Here's a few things to accompany you on your Fourth of July weekend...

Food Ideas for the Fourth
Mark Bittman delivers an ultimate list of picnic recipes. These are quick and easy so great to incorporate into your celebration this weekend.
And although it was published a bit ago, these takes on the hot dog from Hot Dog Heaven Chicago chefs are worth a try this weekend.

And When You're Not Grilling...
Tru Than has garnered quite the buzz from Internet food sites like The Amateur Gourmet and Grub Street. Here's a link to her food show.

AndrewZimmern.com: You received much of your culinary training in your home country of France. Currently, you own and operate Vincent in the Twin Cities. How have you adapted French cuisine to fit a Midwesterner’s palate?

Vincent Francoual: I’m not sure if there was an adaptation period. I tried some dishes that worked and some that did not. I think that the rustic/comfort of French cuisine fit well with Minnesota and its long winters. In the summer months I learned to go easy on the heavy cream. Ultimately, what matters the most is to gain the trust of the customer.

AZ.com: You are still able to visit France frequently. What tops your list of places to see/eat in the country right now?

Happy Fourth of July….everyone likes to grill out for the holidays and here are  a few of the recipes I have used most over the last few summers. The day before yesterday I took my son to the Farmers Market here in St Paul and we bought a whole flat of strawberries, the first of the season. We have been eating them all weekend and I am happy that we bought so many, we’ll make the granite tonight with all the berries we have left. 

 

This is a great recipe for summertime... I suggest cutting up a fresh pineapple and throwing it on the grill to go with the meal. Delicious!

 

Keep in mind that young chickens (poussin) should be about two pounds or under. You can use cornish hens as well.

This slow-roasted pork is best if let to sit in the rub overnight, and then cooked over indirect, low heat for 5-6 hours.  A long process, but well worth it. 

Ed Levine recently reviewed a restaurant that has been around for a couple of years but now Levine proclaimed Blue Hill at Stone Barns "the most important and gutsiest restaurant in America right now. His review is glowing, and it he's right, what Blue Hill at Stone Barns is doing is incredible. This is a restaurant with a very short farm-to-table distance (try the backyard) and snout-to-tail approach to food (my kind of guy). It is connected to whose website calls itself a "unique, nonprofit, member-driven collaboration" with a mission "to celebrate, teach and advance community-based food production and enjoyment, from farm to classroom to table."

Blue Hills at Stone Farms is a concentrated version of what some very important chefs have already put in place and owes much of its success to their endeavors.

There is Alice Waters of Chez Panisse (who I mentioned in Hot Dish last week) who's system has been the same since Waters and her partners decided to base their restaurant on how they would feed a dinner party at home. In the restaurant at Chez Panisse (as opposed to the cafe) one set menu a night based on seasonality of ingredients reflects the commitment of Waters and her crew: "A good kitchen respects its sources, chooses ingredients that are sound, seasonal, local when possible, and appropriate to the event. Garnish and presentation play supplemental roles, not principal ones. Respect for traditions, both artisanal and sophisticated, is equal to respect for inventiveness and improvisation."

Another biggie is The French Laundry. Thomas Keller's restaurant in Yountville, CA (Napa Valley)features a garden nearby and close relationships to local farms (check out the stories section on their website).

These aren't the only restaurants that aim to take on larger responsibility than merely providing food for the guest. Please share your recommendations of restaurants that fit the farm-to-table, snout-to-tail formula... the more the merrier! (And check out my travel page for locations of these restaurants....)

I haven't always liked cheese. For those of you who know about the role food played in my formative years, this is probably no surprise. Growing up, the only cheese I had in my diet was mac and cheese, parmesan (not the fresh kind, the powdery kind), those crunchy cans of Cheeseballs or Cheetos, Kraft Singles, mild cheddar slices which I never liked, and of course, the dreaded "cheese in a can" (my dad still buys me the stuff every year for my brithday, just because he thinks it's funny). It's no wonder that I never grew to love it as a kid. I was getting the cheap stuff.

It wasn't until I ventured all the way to UW-Madison for college that I started to appreciate the yellow (or sometimes white, blue, green or orange) stuff. Cheese and beer are like a currency in that state, which is just fine with me, although it made a mess in my wallet.

I remember tasting my first tiny cube of cheddar cheese, aged 10 years in some sort of cave (magical!). It was crumbly yet still slightly creamy, tangy, and so amazingly good I had to sneak a few more bites. I finally got it. This is what the fuss is all about.

Since then, you'd be hard pressed to find my refrigerator void of queso. My faves lately are aged gouda (with those crunchy little bits in it), goat cheese, cheap port wine cheese (kind of embarassing to admit. "Cheese food" counts, right?), and of course, sharp cheddar cheese.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to enjoy a Spanish, home-cooked dinner with my friend Maggie and a bunch of her friends from work. Her co-worker, Jordan, a fellow food freak, brought this fabulous stanky cheese for all of us to share.