Those of you who have been here a while will recall my unrepentant ruminations on the cruelty of meat eating. From foie gras to feet, there are certain triggers that confront us with the reality that the perpetuation of our lives inevitably involves the extinguishment of others.

Carnivores with a conscience and a streak of masochism can read all about the trail of suffering that ends on their dinner plate in a recent article on Slate. If the cannibal pigs don't get to you, the suffocating baby chickens probably will.

I think I'll skip the oatmeal for breakfast and have some bacon and eggs.

Posted by jeremy at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Belatedly, here is your Valentine's Day dessert: Frozen Chocolate Mousse Hearts. Turns out my coeur à la crème molds were good for something after all; line them with plastic wrap and they're just regular old heart-shaped molds. You can't bake with them, but for this cold dessert you don't need to.

This recipe makes enough mousse to fill two standard sized wine glasses, which is a perfect presentation if you don't have heart-shaped molds (or if it isn't Valentine's Day). It's more than enough for two small coeur à la crème molds; fill a couple of wine glasses half way with the excess and save them for another day.

Recipe: Frozen Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

2 eggs, separated
4 oz. dark chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch salt

In an electric mixer (or by hand if you must), whisk the egg whites with the salt until stiff peaks form.

Whisk together the egg yolks with the sugar until they thicken and turn pale yellow.

Heat half the heavy cream in the microwave until it boils (this shouldn't take more than 45 seconds). Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate in a bowl and mix it together gently with a whisk until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.

Whip the remaining heavy cream to soft peaks.

Stir the chocolate into the egg yolk mixture and stir until fully incorporated. Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate and egg yolks, and finally fold the egg whites into the whole lot by thirds.

When the egg whites are fully incorporated, pour the mousse into your molds or wine glasses, cover them with plastic wrap, and put them in the freezer for at least two hours. Remove the mousse ten minutes before service to soften it.

The heart-shaped mousse pictured above is coated with ganache, a mixture of equal volumes of heavy cream and dark chocolate melted together and poured over the top to create a glossy coating. You could also top it off with whipped cream, dust it with powdered sugar or cocoa, or garnish it with some berries. Enjoy.

Posted by jeremy at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

The Times reports that a fire has shut down Thomas Keller's Per Se, the flagship restaurant of the new Columbus Circle shopping mall, for at least two weeks. You may remember my bitterness and angst as I tried to get a reservation for an early date when the phone lines at Per Se first opened.

So to all those whose inside connections or auto-redial buttons or personal assistants got them a reservation in the first two weeks while all I got was a busy signal, I have only one word for you:

HA!

Posted by jeremy at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As promised, this post is dedicated to explication of the process of creating the stuffed, boneless, skinnless, re-skinned chicken breast -- a process so involved I only make this dish for Valentine's Day.

	Begin with a whole chicken, rinsed and dried, and cut off the last two joints of each wing. Save them for stock, or for a snack.
	Lift the skin over the breast around the neck, and with a sharp knife split the skin down the center of the breast.
	Flip the bird over, and cut through the skin down the center of the back.
	Pull the skin away from the breast, breaking the membranes connecting the two with a knife or your fingers.
	Pull the skin away from the thigh in the same manner. Use your fingers to pull apart the membranes connecting the joints of the leg and the skin around them. Be careful not to tear the skin.
	When the skin has been pulled away from the leg, grasp the skin and pull it inside-out and off the leg entirely. You will be left with a sleeve of skin that used to envelop the leg joint. The skin should now only be attached around the one remaining joint of the wing.
	Remove the breast from the bone by cutting down along the breastbone and following the contour of the ribcage (you should either remove the wishbone before this or cut through it and remove the pieces afterwards).
	Keeping the now-boneless breast attached to the wing joint, cut through the shoulder joint connecting the wing to the rest of the carcass.
	Place the breast skin-side down on a cutting board, and remove the separate "suprème" muscle (often referred to as a chicken "tender"). You can either keep this piece inside the stuffed breast or save it for another use; either way you should remove the tough tendon inside it by scraping the meat off it. Butterfly the breast by cutting halfway through it down the middle and then slicing it center-to-edge parallel to the cutting surface, making sure not to cut all the way through.
	Unfold the butterflied chicken breast, and it's ready to stuff. When you've added everything you want to add, roll the breast up (using the suprème to cover up any open spaces, if necessary), and wrap the skin around it to cover it completely. Seal the skin by pulling the "sleeve" from the leg over the wing joint, and if necessary secure the seams with a wooden skewer. This picture shows a butterflied breast ready for stuffing, center; a separated suprème, lower left; and a stuffed and wrapped breast, upper right.

You can use whatever you want to stuff this bird; I use artichoke hearts, prosciutto san daniele, fresh basil, mozzarella di bufala, locatelli romano, and stravecchio parmigiano. Rub the whole stuffed breast with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast at 375 degrees until well-browned and cooked through (the total time will depend on your choice of stuffing; it could be anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour). Lisa's chicken is served on a bed of linguine with a tomato-cream sauce (and of course, the obligatory red pepper hearts I told you about before). This should not be a wasteful dish: the dark meat can be removed from the bone and used in pasta, sausages, salads, or what have you. The bones, of course, will make an excellent stock. Once you get familiar with the process of preparing a chicken this way, you'd be surprised at how versatile the technique is; you can build any style of dish by varying your stuffing, sauce, seasonings, and accompaniments. Good luck, and don't get discouraged. Even if you don't get the butchery part right, you've still got a whole chicken to work with, and that ain't half bad.

Posted by jeremy at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyhow, back to Valentine's Day. Lisa had demanded that I make her a potato and salmon dish like the one she had at the CIA. I don't have a smoker in my apartment (yet), so I had to either get store-bought smoked salmon -- an expensive and uninspired proposition -- or find an alternative. I got a small piece of tail-end salmon fillet from Citarella on Friday evening, and hoped 24 hours was enough time to cure it. Turns out it was perfect.

In days of yore, Scandanavian fishermen discovered how to preserve their catch of salmon by covering it with salt and burying it in the sands above the high-tide line. After a few days, it became gravad lachs: grave salmon. Today it is known as gravlax, and you no longer need a sandy shoreline in Sweden to make it -- a refrigerator and a two-pound sack of beans will do just fine. The raw salmon fillet is generously coated with a curing mixture of 2 parts salt, 1 part sugar, some herbs or spices (usually cracked pepper and chopped fresh dill), and a splash of booze -- I used a specialty akvavit I picked up on a trip to Copenhagen, but your favorite vodka or gin will work too. Wrap it in a porous material (cheesecloth is best; not having any handy I used parchement), place it in a roasting or baking pan in the fridge, and cover it with a 2-pound weight (you should put the weight on a plate or sheet pan to evenly distribute it over the whole fillet). Depending on the size of the fillet, you should have gravlax in anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. Just make sure to flip the fish over halfway through the curing process, and to periodically drain the liquid that is drawn out by the cure (the fillet will shrink by about 1/3 and become surprisingly firm due to water loss). Rinse the salmon thoroughly and pat it dry, and it's ready for slicing.

Gravlax should be sliced on a bias from head end to tail end to get long, thin slices that cut across the grain: the bias should be only slightly steeper than the natural taper of the fish's body from head to tail. To make Lisa's Valentine's Day appetizer, I shredded some russet potatoes in the Cuisinart, sautéed cakes of the shredded potato (seasoned with salt and pepper) in some clarified butter, and layered the finished cakes with slices of my homemade gravlax. I garnished the dish with salmon roe, fresh dill, and crème fraîche thinned out with a little lemon juice. Sappy as it may seem, I couldn't resist the temptation to use my heart-shaped cookie cutters on the one day of the year they would come in handy.

Posted by jeremy at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

9:20 a.m. I've already billed a full nine-hour day, and the rest of my team is just strolling in to work. It was one of those nights. One of those nights when 2:30 rolls around and you resign yourself to the fact that you will be watching the sun rise from your office window. One of those nights when you want to sleep so bad your stomach hurts. One of those nights when you try to remember what you wanted to be when you grew up, and all you know for sure is that this isn't it.

When I was in high school I loved coffee. I used to drink it every day and night. I used to hang out with friends at coffee shops, and pound espressos until they closed. I loved the nutty smell of a brewing pot; I loved the bitter crunch of whole roasted beans; I loved the ambrosial confluence of coffee and steamed milk. Then I got to college.

I grew up with parents who needed two cups of coffee to get out the door in the morning; who suffered migraines if you gave them decaf. I knew I was going to have some late nights in college; probably a few all-nighters. And I decided I wasn't going to use caffeine to get me through it. My dad, like all doctors, got through medical school on a steady diet of caffeine, and he's never recovered. I've seen addiction, and it's ugly, and I don't want any part of it. I gave up coffee. Every once in a while I have a cup of decaf, just for the memories. But I don't do caffeine any more. Once or twice I've thoughtlessly downed a cup of the real stuff, and my jaw starts to clench, my skin crawls, I fidget uncontrollably, and I lose a night of sleep. I've become caffeine-intolerant.

The coffee in my office is not great, but it's free. It pretty much has to be in an office like this one; the place is swarming with addicts. Last night, as the cleaning crew packed up and I realized I was alone with my work until sun-up, I started jonesing for joe. I resisted, and six tall glasses of ice water later, I'm still awake with the sun.

I have to wait around for a few documents, and then I'm going home for a desperately-needed nap. There's a tin of fancy cocoa in my pantry that Lisa's mom gave me for Christmas. I think I'll brew myself a cup before I settle in. I believe I've earned it.

Posted by jeremy at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

They say that oysters are an aphrodisiac. By "they", I mean writers from Juvenal, who listed the consumption of "giant oysters" among the habits of lascivious women, to Camille Paglia, who likened the sensation of oyster-eating to that of a certain intimate act. Cassanova is said to have consumed fifty oysters a day. There is some science suggesting that the high zinc levels in oysters stimulate production of hormones like testosterone and progesterone, and have beneficial effects on the metabolism. Other nutrients and minerals in oysters, such as glycogen, B-vitamins, iron, and iodine, are said to promote blood oxygenation, muscle contraction, and stamina. There are those who suggest that the aphrodisiac qualities of oysters are psychophysiological: oysters may enhance the libido for no other reason than that they are expected to. And there have been intimations that the flesh of the oyster itself resembles a particular region of the female anatomy... but I don't really see it.

Of course Valentine's Day dinner must begin with a dozen oysters on the half-shell -- if for no other reason than to set up a sensual bulwark against the torrents of flesh-numbing alcohol that are sure to follow. Above is an image of the mighty midget of the Pacific, the Kumamoto oyster. Kumamoto is a city on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, relatively close to the now-infamous city of Nagasaki. Its oysters were once unique in the Pacific, indigenous to the warm waters of the local bay. In the first half of this century the Kumamoto was an also-ran to both the Crassostrea gigas species that dominates the cold-water coastlines of northern Japan and the petite Olympia oysters native to the west coast of North America. As Olympia stocks diminished in both supply and popularity, oyster beds from British Columbia to California began importing seed oysters from Japan -- but not Kumamotos, which continued to be a local oddity relished mainly in nearby Kagoshima.

Oyster importation shut down during the Second World War, until General Macarthur's occupation authority jumpstarted the post-war reconstruction of the industry with an order of 80,000 boxes of seed oysters bound for the United States. The supply of oysters from the North had been interrupted (to use a euphemism) by the recent decimation of the labor force in Hiroshima, and so seed oysters from Kumamoto were used to make up the shortfall. Not long thereafter, the Kumamoto oyster died out of its native habitat in Japan due to a combination of commercial impatience (they take a long time to grow to edible sizes in warm water) and pollution. It seems the American armed forces accidentally rescued this rare Japanese oyster just in the nick of time -- by intentionally killing a few hundred thousand Japanese civilians.

This cruel irony turned out to be a boon to the oyster-loving world. Today, all Kumamotos come from the west coast of North America. They have taken root in waters from Vancouver to Eureka. They are sometimes marketed under their less exotic brand name of "Western Gem"; the rococo fluting of their deep-cupped, silver-dollar-sized shells easily distinguishes them from the broad, flat striations of the larger east coast oyster (more on that below).

Kumamotos are small by American standards, but the rampant supersizing of American cuisine has thankfully overlooked the world of fruits de mer. Round and firm, sweet and mild, and too small to inspire revulsion or fear, they are a perfect introduction to the intimidating world of raw oysters. They lack the briny rush of other bivalves, and their metallic mineral flavor is so subtle that you could miss it if you weren't looking for it: Kumamotos are like a fleshy nugget of San Pellegrino. This oyster is all about texture, and its texture is supple and provocative.

The subtle harmony of the Kumamoto is a marked contrast to the stark contradictions of the Blue Point oyster, the other of the two varieties I chose for Valentine's Day.

Named for a town on the Great South Bay of Long Island, Blue Points were the prize of the American oyster harvest for nearly a century. Queen Victoria preferred them above all other varieties; for a time the fishermen of the south shore shipped over a hundred thousand barrels of the shucked treasures every year. The reputation of these magnificent shellfish spread so wide that counterfeiting and theft took hold; the state legislature had to impose one of its first and only origin control appelations on them, and rampant poaching led native fishermen to attempt secession. As with the Kumamoto, the Blue Point oyster has deserted its namesake locality. Encroachment of tidal waters in the first half of the twentieth century raised the salinity of the Great South Bay to the point that its oysters could neither grow healthily nor avoid salt-water predators. Today, the term "Blue Point Oyster" can be used for any east coast oyster of the species once found at Blue Point, but is often used to denote a Long Island oyster.

The wispy filaments of a Blue Point oyster lack the substance of the Kumamoto, but they are suspended in a liquor of potent steely salinity. The Blue Point is a briny bivalve, but it has gossamer flesh; you do not eat a Blue Point as much as you drink it, as you would a gulp of icy seawater. With a squirt of lemon juice -- and if you are so inclined, a dash of tabasco -- the act of swallowing a whole Blue Point oyster may be the epitome of the raw shellfish experience.

There are tricks to preparing and eating oysters, some of which are the stuff of folklore. One old wives' tale holds that you should never eat oysters in months whose name does not contain an "R". There is wisdom in this: oysters begin spawning in May, which reduces their glycogen levels and tends to make them mushy and thin for several months; the warm water and air temperatures of summer can also promote bacterial growth in the beds or in transport. A fear of food poisoning from oysters may also be justified: hell hath no fury like a rotten bivalve in your GI tract, and they spoil easily. To be safe, eat only oysters whose liquor is clear (not cloudy), and only those whose aroma is clean, like that of mineral water or iodine. A fishy smell is a huge red flag; when in doubt, throw it out.

Your safest play is to buy fresh oysters, keep them on ice (without allowing them to become submerged in liquid water) until ready to eat, and shuck them yourself. Oysters should be tightly closed when fresh; the point of an oyster knife strategically directed with some force into the hinge of the shell should wedge it open. Once the hinge is breached, use the edge of the knife to scrape the adductor muscles off of the top and bottom shells. Work over a bowl and be careful not to spill any of the liquor when performing this maneuver; the briny elixir is the essence of the raw oyster. To reduce the risk of gouging your non-knife-wielding hand, you may opt for a kevlar- or steel-mesh glove, or in its absence, a hardy dishtowel that you will not mourn when it is encrusted with the gritty sludge of a dozen oyster shells. You can -- and should -- reduce the mess by scrubbing the oysters under cold running water before shucking, with a wire brush if you've got one.

Traditional accompaniments for raw oysters on the half-shell include lemon juice, horseradish, mignonette sauce (a melange of wine vinegar, minced shallots, and white pepper), or cocktail sauce (an American abomination that masks the oysters' true flavor). The classic service of raw oysters is on a bed of crushed ice and rock salt, and chilled seaweed if the latter is available, but I have always found it most satisfying to drain the little beasts from their shells seconds after shucking, while they still quiver in my kevlar-sheathed hand.

I offered Lisa a dozen raw oysters this Valentine's Day, as I had offered her her first raw oyster a year earlier. Humor me though she did, she apologetically admitted that she was not terribly fond of them. I am crestfallen. The Kumamoto has deserted Japan; Blue Point, New York is bereft of bivalves; and now my Valentine is impervious to the lures of the world's most famous aphrodisiac. There is nothing to be done; the judgment of history crumbles under the weight of my girlfriend's tastes. In the words of James Thurber, the oyster is a blob of glup, but a woman is a woman.

Posted by jeremy at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Valentine's Day. The only day of the year when it's acceptable to drink pink champagne.

Citarella was as busy yesterday as it was on New Year's Eve, but I managed to get everything I needed for another four-course romantic extravaganza. Each course will be posted separately over the next few days. And only two of them are heart-shaped (if you don't count the red pepper heart garnishes).

Posted by jeremy at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I didn't get off work until Citarella was already closed, which put a crimp in my plans to pick up a nice piece of salmon to turn into gravlax for tomorrow night's dinner. I was going to go to Fairway instead, but the new Whole Foods Market in the Time Warner building is on my way home from work, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to check it out. So I walked to Columbus Circle, entered the then-silent vaulted marble corridors of the Time Warner über-mall, and descended the escalator into the cavernous depths of Manhattan's largest supermarket.

First of all, the superlative "largest" is a bit misleading as a modifier for "supermarket" in this case. A good half of the market is devoted to prepared foods and cafe seating, which in my book does not a market make. But petty quibbling aside, Whole Foods does have remarkable selection. Their produce section is, though it pains me to say it, better than Fairway's (including the upstairs organic section). It reminds me of the produce section at Balducci's, multiplied by a factor of ten. The rarest wild mushrooms were piled into overflowing baskets: Chanterelles, Porcinis, Black Trumpets, Yellowfoots, even Bluefoots (which I have only seen once before in my life, and never tasted). Precious little baby vegetables from beets to lettuce to cauliflower to carrots lined the aisles. Surely, I thought, I would find my salmon here.

So I made my way to the fish counter, where my awe turned quickly to disgust. Half the fish in their case has previously been frozen. They have two choices for salmon fillets: fresh farm-raised or previously frozen wild sockeye. This is utterly, tragically backwards. Why the hell would you even stock wild sockeye salmon if you're going to freeze it? You ruin the fish, and you drive its price up at every other retail market that carries it. No wonder Citarella can get away with charging sixteen dollars a pound or whatever it is they charge these days.

I left Whole Foods Market in a huff and made my way to Fairway, which knows a thing or two (though not as much as Citarella) about fresh fish. But by the time I got there, the fishmongers were shoveling ice out of the display case and into the sink. I emerged from Fairway doubly mad at Whole Foods, jealous of the precious minutes I wasted staring in dumbfounded disbelief at the incongruity between their produce and fish sections.

Now I know better. You can get the best of everything in this city, but not all in one place. In other words, Manhattan is the exact opposite of Wal-Mart. I guess that's why I live here.

Posted by jeremy at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

For amateur cooks with significant others, Valentine's day is not so much an occasion as it is a dare. Around the city, restaurants are offering over-priced menus full of precious - often heart-shaped - morsels to con love-struck men into picking up a padded check. Last year, bound by the constraints of my government wages, I decided to take the dare. I resolved to make a Valentine's Day dinner for two right in my own kitchen.

I had a lot more free time back then. So naturally, I spent two days preparing a four-course dinner.

Lisa has been steadily broadening her gastronomic horizons since we started dating. Valentine's day seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to introduce her to a staple of culinary seduction: raw oysters on the half shell. I happen to have an oyster knife and a kevlar glove in my kitchen, but if you don't you'd probably be wise to skip this course. Oysters are a bitch to open.

On the advice of a female friend (who has seldom steered me wrong), the next course was heart-shaped ravioli. I know, it's as sappy as you can get, but you won''t believe how much it can impress a woman when you not only prepare her a winning meal, but sublimate your masculine revulsion long enough to shape it into cutesy little hearts. The ravioli were filled with lobster meat, mascarpone, and tarragon, and were dressed with a white wine and caramelized shallot beurre blanc. I even tried to dye the pasta dough pink with red bell pepper puree. This is not a good idea -- when boiled, red pepper puree mixed with egg-yolk pasta turns orange.

The red peppers came into play in my next dish as well, this time as a garnish. Here's something that will certainly turn the stomach of any singles out there. Basically, you take strips of red pepper about 1 cm wide, and cut little wedge-shaped cuts into them like this:

Admittedly, the heart-shaped ravioli were a bit much, but there really is one classic Valentine's Day dessert that you can't just ignore: coeur à la crème. There are special molds made just for this dessert, which is essentially a no-bake, no-crust, no-egg cheesecake that you allow to drain in cheesecloth overnight so it becomes firm. I know Lisa isn't really into cheesecake, but I thought if I dressed it up with a little chocolate and some raspberry sauce she'd like it. After all, it's heart-shaped.

Now I've got two coeur à la crème molds I will never use again.

This year I've had a lot less time to prepare. Lisa has already told me she wants me to make her something like the potato tart with salmon she had at Escoffier. So I'm going to Citarella tonight to pick up some fresh salmon to cure. The only real question is whether it has to be heart-shaped.

Posted by jeremy at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

After making short work of my braised veal cheeks...

... we were treated to a cheese course. A cart of six diverse cheeses at room temperature was rolled over to our table. We opted for a taste of each, with accompanying grapes, olives, and membrillo (the spanish quince paste that goes so well with so many cheeses). We began with a particularly dry, crumbly chèvre from France, which honestly was not as satisfying as the fantastically rich goat cheeses being turned out right around the corner from the Culinary, at the Coach Farm Dairy. Next came the Comte, a variation of Gruyère, the noble forbear to the rubbery embarrasment most Americans know as swiss cheese. The flavor was fine, but the cheese appeared to have dried out a bit too much in the open air. The Reblochon followed, a creamy, earthy, slightly funky soft-ripened cheese. From there I ventured alone to the Stilton, the overpoweringly stinky blue-veined English classic -- Lisa wouldn't go near the stuff. She favored the Pierre Robert, a powerful, gooey, triple-cream cheese with the richness of the now-ubiquitous Saint-André and the depth and character of a raw-milk Camembert.

We saved the most intriguing - and decidedly un-French - entry for last. This was the Red Dragon, a johnny-come-lately designer cheese from Wales. It's basically a cheddar with whole mustard seeds mixed in. Our waiter told us that this stuff made the best ham sandwiches you'd ever try, and after tasting it, I can see why. The idea behind Red Dragon appears to be the same as the idea behind the old Lipton Soup Mix commercials. You remember, the one where a group of average-looking suburbanites peers puzzlingly under their hamburger buns at an outdoor barbecue, and the most obstreperous muu-muu-clad lady in the pack yells out, "Hey Phil, where are the onions?" Of course, her husband, having just gotten the skinny from Phil himself, explains to her in an embarrased whisper, "They're INSIDE". So yeah, if you use Red Dragon in your ham sandwich, you can skip the mustard. Of course, you could also just use a far less expensive cheddar and the mustard we all know you have in your fridge anyway. Still, for a cheese tasting, the Red Dragon was a kitschy amusement, and you can't beat Escoffier's price.

Finally came dessert. Lisa, already stuffed to the gills, heroically ordered a cup of tropical white peach sorbet. It opened with a burst of pineapple, which gave way to the smooth mellowness of fresh peaches, followed by a hint of the floral aromas that distinguish white peaches from their poorer yellow-fleshed cousins. A stunning display of control, in something as simple as a sorbet.

I, unencumbered by a want of appetite, ordered the Saint-Honoré, traditionally the most challenging of pastry dishes. The idea behind a classic Saint-Honoré is to fill dozens or hundreds of profiteroles with pastry cream and dip them in hot caramel, then build them into a mountain of pastry from which guests can pick one sugary nugget at a time. The trick is that the profiteroles must be filled immediately before service so they don't become soggy, and the caramel must be at precisely the right temperature when the profiteroles are dipped. Too hot, and the sugar will burn and become bitter; too cold, and it will either fail to harden properly or fail to adhere to the profiteroles in a smooth coat.

Escoffier, unsurprisingly, balks at the prospect of preparing a rock-candy-mountain for every damn fool customer who orders the Saint-Honoré. Instead, they have come up with a clever single-serving tribute to the classic dish: a caramel-dipped profiterole filled with whipped cream, sitting atop a schmear of pastry cream in a disk of caramel-dipped choux paste, all resting in a pool of crème anglaise. The caramel was perfect - brittle and light with just the faintest suggestion of the bitterness of burnt sugar. The pastry was airy and delicate, and the subtle contrasts between the sauce, the pastry cream, and the profiterole filling kept me engaged until the dessert was all gone. Another triumph for the next generation of master chefs.

This being my birthday dinner, Lisa graciously offered to drive us home. I rounded out the evening with a glass of Poire Williams, which was enough to secure my sense of warm contentment for the cold ride back to Rhinebeck.

Posted by jeremy at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by jeremy at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is a prayer, or rather a blessing, that Jews say over a glass of wine on special occasions. The prayer is called called Kiddush, a Hebrew word that means "to make holy". It is a ritual that goes back thousands of years, to pause in our revels and praise God for his many blessings, including the one being celebrated with this glass of wine. As with anything in Judaism, there are multiple interpretations of the Kiddush. One holds that it is the celebration, not the wine, that is being sanctified. The wine is the token and seal of the blessing, it makes holy our joy. Another interpretation holds that the wine is the object of sanctification: our joy is made holy, and we drink it down.

There is also a Jewish prayer called the Kaddish, an Aramaic word that means "holy". It is an expression of fervent praise of God, praise beyond words that words are forced to bear, praise wedded to a plea that we may know God's heavenly peace in our time. The Kaddish is recited several times in any standard liturgy, but it is known to most Jews as the prayer of mourners.

Yesterday my grandfather passed away. He was a man raised in a tradition thousands of years old, the tradition of the now-scattered Iraqi Jews. To my grandfather, born a subject of the Ottoman Empire in the province of Mosul, the God of Abraham and Moses was a living presence who had exiled his ancestors to Babylon in the time of Jeremiah. He had good reasons to offer God his praise: he had prospered in a hostile land; his family had escaped safely to America; his seven children had given him eighteen grandchildren.

I must have heard my grandfather recite the Kiddush hundreds of times growing up. But I only heard him recite the Kaddish once, over my grandmother's grave. The last time I saw him alive, he and my mother and I shared a Sabbath dinner. He recited the Kiddush as he had thousands of times before, and for the first and only time in my life I took the kiddush cup from his hand after he had drunk from it.

I'm not a religious person, but I've been reflecting on these two prayers today. I am not permitted to say Kaddish for my grandfather; in our family's tradition only his children do so. But I am permitted to drink Kiddush wine. And I don't think I'll ever hear the Kiddush again without thinking of him.

My grandfather built a world for himself filled with happiness and life. It was holy work, and deserves to be remembered in joy.

Posted by jeremy at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For the first course of our meal at Escoffier, Lisa ordered a potato tart with smoked salmon, caviar, and chive oil. The dish was more Scandanavian than French: the potatoes were shredded, like rosti, then browned to a dark, nutty crust on the outside while their insides took on a creaminess punctuated here and there with a tender bite. You could still taste the faintest hint of green mustiness at the center; a welcome reminder that potatoes are roots first and starches second. The salmon was sliced a little thicker than I am used to, but it was so soft that it didn't much matter. The salt from the cure had been ably subdued, and what remained was a pleasant briny fattiness that was smooth but not greasy. Since this was Lisa's appetizer, and she was picking up the check, I thought it best to leave the caviar for her.

I began with the terrine of foie gras. To dine at Escoffier and not order the foie gras is, to my mind, the height of idiocy. Nowhere else can you get a preparation of this quality at a lower price. To students of the Culinary Institute of America, this costly ingredient is a school staple. The tuition-paying staff of Escoffier are a source of revenue, not an expense, and since the Culinary is a non-profit institution, it can charge far less than fair market value for its thick slabs of carefully cooked foie gras. Best of all, these kids have learned exactly how to handle this intimidating foodstuff: I asked our waiter what wine I should pair with the terrine, and he didn't hesitate: "Sauternes." Give that man an A.

I have a couple of C.I.A. textbooks, and their treatment of foie gras usually begins with a marinade of armagnac or madeira. I am personally more of a fan of the dry marinade: sea salt (pink and white), white pepper, and sugar. This leaves some of the livery flavor in the foie, which I rather enjoy. The dish I had at Escoffier had begun with an armagnac marinade, and the foie was layered with roasted figs in its terrine. The texture was absolutely perfect: smooth and buttery, the result of careful control over its temperature during cooking. But I found the flavor of the foie was overpowered by the sweetness of the figs and of the plum compote that was served alongside it. The handful of mache tossed in lemon and oil that garnished the dish was barely enough to counteract all the sugary fruit; I ate the last few bitefuls of foie on plain toast without any of its accompaniments. I could have eaten a lot more.

On to the main course, my favorite of the night. I ordered the braised veal cheeks with orange, a mammoth portion of four veal cheeks in a rich brown sauce garnished with whipped potatoes, baby root vegetables, orange fillets, and candied orange zest. The braise had left the meat meltingly tender though it still held its shape. I didn't need my knife once, but neither did I need to go digging through the sauce for shreds of disintegrated flesh. The fresh citrus note of the oranges cut cleanly through what might otherwise have been a rather heavy entree. I have never tasted a more skillfully prepared braised dish. Lisa's beef Wellington was also a treat, and was served with a similar rich brown sauce (hers infused with madeira). When she asked what it was, I explained to her that her sauce and mine were probably both made from the same base of veal stock, and that it probably took about fifty pounds of veal bones to make a quart of the stuff. She glanced from the pillows of tender meat on my plate to the shimmering amber pool on hers, and shook her head. "All the baby cows," she lamented. I quietly nodded my agreement. "All the delicious baby cows."

Posted by jeremy at 02:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Posted by jeremy at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I have discovered only one advantage to the 100-mile distance that separates me from Lisa during the week: she lives about fifteen minutes away from the Culinary Institute of America, and the judge for whom she clerks is friendly with some of the instructors. For my birthday, she was able to use her connections to finagle us a table at the Culinary's most famous restaurant, Escoffier.

Named for the lionized chef who virtually invented the modern system of restaurant management and penned the bible of classic French cuisine, Escoffier is where the Culinary's upperclassmen finally get a chance to test their mettle. In their last year of school, they begin working in the back of the house, learning the menu inside and out by working the various stations that make a french restaurant kitchen: sauté, sauces, garde manger, pastry, and so on. Armed with their intimate knowledge of each of the restaurant's dishes, these budding chefs are then sent into the dining room, where they learn the regimented discipline of classic french dining room service as waiters and waitresses. It is almost a crime to dine at the Culinary's restaurants without engaging your server in a discussion of the menu; a waiter who has not only tasted but actually prepared each dish on the menu will never steer you wrong. One day soon these young professionals will go on to work in the finest kitchens in the world; some of them will be the superstars of the next generation of chefs. At Escoffier, they learn how each element of a first-class restaurant works down to the smallest detail; they are eminently prepared for the challenges that await them.

Borrowing a page from Clotilde, I'll be posting about this meal over the course of the week. All you get today is the amuse-bouche: a tiny profiterole filled with creamy lemon aioli, smoked salmon, and dill. The next few posts will include photos, so keep coming back for more.

Posted by jeremy at 03:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)