A taste of the 2014 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival

“The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival is probably the best food event in the city at this point,” Rathbun says. “I think it’s focused so much more attention on the region, as opposed to just Georgia or just Atlanta. Bringing in so many other chefs from around the region makes Atlanta the host city and it becomes a showcase for the food scene here.”

The dish Rathbun will be serving up at the Watch List Party this year is his elegant take on oyster stew, made with lemon cream poached Apalachicola oysters, baked corn mash and smoked bacon.

“I dig corn, and this is basically a corn mash that’s baked and sets up like corn pudding,” Rathbun says. “It’s so simple and you can use it as a side dish with a lot other things. But it works really well with the oysters and smoked bacon to become super delicious.”

David Bancroft is a young chef who opened Acre restaurant in Auburn, Ala., last year. Located on an acre of land in the historic downtown district, blocks from Toomer’s Corner, Acre is surrounded by orchards and gardens designed as an edible landscape and urban farming environment.

Though Bancroft has been part of the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival for the past two years, this will be the first time he’ll be in the tasting tents serving the food he makes as a restaurant chef/owner.

“I’ll admit, my first year at the festival I was pretty star-struck, just seeing chefs like Kevin Gillespie and Lee Richardson.” Bancroft said. “Last year, I was equally star struck, finding Frank Stitt, Linton Hopkins, Steven Satterfield, Chris Lilly and all these other guys at a party. I just froze, I think.”

As for the dish he’s is presenting this year, Bancroft jokingly calls it a “redneck noodle bowl.” More precisely, it’s called spicy buckwheat noodle salad with ’nduja vinaigrette and fresh herbs. ’Nduja is a spicy, spreadable Italian sausage similar to andouille.

“We use a spiral vegetable slicer you can get from Williams Sonoma to crank out little ribbons, almost like little curly fries,” Bancroft says. “You make noodles out of fresh vegetables like carrots, celery and zucchini, combine them with buckwheat noodles, ’nduja vinaigrette, a bit of broth and spicy pork for some meaty flavor, and brighten it with some fresh herbs. It’s a nice little twist.”

Michael Gulotta, another young chef, opened his first restaurant, MoPho, in New Orleans early this year. Gulotta spent six years as the chef de cuisine under John Besh at Restaurant August, one of New Orleans’ top fine dining spots, before deciding to strike out on his own with a casual South Louisiana-meets-Southeast Asia concept.

Working with Besh, Gulotta spent time at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival over the past three years, prepping behind the scenes and doing demos.

“I think it’s amazing what they’ve been able to do,” he says. “I’ve been to Aspen and Charleston and South Beach, and it’s surprising that Atlanta was able to build such a large venue in such a short amount of time. There are so many chefs, there’s so much going on, and so much to do.”

This year, Gulotta will partner with South Florida star chef Timon Balloo for a seminar called World of Influence that focuses on the international influences that have shaped Southern cooking.

“It’s going to be fun because you’ll see both sides of the coin,” Gulotta says. “Chef Timon has the Asian heritage that he brings to the table but he makes it Southern. I bring my South Louisiana heritage and reinterpret it with the flavors and approaches that you get in Southeast Asian cuisine.

“It’s funny because the cuisines are very similar and the climates are very similar. It’s delta-style seafood from brackish waters, with a lot of crabs and shrimp and clams.”

The dish Gulotta is sharing, fermented black bean braised Louisiana blue crab, is a perfect example of mixing flavors and techniques from two distinctive cultures with a lot in common.

“Every time I would go eat black bean braised fish or lobster it would always remind me of that deep, rich flavor of gumbo,” Gulotta says. “Instead of just doing the traditional black bean sauce, I wondered what would happen if I started it with a dark roux. And the natural progression from that was going back to my mom’s crab gumbo, which is one of my favorite things to make.

“I use the South Louisiana trinity of onion, pepper and celery and then add ginger and fermented black bean, which gives it this funky flavor along with Southeast Asian crab paste. You end up with a dish that’s gumbo but it’s not and it’s black bean crab but it’s not. It’s a really fun melding of the two.”

Recipes

These recipes offer a taste of the 2014 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival from three Southern chefs, David Bancroft, Michael Gulotta, and Kevin Rathbun.

Spicy Buckwheat Noodle Salad With ’Nduja Vinaigrette and Fresh Herbs

— Chef David Bancroft of Acre, Auburn, Ala.

Hands on time: 20 minutes Total time: 20 minutes

Serves: 2

For this cold Asian salad, use a spiral vegetable slicer to crank out veggie “noodles” or make thin strips with a vegetable peeler. If you can’t find ‘nduja, remove the casing from a cooked, smoked andouille sausage and whiz in a food processor for a few seconds until soft.

2 ounces ’nduja soft Italian sausage

1/4 cup pork jus or other broth

1 orange, zested and juiced

1 smashed garlic clove, peeled and smashed

6 ounces cooked buckwheat noodles

1 carrot, spiral cut

1/2 English cucumber or zucchini, spiral cut

2 ounces shaved smoked pork loin

1 bunch each fresh mint, basil, and cilantro leaves, chopped and for garnish

Place ’nduja, pork jus (or broth), orange juice and zest, and smashed garlic clove into a small mixing bowl. Using your hands, crush the ingredients together until ’nduja is halfway mixed, but still somewhat chunky. Add the noodles, carrot, cucumber, smoked pork, and a few chopped herbs and fold the salad together. Serve chilled and garnished with fresh herbs.

Per serving: 457 calories (percent of calories from fat, 22), 21 grams protein, 68 grams carbohydrates, 4 grams fiber, 11 grams fat (4 grams saturated), 107 milligrams cholesterol, 428 milligrams sodium.

Lemon Cream Poached Apalachicola Oysters, Baked Corn Mash and Smoked Bacon — Chef Kevin Rathbun of Rathbun’s Restaurants, Atlanta

Serves: 8

Hands on time: 40 minutes Total time: 1 hour

Roasting freshly grated corn in a low oven creates a pudding-like mash that can be served as an easy sweet and savory side dish. Creamy poached oysters and smoked bacon make an elegant “super delicious” take on oyster stew.

8-10 ears of corn, enough to equal 3 cups grated off the cob

4 tablespoons salted butter

2 teaspoons ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

For the poached oysters

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 teaspoons thinly sliced garlic

1-1/2 cups oysters shucked plus their liquor

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Tabasco

1/2 cup smoked bacon, diced, rendered and crispy

1 cup packed spinach or parsley leaves

1/2 teaspoon paprika

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

Grate corn on a box grater into an 8-inch pie pan, cover with aluminum foil and roast in oven for 1 hour. When corn sets add butter, pepper and salt. Keep warm.

In a medium sauce pot, add cream and garlic and bring to a simmer. Add oysters and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes or until oysters start to curl on the edges. Remove from heat, add lemon zest, lemon juice, pepper salt and Tabasco.

To serve:

Divide 2 tablespoons hot corn mash in the middle of each bowl, spoon three to four oysters around, add poaching liquid, garnish with crisp bacon, spinach or parsley and a dusting of paprika. Serve hot.

Per serving: 255 calories (percent of calories from fat, 64), 7 grams protein, 17 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 19 grams fat (11 grams saturated), 73 milligrams cholesterol, 811 milligrams sodium.

Fermented Black Bean Braised Louisiana Blue Crabs — Chef Michael Gulotta of MoPho, New Orleans

Hands on time: 1 hour Total Time: 1 1/2 hours

Serves: 12

This funky and fun Cajun-meets-Asian dish starts with “gumbo crabs” — less than perfect blue crabs used for seafood stock and gumbo. If you use better quality blue crabs, pick the meat after you toast the shells and make the roux. Find ingredients such as crab paste and black bean paste in Asian markets.

8 gumbo crabs, split and lightly crushed

2 cups neutral oil, such as canola

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 medium yellow onions, diced

½ cup crab paste

1 bell pepper, diced

1 stalk celery, diced

5 garlic cloves, minced

1-inch piece ginger, peeled & minced

1 tablespoon chili paste

½ cup fermented black bean paste

2 ½ quarts shellfish stock or water

1 stalk lemongrass, beaten with back of knife

½ cup cilantro stems, chopped

½ stick Chinese cinnamon

1 foot butcher’s twine

½ cup fish sauce

1 tablespoons dried fermented black beans

½ tablespoon ground black pepper

Salt to taste

Fresh lime juice to taste

Hot sauce to taste

To finish

1 pound jumbo lump blue crab meat, picked off all shells

½ cup scallions, thinly sliced (reserve the white bases)

8 cups Louisiana popcorn rice, cooked or two 8-ounce package of rice vermicelli noodles, cooked and chilled

In a heavy bottomed saucepot over a medium high heat, toast the crab shells in ½ cup of neutral oil. Once the shells are deep red in color, remove them from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside.

To the pot, add the remaining oil and flour to make a roux. Continue to stir the roux over medium high heat till it is a dark chocolate brown and smells nutty like kettle corn, about 20 minutes. To the hot roux, stir in the onions and crab paste and let toast for two minutes. The caramelization of the natural sugars in the onion should turn the roux almost black. Next, add the peppers, celery, garlic, ginger, and chili paste. Continue to stir the mixture over medium high heat for another five minutes.

Stir in the fermented black bean paste and then whisk in the shellfish stock. Tie the lemongrass stalk and Chinese cinnamon stick together with the butcher’s twine and drop them into the pot, leaving the end of the string tied loosely to one of the pot handles for easy removal. Finally, add the toasted gumbo crabs back to the pot along with the black pepper and dried fermented black beans. Bring the sauce to a simmer, stirring regularly to prevent scorching.

Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for 45 minutes, skimming and discarding any skin that forms on the top. To finish, season the sauce to taste with salt, lime juice and hot sauce.

To Serve:

After you’ve sliced the green tops off of the scallions, remove the roots from the white bases and split the bases lengthwise. Set a sauté pan over medium high heat and add a small amount of neutral oil. Season the bases with salt and pepper and add them to the pan and roast for 5 minutes or until tender. Shake the pan occasionally to prevent scorching.

Add the picked crab meat to the finished sauce and remove from the pot from the heat. Once the crab meat is added to the sauce do not bring it back to a simmer, as this will overcook the meat. Serve generous portions of sauce over the Louisiana popcorn rice or the chilled vermicelli noodles, being sure to include a half of a whole gumbo crab with each serving. Garnish with roasted scallion whites and the sliced scallion tops.

Per serving: 240 calories (percent of calories from fat, 67), 5 grams protein, 13 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 16 grams fat (4 grams saturated), 26 milligrams cholesterol, 304 milligrams sodium.