeño, dab of sriracha, furikake, green onion.”

Armando Gagliano, Ecco on Overton Park chef/owner: “My favorite meat to smoke is pork back ribs. I keep the dry rub pretty simple: half brown sugar to a quarter adobo and a quarter salt. I smoke my ribs at 250-275 degrees using post oak wood and offset smoker. … The ribs are smoked for three hours and spritzed with orange juice and sherry vinegar every 30 minutes. After three hours, I baste with a homemade barbecue sauce that includes a lot of chipotle peppers and honey. Wrap the ribs in foil and put back on the smoker for two hours. After that, remove from the smoker and let rest in the foil for another hour. They should pull completely off the bone, but not fall apart when handled.”

FreeSol, owner of Red Bones Turkey Legs at Carolina Watershed: “I am already doing it with the turkey legs. We are smoking these legs for hours till they fall of the bone. … We [also] flavor them and stuff them.”

Ryan Trimm, chef/owner of Sunrise Memphis and 117 Prime: “Beef spare ribs are a personal favorite of mine. A nice smoke with a black pepper-based rub followed by a fruit-based sweet-and-spicy barbecue sauce is my way to go.”

And even Huey’s gets in on the act. Huey’s COO Ashley Boggs Robilio says, “Recipe created by Huey’s Midtown day crew: Huey’s world famous BBQ brisket burger. Topped with coleslaw and fried jalapeños.”

Continuing to celebrate barbecue month in Memphis, more chefs share ’que ideas in next week’s Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Ecco and Libro Executive Chef Armando Gagliano Pays Homage to Childhood Dishes

Echoes of the past drift through Ecco on Overton Park in the form of tantalizing aromas. Executive chef Armando Gagliano occasionally features his take on Italian and German dishes his mom, Ecco owner Sabine Bachmann, served when he was growing up.

“I’ll do all the stuff she used to cook for me and my brothers,” Gagliano says. “Some of them have been on the menu as my take on the dish. I’ll change it up just a little bit, but I always try to incorporate things that I remember growing up that my mom fed us. Put it on there as close to what my mom used to serve us.”

Rouladen, a German dish his mother, who is German, made for them, will be a special January 8th and 9th at Ecco. The family-inspired dish also will be available throughout January at Libro, where Gagliano is executive chef and his brother, Mario Gagliano, is head chef.

Armando Gagliano

Rouladen

Growing up, Gagliano and his brothers ate more pasta than potatoes. “My mom mainly cooked us Italian food ’cause German food is always braised meats and potatoes and onions.

“We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so we probably ate pasta five nights a week. It’s so cheap. It’s one of the best things somebody can eat.”

They served Mama’s Pasta, a “spicy Southern bacon pasta,” as a springtime/summer special at Ecco. It’s “like a South American dish mixed with Italian pasta. It’s bacon that she rendered. She chopped up the rendered bacon with tomato sauce. And she’d usually put in a little hot sugar, hot sauce, and garlic. It was a spicy marinara, but instead of using ground pork or something like that, it was bacon.”

Spaghetti puttanesca is a childhood dish that also shows up at Ecco. “That’s a very old Southern coast recipe. There are different variations of it, but it primarily consists of garlic, capers, kalamata olives, anchovies, and then some sort of whole or diced-up tomatoes, or tomato purée. We use tomato purée. It’s what the fishermen would get to eat after they came back into the docks after being out in the Mediterranean fishing. They would use anchovies to make this dish.”

Rouladen, a Christmas tradition at their home, is “essentially a sirloin steak that you pound the hell out of with a mallet till it’s really thin. You brush Dijon mustard on it and line it with bacon and thinly sliced yellow onions. You roll the whole thing up like a fruit roll and either tie it off or use toothpicks, then sear that in a large pan. After it’s browned on all sides, take it out, and in the same pan put carrots, onions, celery and cook those down until they’re soft.

“Then you’re going to hit it with red wine. However much you want to use. You deglaze all those vegetables in chicken or beef stock. Preferably, beef stock since that’s what you’re cooking. Bring that to a boil. You return the seared rouladen that you set to the side back in the pot and reset the temperature to a very low simmer. Then after about two hours, they’re done. And you can let them go longer if you want them more tender.

“You take them out. And all the vegetables and wines and juices it was cooking in, throw that in a blender. Blend it up really well and then press it through a sieve or a colander. Those juices are the gravy. With the vegetables, it’s already thick enough. My mom would always boil some potatoes to go with them. You over-boil them till they’re really soft. [We use] baby new potatoes. Put them whole on the plate and mash them. Put the rouladen on top of those mashed potatoes, and the gravy goes over all of it.

“It’s a very rustic dish. Rouladen and gravy. It’s a German pot roast kind of deal.”

Ecco on Overton Park is at 1585 Overton Park; (901) 410-8200. Libro is at Novel bookstore at 387 Perkins Extended; (901) 922-5526.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Armando Gagliano’s path to becoming a chef

Porcini mushroom ravioli from Michael Donahue on Vimeo.

Armando Gagliano’s path to becoming a chef

Armando Gagliano’s mother blindfolded him when he was five or six years old, but it wasn’t to play Blind Man’s Seek.

“She would blindfold me and give me different things to eat and taste, and I’d have to tell her what it was,” Gagliano says. “She’d even let me taste wine — just a little sip — and she’d ask, ‘What nuance of the wine do you see? What do you taste?’ She was training my palate. Not on purpose, but because she saw that I took an interest in food and flavors.”

Gagliano loved hanging out in the kitchen. “When my mom would be cooking when we were younger, I would be the only one in the kitchen just staring at her. Like ‘What are you doing? What is that?’ I guess she picked up on my interest.”

The tables have turned — literally. Now when Gagliano is in the kitchen cooking at Libro or Ecco on Overton Park, his mother, Sabine Bachmann, who owns both restaurants, often stands by asking similar questions.

Gagliano, 28, is executive chef of Libro, the restaurant in the new Novel bookstore in Laurelwood, and at Ecco.

Growing up, Gagliano was interested in architecture. He loved drawing, sketching, and painting. When he was 8 years old, he told his mother he wanted to own a restaurant named Silly Wolf’s. He remembers “drawing plans of the building. So, there was a little bit of the artistry, then some of the architecture, then the food, all in one deal. I was like, ‘I want to design my own kitchen and the front of the building, then the menu.'”

His first job was making sandwiches and pasta salad when he was 13 at his mom’s former restaurant, Fratelli’s. “It was long hours, but it was fun.”

Gagliano thought of becoming a nurse practitioner, but before the final day to register, he told his mom, “I’m not going to register for class. I’m going to save that money and go buy a knife set, then go get a job at a restaurant.”

He got a job as a prep cook at Sweet Grass. His idea was to work his way up in different kitchens and one day become a chef de cuisine. But six months later, Bachmann opened Ecco and asked Gagliano if he could run the kitchen. “She said, ‘I’ve always eaten your food and loved it. You just come up with the menu. Do whatever you want back there.'”

Gagliano decided on a Mediterranean menu, but he uses ingredients from all over — Italy, southern Spain, Germany, Israel, North Africa, Asia. “I like the flavors that just punch you in the face. We used to do this steak dish that was marinated in guajillo chiles and soy sauce. So, it was like an American steak with a Mexican and Asian marinade. With French beans. Why omit all the other ingredients and flavors that you can zest up your food with or expand upon by trying to keep it a set cuisine when you can be global? Global cuisine.”

Gagliano spent four months last year in Italy at the Italian Culinary Institute. He came back with “more of an appreciation for how much time and effort people will put into food. In the type of food that I love, which is mainly Italian.”

Two weeks after returning to Memphis, Bachmann was asked by his mom to become the chef at Libro.

Trying to get him to keep the same menu as Ecco, a family friend told Gagliano, “Don’t fix something unless it’s broken.”

“I say, ‘I like to break things purposely so I can fix them in a different way.'”

“My mom says, ‘We’re not trying to do fancy Michelin-style food here, okay? We want to do a nice lunch with some dinner items, homemade bread. We use clean, fresh ingredients. And then, every once in a while, if you want to to a special with your little crazy crap on it, do that.'”

Says Gagliano: “I didn’t want to do any super-eclectic stuff here in East Memphis. We have some typical American items, like a BLT. Chicken salad.”

But he also serves Mediterranean-influenced items, including porcini mushroom ravioli.

And, he says, “We do our own house-made Italian sausage here with baked beans. But it’s not like American-style baked beans. It is and it isn’t. They have some sweetness. We put balsamic vinegar in with the beans and molasses and some honey and brown sugar. So, it’s got a little twist in there with the Italian sausage and the balsamic. Then, also, with my roots in the South, the baked beans.”

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Thanksgiving Upgrade: Try this Delicious Recipe from Chef Armando Gagliano

John Klyce Minervini

Ecco chef Armando Gagliano

Johnny Carson once said, “Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. We travel thousands of miles to be with people we only see once a year—and then discover that once a year is way too often.”

But hey, at least the food is good—right?

This year, upgrade your Thanksgiving dinner with a recipe from Ecco chef Armando Gagliano. On its face, it’s a creamy soup of butternut squash. But what sets this dish apart is the inclusion of Bartlett pears.

“I’ll admit, the combination is unusual,” says Gagliano. “But I think it works well together. You get the creamy, savory flavor of the squash and the sweetness of the pears. Garnish with a few toasted walnuts for an earthy crunch, and some micro-greens for a green, citrusy taste.”

Maybe you’re digging the soup, but don’t want to make it yourself? Starting next week, you can order it off the menu at Ecco ($7). Chef Gagliano recommends serving it with a whole roasted chicken and a glass of viognier. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

Armando Gagliano’s Butternut Squash Bisque
90 minutes
5 servings

Ingredients

3 medium butternut squashes, halved and seeded
1 bartlett pear, slightly underripe, peeled and seeded
1 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 cup toasted walnuts
micro greens or parsley

Preheat oven to 450. Fill the bottom of a baking dish with a small amount (½ inch) of water. Roast squashes in baking dish for 45 minutes – 1 hour, until tender when poked with a fork. Meanwhile, in a pot, combine sugar with 8 cups water and bring to boil. Poach pear for 20 minutes in boiling water.

Allow squashes to cool slightly, then scoop out the flesh, discarding the skins. In a large pot, combine squashes, pear, and cream. Add spices and stir to combine. Puree in a blender. Return to pot and heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with toasted walnuts and micro greens. Serve immediately.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Now open: Strano and Ecco on Overton Park

The kitchen doors fling open inside the swank new Sicilian restaurant at Cooper and Young.

Out walks Strano‘s owner and head chef, Josh Steiner, some two-day stubble failing to camouflage that Steiner celebrated his 23rd birthday on May 30th in conjunction with the restaurant’s grand opening.

The third of four siblings, Steiner spent his childhood in the kitchen with his Moroccan and Italian grandmothers. Soon he was working at Russo’s, the family’s Italian restaurant in Germantown, collecting kitchen equipment for his birthdays, working with Karen Carrier at Beauty Shop, and taking a three-week culinary crash course in Sicily.

Sourcing ingredients from his family’s nearby 100-acre farm and using FedEx to overnight his fish — a nod to the 11-hour expiration rule of his Italian mentors — Steiner takes a traditional approach, avoiding heavy sauces and focusing on foods like vegetable couscous and stuffed eggplant.

The twist is in the presentation, like the column of white oak wood smoke that emerges from the glass chamber on top of the grilled swordfish ($26).

justin fox burks

Josh Steiner

Steiner also uses an anti-griddle, he explains, while dashing back to the kitchen and emerging with a blob of caramel on the end of a toothpick that morphs into a dab of rich sauce in seconds. The anti-griddle flash-freezes salad dressing, which then melts in front of customers, or honey, which becomes marble hard before dissolving.

He adds caviar to drinks at the bar, which changes the flavor midway through, and injects strawberries and grapes with carbonation, using them instead of soda water in sangria.

“You can’t create recipes. Every recipe has already been done. So the only way to do it is how you present it. I feel like people eat with their eyes, their ears, their nose, not just their mouth, and so I play with senses, I play with textures. I even play with time,” Steiner says.

But it’s not all flash and new-age. “Grandma’s Meatballs” ($8) come from an old family recipe.

“My great grandmother sautéed them for just a split second, just to change the color on the outside. I’m talking so they’re still as rare as can be in the middle,” Steiner says. “And then she let them sit inside her marinara sauce for 24 hours while it’s on a low simmer. And that’s how you get them so moist and falling apart.”

Sabine Bachmann anguished over the name of her new Overton Park restaurant, heavy on Italian and Mediterranean influences, before settling on Ecco on Overton Park.

“Ecco is an Italian word. It means ‘here it is.’ I thought it was appropriate,” Bachmann says.

Lounging on the back patio during a recent Sunday, snacking on hot wings and sipping a cold drink, Bachmann pointed out a small plot of grass that one day will produce tomatoes and herbs for the restaurant. She spent her childhood in Germany, Italy’s dairy country, and France, where the family vacationed frequently; her dad made his own wine, and her neighbors were goat herders.

Her upbringing heavily influenced the atmosphere and menu for the restaurant.

“To me, food is not only about nourishment, but about people getting together around the same table and enjoying their time together,” Bachmann says. “I like the concept of how they cook over there, which is to use really good ingredients and don’t mess with them a lot.”

Armando Gagliano, her 25-year-old son, is the head chef and created most of the menu after dropping out of nursing school recently to pursue cooking. According to Gagliano, the orange-glazed Berkshire pork chop ($19) has emerged as a customer favorite.

Served with white wine risotto and an apple-onion chutney, he uses a spiced orange tea brine and cooks the meat sous vide to retain moisture.

Other menu items are the linguini with kale pesto featuring Tuscan kale and pesto Genovese ($10); chicken legs with marinated lemons and olives ($16); and a vegetarian lentil stew with tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic, and tofu ($10).

“People should live to eat instead of eating to live,” Gagliano says. “That’s kind of a stupid little cliché that chefs say.”

Maybe so, but as the breeze wafted through the patio, the Ecco staff conversing over an unhurried meal, it seemed fitting.

Here it is indeed.