Beautiful summer brunch special at the Roadhouse!
By Ari Weinzweig
If youâre thinking of going out for brunch, give some thought to swinging by the Roadhouse Saturday or Sunday. This delicious dish will only be on the menu while the local berries are at their best!
More about the roasted strawberries.
Sous chef Jess Forbes came up with the idea for this special offering while poking around old recipes from Kentucky. Roasting strawberries is a technique that dates back centuries. Itâs a wonderful way to intensify the flavors of already really fine fresh fruit. New York chef and author Tom Colicchio wrote in the New York Times, â[I] love what roasting does to ripe summer fruit. It may seem greedy to improve on nature now, but that is exactly what roasting does.â After being washed and hulled, the berries are slow-roasted with a splash of balsamic vinegar and a good bit of the sorghum syrup we get from Muddy Pond mill in Tennessee. If you donât know sorghum syrup, in the moment Iâll just say, itâs the âsyrup of the Middle Southââup here we have maple syrup, further south, folks have used cane syrup for centuries, but in Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, etc., itâs all about the sorghum. Dark like molasses but with a complex, bittersweet flavor all its own, sorghum is great on pancakes, biscuits, or in this case, in the Roasted Strawberry Compote.
About the heirloom cornmeal.
The seasonal strawberries are certainly the featured item on this dish, but donât overlook the cornmeal. Itâs just as the best locally milled âmealâ would have tasted about 200 years ago. We get it from Anson Millsâthe same folks from whom we source those amazing grits, Carolina Gold rice, and a host of other terrific traditionally grown heirloom grains! Aside from being harder to grow, heirlooms like this generally yield only about 20 percent at best of what you get out of commercial corn. Right now Ansonâs meal is made from four old varietals: Leaming, John Haulk, Jarvis, and Hickory King Yellow. All four are âdent cornsâ (which are softer in texture than the alternative, known as âflint cornâ). Like everything we get from Anson Mills, the corn is grown organically, field-dried, and stone ground. Because, like all Anson products, it has the germ left in (which makes it way more flavorful) it has to be refrigerated.
The old corn varietals used here are wonderfully aromatic and complex in their flavors. Glenn Roberts, the man who got Anson Mills going a little over 20 years ago, says, âGreat corn is like great wine,â and this stuff proves the point. âCornmealâ may sound mundane on the surface but seriously, itâs super delicious. Itâs so flavorful. Floral is the key word for me. We use the corneal for the Spider Bread at the Roadhouse on Tuesday evenings and also on the whole catfish. By making this recipe with the cornmeal and organic Carolina Gold rice flour (also from Anson Mills, itâs what we use for the Gluten-Free Fried Chicken), Jess kept the Cornbread Waffles wheat-free! The delicate delicious floral flavors of the cornmeal get a bit of caramelization as they are cooked up in the waffle iron. And then, while theyâre still hot, they get topped with that wonderful, complexly flavored compote! Swing by soon, while the strawberries are still in season and score these super tasty waffles!
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