Nagasaki Rice

A very close friend from Portland sent them over - and it is a yearly gift - a bag of short grain rice from her family's ancestral farm in Japan, and I cooked them right away. I made a dish inspired by an uni bowl appetizer I had from Mu Ramen shop, a new restaurant in Long Island City which has received reviews to high acclaim. My rice had toasted seaweeds like Mu's, but unlike it had salmon eggs (instead of uni) and sweet-salty homemade tamago omelet (instead of tuna tartare), and for freshness mixed in tricolor cherry tomatoes halved, and fresh lettuce and raw Brussel sprouts, their outer soft leaves. It's almost like a Korean bibimbap, right? (Except the gumption of kimchi.) Mine came from dressing the salmon roe in a quick marinade of Todaro mustard, carrot juice chili oil and pepper flakes! Mu's bowl, what's artful about it is, it doesn't try to impress. It's deeply, unadulterated good. The uni rice bowl with salmon roe and wasabi and tuna alioili  - a taste of distinction each a whole ensemble! And that's what I tried to achieve. Thanks, Shizu (my friend from Portland), I cooked my Nagasaki rice with your whole farm in mind - all the colors of her fruits, all the joy of home! 

Read more »

HOME OF THE "BRIVE"

I am dedicating this blog to a town in central France, Brive-la-Gaillarde, the "strong" land of the foie gras (and my favorite condiment, the violet mustard), and the macarons home baked not "designed," sold during open market days. We had stayed in Brive over the holidays, and the fillings and the condiment inside this sandwich I made this morning were all parting gifts from our hosts there - the most hospitable people on earth! - where from the moment we stepped in their door potatoes cooking in duck fat permeated the kitchen; welcome wines never ever sold outside Brive flowed like honey; and wheels of cheese slowed the pace of our hearts for their goodness' sake. Brive is a "state of (food) mind." I remember a dinner conversation with our hosts - about cuisines of the world - and appreciated the argument made that, except for French and Italian food, the world's other flavors and cooking techniques were "good," but were not "FOOD." To explain what this meant, I have to digress and talk about the first salad I was served that time, simply with arugula and onions, yet dressed with olive oil infused with pistils of an African orchid. The combination of vanilla essence in olive oil essence was so distinct a taste it seemed to me a deliberate meditation on food-making/alchemy. And that's when I got the meaning of the "proverbial" argument. That FOOD, especially French, was not for eating, but for the visceral surprise pleasure to the appetite and mouth; that it didn't undergo cooking but acting; not served but performed; definitely not black and white, but noir. And I wasn't in a fancy restaurant to understand it. I was at the home of the brive. Therefore the sandwich I made, in this New York - terrine, mustard, vanilla oil - is a classic!   

Read more »

LOVING RACHEL KHOO

Ms. Khoo is a beautiful, young British celebrity chef living in Paris (she is part-Asian and part-Gaia, the mythological Greek goddess of earth's harvest and floral elements). Having spent the holidays there and returning to New York feeling post-vacation blues, watching her show my first night back, her cooking this dish - a salmon roe benedict made with crème fraîche hollandaise dill served with toasted baguette cut into strips and buttered on the side - I was infatuated again, with Paris-with her-food. (I hear that she has gathered an adoring fan base in Paris because of how effortless her style is around the kitchen, artistically precise, simple but evocative, imagining a caviar for breakfast.) I did exactly as she mused: the crème, nutmeg powder, the egg, the roe, the dill, salt and pepper - and baking it in a water bath 3/4 the height of the ramekin like making flan, but its resulting flavor has layers of salt of beluga and quiche without the crust. The bread is not the regaled crust but the spoon. And this is a very sexy French table manner using it to sop up the plate clean of sauce. So, I got rid of the demitasse spoon and remembered the bread, breaking a piece and sopping up an exquisite late lunch meal at one of the 11th arr. bistros, like Chez Mamy and Le Paul Bert. For woe, I deliciously left my heart in Paris! And wished had stayed, with her-food.         

Read more »

Foodnote: Septime (in Paris, 11th arr.)

Let's fast forward the greatness of this restaurant to the end: clementine a la mode (sprinkled with fennel seeds) on a bed of yogurt and olive oil boat. That it is a dessert is a miracle, let alone scooping it like seven fruits in one on seven seas. The invigoration of a "sailing sweetness" taste is the sexiest attribute of this food invention. And appropriately so for this New Year's Eve. The ice cream was the best "gin and tonic" of my life, with notes of lime twist and juniper berries blending their freshness together, and the timing of their sweetness slow like a blue morning melting in the ice from the sun through the restaurant's garden window like an edge of a kiss. The great poet Neruda is love's bard because he prepared a table for her, like this that you see, with bass tartare seasoned in tarragon leaves, grapefruit dices, breadcrumbs and eyes of roes assembled apothecaries. Powdered parsley the make up on oyster soup. Truffle chips on grilled crosses of Jerusalem artichokes. Urchin glaze and salted ferns on amulet scallops. And the cognac streamed the game with a hand of dandelions and disorienting endives, falling pomegranates, falling in love. Yes, I am writing a review of this restaurant. Yes, this is the poem. 

Read more »