Beans and Greens, part 2.

The farmers' market in Harvard Square finally had some shell beans.  I think these are borlotti beans, also called cranberry beans.  Pretty, speckled little things.

Dairy Dreams

A couple weeks ago the New York Times assured us that making homemade ricotta is super easy. The wind-up is here to tell you it's even easier than they let on. (The wind-up apologizes for lack of Blogger photo formatting skillz but simply cannot spend any more time trying to make this look better.)

Step 1: Pour two quarts whole milk and two cups buttermilk into a pot over high heat. Stir so it doesn't scorch.

Step 2: Stop stirring when curd-like things begin forming at the top. It's done when the curds stop forming and the whey gets greyish. NYT says curds form at 175-180 degrees. We didn't have a candy thermometer and didn't need one, but it would be interesting to use one next time just to watch what happens. It seems like it's hard to overdo it, so don't be afraid.

Step 3: Ladle curds into a collander lined with cheesecloth. Let it drip for 15 minutes. Now you have cheese.

And you can do things like this. Top something really rich and full-flavored, like orrechiette with bacon and tomato broth and fresh peas, with a dollop of the mild cheese and some fresh basil. Mix ricotta with a bit of sugar, spice, and toasted walnuts, and stuff peaches.

Umami Rendezvous

After sitting down at 9 pm in a warm little wooden booth that compared quite favorably with the one at the IHOP in the burbs earlier in the day, the Wind-Up crew took some time with the wine list. Are we supposed to recognize these wines by name? Or is everyone just guessing like we are? We decided on red from Spain, eliminated the more expensive ones, then picked a grape none of us had heard of before, monastrell. (The Web tells me today that it’s also known as mourvèdre.) I don’t have the vocab for describing wine but I really liked this one; it was good to drink on its own and then held its ground against our decadently salty, fatty, earthy, spicy appetizer selections.

For my appetizer, I had umami pillows. I mean potato gnocchi with sauteed morels and maitake, black truffle and piave cheese (not to mention a rich, earthy broth that gets no official billing). I’ve had the gnocchi at Rendezvous several times before; they change it up all the time. After my first bite I was a bit disappointed, but then I figured out I needed to get a bit of everything in each bite. As you can see from the photo, it was quite a homey dish (except for the truffle shavings.) Ewen’s charcuterie plate was beautiful. Capers and cornichons stood up like transmitters, antennae, and skyscrapers on an alien planet admidst islands of fatty meat. A dollop of chicken-liver mousse looked like a Saarinen building and tasted like licking Cheeto dust off your fingers, but sweeter.

Our entrees were on the whole a bit lighter so we picked a Cote du Rhone for the next bottle. It was good for drinking with a meal but didn’t make much of an impression on me. Nor did my shrimp. At previous meals at Rendezvous I’ve had those tiny, tiny sweet shrimp local to New England, covered in chili powder and lime juice. These were larger and also quite sweet but ever so slightly overcooked. That shouldn’t happen at what Gourmet dubs one of the best restaurants in the country. But I loved the bed of black rice below them and ringed with butter that had a hint of spice and a hint of shrimpiness. The nutty arroz negro valenciano has a large amount of anthocyanins and of course there are a lot of nutritional claims about them on the Internet. What’s cool about anthocyanins to me: they’re in berries and blood oranges and experimental organic solar cells. And they stained the inside of my mouth. Angela ftw with the toasted orechiette and meatballs, for sure. (She had a head start on us all though, having outgeeked us by studying the menu and selecting her dishes before we even got there.)

The best thing about dessert, which I hope someone else will describe, were the thin, crunchy slices of macerated rhubarb and the rosemary ice cream plated with the polenta cake. The evening ended on Ewen’s roof amidst the orange-mist-shrouded chimneys of Inman Square with tiny sips of Old Chub. And then I floated off to sleep on an umami pillow...

more Tuscan kale, please

Last night was our Wind-Up group trip to Rendezvous in Central Square. There was a lot going on, so I'll just stick to telling you how good my food was.

For an appetizer I got the salad of chilled octopus, roasted peppers, fennel, lovage, black olive and smoked paprika. The octopus was sliced thin (I like mine chunkier), but was perfectly cooked and not too chewy. I was not a fan of the iceberg lettuce. If you are charging me that much for a small salad, I expect something more than iceberg. The smoked paprika added an assertive spiciness that went perfectly with the Spanish wine we were drinking. This dish made me even more excited for my trip to Madrid that's coming up.

My entré (which came out surprisingly quick) was the braised pork and veal meatballs with toasted orecchiette, tuscan kale and piave cheese.


My only complaint about the dish? Not enough Tuscan kale. (If you haven't noticed, I have a weird obsession with this vegetable.) I have never had toasted pasta before, but it gave a nice crunchy texture to the dish. The meatballs...what can I say? They were close to perfect. Not too heavy, but very moist and flavorful. I could have eaten five more. The salty piave cheese had a strong taste but paired very well with the meat. The broth at the bottom of the bowl might have been a little too garlicky for some, but I looove garlic and felt it brought all the elements together.


As you can see, I enjoyed the meal quite a bit. I had pretty high expectations for Rendezvous, and for the most part, they were met. Maybe we will return in a few months to check out the new seasonal menu.

As much as I enjoyed my dinner, it doesn't come close to my favorite meal ever, which was at a small cafe in Paris. It consisted of fresh baguettes, warm and melty camembert cheese, perfect scallops in a white wine butter sauce, and creme brulee. This summer I am going to Italy and Madrid, and you better believe I'll be blogging about all the amazing food I encounter there.

The Wind-Up Gets Ensorcelled

Frank Bruni, the food critic for the New York Times, becomes downright rhapsodic when describing a dish he likes. Why I love reading about restaurants I will never go to, and listening to descriptions of farmers' markets in cities thousands of miles away, is an issue to be probed at another time. For now, we will dwell on Bruni's 6/25/08 rhapsody in pork. His review of two wine bars in NYC has a handful of gems that rival my previous number one favorite Bruni turn of phrase ("like a bright white archipelago on an emerald sea, dabs of house-made ricotta").

This week, Bruni declares himself "ensorcelled"* by the pigs from a Virginia farm (in particular, the blade steaks carved from them). "The arugula blunts the meat’s punch, while Parmesan in the salad brings saltiness to the brawl." Bruni, sir, we are only in paragraph 3, and you have outdone yourself.

I love this stuff, but obviously it's pretty ridiculous. Food writing can seem like so much self-indulgent bullshit. But think how open his senses must be to the experience of the meal (or to the thesaurus?) to be able to write things like that. For all the times the wind-up has said, "I'd like to do some food writing..." (and some have even said they'd like to work at a food magazine), how many of us have tried it? So I had the idea to get a few of the wind-up bloggaz to a fancy restaurant to try this out. And coincidentally, Angela is badly in need of a tuscan kale fix. So tonight at Rendezvous in Central Square in Cambridge, we will open our senses to the food, delve into the thesauri, put up some posts, and see if we can even come close to Mr. Bruni. Look for the posts tomorrow, or after we recover.

*ensorcelled: enchanted, fascinated. under the spell of a sorceror.

why I love Paris

I recently visited Paris for the first time. I absolutely fell in love with the city. One of the main reasons was the food. Everything was delicious, including my breakfast pictured above. We ate in a park with a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower, and had lunch (a fresh baguette with mozzarella, tomato, and basil) later that day behind Notre Dame. Life doesn't get much better.