Dish of the Week: Beef Stews
Where: Brasserie Beck, RIS at Union Market, The Source, Le Diplomate, Petit Plats, Founding Farmers
Stew is one of those perfect winter dishes — a hearty, bubbling cauldron, stick-to your ribs comfort food. International versions of the potted dish showed up on a few restaurant week menus I investigated this week, which is no surprise. Stew is about a big simmering pot on the stove, Sunday dinners simmering away under the lid. It’s chunks of inexpensive, muscular cuts, like chuck with lots of connective tissue, that make the best stew meats. A slow and low flame breaks down the collagen in the meat, giving the cubes that melty quality to them. And the cheap cuts cooked in large quantities are a great way for restaurants to survive the low-end restaurant week margins.
Chef Robert Wiedmaier chose beef carbonnade from Brasserie Beck’s regular menu as a restaurant week selection. The Flemish stew uses Belgian beer as a cooking liquid instead of a red wine. Wine would turn the pot into a beef bourguignon, a dish famous in the south of France that you can find at French restaurants like Le Diplomate and Petit Plats. Wiedermair goes over the cooking process in an online video, flouring and browning the meat and adding in a mirepoix, button mushrooms, and the suds, the hallmark of this Belgian stew. A dab of Dijon mustard at the center changes bites up with a kick.
The Source took an Asian route with their stew, delivering a Chinese-style short rib hot pot most surprising for its use of rice cakes as the starch floating in the fermented black bean gravy. Nothing at all like the crispy disc health food snacks, the Chinese cakes add an unexpected chewy bite from the glutinous tubes.
Over at Union Market, along with the exciting Bidwell opening as an anchor to the space, Foggy Bottom restaurant RIS opened a small stall last week. Among small containers of prepared food, the dish I was most excited about tasting on an opening night visit was a bowl of Jamaican curried goat stew, tropically and assertively flavored, perhaps with touch of coconut with the curry powder. Great for transporting and body-warming on a cold wintry night.
Meanwhile, Founding Farmers is stewing several American regional varieties for the winter. A Kentucky burgoo includes sirloin, potatoes and bourbon. And beef’s not the only meat in the game. A New Brunswick stew is chicken-based, while a Southwest-inspired pork and lentil stew makes use of avocados, limes, and poached eggs.
Small Bites
Sips and Suppers
Sips and Suppers, a fundraiser that features intimate dinners from pairs of all-star chefs, is on the pricier side of charity events. Seats at the Supper tables, which are located in 29 private homes across the Washington area, go for $600 a pop. For those for whom volunteering behind the scenes is a more affordable proposition, coordinators are still accepting volunteer applications to help D.C.’s best chefs pull off the dinners on January 26. Individuals with significant culinary and other fine dining experience are particularly needed, as are some volunteers with French language or kashrut experience. Volunteer coordinators plan on making assignments this weekend, so if you’re interested you better get on it. Volunteers also get a break on the $95 tickets to the Saturday, January 25 Sips evening at the Newseum, with signature bites and cocktails from many of the chefs cooking the next day. Money raised benefits DC Central Kitchen and Martha’s Table.
Year of the Horse
Elusive Sichuan master chef Peter Chang is popping up in D.C. After pairing with Scott Drewno at one of the sold out Suppers next Sunday night, Chang will be at The Source’s lounge on January 27 serving dim sum along with a signature punch from head bartender Woong Chang for $50 a person. It’s the start of a series of Chinese New Year festivities at the Newseum’s restaurant where each night a lucky guest will receive a gift from the dining room’s wishing tree. Special events include a one night family style banquet on January 31 — the bigger the size of your party, the cheaper the meal — a dumpling class, and a closing dinner where the first course is a stroll through a recreated night market experience set up in the dining room.
Restaurant Week Debated
There’s been a bit of interesting ink dropped during this 2014 winter restaurant week. Our suggestions this year, just as last August, came from a careful examination of menus combed for value. Particularly lunch menus because it’s easier to find that value when your meal costs you $20.14. Some illustrated in different ways that it’s often not that hard to get three courses to add up to $35.14, illustrating the obvious point that you should do your homework (or let us pros do it for you) when deciding where to dine. Cashion’s co-owner Justin Abad lashed out at restaurant week kitchens and to a lesser extent diners, while Chef Geoff came to everyone’s defense. Want more restaurant week? As always, plenty of places love it so much they’re extending the promotion like Firefly, a RW favorite of mine, and several others. Others always offer a prix fixe lunch or pre–theater menu. Or you can make your own for less than $35.14.
