I finagle my way into a lot of amazing dinners by amazing WashU chefs and then write about them on Fooducated. My number one goal: eat. My number two goal: make you jealous.

But this weekend, you get to make me super jealous by going to a dinner I can’t attend. The new head chef at Ibby’s Wilfrin Fernandez-Cruz and pastry chef Lisa Fernandez-Crus (who also happens to be Chef Wil’s wife) are conducting their very first STL pop-up event. It’s a Calcotada Festival, which is a Spanish celebration of the coming of Spring. 

Imagine flavorful lamb, sausage, and limitless Rose… I know your mouth is watering. So is mine but I’m back in NYC for the summer. If you’re in STL then you’re also in luck because the tickets haven’t sold out yet. Click here to buy some or to lean more about Wil and Lisa: http://www.delafincastl.com/calcotada-festival.html

This dessert is a lot like my mom: exciting, sweet, and topped with a sprinkle of unexpected crunchiness.

My original plan for Mother’s Day dessert was to copy Campus Executive Chef John Griffith’s dish. He made buttermilk panna cotta with strawberries, rhubarb,* and candied peanuts as the seventh course in an amazing eight course meal that I was lucky enough to be invited to. I may or may not have eaten three helpings of the panna cotta. Maybe. They were small.

Anyway, the plan to plagiarize Chef Griffith’s dessert fell through when I got home and realized that I forgot to buy gelatin. Without gelatin, the panna cotta would basically be cold buttermilk in a ramekin. Gross.

I decided to make a buttermilk ice cream instead and immediately felt like such an Iron Chef for using ice cream as a solution to a cooking dilemma (recipe below).

Chef Griffith’s rhubarb topping featured little pieces of cooked rhubarb and strawberries. I began on my journey to copy his topping by throwing chopped up rhubarb and strawberries in a pot over medium heat. Then I poured in lemon juice and brought it to a boil. When I tasted it, my taste buds cringed from the sourness. Something had to be done. I added sugar, fresh ginger, and some vanilla.

It started to smell like a jam and, in my excitement about successfully rescuing the too-sour topping, I forgot that I wasn’t making jam and I began smashing the rhubarb with a fork while singing: “welcome to the space jam.” Then I yelled at my sister’s fat dog for staring at me.

I think I’m giving you too much information.

Luckily, jam can also be called “Rhubarb Sauce” and it can be drizzled on ice cream. Plus, my sister spread it on some bread and said it was her “new favorite jam.” So that’s all good news.

For the candied peanuts, I decided to  follow a recipe because candying things scares me. I rarely manage to do it successfully. I almost always manage to end up with a pan filled with burnt sugar.

I used Daniel Lebovitz’s recipe because he includes encouraging lines like: “Don’t worry; you didn’t mess up.” The three times that I began to panic, I remembered his words and just kept stirring. Sure enough, I didn’t mess up!

To compose the dish, I topped a scoop of the ice cream with a dollop of the rhubarb sauce and some chopped up candied peanuts.

The dish was… dare I say it… the bomb. The sweet and nutty peanuts balanced out the sourness of the buttermilk and the rhubarb perfectly. Chef Griffith’s gets all of the flavor credit for what is now one of my five favorite desserts (I don’t really know what the other four are).

Make this. You will not regret it and your mom will love you for it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Rhubarb “Sauce” (or Jam, whichever you prefer)

Ingredients

• 5 rhubarb stalks, cut into rough small pieces
• 3/4 cup of chopped strawberries
• Juice and zest of one small lemon
• 3/4 tablespoon of fresh ginger
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

Steps

1. Dump everything in a pot with a heavy bottom over medium heat.
2. Bring it to a boil.
3. Lower the heat and let it cook for 45 minutes.
4. Smush it.

Buttermilk Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 2 cups of heavy cream
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Steps

1. Dump everything in a bottom with a heavy bottom over medium heat.
2. Stir often. Cook until sugar dissolves.
3. Cool.
4. Dump in your ice cream machine and churn according to your machine’s instructions.

Enjoy!!!!

*My favorite thing about rhubarb: in 1947, a New York State Court ruled that rhubarb is officially a fruit. That’s what they spent their time doing.

Finals Week is a lot like WILD.

You’re probably confused. You’re probably wondering: how can the worst week of every semester be anything like WILD, the biannual day on which every student at Wash U is suddenly a party animal? The same rules for survival apply.

(1) Eat. Don’t try to take an exam on an empty stomach. Instead, grab a ham and bacon jam (YES, BACON JAM) sandwich from the DUC (pictured below). The ham was fresh and the jam was a great combination of sweet and smoky. The baguette was weirdly chewy and the jam was slightly too sweet but the stressed-induced blur means you probably won’t remember most of it anyway.

(2) Stay hydrated. Coffee is not a substitute for water. In fact, coffee dehydrates. For every coffee you down, drink two cups of water.

(3) Pace yourself. Finals week is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t go too hard too quickly. It’s important that you actually make it to all of the exams.

(4) And finally: try not to pass out in Bear’s Den. 

It seems appropriate on this, the eve of reading week, to write about late night breakfast. I had really high hopes for Fasano’s. I believed in the power of pancakes. I thought they’d make writing a marketing case in Bear’s Den a little less “bleh.” But I was wrong.

The pancakes were not golden delicious. The pancakes were not even the littlest bit crispy. The pancakes were not cooked all the way through.

The french toast was also disappointing. It wasn’t crispy. The egg hadn’t soaked through so the center was nothing but dry bread.

I’m going to bed because… without delicious pancakes… I can’t go on!!!

The tables at the Tongue & Cheek Tavern were covered in butcher paper and topped with big white plates, thick cloth napkins, bowls of vibrant turnips, and fresh rosemary sprigs. Chef Patrick Thrower, DUC Executive Chef, and Chef Wil Fernandez-Cruz, the new Chef de Cuisine at Ibby’s, composed the elegant gastropub in the Studio 40 as the last of the five dinners in the WU Restaurant Series.

The menu demonstrated Chef Thrower’s faith in students. Or his guts. Serving items like “trout rillettes,” “beef tongue pastrami,” and “beef cheek” to 20-year-olds (or anyone really) is definitely risky. It paid off tremendously.

He began with the scariest course: beef tongue pastrami.

It was served with small pieces of toasted bread, pickled vegetables, and a trio of house-made mustards. The slices of beef tongue looked like fried Spam. We were instructed assemble sandwiches.

I took a bite and could feel my eyes light up. The beef tongue was absolutely fantastically delicious. It was, to my great surprise, not chewy at all. The tender beef tongue melted away. It was rich but balanced out by the acidity of the pickled vegetables and the sharp mustard.

I had to have more. On the second toast, I spread the house-made beet mustard. The beet mustard added a touch of earthiness to each bite. Almost everyone at my table tried and enjoyed the tongue.

The next course: pommes dauphine with horseradish creme fraiche.

“These are like really fancy tater tots,” I exclaimed. But Stephanie quickly said: “you can’t even put them on that level.” The pommes duaphine were just too good to be compared to any level of tater tot. Henna compared them to “fried gnocchi.”

The pommes duaphine had wonderfully crispy outside and wonderfully fluffy potato insides. Like the beef, each bite melted onto my tongue. I feared the horseradish creme fraiche but it was appropriately creamy and appropriately sharp.

While we were lamenting the pommes duaphone, we were poured tall glasses of house-made root beer.

According to Chef Thrower, 50 different ingredients were used in the drink. They all worked together to create a root beer unlike any root beer I’ve ever had. The ale yeast in the root beer created an unprecedented depth of flavor.

The next course arrived promptly thereafter: smoked trout rillettes.

Rilletes is, according to Chef Fernandez-Cruz, a technique for cooking meats and fish. The trout was cooked in butter until super tender. The texture of the trout rilletes was similar to a chunky pate. We spread it on the house-made plantain chips on the table.

Each bite was super salty (in a good way) and super fishy (in a good way). I could taste the shallots and the bourbon that was added to the butter.

When the next course showed up, everyone whipped out their iphones to photograph it. Beautiful beef cheek sliders sat on a bed of grilled radicchio and brussel sprout leaves.

I took one bite and fell in love. The braised beef cheeks were tender but robust, like braised veal usually is (and braised short rib rarely is… why is it often so chewy??). The bitterness of the greens and the acidity of the onions did effectively lighten up the richness of the beef to create a really well-balanced and delicious slider.

The next course: quail eggs sitting on top of crispy potato hash stuffed with pancetta and beef cheeks.

Also known as: the world’s most badass breakfast. We topped it with drops of Mexican hot sauce and dug in. The hash was crispy to the nth degree. Chunks of pancetta inside the hash added salty touches while chunks of beef cheek added beefy richness. The delicate quail yolk held its own by adding a bit of moisture.

While we were eating, we were poured glasses of house-made ginger beer.

Each sip was like a ginger-packed kick in the face. The sip would begin slightly sweet and become spicy. It was intense and interesting and refreshing.

Then the next course arrived: Poularde roulades.

The poularde (which is a hen that is raised in a way that makes it particularly fatty and particularly meaty) was rolled (hence the word roulardes) around corse forcemeat (which is usually an emulsification of ground pork and pork fat and seasoning) and wrapped in prosciutto. It was served with brussel sprouts and cubes of pancetta.

This course was, in my opinion, the most classic dish. It reminded me of Thanksgiving. I loved the crispy prosciutto and loved loved loved the combination of bitter brussel sprouts and salty pancetta.

To end the meal (and the series), Chef Thrower and Chef Fernandez-Cruz had to do not one dessert, not two desserts, but three desserts. First up: strawberry rhubarb crumble.

It was absolutely awesome. Slightly sour rhubarb and slightly sweet strawberries commingled with the crispy topping to make a dish that was not too sweet, not too sour, not too anything except delicious.

It was followed with plates of “monkey bread,” which was so appealing that I forgot to photograph it. Monkey bread is, according to Chef Fernandez-Cruz, a STL classic. It was small pieces of warm bread covered with a light dusting of spices and a not-light-at-all coating of caramel. Sugar had melted and cooked onto pieces of the bread. It was incredibly sweet but also delicious.

To cut the sweetness, they finished with a cheese plate and some house-made fig jam filled with mustard.

The cheeses were all from local creameries. The salty cheese combined with the sharp mustard and the slightly sweet figs to balance out of the sugar that’d hit our palates during the first two dessert courses. It was a great finale.

I can’t pick a favorite course. It’s a tie between the beef tongue pastrami, eggs and hash, and pommes duaphine.

Chef Thrower had faith in us. He believed that even students who sustain themselves on half & halves would try the beef tongue and the beef cheek and most of us did try. In fact, we did more than try. We loved the tongue and the cheek at the Tongue & Cheek Tavern.

The WU Restaurant Series began (with Chef Rushing’s The Rusty Spoon) and ended with pop up restaurants that managed to be both welcoming and interesting. Again, I walked away amazed with the passion and talent demonstrated by the chefs at Dining Services. Putting the amount of time and effort it takes to orchestrate such a beautiful, delicious, and interesting 5-course meal requires dedication. I’m impressed and grateful that that dedication is present in a meal on a college campus for students. 

I will spend the entire summer dreaming about delighting in another five-course WU pop up meal. 

I’ve been avoiding this vegetarian special because, quite frankly, it looks like bleh. Polenta looks like baby food. Swiss chard stew looks like airplane food. But I walked into the DUC from the pouring rain looking for something warm to eat and the polenta caught my eye.

Polenta, from what I understand, is basically grits but the cornmeal grains in polenta are more finely ground. While polenta is now on the menus of many upscale dining locations, it used to be a staple in the meals of Italian peasants because it is relatively inexpensive.

The DUC’s polenta was relatively delicious. It was smooth but slightly grainy so it didn’t feel as mushy as it looked. It was cheesy and creamy and rich and comforting. The flavors (and especially the richness) reminded me of the gnocchi at Ibby’s,

The brocoli, on the other hand, was completely overcooked and soggy. The swiss chard stew had a nice acidity to it but it was kind of boring. And the tofu was really not my thing. It was chewy and bland.

But the polenta. The polenta was good. Really good. So next time I’ll do what the student on line in front of me did and only order a side of polenta (even though the salty creaminess might be a little much).