A number of friends around DC had told me that I ought to visit a specific restaurant in Vienna, Virginia - it had a good, inexpensive, French country lunch menu, they said. So I went, and was completely taken aback when the first course salad arrived - a few leaves of iceberg lettuce, topped with a couple of grated carrots and what seemed an awful lot like a sauce that had once seen the inside of a bottle.
There's plainly no sense in which my reaction to this salad was simply a matter of taste. Iceberg lettuce in a restaurant pretending to French country cuisine is objectively wrong, whatever someone like the often confused James Beard might have had to say. Nonetheless, my instinct in the restaurant was to say nothing. If they can't be bothered to notice that they just served an actual customer iceberg lettuce with insipid dressing, to me it makes no sense to help them realize their mistake
My dining companion, on the other hand, was pretty irate - they're taking their customers for idiots, she said. You can't let them just hand out iceberg lettuce salads with no consequences. You and I know this is wrong - we should take them to task. And, she added, we should specifically take them to task the more expensive the restaurant gets. Sure, maybe you can let them escape at $14.95 for three courses as here, but cowards like you say nothing even when a $40 plate is objectively wrong. Why?
In the end, I did nothing, and the meal somewhat redeemed itself with a passable duck confit, though the accompanying potatoes had obviously been hanging around since the night before, and the dried plantain adorning the creme caramele (after I had ordered creme brulee anyway) ill placed. But I'm left wondering whether my approach is wrong. My sense is that if they want my advice, they're welcome to pay me, or suffer when an actual critic shows up and is served the same desultory nonsense. But maybe, and especially since this restaurant has survived unscathed for a while, people should speak out during dinner. I wonder - please email me with your opinions.
6/05/2005
Hell's Kitchen
Raffi Melkonian at 10:48 PM
I'm just watching Gordon Ramsay's restaurant reality show, Hell's Kitchen. The show began with each contestant being asked to prepare a "signature dish" in just 45 minutes for the chef. I was left wondering what I would do in that situation.
Obviously, my stews are out of the question. Roasts wouldn't work either, and my favorite spaghetti carbonara would collapse completely if left for even a minute or two. There's nothing so nasty as slowly congealing eggy pasta.
Frankly, my first idea would be to simply make Ramsay a fried egg, or scrambled eggs, or an omelet, the best way I know how. For the first, by cooking the egg slowly in butter, and then dripping warm butter over the still raw yolk, and then salting only the white to avoid disturbing the yolk's color. The second over a double boiler, with cream at the end. And the last by rolling the omelet around the pan in that way I've never been able to manage.
But he'd probably have thrown those back in my face for being too unambitious. So after thinking about it a bit more, I hit on risotto with morels - and was gratified to see the chef serve a similar dish in the first night of the restaurant's "opening" later in the show.
Of course, by then I would have run out of time to make the risotto properly. Sweating the vegetables at the beginning takes time, as does the rice itself.
Well, better them than me. The difficulty of satisfying a real chef, even one putting on a bit of an act like Ramsay is, is too much for me. I'll stick to what I'm actually good at.
Raffi Melkonian at 10:48 PM
I'm just watching Gordon Ramsay's restaurant reality show, Hell's Kitchen. The show began with each contestant being asked to prepare a "signature dish" in just 45 minutes for the chef. I was left wondering what I would do in that situation.
Obviously, my stews are out of the question. Roasts wouldn't work either, and my favorite spaghetti carbonara would collapse completely if left for even a minute or two. There's nothing so nasty as slowly congealing eggy pasta.
Frankly, my first idea would be to simply make Ramsay a fried egg, or scrambled eggs, or an omelet, the best way I know how. For the first, by cooking the egg slowly in butter, and then dripping warm butter over the still raw yolk, and then salting only the white to avoid disturbing the yolk's color. The second over a double boiler, with cream at the end. And the last by rolling the omelet around the pan in that way I've never been able to manage.
But he'd probably have thrown those back in my face for being too unambitious. So after thinking about it a bit more, I hit on risotto with morels - and was gratified to see the chef serve a similar dish in the first night of the restaurant's "opening" later in the show.
Of course, by then I would have run out of time to make the risotto properly. Sweating the vegetables at the beginning takes time, as does the rice itself.
Well, better them than me. The difficulty of satisfying a real chef, even one putting on a bit of an act like Ramsay is, is too much for me. I'll stick to what I'm actually good at.
French toast for dinner
Raffi Melkonian at 04:33 PM
In The Whole Duty of a Woman from 1737, I find the following recipe for French toast. The entire thing is good (though necessarily simple) - but the last sentence is best. Breakfast for dinner is great fun.
"Having two French Rolls, cut them in Slices as thick as your finger, Crumb and Crust together, lay them on a dish, put to them a Pint of Cream, and half a pint of milk, strew them over with beaten Cinnamon and Sugar, turn them frequently until they are tender; but take care not to break them, then take them from the cream, with a Slice, break four or five Eggs, turns your slices of bread in the Eggs, and fry them in clarified butter, make them of a good brown colour, not black; scrape a little Sugar on them.
They may be served as a second Course Dish; but fittest for Supper"
Raffi Melkonian at 04:33 PM
In The Whole Duty of a Woman from 1737, I find the following recipe for French toast. The entire thing is good (though necessarily simple) - but the last sentence is best. Breakfast for dinner is great fun.
"Having two French Rolls, cut them in Slices as thick as your finger, Crumb and Crust together, lay them on a dish, put to them a Pint of Cream, and half a pint of milk, strew them over with beaten Cinnamon and Sugar, turn them frequently until they are tender; but take care not to break them, then take them from the cream, with a Slice, break four or five Eggs, turns your slices of bread in the Eggs, and fry them in clarified butter, make them of a good brown colour, not black; scrape a little Sugar on them.
They may be served as a second Course Dish; but fittest for Supper"
A sticky problem
Raffi Melkonian at 08:39 PM
One of my friends in Paris has just finished his training as a boulanger - that is, a bread (rather than pastry) baker. For some really good reasons, he needs to get out of France, and we've been chatting about opportunities for him in the United States and in China.
But he's got a problem. As far as we can tell, no one has been able to duplicate the best Parisian bread baking abroad, despite herculean efforts. The most enthusiastic, like the excellent Bread Line of Washington D.C, have even tried importing their ingredients and ovens from France to close the gap - and yet, they still fall short.
Neither of us have any real idea why this is so. The best guess we've come up with is something about the water, which obviously can't be shipped from the motherland. But just yesterday, in the midst of some other research in the extraordinary culinary history collection at Harvard's Schlesinger Library, I ran into this excerpt from a late 19th century report on the bread of Vienna.
“The uniformity of the product demonstrates that the problem of making good bread has been solved. One wonders why such bread cannot be elsewhere obtained. It is know that efforts have been made to introduce the production of the Vienna bread to the public of other countries, but with indifferent success. The trained journey-man bakers of Vienna are sought for and obtained to serve in other capitals; but the bread they produce is inferior. Why have these efforts failed? Why cannot so apparently simple a process be communicated to others in such terms as to be followed?”
Same problem, different country. I wonder if I ought to be encouraged, since the French were apparently able to fix their deficiencies.
Raffi Melkonian at 08:39 PM
One of my friends in Paris has just finished his training as a boulanger - that is, a bread (rather than pastry) baker. For some really good reasons, he needs to get out of France, and we've been chatting about opportunities for him in the United States and in China.
But he's got a problem. As far as we can tell, no one has been able to duplicate the best Parisian bread baking abroad, despite herculean efforts. The most enthusiastic, like the excellent Bread Line of Washington D.C, have even tried importing their ingredients and ovens from France to close the gap - and yet, they still fall short.
Neither of us have any real idea why this is so. The best guess we've come up with is something about the water, which obviously can't be shipped from the motherland. But just yesterday, in the midst of some other research in the extraordinary culinary history collection at Harvard's Schlesinger Library, I ran into this excerpt from a late 19th century report on the bread of Vienna.
“The uniformity of the product demonstrates that the problem of making good bread has been solved. One wonders why such bread cannot be elsewhere obtained. It is know that efforts have been made to introduce the production of the Vienna bread to the public of other countries, but with indifferent success. The trained journey-man bakers of Vienna are sought for and obtained to serve in other capitals; but the bread they produce is inferior. Why have these efforts failed? Why cannot so apparently simple a process be communicated to others in such terms as to be followed?”
Same problem, different country. I wonder if I ought to be encouraged, since the French were apparently able to fix their deficiencies.
Criminal Pie
Raffi Melkonian at 10:58 PM
Two weeks ago, I asked whether people would feel cheated if a bakery sold customers Sam's Club or Price Club pies as homemade.
Eileen, of the blog Ambassador Boo, runs a bakery in New Hampshire. She wrote back noting an aspect of the problem I hadn't considered when I asked the question. People apparently have grown so used to industrially made pies that they disdain the real thing. As she puts it,
"At our bakery, we often end up with the opposite -- people come in, and they want a pie. And we say, Oh, we just made this lovely blueberry peach this morning, it is $20. And then they get all huffy, and say, "You know, I can get a pie just like that at Shaw's/Albertson's/Sam's for $3.95". It is hard to explain to those people that this is real pie crust, and made by hand, and etc.
"As we are the only real bakery in the area, most people usually buy it. But not all. One person one time came and bought a slice of pie (blueberry), ate two bites, and came to the counter and said, "This is the worst pie I have ever tasted. It is absolutely disgusting." And we were shocked, and offered her money back and a free other-dessert (she said no, which is weird), and asked what it was that was so gross. Tasted like dirt? Gross crust? And she wouldn't tell us! Just that it was horrible. Then she left. We tasted what she had left on her plate (not proper, but whatever), and it tasted great! Blueberries! Buttery crust! Yum!"
That, I think, is one of the sadder things about food that I've recently read. And yet, I know it's happening. People like the stuff that comes from a box, or a tin. They think it tastes right, somehow, and that the authentic product is the mockery.
Before anyone gets worked up about my elitism, I should say that to the extent these feelings are essentially nostalgic accidents, I don't think anyone should mind. I know that Heinz ketchup is sugary glop, but drowning some cheap fries in the stuff reminds me of the Friday evening hamburgers my family had when I was a kid, our only foray away from home food for the week. Those are evocative memories, and I don't mind the occasional culinary mistake to reach into them. But I think we've got ourselves a generation of younger people particularly who don't even know about the original article. That is to say, people who think the real pie tastes disgusting, rather than recognizing that what they're after is margarine and preservative taste. That, I think, is the worrying distinction - and is something that can't be addressed by well meaning state programs, but at home.
Raffi Melkonian at 10:58 PM
Two weeks ago, I asked whether people would feel cheated if a bakery sold customers Sam's Club or Price Club pies as homemade.
Eileen, of the blog Ambassador Boo, runs a bakery in New Hampshire. She wrote back noting an aspect of the problem I hadn't considered when I asked the question. People apparently have grown so used to industrially made pies that they disdain the real thing. As she puts it,
"At our bakery, we often end up with the opposite -- people come in, and they want a pie. And we say, Oh, we just made this lovely blueberry peach this morning, it is $20. And then they get all huffy, and say, "You know, I can get a pie just like that at Shaw's/Albertson's/Sam's for $3.95". It is hard to explain to those people that this is real pie crust, and made by hand, and etc.
"As we are the only real bakery in the area, most people usually buy it. But not all. One person one time came and bought a slice of pie (blueberry), ate two bites, and came to the counter and said, "This is the worst pie I have ever tasted. It is absolutely disgusting." And we were shocked, and offered her money back and a free other-dessert (she said no, which is weird), and asked what it was that was so gross. Tasted like dirt? Gross crust? And she wouldn't tell us! Just that it was horrible. Then she left. We tasted what she had left on her plate (not proper, but whatever), and it tasted great! Blueberries! Buttery crust! Yum!"
That, I think, is one of the sadder things about food that I've recently read. And yet, I know it's happening. People like the stuff that comes from a box, or a tin. They think it tastes right, somehow, and that the authentic product is the mockery.
Before anyone gets worked up about my elitism, I should say that to the extent these feelings are essentially nostalgic accidents, I don't think anyone should mind. I know that Heinz ketchup is sugary glop, but drowning some cheap fries in the stuff reminds me of the Friday evening hamburgers my family had when I was a kid, our only foray away from home food for the week. Those are evocative memories, and I don't mind the occasional culinary mistake to reach into them. But I think we've got ourselves a generation of younger people particularly who don't even know about the original article. That is to say, people who think the real pie tastes disgusting, rather than recognizing that what they're after is margarine and preservative taste. That, I think, is the worrying distinction - and is something that can't be addressed by well meaning state programs, but at home.
What I ate this week
Raffi Melkonian at 11:25 PM
It's June! That not only means that many of the summer vegetables are heading to the market, but also that heavy dinners sit too stolidly on the stomach to be comfortably eaten in the air-condition-less torpor of my flat. The solution is light, happy fare - like the two recipes I note below. As for my birthday on Friday (June 3), I had a pleasant lunch with some law school friends, and then stole away home for my real treat - a small linzer tart of home-made raspberry jam and short crust pastry.
Ratatouille - My mom's ratatouille is just a medley of vegetables turned quickly in some olive oil with lots of garlic, and then put into the oven until cooked. It's perfectly tasty, but I discovered this week that the traditional French recipe for the stew is actually rather more involved.
Specifically, a real French ratatouille is made by slowly sauteeing the vegetables in a pan over a low flame, starting with the hardiest of the ingredients and only adding the most delicate at the very end. This technique not only keeps the last entrants into the stew fresh tasting and crisp, but also yields a light, "syrupy reduction", in the words of Richard Olney - that is to say, a tasty sauce.
For my own version, I started onions and garlic, and then with a couple of artichokes, cleaned and turned with a paring knife, and rubbed with lemon to preserve color. Fifteen minutes later, the eggplants went in, with some extra olive oil, followed by some nice bell peppers and asparagus. Finally, I added four summer squash for a quick ten minute sweat. The result, cooled in the fridge overnight, and mandatorily lightened with some lemon, was extraordinary. The oven based home ratatouille is great - but this thing is something else.
Salad Nicoise - I read somewhere that Salad Nicoise never tastes quite as good at home as it tastes on a southern French beach, your toes digging into the warm sand. While that's true, I find it makes a perfectly nice dinner. The only really doctrinal ingredients are green beans (cooked for ten minutes in salted water, and then shocked in ice), those small nicoise olives, tinned tuna preserved in olive oil, and a hard boiled egg. Otherwise, let your imagination roam free.
By the way, the one thing that makes Nicoise better at home is that you can toss each element in dressing before plating. Bistros in a hurry pull composed salads out of the fridge, and drench them with dressing from on top. Not good.
Raffi Melkonian at 11:25 PM
It's June! That not only means that many of the summer vegetables are heading to the market, but also that heavy dinners sit too stolidly on the stomach to be comfortably eaten in the air-condition-less torpor of my flat. The solution is light, happy fare - like the two recipes I note below. As for my birthday on Friday (June 3), I had a pleasant lunch with some law school friends, and then stole away home for my real treat - a small linzer tart of home-made raspberry jam and short crust pastry.
Ratatouille - My mom's ratatouille is just a medley of vegetables turned quickly in some olive oil with lots of garlic, and then put into the oven until cooked. It's perfectly tasty, but I discovered this week that the traditional French recipe for the stew is actually rather more involved.
Specifically, a real French ratatouille is made by slowly sauteeing the vegetables in a pan over a low flame, starting with the hardiest of the ingredients and only adding the most delicate at the very end. This technique not only keeps the last entrants into the stew fresh tasting and crisp, but also yields a light, "syrupy reduction", in the words of Richard Olney - that is to say, a tasty sauce.
For my own version, I started onions and garlic, and then with a couple of artichokes, cleaned and turned with a paring knife, and rubbed with lemon to preserve color. Fifteen minutes later, the eggplants went in, with some extra olive oil, followed by some nice bell peppers and asparagus. Finally, I added four summer squash for a quick ten minute sweat. The result, cooled in the fridge overnight, and mandatorily lightened with some lemon, was extraordinary. The oven based home ratatouille is great - but this thing is something else.
Salad Nicoise - I read somewhere that Salad Nicoise never tastes quite as good at home as it tastes on a southern French beach, your toes digging into the warm sand. While that's true, I find it makes a perfectly nice dinner. The only really doctrinal ingredients are green beans (cooked for ten minutes in salted water, and then shocked in ice), those small nicoise olives, tinned tuna preserved in olive oil, and a hard boiled egg. Otherwise, let your imagination roam free.
By the way, the one thing that makes Nicoise better at home is that you can toss each element in dressing before plating. Bistros in a hurry pull composed salads out of the fridge, and drench them with dressing from on top. Not good.
Summer Garlic
Raffi Melkonian at 10:46 AM
Nigel Slater is one of my favorite food writers - not because he is traditional (the usual way into my stomach), but because he so clearly is gluttonous. Even the names of his books betray him - Thirst, or Appetite. His finest book is the foundational Real Food, and the best passage in that book is about summer garlic:
"Round about late May or early June, the first garlic appears in the market. The very first from Italy or FRance is plump and white, its skin a soft green, brushed with anything from the faintest pink to the deepest mauve. Tied in three, the bulbs are fat and pale and the smell is at first barely detectable.
At home, I peel back the waxy skin and pull out the slippery white cloves. Each one has its own thick skin, still wet and pliable. Tucked inside are the sweetest, juiciest nuggets of garlic. So firm and crisp I want to eat them like slices of new season's apple. This is the garlic I want for cuting in half and rubbing on tihick, crisp toast, or for slicing thinkly and tucking between the sily folds of a toasted pepper, or for rubbing round the salad bowl. This is the garlic for scenting summer mayonnaise, for stuffing into a chicken as it roasts. This is the sweet, mild, garlic of romance".
I personally don't know what I'm going to do with the summer garlic I found in the small Cambridge Farmer's market this morning. Maybe I'll finally indulge my need for a shrimp po' boy, and make a spicy remoulade to go with it. Or perhaps a simple pasta with asparagus is on order. Or, if I'm being particularly homely, I'll simply grind it into a bowl of yogurt like we do at home.
In any case, keep your eyes open. The summer garlic is here.
Raffi Melkonian at 10:46 AM
Nigel Slater is one of my favorite food writers - not because he is traditional (the usual way into my stomach), but because he so clearly is gluttonous. Even the names of his books betray him - Thirst, or Appetite. His finest book is the foundational Real Food, and the best passage in that book is about summer garlic:
"Round about late May or early June, the first garlic appears in the market. The very first from Italy or FRance is plump and white, its skin a soft green, brushed with anything from the faintest pink to the deepest mauve. Tied in three, the bulbs are fat and pale and the smell is at first barely detectable.
At home, I peel back the waxy skin and pull out the slippery white cloves. Each one has its own thick skin, still wet and pliable. Tucked inside are the sweetest, juiciest nuggets of garlic. So firm and crisp I want to eat them like slices of new season's apple. This is the garlic I want for cuting in half and rubbing on tihick, crisp toast, or for slicing thinkly and tucking between the sily folds of a toasted pepper, or for rubbing round the salad bowl. This is the garlic for scenting summer mayonnaise, for stuffing into a chicken as it roasts. This is the sweet, mild, garlic of romance".
I personally don't know what I'm going to do with the summer garlic I found in the small Cambridge Farmer's market this morning. Maybe I'll finally indulge my need for a shrimp po' boy, and make a spicy remoulade to go with it. Or perhaps a simple pasta with asparagus is on order. Or, if I'm being particularly homely, I'll simply grind it into a bowl of yogurt like we do at home.
In any case, keep your eyes open. The summer garlic is here.
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