Tastes of the Week(s)

February 27 through March 18, 2012 Several weeks have gone by and I haven't shared some of the interesting and, often superlative, tastes that I've had. This "tastes" column is a way for me to both document and re-imagine the experiences, but also an invocation for you to fine tune your own. This is a new era of "mindfulness" for me -- in both cooking and eating -- resulting in far more pleasure and appreciation. As many of you know, I am a student in a program called Foundations in Buddhist Contemplative Care and I work in an emergency room and on a cancer floor once a week. The very notion of contemplation spills over into everything nowadays -- not just in working with patients. It even extends to the little cafe at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, where I slowly savor my tuna fish sandwich and unexpectedly decent coffee in a weekly ritual, sharing tables with strangers, wondering what the day has been like for them. Mindful eating is now being talked about with much grace -- I enjoy re-reading the wonderful article in the New York Times about it several weeks ago -- but I am also interested in "contemplative cooking" -- that of my own and of others. It is a subject I will be writing much more about.

This installment bridges February and March -- the end of an almost nonexistent winter and very early spring. I had a wonderful lunch last week at Rouge Tomate, a beautiful sprawling modern restaurant on East 60th Street in the city.   Their $29 prix fixe menu was quite a surprise especially because the meal was as enjoyable and professional as one I recently had at Le Bernardin. The chef, Jeremy Bearman, deserves much more attention and I look forward to learning more about him and his philosophy in cooking. Now here is a "contemplative chef!" Every detail of taste, color, harmony, balance and surprise existed in every dish. I started with a Green Tornado (not part of the prix fixe) instead of my usual glass of wine. It was a fabulous quaff blended from tarragon, spinach, basil, butter lettuce (!), mint and lemon juice. Stimulating and satisfying, I could drink these all summer long.  (And doesn't butter lettuce sound divine and fattening?!) The first course, Wild Mushroom and Leek Salad, was a "painting" that also included spring garlic, frisee, Meyer lemon, and a polenta crisp. The main course, Arctic Char a la Plancha, came with black rice (also known as "forbidden rice"), green olives, spring onion, and passion fruit. The passion fruit was expressed by a disk of daikon that was cooked "sous vide" in passion fruit juice. It might have been one of the most exciting tastes I've ever had.  And while the arctic char spent a few too many seconds on the plancha, the dish as a whole was fascinating.  Desserts? A bittersweet chocolate tart, with accents of banana, coconut, lime yogurt and ginger gelato, and Fingerlakes Farms' Yogurt Panna Cotta, with notes of dried cherry, pistachio, orange and kumquat. I want to learn more about the principles of SPE -- which according to the menu is based on a "genuine respect of ingredients and the crafting of balanced dishes that naturally marries extraordinary cuisine and authentic nutrition." The restaurant is committed to support local farms, fisheries, and producers who employ sustainable practices. And while I respect all that, I respect the "mind of the chef" most.

I had a bar of chocolate called Brooklyn Bar from Mast Brothers Chocolates -- a real player on the chocolate scene  -- manufactured in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The flavor profile of this particular variety really got my attention -- red wine and plum.

Vietnamese coffee at the home of Arthur Schwartz. Arthur just returned from a 40-day cruise to Australia and Asia and we went to hear stories of the voyage and sip extraordinary coffee that he brought home from Vietnam. Just a few sniffs of the coffee could send you into orbit. There is nothing else that has that bouquet. Vietnamese coffee is usually served with sweetened condensed milk -- but I love it straight. I, too, was so enamored of it from my own trip to Vietnam five years ago that I put a "recipe" and photo of Vietnamese coffee in my book Radically Simple! The coffee is very expensive and worth it.

Fabulous Spanish wine tasting with Gerry Dawes at Despana in Soho. It's a terrific place to stop into mid-afternoon for a snack. 410 Broome Street. Wonderful tapas and more of that terrific Iberico ham.

Homemade whipped cream! I forgot how delicious it can be. I had leftover heavy cream from an article I was working on and decided to whip it up with confectioners sugar and good vanilla extract. Plopped it on strawberries and crepes we made from Eat Fresh Food:  Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs -- for Sunday brunch.

Have a delicious week!

Waiting for Godello: The New Wines of Spain

There's a "new kid" on the wine trail. After hawking other importers' wines for 30 years, Gerry Dawes is now selling his own discoveries. And discoveries they are!

Gerry Dawes, a wine expert's expert, is particularly smart about Spain's food and wine scene, and takes America's top chefs to Spain for their own edification. He's been prowling Iberia for ages, discovering gems of restaurants and small wine makers who have utterly no interest in selling to you, me -- or even to Gerry at first, until he proves himself professionally savvy enough to merit at least a conversation. A conversation with Gerry usually is a conversion.

This week I attended a tasting of 20 wines he's just brought in from Spain. They're being touted by chef gurus like Jeremiah Tower and Dan Barber, and gobbled up so quickly by restaurants such as Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Picholine, Petrossian, Paul Grieco's Terroir Tribeca and by topflight wine shops, such as NYC's Chambers Street Wines and Nancy's, that about half are already sold out.

The tasting was held at Despaña Soho, a Spanish café, gourmet shop and wine store (Despaña Vinos y Mas) in New York's Soho district, along with a parade of splendid tapas from Despaña's kitchen. The tasting of wines began, unexpectedly, with the reds, followed by a few rosados, a half-dozen whites, and a last sip of a late harvest moscatel (Aliaga Moscatel Vendimia Tardia 2010).

Gerry is garrulous and endlessly funny, but when it comes to wine he's a fanatical traditionalist: wine should taste like where it came from, and wines shouldn't be manipulated into big alcoholic bruisers crammed with "jammy" fruit. He's not a fan of what has been called the world-wide "Parkerization" method of vinification. Put differently, he's a fan of old-fashioned wines made the old-fashioned way. "Great wine is made in the vineyard," he says, "not in the winery."

For proof, we tasted five different reds from the Ribeira Sacra region of Galicia, each in its own way a star, but each notably different from the other. A tasting companion seated next to me was so stunned by a Toalde Tinto ("tinto" means red) with a big barnyard nose and well-tamed fruit, that he fumbled two idioms in this malapropism: "It knocked me onto my socks." Well, I suppose for twenty-five bucks, a wine probably should do just that -- except these days you'd have to shell out twice that amount for something French or Italian that approached this gem.

To prove this was no fluke, we then tried four different Albariños made by four growers who are part of a small group making singular artisan wines. They were so radically different from each other -- each displaying its own form of greatness -- that you'd never guess they came from the same small patch of geography. "These people aren't making wine to fit a pre-conceived mold," Gerry says; "they're letting their own localized wild yeasts work their individual alchemy."

What "The Spanish Artisan Wine Group -- Gerry Dawes Selections" stands for is rather simple: Relatively low alcohol, little or no oak, generally hand-harvested grapes, real corks, avoidance of over-ripe grapes and over-extraction in the winery. If you've grown up drinking California "fruit bombs," these Spanish artisan wines may be a revelation. The truth is that many California growers today also are working to crank back the excess fruit and alcohol that many gastronomes complain are antagonistic to food and sobriety.

Speaking of sobriety, we were kept sitting upright by stunningly great platters of jamón Ibérico, crunchy salt cod croquettes, Spanish tortillas filled with sweet peppers and garlic and dabbed with smoked paprika aioli, and a cheese that was new to almost all of us: Torta de Queso Canarejal, a soft unpasteurized, ewe's milk cheese, produced by the Santos family in the province of Castilla-Leon. Made with milk thistle rennet, the cheese which comes in a four-inch round, about two inches thick with an edible rind; it resembles an extremely zaftig camembert. You slice off the top and inside there's a creamy, spoon-able voluptuous cheese that you scoop up with breadsticks. All these, and vastly more, are specialty products sold by Despaña and also served in its friendly café with communal tables.

Senor Dawes also has a passion for rosado (rosé to us) -- not the "blush" wines and white zinfandels that give rosés their bad name, but light, elegant Spanish versions that you just keep on drinking. As he says, "No one's ever seen a group of people drinking roses where everyone wasn't smiling." We had two, both retailing at $13.99: Aliaga Lagrima de Garnacha from Navarra, made only from unpressed grapes, and Hermanos Merino Catajarros Cigales Rosado, a mix of two red grapes (tempranillo and garnacha) and two white grapes (verdejo and alvillo). The latter had a slight spritz, and lots of body without being weighty; it is an unmitigated bargain and will become our house pour for the summer. If I can lay my hands on some.

For me, the most exciting flavors came from the Adegas D. Berna Godello 2012 Valdeorras with 13% alcohol, retailing at $24.99. Despite a stuffy nose, I was able to detect notes of white peach, dry lychees, sake, guanabana, and unripe pear! Gerry was delighted. Godello is a white variety of wine grape grown in Galicia, a region of northwest Spain. It's the wine world's new vacation spot.

You won't find these small-batch wines at your local Costco, but the good news is that in addition to New York, Dawes is working on distribution in New Orleans, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and both Northern and Southern California. In the not too distant future then, my prediction is that grape varieties with names like mencía, garnacha, and godello, will join the more familiar tempranillo and albariño on restaurants lists and in our wine glasses at home. After all, this is what we what to drink alongside our favorite tapas.

I should note that between wine shipments, Gerry Dawes runs amazing gastro-tours to Spain, sometimes with great chefs, and often with just-plain-folk who want to really dig into the food, wine and culture of the country. These tours are as unique as his wines; to learn more, you might click here.

El Vero Gazpacho (or Gazpacho with Gerry!)

To my way of thinking, gazpacho is always lipstick red (chock full of the ripest tomatoes), jade green (Asian-style), or even bluish-purple (my playful take on a fruit soup made with blueberries and ginger.)  These can all be found in Radically Simple and they are a fabulous prelude to an end-of-summer meal.  But true gazpacho, according to Spanish food-and-wine maven, Gerry Dawes, has a kind of orange-red-coral hue.  Offered with a "lazy Susan" of garnishes -- fresh chopped tomatoes, red and green peppers, cucumbers, onion (or scallions -- not authentic), chopped egg, warm croutons, the base of the soup is rather smooth and made textural with these colorful add-ons.  Today, in Spain, says Gerry, "it has become a trend to add chopped Iberico ham" to the hit parade of toppings.  Over the Labor Day weekend we enjoyed the fruits of Gerry's labor, as he showed us step-by-step how to make gazpacho, then regaled us with an authentic paella laden with shrimp, squid, two kinds of chorizo, rice awash in homemade fish stock, peas, and peppers -- all cooked in a huge paella pan set atop an outdoor grill.  The goal (and trick) is to get the bottom of the rice to form a nice caramelized crust (socarrat), that is both desirable and delicious. Gerry did. You should see him in the kitchen:  the culinary equivalent of a matador. Gerry Dawes was deemed by the late James Michener, to be the rightful heir to scribe the sequel to Michener's Iberia.  Known by many to be one of the leading experts on Spain's gastronomic scene -- both past and present -- he is the recipient of Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomia (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003 and is a familiar figure on Spain's restaurant circuit.  But as food and wine is part of history and culture, Gerry's vast knowledge of Spain, and his beautiful writing style earned him that opportunity by Michener himself.  Gerry, however, is so busy entertaining friends, making gazpacho, and bringing famous chefs to Spain, that the reality of his novel still awaits.  Gerry has lived on-and-off in Spain for 30 years and his travel notebooks alone are worth stealing.  He was the first American journalist to write about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adria for FoodArts (they are now good friends).  According to Michael Batterberry, FoodArt's late beloved publisher and editor, "...That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adria in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish Table."  Whew.  I couldn't have said it better.

So, it was Mr. Spain last weekend, who finally taught me the gospel-of-gazpacho.  No hot spices (the heat come from the garlic), the proper texture, the requisite color, and the most fabulous taste.   I took notes and you will find my approximation below.  His is the Gazpacho a la Sevilliana -- taught to him by his "Spanish mother" Maria Franco, the proprietress of Pension Santa Cruz located in the old Jewish quarter of Seville.  In the old days, it cost $1.00 a night and an extra .15 cents for a hot shower.  Gerry differentiated his Sevillana gazpacho from the more brick-colored, thicker, sauce-like salmorejo gazpachos of Córdoba, which are often served with strips of fried eggplant.

If you are ever planning a trip to Spain, you might want to hire Gerry to write your itinerary and fix-you-up with some of Spain's greatest chefs and restaurants, or follow Gerry Dawes's  Spain:  An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel, on his generous blog.   His photography is also award-winning.  www.gerrydawesspain.com

Gerry's Gazpacho Gerry says the base of gazpacho is primal -- water, vinegar, garlic and bread.

5 very large ripe tomatoes, cut into wedges 1-1/2 large cucumbers, peeled, seeded and chopped 1/4 cup vinegar (Gerry used 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, and 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar) 4 ounces soft baguette, soaked in a bowl of 2 cups water for 20 minutes 1 cup chopped red peppers 1 cup chopped green peppers 1 cup chopped orange peppers 2 large cloves garlic 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oiil

Process everything in the food processor until smooth, including the water from the soaking bread.  Strain into a large bowl.  Process the remaining solids until very smooth and add to soup.   Chill until very cold.  Add salt to taste.   Garnish with remaining cucumber, chopped, chopped tomatoes, chopped peppers, chopped egg, chopped onion, and warm croutons.  Serves 6 to 8

Tastes of the Week

August 28 through September 4 A resounding Labor Day dinner cooked by Gerry Dawes, celebrated authority of all things Spanish -- mostly food, wine, culture, and chefs -- the most authentic gazpacho ever (read more about it tomorrow), a seafood & chorizo paella cooked on the grill, and a middle course of sauteed mushrooms (six wild varieties) with leeks, wine and poached duck eggs on top.  All with Spanish whites (mostly from the Godello grape) to match.  Keep an eye out for these wines at your wine store.

A lovely dinner at Cathryn's restaurant in Cold Spring, New York.  Loved the black squid ink pasta, the calves liver, Venetian-style, sea bass with leek and black olive pesto, and a fabulous organic burger -- rare, juicy and flavorful as can be.

A great walk on the new part of the High Line on 11th avenue, followed by a wonderful early dinner at Donatella's -- her new restaurant/pizzeria on 8th avenue and 18th street in the city.  A wonderful pizza margherita (for our daughter) , followed by a delicious pizza with sausage and broccoli rabe (for me), and a very credible pasta with sea urchin (for my husband).  Love the ambiance and Donatella's gold pizza oven with her name inlaid on it.

Another out-of-this world lunch on the rooftop of Eataly.  At Birreria, with sunglasses on our heads and wine glasses full of Fontanafredda Langhe Bianco, a friend and I shared two simply delicious dishes: a kale salad with grapefruit, poppy seed frico and anchovy vinaigrette, and pork shoulder braised with beer and apricot. Signature "kraut" and lots of good bread.

Wine grape of the week:  Godello

First course of the week:  Cold soup (authentic gazpacho; and cucumber-cilantro-yogurt).  What they had in common were delicious warm homemade croutons.

Last fling of summer:  Party at Katie Booth's, dinner for four at the Adlers, terrace dinner party at Saralie's (prior blog)