playing with fire and water

asparagus rose

prosciutto  asparagus  olive oil  lemon  rose

I once worked for a chef with an exacting standard for detail. His mirepoix were perfectly uniform 1/4" dice and his mise en place were works of art, craft, and geometry. Besides his knives, which he wielded with the precision of a surgeon, his favorite tool was a ruler.

I learned a lot about OCD from him.

He must have seen some of those same tendencies in me because I was given some of the fussier tasks that he normally did himself. When he wasn't there to walk me through it, he would leave detailed notes-- complete with drawings-- of components or new dishes that he wanted me to work on. Eventually, as I became more familiar with his aesthetic, and he with mine, I was just given a list of dishes and left to interpret them.

On one of those lists was a dish that I fixated on: Fresh pea risotto with prosciutto rose. I immediately saw the dish in my head; a pale green mound of risotto topped with a loosely coiled ribbon of prosciutto. I couldn't figure out how prosciutto rose even fit into his style so I proceeded with my vision.

When I showed him the dish, he glowered at it. He insisted he had specified prosciutto lardons. I showed him the list and he conceeded that it had been his mistake but he never did explain how someone confuses lardons with roses.

In the end, he liked the dish as I had made it. My reward for pleasing him was to make 150 more just like it.

asparagus risotto

robiola bosina

prosciutto rose

deep-fried rose petals

asparagus salt  

A recent job took place on a privately-owned modern villa here in Northwestern Connecticut. Hidden behind 8'-high stone walls was the most extraordinary vegetable garden that brought to mind the gardens of Monticello, Versailles, and Villa Borghese. 

Highly ornamental, yet fully functional, it featured symmetrical parterres edged with clipped boxwood in elaborately knotted patterns; the pockets planted with herbs and vegetables. Red and green lettuces were planted in alternating blocks to form edible checkerboards. Iron trellage towers supported beans and tomatoes. Antique terra cotta cloches protected tender seedlings. Gurgling fountains, imposing sculptures-- there was so much to admire and draw inspiration from that I quickly went into sensory overload. 

In that formal setting, herbs and vegetables were treated and displayed with a deference that is usually reserved for ornamental plants and flowers. One stunning border featured roses interplanted with asparagus. The slim stalks of asparagus rising out of the ground echoed the thorny stems of the roses tipped with tight green buds. The gardener revealed that there was a beneficial logic to the pairing, but I was too distracted to take note.  

                                                           

I can however tell you about the logic of pairing the flavor of roses with asparagus. They are united by several aroma compounds, most notably alcohols and aldehydes and also some ketones and esters. Among them are:

Valeraldehyde (warm, winey, slightly fruity, and nutty)

Phenylacetaldehyde (earthy-sweet, fruity, floral)

Octanol (fresh orange-rose, slightly herbaceous)

Vinylphenol (vanilla extract)

Nonyl Alcohol (floral-citrus, slightly fatty, bitter)

No matter how much research I do on these compounds, the scientific names always shock me. They serve as a reminder that everything we perceive as wholesome, natural, and organic is, in fact, a complex composition of chemicals.

playing with asparagus

 

What do you see when you look at asparagus?

asparagus black truffle

Asparagus with Black Truffles and Butter. 

Just reading it made her mouth water. She hadn't known that she craved it until that moment. There was no need to read through the menu. 

The plate was set before her unceremoniously. Three fat stalks of naked asparagus. No truffles. No butter. She suddenly understood the agony of pigs who moved earth with bare snouts, driven by a primal fervor, only to have the object of their desire snatched away. 

She ached with unrequited truffle-lust.

"Yes ma'am, I assure you that there are truffles in the asparagus."

Had he spoken with less conviction, she would have handed the dish back and demanded satisfaction.

Had he not been so lucid, she could have come unhinged.

 

She poked the asparagus, moved them around the plate. 

Come out, come out, wherever you are.  

Nothing. 

He said they were in there.  

She lifted one to her nose, sniffed for evidence, found none. 

Was he lying?  

She caught his eye. 

I assure you...

Even before taking a bite, she knew that the asparagus were perfectly cooked. She had cooked enough of them herself to recognize the graceful arch; the way they bowed from their own weight when lifted. Familiarity did not diminish the pleasure she took in the first resilient bite and hexanol flavor that transported her to grassy green meadows, concertos of birdsong. 

Sparrow grass. 

Asparagus always elicited these sensations; they were welcome and expected. 

The surprise came a moment later.

It began as a peripheral warmth, skirting around the edges of her tongue. Wave after wave of volatile compounds, unleashed by the grinding of teeth, undulated and rose up through her olfactory bulb. Odor molecules mated with receptors in an orgy of scent. 

Caprylic. Pheromonal. Primordial. 

She began to feel a sound welling up in the back of her throat. She fought to suppress it as the server returned to inquire about the asparagus. Afraid to speak, she could only mumble and nod and let her eyes say the rest. He was well out of earshot when she dared to release it. 

Part snort, part grunt, it arose from a place of deep satisfaction; a gleeful pig giggle... the ecstasy of the sow. 

sweet pickled black cod

I can't say that I've ever been a fan of commercially made sweet pickles. More often than not, they're cloyingly sweet or too heavily spiced to win me over. That all changed when I encountered a product that showed me what a sweet pickle should be.

Low Country Products, located in South Carolina, makes a line of artisanal pickles, preserves and soups. Their website buzzes with all of the right trigger words: handmade, handpacked, small-batch, farm-driven, local, seasonal-- but ultimately, the proof is in the pickle. 

While I can't vouch for any of their other products, the Sweet Cucumber Pickles were an epiphany. The list of ingredients reads like Grandma's recipe: cucumbers, cider vinegar, sugar, garlic and pickling spices. Long after the pickles were gone, I kept the jar of brine because it was just too good to discard.

Miso-glazed black cod was another epiphany. Nobu's iconic dish was the west's introduction to the sustainable sablefish, or black cod, and the ancient method of curing in a sweet and acidic marinade of sugar, sake, mirin, and miso. Using this method with the sweet pickle brine rendered the flesh lush and silky and allowed for deep caramelization without overcooking.

Being an advocate of flowers-as-food, I'm delighted to see that edible flowers are becoming more readily available at grocery stores, though it concerns me that they are being marketed as garnishes and destined to become nothing more than a gratuitous flourish, replacing the token mint sprig on a desert, instead of relevant components of a dish. 

Perfumers recreate scent profiles by carefully selecting and blending flower essences-- can't we do the same with flavor?

My intention with this dish was to integrate the flavors in the sweet pickle brine with a purposeful selection of flowers. Yellow and purple chive blossoms reinforce the garlic, dianthus petals (which taste of cloves) supports the warm spices, and the sour bite of oxalis leaves (the flowers close up at night) substantiates the vinegar. Borage, had it flowered in time, would have been a fitting reference to the cucumber.

cheddar corn chives

snacks:

ice cream float

Sweet corn ice cream with cheddar beer. Yep, that's right: cheddar beer. It's better than I expected and it keeps getting better with age. The real gem here is finding a use for chive flower stems-- their rigid cellulosity renders them inedible, but makes for fantastic straws.

corn krispies treat

Ethereally light and crisp freeze-dried corn kernels and chives, bound with buttery isomalt syrup. More like a sweet/savory popcorn ball. Eminently addictive.

funyun

OK, so it's really an onion ring. But it's kinda fun, and definitely 'yuniony' courtesy of chive blossoms, thinly sliced Vidalia onions and ground, dehydrated onions in the tempura batter. The batter gets an extra boost from cheddar beer. I thought of making an onion beer for this but even I wouldn't go there.

pixy stix

Remember these? The sweet/tart powdered candy-in-a-straw goes savory with freeze-dried corn, chive, and cheddar powders. The straw (cheddar water with Ultratex) is edible, too. Break it open, use it as a dry dip, sprinkle it on the float--or better yet--directly on the tongue.

Download recipe:   Cheddar corn chive snacks

blooming onion

Chives are the smallest species of onions and they grow in clusters instead of individual plants.

I never got around to dividing the chives last year and now that they are in flower it'll have to wait until the fall. They multiply so quickly that by the end of the season the clumps will have doubled in size and become so compacted that I'll have to cut them apart with a knife.

I really didn't need any more chives for the garden but I couldn't resist this yellow-flowered Allium Molly. The flower heads are looser and slightly larger than the common purple variety (Allium schoenoprasum) but they have the same sulphuric bite. 

 

The "Blooming Onion" was once ubiquitous fare at family restaurant chains. It was introduced by Outback Steakhouse in the late 80's and involved a giant Vidalia onion, scored into petals, dipped in batter and deep fried. I went with my family once and someone ordered it as an appetizer. I remember being astonished by the size of it and even though it was passed around the table a few times, we couldn't finish it.

A quick look at their website shows that they are still serving it and are quite proud of the 16 ounce, 4 1/2" wide onions that are specially grown for them. Wiki reports that this "appetizer" contains about 2,200 calories and 134g of fat. I have to ask---why so big?

Here I thought that the days of confusing portion size with value were behind us. Has anyone ever finished an entire one, followed by an entree, and lived to tell about it?

chive blossom tempura [the real blooming onion]

the meadow

"No voice calls me to order as I enter a dream of meadow, kneel to earth and, moving east to west, second the motion only of the sun.... Clouds form, dissolve, withhold or promise rain. In time, outside of time, the unkempt afternoons fill up with flowers."

"Planting the Meadow"  by Mary Makofske

Dame's rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is a biennial wildflower that is often confused with phlox. The most obvious distinction is that phlox blooms later in the season and the flowers have five petals whereas Hesperis has only four.

Because of its tendencies to self seed and escape cultivation, it's considered an invasive species in parts of the country where it has crowded out native species. In my state of Connecticut, it is illegal to move, sell, purchase, transplant or distribute Hesperis. And, because I always follow the law [ahem], I resist the temptation to transplant them to a more conspicuous part of the garden. For now, they live on an unmown patch of earth that I call "the meadow", where they happily coexist with sumac, asters, mullein and goldenrod. 

Dame's rocket belongs to the Brassicaceae family of plants that include cabbage and mustard. 

The flowers throw off a sultry vanilla scent that intensifies as the sun goes down (Hesperis means evening in Greek) and has a two-part flavor that starts as honeyed pears and ends with a mild sting of mustard.

This dish, built on a foundation of peanut butter ganache and peanut brittle-enrobed roasted banana, covered with elderflower and green tea whip displays an intriguing juxtaposition of harmonious flavors.

It looks a bit wild and unkempt. Just like the meadow. 

Download recipe:  The meadow

rain

So. Much. Rain.

When I hear that parts of the west are suffering from drought, this feels like an embarrassment of riches.

Wish I could send some your way.

foragers and marauders

My neighbors raise chickens and turkeys that they allow to forage. When they get bored with the offerings in their yard, they wander into mine looking for a fresh supply of worms and seeds. 

I don't mind their visits... they're amusing (especially to my dog)... and we all have to eat, right?  

...even these sawfly larvae. 

But my prized mugho pine? Really? These f'ers decimated a mature specimen in just 2 days. 

I hope they enjoyed it... it was their last meal.