Writing With My Mouth Full

Perilla

9 Jones Street between West 4th and Bleecker Streets
212/929.6868
$147 for three, with a bottle of wine, without tip
♥ ♥

I’ve watched Top Chef enough to know that the judges sometimes can’t make up their minds between “cooking outside the box” and “sticking with what you know”. You had Carla who finally stuck with the food most familiar to her and she made it to the final round. You had Marcel the twat who does everything Wylie Dufresne style and the judges sometimes thought it–he–was too much. But then there were episodes when the contestants were not trying hard enough or were trying too much–you just couldn’t predict what the judges were going to say next.

When Frank Bruni gave a less than stellar review to Perilla, Harold Dieterleâ€™s first restaurant, my heart went out to the first-season Top Chef winner. I can’t even imagine the anxiousness chefs feel when their new restaurant opens in New York City because one review can either make or break them. Three years later, Perilla is still in business and thankfully so because I had a very good dinner there a couple of months ago with some friends. We were looking for a low-key spot to get together and catch up with our holiday stories, particularly a small place where we didnâ€™t have to scream at each other to have a conversation. In fact, Perilla doesnâ€™t even look like it came from a TV winner. I gather that if people who have never seen the show walked in the restaurant, they would think the same way I did: Oh, this is nice and cozy and that’s about it.

I walked in and joined the standing queue at the bar one prime Saturday night. My friends joined me a few minutes after the bartender made my martini and we were soon seated right next to the kitchen entrance. I went for the sure-fire lamb while my friend ordered the fish; her fiancé, beef. A hamachi crudo was refreshing with yuzu and the notorious duck meatballs didn’t disappoint. Brussels sprouts and sunchokes are usual fare in seasonal menus and they both served their purposes well at Perilla.

The portions were larger than what I usually see in the city for the same prices, and considering I was unemployed at the time, I couldn’t complain. The food and the service matched the ambiance: nothing was overdone because everything was modest. Maybe now that chef Dieterle has made it past Bruni’s claws, he’d be willing to cook outside of his comfort zone. But you know what? Maybe I’d like for him to cook just the way he’s been cooking.

Pancit Canton, Filipino Noodles with Stir-Fried Vegetables

I skipped swimming tonight to run some errands I’ve been putting off the last week so all I wanted for dinner was something healthy and quick to make. I wanted a lot of half-cooked vegetables and imagined a lot of crunch to my meal. I immediately thought of cabbage and bubble and squeak, but I didn’t really feel like eating potatoes. I turned to the Filipino pancit after I remembered that I still have a package of cooked noodles from the Khmer Legacies swag a couple of weeks ago.

Canton noodles, one of the many Chinese influences Filipinos call their own, are long egg noodles that have been precooked and dried before packaging and thus only require a few minutes to cook. Time the prep just right and you’ll be slicing and dicing while the first batch of vegetables are cooking. This way, your time is spent efficiently and you avoid overcooking any of the ingredients. The worst is to eat soggy noodles. You can use angel hair noodles as a substitute here; just cook them al dente and toss with the vegetables before serving.

Ingredients:
1 pack of pancit Canton noodles
2 cups of chicken broth
1 small head of cabbage, sliced into strips
1 cup of dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in water then drained, roughly chopped
a handful of string beans, roughly chopped
1 small carrot, roughly chopped
2 red bell peppers, julienned
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
peanut oil
sesame oil
soy sauce
juice from 1 lime
salt

1. Heat some peanut oil in a large skillet. Sauté garlic until brown and onions until soft. Add cabbage and toss until covered in oil. Let cook for about 5 minutes while occasionally mixing.
2. Add the carrots and cook for another 2 minutes. Then add the softened mushrooms, string beans and the bell peppers. Keep tossing all the ingredients together to cook evenly. Add chicken broth and cover the skillet for 3 minutes to steam the vegetables.
3. Meanwhile, soak the noodles in a bowl of water to soften them. Gently separate noodles by hand. Drain, uncover the skillet and add noodles with the vegetables. Drizzle some sesame oil for flavor and season with salt and a jigger or two of soy sauce to taste. Toss for another 3 minutes to make sure the noodles are evenly distributed. Remove to a plate and serve with lime juice for a little sting.

Centovini

25 West Houston Street between Greene and Mercer
212/219.2113
$196 for two, with five drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

I knew I shouldn’t have ordered the $22 glass of Barolo but the guy behind the bar gave me a taste after I picked the $16 Muraglie and convinced me that it was the better way to go. It was a very good glass of wine and I gingerly drank it with the meats and cheeses that we ordered as appetizers, as well as with the asparagus salad topped with fried duck prosciutto and egg. For $20, we had a choice of five cheeses and salumis: we split the cacciatorini, the sweet coppa, the finocchiona and the Calcagno with the Testun al Barolo. I loved the subtle spring taste of the trout main dish with the fava beans, sprouts and sweet peas; a few pieces of morels upped the price to $28.

I have walked by Centovini several times but never paid much attention to it because it looked far too dark from the outside. I thought the space would be a little too romantic to meet a friend, so I was surprised at how bright it actually was inside. We sat at the bar under the massive mirrored lamp and even felt like a surgery can be done right on the marble-top counter. The rest of the restaurant is quite handsome, with a beautiful wall of wine shelves in one end and a lounge area in another.

The service was unobtrusive because they knew to leave us alone the entire time we were there. The bartender seemed to just show up whenever we needed to refill our wine glasses. And as to not interrupt our conversation, we would nod and just give him an okay–that makes for a very hefty bill after two and a half hours.

You can still get away with a much simpler dinner–and less wine–before heading to Angelika Theater without spending too much. A three-course prix-fixe is available every night for just $38 while brunch on weekends goes for $18. Centovini isn’t Lupa but I think it’s a good spot to start the night off right. Just make sure you don’t order the Barolo.

Ramps Fried Rice

Now that everyone knows what ramps are, I don’t have to go to Vermont to rummage for them or pay $5 for a bunch at Whole Foods. The farmers market have settled on the $2.50 price for each small bundle and more than one tent sells them now. I still find them pricey–the Spotted Pig still gets away with charging $13 for a plate of it–so I’ve gotten used to pickling my own every spring to make them last longer than a week.

After getting my first few bunches to welcome spring this year, I still had a couple to play with. With some pancetta in the fridge, I decided to add some cold rice to make a very onion-y fried rice. I matched it with some mâche tuna salad and lentil soup to make a hearty lunch box the next day.

Ingredients:
2 bunches of ramps, thoroughly washed, roots sliced off
a thin sliver of pancetta, diced
1 egg
1 cup of leftover white rice, crushed with the back of your spoon
salt, pepper

1. Sweat the pancetta in a skillet with some hot oil and continue to cook until a little browned. Toss in ramps, season with salt and pepper, and sauté until wilted.
2. Add rice and fry until warm. Crack the egg into the pot and mix with the rice until scrambled.

Where to eat in Stamford: Colony Grill

You know it was bound to happen, right? A month into my new job in Connecticut (yes, that Connecticut), I’ve had several chances to hitch rides with co-workers and try a few places for lunch. Since I don’t know how to drive, I’m at the mercy of those with cars and I go wherever they want to go. It’s been really nice to treat lunch time like a new food adventure because I never know what I’m going to get. Some of the places we’ve been to were meh, but a couple have been really decent.

Now I’ve never really been a big fan of pizza. I think it’s because pizza reminds me of college and college reminds me of how poor I was. On a student budget, I ate poorly. As soon as I started to make money, I swore to myself that I was never going to go back to eating bad food again. “Bad” here, of course, is both in taste and in nutritional content, and pizza usually qualifies for both. I like my Otto and I like my John’s on Carmine just like anyone else, but never again will I “get a slice” because it’s 1am and I’m stumbling home from a bar–Han Bat in Koreatown is open 24 hours and I can get a better hungover meal there–and never again will I think pizza is “good because it’s cheap”–I can still get a plate of pork chops with rice under $5 from Chinatown.

But go ahead and convince me otherwise. Let me know where you get your pizza and I’ll give it a shot–my boss did. He drove a couple of us from work during lunch to the notorious Colony Grill in Stamford, Connecticut. He wanted to prove to me that Colony’s pizza isn’t just regular pizza; it’s its own beast. He talked up the hot oil so much, I also got excited about it. I ended up liking the dive bar feel of the place and it seemed like the waitress knew every customer by name.

We must have waited 45 minutes for three single pies and we were starving by the time they were served. I inhaled my sausage pie with stingers, or hot peppers, on the side without blinking an eye. The hot oil was not exactly spicy, but it made even the pepperoni better; the vegetable pizza was definitely better with it. I was speechless on the drive back to work and I was comatose the rest of the afternoon in my cubicle. College days be damned; Colony has some good pizza. I better watch out before I need to seek for a binge eating disorders treatment.

Colony Grill is at 173 Myrtle Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut. You can call 203/359.2184 ahead to order but you’d still have to pick your pie up.

Related post/s:
Otto pizza is thin and crusty