Journal entries from June 2015

An Uncomplicated Version of Paella

 

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This isn't really a paella that anyone in Valencia would recognize as real, but it certainly made a festive Sunday night dinner.  The tumble of flavors - saffron, chorizo, pimentos - with that wonderfully fat and slightly chewy rice is absolutely irresistible.  And although this is a protein-heavy meal, if you eliminate the shrimp, it's not all that expensive. Next time I'm going to try it without,  just for science. 

Cheater's Paella

2 1/2  cups homemade chicken stock
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
1 pound boneless chicken thighs
Salt, pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound chorizo, cut into 1/2" slices
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, smashed
2 whole jarred roasted peppers, diced
1/2 pound medium shrimp, shelled
1 1/4  cups bomba rice (arborio or canaroli are acceptable substitutes)
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1/4 cup dry white wine,
1/2 lemon, squeezed
1 pound littleneck clams, washed and purged
1 pound squid, bodies separated from tentacles and cut into 1 inch rings

Heat the stock with the saffron.  Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Set aside

Heat the oil in a large flat pan or paella pan and cook the onions, garlic and pimentos until they're fragrant, about 10 minutes.  Add the chorizo and cook, stirring every once in a while, another 10 minutes or so.  

Dry the chicken thighs, sprinkle them with salt and pepper.  Push the onion/chorizo mixture aside and add the chicken to the the pan, turning occasionally, until it has lightly browned on all sides, about 5 minutes.  

Add the rice to the pan and stir to coat it well with the oil.  Toss in the wine and let it cook away.  Add the bay leaf.

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Bring the chicken stock to a boil and add to the pan.  Simmer 10 minutes. 

Bury the shrimp, chicken, clams and squid in the rice, as well as you can (much of it will still be sitting on top), and bake, uncovered,  until the clams are open, about 25 minutes.  Remove from the oven, and if there is still liquid in the pan (bomba rice can be slow to absorb liquid), cook over medium heat for another 10 minutes or so.  

Cover and let stand for a few minutes before serving. 

 

Purging Clams

Add a tablespoon of sea salt (it must be sea salt) to 2 cups of water.  Add the clams and allow them to sit in the bowl, in the refrigerator, for a few hours.  Watch the clams stick out their necks - and then watch how much sand they secrete into the bottom of the bowl. 

 

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The Excess Express Zooms into New York

It's been a wonderful couple of days in America. Obamacare is safe.  People can marry the partners of their choice.  And our president can sing!  It seemed like a great time to celebrate.  And how better to do that than with food?

My odyssey started with a drink at the Library at the NoMad hotel - surely one of the city’s most civilized spots.  This wine was totally unknown to me - Rondinella Bianco from Zyme.  It's clean, refreshing - perfect for a warm summer evening. I'll be looking for it again.

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On to Lupalo. The highlights at this raucous Portuguese gastropub were these incredible shrimp ($13 each!)

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and percebes - gooseneck barnacles. I've had these often in Europe, but the last time I tasted the strange little creatures in the United States was when the much-missed Jean-Louis Palladin served them at a special dinner he was cooking with Joachim Splichal.  I hope their appearance here means we'll start seeing gooseneck barnacles more frequently on American menus. 

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Spent a wonderful few hours at Brookfield Place - a total madhouse, but great fun.  Highlights there were the bagels from Black Seed

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and the spectacular brisket from Mighty Quinn. We asked for meat that was not lean - and then asked them to scrape the board after cutting the meat.  The result was totally delicious decadence. If you love barbecued brisket, this will make you very happy. 

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Downstairs, we roamed through the vast Le District marketplace - a francophile version of Eataly.  It's a wonderland of food, with a fragrant rotisserie, a lovely bakery, an enormous restaurant, local produce..... What intrigued me most were the beautiful little sandwiches on true ficelles - and the butcher shop with cases filled with such gorgeously aged and marbled beef I wished I could take some home. But we still had hours of eating ahead of us. 

On to Dominique Ansel Kitchen for the irresistible burata soft serve ice cream - and a few of these warm, barely sweet and absolutely fantastic chocolate madeleines. 

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And then, because it was thrilling to be so close to Stonewall on this historic Friday, we went to Via Carotta for a celebratory glass of wine and a few radishes dipped into the most delicious bagna cauda. The secret?  I think it’s excellent anchovies and butter.  

Dinner at Batard, which produces some of the city' prettiest dishes, like these delicate pea-filled tortellini:

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and this intense octopus terrine:

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And then - just because it was not yet midnight, and we wanted to squeeze in one more meal, we ended the evening at Aldo Sohm, the wonderful Le Bernardin wine bar. And after a bottle of wine we discovered that yes, we could manage a few tiny boudin blancs, some spicy chicharrones and an entire baked camembert. 

The eating finally ended, we had a long walk home through almost-quiet early morning streets.  I love New York.

 

 

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So Rare

Celtuce

The first time I encountered celtuce I was thrilled and amazed. But these days it's less exciting to see celtuce on a menu - many Chinese restaurants now source this Asian stem lettuce year-round. During its short local season (late spring- early summer), Stone Barns, Blanca, and Eleven Madison Park all succumb to it’s singularly refreshing  snap. Celtuce has been having its moment.

But it’s a tricky crop to buy and cook for yourself. The growing season is abysmally short; I’ve never encountered celtuce as young, sweet and tender as that I’ve found in Sichuan restaurants. And since it’s mostly grown for it’s stalk, the milky greens are plucked during growth so they won’t hog all the flavor. It's rare indeed to find celtuce with leaves young enough to eat. 

So this weekend, when I found this rare young specimen at the farmers market , I marveled at its perky slender leaves. Celtuce was suddenly new again to me. At home I trimmed off the ends, set the stems in a jar of water and put them into the refrigerator. When I was ready to cook, I peeled the tiny stalks, reveling in the sweetness of their flesh as I simply ate it raw.

 I decided to treat the leaves like pea shoots. I splashed a tablespoon of peanut oil into a hot pan, added two cloves of smashed garlic, swirling them for a few seconds, then tossed in the leaves and a small sprinkle of salt. With just a wiggle of the wrist, and a toss with a spatula, the leaves wilted. I added a small pour of Chinese cooking wine, waited for it to evaporate, and brought the celtuce to the table. With a little bowl of rice on the side, they made a lovely summer lunch. (Some may yearn for a splash of soy, but I reveled in their sweet austerity.)

Rare, yes. But hopefully not for long. 

(I wish I'd put a dime next to the celtuce for scale: the stalks are that thin!) 

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Angel's Food

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When I was in Madison a couple of weeks ago, a pleasant gentleman came up to ask if I’d ever heard of a Rekul Pan-O-Cake. 

I hadn’t.  He handed me a Xerox of a Clementine Paddleford Food Flash from Gourmet in 1947. Here’s Ms. Paddleford.

"Angel foods, the real heavenly kind, snowy white, soft as down, tall and lithesome, are going places by mail, traveling in the Wearever aluminum pans in which they are baked.  These are big cakes, the thirteen-egg kind, nine inches in diameter, four inches high.  The price, $2.50 post paid. 

The pan is yours, or return it for a refill.  The next cakes costs but $1.25." 

To make a long story short, Jackson Luker discovered that his angel food cakes got better over time if he left them in the pan.  And so he started his mail order business.  By 1947 he was selling half a million cakes a year.  That's an awful lot of egg whites.

The company is no more, but I was curious.  I found a couple of the old Rekul pans on Ebay and immediately ordered them. They’re sturdy pans - and they really do make great cakes.   

The man in Madison?  He’s Jack Luker’s son - and he remembers growing up “washing the concrete-like dried crust out of the pans in order to bake more cakes." 

I’m with him there; these are great pans - but it’s hard to get the cakes out (you’re supposed to bang the cake on a board, really hard, to remove it from the pan) - and even harder to wash the pans. 

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The Best Angel Food Cake Recipe I Know

When my friend Marion Cunningham was working on The Baker’s Dozen Cookbook, she sent a recipe for Angel Food Cake to thirty-five bakers, asking them each to bake the cake, exactly as written, and bring it to a meeting. She called me afterward in great excitement; “You would not believe how different they were,” she marveled. “They all had holes in the middle, but other than that, each cake was unique.”  Appalled by this, she and the other bakers decided to perfect the recipe. This cake, created by Flo Braker, is angel food perfection. Follow these instructions and you will have a high, white cloud-like confection that truly does seem food fit for angels.

Five Steps to a Better Angel Food Cake

1. Cold eggs are easier to separate, so do it when the eggs are right out of the refrigerator. 

2.If even the tiniest amount of fat gets into the eggs they will refuse to whip.  So separate each egg  white into a separate bowl before adding it to the others, in case one of the yolks breaks. 

3. Leave your egg whites in the bowl, out of the refrigerator, for about an hour. If you have an instant-read thermometer, the optimum temperature is 60 degrees. The white are more viscous at this temperature, and the air bubbles are more stable.  (Room temperature is about 70 degrees; they will whip more quickly, but at this temperature they are easy to overbeat.)

4.To insure that there is no grease on the bowl or beater, wipe them with white vinegar and rinse in very hot water.  Dry well.

5. Make sure your oven is 350 degrees. If the oven’s too low, the sugar will absorb the liquid from the egg whites and turn syrupy.  If it’s too hot, the outside will set before the interior. 

6. Allow the cake to cool completely before removing it from the pan.

 

Angel Food Cake (from Baker’s Dozen Cookbook) 

12 large egg whites

1 1/2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar

1 cup sifted cake flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla.

Allow the egg whites to sit in the bowl of a stand mixer for about an hour, to come to just above room temperature (70 degrees).

Sift the confectioner’s sugar, cake flour and salt together. 

Whip egg whites at low speed until they are foamy.  Add the cream of tartar and increase the speed to medium.  Keep whipping, gradually adding the cup of granulated sugar, until the whites thicken and form soft, droopy peaks.  Add vanilla.

Sprinkle a quarter cup of the flour mixture over the whites and fold it in, by hand, with a rubber spatula. Repeat with the next quarter, and the next, until all the flour has all been gently folded in. Pour into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

Bake at 350 degrees, 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is golden, the top springs back when you touch it, and a toothpick comes out clean. Invert the pan onto the neck of a bottle.  Leave for 3 hours so that the cake is completely cool. 

Run a knife around the sides of pan until you feel it release. Then push up the bottom of the pan. Loosen the cake bottom by tapping on a counter until it’s free and invert onto a plate, and then back onto a cake platter.

Slice with a serrated knife.

 

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A Completely New (to me) Ingredient

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Chicos

When I was in Tucson a few months ago, I was lucky enough to go to the Anita Street Market.  As I was paying for the spectacular tacos, I noticed little bags sitting next to the cash register, filled with a substance that looked like broken amber beer bottles. The shapes were shiny, irregular.  "What is that?" I asked.

The cashier glanced down at the bag. He shrugged.  "Chicos."  He pointed to a shelf.  "These are ours. Those over there are from a local farmer.  I like ours better. They're smokier."

"Add them to my bill," I said, sticking the little plastic bag in my pocket book.  Where I promptly forgot them.

I found them the other day, still hidden in the bottom of my purse. With no idea how to deal with them, I did a little research. The dried, smoked, broken corn kernels are an ancient ingredient beloved by the Indian nations of the Southwest.  Apparently they're easiest to find in New Mexico.  

Unsure of what to do with them, I made up my own version with what I happened to have on hand. I'm sure there are better ways to cook chicos, but everyone who came to dinner last night loved my thrown-together dish. I did too.

I began by soaking 2 cups of chicos overnight, as I'd do with beans.  In the morning I drained them.

I chopped a couple of onions and a few cloves of garlic and sauteed them in a couple tablespoons of duck fat.  (I'd cooked a duck the night before, and just happened to have it sitting by the stove. Ordinarily I'd use vegetable oil or bacon grease. But duck fat adds its own wonderful layer of flavor. )

When the alliums had given their fragrance to the air, I added the soaked chicos, a teaspoon of salt and a bay leaf, along with 6 cups of the duck stock I'd made with leftover duck bones.  (Chicken stock or water would undoubtedly work well too.)

I cooked the chicos  for about 3 hours, until they were soft.  Next time, just for science, I might try cooking them a little less, so they maintain some crunch. The recipes I've found online seem undecided on this point.

But then, the piece de resistance.  I'd been cooking some pork skin, and when the chicos were done I chopped some up and stirred that in.  The cracklings were the same color as the chicos, but they added crunch, fat and flavor to the smokey goodness of the chicos.  It was absolutely delicious - and not like anything I've tasted before.

 

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Crackling Pork Skin

I'd bought a pork shoulder from North Plains Farm, who raise the most delicious pigs.  At home I decided to slice off the skin and cook it separately.  So I salted it really well, rolled it up like a jelly roll and left it to sit in the refrigerator, well wrapped in plastic, for a few days.

Then I put it into a gratin dish (so I could capture the fat as it melted) and left it in a slow (325) oven for four hours, turning it every hour or so.  Halfway through it was almost submerged in its own fat, making this essentially confit.

When it came out of the oven the crackling was so delicious we pounced on it, devouring it with such glee we barely left enough to shred over the chicos.  

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Perfect Summer Lunch

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Steamed Ipswich Clams

I think I have just definitively solved the question of how to purge the sand from these delicious little morsels.  

There's nothing more annoying than sitting down to a big bowl of steamers and finding yourself with a mouthful of grit.  You want to get them really clean.

I've always used salt water and cornmeal.  No more.  From now on it's strictly salt water for me.

A friend arrived with a bucket of steamers a couple of days ago.  "They're just-dug," he said, "and really sandy.  So you'll have to clean them well."

"Did you bring me some seawater?" I asked.  Seawater is their natural medium, and it makes them very happy.  He'd neglected to do that, so I stirred 2 tablespoons of sea salt into 4 cups of water, gently lowered my clams into their new home and stuck the bowl in the refrigerator.  I decided to leave them overnight; by morning, if the water wasn't filled with grit, I'd feed them some cornmeal. 

In the morning I found the entire bottom of the bowl filled with sand.  I cleaned out the bowl, added more salt water, and left the clams to rest for another day. Every time I opened the refrigerator it gave me a little thrill to see them sitting there, their feeder tubes extended to a full 4 inches.

I cooked them by steaming them in an inch or so of water for about 5 minutes, until all the shells were open. There was not a single grain of sand in the entire bowl.  A perfect little lunch. 

Next time I get some steamers, I think I'll fry them.  If there's one thing that's better than a bowl of steamed clams, it's a plate of  freshly fried Ipswichs. 

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Perfect Summer Lunch

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Steamed Ipswich Clams

I think I have just definitively solved the question of how to purge the sand from these delicious little morsels.  

There's nothing more annoying than sitting down to a big bowl of steamers and finding yourself with a mouthful of grit.  You want to get them really clean.

I've always used salt water and cornmeal.  No more.  From now on it's strictly salt water for me.

A friend arrived with a bucket of steamers a couple of days ago.  "They're just-dug," he said, "and really sandy.  So you'll have to clean them well."

"Did you bring me some seawater?" I asked.  Seawater is their natural medium, and it makes them very happy.  He'd neglected to do that, so I stirred 2 tablespoons of sea salt into 4 cups of water, gently lowered my clams into their new home and stuck the bowl in the refrigerator.  I decided to leave them overnight; by morning, if the water wasn't filled with grit, I'd feed them some cornmeal. 

In the morning I found the entire bottom of the bowl filled with sand.  I cleaned out the bowl, added more salt water, and left the clams to rest for another day. Every time I opened the refrigerator it gave me a little thrill to see them sitting there, their feeder tubes extended to a full 4 inches.

I cooked them by steaming them in an inch or so of water for about 5 minutes, until all the shells were open. There was not a single grain of sand in the entire bowl.  A perfect little lunch. 

Next time I get some steamers, I think I'll fry them.  If there's one thing that's better than a bowl of steamed clams, it's a plate of  freshly fried Ipswichs. 

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Old Menus: Cafe Chambord

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 Why do I even have these menus?  No idea.  I suspect that a reader sent them to me, as a special treat, when I was at the Los AngelesTimes.  Otherwise I have no explanation for the presence of a menu belonging to a restaurant that closed about the time that I was born.

But I do remember my parents talking about Cafe Chambord, which opened in 1936; Mom said it reminded her of the bistros she went to in Paris when she was at the Sorbonne. It was, she said, small and rather rustic. At least in the beginning.  Then, in 1942, owner Roger Chauveron got his hands on a great wine cellar at a bargain price.  He'd worked at all of New York's one-named big-deal hotels - The Ritz, The Plaza, The Astor, The Commodore - and now he raised the level of the food to match his swell new wine list. Before long it had become a favorite haunt of the French emigres flooding to New York to escape the war. They were soon joined by prominent New Yorkers (the Rockefellers), and movie stars (Greta Garbo was a fan).  

Chauveron sold the restaurant in 1950 and went back to France.  He didn't stay long; in 1955 he was back to open Cafe Chauveron.  I never went there either, but here's Gael Greene's paean to that restaurant. 

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Kick Out the......

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Another menu offering from the box in the coat closet, this time from Jonathan Waxman’s seminal Manhattan restaurant, Jam's.  Jonathan had been the chef at Michael's in Santa Monica, and when he arrived in New York he brought California cuisine with him.  Free range chicken? Check. Laura Chenel’s goat cheese, FedExed from the West Coast every week? Check. You get the idea. (Jonathan's West Side restaurant, Bud's, was the home of Paul Prudhomme's pop-up Cajun restaurant, which explains that grilled swordfish with spicy pineapple salsa.)

But Jams brought more than the simplicity of an ingredient-driven menu to New York.  The restaurant became a clubhouse for New York’s gonzo 1980s chefs. There was famous art on the walls, the servers wore sharp white shoes, and expensive champagne was freely poured, starting at breakfast.  

One mouthful of that air - thick with fun, exuberance and excess - and you found it hard to leave. But the fun finally ran out; Jams closed in 1990. 

Without further ado, here’s the menu from Tuesday August 20, 1985. The prices kind of amaze me; I had lunch at Jonathan's current restaurant, Barbuto the other day, and the chicken cost exactly one dollar more. Thirty years have passed since then, and you might want to recall that in 1985 the  minimum wage was $3.35 an hour.

Lest you think the place teemed only with the young and the hip, note the message at the bottom of the menu. When was the last time you saw somebody smoking a pipe?

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Wonderful Weed

Lambs quarters

Lamb's Quarters

A friend who was weeding her garden yesterday gave me an entire bag of lamb's quarters, and I practically danced for joy.  It's my favorite forage - a gentle, easy to cook green that is not called "wild spinach" for nothing.

Unlike so many other foraged finds, it's easy to clean.  Simply dump it into a sinkful of water and pull it out; these leaves do not cling tenaciously to dirt, and the gritty pollen washes right away. Pull off the longest stems - you'll know which - but don't be fussy about it.  The stems pretty much vanish as they cook. 

You don't need to do much.  I melted some butter, threw in the lamb's quarters for a couple of minutes, watched them wilt, added a bit of salt (the leaves are naturally high in sodium), and a splash of lemon (which neutralizes the oxalic acid). Then I sat down to a totally delicious plate of greens.

If somebody offers you lambs quarter's, do not turn them down. They're extremely delicious - and their vitamin and mineral content make these among the most nutritious of wild plants. 

 

 

 

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Old Menus

Just found a box of old menus - from my days at the Los Angeles Times - hidden in a box in the closet. 

I've been trolling through them, which is like encountering old friends.  Here is early Thomas Keller, and his fascinating menus from Checkers.  And the inaugural menu from the much-missed Rex, which I still consider the most beautiful restaurant I've ever visited. (The dining scene from Pretty Woman was shot there.) And here, in all its laminated glory, is Michael Roberts' menu from Trumps; it's at least thirty years old, but still so modern you could change the prices and offer it up today without anyone finding it strange. Was there another high-end restaurant in the country whose menu offered Tacos, BBQ brisket on a bun, tuna pastrami, fried chicken, salmon tartar,  chicken with spicy peanut sauce, french toast with bacon and fruit donuts on the dinner menu?  I'd guess not.  Michael, who passed away ten years ago, was one of the most interesting chefs in the country, cooking to some interior music no one else could hear. 

I'll be posting menus now and then, as I find them. But for today, here's John Sedlar's menu at St. Estephe from 1982.  He's been a pioneer of Southwest cooking - but as this menu makes clear, so much more.  Isn't it amazing to see a recipe for pasta with sea urchin sauce from a time when most Americans had not the faintest notion that those spiny creatures even existed? And just look at that price!  (John was also the first chef who ever served me American caviar and home-grown snails.)

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Loved the Food

Walking down the Bowery I'm always surprised by what's happened to my old neighborhood. When I lived on Rivington Street, in the early 70s, the neighborhood was so dangerous, depressed and dilapidated the police didn't bother with it, and if you had a car you could park it for weeks without worrying about tickets.  Nobody, of course, had a car.  And if they did, the Bowery bums - who were still very much in residence - were always trying to "clean" the windows with their rags. 

So I have to admit that I was slightly heartened to see a little bit of the old neighborhood spirit in the form of a man sleeping on the sidewalk, possessions piled around him like a hopeful fortress, right in front of Pearl and Ash. I miss my gritty old city, a place that made room for outcasts and artists. 

On the other hand, I do admire Pearl and Ash. And I'm even more enamored of their newest outpost, Rebelle, right next door. The room is lovely in its simplicity, stripped down to the bare bricks. The back room, with its open kitchen, is one of the city's pleasantest places to eat.

Pearl and Ash has a wonderful wine list; Rebelle has an even more impressive one.  Co-owner and wine director Patrick Cappiello has assembled an amazing collection of bottles at a wide range of prices. This is one place where you really want to ask for guidance; he knows his list, knows the food, and will happily help you select something at your price point. 

The chef, Daniel Eddy, is doing the wine justice. He is a master at coaxing new flavors out of shy ingredients. He slices scallops and interlaces them with turnips - a surprise - and green apple, then crowns them with herbs and surrounds them with a bright tasting green jus.  The result is scallop in an entirely new mood, scallops as I have never quite imagined them before. 

Scallop 

 

Fluke is not the most forward of fish, but in his hands, bathed in brown butter and sherry, topped with capers and sparked with lemon, the fish is coaxed out of the corner to become suddenly assertive. Few chefs have mastered the delicate balance between acid and richness: here it is perfect. 

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His sweetbreads are also eloquent, paired with artichoke hearts so you encounter two completely different versions of softness. It's all punctuated with fava beans and then swathed in a lobster foam that brings out the richness of the main players. 

Sweetbread

 

He works wonders with duck breast as well.  I was so entranced by the dance of flavors, that  I'd eaten it all before I remembered to take a picture. There was the usual orange, but behind that was endive, offering a slightly bitter edge which was underlined by smoked almond.  The effect was to bring forward the slight gaminess of the bird, giving the dish a kind electricity.

Dessert?  An entire cherry clafoutis for the table to share. Nice bow to the season.

Claoutis

 

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Outside the man was still asleep on the sidewalk.  Chic revelers looked down as they passed, and then moved on, headed for one of the many bars or restaurants that have turned this into one of the city's hippest neighborhoods. I thought, suddenly, of my Aunt Birdie, who grew up here hundred years before I moved in.  "Why would you want to live here?" she asked me in 1970.  "We couldn't wait to get out."

 

 

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Things I Love

Ledyard

A Truly Fantastic Cheese 

Stopped into Talbott & Arding in Hudson yesterday, one of my favorite food shops on the planet.  

"You have to try this," said Kate Arding, handing me a taste of Ledyard, a cheese I'd never heard of. The cheese was softly seductive, and then my mouth flooded with surprising flavors. Although it is made with ewe's milk, behind the robust barniness is a gentle elegance unusual in sheep cheese. The flavors build like music, resonating long after the cheese itself has vanished.  Coming right behind the rich milkiness is the flavor of the grape leaf. And then, behind the herbal, slightly bitter taste of the leaf is something else. It is the sweetness of grapes. How can that be?

It turns out the leaves are soaked in Deep Purple,  a wheat beer infused with Concord grapes. It's a brilliant touch, that leaves you with the illusion of eating and drinking with a single bite.

Ledyard is made by Meadowood Farms in Cazenovia, New York.  Can't wait to try their other cheeses.

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A Way with Leftover Bread

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Savory Bread Pudding

Back from booktour, searching for something to do with the loaf of bread my family failed to eat in my absence, I stumbled upon a savory bread pudding in the Tartine Bread book. I'd just bought some local asparagus at the market, and it seemed worth trying.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting it to be quite so special. But when I opened the oven, I found my pudding had puffed itself up, high as a souffle, and sat there looking jaunty and light.  As for the flavor.....

Well, see for yourself.

Asparagus Bread Pudding

adapted from Tartine Bread

2-3 small leeks, white part only, well washed and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 pound asparagus, ends snapped off, cut diagonally into 3-inch lengths

1 small head radicchio

1 can artichoke hearts, cut in half, well drained 

3 thick slices good quality day-old (or older) bread, torn into rough cubes

 

For Custard: 

1 cup whole milk

1 1/3 cup heavy cream

6 eggs

1 1/2 cup grated gruyere

2 teaspoons minced thyme

nutmeg, grated

several big grinds pepper

salt

Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan over medium-low heats, add the leeks, and stir occasionally for 5-6 minutes, so they melt into sweetness- without going brown. Add the wine and continue to cook until it’s almost disappeared; this should take about 5 minutes. Set aside.  

Salt a big pot of water, bring it to a boil, add the asparagus and cook for one minute, until they turn bright green.  Drain and put in an ice water bath so that they don't continue to cook. 

Melt another tablespoon of butter, add the radicchio and toss wildly for a minute, just until it wilts. Set aside. 

Blot the artichoke hearts with paper towels, removing as much liquid as possible.  Salt gently.

Whisk the eggs, cream, milk, thyme, and a half teaspoon of  with 1 cup of the grated gruyere.  Grate in a bit of nutmeg, and grind in some pepper.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a souffle dish, casserole or Dutch oven.

In a large bowl, stir the leeks and asparagus together.  Add the bread cubes, toss again, then add the custard egg mixture, making sure that all the ingredients are evenly distributed. Pour into the casserole, sprinkle with the remaining cheese and allow to sit for ten minutes, until the bread has absorbed all the liquid.   Bake for about 50 minutes.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My Surprise Dinner at Per Se

Marcona sorbet, pluot

"Where should we meet for a drink near Columbus Circle?" we asked each other, ticking off the possibilities.  We thought about Porter House, Stone Rose, Jean Georges.  We considered going up to Lincoln or Bar Boulud. But it was just a drink, and so in the end we opted for Per Se.  After all, the price of a glass of wine doesn't vary all that much from place to place.

It was early, and the entire salon was filled with the late afternoon light.  The sedate room was hushed, and I relaxed into a pillow-strewn sofa. The wine, served in almost weightless glasses, was cool and crisp. I was instantly happy to be in this calm oasis. And that was before they brought out hot, tiny gougeres that evaporated in the mouth like so much cheese-scented air, or that beautiful sorbet of marcona almonds above, in its elegant pluot wrap.

The flavors were so seductive we each ordered a little something more. Why not?

Foie gras

Out came a beautiful mousse of foie gras, surrounded by cherries in a pistachio scented gastrique. That green tuile on top? A crisp little bite of matcha, Japanese green tea. The silken mousse arrived with this sextet of salts and little puffs of warm brioche. Sheer luxury. 

Salts

 

My companion chose these gorgeous ricotta anolini, strewn with a spring pea custard.  Such an extraordinarily delicate dish.

Anolini

 

After that, there was no stopping us. We were riding the excess express, eating great dollops of caviar perched on exquisite pillows of pommes soufflees and crowned with tiny chive blossoms.....Pommes souffles, caviar

 

....and this remarkably intense truffle custard, nestled into an egg shell. 

Truffle custard

This is sumptuous indulgence on a very grand scale.  You wouldn't want to get accustomed to eating like this. But every once in a while it's wonderful to be reminded that, somewhere in the world, some people are living the luxe life. It's nice to know you can join them if you're so inclined, for a short, sparkling interlude.

To me it was like going to a spa: the effects of this little sojourn have buoyed me up all week. 

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About this journal
Where am I eating? What's for dinner tonight? And what books have I been reading? For a look at what's going on in my life lately, take a look at this journal, which I try to update on a regular basis.