Pure Food and Wine

This lovely vegan restaurant at Union Square in New York bills its food as raw, though some of it is gently cooked, below the 118 degrees when enzymes break down. It bursts with fresh vegetable flavors, enhanced by silky oils and seasonings.

Unfortunately the restaurant doesn't update its menu so I can're recreate what I had, though I know I had a creamy polenta with a braised green and the salt caramel tart for dessert, both very good. The wine was a crisp, southern French with a nice mineral taste and matched the vegetable dishes well.

Fresh pasta

So I created enough time and space to experiment with making fresh pasta. It's always something lurking in the back of my mind. My mother often made egg noodles when were growing up and we'd have noodles draped over furniture on towels to dry all over the house when she got in a noodle-making mood. I had attended a session on pasta making in Princeton and bought the machine but never really used it.

I used the recipe and technique from Domenica Marchetti's The Glorious Pasta of Italy. Very simple -- 2 to 2-1/4 c. flour, 1/2 tsp salt, pinch of nutmeg in a mound, create a well and crack 3 eggs into and add 1 to 2 Tbl olive oil. Break the yolks with a fork, whisk eggs and olive oil together and gradually fork in some flour from the inside of the well to make a batter-like consistency. Then push the flour into the batter and start kneading. She suggest flattening with heel of hand, quarter turn, flattening some more, etc.

My first attempt failed because, as she suggested for hand kneading, I used the maximum amount of flour from the get-go. It was too much and dough came up very stiff and even after resting for half an hour was too stiff and dry to put through the pasta machine. So I started over, using just the 2 c. of flour. We got the "00" imported flour from Vace as recommended by the recipe. This time it worked much better. The dough was smooth and supple, and after resting 1/2 hr. I could cut it into quarters, roll out the quarter into an oval and feed it into the machine (Atlas from Italy) at the #1 setting. Following her technique, I folded it over in thirds and repeated this process 3 or 4 times. Then I started narrowing the setting -- #2,#3,#4,#5 -- feeding it through twice each time. She said to cut noodles at either #5 or #6. I didn't want to press my luck and have the dough start to break on me so I stopped at #5. It turns out this is too thick for fettucini, so next time I will go to #6.

The dough stretched out nicely and the cutting attachment worked perfectly to yield long, even fettucini, which I wrapped around my hand into a nest and dusted with cornmeal while I stretched out the other 3 chunks of dough. The noodles were very long and next time I will probably cut them in half as well as making them thinner.

We had been to the farmer's market in the morning and I got yellow zucchini and a couple of types of mushrooms just because they looked so nice. We found a couple of pasta recipes in Sara Jenkins' Olives and Oranges, one using zucchini and mint and the other using mushrooms and mint and decided to combine them with our fresh pasta. The mint gave me pause, but I used 4 Tbl in the end and the dish did not taste "minty" but the mint gave it a zingy freshness that was very nice. The zucchini got grated and then sauteed with chopped shallot.

For the mushrooms, she had an interesting technique I hadn't seen before. She called for putting just a single layer of trimmed and cut mushrooms into the heated oil and butter, adding some salt and pepper, and cooking them for 2 or 3 min., then pushing them to the side of the pan and adding a another single layer. Of course, the mushrooms reduce and the cooked ones continue to cook and brown, but this worked well for the 3 or 4 layers I had. Then you add some butter and chopped garlic at the end and cook until the butter foams. In both cases, you add the chopped mint at the end. So I tossed the cooked pasta -- it took nearly 5 min. because they were thick -- with the two dressings and some parmesan and it was really good. The mushrooms predominated because we had more of them than zucchini, but the mix worked fine. Jenkins' zucchini recipe has squash blossoms and a couple of other optional ingredients as well as a lot more zucchini, so it would probably be worthwhile to try it on its own someday.

Not sure how often I'll go to the trouble of making fresh pasta, but I will find a place to keep the machine that's easier to get at. We had it way back in a lower cabinet that I had to empty and almost crawl into in order to retrieve the equipment. Also, I have to move some stuff to open up counter space for this operation. When we renovate the kitchen we'll plan for a space that's always available for dough-making.

Tackle Box

Fresh fish, great ambiance, reasonable prices -- what more could you want? A little more food, maybe. The latest eatery from Jonathan and Bethany Umbel has opened in Cleveland Park and we had a nice lunch there Saturday. No lines, though the kitchen was a little slow in getting our fresh-made tacos and sandwich out.

The prices are reasonable, though they don't give anything away. Two tacos costs $8, and that's what you get -- two tacos. No rice, beans, salad or garnish of any sort. Just two tacos, each half full of a tiny, grilled fillet of tilapia and some slaw. Tasty, but not filling. Andrea's fried haddock sandwich came with fries, but came on two slices of totally untreated bread -- not a roll, not toasted, not buttered. So it's a little primitive.

The ambiance -- with well-used boat tackles hanging from the walls and a general feeling of Maine lobster shack -- is really nice, with a great bar and a friendly bartender. Drink prices also very good -- my 16 oz. Landshark draft cost only $5.

We did not try the lobster roll for $19, though it would be interesting to compare it with the lobster truck's $15 roll and Persimmon's $17 roll. The fish taco ranks behind Persimmon's and behind Surfside's, at least in volume, though sometimes the Surfside fish is not as fresh as it should be, or not freshly cooked.

The meal combos look like a good deal, and the shellfish pot, starting at $35 per person and going up depending on what fish you add, does not look like a good deal but looks interesting. We'll go back, though Cleveland Park is not always easy to deal with.