Cooking tomes

(Cross-posted in my book blog)

There seems to be a trend toward cookbooks that go way beyond recipes and into lengthy disquisitions on food and its cultural context. These are the books that are getting the awards and notice and I have acquired a few of them recently.

For instance, after a particularly wonderful Thai meal at a friend's house and hearing for some time that Thai cuisine is influencing chefs all over the world, I wanted to get a good introduction to Thai cooking. So I bought Thai Food by David Thompson. One of the Amazon reviewers noted that the book, written by an Australian chef who fell in love with Thailand, gets nearly to p. 200 before you have the first recipe -- so I went in with my eyes open. Opening sections deal with the country and its culture, the Thai kitchen and ingredients before tackling recipes.

This not essentially different from Julia Child, but much, much longer. Elizabeth David and M.F.K. Fisher were as much food writers as cookbook writers and many of their books take the form of the longer essays with recipes sprinkled through, so perhaps this new wave is simply a return to this more holistic view of cooking.

English writers seem to be leading the way. I recently bought two books by Nigel Slater, Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch and Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard. Like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's The River Cottage Meat Book before it, these lavish, long books are highly personal accounts of the writer's experiences with cultivating and cooking the meat, vegetables or fruit. I've never used many of the recipes from Meat, nor, truth be told, taken the time to read much of the author's musings on the subject. Nonetheless, there is something captivating about this approach and it might be rewarding to take more time with them.

I have a number of cookbooks on Italian cuisine, but still I fell for two new books in this cooking tome genre. One is truly a massive tome -- Culinaria Italy: Cuisine, Country, Culture. It is part of a series edited by Claudia Piras and published by H.F. Ullman, a German publisher. I had to order it from England. It takes a regional approach, describing the culture and foods of Italy's various regions. Like the others in this genre, this book has plenty of big colorful photos printed on thick-stock paper. No doubt part of the motivation for this trend is to provide a different type of experience from printing a recipe at Epicurious.

I also bought SPQR: Modern Italian Food and Wine by Shelley Lindgren and Matthew Accarino, who run a restaurant by that name in San Francisco. This is billed more as a guidebook, however, with on-the-spot descriptions of food and wine in Italy's central and northern regions. From what I've seen of the recipes, however, it falls into the usual trap of chef-written cookbooks of recipes that are complicated and use many hard-to-find ingredients. If it's only good to learn more about Umbria before we go there, it will be worth it.

Besides needing to compete with digital media, these books probably respond to the growing demand, verging on fetishness, for people to get more deeply engaged with food and wine. For many people, as for me, cooking and eating and drinking have become real hobbies in our era of plenty. How else account for the popularity of books like Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History or Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World -- neither of which, I hasten to add, do I own -- and the book I'm currently reviewing for Washington Independent Review of Books, Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice by Marjorie Shaffer.

In short, a hobby cook is invited to become a veritable scholar of food. Perhaps it all began with Waverly Root, the Paris-based American journalist whose 1958 tome Food of France really set the standard for this type of food writing. Root was writing for the International Herald Tribune still when I went there in 1980 and I saw him in the newsroom a few times. It was at that time, too, that Patricia Wells arrived with her husband, Walter, and embarked on her highly successful career as a food and cookbook author.

How much all of this will translate itself into great meals on our own table remains to be seen. I generally report my (successful) cooking experiences on my food blog, so I will track the results of all these lavish tomes there.

The Pig

I love pork so when someone suggested meeting at this new Logan Circle snout-to-tail restaurant, it had a lot of appeal. We did have a great time, with the table next to the window as separate and as quiet as it could be in a noisy restaurant. Prices for both food and drink were reasonable and the food was fine.

However, thinking back on it I realized it seemed to be to be a bit of a toy restaurant. For one thing, it was mostly small plate, so the portions were not satisfying. Second, it is a restaurant based on a gimmick and virtually everything came across as a bit gimmicky. There is a 4 oz. beer, which indeed caters to a certain niche of non-beer drinkers, but looks like it belongs in a doll house. The menu, the decor, the pig theme in general is late American cutesy. It doesn't hark back at all to the genuine tradition of charcutiere. I went to the original snout-to-tail restaurant, Fergus Henderson's St. John, on one of my trips to London. It is a very sophisticated place, with real portions (and of course much higher prices). The Pig is like a toy version of that restaurant.

I opted for the small plate called porchetta even though a discussion with the waitress established that it was stuffed pork belly, so nothing like the real Italian porchetta, and I was suitably disappointed. It was a roasted or fried slice of pork belly, stuffed with a tasty potpourri of pork parts, but had nothing of the fragrance and tender meatiness of the real thing. The braised cheek that I tasted was quite good, but of course the portion was very small. The "small pig" plate of dried meat we all shared as a starter was very tasty, but there were only three meats and two of them were ham. The sides we shared were quite good, especially the roasted Brussels sprouts. We shared a couple of desserts, a toffee and a panna cotta, that were fine. The beer I had, Devil's Backbone from Virginia, was fresh and tasty and at 5.25 a good deal.

In this case, it really was the company that made the meal and The Pig provided a comfortable venue with a lot of buzz for that and reasonably good food. So I'm not complaining, I'm just saying I won't rush back.

Corduroy

We had a splendid meal at Chef Tom Powers' restaurant, splurging for a special occasion at what has become recognized as one of the best restaurants in town. I've been a fan of the chef since he sat at the bar at Vidalia one night when I was bartending and left me a very generous tip. We went to his place once before, when it was still located in a hotel. Now it is in a stylish row house, which, unfortunately for the ambiance, is across the street from the convention center.

In fact, the interior, though cozy and not too noisy, had a bland expense-account look to it, and most of our fellow diners appeared to be out-of-town men in business suits. Nonetheless, we were installed in an intimate sheltered 2-top and were perfectly happy. We opted for a la carte rather than the "surprise" tasting menu. I had a lobster carpaccio for starters, which was quite delicate -- perhaps a bit too delicate -- but exquisite. Andrea had a much heartier wild mushroom blintz, a special. The blintz was fried and more like a spring roll, but the mushrooms were perfectly cooked and seasoned. For the main course, I had the antelope, which was supremely tender and tasted like venison, not at all gamey (I presume these are farmed, not wild, antelope). Andrea had the guinea hen, which was strongly flavored with fennel. The breast was roasted, moist with crispy skin and the thigh was confit, with a rich dark-meat flavor. For dessert, Andrea got the baked chocolate sabayon, which was very chocolate-y but a little too baked for my taste. I got the bourbon and chocolate ice cream, which was fine, but nothing special.

We took advantage of the corkage fee, as is becoming our custom in expensive restaurants, by bringing our own bottle of Barolo. More about the wine at my wine blog. One of the reasons I rejoined Wines Til Sold Out was precisely to get these expensive wines at a discount, so this was a $90 wine at $40. So with the corkage fee of $25, we still saved a bundle on wine -- the Barolo and Corduroy's menu was $160. We had a cocktail beforehand and I had a Barolo grappa with coffee (I said we were splurging). The service was good, the waiter entertaining. Chef even sent out a little sample of his delicious cauliflower soup after I told the waiter about my Vidalia encounter. All in all, a delightful evening. There is a apparently a $30 menu available at the upstairs bar, so we may go back some weekday soon for that.

Ad hoc recipes

I enjoy browsing through my cookbooks and planning menus for the week ahead, but good recipes come from many sources. Over the weekend, I used the recipe -- more just a technique -- for flank steak that appeared in the NY Times Dining section last Wednesday. You rub the steak with salt, cracked pepper, rosemary leaves and garlic slivers and let it sit for an hour. Preheat the oven to 450 and put a cast iron skillet in to warm up a half hour before cooking. Then sear the steak in the pan (in the oven) for 5 min. on the first side and 3 to 4 min. after you turn it over. It works quite well, leaving the steak seared and tender. Ours had quite a bit of fat on it, so it was nice and juicy. To serve, slice on the diagonal and drizzle with olive oil. The recipe for what Italians call tagliata goes on to add parmesan shavings and arugula but we did fine without that. Instead, I paired it with a broccoli crustless tart from Elizabeth Minchilli that I pinned on my Recipes to Try board on Pinterest. Essentially a quiche -- you bake the cooked broccoli with a mix of eggs, cream and cheese -- it worked really well with the steak.

For a solo dinner yesterday, I stopped by The Fishery and decided once again to try shad roe. After reading some 30 Nero Wolfe mysteries with each one mentioning shad roe at some point, it's hard not to keep trying. This time I went to Google (Epicurious, oddly enough, had never heard of shad roe) and found some nice treatments. I ended up gently sauteeing the pair of roe sacs in butter in a cast iron skillet, and then serving with some caramelized shallots and a lemon caper butter sauce. I cooked a rice pilaf to accompany, though it turns out basmati rice is not ideal for this. Still not totally sold on shad roe. It's an acquired taste and hard to acquire if you have it only once a year.

Eating in the burbs

Various meetings took me to the suburbs for dinner this week. I met an old friend who has moved to Alexandria at Geranio, an old-style Italian restaurant on King Street. It was refreshingly relaxing and un-pretentious and we both had the signature lobster risotto, which was truly outstanding. The rice was perfect and they were restrained in the use of butter -- no cheese -- so that the lobster flavor came through. Presumably they used some sort of broth and/or butter made with lobster, because the flavor permeated the rice. The lobster itself was fresh and tender. I had a grilled portabella and arugula salad which was also perfectly prepared and my friend ordered a light dolcetta d'Alba to accompany the meal.

For the final class in my introductory Italian course, the instructor took us to Pizzeria Da Marco in Bethesda, run by a fellow Genovese he knows. The restaurant offers genuine thin-crust Neapolitan pizza and I got the DOP version with buffalo mozzarella and an extra topping of prosciutto. The pizza was (nearly) as good as 2Amys but the ambiance of the large space in a new brick building left much to be desired. As a result, however, it was not nearly so crowded and noisy as trendier places and is a good fall-back if you just want to have a good pizza.

Our trip over to Silver Spring to Charm Thai was just a way to get some quick and easy dinner. I say it every time that I'm surprised how close Silver Spring is. The restaurant gets good reviews in Yelp but I made the mistake of asking for my seafood drowned noodles to be "extra spicy." The kitchen evidently took that as a dare. I was able to choke it down but next time I will just order what's on the menu. Andrea liked her very spicy crunchy chicken but the duck roll appetizer we split was pretty blah. The restaurant is totally devoid of charm -- this may be why I forget how close Silver Spring is -- with the tables lined up a long counter that serves take-out customers. In my new project to get better acquainted with Thai cuisine, I will certainly go back there, but will be more judicious in my menu choices.

Aromatic braised pork shoulder

The emphasis is definitely on "aromatic" in this recipe from Susan Hermann Loomis's Cooking at Home On Rue Tatin. The various aromatics virtually disappear as individual notes in a blend of flavor that infuses the tender meat.

The pork butt cut from Blue Rooster farm is a thick, flat piece of meat with a bone in it and it worked well in this recipe. Brown the meat on both sides in olive oil, remove and put in 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced onions, 1 sliced fennel bulb and soften for 5 min. Put meat back in, add 3 c. water and put 3 bay leaves, 4 garlic cloves, a handful of lemon thyme and 2 unpeeled coins fresh ginger into the water. Sprinkle 1 Tbl coarse sea salt over it, cover, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 min. Uncover and put in 400-degree oven for 1 hour, turning the meat every 20 min. Let the meat sit for 15 min before slicing (Loomis doesn't say anything about removing it from braise but it's the only thing that makes sense in the context).

Interestingly, Loomis calls for spring or filtered water to avoid a possible chlorine taste from tap water. This never occurred to me before, but I used the filtered water I have for coffee -- why not? Couldn't find lemon thyme so just used thyme. Andrea actually missed tasting the fennel and thyme. I supposed I could have cut the fennel a little thicker, and vertically instead of horizontally to have bigger slices that held together better and retained more flavor. Loomis recommends a white wine with this dish and we had a white Bordeaux.

I haven't used too many recipes from this book, but this was terrific and encourages me to look here more often.

Range

The food at Bryan Voltaggio's innovative restaurant is delicious, but the overall dining experience is an unsatisfying combination of precious and pedestrian. The spread-out space in Chevy Chase Pavilion made Andrea think of an upscale cafeteria while it reminded me of a restaurant at a European train station. Range even made up for the lack of train passengers by providing hordes of waitstaff bustling around and an amazing number of suits running around with little earphones to keep the 300-seat restaurant humming.

To our surprise, however, there were a lot of empty seats and no waiting on a Saturday night. Besides the tables (many which remained empty for much of the time we were there, though we were told none was available for an hour and a half) and the crowded bar, there were the marble lunch counters running along the various cooking stations and we sat at the first empty seats we saw, at the bread station, which of course was the least interesting to watch.

But we were there for the food, so it was fine. Everything we ate was excellent. However, it reinforced my animosity to small plates. It worked for us to get a "pizza" to split for a starter, order two meat dishes and a side of Brussels sprouts while sitting at a lunch counter and leave, barely, full. But I don't think it would be totally satisfying sitting at a table, especially if with friends, and counting it as a great meal.

The "pizza" was really just a flatbread with a sprinkling of bacon and onions and some dibs and dabs of fresh cheese. The ingredients were good but this was nothing faintly resembling a pizza. I ordered the veal sweetbreads, and they were exquisite -- creamy white with a thin crispiness on the outside. Andrea ordered the pork cheeks, and they, too, were tender and very fine, though the dish was not hot enough. Needless to say, the portions, while somewhat bigger than a Jaleo small plate, were smaller than a normal entree. The roast Brussels sprouts were also great, though they came tossed in a fish sauce, which the menu neglected to mention.

The menu, in fact, may have swung too far away from those flowery descriptions that used to distinguish menus and was a little terse. Perhaps we should have asked for details. The wine menu online is different and I didn't make an note, but Andrea had a Chablis, which was nice, and I had an Italian red.

The restaurant is new, and I suspect that after a year they will have backed off from some of the odder innovations. I will go back at some point, but I'm not in a hurry.

Cabbage soup diet

Crash diets are of course suspect, but the measure of success in any diet is not how much weight you take off or how quickly but how well you keep it off. We were encouraged to try a second round of the cabbage soup diet because we successfully kept off the 10 lbs. we lost in the round last summer.

So this time, from March 1 to 7, I once again lost about 10 lbs -- in fact, the total for the two rounds is 21 lbs -- and that feels great.

I got the feeling sometimes during the past week that the only reason cabbage is used is to keep you from eating too much of anything, because you can only force so much of that down. We did our best with alternate versions of the soup -- adding fennel and basil to make it more "Italian," using stock instead of water -- but in the end you're stuck with a bland soup that is just bubble and squeak without the potatoes.

It is the baked potato day and the two steak days that save it. I think we will try another form of dieting the next time around, but you have to give the devil its due -- this diet is effective.