Last week, when I was suffering from writer’s block, or cook’s block, or whatever it was that was keeping me from coming up with a menu for that week, I asked friends on Facebook what their “OMG” moment was with food. What was their eye-opening food experience that changed how they thought about dining, eating, and cooking?
Their answers – and there were many – ranged from state fair corn dogs to the first taste of sashimi in Tokyo; from dinners at three-star Michelin classics to KFC’s notorious artery hardening Double Down; cream puffs in moms’ kitchen, and French food in Hong Kong.
The thoughts I was mulling and turning about in my mind were twofold.
First, what were my moments? I can think of a few, some of which I’ve even mentioned before. Meals and experiences that combined taste and place and moments in time: Fish and chips on a dock in Northern Ontario, sushi at Ebisu on one of my first nights in San Francisco, clam chowder and hot coffee on the steps of Faneuil Hall on a rainy St. Patrick’s Day afternoon, a crackling bite of a still slightly warm baguette ancienne from a boulangerie on St. Honoré in Paris as I walked back to our rented flat in the 1er.
And, second, what were the dishes that stuck with me years later? The dish where the first bite, or the taste experience changed how I thought about an ingredient, a cuisine, or just food in general.
I was asking myself and my friends: “What are the best things?”
Roasted Dates with Mascarpone
Ten years ago, Washington DC’s Komi was one of those places where it was nearly impossible to get a reservation. The dining room was so tiny, the food so well thought of, that you had to call exactly a noon, exactly a month before your preferred reservation – and even then, you were playing the lottery – hoping you were the caller that got through. I got lucky when a visiting friends wanted to go and landed a reservation.
When we were finally seated in the tiny almost austere dining room, there were no choices to make. Course after course after course of amazing snacks, small bites, shared dishes, and lovely breads and desserts flowed from the kitchen at a perfectly comfortable pace. The experience was wonderful, the food phenomenal. It was a truly great meal.
But it was the very first, and possibly simplest dish they served that’s stuck with me for all these years. A single simple date, roasted, filled with mascarpone and scattered with crunchy delicate flakes of sea salt. A single bite of surprise. It was sweet, salty, earthy, creamy, everything all at once.
Serves 4
8 pitted Medjool dates
4 tbsp mascarpone cheese
1 tsp Maldon or other large flake finishing salt
1 tsp olive oil
Preheat your oven to 325°F.
Coat the dates in oil.
Arrange the dates on a tray and roast for 5 minutes, or until just warmed through.
Allow to cool slightly.
Use a piping bag or zip top plastic bag with a corner cut off to fill each date with cheese.
Arrange on plates and top with finishing salt.
Red Bacon Blue
If you’re a regular reader, you know I like fancy food. I rant about great restaurants and international cuisines and … yeah, I’m a food snob. That’s why friends are always surprised that my favorite restaurant in town isn’t a fine dining place or even one of the Columbus’s unusual international restaurants (no, really, from now famous Tibetan/Nepalese dumplings to amazing Somali and other East African restaurants, there is great stuff here).
It’s the neighborhood outlet of a (mostly) local chicken wing chain.
The thing that makes a restaurant great isn’t reaching for the stars. It’s picking what you do and doing it well. Sometimes that’s being super innovative. Sometimes that’s having perfect service. Sometimes, maybe most often, it’s simply being exactly what you want, need, and expect every single time.
In 2006, I was in Columbus for a job. I lived in Cleveland at the time and, as such, spent a lot of time sleeping on the foldout bed in my office, in a spare bedroom at my parents or at friends, or in hotels scattered around the district. I ate out a lot. I mean, at least 2 meals a day, if not four. One of the staff favorites – a few blocks from the office – was Rooster’s, the aforementioned chicken wing joint. At some point, a friend I was dining with ordered a salad – something I generally wouldn’t have done there. It was crispy lettuce, sliced red onion, bacon, and blue cheese dressed with a sweet and sour red wine vinaigrette and it was good. Like really good. From then on, I ordered it on almost every visit. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t order it in place of chicken wings or loaded fries – I ordered it in addition to those wonderfully greasy, spicy, perfect items.
When I moved back to Columbus a decade later, we ended up just a couple blocks from that same Roosters. The salad recipe has changed – leaf lettuce replacing what I remember as either romaine or iceberg. I don’t order it anymore (now we almost always order a wedge salad, very much like the one in last week’s newsletter).
This is my attempt to recreate that salad experience – not that salad per se – but the balance of crunch, sweet and sour dressing, almost spicy red onion, bacon, and blue cheese. I use Frisee because – well, I love frisee. You can use iceberg, copped romaine, or ever the spring mix I was maligning above.
Serves 4 as a salad course
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tsp granulated sugar
1 tsp cold water
1 tsp ketchup
½ tsp kosher salt
½ tsp prepared Dijon mustard
½ tsp fresh ground black pepper
3 tbsp neutral oil
4 pieces thick sliced bacon, cut into small pieces and fried
½ medium red onion
2 tomatoes
4 tbsp crumbled blue cheese
3 cups loosely packed frisee lettuce
Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic.
Combine the garlic, salt, sugar, and red wine vinegar in a non-reactive bowl and allow to rest five minutes.
Add the water, ketchup, mustard and pepper.
Whisk in the oil to form an emulsion
Toss with remaining ingredients and serve immediately.
Spaghetti Chitarra with Curry Cream and Fried Oysters
I was eighteen years old the first time I visited anything resembling a fine dining establishment in any context other than a large, semi-catered event. It was my Senior Prom. I’d made a reservation for my date and myself at Rigsby’s – Kent Rigsby’s eponymous modern Italian restaurant in Columbus, Ohio’s Short North neighborhood. At the time, it was only six years old, but had already garnered a reputation as one of the city’s best restaurants. It was unlike anything else Columbus had seen at that time: an open kitchen, offerings that weren’t a variation on meat and three, red sauce Italian or hotel-style white tablecloth. It felt contemporary, fancy.
I was terrified. I had no idea what or how to order. I had a couple hundred dollars in my pocket – money I’d made delivering newspapers. I knew good food wasn’t cheap – but plates with price tags north of $20 seemed staggeringly expensive. Regardless, I was determined to do the whole prom thing right. I have no recollection what my date ordered, but I was fascinated by one dish on the menu, a handmade pasta dressed with what I remember as a curry cream, and topped with lightly fried oysters. Both the oysters and the curry seemed unbelievably exotic – and the fact that I still remember the dish says that in some way it was.
I didn’t return to Rigby’s for nearly 14 years, but ate there regularly when working in Columbus in 2006 and 2008. They closed in 2015 – a great loss to the food scene here.
This isn’t Rigsby’s recipe. For all I know, it bears no resemblance to what I ate that late May evening in 1992. This is how I’ve tried to recreate when I remember. It is intentionally dated. I even threw some tomato “confetti” on the plate to really capture that late 80s early 90s feel. But it’s still damned good.
Serves 4 as a pasta course
Fresh Pasta
2 cups bread flour
3 large eggs
1 tbsp cold water +/-
Add eggs, flour and salt to the container of a food processor and pulse until well mixed – adding small amounts of water as necessary.
Turn the processor on to “knead” the dough.
Remove the dough and shape into a disk, wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Use a pasta roller to roll out the dough and cut using a chitarra or the pasta roller’s spaghetti cutter.
Boil for 2 minutes in heavily salted water, then dress with curry cream (below) and top with fried oysters (below).
Curry Cream Sauce
2 cups heavy cream
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp kosher salt
4 egg yolks
Salt and pepper to taste
Peel, trim, and microplane or crush the garlic.
Add the garlic, heavy cream, and curry powder to a thick bottomed pan and bring to a low simmer.
Whisk the egg yolks, and carefully pour a stream of warm cream into the yolks, whisking the whole time, to temper the yolks. Add about ½ the cream mixture.
Reverse the process and return the egg/cream mixture to the pan.
Slowly heat the mixture until thick enough to cover the back of a spoon. Do not allow to boil.
Season with salt and pepper and use to dress freshly boiled pasta.
Fired Oysters
8 oysters, shucked
1 egg
½ cup AP flour
1 cup breadcrumbs
Oil for frying
Place the flour, egg, and breadcrumbs in separate bowls.
Beat the egg well, adding a little water if necessary.
Working one at a time dip the shucked oyster into the flour.
Dip the floured oyster into the egg.
Dip the egg covered oyster into the breadcrumbs.
Quickly fry at 375°F until browned.
Remove to drain on a paper towel.
Not Veal Chop with Brandy Sauce
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about a dish from Capitol Hill’s Aqua Al 2. The DC outpost of a Florentine restaurant was a neighborhood standout when we lived there, and a go-to for small celebrations. It felt cozy, a small collection for rambling rooms and corridors, the walls decorated with plates signed by well-wishers – mostly well-known members of congress and other “famous for DC” celebrities. I the past I’ve written about their fennel salad, and about a dish of tomato braised radicchio that I’d order almost every visit. There was another “nearly every time” item: a veal chop with a brandy and green peppercorn sauce. Normally we’d share because the dish was so rich it was almost too much for just one.
In the time since we’ve moved away, the pandemic has closed Aqua al 2 (though I’m informed they’re moving to a new location) and I’ve struggled to replicate the dish at home. First, it’s difficult to source veal (not everyone eats it) so I’ve often used thick cut pork chops. Also, it’s surprisingly difficult to find green peppercorns (you can order them from Amazon) leading me to use capers in a lot of the experiments. It’s not the same, but it still works.
This isn’t the veal chop we so fondly remember, but perhaps a nod to it.
2 16-24 oz bone-in center cut pork chops
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp black pepper corns2 sprigs thyme
Make a brine by mixing salt, sugar, black peppercorns and thyme in a container with enough cold water to cover the chops.
Allow the chops to brine for at least 2 hours, and up to 24 hrs.
Preheat your oven to 300°F.
Remove from the brine, pat dry, and sear in a hot pan.
Transfer the chops to the oven and cook until the internal temperature reaches 160°F. The time will vary based on the thickness of the chop.
Remove from the oven and allow to rest 5 minutes, slice, and top with brandy/green peppercorn sauce (below)
Brandy Peppercorn Sauce
1 medium shallot
1 tbsp butter
1 sprig thyme
1 tbsp capers or green peppercorns, drained
½ cup chicken stock
2 oz heavy cream
2 oz brandy or cognac
½ tsp ground black pepper
Peel, trim, and slice the shallot.
Add the butter, shallot, and thyme to a sauté pan and cook over medium heat until the shallots just begin to brown.
Add the brandy and cook until the alcohol smell has dissipated.
Add the chicken stock and cream and cook until reduced by half.
Strain the liquid and discard the solids. Return the liquid to the pan.
Add the peppercorns or capers, season with black pepper, and serve immediately.
Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Unlike the other dishes in today’s treatise, I don’t remember the first time I had salted caramel ice cream – at least not precisely. I do remember where. It was definitely at Columbus’s historic North Market where Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams started. I just don’t remember if it was in the late 90s when Jeni Britton Bauer opened her first stall in the market or later when she started re-opened with what has since grown into a national chain.
Either way it was a revelation. I think when it comes to dessert, a lot of people are divided into two camps. There’s the chocolate camp – where anything chocolate is the right answer, and the more chocolate in the chocolate the better. Then there’s the caramel camp. Caramel partisans like maple, vanilla, and of course variations on burnt sugar – caramel. I’m strongly in the caramel camp. But this wasn’t the sickly-sweet artificial flavor I knew as a kid. It wasn’t the butterscotch or caramel sauce from the gingham topped jar that was drizzled over a slapdash Ice Cream Sundae. This was sweet, salty, a lingering hint of brilliant bitterness to balance it all.
Now you can find a Jeni’s in cities all over the country, but there’s still a tiny window a few blocks from our house. If they have it, I have no choice but to order the Salty Carmel.
This isn’t Jeni’s recipe – their recipe and style doesn’t use eggs – but this does make a rich, smooth ice cream with a pronounced salted caramel flavor.
1 cups sugar, divided
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
3 large eggs
Add ¾ cup of granulated sugar to a pan over medium heat. Cook until the sugar is melted and a deep amber color.
Warm the cream in the microwave.
Add the warm cream to the melted sugar. It will boil and spatter.
Reduce the heat and cook until the sugar is dissolved.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
Add the milk and the remaining ¼ cup of sugar to a thick bottomed pan over low heat and bring to a simmer.
Whisk the eggs in a heatproof bowl, slowly pour about ½ the milk into the eggs while whisking vigorously to temper the eggs.
Reverse the procedure and slowly add the tempered egg mixture back to the milk while whisking.
Slowly cook the custard mixture until it reaches 170° F.
Add the caramel mixture, salt, and vanilla.
Chill the mixture, then prepare in an ice cream machine according to the machine’s instructions.