Cooking Class: Crab Cakes at Eighty Acres Kitchen & Bar

Cooking Class visits the kitchens of area restaurants whose chefs share their popular recipes.

Don Winkie grew up an “Army brat,” living wherever his father was stationed, including Germany and Korea.

But he ended up in Pittsburgh after marrying “a Gateway girl,” whom he met when she was in graduate school and he was cooking in New Mexico. When the couple was expecting their first child, they moved to this area to be close to her family.

Winkie, 51, of Monroeville, cooked for years at The Tuscan Inn in Hampton, but more than a year ago, he and his wife, Amy, parents of a son and daughter, decided to open their own restaurant, Eighty Acres Kitchen & Bar in Plum.

When they went out to dinner, they would have to travel outside the eastern suburbs to dine at restaurants that were not part of national chains, Winkie says.

“We wanted to capture” the market that was underserved, he says.

The restaurant is named for the last venture of Winkie's late father, an 80-acre farm in Missouri, where Winkie's parents raised 400 head of goats after his father's Army retirement.

Their son tries to follow a similar philosophy of relying on local produce for Eighty Acres' contemporary American cuisine. Eighty Acres procures its lamb from Jamison Farm in Latrobe for its Jamison Farm English cut lamb chop, accompanied by ratatouille, toasted couscous, roasted red pepper and goat cheese coulis, for $26.

Other dinner offerings include crab cakes with seasonal vegetables and whole-grain mustard for $25 and Gerber Amish chicken breast with buttermilk smashed Yukon gold potatoes, roasted baby carrots and green beans and natural jus for $20.

The lunch and dinner menus have an array of snacks and appetizers, including polenta fries with tomato-red onion chutney for $6 and Coyote Queso, with melted fontina cheese, chorizo and roasted poblano pepper on brick-oven flatbread, for $10.

Lunch offerings include the Eighty Acre Bison Burger, with aged cheddar, bacon, dill pickle, aioli and a choice of a side salad or fries, for $14; the pork belly BLT with Tabasco aioli and a choice of side salad or fries for $9; and jerk shrimp tacos, with jicama slaw, pineapple salsa and a small green salad, for $12.

Eighty Acres features brunch on Sundays, with Coyote's Huevos Rancheros, or two fried eggs, corn tortillas, black beans, ranchero sauce and queso fresco, for $9; or Berkshire Pork Schnitzle & Eggs, with panko-crusted and pan-fried pork loin, fried eggs, breakfast potatoes and lemon-caper butter, for $12. Brunch libation options include a Bloody Mary bar for $7 and Bellinis with Prosecco, peach liqueur and peach puree for $7.

Winkie, the oldest of seven children, has been cooking since he was 11.

“I loved to cook family meals,” he says. “My dad was gone a lot.” Winkie had an international upbringing, living in Germany until he was about 12 and spending his high-school years in Korea.

“I've been working in a restaurant since I was 17,” says Winkle, who spent time as a cook in New Mexico, Utah and Las Vegas, where he increased his culinary knowledge while working in “nice places with good chefs.”

He helped open one of celebrity chef Mark Miller's Coyote Cafes in what was the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Winkie thinks the move to Pittsburgh was a good one: “It's a good city to raise kids,” a smallish city with big-city amenities, such as the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium.

The Winkies situated their restaurant in a former pizza restaurant on New Texas Road, on a hill overlooking the Golden Mile Highway and its retail stores.

The interior of Eighty Acres has a few details that hark back to the original 80-acre Missouri farm, such as interior red barn doors.

“My wife was the designer,” Winkie says of the interior. Winkie's brother-in-law, Josiah Aitchison of Monroeville, did much of the work, including building a marigold-yellow hutch that coordinates perfectly with a sideboard the Winkies had bought. Family and staff helped with the labor, including the creation of the finely honed concrete bar counter.

“When you hear the atom bomb is coming to Plum, get under this bar,” jokes restaurant manager Vinnie Trzeciak, 58, of Shaler, who helped with its construction. Trzeciak previously managed the front of the house at the Tuscan Inn when Winkie was chef there.

“It was a no-brainer because of Don,” Trzeciak says of his move to Eighty Acres. “Ninety percent of your worries (as restaurant manager) is what comes out of the kitchen. Working with Don, I can put 90 percent of my worries on the floor.

“We've had regulars since day one,” Trzeciak says. “Now they're here two or three days a week. We have the young people; they feel comfortable. And we have so many 80th birthday parties here. We have showers; we've done wedding receptions. The restaurant needed to be comfortable, and it's comfortable here.”

Says Winkie: “It was a labor of love and something I've wanted to do all my life.”

Sandra Fischione Donovan is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.

Crab Cakes

Eighty Acres Kitchen & Bar serves contemporary American food, and one of its biggest sellers is its crab-cake entree. Co-owner and chef Don Winkie uses fresh vegetables and herbs in the cakes — no dried seasoning here — for a fresh taste that allows the mellow flavor of the crab meat to shine. Winkie does not use extra-virgin olive oil because he says it takes away from the flavor of the crab.He suggests accompanying the crab cakes with seasonal vegetables, sauteed until tender-crisp.

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

¹⁄₂ cup mayonnaise

2 pounds jumbo lump crab meat

1 tablespoon sweet red bell pepper, small dice

1 tablespoon sweet yellow bell pepper, small dice

1 tablespoon red onion, small dice

3 green onions, chopped

1 teaspoon fresh tarragon, chopped

1 teaspoon fresh parsley, chopped

1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped

Pinch of salt

Pinch of pepper

1 cup panko bread crumbs, with more reserved, if necessary

Olive oil, for cooking (do not use extra-virgin olive oil)

Flour, to coat

Honey-mustard sauce, purchased or prepared using honey and whole-grain mustard

Crack the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add the Dijon mustard and the mayonnaise. Mix them thoroughly using a fork or whisk. Add the crab meat, the chopped bell peppers, the chopped red and green onion, the herbs, the salt and pepper and the bread crumbs. Mix gently, being careful not to break up the crab-meat lumps. Add more bread crumbs if the mixture seems to be too wet.

Form the crab mixture into 12 cakes. Coat each with a small amount of flour. Meanwhile, coat a skillet with olive oil and put it on a medium flame. Fry each crab cake until it is golden brown on both sides.

To plate, drizzle honey-mustard sauce on the sides of the plate. Place the sauteed vegetables (see recipe) on the center of the plate. Add two crab cakes to each plate and serve.

Makes 6 servings.

Sauteed Vegetables

Olive oil

1 zucchini, julienned

1 yellow squash, julienned

1 carrot, julienned

1 sweet red bell pepper, seeded and julienned

Heat the olive oil in a skillet. Saute the vegetables until they are tender-crisp. Serve with the crab cakes.