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out. As with wine pairings, Love’s
food-and-fuel combinations are intended
to bring out the best in each dish.
“The same way cabernet has oak in it,
our spelt has hickory,” says Love, refer-
ring to the aforementioned spelt and
quail dish (in which the grains are cooked
with a hunk of wood right in the pan).
Each type of wood is best suited to a par-
ticular job. Hickory, in general, is good for
long-cooking foods. Pecan is much more
delicate—“so and sweet,” he says—while
mesquite “is very brash.”
Love is hardly alone in embracing ele-
mental cooking techniques, a facet of the
new “manly chef” ethos, which includes
foraging for and sometimes even killing
your own food. In recent months, wood
varieties have been elevated to the rarefied
status of cheese and wine at top restau-
rants all over the country. At Iron Chef
Jose Garces’ Arizona outpost of Distrito,
the food is cooked over
kiawe ono
, a type
of Hawaiian mesquite used in traditional
luaus. Star chef Sean Brock of Husk and
McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C., burns amix
of sustainable hardwood and carbonized
pig bones. And at Yusho in Chicago, Mat-
thias Merges offers a Japanese spin on
the sort of high-end grilling pioneered
at Asador Etxebarri in Spain—the most
celebrated grill restaurant in the world—
cooking evendelicate ingredients like tofu,
quail eggs and leeks over an open flame.
“I love doing this kind of cooking, work-
ing with wood and outdoor fires,” says
Love, who has run a mobile smoker dur-
ing the Austin City Limits Music Festival
(at which he’s the official chef) since 2009.
But where his smoker menu has always
focused mostly on meat—often whole
animals—at Woodshed he’ll fire up any-
thing from hickory-smoked artichokes to
oak-smoked redfish steamed
en papillote
.
Even the ice used in cocktails gets a quick
pass over smoldering pecan wood. “We
tried every single thing with a different
wood,” he says, “until we got it right.”
THE OSWALD’S CORRIDOR
INGREDIENTS
›
Absinthe
›
1 sugar cube
›
½ oz. Punt e Mes
vermouth
›
½ oz. Cherry Heering
liqueur
›
2 oz. Maker’s 46 bourbon
›
2 pieces orange peel
1.
Pour a bit of absinthe into
a cocktail glass and roll to
coat. Discard the excess.
2.
Place the sugar cube in
a mixing glass. Add the
Punt e Mes and Cherry
Heering. Squeeze one
piece of orange peel
and drop it into the mix,
then add the bourbon
and stir until the sugar is
completely dissolved.
3.
Strain into the absinthe-
rinsed glass and garnish
with the other peel.
Note:
You can set the
absinthe on fire before
pouring in the rest of the
drink, or simply fill the
orange peel garnish with
absinthe and light that
instead (pictured).
32
AUGUST 2012
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
KEVIN MARPLE (CHESTERFIELD); KELSEY FOSTER (CAMPBELL); JOHN HAYS (COCKTAIL)
BOARDING PASS
Whether wood-
grilled, chicken-fried or tortilla-wrapped,
the local eats in Dallas–Fort Worth are a
food lover’s delight. Let United take you
there with nonstop service from its hubs in
Houston, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, New
York/Newark, Los Angeles, San Francisco
andWashington, D.C.
Go to united.com to
see flight schedules and book your trip.
DISPATCHES
||
FOOD&DRINK
MOST WANTED
ADallas cocktail inspired
by a notorious former resident
Veteran barman
Eddie “Lucky” Campbell
(inset) recently launched retro cocktail
den The Chesterfield in downtown Dallas,
not far from the infamous grassy knoll.
Here he shares a signature drink he
invented while working at a bar in Oak
Cliff—which happens to be the former
neighborhood of one Lee Harvey Oswald.