A PERFECT MARRIAGE

Chestnut-Clementine Soup

and  Chard-Red Potato Salad




I was going to make chestnut jam, yet in the process ended up with soup. It was an unexpected delight. (Just for the record: it wasn't a misstep that happened. I know roasted chestnuts aren't fruits or berries, yet I treated them like they were and added a little lemon juice for pectin and peeled clementine segments for juice and pureed them together in the blender, adding milk and heavy cream and water for liquefaction. I buttered a saucepan under low heat and stirred in constantly the mixture for 20 minutes or so - yet it's not thickening. I added cornstarch - and this ingredient changed the game altogether.)

Adding rock salt and vegetable stock and stirring, stirring made my jam chowdery, and I tasted and it was good, had a rawness to it yet balance that coated well. She will be a soup, I declared. (Remarkably the chestnuts and clementines married well, almost like tasting a prosciutto with cantaloupe hors d'oeuvre that you don't finish off with wine.) But some elemental flavor was missing to crown a "garland of love" to the two: sage. So what I did was, as soon as the soup was cooked, before turning the stove off and serving, I took a sprig of sage and used it to stir the soup as to "tie" the chestnut and the clementine together as one with the birds and the bees - and anointed the couple with virgin oil.

Speaking of birds and bees, why not invite chard and red potato over to the bounty - it's a Mediterranean autumn wedding after all!

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Postcard Thanksgiving

Folded away in the memory of nature ...

Memories beset his brooding brain..

Glass of water from the kitchen tap .. approached the sacrament ...

A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting at the hob on a dark autumn evening..

~ James Joyce

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'Twas the Week Before Thanksgiving...

when all through the house, baked ribbon pasta with garlic-crisped potatoes over delves of cheese, French beans and mushrooms permeated, and not a single candlelight flickered. The night hung very cold but cozy - taking the mac and cheese out from the aromatic oven - putting immediately in the green apple and comice pear crumble pie to bake - in the woods, winter's chimney is releasing the sweet myrrh and frankincense olfactory in nature's whiffs - and this holiday food and pie cream filled my heart. The kick in the pasta was the added fresh spiciness of the tomato salsa, gathering waves of cheddar-grana padano-ricotta-tuma persa.

The pie's thin crust crumbled to cobbler the filling, broke the rim like peanut brittles and impaled them there, and the stiff foam of whipped cream like a vanilla sundae with nutmeg waited to melt with me. I don't anticipate Thanksgiving next week any better and decadent as this night, 25 degrees bitter cold outside, but warm, such warm comfort and beauty and smell in my stomach cutting lemon juice in the apples and pears and allspice and brown sugar and cinnamon and salt and orange liqueur and milk and charred bread and onion caramels. Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good night.                 

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Quinoa Bread Huevos Rancheros

Cut a thick slab of bread - inch and a half, butter on, then spread irregular slices of Camembert on top, drizzle hot chili oil lightly, fresh-ground black peppers - bake at 375 until cheese is melted and dripping crispy pools on the sheet (about 15 minutes).

Meanwhile, heat homemade salsa in an iron skillet with a little vegetable stock, crack three fresh eggs over the ragu, drizzle olive oil around, salt and pepper the eggs, dollop some ricotta, more black pepper - then cover with foil and let simmer-steam under low heat for as long as the bread's baking. (I had left leftover samosa from the Indian food truck domiciled in Washington Square park - the best in town! - and I actually added chucks of it in my rancheros for increased flavor heft and breadth; it was filled with curried potatoes and peas with a kicker green cilantro sambal!)

The result is this:

The ultimate meal meeting East and West, south of the border! I love complex stews on hardy bread that absorbs yet bounces back the richness of the amalgamate food. And it's not even a fusion dish but a holism: a green breakfast, a pasture breakfast, a French breakfast, my breakfast. 

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Foodnote: Arcade Bakery, TriBeCa

Croissant: crunchy, chewy from the outside in, stable flakiness, buttery and yeasty at the same time, not greasy, not a hollow bread, but just right, yet a balance taste that tilts to a flavor being sopped on a dinner plate, still the yeast comes out again, reminding you of coffee and wintery breakfast is at hand.

The bakery's wood awning juts out to open its two windows and glass cases of pastries and bread, through a hallway of an old building with cathedral-like ceiling. The few bar tables have been gutted in the walls framing a wood-paneled bay where you can sit and eat, but the reminder of this experience is a mission church view from a bell tower at sunset - because of the museum-like light. 

I had taken home a quinoa round bread baked beautiful like a cappuccino cup designing the surface with a foliage cream. A friend had given me a homemade salsa verde and I'm thinking toasting the quinoa like grilled cheese and making a huevos rancheros to put on top and smother the salsa. I will do it this Sunday while reading the morning paper. And while I'm at it, make a Mexican coffee with cinnamon and with cardamom. 

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