These days using vegetables in fancy desserts is commonplace. There is even—awkwardly, inexplicably—a backlash. When my sous-chef did a tasting for a potential job at a new restaurant recently, he made a roasted apple dish with candied fennel, caramel, and chunks of toasted sesame semolina bread. I helped him craft it. I was sure it was going to kill.
The young owners smirked: We have moved beyond savory desserts. I pictured this as a New Yorker cartoon, the owners as bespectacled, turtlenecked bohemians and my sous as a walrus or a cow in a chef’s coat doing a “Wha’ happen?” à la Fred Willard.
I use vegetables because I like vegetables. I have exactly no interest in appearing “edgy” or avant-garde. I’m more grandma than crazy scientist guy, I assure you. But, yes, there is no denying that I use a lot of savory stuff in my desserts. Beyond vegetables, I also overuse olive oil, bread crumbs, and vinegar. Those are some of the best things in the kitchen. It’s weird not to use them.
Being referred to as a savory pastry chef used to irritate me, but that’s basically what I am, so I wear it proudly now. Really, I’m just the guy who makes the stuff that comes at the end of the meal. (I have included tomato recipes in this section because after much waffling, I realized that putting tomatoes in the fruit section was even more pretentious.)
Pity the avocado. As guacamole, it is persistently violated and sullied stateside as the plaything of frat boys, sorority sisters, and grotesque American chain restaurants. Too often plowed with soapy cilantro and sarcastically aggressive raw red onions, American guacamole can be a disservice to the avocado’s nature. It’s shameful the things we do to the noble avocado sometimes.
Avocado is not Italian. But it’s a fatty fruit (fattier than . . . all the fruits?), and as such it is at home in my version of the Italian kitchen, despite what some authenticrats are feeling. It is strange and awkward, bulbous and delicate, the Rocky Dennis of fruit. Avocado is mildly sweet, green, and creamy, not that weirded out by being the accidental star of a dessert. So here is avocado in a hotel bathrobe, fresh off the set, filming an independent film destined for basic cable. It’s a cool movie, one that won’t make any money, but one that will be championed by the punks long after everyone else has forgotten about it. Think Over the Edge or Desperate Living.
Yield: 4 servings
Avocado scooped out of the shell ½ cup (75 grams)
Sugar (100 grams)
Water 2 tablespoons (30 grams)
Extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons (27 grams), plus more for serving
Lemon juice 2 teaspoons (10 grams), plus more to taste
Salt ½ teaspoon (2 grams)
Chocolate mint 5 nice leaves, plus more for serving
Tristar strawberries, quartered 1 cup (152 grams)
Croutons (here)
Maldon salt for serving
1. In a large deep bowl, combine the avocado, ¼ cup of the sugar, the water, olive oil, the 2 teaspoons lemon juice, the salt, and chocolate mint and puree using an immersion blender.
2. In a small bowl, combine the strawberries, the remaining ¼ cup sugar, and lemon juice to taste and let sit for about 10 minutes, until the strawberries are slightly macerated.
To serve: Spread the avocado puree on the bottom of a bowl you like. Top with strawberries. Landscape with toasted croutons. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Maldon salt. Garnish with a few pieces of torn chocolate mint.
See here.
The key to making great food is to get the best possible stuff and avoid fucking it up. I say this to every cook who comes to me looking for a job. If they crack a smile, I know I probably have someone I could work with. If they remain expressionless or, worse, if they smirk and roll their eyes, I have them coat truffles for a couple hours to finish out their trial shift and bid them adieu.
Cucumbers are usually terrible, bland and seedy, tasting of a lawn-clippings-and-wet-dog cocktail. In the past I avoided them unless I could get my hands on really good ones at the greenmarket during the summer. But then I had a cucumber epiphany in Italy in the summer of 2013.
I’d been shipped to Friuli–Venezia Giulia, to the outskirts of the city of Cividale del Friuli, to help open up a new restaurant on a secluded winery funded by my bosses Joe and Lidia Bastianich. There I found the best-tasting cucumbers I had ever bitten into. They were so delicious and crisp, so full of explosive cucumber flavor, that they needed almost no seasoning, only a sprinkle of salt. They tasted like a laboratory rendition of a cucumber. When I was a kid, my mom bought a brand of super-cheap imitation blueberry muffin mix that had a tagline on the box: “Blueberrier than real blueberries!” I tell you, these cucumbers were so good they were fake. Only they were real.
Brand me a hopeless romantic, call me out for being spoiled by the summer produce of the Italian peninsula, but I assure you, these cucumbers were cantankerous in their deliciousness. They seemed to look up at me and smirk with their beauty: “Go ahead, jerk. I dare you to not fall in love with me.”
I recalled an article in The Washington Post from right around the time I started cooking in a professional kitchen. It was one of those articles that gets recycled by a newspaper food section every few years about how some restaurants’ sorbet survives as the platonic ideal of a certain type of fruit. So my staff and I made cucumber granita. And I swear to you it was like biting into the platonic ideal of a perfect cucumber. Easy. Blitzed cucumbers (skin on), lime juice, sugar, salt. Really easy.
I’ve always loved the blue raspberry Slushies topped with vanilla soft-serve that were an off-the-menu specialty of the stoner teenagers who manned the ice cream counters in Ocean City, Maryland, where I vacationed as a youngster. For this dish, I added yogurt sorbet to mimic the ice-cream-colliding-with-ice memory fixed inside my subconscious. I definitely have a Creamsicle fetish.
The fake-real cucumbers are diced and salted before getting a quick roll in crunchy turbinado sugar. They deliver textural pop and are camouflaged perfectly by the matching dull-emerald color of the granita. You know, like that soil-colored snake hiding in the dirt that kills you when you accidentally step on it?
Yield: 4 servings
Cucumbers 4, peeled and seeded
Juice of 3 limes
Water 1 cup (118 grams)
Fresh mint 5 leaves
Sugar ½ cup (100 grams)
Salt to taste
In a medium deep-sided bowl, combine the cucumbers, lime juice, water, mint, sugar, and salt using an immersion blender. Strain the mixture through a chinois or fine-mesh strainer and freeze in a shallow pan until slushy, stirring occasionally, about 3 hours in a freezer.
CANDIED CUCUMBER
Cucumber 1, peeled, seeded, and cut into small cubes
Turbinado sugar 4 teaspoons (16 grams)
Extra-virgin olive oil a tiny glug
Salt to taste
In a small bowl, combine the cucumbers, sugar, olive oil, and salt and toss to coat the cucumber.
FOR SERVING
Yogurt Sorbet (here)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Maldon salt to taste
Fresh mint 4 leaves, torn into pieces
To serve: Place a bowl in the freezer and let it chill for at least 10 minutes. Using a fork, break up the granita into irregular shards and place in the bottom of the well-chilled bowl. Top with a scoop of yogurt sorbet. Add several pieces of the candied cucumber on top (you want the sugar to be unmelted and crunchy, which is why you prepared the cucumbers last, just before serving). Drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with a few large grains of salt and a few pieces of torn mint.
Sam McPheeters and I have been in two and a half bands together. He can be a difficult character, but he writes incredible lyrics. His novel, The Loom of Ruin, is a brain-melter that should be made into a movie by John Carpenter. Sam hates food.
THE FAILURE THAT FORGED BROOKS by Sam McPheeters
As the man who made Brooks Headley, I am often asked to divulge my methods. How did I turn the boy from Towson, Maryland, into the master chef of Manhattan? Did I impart a love of fine cuisine? Hardly: I find food inconvenient. Did I bequeath a tireless work ethic? Absolutely not: I prefer a life of scholarly indolence. Was it a philosophy, or an attitude, or a significant personal loan? No, my contribution to history runs deeper. I provided Brooks with his first failure.
Failure is the fuel that propels great men. It is also the furnace in which those great men are forged. It’s a simple recipe: Take a regular man, load him into the Failure Furnace, squirt in a bunch of Failure Fuel, and presto! Out pops a great man. Ask Lincoln (lost like ninety elections) or Twain (curb-stomped by debt collectors) or Spielberg (ridiculed by every film school in America).
Brooks’s failure involved a concert. In 1995, I launched the world’s first micro show, in Richmond, Virginia. The idea was simple, as were the rules. Bands were to play for 1 minute. An emcee would keep time. The audience would provide enforcement, storming the stage for any performance running even 1 second over. In the years since, my concept has been cheapened, downgraded into a feel-good statement about youthful exuberance. In the twenty-first century, micro shows—a weekly event in most American cities—are just one more live event. The original micro show was a tribute to efficiency, nothing more or less.
Doors opened at midnight. The venue, Hole in the Wall, quickly filled to capacity, and we all found ourselves packed into a hot holding cell of a nightclub. I assumed that such stress would work to the show’s advantage. I certainly wanted out as quickly as possible. Why would any musician spend more time here than they had to?
And yet the opening band ran a full 30 seconds over. The second band, Action Patrol (performing with plastic bags over their heads), went 49 seconds over. Worse, the audience seemed baffled by its duty. No one ejected anyone. It was the disastrous flip side to the infamous Milgram experiment on obedience to authority: Charged with maintaining order, the howling mob dithered.
Brooks’s band, Young Pioneers, charged through its song. I studied my watch. As the second hand zipped past sixty, heads in the crowd parted in such a way that I momentarily had a view of Brooks on drums. Our gazes met for an instant and he seemed to say with his eyes, What is this? What is this new feeling?
I said, with my own eyes, This is failure. You and your band have shamed yourself with your over-long performance.
Brooks’s eyes continued, How do I undo this shame?
And my eyes replied, Keep this shame in your heart for all your days. Never forget this night. Learn from your past. Go forward from this place and bring great pastries to mankind.
KABOCHA CAKE WITH SAGE GELATO AND CANDIED SQUASH
“Trick or Treat?”
I have always been a fan of the iconic flavor combination of pumpkin, brown butter, and sage that exists as a classic Italian pasta dish. It is sweet (the pumpkin or squash filling), savory (the salty pasta dough, the grippingly near-burned brown butter sauce), and oddly floral (the striking sage, like an evil shiv of whittled Christmas tree branches).
Turning pumpkin ravioli into a dessert was both inevitable and scary. Especially at a restaurant where actual pumpkin ravioli would be served, with identical flavors, in the meal’s opening courses. Thomas Keller would not approve of such duplication. It reveals weakness. It confesses a lack of imagination.
I went for it anyway. I tried to keep an eye on each table’s progression during service to make sure that no one who had ordered the pumpkin ravioli dish got the dessert version, but Del Posto is big, so I often failed. So, uh, like, well, this is the same thing you had an hour ago. Only now it’s dessert.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
KABOCHA CAKE
Unsalted butter 1 cup, or 2 sticks (225 grams)
Granulated sugar ¼ cup (50 grams)
Light brown sugar ½ cup (100 grams), packed
Extra-virgin olive oil ¼ cup (54 grams)
Eggs 2 (100 grams)
All-purpose flour 2 cups (280 grams)
Instant polenta ½ cup (115 grams)
Baking powder 2 teaspoons (9 grams)
Baking soda 1 teaspoon (7 grams)
Salt ½ teaspoon (3 grams)
Kabocha squash, shredded 3 cups (340 grams)
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, combine the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Drizzle in the olive oil, add the eggs, and continue mixing.
3. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, instant polenta, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until incorporated. Fold in the shredded squash.
4. Pour the batter onto the reserved baking sheet. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
5. Let cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes.
CANDIED SQUASH
Kabocha squash 1 cleaned and cubed
Extra-virgin olive oil as needed
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Turbinado sugar ¼ cup (50 grams)
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the squash, olive oil, salt, and pepper and toss to coat the squash. Spread the squash evenly on a baking sheet and roast until golden but not mushy, 10 to 12 minutes.
3. Sprinkle the squash with the turbinado sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice and toss to coat the squash.
BROWN BUTTER SAUCE
Unsalted butter ¼ cup, or ½ stick (57 grams)
Salt a pinch
Fresh sage 1 leaf
Honey ½ teaspoon (2 grams)
Water ¼ teaspoon (2 grams)
1. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter with the salt. The butter will froth up after about 1 minute and when it does, begin whisking constantly. The butter will darken and become nutty and fragrant, about 1 more minute. When the butter is dark brown, add the sage and remove from the heat.
2. Let the butter cool for 5 minutes, then whisk in the honey and water. The sauce is ready to use immediately.
FOR SERVING
Sage Gelato (here)
Sage leaves, torn
To serve: Tear the squash cake rebelliously into irregular chunks and put them on a plate. Scatter the candied squash across the plate and add a scoop of sage gelato. Drizzle the brown butter sauce all over everything and add a few pieces of torn sage leaves.
Perfection is overrated. A little sloppiness is reality. It shows vulnerability. But screwing up has actually saved my ass on countless occasions, in the studio and in the kitchen.
An early Universal Order of Armageddon recording from 1992, when I still lived with my mom, was rife with mistakes. I tried to record a drum part that I had no business attempting, one that I maybe got right once at practice. There was no chance under the pressure of expensive studio time that I was going to nail it. Recording songs is stressful enough as is. You go into some sterile environment during the day and try to document something that requires the energy of a crowd to support it. Those same songs you nail triumphantly at night, at shows, in awkward and uncomfortable venues, can’t always be replicated when you are wearing headphones in a soundproof studio. (Note: The more cramped and uncomfortable you are as an attendee, the smaller the venue, the more fun it is for me to play. It just is. Always.)
So I left a big botched drum part in one of the UOA songs, because I couldn’t play the rest of the song any better either. I started playing the error at live shows, too, but intentionally. Cross-pollination.
I refuse to play songs live unless they are so practiced that I don’t have to think about them during the show. I have always preferred to go on autopilot and dream about pizza like Homer Simpson. People say I look intense when I’m playing live: It’s because I’m picturing a pie from Di Fara, or maybe the floppy slice that Mr. Hand steals from Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Do I think about drumming when I am in the heat of dinner service? No, it doesn’t work backward (see here).
The Error Carrot Cake is a mistake we kept. We overfilled the pan our first couple tries. It made a mess of the oven with crunchy overcooked cake spewing everywhere. Everyone on the kitchen staff who walked by grabbed a handful of the crunchy bits. I thought it was so obviously trash. But it was delicious trash. And then, as if we were planning it all out (I can assure you there was no plan), we decided to at least look into the center of one of the screwed up cakes. It was light, as full of air and as moist as a cake could possibly be. So in the end the cake was both crunchy and soft. It was a botched riff. Screw it, leave it in.
Here’s how you do it: Replace the kabocha squash with an equal amount of carrots in the cake recipe. You also need to chill a mortar and pestle, along with ½ cup sugar and ½ cup fresh parsley, in the freezer for at least 8 hours. Crush the sugar and parsley together in the mortar with the pestle and sprinkle the mixture over the cake when serving. Garnish with cured lemon from the Tartufo al Caffè recipe (here).
Maximum RockNRoll, August 1994.
I don’t listen to music in the kitchen. It distracts me. Music is sacred. Cooking is, too. Mixing them is unnecessary and confusing. It bugs me out.
The ambient sounds of a restaurant kitchen are important and soothing. The dot matrix whir of the ticket machine; the airplane-like howl of an industrial blender going full blast; that beautiful hiss of a screamingly hot pan dropped into a full sink of water; the crash of a huge quantity of ice dumped into a plastic container; the quiet scrape of a peeler against the skin of an apple; that wrenching chug of the enormous dishwasher. It’s like house-made Einstürzende Neubauten. I love it.
My prep team listens to music downstairs during daytime production. When I am occasionally forced to invade their space, I’m always the jerk who lowers it to a whisper: My god, it’s so loud! I say, like a cranky grandma. How can you hear yourself think? As I stomp off, they blast it. Once someone had a mix playing and a Bikini Kill song came on as I walked by. I stared at the speakers, mesmerized. I forgot what I was doing and where I was going. I don’t listen to music when I cook at home, either. The one exception was several years ago, when I ingested a large quantity of marijuana and prepped Thanksgiving dinner by myself. I listened to Paul’s Boutique five times in a row.
Carrot cake with parsley gelato and candied carrots.
I went through a splat phase. Lots of chefs do. It’s an awkward time in a cook’s career, when suddenly spooning sauce onto a plate is no longer good enough. Instead, you hurl it full force in the general vicinity of a plate. You whip it violently from a spoon. It looks cool. It just isn’t. This sauce used to be served with the carrot cake, and it utilizes a technique of cooking carrots in carrot juice, which is among my favorite tricks. With a little tweaking, this could be made into a very decent homemade baby food. Leave the splatting to the kids.
Yield: About 2 cups
Carrots peeled and diced 2 cups (244 grams)
Carrot juice 2 cups (480 grams)
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste
Lemon juice to taste
1. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the carrots and carrot juice and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the sauce until almost all the liquid has disappeared, about 5 minutes.
2. Remove the sauce from the heat and blend using an immersion blender until smooth. Season with salt, sugar, and lemon juice.
This recipe is inspired in part by the Looney Tunes episode where Bugs Bunny buys carrots out of a vending machine. Even as a kid I was obsessed with food, but this image struck me especially: He bought carrots out of a vending machine! At eight years old, to me carrots (historically boring, healthy, a drag) were granted the same status as candy, then the most important thing in the world.
Kim Janusz, one of my long-standing sous-chefs at Del Posto, came up with this method for candying carrots. My single contribution, as usual, was to suggest adding salt. It is likely this is going to set off your home’s smoke alarm. Don’t disable it! Do you know how dangerous that is? Instead, do as my mom used to and stand on a chair and use a dish towel to wave the smoke away from the alarm. That’s fun! It means you’re really cooking.
Yield: 3 servings
Extra-virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon (5 grams)
Baby carrots 6 halved lengthwise
Sugar 2 tablespoons (25 grams)
Unsalted butter ½ teaspoon (2 grams)
Salt to taste
1. In a small sauté pan over high heat, heat the olive oil for 1 minute. Sear the carrots, cut side down, until they’ve taken on a little color. (Don’t cook them through. You want them al dente.)
2. Coat the carrots and the pan with a light layer of sugar, stir, and cook until the sugar darkens to a golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.
3. Add the butter to the pan, toss to coat, and season with salt.
Pappa al pomodoro is one of my very favorite things to eat. It isn’t a dessert, but here it is nonetheless, in my dessert book. It is pizza in stew form: tomato and bread stew. It’s a snack I make for my pastry staff each winter. Everyone loves it. One of the issues of working around and tasting desserts all day is that your body constantly craves salty, umami-filled stuff to balance out all that ice cream and cookie dough. This is a perfect example of that.
As a method of using up stale bread, pappa al pomodoro could not be more efficient. Use canned San Marzano tomatoes if you can find them. Massimo, an old coworker from my time in DC and a proud Tuscan, taught me this recipe and said the literal translation means “it’s good for your grandfather because he doesn’t have any teeth.” It’s warm and soft and comforting. Pillowy. On the same playing field as Martin’s Potato Rolls, chickpea doubles from a Trinidadian take-out spot, or potato gnocchi.
We usually eat pappa al pomodoro straight out of the pot early Sunday mornings, as Saturday night’s service winds down. If you plan to go on a dessert recipe bender using this book, for the love of god, please have a pot of this stuff hanging around to temper your sugar high.
Yield: 2 large servings
Onion, white or yellow 1 large, chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons (30 grams)
Garlic 2 cloves thinly sliced
San Marzano tomatoes, crushed one 28-ounce can (790 grams)
Sugar a pinch
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper 1 teaspoon (2 grams)
Stale bread, torn 2 cups (274 grams)
Fresh basil a handful torn
1. In a deep-sided saucepan over low heat, sweat the onion in the olive oil until translucent, 8 to 10 minutes.
2. Turn the heat up to medium and add the garlic, stirring regularly. Once the garlic colors slightly, add the crushed tomatoes (including the juice), reduce the heat, and let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes. Season with the sugar, salt, and pepper and add the torn bread and basil. Mix with a wooden spoon until thick and chunky.
To serve: Present in a large bowl to people you really like.
Sun-dried tomatoes rate high on the annoyance scale. They’re up there with rethreading the string in a hooded sweatshirt and washing Crisco off your hands. The poster child of food in the 1980s, sun-dried tomatoes are insipid, oily, and cloyingly grating. They remind me of boring dinner parties my mom forced me to attend as a kid.
These dried tomatoes are not at all annoying or retro. They are like tomato shells stuffed with tomato paste—wildly delicious. The fresh strawberry variety of tomatoes works best, but grape tomatoes work, too. The result is a sweet and slightly salty half-dehydrated tomato that is savory enough for a winter Caprese salad and sweet enough to flank ice cream. Actually, there’s one irritating thing: peeling the tomatoes. But after that, it’s pretty much a set-it-and-forget-it activity. Ron Popeil would smile knowingly.
Yield: 15 dried strawberries that won’t last (double the recipe at will)
Sugar 3 tablespoons (37 grams)
Salt 1 tablespoon (12 grams)
Freshly ground black pepper 1 tablespoon (6 grams)
Extra-virgin olive oil as needed
Strawberry tomatoes 15
1. Preheat the oven to 200°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, salt, and pepper, adding one splash of water at a time until the mixture is the consistency of wet sand. Whisk in the olive oil slowly until it becomes a paste and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, prepare an ice bath.
4. In a small saucepan over high heat, bring 3 cups of water to a boil and blanch the tomatoes for 1 minute. Transfer them to the ice bath. With a paring knife, carefully remove the skins and discard.
5. On the reserved baking sheet, scatter the tomatoes and brush them with the olive oil paste until completely covered. Bake for 2 hours. The tomatoes will become wrinkled, sweet, and soft. Store the tomatoes in the refrigerator in an airtight container completely covered in olive oil. They will keep this way for a couple weeks.
To serve: However you’d like.
See here.
Born: Southie
Occupation: Chef/founder BLGRUPPO
Status: Not really sure
Notable quote: “Bon Fucking Jour”
Shoe size: 8
Lunch food: BLT, roasted tomato; shitloads of bacon still warm, fatty, and crispy; and extra mayo
Beverage: Chablis
I Heart NY:
First time: 1986
Accomplishments: Tons
Ambition/future plan: Change the way we produce food in this country!
I met Dario Cecchini on my first trip to Italy. If you’ve read the outstanding Heat, by Bill Buford, you already know way too much about this maniac butcher from the tiny village of Panzano in Tuscany. (If you haven’t, get to your local independent bookseller and snag a copy immediately.) Dario is half artisanal champion of Tuscan Chianina beef, and half John Belushi in Animal House. If he were a punk guy in Los Angeles in the eighties, he would have been a roadie for Fear—not in the band, because he’s too smart for that. Dario’s a troublemaker. A prankster.
I’m not much for the fetishizing of meat. I eat animal flesh sporadically and sparingly, and prefer it more as a condiment than the focus of a dish. Nothing bores me more than a big pile of meat. My first published piece of writing was a poem about how a Subway steak and cheese sandwich was weird, confusing, and gray—unfit for human consumption. The poem was for my high school literary magazine in the late eighties. But Dario, a meat guy at the core, is a cool and crazy lunatic. My favorite type of person.
You can drive through Panzano in a couple minutes without knowing you’ve missed Dario’s butcher shop, Antica Macelleria Cecchini. It’s so sweetly charming it warms even the tofu- and seitan-lined chambers of my heart. You’re greeted with a complimentary tumbler of Chianti. The refrigerators containing the meats of the day usually have a dick joke or two written on the glass. On one of my visits, there was a pig’s head molded from lardo and smoking a carrot cigar. Adjacent to the display case is a table with loaves of Tuscan bread. There’s a knife and you’re welcome to cut yourself a slice, but there’s no salt in the bread. It’s a weird Tuscan thing; I don’t get it either.
There is also the infamous bull-minotaur statue with a boner that juts out from the lower part of its robe. You have to look close or you’ll miss it. Dick joke after dick joke.
Above the engorged bull-man are four varieties of jars: a proprietary blend of indigenous fennel pollen, a marinated sliced pepper condiment called bruciaculo (“ass burner”), a spice mix with a corny but hilarious rant that claims to invoke nostalgic sensations of Tuscany, and an absolutely killer red pepper jelly. The jelly is slightly spicy, red as the McDonald’s strawberry sundae topping. One spoonful of this stuff and I knew I had to make my own version at Del Posto. It’s sweet and savory. It would work perfectly on roasted or braised pork, or as a dipping sauce for potatoes. I smear it on bread with some ricotta (I’m the weakling semi-vegetarian, remember). At his restaurant upstairs from the butcher shop, Dario pairs the jelly with fried cubes of breaded meat and twirls of orange zest—it’s a dish that tastes like the world’s best version of an order of General Tso’s from a crummy Chinese takeout. Note: Make red pepper juice at home or purchase it at your favorite juice store.
Yield: 1 cup
Red bell pepper, peeled and diced 2 cups (250 grams)
Red pepper juice 1 cup (250 grams)
B&G cherry peppers ½ cup (50 grams)
Sugar ½ cup plus 1 teaspoon (100 grams plus 4 grams)
Salt 1 teaspoon (4 grams)
White wine vinegar ¼ cup (50 grams)
Pectin ¾ teaspoon (2 grams)
1. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine the red pepper, red pepper juice, cherry peppers, ½ cup of the sugar, the salt, and vinegar and stir occasionally, until all the liquid has evaporated, about 20 minutes.
2. In a small bowl, mix the pectin with the remaining 1 teaspoon sugar and sprinkle the mixture over the peppers.
3. Cook the peppers for 1 more minute, remove from the heat, and let them cool in the pan. This jelly will stay in your fridge in an airtight container for several weeks.
Dario’s bull-minotaur. Photo by Brooks.
Robert Sietsema is one of my favorite food writers. I have been reading his New York City restaurant reviews for nearly twenty years. He is a very smart and enthusiastic dude.
WHERE PUNKS ATE IN NEW YORK CITY IN THE EIGHTIES by Robert Sietsema
Few care to remember the 1980s in downtown Manhattan, but it was the best of times and the worst of times: Crack was replacing heroin as the drug most dogging the neighborhoods, and the colorful caps of drug vials filled every seam in the sidewalk. Children collected them to make 3-D artworks.
But it was also a time when, in the East Village at least, carrying a guitar down First Avenue was a passport to a secret world. You lived in a tenement with crumbling stairways, pennies in the fuse boxes, and a shared toilet in the common hallway, but when you stepped up on stage or into your makeshift rehearsal studio, you were part of a rich and vibrant culture mainly hidden from public view.
Our days may have been spent in Midtown offices xeroxing endless piles of meaningless documents, but our nights were spent in the clubs. The test of your clubbing prowess was if you could put in a full day at work after staying up till 5 a.m. the night before. Clubs like CBGB, Pyramid Club, Brownies, Mudd Club, Tier 3, Club 57, Danceteria, Nightingale Lounge and Continental Divide offered music seven days a week, and if you knew the doorman, you got in free. These places started hopping around midnight and went until 4 a.m., when after-hours clubs like Save the Robots and AM/PM kicked in until dawn and beyond.
Bands tended to load-in and sound-check around 5 p.m., went on stage sometime after midnight, then dragged their equipment home in the wee hours. At that time, the streets were dark and quiet save for the elephantine scream of garbage trucks. There were few places open for a hungry musician to eat. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the East Village of the early eighties, most all of the restaurants were closed by 6 p.m. Those that existed—and there were about 95 percent fewer than there are now—catered mainly to a lunch crowd that worked in nearby offices, warehouses, spare-tire shops, and secondhand stores.
An exception was Stromboli. Open late weeknights and even later on the weekends, the pizzeria was located at the iconic corner of First Avenue and St. Marks—beyond which every human being you knew passed at least once every twenty-four hours. It was half the size it is today: a narrow room, a high counter, a pizza oven that caused summer customers to swelter, and a shelf for eating while gazing disconsolately out the window and wondering how you were going to make rent. The slices were cheap, and no one had ever been known to order a whole pie. With the thin crust and oven-browned “bone” a given, Stromboli’s slice differed from other typical neighborhood slices by sporting a slightly sweeter tomato sauce with no chunks in it, and a modest strew of better-than-average cheese. It was common to see Arto Lindsay of DNA or the Beastie Boys chowing down there.
Many East Village musicians were drawn to the Mudd Club, or its cheaper and less pretentious cousin Tier 3, down near Chinatown. Jean-Michel Basquiat was a bar back at the latter, though he was already famous for his work as part of a three-person graffiti-writing crew, SAMO. Whenever you’d come out of the club, often a bit tipsy from all the free drinks, you’d see a SAMO inscription nearby, the lettering all capitals and the paint still wet. The one that most sticks in my mind was on Franklin Street: LIFE IS CONFUSING AT THIS POINT—SAMO. The Mudd Club paid better, but dates at Tier 3 were more common. It became a kind of obscurely located rock clubhouse for East Village musicians, because Tribeca was even more desolate than SoHo in those days, a neighborhood of broken-down warehouses and small manufacturing facilities, many dating to the nineteenth century.
Most of Chinatown closed up shop around 9 p.m., so the main place to eat in the early-morning hours around Canal Street in the vicinity of Tier 3 was Dave’s Luncheonette. I remember seeing Debbie Harry there. The main thing they sold, at a dimly lit, curved formica counter top, was hot dogs. At least that was all we ate there. There may have been more on the menu, but who’d even seen a menu? Coffee was downed in profusion, and those with the scratch would score the occasional chocolate shake or egg cream. Dave’s was located right on the southeast corner of Broadway and Canal. What a spot!
Back in the East Village tenderloin, Kiev, at 7th Street and Second Avenue, was open far into the night. Most rockers I knew eschewed it because it was becoming the neighborhood’s only bona fide tourist destination—besides CBGB, of course—and we could always be sure of being exposed to some uptowners slumming there. The fare was bland and Ukrainian. We deemed it far better to get Greek diner food, which included flame-grilled hamburgers and decent fries. At that time the closest actual Greek diner was called something like Oak Leaf, and was located on 23rd Street. Going up there we considered an uptown adventure; it was a street famous for being represented in detective fiction. And as you strolled along 23rd Street at 4 a.m. picking hamburger fragments out of your teeth with a toothpick, you’d look up at the second-story lofts and see many privates dicks’ shingles. Not anymore.
Really, the only other option we knew about downtown (and none of us had ever set foot in the West Village) was on Mott Street in Chinatown, where the Mayflower Tea Shop was open after midnight. And eating cheap plates of chop suey and egg foo young while drinking steaming glasses of tea drawn from humongous stainless-steel urns was not the worst way to spend your time after a gig, before you went home to your East Village tenement and collapsed.
Xray Spex at CBGB, 1980. Photo by Robert Sietsema.
See here.
THREE-STAGE HAMMERED RHUBARB JAM
This jam is horribly unstable. You can’t jar it. You have to make it and eat it really quickly, but it is extremely flavorful—you won’t mind rushing. The instructions that follow apply also to cherries, strawberries, apricots, peaches, and plums. Pineapple, too. As for the recipe’s name, look at the method like this: The first stage of cooking is the complete destruction and annihilation of your fruit—nuclear fallout. No survivors. The second stage is a sword fight during the Roman empire, violent and bloody, but your fruit’s still got half a leg when it’s over. The final stage presents a sea of beautiful little bobbleheads of barely cooked fruit swimming around in a hammered, drunken daze, about to get rescued from the wing of an airplane maneuvered gently into the Hudson River, probably able to make it to work in the morning. (Smuckers, Polaner’s, and all the oversugared stuff you find in the jelly aisle of the supermarket? Fully hammered. It’s just a phrase I use to describe something that’s been decimated in stages.)
Yield: 1 pint
Sugar 1¼ cups (250 grams)
Rhubarb, cut into ½-inch dice 4 cups (548 grams)
Rhubarb, finely diced 1 cup (137 grams)
Salt to taste
Lemon juice to taste
1. In a medium saucepan over high heat, combine the sugar and 3 cups of the ½-inch pieces of rhubarb, stirring regularly until the rhubarb releases its liquid and the water has evaporated, about 15 minutes, maybe more.
2. Add the remaining 1 cup ½-inch pieces of rhubarb and cook until about half of it has broken down, about 10 minutes. You are creating texture.
3. Add the finely diced rhubarb and stir to incorporate. Remove from the heat and season with salt and a squeeze of lemon.
To serve: Use this in the plating of Lemon-Ginger Curd with Rhubarb and Polenta Chips (here).
LEMON-GINGER CURD WITH RHUBARB AND POLENTA CHIPS
On May 1, 2002, there was a huge protest in DC for International Workers’ Day. The staff at Tosca, where I was working, consisted mainly of El Salvadorean cooks, and it was likely they weren’t going to show up for work. The owners of the restaurant were pre-pissed and ready to fire the lot. I was in support of the probably-protesting Salvadorean cooks, who were and are, in fact, the unsung heroes of every kitchen in DC. I sucked it up and got to work really early to compensate for any no-shows.
Rhubarb is the harbinger of spring. The earliest bunches are hothouse grown in either Washington State or Denmark. The stuff that comes from Denmark, Holland, and even Eastern Europe arrives in amazingly artful boxes, as beautiful and thoughtful as the product they carry. One box I received that day—from Poland, I think—looked especially sharp, like Soviet Constructivist art but brimming with glowing pink stalks of rhubarb, stylized into immortality. I cut off the top of the box, thinking I’d use it for something cool some day.
I got out of work at the same time the protests ended, as the cooks who had attended the gathering arrived for their dinner shifts, in a swift display of some serious Black Flag–level work ethic (see here)! I was holding my rabarber (rhubarb) cardboard lid when I got on the bus. I sat in the back, on top of the heater, the worst seat on the bus, and rode the 42 back to my room in Mount Pleasant. I wasn’t part of the protest, but at least I had a sign like everyone else.
I moved that piece of cardboard all over the country, from DC to LA to DC to New York, just knowing that one day it would be in the right place. It lay on my floor in New York a long time before Stella, my ex, had it framed for me as a birthday present. It hangs on my wall to this day.
In New York City if you put rhubarb on your menu too early and there’s a freak, late-March snowfall, you’re going to get laughed off the stage. However, early rhubarb can be difficult to resist. It is particularly beautiful, with lovely pink stalks that cook down into an electric-pink puree that makes the kitchen smell like dirt (in a good way). Rhubarb is one of my exceptions for having produce flown in. The hothouse stuff from out of state is horribly sexy. The local Hudson Valley rhubarb that comes later in the spring and summer is brown, green, and pockmarked. It smells equally of dirt and is exceptional in its own ways, but looking at the two side by side it’s hard not to be reminded of a before-and-after methamphetamine-addiction photo essay: That’s the same person? You’re kidding.
This is a plated dessert taken straight from the Del Posto menu. The lemon cream is a variation on lemon curd that we keep in the freezer (does the world really need another lemon curd recipe? Probably not). I really love super-cold lemon stuff. My sous-chef Kim calls this the Barbie Dream House dessert, which initially bummed me out. Now I think it’s hilarious. I include ginger because it is spicy and has the coolest Italian name: zenzero. ZENZERO. Think about that. That’s definitely what I’m naming my kid.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
LEMON-GINGER CURD
Yield: 1 pint
Ginger juice 2 tablespoons plus ¼ cup (12 grams plus 90 grams)
Zest of 1 lemon
Lemon juice ¾ cup (183 grams)
Egg yolks 7 (125 grams)
Sugar ½ cup (100 grams)
Unsalted butter ½ cup, or 1 stick (113 grams)
Salt to taste
1. Fill a heavy saucepan with water and bring to a light simmer over medium-low heat.
2. In a medium bowl over the simmering water, whisk together the lemon zest, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of the ginger juice, the egg yolks, and the sugar until smooth and slightly thickened and glossy. Remove the mixture from the heat and let it cool for 5 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, prepare an ice bath.
4. Transfer the mixture to a deep bowl. Add the butter, the remaining ¼ cup ginger juice, and the salt. Combine using an immersion blender until smooth. Transfer to a freezer-safe bowl and chill in the ice bath.
5. When the curd is chilled, seal it in the container and place it in the freezer overnight to set fully.
RHUBARB STRINGS
Rhubarb 2 stalks
Sugar 1 cup (200 grams), plus more for dredging
Water ½ cup (118 grams)
Salt a pinch
1. In a small bowl, whisk together the sugar and water to create a syrup.
2. Using a vegetable peeler, shred the rhubarb into thin strings and soak the strings in the simple syrup for 1 hour.
3. Remove the rhubarb, drain on paper towels, and dredge in sugar.
4. Prepare snakes of aluminum foil (see the photograph) and drape the sugared strings in a free-form pattern on the foil.
5. Place in a dehydrator overnight until crisp (see here for an alternate method). Store in a very dry plastic container for 2 days.
Sour cream 2 tablespoons
Rhubarb Sorbet (here)
Polenta Chips (here)
Three-Stage Hammered Rhubarb Jam (here)
To serve: Smear the sour cream on a plate. Top with a scoop each of the frozen lemon-ginger curd and rhubarb sorbet. Garnish with pieces of rhubarb string and some polenta chips. Add a few spoonfuls of rhubarb jam. Serve immediately.
SFERA DI CAPRINO WITH CELERY SORBET
This is a case of me trying to please the chef, my boss. It’s no secret that Ladner loves celery. So I incorporated celery into a dessert. I confess I didn’t work too hard on this one—it was kind of a B-side.
But then a couple New York Times folks (Sam Sifton and Mark Bittman) wrote flatteringly about it, which made me think a little bit harder about what makes it work. Maybe I’ve always taken celery for granted. Celery, I can admit now, has hidden powers. It is humble but wise. Ladner knows things.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
GOAT CHEESE MOUSSE WITH FRIED BREAD CRUMBS
Honey 1½ teaspoons (10 grams)
Water 1 tablespoon
Salt a pinch
Unflavored gelatin ½ teaspoon (1 gram)
Cream cheese ¾ cup (170 grams), softened
Goat cheese ¾ cup (170 grams), softened
Crème frâiche ½ cup (115 grams)
Heavy cream ¼ cup (60 grams)
Sugar ½ cup (100 grams)
1. Preheat the oven to 300°F.
2. In a small saucepan over low heat, combine the honey, water, and salt and stir until the honey melts. Sprinkle the gelatin over the honey mixture and whisk until it dissolves completely, about 4 minutes. Turn off the heat.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese and goat cheese on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the crème fraîche, cream, and sugar and continue beating until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Add the honey mixture and beat for 1 minute. Transfer the mousse to a clear bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. This can hang out in your fridge for up to 1 day.
BALSAMIC FIG COMPOTE
Sugar ½ cup (100 grams)
Zest from 1 lemon, cut into strips
Water 1 cup (237 grams)
Dried Black Mission figs 1 cup (149 grams)
Balsamic vinegar ½ cup (127.5 grams)
1. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine the sugar, lemon zest, and water, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved.
2. In a medium bowl, add the figs. Pour the warm syrup over them and let the mixture cool for 2 to 3 hours.
3. Drain and discard the syrup. Place the figs in an airtight container. Add the vinegar, seal, and refrigerate for 3 hours, or until ready to use. (Use leftover vinegar for drizzling or for vinaigrettes.)
SHAVED CELERY SALAD
Celery 4 stalks, peeled and cut into 3-inch lengths
Gulden’s spicy brown mustard ½ teaspoon (2 grams)
Honey ½ teaspoon (3.5 grams)
White wine vinegar 2 teaspoons (10 grams)
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons (27 grams)
1. In a medium bowl, prepare an ice bath.
2. Using a vegetable peeler, shave the celery into thin strips and soak the strips in the ice bath while you make the vinaigrette.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, honey, vinegar, and ½ teaspoon water and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, whisking constantly, until an emulsion forms. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed.
FOR SERVING
Celery Sorbet (here)
Bread Crumbs (here)
To serve: Dry the shaved celery and dress it with the honey mustard vinaigrette. (This is done immediately before serving!) Using a small ice cream scoop or two teaspoons, shape the goat cheese mousse into oval balls and coat them with the fried bread crumbs. Place a scoop of celery sorbet on a plate, surround with mousse balls, and tear apart the figs and scatter them around. Finally, add the celery salad as garnish.
BAND TOUR FOOD DIARY: UNIVERSAL ORDER OF ARMAGEDDON
At the same time I was playing with Born Against, I was also drumming in Universal Order of Armageddon. Tonie, UOA’s guitarist, played bass in Born Against and we were a package deal. Back then, Tonie was a crazy vegan macrobiotic hippie nut (I mean that in the most endearing way). We rehearsed at his place, the 169 House, better known as either the Bone Closet or the Total Experience, depending on whether or not there was a show scheduled in the basement. It was in Arnold, Maryland, and there was a single sunflower growing in a big garden on the side. It was mostly a peaceful, well-maintained suburban neighborhood with windy roads. Except for the 169 House, which was dilapidated and falling backward, off a cliff. Sometimes the toilets didn’t work. In the small driveway, there was an old VW van that was filled to the brim with the aseptic soy milk containers Tonie saved for recycling. Maybe you know this neighbor.
Tonie liked to cook big, bubbling crocks of cabbage and burdock root in tamari broth. The 169 House always smelled like fermenting cabbage. On tour, he’d fill a Tupperware container with cabbage and brown rice, hide it under the seat, and eat it in the middle of the night as he drove with his knees and listened to dubbed Can and Don Cherry cassettes across some desolate part of the country.
We toured often, and probably played South Dakota six times but never once stopped at Mount Rushmore. The verdict was always the same: too fucked up, too racist. We were regulars at the Rapid City natural foods co-op, though, downtown, on Mount Rushmore Road. We’d sometimes miss a show entirely, having underestimated the time it takes to drive seven hundred miles in one shot. We were booked to play Montana once, but we blew it by strolling around a roadside flea market for an hour we couldn’t spare. We played an impromptu set at some house instead. Driving for ten hours and unloading directly into a kid’s basement to play for sixteen or seventeen minutes: That’s what we did.
If we were lucky enough to find a health food store back then, we would stock up on frozen black bean burritos—the super-healthy kind with little salt or seasoning of any kind. We’d toss our stash on the dashboard and let five hundred miles of direct sunlight thaw them until they were edible. The band broke up right before a tour of Europe we’d scheduled. (Continued here.)
Eggplant in a dessert. Yeah, I guess it’s weird. But I’m not avant-garde. I’m not even an artist. Not at all. I’m kind of a dolt, a knucklehead, a wannabe nonna cooking while half-cocked on limoncello. I’m also lazy. I didn’t want to make this dessert.
But Ladner pushed me hard to give it a try and he can be very convincing. Then Mario Batali came poking around the kitchen one day when we were still in the R&D stage. Ladner was bouncy, giddy, and laughing hysterically, like a little girl: “Mario, dude, check it out,” he said. “Brooks is working on a version of that classic eggplant and chocolate dessert. Pretty cool, right?” Mario, not missing a beat, gave us that trademark smirk, a single eyebrow jutting up through ceiling. “Good luck, guys,” he said. “I’ve had the real thing in Italy. It was fucking gross.”
And do you know what? At that very moment I became obsessed with making eggplant work in this dessert—and to make it delicious and comforting while remaining clearly inspired by the Italian original.
We did all sorts of wacky crap to try to make this dessert a success. We poached eggplant in a cocoa nib stock (absolutely awful), deep-fried it in a rice flour batter, and drenched it in fudge syrup. We made a sweetened eggplant puree—easily the weirdest, most unpalatable baba ghanoush I’ve ever had—and then dipped it in chocolate to make a bonbon thing. Terrible.
Eventually, I gave a particularly curmudgeonly sous-chef at Del Posto a taste of one of our experiments, and he looked at me and frowned. “Brooks, this is totally confusing on my palate,” he said. “It’s not bad, just confusing.” Italian food should never be confusing. When I was able to sleep, I started having nightmares about eggplant. Horrible nightmares.
It occurred at exactly 3:18 a.m. I was hanging out with some line cooks at a shady Irish bar on 14th Street that we used to frequent after service because it’s open late and has cheap beer and the constant potential for an accidental bar fight. “Have you tried cooking the eggplant in a panini press?” one of the cooks asked. I hadn’t. I’m an idiot. Why were we even talking about cooking eggplant at three in the morning?
I got on the train back to Brooklyn and set my alarm. I woke up the next morning (it was a Sunday) and went straight to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a George Foreman grill. I carried it back to Del Posto with a shit-eating grin on my face. I knew it was going to work. I didn’t need to try it to know. But I tried anyway. And it worked.
The dish wasn’t anything like the original version . . . but it was. It went on our since-retired tasting menu and camped there for a year waiting, like a sniper, to pull the chocolate-covered trigger on each unsuspecting guest. Whenever possible, use Fairy Tale eggplant from the farmers’ market—they are tiny and austere and look like Rumpelstiltskin shoes. Otherwise, Japanese eggplant will do just fine and is available year-round.
Yield: 4 servings
Bittersweet chocolate, very best quality chopped 1 cup (313 grams)
Extra-virgin olive oil ½ cup (54 grams)
Salt to taste
1. In a medium microwavable bowl, melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30-second intervals until it is completely smooth. Do not burn it. (If you don’t have a microwave, use a double boiler.)
2. Stir in the olive oil. Add salt—a considerable amount. Seriously, more than you think you need. Taste it. It should taste like all three ingredients.
EGGPLANT
Japanese eggplant 1 (or several Fairy Tale) peeled
Extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons (27 grams)
Salt and sugar to taste
Honey 3 tablespoons (63 grams)
White wine vinegar 3 tablespoons (97 grams)
1. Using a mandoline, slice the eggplant thinly. Coat the individual slices in the olive oil, season with salt and sugar, and grill on both sides in a sandwich press or on a stove-top grill pan, whichever you have, just to soften.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey and vinegar, season to taste, and set aside.
ALMOND SPREAD
Almond flour 1⅓ cups (125 grams), lightly toasted
Sugar ⅔ cup (133 grams)
Unsalted butter ½ cup, or 1 stick (125 grams), cubed
Eggs 3 (150 grams)
Zest of 1 lemon
Salt a pinch
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond flour and sugar and set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream the butter on medium speed until softened. Add the almond flour mixture and combine. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue to mix on medium until you have a batter that looks and feels like unfinished cookie dough. If it’s grainy, don’t worry about it. Add the lemon zest and salt and mix until just combined.
FOR SERVING
Cream Cheese Crust (here)
Ricotta Stracciatella (here)
To serve: Cover a cracker-size piece of the cream cheese crust with the almond spread and lay a slice of eggplant on top. Put it on a plate. Add a scoop of the ricotta stracciatella, and drizzle the plate with the chocolate sauce, making sure to avoid the gelato.
SUNCHOKE CRUDO WITH YEAST GELATO AND CANDIED WALNUTS
Sunchokes are not part of the Italian diet. I’m not sure if they are a part of any indigenous cuisine. Native American? European? People also call them Jerusalem artichokes, so maybe that means something.
They are knobby, dirty roots—somehow dirtier than carrots, and even potatoes. They are the crust punks of root vegetables: They can bathe, they just choose not to. There is something alien and appealingly prehistoric about them, too. Weird patches of hair sprout from them at random, like in your grandfather’s ears or Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead’s mole. And like your granddad and Mr. Kilmister, they are total sweethearts with tons of great stories under that pocked, patchy skin. Sweet and a little bit off. Drunk, maybe, or in need of a nap. They smell musty, like the Egyptian art exhibit on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or a thrift store in Baltimore. All winter long at the Union Square greenmarket in NYC it’s apples and sunchokes and the weird dudes selling hard pretzels.
Flavorwise, sunchokes remind me of sour potatoes sprinkled with dirt and Splenda. I enjoy them roasted into submission and also nearly raw. In this dessert I serve them both ways and paired with yeast gelato, bread crumbs, citrus, and candied walnuts. For the yeast gelato, I was trying overly hard to be weird, which in 2011 was very trendy. I apologize. But I ended up keeping it because it works so well with the other stuff on the plate.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
CURED SUNCHOKES
Lemon pulp, pureed ¼ cup (61 grams)
Sugar ¼ cup (50 grams)
White wine vinegar ⅓ cup (78 grams)
Water ⅓ cup (78 grams)
Extra-virgin olive oil 1 cup (216 grams)
Salt ¼ teaspoon (1 gram)
Sunchokes 3 peeled and scrubbed
1. In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon pulp, sugar, vinegar, and water. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, whisking constantly, until an emulsion forms. Season with the salt and set aside. This vinaigrette can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
2. Using a mandoline, slice the sunchokes thinly. Add the sunchokes to the lemon vinaigrette and let them sit until seasoned yet still slightly crunchy, about 5 minutes.
HAMMERED SUNCHOKES
Sunchokes 5, unpeeled and scrubbed
Extra-virgin olive oil ¼ cup (54 grams)
Salt ½ teaspoon (2 grams)
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Chop the sunchokes into irregular chunks. In a small bowl, toss the sunchokes with the olive oil and salt. Pour the sunchokes onto a baking sheet and roast until very soft and slightly blackened, about 20 minutes, checking halfway through.
3. While the sunchokes are still warm, use your fingers to crush them slightly.
CANDIED WALNUTS
Walnuts 1 cup (117 grams)
Sugar 1 cup (200 grams)
Water 1 cup (237 grams)
Cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon (5 grams)
Peanut oil ½ quart (432 grams), for frying
Salt to taste
1. In a small saucepot over high heat, add the walnuts, sugar, water, and cayenne and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until thick and syrupy.
2. Drain the liquid from the walnuts and fry in the peanut oil until shiny. Salt the nuts heavily and immediately, while they are still warm. These keep for a week in an airtight container in your pantry.
FOR SERVING
Yeast Gelato (here)
Bread Crumbs (here)
To serve: Lay some cured sunchokes on a plate. Garnish with pieces of walnut and the bread crumbs. Add chunks of the hammered sunchokes and finish with a scoop of yeast gelato.
FRIED ROMAN ARTICHOKES WITH RICOTTA GELATO, HONEY, AND MATZO CROCCANTE
A few years ago, Dave Arnold gathered a bunch of local chefs to each present a dish at a large lunch he’d organized at Del Posto. Dave is New York City’s food-world mad-scientist-lunatic (if he ever offers to show you his rigged “puffing gun,” run away fast), and the gimmick, the prank, was that he’d personally assign each chef a theme for his or her dish. Momofuku’s David Chang got “American Food, 1491.” Wylie Dufresne, of wd-50, was given “Caveman Food.” Ladner did a whole roasted ostrich in honor of his theme, “Ancient Rome.” Each concept was intentionally ridiculous and aimed at playing into, or sometimes, more comically, against each chef’s strengths and reputation.
The topic for my dessert was “Jewish Food in Italy, pre–World War II.” It made me feel more than a little uncomfortable. Everyone else got comedy routines. Mine was both intensely historic and somber. Thanks, Dave. I called Nastassia, Dave’s right hand, and asked if I could have something funny instead. She said no.
Carciofi alla Giudea (fried artichokes) are one of my favorite Roman snacks. There is something so satisfying about a crisp, oily, salty artichoke. I like to eat them blazingly hot so there’s a little bit of hot oil dripping down my forearm. For the Dave Arnold experiment, I decided to turn fried artichokes into a dessert. They met the guidelines. In my research I also found a lot of baked goods with honey from that time period. I fried some artichokes, salted them heavily, and doused them in honey. Delicious, but a bit too sweet. I cut the honey with some white wine vinegar: perfect. I finished the dish with a scoop of ricotta gelato and a candy-brittle-nougatine thing made with caramelized matzo. It was tasty and fun, but in no way traditional. It was also just this side of Milk Bar boss Christina Tosi’s dessert at the same event, which included a meringue made with powdered Tang drink mix. Her topic: “Space Food.”
A few days before the lunch, I received a call from the Forward, a Yiddish newspaper covering Jewish news—the oldest of its kind in the nation. When asked about my intended dish, I told the reporter why I picked carciofi alla Giudea. “But are you Jewish?” she asked. No, that was just the topic given to me. “But, you are not Jewish!” I explained again that I wasn’t. In the article I was referred to as “the non-Jewish Headley.”
Yield: 4 servings
MATZO CROCCANTE
Sugar 1 cup (200 grams)
Matzo, broken into small pieces 1 cup (50 grams)
Salt 1 teaspoon (4 grams)
1. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat and set aside.
2. In a small saucepan, caramelize the sugar using the wet-sand technique (see here), until it gets pretty dark. Add the matzo and salt and swirl to coat the matzo in the caramel. Pour the mixture out in a fluid motion onto the prepared baking sheet.
3. Let it cool on the countertop until hard and then break it apart like peanut brittle.
HONEY VINEGAR GLAZE
Honey 3 tablespoons (63 grams)
White wine vinegar 3 tablespoons (97 grams)
Salt to taste
In a small bowl, whisk together the honey and vinegar. Season with salt and set aside.
FRIED ARTICHOKES
Peanut oil for frying 1 quart (864 grams)
Baby artichokes 8
Lemon juice for the holding water
Salt to taste
1. In a large deep-sided saucepan over high heat, bring the peanut oil to 275°F.
2. Trim off the exterior leaves of one of the artichokes until you see the pale yellow flesh—the color of the artichoke will change, moving from yellow at the bottom to dark green at the very top. Lay the artichoke on a cutting board and cut off the top, at about where the pale flesh meets the dark green.
3. Using a paring knife or peeler, trim the base of the artichoke and stem to remove the fibrous material, moving from top to bottom and revealing the tender interior.
4. Continue in this manner with all 8 artichokes, cutting each in half and placing it in a bowl of cold water with lemon juice, which will keep the artichokes from oxidizing until ready to use.
5. Strain the artichoke and blanch in the preheated oil until tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the oil and cool on a paper towel–lined cooling rack.
6. Once you have blanched all the artichokes, increase the frying oil temperature to 350°F. Fry the artichokes for a second time, until the leaves are golden and crispy, 4 to 5 minutes, turning occasionally.
7. Remove the artichokes from the oil and place in a paper towel–lined bowl. Season with a little salt while still warm.
FOR SERVING
Powdered sugar
Ricotta Gelato (here)
To serve: Drizzle the freshly fried artichokes with the honey vinegar glaze, lightly dust with powdered sugar, add the matzo croccante, and serve immediately with a scoop of ricotta gelato.
