foodie nyc

Watermelon, Gruyere, Charred Jalapeno, Mint Salad

I started experimenting with fruit and cheese summer salads while cooking in Umbria last year.  On multiple occasions, I decided to refresh myself in the summer heat by playing with perfectly ripe fruit salads, paired with cheese, herbs and a lingering spicy note for balance.

At a recent cheese focused dinner at Artisanal, a friend openly scoffed at a watermelon, olive and feta cheese salad appetizer, thinking the salty flavors of olive juxtaposed with the sweet, refreshing flavors of watermelon would be a stretch.  I was in the mood for snails in puff pastry on this given night, so I'd have to prove that a savory watermelon salad was worthy some other time.

At the market the next day, I was reminded of those perfect summer days in Italy - watermelon salad, spicy peppers, a bite of cool fresh mint, an unexpected, salty, creamy cheese.  A drizzle of fine extra virgin olive oil, maybe a squeeze of lemon juice rounding out the flavors.  Those satisfying days in Italy were calling at me, thanks to a random reminder from a Manhattan bistro.

I decided to experiment with my choices of cheese and peppers.  Peperoncino was an obvious ingredient while in Italy, but I went with jalapeno on this occasion.  I simply blistered the pepper on the gas flame of my stove for a bit of extra flavor. I wanted a firm cheese, so I went with a cave aged Gruyere.  You know, the kind with those crunchy, crystallized salty bites I love so much.   I decided to make fried ginger slivers, which added a subtle backbone of flavor and texture to the dish. 

The presentation needed to be simple, but at least slightly thoughtful.  I wanted to feature layers of the ingredients, so I chose to serve three neat stacks of the salad on a plate for an appetizer.  A thin slice of  the sweet watermelon is the first explosion of flavor in the mouth, which is quickly followed by the creamy, firm cheese.  The fresh blast of the mint hits the palate and bursts with flavor, while the heat of the jalapeno hits you right at the back of the throat to conclude the bite.   A squeeze of citrus and the fruity drizzle of olive oil is a nice condiment to the dish.

If you're interested in trying these flavor combinations, it's important to consider the temperature of  both the cheese and watermelon. Obviously, the watermelon is best served cold.  Thin shavings of the cheese is slightly important for proportional balance, but it's critical to properly ripen the cheese at room temp.  As we all know, a cold cheese is no one's friend. 

Charred Halloumi and Peach Salad with Crispy Ginger

One of the challenges of being creative in the kitchen is finding inspiration.  After you've been cooking for a while, you'll realize that limiting your channels to the obvious sources can actually limit your creativity.   Restaurant menus, blogs, cookbooks and TV shows are great and all, but sometimes it's the everyday conversations that strike a chord and open new paths.

This is a learned trait, trust me.  Everyone and their mother gives me food and cooking tips.  Mainly, they know I love to chat about food, so it's a welcome topic.  But back in the days of my arrogant youth (2006?), I'd rarely internalize them.  But I realized the obvious.  There's a nugget of inspiration in most things around me, they just need to be extracted properly. 

Take for instance, a recent chat with new blog crush, ACB.  She was telling me about grilled halloumi cheese, which I recalled reading about long ago.  The old Joe would have tried to internalize it, but the halloumi would have slipped into the back ether of my brain moments later.  The new Joe pursues its possibilities straight away, as it might lead to an idea that could motivate me to keep it top of mind.

I thought about a charred, thick hunk of halloumi with a hot, firm interior contrasting with a crispy exterior.  I thought about using the halloumi in a fun! summer! salad!, maybe contrasting the saltiness and creaminess with a charred, fresh sweetness (corn and mint came to mind).  I even envisioned the presentation - a thick circular hunk of halloumi overflowing with charred veggies.

Sure enough, the extra thought about halloumi during the initial discussion made the dish stay in my mind.  I went to the market with this rough idea, but became intrigued with peaches.  I would char peaches, toss them with a chiffonade of mint, and finish them with a squeeze of lemon juice and maybe a drizzle of a mint spiked olive oil to top the cheese.

The best method for preparing the peaches and halloumi would certainly be on the grill.  Since I'm grill challenged here in NYC, I used a flat, non-stick griddle pan.  Simply get the pan very hot, add a touch of olive oil and char the peaches on one side.  I didn't bother cooking them on the other side, as I wasn't looking for limp sauteed peaches.  Remove them from the pan, then do the halloumi in the same method, but charring both sides this time.  Don't season the cheese, as its pretty salty on its own.

I kept the cheese in the oven at 250 while I prepared a few garnishes.  I needed some texture, so I thinly shaved ginger with a sharp pairing knife, as if it were garlic and I were in Goodfellas. I toasted the shaved ginger in hot olive oil for a few minutes, until the slices turned crispy.   I also blanched a handful of mint and whizzed it in the food processor with olive oil, creating a mint oil to spoon around the cheese.  Simply strain the mint from the oil for a vibrant green, mint infused oil.

The saltiness of the halloumi was a perfect foil for with the sweetness of the peaches.  The crispy ginger added an interesting texture and burst of flavor, while the mint and the charred exteriors of the cheese and peaches tied the elements together. 

Music in the Kitchen: July 2007

As a few of my friends know all too well, I am obsessed with the song Ada from The National's new album, Boxer.  I'm not sure it's even the best song on the album, but it's on every new playlist I make these days. 

I was listening to this playlist while recently making lavender steamed cod with a cherry chili vinegar .  As I sliced, simmered, pureed and strained, the lyrics of the chorus of Ada, "Leave it All Up in the Air", was ringing in my head.   

Occasionally, cooking leaves my mind wandering, as if I'm on autopilot.  There isn't usually much need for me to think about the process of pitting cherries, you know?  Instead, Ada sparked an observation about myself.  I'm at a stage in my life where so much of what I value is currently being left "up in the air" - undefined, unresolved, unfinished and seemingly left to chance.  While that sounds like a negative, I reminded myself that this is a self imposed imposition.

Leaving things up in the air has always been an acquired skill for me.  My personality doesn't naturally accept  undefined or unclear goals, which I've currently been finding a bit of a personality flaw.  Over the past six months, one of my personal objectives is to let things sort themselves out with little interference on my end.  I'm letting my personal life run on the path it naturally sets for itself, as opposed to the grand plan I've usually mapped out in my head .   In many ways, the freedom from the burden of planning the next move has taught me to go with the flow a bit, something which I feel was missing from my life for a while.  Every now and then, I frequently feel the urge to take control back and map out the next move.   But I relent, if only temporarily. Leave it all up in the air, indeed.

Ah, the joys of cooking and music.

By the way, this post is part of my sporadic playlist series called Music in the Kitchen.  I've posted this playlist on iTunes for your listening pleasure.

Longing For A Modern Day Harvey's

I recently finished reading The Devil in the Kitchen, an uncensored memoir written by the infamous British chef Marco Pierre White.

Chef White's career preceded my awareness of great restaurants and chefs, as I was just a teen when he became the first British born chef to earn three Michelin stars. But I had tracked down his first book, White Heat, which I had heard was unlike most cookbooks I had previously owned.

The food wasn't a huge focus for me when I first read White Heat.  Rather, I found myself fixated on the raw, brutal, unrefined nature of Chef White's writing and appearance.   Equally perplexing was the elegant, refined and thoughtful approach to cooking that contradicted his brutish nature.  I remember reading White Heat and catching myself with my mouth gaping (sometimes smiling), as if watching a train wreck heading for a crash that's somehow avoided.

When The Devil in the Kitchen landed in my lap (thanks Laren), I was skeptical about the quality of the story Marco was going to tell.  I pictured an inarticulate, slightly emotionless, brutal behind-the-scenes story about how White used to torture his kitchen staff in the pursuit of perfection.  I'd read about Mario Batali's abuse at the hands of White (in the book Heat), as well as Gordan Ramsay's war stories with White and wondered if this would be a shallow, surface level book that you'd read and forget about weeks later.

To some extent, this book is just that.  The difference is that the restaurant war stories are absolutely hilarious and shockingly unbelievable.  I've personally never seen or heard of someone getting kicked out of a restaurant by a superstar chef for complaining to a waiter, or getting into a fist fight with a chef in the kitchen.  And rest assured, the stories are just damn funny coming from Marco's brutish voice.   Somehow, Marco's unrefined, simplistic writing style adds to the humor and drama of his story.  Yet, his real and honest voice allows White to get very personal.  Even when he glosses over some of his feelings while discussing emotional points in his life, his tone of voice somehow communicates his choked back tears. Curse word after British slang after typo, I questioned the editors of this book but then realized the editors are one of the stars here - they did an excellent job leaving Marco's voice unpolished and unprofessional.  It makes the book.

There are many aspects of the book I can discuss here, but I'll just focus on the one thought I had over and over again as I read about Marco's rise to three star perfection.

Marco's first restaurant was called Harvey's, a small restaurant that Marco brought from nowhere to Michelin star fame.  The stories behind the day-to-day life at Harvey's are one of the highlights of the book.  As I read about Harvey's, I remember thinking about how I've never been to a restaurant like this in my life.  At any given night, White makes it seem as if you'd witness a guest getting kicked out of the restaurant, guests getting into fist fights in the kitchen, chefs getting into brawls in the back alleys behind the restaurant, chefs having sex with guests in back rooms, movie stars acting like clowns in the dining room....it seemed to go on and on.

Harvey's seemed to have adapted the personality of Marco - the dichotomy behind his thoughtful and perfect cuisine and his brutish, unpredictable, over-emotional tendencies.   If a modern day Harvey's were within my current reach,  I would want to dine nowhere else.

In my opinion, high-end restaurants these days avoid displaying the personality of their owner (Babbo has always been one of the exceptions, thankfully).  These days, it's all about following a formula to accomplish a goal of delivering refinement, trendiness, or a theme/genre.

Dining at Harvey's meant entering the world of Marco and knowing that while you'd get an amazing meal, something could happen at any given time that could be a little bit offbeat, quirky, or down right wrong. And that's one of the reasons why people went to Harvey's.  Harvey's wasn't able to be replicated next door, as there was only one Marco Pierre White. 

I long for this type of restaurant in NYC.  But thanks to The Devil in the Kitchen, I somehow felt like I was transported to Harvey's - and damn was it tasty.