Friday Night Tomato Sauce

(The Virgin and the Whore)

There is something so voluptuous about August-ripe tomatoes, pan-simmered in olive oil and lots of garlic. Lacking basil, I cast around for other ingredients, and found the makings of a puttanesca sauce: olives, capers, and green chili pepper, everything except for the anchovies. I have always been ambivalent about puttanesca. The reality is, the combination of all these strong flavors can be sort of acrid, not a good counterpoint to the fresh sweetness that could otherwise be mine. This time, I decided to respect my ambivalence, and add only small amounts of each. The result: tomato, garlic and olive oil predominated in their summer freshness. The other ingredients: only to titillate.

Inspired by Mark Bittman

The Minimalist Meets His Her Match

Mark Bittman is a hero of mine. Many of my most successful meals can be traced back to his Minimalist column, and my recipe collection is stacked with cuttings from it. People say that I am a great cook, but really what I am good at is spotting great ideas, and The Minimalist is a font of those. My attraction for this style is not so much the ease of preparation, as much as his innovative attention to the pairing of complementary flavors, so that, using a minimum of ingredients, he can create a dish of understated elegance.

Chris has a different approach to cooking. In her eyes, I like to tease her, Mark Bittman is the Antichrist. This is because I have never met more of a “more is more” foodie than Chris. It’s as if she views ingredients as having a multiplier effect on taste, while I am trying to balance an equation. For example, presented with home canned pears, Chris will marinate them in apple juice with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, throw in some apple jack brandy for good measure, then grill them and drizzle with the canning fluid that has been reduced with extra orange zest and a bit of milk to make it creamy. All of this will be served over a cinnamon crumpet. (For more about this creation, and about Chris’ approach to food, see Brian Blaho’s brilliant rendition in his story Pills). But for minimalists like me, this plethora, even redundancy, of ingredients is a bit overwhelming. How can you ever find those delicious pears that are submerged in there somewhere? It’s like with bagels and lox. If I am getting a bagel and lox with the works, no way am I going to get it on an everything bagel. “The works” and the “everything” compete too much against each other. Chris, on the other hand, would not dream of getting anything else.

This basic difference between us is reflected in the way we have furnished our respective homes, too. Mine has clean lines, each piece chosen with care and arranged in a way that each gives the other lots of space to be itself. I have only the number of glasses, plates, and silverware I need, and they are respectively: clear, black and white, or grey. Chris is a collector. An eclectic collector. Her house is filled with furniture, ornaments, and kitchen gadgets that she has amassed, all rubbing up against each other. She has a collection of glasses that range from antique ruby red goblets she inherited from her Italian grandmother to brightly colored perspex tumblers found on sale at Target. Somehow it all makes sense in her space, and I feel at peace being there, as she finds relief in mine. At the same time we sort of marvel at each other’s insanity.

Where we have common ground is in grilling. Chris loves to grill, and this preparation lends itself to the simple seasonings and spices that I favor. Here is a recent menu I put together, with me seasoning and Chris executing:

 Corn grilled directly on the flame, topped with olive oil, salt, and torn basil leaves. This was inspired by The Minimalist’s July 28 column. In his version, Bittman calls for parmesan cheese as well as the olive oil and basil, but I left this out and added salt instead. It turns out corn and basil work fantastically together, and I will be forever grateful to The Minimalist for this one.

Porterhouse steaks, seasoned with “Something South African” Sweet and Smoky spice rub. Chris discovered this rub at Marshall’s, and while I am generally suspicious of store- bought spice blends, in this case I can vouch for its authenticity: it is the closest that I have found to replicating the flavor of the South African braais of my childhood. If you can’t find it, you can always make up a batch yourself, using sea salt, garlic, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, cumin, ginger, garlic oil, chili, and sugar, and use wood chips in your fire. We would always make some version of this from scratch when I was growing up, braaing over wood fires.

No frills grilled asparagus

Bellingham Cabernet Sauvignon The hearty porterhouse, particularly in this zesty version, calls for a big wine. I paired it with the Bellingham, a South African wine which is not widely imported, but which I stumbled on at Libbie Market (formerly Joe’s Market) in Richmond, VA. If anyone knows of a DC source for this, please let me know!

Ciao Bella Key Lime Graham gelato. Truly, Ciao Bella gelatos render me speechless, and this flavor was no exception.

For the occasion, Chris brought out her gold and white Plaza plates with a big P in the middle that she picked up at the hotel’s fire sale, and her silver pedestal ice cream dishes from eBay.




This post is dedicated to Dr. Joseph Svoboda, Chris’ dad, who passed away a few days before we had this meal. Brian talks about him in his story too.

Nando's Peri Peri

Dish to Die For: peri-peri chicken; Adega white wine

I love Nando’s. It almost seems superfluous to blog about it, because just about everyone I know already loves the place. And pretty much the only thing they serve is flame grilled chicken, so it’s not like I can pick out that one thing that they do so well. But eating at Nando’s is always a peak moment for me, and so it deserves a place in my small piece of cyber real estate.

Walking into the place is a happy experience. World music is swirling around, vaguely connecting diners to the Afro-European roots of the peri peri chili pepper. The mood in each of the locations is a bit different: busy and bustling downtown; a bit more off-beat in Dupont, with just a few wide rough wooden tables in front and some booths crammed in at the back between the counter and the wall. Still, although it is pleasing to walk in to, once I am settled down with my meal, all of that fades away, both the sound and the décor. It’s as if my focus on the chicken takes up all my sensory capacity. Losing track of everything else, I become one with the complex of flavors, all the way down to the bone. I like to get the ½ chicken with two sides ($11.85). Usually I get cole slaw, and then, depending on how uptight I am feeling about calories, either the baked squash or the fries. These accompaniments are themselves very good. But it is the chicken that is sublime. Spiced to the temperature you like (mild, medium or hot), it is fiery, sweet, and wood-smoky, all at the same time. The marinade has penetrated deep inside the chicken, and there is really no need to use the extra sauce that is available over by the silverware (which you have to pick up yourself, after you place your order at the counter). Sometimes I even feel that the extra sauce takes away from the dish, masking its perfectness. On the other hand, if you want to heighten the experience, try pairing it with the Adega, a Portuguese white wine whose fruity dryness contrasts beautifully with the fiery chicken (it’s second on the list of white wines). Bliss!


Central Asia Farewell


Surprisingly for a no-frills place, the Dupont location has a second floor loft which is quite suitable for hosting dinners. The room to the right of the staircase has a private feel to it, with low lighting, wine-racks lining the walls, and wooden ceiling beams. Once, looking to stretch a lean non-profit budget, I organized a farewell dinner there for a group visiting from Central Asia. Just a few days before, I had hosted the welcome dinner at my home. I had prepared my acclaimed 4 bean chili (kidney, cannellini, garbanzo and black bean), simmered in a pint of guinness, and rounded out by a square of chocolate. For toppings I had lime-marinated avocado, cilantro, pitted black olives, and freshly grated cheddar cheese. The dish had worked famously for my non-meat eating Indian colleagues, and I opted for it again given that I had to consider my vegetarian boss, who had also been invited. Big mistake. What for me had seemed an exciting spin on an American classic, for my visitors was merely rice and beans: meatless, and therefore, mundane. Nando’s, then, was my chance to make up for this. I ordered two jumbo platters of chicken and an assortment of sides, and they arrived piled high and sumptuous looking. I sensed a silent cheer go up. Or perhaps it was me, cheering myself for getting back on the right path. We ate; we drank; we made toasts. At the end of the evening, it was gratifying when Nikolai Lukyanov, the elder statesman of the group, asked for a doggy bag to take home the remaining pieces, even after eating his fill. High praise from a meat-loving Kyrgyz.

Ebony and Ivory: The Keys to Exceptional Service

ZOLA

800 F Street NW
Washington D.C.

www.zoladc.com

To die for: service; "The Zola" cocktail

Two napkins, one black and one cream, lay folded side by side on the table. To be honest, I hadn’t really noticed them when I took my seat. Not until the waiter approached, eyed my black linen pants, and flicked the cream one away. “I wouldn’t want you to get white lint on your black pants”, he explained. Frivolous, you say? Absolutely. Decadent? Uh-huh. But how seductive! I tilted my head back towards him, my lips parted. He had my attention.

Going on, our waiter explained the specials. The potato soup, he said, was made with a meatless stock. I shot a glance across the table at Pam, my vegetarian dining companion. Her question had been anticipated. This was getting interesting. What would be next? I asked him if he could suggest a wine by the glass to go with my meal. He nodded and disappeared. When he returned, he was not bearing a glass of wine, but rather two bottles, and two empty glasses: an unbidden tasting.  

For all this, Zola is not a snooty place. In a more ritzy establishment, these gestures may have had a distancing, even intimidating, effect. Here they felt inviting. On the other hand, Zola provides a more civilized alternative to the high-decibel, high-density hot spots in Penn Quarter. For me, it struck just the right note.

Cosmos for Butches

Of the things I actually ingested at Zola, my favorite was the eponymous “Zola”, a specialty cocktail made with Russian Standard Vodka, white cranberry juice, cointreau and fresh limes. In effect, it was a white cosmopolitan, translucent and more austere looking than its girly pink cousin. It came in a martini glass with a cluster of red cranberries heaped at the bottom, magnified slightly in their clear bath. True, the effect was a bit shy of the smack down an actual Russian Standard martini would have produced (look for that at Russia House), but notable nonetheless. 

Photocredit: Dave Pearson

 

Dino: Wild About The Boar

Dish to die for: prosciutto

I was excited about Dino from the beginning. It had an enticing menu, which my friend Tali forwarded to me. Tali herself raved about the food. And on weekdays, it was byob, which it charmingly called “free corkage”, old world style. So I was enthusiastic, even though Tali wanted to get there in time for the prix fixe menu, of which I am not a fan.

By the time I arrived, Tali and our friend Jen had already secured an outdoor table. In late June, DC was in the throes of one of its suffocatingly hot spells, but on this particular night we had a reprieve.And although it was just a few minutes before 7, it turned out that Dino was offering the prix fixe all night long, so the pressure to order fast was off. I had selected a 2008 Petit Verdot from Blenheim Vineyards in Virginia wine country to bring along. My delight over that wine – worth a post of its own -- had prompted Chris to order me a case for my birthday, and I was eager to share. We three scanned the menu. Having a head start on me, Tali and Jen were ready with their antipasto choices, which they proposed sharing. HMMM….all of their choices were fried. We negotiated. I agreed to the fried squash blossoms, somehow a caprese salad got into the mix, but what I was really pushing for was the platter of house duck liver spread, wild boar pate, wild boar prosciutto, and house pickle.

Tali frowned. “The boar would be adventurous for me,” she proferred. What?! This from the woman who glibly ordered steak tartare one of the first times we dined together? Who rattled off the exotic dishes associated with any country you could throw at her, including guinea pig in Ecuador? “I never actually ate the guinea pig,” she confessed. “I just know it is a national delicacy”. Oh. I stared at her hard. I guess my silent appeal to her inner foodie must have worked, because she relented, and we agreed on the boar platter as the third dish.
You can blame it on the Petit Verdot if you like, but I actually swooned over three dishes at this meal. Okay, really only one, but the other two were such close contenders that I happily include them as well. First off, the squash blossoms -- fiori di zucca – were truly amazing. Because we were splitting it three ways, I got only a scant taste of them, but I would certainly go back for more. What really sent me over the top was the boar prosciutto. Oh my. Somehow it was even better than what I had sampled in Florence. Who would think that the boar – a seemingly tough old beast – would be the source of melt in your mouth tender meat, at once salty and sweet? Wild eyed – since again there was not enough to be had from my one third share – I started madly looking around for someone to appeal to for more. At any cost! In my peripheral vision, I saw Tali clawing with her fork to prise the last morsel from its piece of attendent fat.

The waiter nodded knowingly. “I will try”, he said, when he heard that we wanted another order of the boar prosciutto alone, without the rest of the platter. “But the chef covets that prosciutto; it does not come in large quantities”. I hoped against hope that the chef would indulge me. After what seemed like a long time, the waiter returned, with a large platter of the regular prosciutto. Seeing my disappointment, Jen -- who did want to indulge me -- began to intervene on my behalf, explaining that this was not what we had in mind. I stayed her hand. “Let’s just try this”, I said. So we did. And actually, this was not “regular” prosciutto at all, but something quite extraordinary. According to Dino, it is made by the Tosini family, and is hand salted and aged a full 500 days. Hence the name: Pio Tosini 500 Giorni Prosciutto di Parma Crudo. Its tangy flavor had undertones of watercress, and I wondered what the live boar had been eating, prior to its careful curing.

After the entrees and dessert, I still wanted to linger, and decided to finish things off with a glass of grappa – a $5 add on to the prix fixe. It was a happy walk back to Adams Morgan.

June 30, 2010