At Home With: Lawrence restaurant owners Codi and Simon Bates
Jennifer Hack/Ink
At Home With Codi and Simon Bates, the owners of The Burger Stand and Esquina in Lawrence. The couple shares fall/holiday entertaining tips and three recipes.
“At Home With,” a feature that takes you inside cool and unusual apartments and homes in the Kansas City area, appears in Ink the first and third weeks of the month. Know someone with a kick-ass pad? Send info and photos to sarah@inkkc.com.
Chicken pate in eggs
When Simon Bates makes these decadent deviled eggs for guests, he rarely reveals that the secret ingredient is chicken liver. He says most people (including his wife) get a little squeamish when they hear the word “liver.” But trust us: one taste of this rich appetizer cures that.
Makes 12 servings.
6 eggs
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 white onion
4 chicken livers
1 tablespoon tomato paste
½ cup brandy or red wine
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
½ cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper, to taste
Boil the eggs for 11 minutes. Chill, peel, cut in half and set yolks aside in a small mixing bowl.
In a medium saucepan, sauté the onions and chicken livers in olive oil over low heat for about 6 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook for another 2 minutes. Add brandy or wine, vinegar and cream and cook for another 4 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce thickens.
Add butter and egg yolks, then pour the mixture into a food processor and blend until silky smooth, about 1 minute.
Chill the filling, then pipe it into the egg whites. Don’t have a piping bag? Do what Simon Bates does: Put the filling into a zip-top bag, then cut off one corner.
Bates suggests garnishing with pickled onions, mustard, dried fruit or parsley.
Truffled crab deviled eggs
This recipe upgrades the humble deviled egg — a staple at any holiday get-together — with truffle oil and hunks of crab. Simon Bates says that in his experience, people at parties go crazy over anything made with crab.
Makes 12 servings.
6 eggs
1 cup lump crab meat
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoon Dijon or whole grain mustard
1 ½ tablespoons black or white truffle oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste
Boil the eggs for 11 minutes. Chill, peel, cut in half and set yolks aside in a small mixing bowl.
Add crab, mayonnaise, mustard, truffle oil, lemon juice and parsley to the yolks. Season with salt and pepper, then whisk the mixture together using a fork or small whisk. Stuff eggs with mixture, then garnish with paprika, dill or lemon zest.
Smashed pumpkin spice latte
This boozy cocktail is like autumn in a glass. Bonus: It’s sweet enough to serve as a dessert.
Makes 1 cocktail.
1.5 ounces vanilla vodka
2 ounces cream
2 tablespoon pumpkin puree
2 ounces coffee liqueur (Codi Bates uses Kahlua)
Vanilla sugar (make your own by storing a few vanilla beans with your sugar)
Mix ingredients with ice. Shake, strain and serve in a glass rimmed with vanilla sugar.
Triple mushroom stuffing
Forget the stuff in the box. Codi Bates’ recipe for made-from-scratch stuffing, which gets its earthiness from fresh herbs and three kinds of mushrooms, has better texture (no mushiness here!) and way more flavor. For a pretty presentation, Bates bakes the stuffing inside hollowed-out red onions.
Makes 6 servings.
6 red onions (or sweet yellow onions, if you prefer)
4 tablespoons butter
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
1 stalk of celery, diced
8 shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and chopped
6 baby portabella mushrooms, chopped
8 medium button mushrooms, chopped
1 ½ cups diced onion (use the insides of the red onions you’ll hollow out)
2 bay leaves
1 ½ tablespoon chopped rosemary
1 ½ tablespoon chopped thyme
12 cups bread crumbs (Bates tears rolls into 1-inch pieces)
3 cups chicken stock
Heat the oven to 375 degrees. In a large stock pot, sauté carrots, onion and celery with butter over medium heat for about 8 minutes, or until vegetables become tender. Add mushrooms and herbs and cook for another 4 minutes. Add bread crumbs and chicken stock. Cook 5 minutes, then set aside.
Cut the top and bottom off each onion. Leave the skin on. Use a melon baller to hollow out the onions, then arrange them on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Heap the stuffing into the onions.
Bake for about 40 minutes, or until the onions soften and the stuffing turns golden brown.
by sarah gish :: photos by jennifer hack
ink
In 2009, Codi and Simon Bates got married, opened a restaurant and bought their first house in East Lawrence.
As if that weren’t enough, the house they bought had been abandoned for years. The foundation was crooked, the yellow paint was peeling and the only tenants were cats.
“It was pretty spooky,” Codi says.
But it was close to downtown Lawrence, where the couple now owns two restaurants: The Burger Stand at The Casbah and Esquina. And they figured that with a little money and a lot of work, they could transform the forgotten house into their dream home.
“We really didn’t know what we were doing,” Simon says. So the couple hired Struct/Restruct, a small design/build company in Lawrence, to handle the renovations.
With help from Struct/Restruct and a small army of subcontractors, the Bateses poured a new foundation, gutted the old house, moved it 50 feet and built a modern addition for the kitchen, a room that Codi says “is more important than the family room to us.”
By the time it was finished in August 2010, the kitchen was equipped with lots of chef-friendly details — extra-deep sinks, ample white countertops, a GE Café Series gas range and a massive butcher block that doubles as a bar for guests.
Look closer and you’ll see all of Struct/Restruct’s green touches. The floor is covered with slate shingles from the 1850s. The butcher block is made of multicolored wood scraps leftover from construction, and the smooth white countertops are poured concrete. They almost resemble wet, white sand.
Unfortunately, the Bateses don’t spend as much time as they’d like in their kitchen. In September, they opened a second Burger Stand in Topeka. Their three restaurants keep them busy five or six days a week.
On rare nights off, the Bateses like to entertain friends and family with rustic food and homemade cocktails. Read on for four of the Bateses’ favorite fall recipes and a tour of their upcycled home.
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