Babbo: The Cookbook

This book is a great overview about the food Mario prepares. Babbo Ristorante serves dishes that are complex in flavor and beautiful in presentation, and the cookbook reveals this style with pinpoint accuracy. It has brilliantly bright food photography. I love the pages of thematic recipes, including a page on oils with six different infused oils. So you can go to this page and see a panoply of ideas. Also notable about Babbo The Cookbook, is that Mario talks about the importance of wine service in a restaurant, something many chefs just take for granted.
This cookbook has been very important to Five & Ten and how we cook food, present our dishes and serve our wine. Through the years Mario has helped us move away from a lot of the French influences and embrace Italian styles and techniques.

Frank Stitt's Southern Table

Frank Stitt is the Chef/Owner of Highland Bar & Grill, Bottega, and Café Bottega in Birmingham. He is an honest, hardworking, brilliantly talented man who can cook the most amazing food that is decidedly Southern. Frank Stitt’s Southern Table: Recipes and Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill is an utterly inspirational book when it comes to Southern Cooking, and it is a good reflection of exactly who Frank is. Artisan did a great job of making this an extremely beautiful book to look at.

Casa Moro

Moro is a London based restaurant opened by husband and wife team, Sam and Sam Clark. Samantha & Sam are really great, and they operate a perfect style of restaurant in my mind. Moro is just all about the food, and their food is really good and people care about it. The restaurant is comfortable in its own skin, but always very exciting. The food is Spanish and Moroccan influenced, which to us is very current. Named after their house in Spain, Casa Moro is the 2nd of three cookbooks written by the Clarks. This book is filled with recipes that are lively, flavourful and attainable.

Book Series Begins!: Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon

For the next two weeks I will be doing a book series. Like many chefs, I have shelves full of cookbooks and magazines about food, wine & restaurants. Out of my many books, I have chosen the real standouts. Today, we will be starting off with Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon: Stories of Pork Bellies, Hush Puppies, Rock'n' Roll music and Bacon Fat Mayonnaise by Ari Weinzweig.



It does seem like bacon trend is slowing down a bit, but good bacon will never go out of style (especially in the South, but hopefully everywhere else too). Here is why I love this book: the author Ari Weinzweig is a brilliant man, who with Paul Sagninaw opened Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1982. Zingerman's Deli is an important force in food for a gazillion reasons, but more notably these days for their excellent customer service, how they treat their employees and their knowledge of food (it is in that order which is really rare, they are a special group). In this book, Ari guides his readers through the importance of bacon to the U.S. (calling it the olive oil of North America) and he explains how to make bacon and bacon dishes that really rock. This is an awesome book, a current book, and bacon will always be hot. Jump on the bacon bandwagon now!

Click HERE to check out Zingerman's Press.

vinegar in my home kitchen

I love vinegar. It gives the oomph to the food we cook. It lifts and allows sweetness and sultry acidity to sing side by side.
One vinegar I am really into these days is a sugarcane vinegar from the Philippines called Datu Puti. It's malty and complex, and quite the opposite of what you think if you think sweet. Oh, and its cheap as can be. A liter was 1.99 at Fooks in Athens.
I'm using it in a roasted pork butt dish that has garlic, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and maple syrup in it. Yum Yum.


I am using a red wine vinegar that I make in jars at home with the dregs of good wines we consume. Just get a good vinegar culture from Bragg's vinegar and top over it with some wine. Cover with cloth and store in the closet for a while. About two weeks later you'll have vinegar.Some day soon I will invest in a real nice tapped cask and go the used oak route.

We use cider vinegar a fair bit too but its the nervous one of the bunch, the vinegar you don't want playing with the loaded guns. Great stuff mind you but jumpy. There are some fantastic ones out there though, like J. LeBlanc from France where they have trained their vinegars not to be so caustic.

Seasoned rice vinegar is for sushi rice.

Champagne vinegar is the epitome of clean vinegar and is great in vinaigrettes.

No balsamic right now. Its a recession and I like really good Balsamic. Once I sign a book contract I will buy into good balsamic again. Anyhow, it is not strawberry season and that's where I really love the balsamic.

The list goes on. I just love me some vinegar.

The white vinegar is under the sink where it belongs. It's a wonderful cleaner.

Dancing with the Stars Wine Dinner Series

Every week leading up to The Athens Dancing with the Stars benefit for Project Safe on March 21st, Five and Ten will offer wine dinners in order to raise money for team number 7. Team 7 is Hugh Acheson and Natalie Cox! REMINDER, HUGH HAS NEVER DANCED BEFORE… he needs your support.!!

Give to Charity while eating awesome food and drinking fantastic wine!

A new menu will be created on Monday of every week. You can come in anytime and ask for the Dancing with the Stars Wine Dinner special.

Menu for next week starting on MONDAY 1/18-24/10

roasted kumomoto oysters with lemon emulsion, shallot, dill and UGA caviar

viognier, la Paradou, France, 2008

smoked salmon with salad of olives, slow roasted tomatoes, dill, croutons with a lemon-anchovy vinaigrette

St. Veran, JC Thevenet, “Clos Hermitage”, Burgundy, 2007

fried chicken thigh with collards, crisp grit cake and potlikker jus

sparkling cabernet franc, Grenelle, Loire, NV

grilled venison with pepper spaetzle, braised cabbage and stewed cherry gastrite

Cote Rotie, Rene Rostaing, “Classique”, Rhone, 2006

Pineapple upside down cake with meyer lemon sorbet

Monbazillac, Tirecul la Graviere, France, 2005

Wine dinners are $120 per person, not including tax and gratuity.

Please call Five & Ten for reservations (706-546-7300).

Drink for Charity

Try Five and Ten's newly created winter cocktail named "The Lucky Seven". Profits from this tasty gimlet, made of kumquat and vodka, will benefit Athens Dancing with the Stars. Athens Dancing with the Stars is a fundraiser benefiting Project Safe and I will be participating in this event as a dancing contestant on Team #7. So warm up with a "Lucky Seven" at Five & Ten this winter and support Project Safe!