April 2007
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Month April 2007

Entries 5 Total

Ramps with Minced Chorizo and Strawberries

Apr 30, ’07

When I begin to see ramps for sale in the farmers’ market, I only think of one thing: it’s spring. I bought a couple of bunches last Wednesday and stopped by the High Hope Hog tent to pick up a package of their spicy chorizo. For the last few ramp seasons, I’ve sautéed them with bacon or pancetta. This time, I wanted to try something slightly different. I’m loving the fruit-in-my-salad thing lately, maybe because we East Coasters have been deprived of fruits all winter, but there have been beautiful strawberries in the market and I wanted to add a little bit of sweet and tart to this dish. The result? The ramps balanced the perfect combination of subtle fruitiness and pork saltiness.

Ingredients:
2 bunches of ramps
3 pieces of spicy chorizo
a handful of fresh strawberries, sliced thinly
a bowl of ice water
salt, pepper, olive oil

1. Add thoroughly washed ramps in boiling water for four minutes. When they’re done, drain and shock them in ice water to stop its cooking.
2. Using a large skillet, heat some oil and fry the sausages until brown on all sides. While cooking, crush the sausages in smaller pieces with a wooden spoon.
3. Using the same skillet, add the ramps and toss them in the rendered fat with salt and pepper. Plate and serve with strawberries.

Related post/s:
Ramps with pancetta
Ramps are $2.50 a bunch at the farmers’ market from late April to early May

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Salt

Apr 27, ’07

58 MacDougal Street between Prince and Houston
212/674.4968
$90 for two, with a bottle of red, without tip
♥ ♥

I’ve walked by Salt many times and have always been curious. We stopped by on a Friday night without reservations. They were completely booked but the waitress invited us to sit down with a “We’ll figure it out when the couple with the table comes in.” As soon as we joined the other diners at one of the long tables, a whole bottle of red was in order–other couple be damned.

The rack of lamb was well-executed. The crust was crispy and the meat perfectly medium-rare. The Dr. opted for one of their Protein + 2 options: duck breast with sautéed eggplant and braised leeks. The meat was a little overdone but the vegetables were simple and undeniably hearty. Other safe choices included a grilled dorade, roasted chicken, Newport steak and a bowl of pasta. Fennel, asparagus, artichokes and Yukon gold potatoes were available as side dishes. The menu may be unexciting but our dessert spoke volumes: a plum tart frangipane topped with a delicious rosemary ice cream.

I’ve fallen in-love with a restaurant before because of the ambiance and upon entering Salt, my heart pitter-pattered. Wooden communal tables occupy most of its intimate space. The open kitchen behind the bar invites you to sit, eat, drink wine and enjoy a conversation. The dim, warm lights make you feel like you’re in someone’s gorgeous apartment with exposed bricks. As the night leisurely passed and the buzz around us became intoxicating, we just wanted to stay.

Related post/s:
Provence is only a few stores down

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Cornish Hens with Pomegranate-Honey Sauce

Apr 26, ’07

The Cornish hens were on sale at my grocery store. I bought two and thought about cooking the chicken and pomegranate stew recipe I published a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t have vegetables so I just used the spices in my cupboard. The meat fell off the bones easily so I ended up deboning the hens while the liquid reduced and thickened. For texture, I added some sesame seeds and crushed almonds before serving.

Ingredients:
2 Cornish hens
2 tbsps pomegranate molasses
1/4 cup honey
1 red onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
12 threads saffron, soaked in 3 tbsps of hot water
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 pinch of whole cloves, grounded
4 parsley stems, chopped
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup whole blanched almonds, crushed, toasted
1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
salt, pepper, olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 350º. In the meantime, heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven. Sauté the garlic and the onions. Add and brown the Cornish hens on all sides. Remove the hens to a plate.
2. Add all the spices including the saffron to the pot with 2 cups of water. Simmer and reduce until somewhat thickened for 25 minutes. Then add the pomegranate and honey to the liquid and let simmer while gently scraping off the bits from the bottom of the pan. Season with salt and pepper. Add the hens back, cover the pot and put in the oven for 10 minutes.
3. When done, carefully remove the pot from the oven. Remove and discard bay leaves. Using a pair of tongs and a fork, slowly take off the meat from the bones. The hens should be so soft and tender that the meat just slides off the bones. Discard the bones. Plate meat and top with toasted sesame seeds and almonds.

Related post/s:
I like my pomegranate and Cornish hens

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Sullivan Street Bakery’s No-Knead Bread

Apr 25, ’07

Last November, The New York Times published this no-knead bread recipe from Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery and food bloggers everywhere went berserk. But it requires some time and I couldn’t squeeze in a day and a half to try it myself last year. Fast-forward five months later and I’ve adjusted the recipe according to the trials and errors posted on the Web and finally tried it at home this past weekend when the summer weather called for my own homemade bread.

As you may or may not know, I’m scared of baking. I’m a better cook than baker because with cooking, I can adjust ingredients and steps by taste. I feel like with baking, I can never turn back. Baking makes me afraid of making mistakes while cooking allows me to make room for circumstances that may be beyond my control. So you can imagine when I tried this recipe and it came out looking like, well, bread. I was squealing with delight! I sat down with my mother, opened a bottle of Chateau de La Chaize and ate it with cheese and anchovies, pintxos style.

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose white flour, more for dusting
1/4 tsp instant yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups water

1. In a large glass bowl, combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 1/2 cups water and stir with a wooden spatula until blended. Your dough will be sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour. Put dough on the towel and dust the top of the dough with more flour. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for another 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least 30 minutes before dough is ready, heat oven to 450º. Put a large Dutch oven in the oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Gently place dough into pot. It will still be a little sticky. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed. It may look like a mess but it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake for 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a chopping block.

Related post/s:
Make it or buy it from Sullivan Street Bakery
Pintxos style, the way they do it in Barcelona

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Mercat

Apr 24, ’07

45 Bond Street between Lafayette and Bowery
212/529.8600
$120 for two, with 3 drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

It was a Monday night and Mercat has only been open for three days, yet the decibel level made it seem like it was a Thursday night. The place is packed; the white tiles immediately reminded me of Cal Pep in Barcelona. One of the bartenders gave me a long-stemmed pink rose to alleviate my 25-minute wait for a seat at the bar in front of the restaurant. (I saw later that every woman in the house was holding the same rose. I wasn’t so special after all.) The sausage and cheese station was manned by one doing all the slicing and plating and was surrounded by the curious also waiting for the bathroom to free up. In the back, the open kitchen was being watched by the more important people who sat at the chef’s bar. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

We started with the crispy sweetbreads on a bed of fennel, orange and capers. It was a light and delicious appetizer to an unexpectedly heavy meal. The grilled sardines were great with salsa verde even though I was picking small, thin bones off my mouth the entire time. What made my night, however, was the braised pork belly served with crosnes, my latest favorite vegetable. Never mind that it also came with asparagus which seemed pretty boring compared to the sauce that made the dish special: a dollop of preserved cherries. No one should be afraid of eating their meals with fruit; I could have eaten this all night with my glass of cava.

The mushroom dish will mostly likely leave Mercat bankrupt. For only $12–and I can’t believe I’m saying “only” here–I think I tasted sautéed morels, hen-of-the-woods, shiitake and crimini mushrooms on my plate. The last time I stopped by a Whole Foods, morels were going for $60 for a pound. A very earthy and filling dish served with crunchy strings of potatoes and topped with a fried egg was hard to resist even if the egg was a little overdone. They ran out of razor clams by 10pm and I totally missed the blistered Padron peppers from the top of the menu, so we finished with the snails and chorizo skewers. It sounded promising but what happened to this dish? The snails tasted like they’ve been in the bottom of an aquarium for days. The chorizo-tomato salsa could not even cover the algae taste that we decided to leave the dish unfinished.

From my experience at Cal Pep, the meals got better as the night wiled away. At Mercat, the night started inspiringly, but after I ate the snails, all I wanted was to rewind my experience back to the pork belly and back to Spain.

Related post/s:
Mercat is reportedly inspired by Cal Pep in Barcelona
Crosnes at Momofuku Ssam
Pork belly with watermelon at Fatty Crab

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