Writing With My Mouth Full

Shrimp with Root Vegetables and Honeydew Summer Salad

I grew up in the Philippines where a lot of vegetables were called differently from what they use here in the States. A good example is turnip. My turnip, or singkamas, has a tough brown skin and a white, watery, and almost translucent flesh inside that you eat with shrimp paste or vinegar and fish sauce during the summer months. Here in New York, that’s the same as the Mexican jícama while the turnip has a thinner skin that’s white at the bottom and purple towards the top and it has a slight bitter taste perfect for raw salads.

For some of you, the American turnip might be too bitter here and that’s why I decided to add honeydew for a slight tinge of sweetness and a different texture. Cantaloupes should be okay too and would be a good addition if you use both turnips and jícama. The portions below made a perfect appetizer for two people.

Ingredients:
1/4 lb cooked shrimp, deveined, peeled
2 small to medium-sized radishes, thinly sliced
1 small turnip, peeled, thinly sliced
half a honeydew, the flesh thinly sliced
1 stalk of scallions, diagonally sliced

For the dressing:
ginger knob, peeled, crushed
a splash of fish sauce
juice from 1 lemon
olive oil
pepper
red chili flakes

1. In a large glass bowl, whisk all the dressing ingredients. Toss in the shrimp and chill in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
2. When ready to assemble the salad, remove the shrimp from the fridge and add the vegetables and fruit. Toss until well combined. Add more olive oil if necessary.

Homemade Pappardelle Pasta with Slow-Cooked Beef Shin Stew

I know a slow-cooked beef shin stew is not really the way to welcome the official start of summer, but the dish lasted me a few days and rescued me from cooking during the past rainy (and lazy) week. I publish a lot of braised recipes here, but I opted to slow-cook this dish on the stovetop. I didn’t plan to hand-roll the pasta with it, but the timing just worked out perfectly.

When rolling out the dough, the original recipe called to divide it into 2 balls (Step #5 below). I ignored that note (rebel!) and had a gigantic piece to work with. If you have a large work space, keeping it in one large ball works quite well; I had to maneuver around me to continue rolling the dough out into a thin sheet. The thing with homemade pasta is that you need practice. This was my first time making papperdelle and they came out imperfectly, but I think their unequal shape made them more rustic. Your old-school Italian grandmother may disapprove, but my tummy was all for it.

Ingredients:
2 lbs of boneless beef shins, chopped into 2-inch pieces
flour
oil
1 large red onion, roughly chopped
1 small bag of mini-carrots
3 sticks of celery, roughly chopped
a few sprigs of fresh rosemary
2 bay leaves
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 cinnamon stick
a small handful of dried porcini
1 can of peeled plum tomatoes
1 bottle of red wine
salt and pepper

For the pappardelle pasta:
1 3/4 cups flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup semolina flour, plus more for dusting
6 large eggs at room temperature
4 teaspoons olive oil
salt

1. Prepare the cubed beef shins. Toss the beef pieces in a bowl with a little bit of flour and shake off excess. Set aside.
2. In a large Dutch oven, heat a splash of olive oil and sauté the onions. Add all the vegetables and the herbs with the garlic, cinnamon sticks and the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Add the floured beef and stir everything together. Add the tomatoes, the wine and season with salt and pepper. Slowly bring to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer and cook for at least 2 hours, or until the beef falls apart with a gentle prod of a fork. Remove the cinnamon sticks, the rosemary sprigs and the bay leaves before serving.

Making the pasta:
4. While the beef is cooking, make the dough for the pasta. Sift both flours together on your work surface and make a well in the center. Place the eggs, olive oil and a pinch of salt in a bowl, then pour into the well. Using a fork, break up the eggs, then slowly mix the wet ingredients into the flour mixture until combined.
5. Knead by hand. Gather the dough into 1 large ball. Flour your work surface. To knead each piece, push the dough away from you with the heel of your hand and fold the dough over itself. Continue pushing, folding and turning until the dough is smooth and elastic, 4 to 5 minutes, on all sides of the dough.
6. Let the dough rest. Flatten slightly, wrap in Saran wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight.
7. Roll out the dough when ready. Flour your work surface again. Place the dough and dust with more flour. Starting in the middle, push away from you with a rolling pin and continue rolling the dough into a sheet until you can see your fingers through the bottom. Feel free to dust with more flour as necessary. Let dry about 10 minutes.
8. Cut the pappardelle: Dust the top of the sheet of dough with flour and loosely roll it into a cylinder. Using a sharp knife, cut into 3/4-inch-wide slices. Dust with semolina and gently toss to separate. Place on a sheet pan and cover with a tea towel until ready to cook, or freeze in freezer bags for up to 2 months.
9. To serve, boil some salted water in a large pot and add the freshly-made pasta. Cook for no more than 15 minutes or until al dente. Drain and put the cooked pasta in a serving dish and top with the slow-cooked beef shin stew.

Parish Hall

109 A North 3rd Street between Berry and Wythe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$86 each for 3 people, with 3 drinks apiece, without tip
718/782.2602
♥ ♥ ♥

The disclaimer here is that I made a small investment on Parish Hall to finally fulfill one of my dreams of being a small part of the restaurant business. I also wanted to support George Weld, someone I’ve known since the dot-com days when we used to pretend we were actually working. But the fact of the matter is that I will still give this restaurant a good review even if I did not know George and even if I wasn’t a fan of his first venture, Egg.

If I can eat the duck breast everyday with a side of their “new field greens”, I’d be totally content. I’ve had the duck twice the last three times I visited (fourth if you count them hosting the Gastronauts’ 6th anniversary), and both times it was cooked impeccably. I was just bummed that I had to share it with my friends.

The salad’s composition depends on what greens they have in the kitchen that day, taking the concept of farm-to-table to a whole new level since George actually owns Goatfell Farm which provides most of their vegetables. They’ve had dandelion, arugula, mizuna, chickweed, watercress and all sorts of lettuces, and all of them tasted fresh, earthy and healthy. During one visit, nasturtium was on my plate; it was peppery and tasted so much like a… green–there’s really no other way to describe its rawness.

Equally delicious is the grilled rack of lamb and roasted shoulder and equally surprising to see on the plate was the flax and nettle pesto that came with it, not so much of a sauce but a dollop so you can lather as little or as much as you want. (But don’t worry, no stings included!) The homey dumpling also changes depending on what ingredients are on hand. I loved the version with asparagus, pears–and what again?–spinach cream and fennel pollen. A most recent addition was trout in a clean broth with some fiddleheads and the perfect cubes of apples. The dishes seem simple, but simple is never easy to implement in the kitchen. I think a chef’s skills are more challenged when he or she can make something so complicated look so simple to us mortals.

If you walk past the restaurant or go to their Web site, you’ll read a variety of the produce they present: beet, maple, apple-sorrel sauces, purée of parsnips, green garlic aioli, nettle yogurt, kohlrabi and sunchokes chips. I would like to think I’ve had my share of eating in some of America’s best restaurants, but nowhere else have I been perplexed about ingredients that are so straightforwardly named. Thomas Keller’s menus always come with quotation marks to describe their food, but with Parish Hall you get the list of ingredients and still have to ask the servers about them.

George has described their cooking as “the truth of the Northeast”–I suppose I didn’t know anything about what this part of the country can offer. Parish Hall and chef Evan Hanczor shows it can offer so much.

Some photos from my last few visits:

A simple Alpine breakfast named after the highest peak in the Catskills with a slow-cooked egg, some charcuterie, mustard and jam. I like the touch of fresh radishes on the plate to cut through the richness.

Water buffalo pastrami made especially for the Gastronauts’ 6th anniversary. You won’t see this on the regular menu though.

A plate of beautiful radishes:

Danji

346 West 52nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues
212/586.2880
$66 for my share with 2 others, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

Tastiest:
1. Spicy whelk salad with buckwheat noodles – just enough saltiness and spiciness. It’s refreshing to see whelks on the menu.
2. Poached sablefish with spicy daikon – reminded me of a wonderful dish I had at Tojo’s in Vancouver, only not as much finesse
3. Tofu with ginger-scallion dressing – I couldn’t tell what kind of tofu it was because it was stringy. I wondered if it was the fried batter that made it so because it had the texture of mozzarella cheese.
4. Makgeolli, or Korean rice beer – They called it rice beer, but I read that it’s mostly referred to as rice wine. It’s quite thin but milky, and the sourness and sweetness are both very subtle.

Most boring:
1. Kimchi-bacon-chorizo “paella” with fried egg – I think they called it paella because it was on a sizzling plate, but it reminded me of a dish you make with your leftovers topped with a fried egg. It’s good–just not worth $16.

Overrated:
1. Bulgogi sliders – Even Ruth Reichl wrote a poem about them, but it’s still the same bulgogi flavor you get outside of the Los Angeles area: a little too sweet and lazy

Service:
The maître d’ was impatient when the place was crowded from about 6:30pm until 9pm. She just had it from every customer insisting they were the next ones to be seated. We never saw her again until my friend ordered another glass of Riesling, but the entire staff was more attentive after the dinner rush was over.

Isa

38 Wythe Street off South 2nd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
347/689.3594
$70 each for 2 people, with 2 drinks, without tip
♥ ♥ ♥

When Eater.com announced that Masten Lake would be closing, a small part of me hurt. I haven’t been in a restaurant that was as delicious and creative as Masten Lake since Momofuku Ssam, and even though I had to trek to Williamsburg from Harlem to eat there, I was so excited about it that I didn’t mind the L commute. Enter Isa, another restaurant in almost the same area that could very well replace my love for Masten Lake.

Notable:
1. Their prix-fixe menu is the best deal in town for $50 for three courses.

Tastiest:
1. The beet salad was so pretty. Each plate reminded me of Eleven Madison Park, which I totally did not expect in a hipster place like Isa.
2. The mackerel was overwhelming in that same awesome way Masten Lake’s version impressed me.
3. The grilled and shaved celeriac was a nice surprise.
4. The grapefruit curd was so interesting that I had to compliment the cute Asian girl in the back responsible for it.

Service:
The dapperly-dressed man at the front of the house–ascot, natch–told us that all tables were committed until 10:30pm, but that we can sit at the bar since it’s first-come first-served basis. We returned a few minutes later and ordered some nice cocktails with bourbon and lemon dew and also a rum drink with mint. Said dapper man stopped by later to say that he was glad we made it after all.