cia – Page 153 – Writing With My Mouth Full

The North Fork Table & Inn

57225 Main Road, Southold, North Fork, Long Island
631/765.0177
about $250 for two, with four drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

From Chef Gerry Hayden, of Manhattanâ€™s Aureole and Amuse, and Gramercy Tavernâ€™s pastry chef Claudia Fleming, comes a huge effort. The menu concentrates on the island’s freshest produce including seafood from Peconic Bay and the Long Island Sound. We walked in a few minutes before our 9pm reservation to a hushed dining room. Even though the decor is bare, the lighting was perfect enough to bring out the coziness of what was the old Coeur des Vigne. At the bar, they didn’t have fresh mint leaves, but it was too early to be disappointed so we ordered the tomato water martini and raspberry bourbon instead. Both were too strong to be enjoyed, so we basically nursed our drinks until our main courses came.

It was because we had our drinks on the table that our waiter never asked us if we were interested in wine with our dinner. But what do you expect when most of the wait staff look like they’re under twenty-five years old? The restaurant is quite new and the service needs a little sharpening–a little finesse, just like what Thomas Keller would say.

But what The North Fork Table & Inn lacks in service is made up by the seasonal and local items on the menu. The roasted beets with goat cheese from Catapano Dairy Farm were evenly roasted. Salted pistachios gave them a crunch and the sherry vinegar a nice kick. I had the yellowfin tuna tartare with ponzu sauce topped with mizuna greens: fresh and light.

We never usually order fish from the menu, but the sautÃ©ed wild striped bass came with warm fennel, radish and celery salad, so it was hard to say no. The meat was so tender, just perfectly cooked. The olive vinaigrette gave it the right amount of salty taste. And who says no to lamb chops? For forty dollars, they were the most expensive dish in the menu, but the chops came with a nice cut of shoulder, too, encrusted with smoked pepper. I could have been happy even without the mashed potatoes on the side, but I suppose most diners expect something mushy with their manly dinner.

Have I already mentioned that Claudia Fleming was awarded by the James Beard Foundation as its best pastry chef of 2000? How else can I describe the upside-down peach and blueberry cobbler with sour ice cream? Try divine.

North Fork is about two hours away from Manhattan but the Table & Inn makes the trip worth it.

Seared Cod with Fennel and Celery

Adapted from The North Fork Table & Inn, Long Island, using wild striped bass

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pound of cod fillet, slice into 3 steaks
3 stalks of celery, chopped
a small fennel bulb, chopped
1/2 cup of piquillo olives, pitted, finely chopped
red wine vinegar
olive oil

1. In a skillet, let the celery and fennel sweat in low heat. Remove from heat when celery is tender enough. Transfer to a small bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, combine vinegar and the olive oil. Add the olives and whisk until desired consistency. Dress the vegetables and let it stand.
3. Prepare the fish. Preheat oven to 350Âº. In the meantime, heat some olive oil in a frying pan and sear the cod until a nice brown crust has formed on one side and it moves easily away from the pan when gently pushed with a spatula. Turn and brown the other side. Transfer the fish in the pan to the oven and bake for no longer than 7 minutes, just enough to cook the inside. Serve fish on top of the vegetables and top with leftover olives.

Dragon Fruit and Rambutan

In Chinatown, I saw these cool-looking fruits they call dragon fruit. One sign had “gradon” written on a piece of cardboard. Those Chinese vendors get confused sometimes! I couldn’t get any information from them so I did my own research after buying one for $3.

They’re native to Central and South America, but they’re apparently now the number one export of Vietnam. The meat is like a kiwi’s. It’s white and fleshy with a lot of small black seeds. It tastes a little bit like kiwi but without the tartness. I tried a little bit with salt and another piece with sugar just to see the difference. With sugar, it became somewhat bitter, but salt didn’t really make a big difference. If it wasn’t too early for rum, I could imagine putting this in a blender and making a cocktail out of it. Perhaps next time.

There’s also rambutan out on the streets now. I grew up eating these in the Philippines, so I was taken aback when half a pound, about 6 pieces, cost $3.75. They taste like lychee, only the red leathery skin is surrounded by soft spikes or hair. In Malay, rambut means hair. If it’s the right time, the flesh is sweet and juicy and it comes off the seed easily when you eat it, avoiding the bitter soft bark that covers that seed. Since we’re speaking of cocktails, it’s great to have one at the bottom of a martini glass–sans the spiny skin, of course.

China: Blue Crab Special

I could imagine Anna when she was a kid picking and sucking out the meat from these steamed crabs until her fingers turned wrinkly and raisin-like. She told me that most Cantonese grew up with the salty egg and meat patty combination but her father made it extra special by mixing it with steamed blue crabs. This was one of my best homecooked meals this summer. Be careful of the live crabs. One of them pinched me and it hurt! If you have some extra time before cooking, put them in the freezer for about 20 minutes so they “fall asleep.” Cracking them open later would not feel so bad. The best part of this recipe is pouring that super hot oil over the blue crabs before serving. Again, be very careful because the oil will be very hot, but oh, that crackling sound!

Ingredients:
half a dozen blue crabs
2 cooked salted duck eggs, shelled
1 regular egg
1/4 pound of ground pork
cilantro, roughly chopped
scallions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
oil

1. Open the blue crabs by pulling off the shell from the body. Remove apron and gills. Cut the crabs in half and using a pincher, smash the claws for easy access to the meat later.
2. In a bowl, combine the salted egg and regular egg and mix in the ground meat. Using your hands, mash the meat in the egg mixture then pour over the blue crabs. Sprinkle with cilantro and scallions, saving some for later.
3. Using a large Dutch oven, steam the crabs for about 15 minutes or until the crab shells are deep orange.
4. In a separate wok, heat the oil and add the garlic. Without waiting for the garlic to burn, quickly but gently pour the hot oil over the plate of steamed blue crabs. Garnish with the rest of the cilantro and scallions.

In Tent

231 Mott Street off Prince
212/966.6310
about $80 for two, with two drinks, without tip

In Tent is such a hokey name for a restaurant but the main dining room indeed has a removable tent made of rust-colored silk fabric because zoning regulations do not allow a permanent roof to cover a garden (vacated by Bot Restaurant).

A beautiful setup in the dining room with Moroccan lamps under a tent

Chef Francois Payard brings his experience as pastry chef from La Tour dâ€™Argent and Le Bernadin and partners with several other chefs to bring In Tent’s Moroccan-inspired menu. The lamb burger with zucchini fries was excellent. The meat was so juicy and the bread crispy that I regret sharing it with my dining partner.

Lamb burger with zucchini fries

The grilled octopus with cannellini bean salad was tender; just how I like my tentacles. I liked the idea of the bacalao carpaccio but without the black olive emulsion, it would have been bland. In Portugal, fresh codfish is rarely eaten. Dried salted codfish, or what we know as the more expensive clipfish, is the way to go for South Americans.

Octopus with white beans

Black olive emulsion on bacalao

Our young server was attentive and even though In Tent was busy at 9pm on a Wednesday night, we were promptly accommodated without reservations after a drink at the bar. I’ll come back for more of that lamb.