What I'm dreaming about cooking tomorrow before I leave for dinner

Butternut squash custard sprinkled with pancetta and cheese

Small fishes, filleted,  fried in extra virgin olive oil sitting on a mild curry sauce.

Finding a resy

Going out in New York is sometimes a little nervewracking.  We're headed to a comedy show tonight in the West Village, so I needed somewhere to eat.  The obvious place is Otto.  Booked solid.  So is Lupa.  Macao Trading Co. is too.  Kampuchea and the various Momofuku's are likely to be busy and don't take reservations.  John Dory is crushed.  I didn't like the Double Crown review from Bruni (an Asian-British fusion? Flurgh).  Anissa is booked. Little Owl is booked (when is it not?).  

Finally.  Anita Lo's Bar Q, blessed/cursed with a fairly tepid reading two stars from Bruni, and with otherwise decent reviews (Platt) from (Cuozzo) the secondary reviewers (Robert Sietsema hated it).  

Oh crap -just remodeled! Maybe that's why there was space. 

Cooking for friends

I don't often cook for friends. As I get older, I hope to do so more and more. Indeed, I've been thinking recently how nice it would be to get a low-key supper club together. There are problems with cooking for friends when one is used to cooking for oneself, or oneself and a girlfriend or fiancee. Of course, you need to be sensitive to likes and dislikes, though my friends have broad palates generally. But also, there's the simple matter of portion size. I'm afraid, especially because my second course went awry, that I left my guests hungry. Alas.

In any case, we started with small cannolis out of fried wonton wrappers and stuffed them with crab salad (crab, sour cream, lemon). The fried wonton wrappers were a triumph in terms of shape - I wrapped them around a wooden dowel and fried them on the dowel until done - otherwise they puff up and close the cavity. However, I filled them too early and they sogged on me. I also made baby roasted fingerling potatoes topped with sour cream and lox.

My second course was meant to be Blue Hill's soft boiled, deep fried, egg. This failed utterly, as I broke all the soft boiled eggs when I peeled them. So I got rid of the dish.

Dinner was pork short rib braciole, as per this recipe from Carmellini. It is a delicious and really perfect recipe even for a larger dinner party, as it can sit in the oven with literally no ill effects basically indefinitely. The pork shredded, the sauce reduced, the cheese, egg and parsley topping gave an interesting texture and flavor.

Dessert was my (i.e., Jacques Pepin's) apple galette, made with higher fat European butter. The tart has a propensity to leak, but it is always tasty. This is a reliable, workhorse dessert, equally good with pears or peaches.

Wine was this 2007 Oregon Willamette Valley Belle Vallee Pinot Noir. I think this was universally liked by all four of us. Fruity, yet with pinot noir ink.

Erg.

I realized I was going to come to terms with mediocrity back when I understood everything Paul Gowder was talking about in these two posts and could have given him a long and boring lecture on various lines of the Najdorf, and still never got past a 1450 chess rating.

Diet Coke

I stopped drinking diet Coke (or any Coke or Pepsi, for that matter) during my vacation to France this summer. My theory was, with some encouragement from a special someone, that it couldn't possibly be good to be drinking quite that many chemicals in such quantity, and in any case the overwhelming taste of sweet was probably ruining my palate for other more interesting uses (I would have two 20-ounce bottles a day).

It's now been about three months, and all I can say is that from a tangible standpoint, the results of my little self experiment are decidedly mixed. I certainly feel a little less jittery, since my caffeine intake is down (I also have two coffees a day). I can't say that I feel better or any more vital in any substantive way, except that I had a diet soda at a movie the other day, and found it unbearably sweet. I do think my ability to taste wine is somehow better - I'm still not going to taste plums or cherries or what have you, but I feel like I can pick up a little more subtlety now than before.

The experiment continues. Hopefully, the next thing is to cut out the splenda from the morning coffee.

Obama as Glass bead player

In all the hundreds of descriptions of Obama I've ever read, none fits him so well as this description of someone else, from Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game (thanks to Amber's comments for the recommendation). So sayeth this lesser man, at least:

"A good many of Knecht's friends and later disciples envied him as remarkable men are always envied, not only for their greatness of soul and energy, but also for their seeming luck, their seeming preferment by destiny. The lesser man sees in the greater as much as he can see, and Joseph Knecht's career cannot help striking every observer as unusually brilliant, rapid, and seemingly effortless. . . . Nevertheless, there are outstanding men with whose lives "luck" is intimately bound up, even though that luck may consist merely in the fact that they and the task proper to their talents actually intersect on the plane of history and biography, and they are born neither too soon nor too late. Knecht seems to have been on of these. Thus his life, at least for a considerable part of the way, gives the impression that everything desirable simply fell into his lap."

Thanksgiving Dinner

A brief note on Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant 2941 in suburban Virginia, which my family enjoyed very much. The amuse bouche was a risotto asiago fritter, which was satisfyingly crunchy. I followed that with seared Hudson Valley foie gras (am I the only person who enjoys the slightly less unctuous North American product more than true French foie?) with an apple and espresso sauce (puzzling but good). The main course for me was pan roasted artic char - although the fish was good, I'd eat the crispy, salty, skin instead of potato chips any day. My butternut squash puree (in reality, a small butternut squash tart) was tasty and simple, while we all enjoyed the after coffee macarons, pate de fruit, and warm lemon beignets. I chose a South African Kanonkop Pinotage 2005 to drink ($65 on menu, $25.99 online), which did a great job bridging the gap between my fish, my dad's turkey, and my sister's and fiancee's prime steak. If I was being picky, I'd say my father's pecan square with chantilly was too small a dessert, and the soaring, spacious dining room lets in a little too much chill wind. While leaving, I noticed a well thought out and tasty seeming children's menu - a touch that must have been a blessing to parents.

EDIT: I find people who refer to foie gras as "foie" really annoying, though I did it above, and thus presumably find myself really annoying.

St. Andrews

The New York Times has a nice story on my alma mater, among others, describing a supposed trend of Americans heading overseas for college. Much of what they say is true, and I'll say more as I think about it, but I will say now that spending four years at St. Andrews was one of the best experiences of my life, for many reasons.