Little Serow

This is not the coconut milk Thai from the country's central region, but the smokey, porky, sweet-sour-spicy cuisine from the mountainous terrain of the northeast. Our server at Johnny Monis's Little Serow explained this to us as we devoured a succession of seven courses on the prix fixe menu, rattling off the differences in climate and geography and how that affected the food in each region.

Four of us made the pilgrimage to the spinoff from Monis's nouvelle Greek fancy dining place Komi, which we managed to enjoy a couple of times before it rocketed to fame as one of the top restaurants in the country and became impossible to get into. We arrived at 4:50 to take our place in line and put our names in when the restaurant opened at 5:30. We weren't the first ones and in fact were among the last to get some of the 28 places available in the first seating, seated side by side along a white counter.

Decor is funky (Thai funky?), with the interior painted an aqua green, tables at bar-stool height, drinks kept cold in a utility sink and flat screens hidden in a file cabinet.

We started with a drink and the fried pork rinds with chile sauce and salad vegetables (nam prit narohk het). The sauce was very hot and the pork rinds were light as air. I had one of the vermouths to start with, the Perucchi Gran Reserva from Spain.

The next two dishes -- all were served "family style" for each couple -- came together with some rice. There was a dish with catfish, dried shrimp and mango (yum mamuang pla muek), which had a funny fish-sauce flavor (don't get me wrong, I liked it). The second dish featured pork (not listed in the decidedly sketchy descriptions on the menu) along with sour fruit, palm sugar and shrimp paste (ma hur). As with all the dishes in the menu, these braced you with new, exciting and unusual flavors. There were hints of the familiar cilantro and Thai basil and always a suggestion of heat from chile, but there were new things, literally, for this Westerner and Thai food novice, indescribable.

The next dish, gai laap ching mai, combining chicken and chicken livers, offered more familiar flavors, a taste of pate with some exotic seasoning. Our companions at dinner, who cook Thai at home, noted approvingly, "Lots of chopping going on in the kitchen." This was followed by a crispy rice and sour pork dish (naem khao tod - no photo) that upped the heat a bit and gave us some more of that marvelous pork flavor.

To my taste, the next dish of greens, salted fish and egg (gai lan bla kem), was even hotter, though it was supposed to bring us down again. It had us reaching the sticky rice and sniffling but made you feel like you'd been to Thailand.

The final course brought us back to more familiar terrain with pork ribs marinated in mehkong whiskey and grilled to falling-off-the bone tender (si krong muu). Something of a piece de resistance it was a useful bridge back to U.S. of A.

A fun place with great food and excellent service -- what's not to like. I'm not sure how often I'll like leaving at 4:30 to stand in line for dinner and the service seemed at times a trifle rushed, especially when they set out the clean plates and silverware for the next seating on the back counter was we polished off our ribs. But how should you cope with fame? At Komi, you can only get a reservation if you call the minute they open for  booking 30 days in advance. How long can you let guests linger when you've already booked two more seatings? Sometimes it's worth the trouble and this is one of those instances.

Crab season

When I lived in France, there was only one culinary experience I was bold enough to come back from the U.S. and brag about -- Maryland crabs. From the time my friends in Baltimore first took me to Bo Brooks and I tasted the sweet white chunks of meat you pry out of these hardshell crabs, I have considered it one of the top eating experiences anywhere.

Going out for crabs became a regular feature of my visits stateside, as we switched back and forth from Bo Brooks to Obrycki's. When I moved back to the U.S., I'd visit regularly from Princeton, and since I've been living in DC it's a ritual to go at least once a season for a real crab feast.

Nowadays we go to Nick's Fish House and Grill, perched on the water south of the port with a lovely address on Insulator Drive. But sitting on the deck, you see only the water, the docked sailboats, the stately old Hanover Street bridge, and dozens of people whacking away with wooden mallets at the steamed crabs.

The visit last weekend was exceptional because jumbo crabs were available (though in earlier times these were probably known as extra large) and we were all hungry, so we added steamed shrimp, mussels in chipotle sauce, corn on the cob, French fries and pitchers of Fat Tire beer to the mix.

The bigger the crab, the bigger the chunks of meat and the easier they are to pick out of the various little crevices. It's a lot of work to eat crabs and the joy of having the big ones is that the payoff is bigger. Crabs come out of the steamer smothered in the Old Bay spice mix and are dumped directly on picnic tables covered with thick brown packing paper so that participants can grab a crab, crack the pincers with a wooden mallet to extract that meat, split open the body with a sturdy plastic knife, and squeeze, pull, pry and pick out what they can from the sharp, cartilaginous interior. The succulent meat needs no drawn butter, dressing, sauce or other adornment.

Nick's is reliably good, though this two dozen crabs did not come immediately out of the steamer and as a consequence were not as hot as they should have been. Our table was only feet away from the hard-working reggae band (we so wanted them to take more frequent and longer breaks), making conversation difficult. But cracking, picking and consuming crabs requires a lot of concentration, so conversation was often suspended anyway. Plus, we had the entertainment of several fellow diners pretending they were in Aruba and dancing to the music.

One could be forgiven for pretending to be in the Caribbean, given that it was a rare summer night that is warm without humidity, a breeze coming off the water, and that full, full moon coming up over the masts of the sailboats. Truly a feast.

Union Market

It sounded too good to be true and it was. I dreamed of something at least faintly resembling Borough Market Hall or even the Baltimore markets, but Union Market in NE DC is not a new foodie mecca chockablock with quality products. Rather, it is a boutique-y dollhouse version of a real market. It has a smattering of products that are indeed good quality but generally overpriced and it is very difficult to get to. Maybe it will succeed as part of the redevelopment of that section of NE but for those of us in upper NW it's just not worth the trip.

I went hoping it could be a destination for one-stop shopping, in particular with a good butcher shop and some vegan-oriented food bars. Goshen does in fact offer some fresh juices and a couple of vegan dishes, but it really is just a market stand and they offer what they can carry in. Soup Up offers a vegan soup, but for $8 you expect something more original than tomato basil.

Red Apron Butchery was unimpressive. Why would I buy their sausages and salumi when I can get a better, more robust selection that is much closer at Stachowski's? Harvey's was much more impressive as a butcher, but Wagshal's either in Spring Valley or hopefully on New Mexico Ave. offers much the same. The prices are higher but it is much more convenient. And why would I trek down across the tracks in NE to Righteous Cheese, which is a pale shadow of Cowgirl Creamery.

The market seems much harder to get to than the 26 minutes estimated on Google Maps. For one thing, there is always plenty of traffic to slow you down via Georgia and Florida. Plus you then get trapped in what has to be DC's worst intersection at Florida and New York.

And once you get there it is just much too precious (read pretentious). Cordial, for instance, a wine and beer store, actually got a plug in Food and Wine for an extremely limited selection of $20+ wines. At Pearl Fine Teas, one of the "popup artisans," I got what seemed like an 8 oz. cup of "Hawaiian Zen" for $3.30.

The vendors, excuse me, artisans seem bored and listless, as well they should sitting all day in a cavernous space devoid of customers. I came at 2 on a weekday, so maybe they do land market business at meal times, but I don't think so.

Good markets, like good food, grow organically to meet real needs. Union Market seems like a totally artificial effort to force the issue. I'm much better off supporting my local Farmer's Markets, co-op and above-mentioned NW stores.

Long summer lunch in the country

I generally don't blog about meals at friends but we had a special lunch over the weekend that goes in our personal hall of fame right next to the idyllic meal in southern France a couple of years ago.

This time we were in rural Virginia on one of those rare summer days when it's not too hot or muggy or buggy or too overcast or too rainy to sit outside and enjoy the beautiful scenery -- and this on a Saturday to boot. Our friends built a house on a farm with a terrace facing their pond, framed by wonderful green trees and blue sky. They have been experimenting for some time to create the perfect "slow food" lunch -- where the pacing and amounts are just right to stretch out a meal for the full afternoon. It was our good fortune to be there when they succeeded.

A word of warning: Sitting in the summer sun (even in the shade as we were), you will get more dehydrated than you realize and this results, judging by my recent experience, in alcohol consumption having a bigger impact than usual.

We started with prosecco, and moved to white or rose and then red. There were radishes and other munchies that have faded in my memory after what followed. The first course was a lovely grilled toast with a canned truffle spread accompanied by a fresh burrata. As with all the subsequent courses, this was exquisitely plated and as pleasing to the eye as to the taste buds.

The second course consisted of shrimp, lobster and scallops gently grilled in a basket in the Big Green Egg so that they all were delicate, tender and moist. Again, the presentation knocked your socks off (though on a hot summer day none of us were wearing socks). There was only the faintest taste of smoke and a subtle taste of sea though we were deep inland at the foothills of the mountains.

The courses were spread out. Our hosts would disappear into the kitchen to work their magic while we continued a leisurely but stimulating conversation with the other guests, sharing views on travel, Europe, Santa Fe, food, wine, politics, movies, books -- the kinds of things you talk about when relaxed.

The third course was a delightful celeriac soup, creamy with a touch of green from some subtle herb and decorated with a drizzle of oil.

At this point we switched to the Chateauneuf du Pape for the homemade beef carpaccio, accompanied with thick stalks of asparagus and a tangy spaghetti squash and shaved parmesan, all al fresco as the perfect light main course for a summer lunch.

Dessert  (unfortunately no photo) was also delicious. It was a chocolate tort with whipped cream that was rich but still light enough to finish off this summer lunch.

After coffee and more conversation, we retired to the upper deck to enjoy some more red wine and the 360-degree view. Time had not so much flown by as just stopped and suspended us in a pleasant idyll.

Chicken with eggplant and basil

Elizabeth Minchilli said she learned at a recent workshop on food-blogging that people click most often on chicken recipes, so she obliged with this weekday recipe that is simple and delicious.

First step is to brown 4 thighs and 4 legs in 1/4 c olive oil. Minchilli stresses the importance of letting the chicken fry without moving it around in order for it to get good and brown, about 6 or 7 min per side. It really works! The skin side gets crispy and brown and stays that way through the subsequent stewing process.

Remove the chicken and add three cubed (but not peeled) medium eggplants to the hot oil, and again let it brown. Not sure how big her medium eggplants are, but mine filled the sauteuse that I was obliged to stir the cubes around a bit to get them all to brown. Then add 5 cloves of chopped garlic and cook for a further 3 minutes. Add 1-1/2 c white wine and bubble up a couple of minutes to deglaze bottom of pan. At this point, add 1 c water some of the 2 c of basil leaves, reduce heat, cover and cook for another 20 min or so. To finish, add the rest of the basil.

I'll confess that embarrassingly I was unaware we don't yet have basil in our garden, so I belatedly had to adapt by simply sprinkling in some dried Herbes de Provence. But it was still quite delicious and I'm not sure you need the herb or at least need to be confined to one or the other. I could imagine this tasting quite good with tarragon, for instance.

Minchilli has a short rif about how bland boneless skinless chicken breasts are and why she never uses them. Never say never, I say, but there's no question the dark meat is more flavorful. An the family pack price at Whole Foods for $1.99/lb meant that I could get 5 leg-thighs for $6.67 and have my 8 pieces for the recipe with 2 left over for stock.

The dish comes out creamily Mediterranean -- all that eggplant and olive oil! -- and went nicely with brown rice and a French rose.

Santa Fe

Rather than fight the medical conference crowds for reservations at Cafe Pasquale or other leading lights on this trip we sampled some of the more informal places favored by our friends in Santa Fe.

Harry's Roadhouse had the pride of place, where on three trips we had the blue corn turkey enchiladas, tacos with barbacoa, and the buffalo burger with Monterey jack and green chiles. But Santa Fe Baking Co. was right up there, too, for several breakfasts. Great pastries, and excellent huevos rancheros and blue corn pancakes (which really stole the show).

Two other down-home favorites were Counter Culture, which had excellent sandwiches, and Tune Up, where I enjoyed chicken breast with mole Colorado and grilled bananas, a great sweet, savory and spicy dish. We also met friends at Santacafe for a little Southwestern elegance in the their lovely courtyard and some great steak.

We will probably be more venturesome once again on our next trip, but we wanted to take it easy this time around. Among Santa Fe's many charms is that taking it easy could not be easier. There is not a single place in Washington that can match any of these in the combination of chic and quality, without any pretensions or falsity.

Gateway BBQ Tour

I was helping a friend drive a U-Haul from Washington, DC to Santa Fe, so  we decided to have some fun and turn it into a "Gateway BBQ Tour." Since we were driving through Va, Tn, Ar, Ok and Tx, it seemed like a winner -- and it was. However, we discovered that the most important criterion for finding good BBQ is not how many stars or favorable reviews it gets on Yelp or Urbanspoon or whatever, but that it be open!

Our first target was Smoky's Hickory BBQ in Mason, Va., which got great reviews and seemed like a great BBQ shack. We held out for a late lunch, got off the Interstate and found the shack. Smokey's, it was obvious, had gone out of business some time ago. First lesson, call ahead.

So we had an early dinner at Archer's in Knoxville, Tn -- sampling both the Memphis-style baby backs and the pulled pork sandwiches (we were hungry, what can I say). They were excellent. We stopped there because a potential target in Nashville, Hog Heaven, told us when we called that they would close by 9 and we didn't think we could make it by then.

The next day was Sunday, and it turns out the most BBQ joints, at least in Tn, are closed on Sunday. Our first choice, Mac's BBQ in Jackson, Tn, was closed, and B.E. Scott in Lexington, which Andrea and I had visited in our previous trip along I-40 was also closed. We ended up at Brooksie's Barn in Jackson, which had a good pulled pork sandwich but a bizarre ambiance and a location right next to the megachurch Love & Truth. Jackson, in fact, was a depressing array of chain stores and restaurants.

We hustled to Fayetteville to make it to Sassy's Red House before they closed at 9. The rack of spareribs was good enough, but not great, though the ambiance of the festive outdoor deck made it a pleasant stop.

In Amarillo, we headed for Doug Henk's BBQ, after reading that he had won a vote as the best BBQ in the city. When we got there, we found it had become Crazy Larry's. Larry, who did seem a bit crazy, greeted us warmly and just informed us they had changed their name. The brisket was good, though I'm sure Austin has much better to offer.

When we finally got to Santa Fe, Harry's Roadhouse did have some juicy St. Louis style ribs on the menu, but I decided the BBQ tour was over and opted instead for a New Mexico blue corn turkey enchilada, which was scrumptious. The margaritas helped.

It was clear in Mason that the fast food franchises which dotted the road from the Interstate had most likely driven Smokey's out of business. In general, it seems that the shacks, at least those accessible to cross-country drivers are fast disappearing. In Oklahoma City, for instance, the front desk personnel at our Hampton Inn steered us away from Earl's Rib Palace, a Bricktown eatery that got fairly good review in Yelp, and recommended the Cajun place across the street. One of them said there were really good BBQ places in OKC, but got very vague when we asked where they were, making me think he was worried that it would not be advisable for us to go those neighborhoods. In any case, we were not going to tool around OKC in a U-Haul truck.

Memphis, itself, btw, was fully booked between the May in Memphis festival and the NBA playoffs, so we didn't even attempt a stop there. My conclusions: BBQ is alive and well enough but shrinking; Yelp can help but is not totally reliable; in the end, serendipity is your best friend.

Atlanta eating

We only had time to go to four restaurants in Atlanta, but they were all great.

The big splurge was The Spence with Top Chef winner Richard Blais. He really can cook and every dish we had at the table was top quality and very tasty. Though this is small plates, the plates aren't too small as a rule (though the desserts were bizarrely small). The baby kale Caesar was very ample, and we split it. I ordered one of the dishes set apart as a full entree -- rolled pork belly with baked chickpeas. We got a couple of orders of the signature fried Brussels sprouts for the table, and the fried three times French fries -- both excellent. The moderately priced Coteaux de Languedoc was a great pairing for most of the meal.

The overall ambiance of the place was good, though it was very loud as people tried to talk over the background music. Service was mostly good, though our waiter was a bit erratic in his attention. There was an open kitchen and though I've never cared one or the other about this I have to admit that watching a pimply-faced kid with a ponytail and arms covered with tattoos flipping a saute pan doesn't do much to enhance my enjoyment of the meal. Blais himself, dressed in a white T-shirt with an apron (but thankfully no tattoos), made the rounds of the tables, including ours, and that made many people very happy. As to my dish -- the pork belly came out lukewarm so I sent it back and it tasted much better when it was hot. The baked chickpeas were actually just a chickpea version of Boston baked beans -- not the happiest taste innovation of the night. But honestly, overall, I enjoyed the restaurant.

My pleasure was more unalloyed with our brunch at Gladys Knight's Signature Chicken and Waffles -- four jumbo chicken wings served hot and juicy with a waffle and all the trimmings (butter and maple syrup). That will hold you for the better part of the day. That evening we went to Fritti's, an upscale pizzeria in Inman Park and it was very pleasant. We would have tried the nearby Barcelona tapas bar but it was fully booked due to Mother's Day. For lunch after the graduation ceremony, we went to the Highland Bakery, where I passed on the signature peanut butter French toast but had a truly delicious chicken fried steak Benedict, which was pretty much as the name would indicate -- sinful and satisfying.

Pasta with asparagus, ricotta and lemon

This recipe from Elizabeth Minchilli calls for wild asparagus but I didn't even look for that. To my surprise, however, I was able to get the unusual pasta, sagne e pezzi from Rustichella d'Abruzzo, that she uses in the recipe. It must be something they are promoting, because Minchilli acknowledged it was a freebee from the producer (mine, btw, was NOT free) and it was prominently displayed in Cornucopia.

The recipe is fine with thin regular asparagus though I think it might be better shifting the proportions to get the taste balance right with the milder farmed vegetable -- either more asparagus or less pasta. The asparagus tips get cut up into 1-inch segments while the woody ends are boiled for 40 min in a big pot of salted water that will be used for cooking the pasta. Prep the ricotta by peeling the zest off a lemon, chopping it up as mixing it with the cheese to sit while you do the rest. Saute 1 chopped onion in olive oil for 15 min. then add the asparagus tips and a scoop of the pasta water and cook about 10 min until tender (not mushy). Drain the asparagus water, reserving the broth and throwing away the stems. Return the broth to a boil, add the pasta and cook according to instructions. When the pasta is almost finished, take a scoop of the water and add it to the ricotta mixture, stirring to make it smooth and creamy. Drain the pasta (reserving water again) and put it into pan with the asparagus tips. Toss with 2 Tbl butter, then add ricotta mixture and juice of 1 lemon and toss again, adding some pasta water if it is too dry.

The dish has a great lemony flavor. Minchilli says she doesn't serve parmesan with it because it might overpower the asparagus. I would be tempted to sprinkle some cheese over it, though, especially with the farm asparagus. The sagne e pezzi is a heavy, nutritious pasta and makes the dish a satisfying main course.

Wildwood Kitchen

We like Robert Wiedmaier's Brasserie Beck and Marcel's so wanted to try this new restaurant where he abandons the butter and cream and starch of his Franco-Belgian cuisine in favor of the oil and vegetables of Mediterranean cooking.

It is a relatively small place located improbably in the Wildwood strip mall on Old Georgetown Rd. The decor is pleasant and cozy and you could forget where you were if you weren't, as we were, sitting right at the window with a view of the parking lot.

The food, however, was quite good -- high quality, perfectly prepared and very tasty. We started off with drinks to celebrate Andrea's new car. I had the gin-based Corpse Reviver #2 and Andrea had the Wildwood's New Fashioned. Both were refreshing, generous drinks that commanded correspondingly generous prices ($15).

Bread was an oven-toasted, olive oil-flavored Italian style white served with a tuna rillettes that was a great way to whet your appetite. We split the asparagus salad, which both white and green asparagus with frisee and radish, all very fresh and refreshing. I had the pan-seared sea bream with ratatouille and Andrea had the salmon with quinoa and fennel and we were both very happy. The dishes were indeed light and Mediterranean.

Decor, like the food, was a sort of Italian-Spanish fusion, very pleasant, which made you yearn, however, for an outdoor patio, real trees and balmy sea air instead of Montgomery County 'burbs.

Bucatini all'amatriciana

One of the dialogues in my Italian textbook was about someone ordering spaghetti all'amatriciana in a restaurant, and this prompted our teacher, Carlo, to launch into a passionate description of how wonderful this Roman dish consisting of guanciale, pancetto, onion, tomato and hot pepper is. So I went to Domenica Marchetti's The Glorious Pasta of Italy for a recipe and found a good home version.

Her recipe calls for pancetta and Canadian/back bacon, but I thought I would be smarter and go to Vace, which I know carries guanciale. Sadly, they were out the day I was there, so I used 8 oz of pancetta, which gets sauteed 10 min until it renders its fat. Then you add 1/4 c olive oil, 1 c chopped red onion and 3 partially crushed garlic cloves for 5 min, then 2 c diced tomatoes with juice, sprinkled with salt and "a generous pinch" of red pepper flakes. Simmer for 10 more min. Meanwhile cook the bucatini to al dente, drain, reserving 1 c of pasta water, put the noodles in the skillet with the sauce and toss to combine over low heat. Transfer to heated bowl and sprinkle 1/2 c shredded pecorino romano over it and serve.

Bucatini are large-diameter spaghetti with a hole down the middle, which makes the cook more evenly and also helps pick up the sauce. This was a tasty, easy pasta dish. Next time I will try it with guanciale and either a bigger pinch of red pepper flakes, or, as Carlo described it, including a red pepper in the saute.

Roast leg of lamb with rosemary and prosciutto

Roast leg of lamb was a standby for me in Paris when I lived across the street from a wholesale butcher. Nothing could be simpler -- insert slivers of garlic around the leg, pop it in the oven and a little more than an hour later, feast like a king. The lamb is self-basting with the layer of fat, tender and pink and delicious.

Diana Henry has several recipes for leg of lamb, including this one, which involves wrapping a strip of prosciutto around the garlic sliver with a twig of rosemary and inserting them around the leg. She recommends roasting at 425 degrees for 15 min, then lowering it to 350 for 50 min more. In this recipe, she also has you pour 1/4 c balsamic vinegar and 2/3 c white wine over the lamb and baste during cooking. It helps to form a tasty crust. We served it with flageolet beans from Rancho Gordo. Superb.

Fiola

To celebrate a special event with some friends we splurged on this "modern trattoria" of Fabio Trabocchi's in Penn Quarter and it was sensational. Everything -- decor, drinks, appetizer, pasta, main course, wine, dessert, service, ambiance -- was terrific. It even had the Washington power elite it's famous for, with a Supreme Court justice coming into the restaurant right behind us.

The friend who suggested this outing had done some research and steered us to truly outstanding signature dishes. To start with, as an hors d'oeuvres for the table, we had the veal meatballs, with an egg sunny-side up. These were tender, flavorful concoctions smothered in a delicious garlicky tomato sauce that I mopped up with the slightly toasted delicious bread. We had these with cocktails that I discuss more at length in my wine and spirits blog.

My first course, one of the signature dishes, was the agnolotti of Venetian cod "Baccala" with mussels, cockles and Spanish octopus, and it was stupendously good. The creamy salty cod in the perfectly cooked pasta took you to the sea and the various other ingredients enhanced the fishy ambiance. The octopus, in particular, a baby octopus that had been blanched, was tender and mild in flavor but with enough of that exotic Atlantic taste to give the dish some kick. The broth and flavoring, too, all worked to create a wonderfully balanced and, even the half-portion, very generous serving of seafood. Andrea had the vitello tonnato, made with tuna tartar and a creamy mayonnaise, that also was fabulous from the taste of it I had.

Let me say in passing it was such a relief to go to a restaurant that was not serving small plates. This was a meal, a real meal, that had nothing "precious" or sampling about it. This was great food, served with flourish, but not fussed over. So in that sense, it was truly like a trattoria. No white tablecloths, only some smart finished wood, and a cheerful, bustling air that was not too hectic or noisy.

My main course was Wagyu beef tenderloin with rosemary zabaglione that was beautifully tender and, even at medium rare, a healthy red with a robust beef flavor. Andrea went for the porchetta that was the genuine article, a real stuffed pork loin with the fennel and anise flavors, and extra savory from the homemade sausage used in the stuffing. For dessert, we actually passed up the dark chocolate ganache in favor of the bomboloni -- Sardinian ricotta doughnuts -- that were simply exquisite -- warm, puffy, creamy in the middle and set off perfectly by the burnt honey gelato that accompanied.

We had a moderately priced Super Tuscan that I don't find on the online menu, but which was quite nice. The service was genial, efficient and never intrusive, though the courses did come out somewhat quickly. The manager stopped by twice to check on us and was very personable.

Fiola is definitely in the top rank of DC restaurants, right up there with Komi, Marcel's, Corduroy and the others. Too pricey to go often but definitely one to visit again.

Chicken baked with red onions, potatoes and rosemary

This the second recipe I tried from a new cookbook, Pure Simple Cooking by Diana Henry, and it truly was simple and very good. Henry is a food columnist and TV host in Britain so her recipes are somewhat derivative. This one, for instance, she credits to Antonio Carluccio. The book is another one of these lavishly illustrated Ten Speed Press productions, which I seem to be a sucker for.

The recipe calls for a chicken cut into 8 pieces or 8 thighs, rubbed with sea salt to crisp the skin (it really works!). I opted for the thighs, though since WF in its wisdom does not sell thighs with the skin on, I had to get the whole leg/thigh and cut them apart, but the price was great ($1.99/lb) and the chicken was delicious. The dark meat wonderfully absorbs the flavors from the aromatics, which consist of 2 red onions, each cut into 10 wedges; 2 bulbs garlic, separated into cloves but not peeled; and 5 sprigs of rosemary, a couple whole and the others stripped of their leaves. You put these ingredients with 1-1/4 lb of new potatoes into a roasting pan, salt and pepper, pour in 1/2 c olive oil and 2 Tbl balsamic vinegar, toss, and nestle chicken pieces into the vegetables and put into a 400-degree oven for 45 min.

Obviously it fills the house with a great smell. The onions caramelize and you can squeeze the roasted garlic out of its peel. I couldn't find new potatoes and the closest I could come (WF had nothing, of course) were some purple finger potatoes at Rodman's. They were just OK and I would like to do it again with new potatoes.

I had tried another recipe last week, roast cod with smoked bacon, that I wasn't crazy about. It seemed maybe a little too simple, given that this seems to be common pairing of ingredients. Pan-searing then baking the cod did not result in a very appetizing dish and it tasted like a collection of ingredients rather than a balanced dish. So we'll see how the other recipes go.

A Stachowski's weekend

With Andrea away for the weekend, I treated myself to a pastrami sandwich at Stachowski's, the artisanal butcher/charcutiere in Georgetown, and brought home some other goodies for the weekend. I got the hot Italian sausage to grill and it crisped up nicely and tasted good. These modern sausages tend to be a little too politically correct, however, and this had too little salt and too little fat. Instead of dripping juices, it was a little dry after grilling.

The duck confit was terrific. I wanted to reproduce the way confit was served on the goose farm I stayed at in Perigord one vacation -- the confit crisped on top of potatoes which had absorbed the fat while roasting. I peeled and diced some baby red potatoes I had into 1/4-in cubes, and browned them in the skillet in some olive oil. Then I put the duck leg/thigh on top and popped it into a 425-degree oven for 15 min. or so. To get the right golden color on the duck, I put it under the broiler for a few minutes to finish. The duck was tender, remained moist and was good-sized.

I also got some delicious hand-crafted mortadella, one of my favorite salumi. This had much more flavor than the mass-produced. It was sliced very thin the way it needs to be and was a great antipasto all weekend. It's a good thing, really, that Stachowski's isn't any closer!

Dino's "Big Pig" event

In a culinary tour de force, Dean Gold offered a tasting menu of several dishes featuring the Mangalitsa pigs that originally hail from Hungary and which a local farmer is raising.

The pigs are odd-looking because they have curly hair that looks like sheep's wool. Dean explained that Bryan Kerney, who was at the dinner, has been raising them at Truck Patch Farms.

Every one of the 11 dishes was excellent, though I liked some more than others. The portions, of course, were quite small, but as long as you keep in mind that a tasting menu is more like a culinary seminar than a meal, it works fine.

Serving some 50 people with such an elaborate menu clearly challenged the capacity of Dino's kitchen. The evening stretched to three hours, which was simply too long, especially if you don't want to drink with abandon on a school night. Fortunately, we had some good table companions -- a father and son who each in his own way was a certified foodie -- and the time passed pleasantly enough.

A charcuterie trio featured a pig liver terrine in pancetta, a mushroom and pig terrine, and duck fat hock rillettes. All three were terrific, though my favorite was the one with pancetta -- it had an earthy, pate flavor and robust texture that I like. The rillettes was very good. Dean explained he used duck fat (from D'Artagnan) to lighten the otherwise porky menu.

A second set of starters was the chicharrones -- crispy pig skin (cracklins, pork rind) -- and burnt ends with Tuscan barbecue sauce. Both good but Arthur Bryant has nothing to worry about.

One of the stars of the evening was the grilled radicchio leaves wrapped in a Tuscan bacon made with pork belly that was braised, sliced then cooked to crispy. Here's where you want to exit a tasting menu and just get a large order because the single serving per person was frustratingly small.

The cheesy Calabrian meatballs, Dean explain, had a lot of bread filling because traditionally it was a dish for poor people. These were very tasty, but had a tendency to fall apart. What stole the show was the San Marzano tomato sauce.

Duck fat matzoh balls in spiced pig stock would probably be my top candidate for the ax if you wanted to lighten the menu and shorten the evening. The matzoh balls were a bit heavy, and the dark, spicy broth was not at all bad, and probably fine on a winter evening as a starter. I get it that this was a way to introduce some starch into a menu that otherwise was almost pure meat and fat.

The head and neck stewed in chickpeas would be second on the list for the ax. I like chickpeas and the little bits of meat were tasty enough, but the presentation was unappetizing and this was the only dish that was not fully eaten.

The Tuscan tomato sauce with trotters and spices on shell pasta (canestri), on the other hand, was a big hit. The pasta was terrific and perfectly cooked, and dressed nicely with the by now familiar taste of these Mangalitsa pigs

The pork shoulder pot roast with vinegar and herbs -- called the jailhouse stew in Italian -- was the crown of the meal and appropriately delicious, though I would fault the planning for not making this a bigger portion. At least one dish should be more than a tidbit to give the illusion at least of a meal, and this was the obvious candidate.

The pork from the Mangalitsa has a rich, deep flavor. You would never call this the "other white meat." Dino's is offering the choicer cuts on the menu this week, though I'm not sure I'll go back right away. Truck Patch Farm sells its products at the Mt. Pleasant market starting in May, so that is probably where I'll get my next Mangalitsa.

For this tasting menu, Dean offered an optional Sicilian wine flight. I'm sure the wines were quite good, but at $30 for three 3-oz. pours, seemed a little pricey to me. We opted instead for the 8-oz carafe of the open reds, taking a Corte alla Flora "Giugiolo," a 2010 Prugnolo Montepulciano described as "explosive" and which opened up very nicely, and the 2009 Per Alessandra Barbera d'Alba described as "delightful," which was quite smooth. At one of the neighboring tables, a group of six men had the genial idea of each ordering a bottle for the table to sample. That is probably the way to go if you don't have to work too hard the next day.

Pork Pot Roast with Apricots, Cardamom and Ginger

This Molly Stevens recipe was a big hit, a different flavor direction for our beloved pork. The recipe's 4-1/2 to 5 lb boneless pork shoulder roast (Boston butt) became a 4 lb bone-in roast at Wholefoods' take it or leave it butcher counter, but I kept the other proportions.

Brown the roast on all sides in 2 Tbl olive oil, for 15 to 20 min. total. Remove to plate and pour off all but 1 Tbl of fat, add 1 leek, 2 carrots and 1 medium onion, all coarsely chopped. Stir in 6 cardamom pods, shell removed and insides crushed, 1/2 tsp turmeric and 1/4 tsp cayenne, and cook for 5 min until vegetables start to soften. Add 1 Tbl shredded ginger, 2 cloves garlic peeled and "bruised," 3 strips of orange zest and bay leaf and cook for 2 more min. Pour in 2 Tbl cognac or apricot brandy (I used equal portions of cognac and apricot liqueur) to deglaze, about 1 min, then add 1/2 c white wine and boil 4 min. Pour in 2 c chicken stock (I used my homemade stock), bring to a boil and add 6 oz dried apricots and cook them for 2 min. Place roast back in pot (pour in juices from plate), cover with parchment paper hanging 1 in over the edge, place lid on top and pop into 325-degree oven for 2 hrs, checking and turning every 30 min. When done, remove roast and let it rest for 10 min. Degrease sauce and boil down if necessary. Slice pork and nap with sauce and apricots. Serve couscous on the side. We also followed Stevens' recommendation to accompany with an off-dry Riesling, with a Dr. Loosen Mosel wine filling the bill.

The pork was tender, moist and redolent of the flavor from the aromatics. The sauce turned a rich brown (from the apricots?) with a gentle interplay of sweet and savory. I dressed the lettuce salad with a blood orange-infused olive oil and a Pinot Grigio vinegar to round out the meal. A real keeper we'll duplicate some day for guests.

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.