Summer in the Kitchen
This summer has been a pretty great one for the Black Star Co-op Kitchen Team. We’ve been enjoying the amazing summer produce and some really great specialty proteins from around the state. Our Crestview Hot Chicken recipe, an homage to Prince’s Nashville Hot Chicken, is getting better with each new iteration. And we’ve been making a ton of great pies and ice cream to keep you cool.
Because we’re a little behind the season on switching to our summer menu, we’ll call it a Late Summer menu. There’s not a whole lot of change on this menu, mainly: we’re lightening up some of our items, moving to more local options on stock items, and adjusting some prices due to seasonal cost increases.
The two biggest changes that you will see pertain to our grit dishes, and how we will be treating our bar steaks. We are switching our grits to a far superior local product provided by the folks at the Homestead Gristmill in Waco. These true grits allow us to make an end product closer to Low Country style grits—creamy and filling with a bright corn flavor. We are really excited about this product, and we hope that you are too. Regarding bar steaks, we’re doing a “Butcher’s Cut” that will allow us to be more flexible and creative with the range of cuts that we can offer. Bar steak price will follow market price, with our base price will staying the same. With these changes we’ll have the freedom to make different cuts and bypass and sourcing issues we may experience. All the beef used for our steaks will be sourced locally and butchered in house.
2014 has been a good year for sourcing local fruits. We are right in the middle of fig season, and we are super stoked to be getting figs from Dan Gonzales again. As I’ve said before, he’s not a farmer, he’s just a man with a lot of figs–delicious figs. A friend of member-owner Debbie Cerda, Dan reached out to me on her recommendation back when I was Produce Manager at Wheatsville. We were as lucky to get them then as now, and are enjoying using them in pies and other treats this summer.
On the worker front, we have two new Kitchen Team members: Isaac and Alyssa. If you see them around the Co-op, please welcome them to the family.