There’s no end to eggplant surprises. We eat the vegetable fried, pickled, roasted, pureed, stuffed and baked. But have you ever considered eggplant soup? This recipe exploits the vegetable’s meaty weight to produce an elegant, creamy soup with just enough chunky texture to keep it interesting.
Have prepared pesto on hand. Use store-bought if you must, but it doesn’t compare to the bright flavor of freshly made pesto. Refrigerated in a tightly closed container, leftovers will keep up to a week. Pesto may also be frozen for up to six weeks.
Ingredients
Pesto – Makes 1 cup
½ cup olive oil
2 cups fresh basil leaves, rinsed, dried and tightly packed
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¹⁄3 cup pine nuts
3 medium garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
Juice of ¼ lemon
Salt and black pepper to taste
Put the ingredients in the order given in a food processor or blender. Blend until smooth.
Eggplant Soup – Serves 6
2 medium-sized eggplants
4 Tbsp. olive oil
2 medium onions, sliced thickly
4 garlic cloves, chopped coarsely
8 cups (2 liters) water or vegetable stock
¾ cup fresh white mushrooms, coarsely chopped,
plus ¼ cup thinly sliced mushrooms, reserved
2 Tbsp. fresh basil leaves
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh thyme (or ½ tsp. dried) or oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
1 container sour cream
6 Tbsp. prepared pesto
Method
- Place each eggplant on its side and cut it in half horizontally.
- ut a cross-hatch pattern deeply into the flesh.
- Drizzle ½ tablespoon olive oil over each eggplant half.
- Grill for 20 minutes or until the eggplant is brown, soft, and separating into cubes. With a spoon, scrape the eggplant flesh off the skin.
- Chop the flesh coarsely and set it aside.
- Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Sauté the onions and garlic in the heated olive oil for eight minutes.
- Add the chopped mushrooms.
- When the onions are golden and the mushrooms start to release juice, add the water or vegetable stock and chopped eggplant.
- Bring everything to a boil, reduce heat to medium, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Stir in basil, thyme, salt and pepper.
- Cook another 2 minutes.
- With a slotted spoon, lift the solids out of the pot. Keep the soup hot.
- Blend all the solids in a food processor or blender until smooth.
- Return the puree to the hot liquid and reheat to a simmer.
- Add the reserved sliced cup mushrooms now.
- Simmer another five minutes. Taste to adjust seasonings if needed.
- Ladle the soup into bowls. Spoon 1 tablespoon sour cream into each bowl.
- Top each bowl with ½ tablespoon pesto.
- Serve and enjoy.
A festive slow-cooked dish with Moroccan flavors.
Serves 6
One of the lovely things about springtime is that fresh lamb comes into the markets. This recipe combines lamb and fruit in a slow-cooked tagine stew infused with the flavors of North Africa.
Tagines are slow-cooked dishes that take their name from the vessel they’re cooked in. The tagine pot consists of a round clay dish and a lid that rises to a cone shape. The food’s juices never evaporate while cooking inside a tagine pot; they rise inside the lid, condense, and fall back down, constantly basting the food. Cooked over low heat, even tough cuts of meat emerge fork-tender and deeply flavored. In Israel, many cookware stores carry elegant glazed tagine pots for cooking, or decorated ones for serving only.
Different styles of tagines can also be bought online.
But lacking the traditional pot, you can cook a delicious Moroccan tagine-style stew, as long as you have a pot that stands up to slow cooking, with a tightly fitting lid. You will need an inexpensive heat-diffusing pad to place between the heat and the pot; or cook the tagine in the oven, on a low setting.
Once the pot is on the heat, you can forget about it for the next few hours while you’re busy getting other cooking done. This tagine requires shoulder of lamb.
In Israel, lamb usually comes as an entire front quarter of the animal, with ribs and shank (a piece that resembles a chicken drumstick). Ask your butcher to separate the ribs into chops and to slice the shoulder blade into large strips, leaving the bone in. Include the shank in the tagine. The bone adds depth of flavor, and by the time the dish is ready, it will separate easily from the meat.
The half-cup of red wine included here isn’t traditional, but I include it to balance the sweetness of the dates. I recommend making this dish the day before you intend to serve it, because it’s even better the next day, with the advantage of the fat having hardened so you can spoon it off the top before reheating the dish.
Ingredients
1.5 kg. shoulder of lamb, thickly sliced, plus the shank
1 tsp. table salt
Ground black pepper to taste
3-5 Tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, thickly sliced
1 2.5-cm. cinnamon stick
4 whole allspice berries, or 1 tsp. ground allspice
1 large bay leaf
4 large garlic cloves, thickly sliced
2 medium tomatoes, unpeeled and sliced
8 large, moist dates, halved and pits removed
2 oranges, peel and white pith cut away and fruit quartered
½ cup dry red wine
Optional for chili heads: 1 tiny hot pepper or cayenne pepper flakes to taste A small handful finely chopped parsley or cilantro, to garnish Rub the meat with salt and pepper.
Method
- Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a large skillet.
- Brown the meat on all sides over medium heat. This may have to be done in two batches. Add more olive oil, one tablespoon at a time, if needed. Remove the meat to a platter.
- Pour 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil into the cooking pot and turn the heat on to medium-high. If using earthenware, ceramic or a tagine pot, first place a heat-diffusing pad under the pot. A metal or cast iron pot may go directly onto the heat.
- Cook the onion until wilted, stirring. Add the cinnamon stick, bay leaf and allspice. If using hot pepper or cayenne, add it to the dish now.
- Add the garlic and tomatoes. Stir and cook an additional two minutes.
- Place the browned meat into the pot, on top of the vegetables. Tuck the date halves and orange quarters around and under the meat.
- Pour the half-cup of wine over the whole.
- Cover the pot and either cook on the stove over the lowest heat, with the heat diffuser under the pot, or place in a preheated 170° oven.
- Turn the meat over once or twice over the next two hours. When you do, squash the dates, tomatoes and oranges pieces down with the back of a cooking spoon and stir them around, to thicken the sauce. Taste for seasoning and add salt and/or pepper if desired.
- Cook a further half hour, making total cooking time 2.5 hours.
- The meat will be falling off the bone and a thick, aromatic sauce will have formed.
- To serve, spoon the sauce over the meat. Scatter finely chopped herbs over all for an appealing green garnish.
- This is a rich dish: serve with plain steamed vegetables or a salad, and either rice or potatoes.
About 8 kneidlach
What’s Passover without kneidlach, a.k.a. matza balls? The recipe below details old-fashioned, homemade kneidlach. You’ll be surprised to see how easy they are to make; just handle the batter gently when you form the balls, as squeezing will make them tough. You may use plain room-temperature water, but soda water makes the lightest matza balls. The quantity of water will vary according to your matza meal; some brands absorb more water, some less. The batter should be stiff, but not doughy or kneadable.
You may boil the kneidlach directly in soup, but they result lighter if cooked in plain water.
Ingredients
2 whole eggs
4 Tbsp. oil or schmaltz
1 scant cup matza meal
¼ cup soda water and up to ¼ cup more if needed
1 tsp. table salt
Optional: ½ tsp. ground ginger
Method
- In a medium bowl, combine eggs, fat and matza meal with a fork.
- Add water, salt, and ginger if using, stirring to make a stiff batter. Add more water by tablespoons if the batter seems too solid.
- Cover the bowl and chill for two hours.
- Set a large pot of salted water to boil.
- Wet your hands to prevent the batter from sticking, and gently form balls about the size of a walnut.
- Drop the balls into the boiling water. Lower the heat to medium. The water should be simmering. Cover and cook 40 minutes.
- Drain and serve in soup.
- Kneidlach accompany soup, of course, but can also stand in for potatoes. Dribble schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) over the cooked and drained dumplings and brown them in a 180° oven for 10 minutes. Lacking schmaltz, fry a small onion in olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and drizzle it over the kneidlach before setting them in the oven to brown.
Kitchen Bar in Netanya blends Middle Eastern and European elements beautifully
Kitchen Bar Netanya. (photo credit:PR)
Kitchen Bar in Netanya’s Ramat Poleg is called Bistro Yam Tichoni (Mediterranean Bistro) in Hebrew, a name which much better describes the food and atmosphere of the place. If you didn’t know, you might think it was a café with nothing much to eat and plenty to drink; but in fact, Kitchen Bar is a kosher restaurant offering substantial meals which perfectly blend Middle Eastern and European elements.
This may have something to do with the fact that the owner, Guy Shalev, is half Moroccan on his father’s side and half German on his mother’s. He took over Kitchen Bar a few years ago and made it kosher, and today it is a magnet for Netanya’s many English speakers, as well as native Hebrew speakers. All the staff speak perfect English, and the menu comes in three languages – Hebrew, English and French.
Walking into Kitchen Bar, one immediately gets a friendly welcoming vibe. Soft music plays, the lights are lowered, and candles glow on the wooden tables.
We left the choice of starters to our efficient waitress, who suggested ceviche, cigars and a mushroom and artichoke mix. The ceviche (NIS 42), made from ultrafresh sea bass with diced tomatoes, chopped red onions and coriander, was served on a wooden platter that looked like tree bark. The mushroom and artichoke stew was erved with a coddled Scotch egg, which we felt was superfluous, although the sundried tomatoes added much flavor, as did the basil garnish (NIS 42). The crisp homemade cigars (NIS 48) were of Cuban proportions and filled with small chunks of beef and liver and served with Israeli salad and a smear of very good homemade tehina. All the starters were first class and augured well for what was to come.
For the main dish, my dining companion chose the entrecote steak (NIS 118), which came with a small dish of salsa verde as condiment and ground black pepper around the plate. Piping hot French fries were served separately. He assured me that the entrecote was tender and flavorful, as any good steak should be.
I decided to try a dish which would be more of a challenge to the chef’s skill and chose chicken scallopini (NIS 68). It consisted of tender slices of chicken breast served in a white wine sauce with capers and diced tomatoes. A very generous portion arrived and proved to be delicious. The chicken had absorbed the rich flavors of the wine and the capers, which made the whole dish more piquant than one would have expected.
We felt we must taste a dessert in order to give a balanced view of what is available at Kitchen Bar, so our waitress brought a chocolate bar for us to share. It was rich and decadent – the guilt was exquisite! A generous glass of Gamla red blend (NIS 29) was enough liquid refreshment throughout the meal, and we left the restaurant with a light step and a determination to return to Kitchen Bar very soon.
The food wasn’t at the top of things I was excited about when I was invited to experience Israel. Aside from hummus, falafel and Charlotte turning her nose up at an unappetizing jar of gefilte fish in Zabar’s when she decides to convert in Sex and the City, I really didn’t have a clue what Israeli cuisine is. But when you’re traveling all around the country with chef-owner Nir Margalith from Puzzle Israel, you not only get the inside scoop on how all these Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines meld together to become Israeli cuisine, you eat really, really well. I could rave about a hundred things we ate, but I painstakingly whittled my list of the must-trys down to these 10 things to taste in Israel:
Shakshuka
1. Shakshuka
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially when you’re heading out on full day adventures like mountain biking and repelling in the Negev desert. My favorite way to stay energized quickly became getting my protein by eating as much shakshuka as possible at breakfast each morning.
It’s technically Tunisian in origin, but became hugely popular in Israel when North African Jews immigrated to Israel in the 1950s. Shakshuka is a poached egg cooked in a cumin spiced tomato sauce. You can find it at a lot of places, but the best I shakshuka I had was at the Shiri Bistro in Rosh Pina.
What’s the venti size, please?!
2. Fresh Pomegranate Juice
I love pomegranate juice and used to drink it all the time when we lived in Arizona. It was super easy to find since pomegranates are grown in Arizona and California. I didn’t realize that pomegranates originated in modern-day Iran and are grown all over the Middle East. Bonus that the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere is from October through March.
Thanks to our friend Cailin from Travel Yourself, who mentioned to me that I must try the pomegranate juice if it was in season, I was on the lookout. And I didn’t have to look very hard. Little carts with pomegranates piled up next to the juicer were everywhere. Well worth my 15 Shekels (about $4 US)!
The locals told me that Shevah is the best place in the Jerusalem for falafel and shawarma.
3. Shawarma
It’s kind of like the Turkish döner or the Greek gyro. The meat (lamb, chicken, turkey, beef, or veal) is put on a vertical spit and it turns to slowly roast for up to a day. The meat is then shaved off and can be served on a plate or as a sandwich. It’s a fast food and perfect to grab for a quick lunch on a full day of sightseeing.
I opted for a pita and selected hummus, tabbouleh, cabbage, tahini, pickles and spices on my turkey shawarma. The best one I had was at Shevah (91 Yaakov Pat St) in Jerusalem, which was highly recommended as a local favorite.
Enjoying a 2011 Moise Grand Reserve
4. Israeli Wine
The skeptic in me had me thinking there was no way Israeli wine would be good. Oh, how wrong I was. Grapes were technically growing on this land since biblical times and modern day Israeli wine makers have studied viticulture and enology at world-class universities and interned under top wine makers in France and the United States.
Many wineries are producing award-winning wines and the Golan Heights is one of the most interesting wine regions I’ve visited around the world. It’s worth traveling up to the north of Israel to visit a few, but if you can’t then at least try some Israeli wines which are easily found in restaurants and wine shops around the country.
Labneh is typically topped with herbs and drizzled with olive oil
5. Labneh
Israel is a country that loves its dips. Eating hummus is a given, so I’m not going to include it on this list. But there are other dip options beyond hummus, like labneh.
It’s a cheese that is made from straining yogurt. It’s Armenian in origin, but Israelis have embraced labneh and it’s a staple breakfast food that is enjoyed with pita or bread.
I ate my Krembo before I could snap a photo, so this is by Oliver Hoffmann/Shutterstock
6. Krembo
Like so many Israeli foods, Krembo is a an import. The Danish treat became extremely popular in Israel in the 1960s, though today some 50 million are produced and sold in Israel. Part of the popularity might be because it’s a treat that is only available and sold from October through February.
Krembo means cream (krem) in it (bo) in Hebrew. It’s a marshmallow cream, that reminded me of the Marshmallow Fluff that comes in a jar, heaped onto a shortbread cookie and then covered in chocolate. You can’t just pop the whole thing in to your mouth and it’s very delicate, so I wondered how to eat it as I unwrapped the individual foil-wrapped treat.
Apparently this is a debate in Israel! Strauss, the primary manufacturer of Krembo in Israel, did a study and found that 69% of Israelis prefer to eat Krembos from the top down.
Chocolate AND a party in your mouth!
7. Chocolate with Pop-Rocks
Where eating a Krembo is an Israeli’s trip down memory lane to their childhood days gone by, Pop-Rocks remind me that I’m a child of the ’80s. While technically not Pop-Rocks, the flavorless Pop-Rocks-like explode for that ka-boom sensation in your mouth in this unique milk chocolate bar.
The chocolate bar is divided into little squares like a Hershey bar. Break one off and let the chocolate melt in your mouth. Then pop-pop-pop!
My first Israeli Arak cocktail was mixed with almond liqueur and mint
8. Arak
Arak is one of those things you’ll end up trying regardless of whether you actually want to try it. Like Italy’s Limoncello, Greece’s Ouzo or Norway’s Aquavit, every Israeli will pour you a shot of Arak or mix you an Arak cocktail.
It’s distilled from the leftover pulp, skins, stems and juice from winemaking. Anise seeds are then added for flavor before another distillation to make the licorice-flavored spirit.
The best seafood curry I’ve ever had
9. Seafood
Before my trip, I thought of Israel from the stories in the bible – Moses wandering the desert for 40 years, landlocked Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified, died and was buried. It’s easy to forget that Israel actually has over 100 miles of coast.
And if you know anything about being kosher, it might be even more surprising that you can find excellent seafood all around Israel (bottom feeders like lobster, shrimp and calamari are prohibited by Jewish dietary law). Lucky for me, because I love all of those things and one of the best seafood meals I had was at a restaurant in the village Sderot near the Gaza Strip that I’d probably passed over from its outside appearance had I not been traveling with locals like Nir and Guy from Puzzle Israel.
Honestly, the restaurant named SINS kind of looked like a Las Vegas tattoo parlor with cages over the door and windows. But it goes to show that first impressions aren’t always accurate, because inside I found a cozy restaurant with a chef-owner who was happy to share his stories of what owning a restaurant within range of rockets was like. And I had one of the best seafood curries I’ve ever had.
Falafel is the ultimate Israeli food
10. Falafel
Falafel is Israel’s unofficial national snack and every Israeli seems to have an opinion on the best way to eat it – stuffed in to a pita or on a plate. Either way, you simply can’t go to Israel and not try the chickpea fritters.
You can find falafel literally everywhere. Just look for a long line at lunchtime or in the early evening to find the best local falafel haunts. If you have it in a pita, it will be accompanied by various salads and sauces so be sure to grab plenty of napkins. It is one delicious, albeit messy, street food.
Veneziana restaurant. (photo credit:PR)
The lower city of Haifa has been undergoing serious gentrification in recent years, and a number of fine dining restaurants and nightspots have opened in the area adjacent to the passenger port, between the city’s railway station and financial district. One of the most recent is Veneziana Bar and Trattoria, helmed by chefowner Aaron Namnah, who recently returned to his hometown of Acre after training in Italy and running award-winning Italian restaurants in Stockholm.
“I could have retired,” Namnah says, “but I am anxious to expose Israelis to real Italian food rather than what passes for it here.”
Namnah has embarked on his mission with what he considers a limited menu, with plans to expand it soon. Still, there is already plenty on the menu to make for an interesting meal.
At first glance, the menu looks like it is in English and Hebrew, until one realizes that it is actually the names of dishes in Italian, while all the details are in Hebrew. Even the wines, which are imported from Italy, are mentioned only in Hebrew, not on a wine list (except for four very expensive ones) but rather as recommended pairings with pasta dishes. Fortunately, the names of most of the dishes will be familiar to diners who occasionally patronize Italian restaurants, and the chef and his wife speak English.
Veneziana has no specialty cocktails, but there is a full bar, and a bartender who can mix most of the classics. The Italian beer Peroni is available on tap.
A meal starts with the house bread, toasted white baguette spread with olive oil and garnished with parsley, along with three homemade dips: a rich pesto, a zesty paprika spread and an excellent black olive tapenade.
Our first appetizer was the carpaccio di manzo (NIS 30), thinly sliced filet of beef with rocket leaves and broad ribbons of Parmesan cheese, drizzled with olive oil and dabs of balsamic vinegar. Taken all together, the ingredients added up to a wonderful interplay of flavors.
Next were the arancini Siciliane (NIS 25) – two large balls of fried risotto in a marinara sauce. The arancini were perfectly fried, with a crunchy exterior and a moist, flavorful interior, oozing droplets of melted cheese.
Our pasta choice was the cannelloni Ripieni (NIS 66), three tubes of pasta stuffed with beef ragout in a bechamel sauce, with smears of pesto. Unusually, the bechamel was enriched with tomato, creating a delectable pink sauce that nicely complemented the hearty and filling baked pasta.
Veneziana’s Caesar salad (NIS 50) was a generous portion of lettuce, croutons and Parmesan cheese, with three surprises: large morsels of chicken breast, which was not listed in the Hebrew description, and cherry tomatoes and sliced onion, which are not generally ingredients in a traditional Caesar salad. Nevertheless, the salad was quite tasty, in a dressing that was perked up with a touch of anchovy.
Our first main course was the costine d’agnello (NIS 115) – lamb chops in a balsamic-infused sauce of dried figs. The succulent chops – which included the rib meat and fat along with the bones – were very nicely enhanced by the exotic sauce. The side dishes were highly seasoned spelt and grilled al dente vegetables: eggplant, zucchini and red bell pepper.
The same vegetables accompanied the gamberoni in padella (NIS 83) – sautéed shrimps in a white wine sauce with cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. The plump, juicy shrimp were delicious – exceedingly fresh and not overpowered by the mild sauce with chunky vegetables, which did much for the plain risotto that came with the seafood.
There were three classic Italian desserts, of which we sampled the tiramisu (NIS 35) and the panna cotta (NIS 26). The former was sweet and frothy, with a nice espresso kick, while the latter thick custard was drenched in an overly sweet berry syrup.
I confess that I am not familiar with the quality of Italian restaurants in the Galilee, but the authenticity represented by Veneziana would be welcome anywhere in the country.
For the penultimate article in my series on multi-sensory dining, I am tackling texture. This may well be the shortest article of the five because, of all the senses considered in relation to gastronomy, touch (along with sound) is one of the least researched. This is mainly due to the fact that conventional definitions of flavour do not include texture. But how important is the role of texture in experiencing flavour?
Does texture matter?
Let’s start out with something very simple to help us answer this question; what makes a crisp, a crisp? Think of your favourite crisp brand. Flavour will factor into your choice, but is that all that makes them your favourite? For many, it is the size, thickness (or thinness) and the mouthfeel – the crunch in the mouth (which also belongs in the sound domain) – which, along with a particular flavour, make up the characteristics of their favourite crisps. Dare we say the texture, weight (and sound) of the packet itself may even be a characteristic which endear us to our favourite brand?
Think about throwing all the elements of your next Sunday roast in a blender before serving it to your family and friends. If texture was irrelevant to flavour, those beautiful crispy potatoes, rare beef, perfectly cooked vegetables and home-made gravy would be just as delicious after a good blitz. Clearly we have certain associations, perceptions and preferences for the physical attributes of food which go beyond just how they look and taste.
So far so simple. Everything I have mentioned above is hardly mind blowing, nor is it really that experimental, but it is important to highlight the role that texture plays in the simplest terms. I’m now imagining that perfect crème brûlée with a glass-like sugar disc waiting to be shattered into velvety custard. The texture is a big part of what makes it a great dish – a disappointing top equals dissatisfaction.
The contrast between the caramel disc and custard proves how important texture is.
For one subject, chicken was only ready to serve when it felt 'pointy'.
Synaesthesia
When researching for our last dining concept, Synaesthesia by Kitchen Theory, I read a book by Dr Richard Cytowic (who collaborated with us in the development of the dinner) and I came across research on a synaesthete called Michael Watson. This man was unique; as well as other interesting forms of synaesthesia, he had a very interesting and rare form in which foods in his mouth generated actual tactile sensations in his hands! As he ate food, he would feel different shapes, weights and textures in the palm of his hand. Watson had different tactile sensations for all kinds of tastes – spearmint, for instance, gave him a feeling of running his hand along a tall, cool column of glass or marble and chicken was only ready to serve once it felt ‘pointy’, like placing his hands on a bed of nails. This obviously got me thinking about this link between taste and external tactile stimulation and I turned to science to explore this link further.
Here’s a question for you: do rough textures such as sandpaper match better with salty, bitter notes or sweet, creamy notes? And how about soft textures such as velvet? Which of the tastes mentioned would they work with? For most people, it makes sense that rough textures match salty/bitter notes and the softer textures correlate to sweeter/smoother notes. The question now becomes: can external tactile stimulation in the hand actually accentuate a diner’s perception of different notes in a dish?
Marinetti’s cubes
Marinetti's cubes.
To test this concept, we developed a dish intended as an homage to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti is known best as the author of the Manifesto of Futurism which he wrote in 1909 and The Futurist Cookbook published in 1938. What made futurist cooking so revolutionary was that it drew on food as a raw material for art and cultural commentary reflecting the futurist idea that human experience is empowered and liberated by the presence of art in everyday life. Marinetti saw food as the ultimate promise of optimism – a gateway to sensual freedom. He also very much advocated the idea that guests should run their fingers over various textures in order to augment the mouthfeel and even flavour (and intensity) of the elements in a dish. This inspired our Marinetti Cubes which are black (to remove colour cues); seven inch cubes with each of the sides covered in a different textured material – natural wood, velvet, plastic, Velcro (both sides), and sandpaper.
Amazingly enough we found that some of our guests did genuinely perceive differences in the taste and mouthfeel of the dish, based on the textures they ran their fingers over on the cubes. The textures affected around twenty percent of our guests, five percent of whom had pretty strong reactions (which include the guest who got ‘cotton mouth’ from touching the fuzzy side of Velcro; a table of two who couldn’t stop commenting on how much saltier the dishes became once they touched the sandpaper and my favourite, the guest who had to touch the velvet side of the cube to get through one particular dish because she felt the rough textures made everything too crunchy and noisy!) We are so interested in this idea that we have included the texture cubes in our latest experimental dining concept Mexico by Kitchen Theory.
Wider implications
Plenty of chocolate companies use silky textures in their television and print ads to plant the idea in our minds that their product is smooth, creamy and sweet. This is just taking that concept to a more physical level.
Jozef Youssef
If tactile sensation can be used to enhance taste and flavour, there could be practical applications. How about channelling this research towards our growing concern with high sodium levels in processed foods. Given the ability of rougher textures to enhance saltiness in a dish, simply eating with a slightly grainy textured spoon might allow us to reduce the salt in our diet without even noticing its absence. Could we find a way to cut back on sugar using a similar idea? Silk-covered chocolate mousse pots, for example. Plenty of chocolate companies use silky textures in their television and print ads to plant the idea in our minds that their product is smooth, creamy and sweet. This is just taking that concept to a more physical level.
Crockery and cutlery
Also on the topic of texture, let us not forget our cutlery, crockery and glassware. Does a Michelin-starred meal taste better with heavier cutlery? Apparently so. The team at the Crossmodal Laboratory in Oxford conducted an experiment with more than 130 diners at a hotel restaurant in Edinburgh. The results showed that simply using high-quality cutlery normally reserved for banquets resulted in customers willing to pay fifteen percent more for their food, compared to people eating the same meal with lower-quality utensils. And as for glasses, just think about how much more pleasant a good wine, Scotch or brandy tastes out of the right glassware.
Kitchen Theory at home
Much of what I have discussed in this article is intuitive, but it is worth paying a little more attention to textures when cooking and entertaining at home. Here are some ideas for bringing texture into your own kitchen.
Food
Textural balance on the plate is vital. Think of that perfect crisp caramelised sugar on the crème brûlée, the charred surface of a roasted piece of meat with a smooth creamy mash and slow roasted garlic, a crusty piece of country bread with a soft French cheese and a chunky fig chutney. Be mindful of the balance of textures within each dish in order to stimulate and pique your guests’ interest at different points within the course. Baked or fried fish, chicken or duck skin is perfect for adding crispy texture as are baked Parmesan or chia crisps and dehydrated purées.
Linen
Introduce a variety of fabrics with tablecloths and napkins. Perhaps try different textured napkins to accompany different courses?
Plates
Smooth, round, ridged, angular; what best fits the dish you are serving on it? For example, rustic, Nordic-style dishes look great on a piece of bark.
Cutlery
Research would suggest heavier is better! But bear in mind there needs to be continuity, your nice minimal crockery may not look great with clunky, heavy cutlery.
Texture cubes
Take a leaf out of our book and fabricate your own version of the texture cubes. Even different swatches of materials stuck on a small card could potentially work. The point is to give guests something to play with and see if you get any reactions. This isn’t an exact science… yet!
Easy and a wonderful Pesach gift
Curds are a dairy product obtained by coagulating milk in a process called curdling. The coagulation can be caused by adding rennet or any edible acidic substance such as lemon juice or vinegar, and then allowing it to sit. The increased acidity causes the milk proteins (casein) to tangle into solid masses, or curds. Milk that has been left to sour (raw milk alone or pasteurized milk with added lactic acid bacteria) will also naturally produce curds, and sour milk cheeses are produced this way. Producing cheese curds is one of the first steps in cheesemaking; the curds are pressed and drained to varying amounts for different styles of cheese and different secondary agents (molds for blue cheeses, etc.) are introduced before the desired aging finishes the cheese. The remaining liquid, which contains only whey proteins, is the whey. In cow's milk, 80% of the proteins are caseins.
Preparation timeless than 5 mins
Cooking time10 to 30 mins
Serves
Makes one 500g/1lb 2oz (large) jar or two 250g/9oz (small) jars
Homemade lemon curd is quick and easy and so much more mouthwatering than the shop-bought variety. Nice to spread on matza and makes a wonderful Pesach present in Zion.
Ingredients
4 unwaxed lemons zest and juice
200g/7oz unrefined caster sugar
100g/3½oz unsalted butter cut into cubes
3 free-range eggs, plus 1 free-range egg yolk
Method
Put the lemon zest and juice, the sugar and the butter into a heatproof bowl. Sit the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, making sure the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl. Stir the mixture every now and again until all of the butter has melted.
Lightly whisk the eggs and egg yolk and stir them into the lemon mixture. Whisk until all of the ingredients are well combined, then leave to cook for 10-13 minutes, stirring every now and again, until the mixture is creamy and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Remove the lemon curd from the heat and set aside to cool, stirring occasionally as it cools. Once cooled, spoon the lemon curd into sterilised jars and seal. Keep in the fridge until ready to use.
Recipe Tips
To sterilise jars, wash the jars in very hot, soapy water or put through the hot cycle of a dishwasher. Place the jars onto a baking tray and slide into an oven set to 160C/325F/Gas 3 for 10-15 minutes.
'Multisensory gastronomy’, ‘neurogastronomy’ or ‘gastrophysics’ are terms coined by Professor Charles Spence of Oxford University’s Crossmodal Laboratory), I hope you have begun to develop a much broader understanding of how we as humans not only perceive flavour but also how we appreciate and relate to food. We have looked at the importance of the visual aspects of plating and how this can potentially impact our enjoyment of a meal as well as the importance of sound and how it can affect our dining experience. So now let’s look at something we are all a lot more used to associating with the enjoyment of food – aroma.
What could be better than coming home to the smell of your favourite dish cooking on the stove or in the oven? For me, this would have to be the scent of plain white basmati rice. I can’t specifically say this is related to nostalgia or childhood memories, it’s just an aroma that gets my gastric juices flowing and opens up my appetite, something I believe most readers will be able to relate to with their own food of choice. But is that where it begins and ends? Is the aroma of a food just there for a bit of pre-mastication titillation? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’!
Taste vs. flavour
Scientists estimate that up to 90% of what we perceive as flavour is actually derived from our sense of smell.
We often use the expression ‘I can’t taste a thing’ when we have a cold; this one short phrase says a lot about our perception of flavour and the fact that we credit our mouth with all the glory. But even when one looks at a traditional definition of flavour (by traditional I am excluding contributing factors such as sight, texture, sound, perception etc.) we find that it is not only comprised of our sense of taste (which is centralised in the mouth and throat) but also our sense of smell (olfactory system). Only when these two senses are working together can we perceive flavours. The question now is whether one is more important that the other.
Scientists estimate that up to 90% of what we perceive as flavour is actually derived from our sense of smell. That may seem like a disproportionate amount but let’s put it in context: when you have a blocked nose on account of hay fever or a cold, foods tend to lose their flavour, although we say we can’t ‘taste’ our food, we can in fact taste saltiness, sweetness, sourness etc. It is, in fact, our lack of ability to detect aromas which renders the food so bland. In my previous article, I talked about the poor flavour of airplane food which is mostly caused by our sinuses becoming dry which inhibits our ability to detect aromas which in turn leads to us feeling that the food is lacking in flavour.
To illustrate this point, Professor Barry Smith (founder of the Centre for the Study of the Senses) has devised a simple test: put a random selection of jelly beans into a jar, close your eyes (so as not to be alerted by the colour cues) and pinch your nose tight so there is no air getting in or out, then pop a jelly bean into your mouth and begin to chew. Most likely you will detect sweetness and perhaps acidity, but can you tell what flavour the bean is? Before swallowing, release your nose, take a breath and all of a sudden the flavour comes rushing in.
Your tongue can detect a handful of tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, oleogustus (fatty) and metallic along with a few other prospects. Our olfactory system, on the other hand, is capable of detecting up to 1 trillion distinct aromas, hence we can perceive differences in flavour between, say, an orange and a tangerine which ‘taste’ pretty similar – sweet, slightly sour and perhaps even slightly bitter – because of differences in the aromas.
Orthonasal vs. retronasal smell perception
That pungent French cheese you love may not smell so great on the board but once it is in your mouth the flavour (which is up to 90% aroma) is wonderful.
What’s even more interesting is that we have two ways of perceiving aromas called orthonasal smell perception (when we detect external aromas) and retronasal smell perception which occurs during food ingestion as volatile molecules released from food are pumped by movements of the mouth from the back of the oral cavity up through the back of the nose. How do these differ from one another? Well as soon as food hits your palate, saliva does its bit to alter the chemical structure of the molecules which results in a different aroma being perceived retronasally. Hence that pungent French cheese you love may not smell so great on the board but once it is in your mouth the flavour (which is up to 90% aroma) is wonderful.
Given that aroma is so vital to flavour, during our multi-sensory dinners, we focus on making sure that guests actively trigger their sense of smell just before or during the eating of a dish by adding external aroma elements which encourage them to start actively detecting a particular aroma which matches with or is part of the dish. So finally, I’d like to discuss a couple of ways in which we at Kitchen Theory use this knowledge when designing our dishes and hopefully this will inspire you to create your own sensory gastronomic masterpieces at home.
Kitchen Theory at home
At Kitchen Theory, we have devised a dish entitled ‘Marrinetti’s Cubist Vegetable Patch’ – an homage to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook written around the turn of the last century. Marrinetti was keen on using, among other things, external scents as a way of enhancing dishes. We designed a dish which incorporates several ingredients, three of which were tarragon, smoked bacon and pomegranate. As the guests ate this dish, each of these ingredients’ aromas were sprayed in the dining room using atomisers, in a specific sequence in order to heighten the guests’ flavour perception of these ingredients throughout the course of the dish.
Another example is when we sprayed the scent of wet earth (think of that moss-like smell in the forest after it has just rained) over the guests’ table just as they were about to eat a dish entitled ‘A Taste of The Earth’ – a leek consommé with leek ash, goat’s cheese and gold cress.
Another way in which we highlighted the aroma element was when we smoked our sweetcorn risotto with guinea fowl and cured miso egg yolk. Once the dish was plated, we simply slipped it into a clear food-safe plastic bag and pumped the bag full of smoke from old whisky cask shavings. The ingredients themselves were only briefly smoked within the bag during the time it took for the dish to be carried from the kitchen to the guests’ table. The bag was then cut open in front of the guests using a scalpel, releasing this wonderful plume of smoke, the aroma filling the air and lending a beautiful smoked aroma to the dish.
Showmanship is a big element when it comes to playing with external aromas, just think of the traditional waiter dramatically lifting the cloche off a dish and releasing a spectacular burst of aroma in front of the guest. Is what we do so different? It’s just a slightly more modern take on this old school bit of showmanship! Dry ice is a great way of both conveying aromas as well as adding to the spectacle of a dish. We have used this as a method of heightening the aroma sensation with several dishes, examples of which include the aroma of the sea served with a marinated crayfish, seaweed and green bean dish and a matcha tea aroma ‘cloud’ which we served with a sake, aloe vera and tapioca cocktail (created by Chef Helder Gila Alonso).
So here you have inspiring, practical ways of enhancing the scent element of dishes. Do try them out – not only will the food taste better but your guests will definitely get a kick out of the interactivity of atomisers or spectacle of dry ice smoke clouds!
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Perhaps you've heard by now about the Instant Pot, a slow cooker, rice cooker, food warmer, pressure cooker, sauté pan, and yogurt maker all rolled into one slightly unwieldy programmable metal contraption. Over the last few months, this kitchen gadget has garnered a lot of attention. It's a bestseller on Amazon. The New York Times took it for a spin, as did NPR's The Salt. Bon Appétit claimed it "will change your life."
But there's one group that applies exceptional creativity to the Instant Pot: people who cook Indian food. On a private Facebook group called Instant Pot for Indian Cooking, home chefs adapt traditional dishes—dals, biryanis, curries, and more—and post the photos and recipes to 70,000 members. They also poll each other for advice—questions like "How much paneer do you get from a gallon of whole milk" in the Instant Pot? and "Has anyone used packaged fried onion from the store for Instant Pot biryani?"
These folks are devoted to their Instant Pots. Many members boast that they've thrown away their traditional Indian pressure cookers. Someone recently posted a photo of her Instant Pot overlooking a scenic mountain vista. Yes, the Instant Pot went camping.
So what makes the Instant Pot so good for Indian cuisine? On the last episode of Bite, our food politics podcast, I had a quick lesson with Pooja Verma, who cooks a lot of Indian food for her family in Fremont, California. (The segment starts at 02:28)
Pooja told me she now does an impressive 80 percent of her cooking in the Instant Pot. One reason she likes it, she says, is that it's great for recipes that usually only work in India's hot climate. Take idlis—dumplings made from fermented rice and lentil flour. The key to making great idlis, Pooja explained, is that the batter must ferment without the addition of yeast. "So some smart people have figured out that the yogurt function in the Instant Pot emanates just the right amount of heat to get the batter fermented overnight."
Gluten-free baking can be an exercise in frustration, but this bread recipe has never let me down. For me, the success is in the texture. As you can see, it has plenty of aeration which lends it some of the fluffiness of real bread.
It freezes well, so you can slice it, freeze in a zip-top bag, and take out as needed. It toasts well, and although it is more fragile than regular wheat bread, it does a good job of holding up toppings (see pictures).
If you're unfamiliar with gluten-free bread, be aware that it has more of a batter consistency and cannot be shaped or braided. For challah, some people like to use the silicone moulds, which gives it the appearance of a braided loaf, but in my experience cakes and breads do not bake well in silicone. Since I prioritize taste and texture over appearance, I simply pour the batter into loaf bans and bake as such. It might make for non-traditional challah, but hey, gluten-free challah is non-traditional to begin with. And if you're using this for breakfast toast or school lunches, loaf pans make for neatly sliced sandwich bread.
batter/dough before rising
batter/dough after rising
Recipe adapted from Barefeetinthekitchen.com
Since this bread is made with liquid other than water, it is considered pat haba bekisnin, over which the blessing of mezonot is normally said. When this bread is eaten as the basis of a meal that is at least the size of four eggs (approximately 8 oz.), it takes on the status of bona fide bread, warranting washing, hamotzie and a full afterblessing.
Two unsliced loaves of this bread can be used as challah for the Shabbat meal. If you will be eating the abovementioned size, treat it exactly like bread made of flour and water. If not, skip the pre-meal washing and make the blessing of mezonot instead of hamotzie, and say the appropriate (truncated) afterblessing following your meal (this follows the final decision of the Alter Rebbe that mezonot can constitute the two loaves of the Shabbat meal).
Ingredients:
2 cups brown rice flour
2½ cups oat flour (look for oat flour which is certified gluten free)
1⅓ cups potato starch
⅔ cup tapioca starch
2 tsp. dry yeast
2 tsp. salt
2½ tsp. xanthan gum
1½ cups unsweetened soy or almond milk
⅔ cup honey
½ cup oil
6 eggs (+ 1 egg for the egg wash)
sesame seeds (optional)
Directions:
Place the brown rice flour, oat flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, yeast, salt and xanthan gum into the bowl of a stand mixer.
Warm the milk and slowly mix it into the dry ingredients. Add the oil and honey and beat until smooth.
Add the eggs one a time, making sure each egg has been fully incorporated before adding the next.
Beat the mixture at high speed for 3-5 minutes. This adds air to the batter, which helps with the texture of the finished loaf.
Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel or saran wrap. Let rise for 60-90 minutes. (Note: the batter will puff up but don't expect it to double in size like regular bread dough.)
Gently pour the batter into two loaf pans lined with parchment paper. Smooth the top of each loaf with wet fingers or the back of a spoon dipped in water.
Beat the egg and brush the top of both loaves. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Cover the pans and allow the dough to rise for another hour.
Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown.
Allow the loaves to cool in the pans for 5-10 minutes, then gently tip out onto a cooling rack.
Only slice the bread once it has fully cooled, or it will fall apart. Freezes well.
Yields: 2 loaves
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Roberto Bompiani, “A Roman Feast” (c. 1887)
To Make White Wine Out of Red Wine (Vinum ex atro candidum facies)
Put bean meal or three egg-whites into the flask and stir for a very long time. The next day the wine will be white. The white ashes of vine have the same effect
—Apicius 5 (Tr. Flower and Rosebaum)
Such is the kind of “recipe” that one finds in the Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius. So when world-renowned chef Grant Achatz announced that the 2017 menu for his restaurant Next would include “Ancient Rome” — inspired by executive chef Jenner Tomaska’s presenting him with a copy of Apicius — foodies were naturally intrigued. Although translations have been adapted for use for amateur chefs, it’s difficult to imagine what a progressive restaurant known for molecular gastronomy might do with such source material. Next had already garnered rave reviews at their opening in 2011 with their first foray into historical cooking, “Paris 1906,” so it seemed critical for any good classicist worth their salt (insert salary joke here) to get there and roll the proverbial dice.
Would the restaurant tap into the over-the-top decadence we associate with a Roman banquet? Grapes fed by toga-clad waiters, perhaps? Or, as per Life of Brian: lark’s tongues, jaguar’s earlobes, wolf’s nipple chips? The most familiar literary source of such a Roman meal, the Cena Trimalchionis in Petronius’Satyricon doesn’t quite whet the appetite. Trimalchio’s clumsy, over-the-top nonsense does not provide a clear idea of what might be served at a decent table where one might actually want to dine. The promotional video that Achatz posted suggested we might be getting some sword-and-sandal type fun, but said little about what we would actually eat.
When we parted the black veil to access the restaurant’s tiny foyer, we were greeted by a bust of Augustus, reminiscent of the kitsch of Caesar’s Palace in Vegas. But only tasteful touches followed: the table was set with a clay pitcher of enigmatic liquid, a small working Roman oil lamp, a theatrically-aged copy of The Roman Cookery Book (a translation of Apicius by Barbara Flower and Elizabeth Rosenbaum) and a printed menu card. Each menu item was keyed to the recipe in Apicius, which made Classicists familiar with numerical references to, say, comic fragments, feel right at home. The menu’s descriptions consisted of a short reference to an Apicius dish in Latin followed by a corresponding list of ingredients in English used in the modern adaptation (e.g., “cuminatum in ostrea et conchylia ([Apicius] 30) // kamut pancake, oyster, pomengranate”). We were therefore immediately able to consult our text of Apicius for the fuller information on our first dish, vinum ex atro candidum facies, cited above.
A Roman mensa. All photos by Laura Gawlinski
Served as a mead-based savory cocktail, it set the dramatic stage for the rest of the evening and exemplified the methodology behind the modernization of the ancient recipes. This drink went through a series of colorful chemical changes as various ingredients like egg whites were added, all while the server provided a brief introduction to alchemy’s relationship to antiquity and bartending: “Don’t watch me, watch the vessel,” she warned, as she performed her magic. It immediately brought to mind the visual tricks of Roman dining, such as is found in the Lycurgus Cup, a large, glass drinking vessel of the 4th century CE now in the possession of the British Museum. The glasswork changes color from red to green depending on the direction of the light shining through it. The drink itself was unusual, the key ingredient oddly being cabbage juice — Cato would have definitely been a fan, even if not everyone at our table was.
All told, we had eighteen separate dishes, several appearing with some overlap, paired with eight different wines (all from locales familiar to the ancient Romans). Each course arrived with an artistic flourish and an explanation via a local server (standing in for the amiable dinner companions of Petronius’ Encolpius). The food was very, very good — even decadent at parts — but the spectacle, by Jove, the spectacle!
clockwise from left: mussels, kamut pancake served on wheat sheaf, meat sword with broth, patina among rose petals
The fifth course, patinam de rosis (“a patina from roses”) had the most Petronian flourish. There are many different recipes in Apicius for something called a patina; it seems to have been a frittata or quiche of sorts, a mix of ingredients baked all together. In our case, a mix of mashed asparagus flavored with rosemary had been molded into a rough leaf shape. Although it might appear to be no more than a delicious cracker, an unusual floral ingredient transformed it into an experience. A server arrived bearing glass jars filled with rose petals. With a flourish, she spread the contents out in a line in front of each diner: resting softly amongst the petals were two bites of patina. Perhaps Trimalchio would have done something far more crass, but even he would have applauded this spectacle.
This was followed by what was one of the tastiest dishes in the feast, although it was only a mere bite or two. Aliter tubera: elixas et aspero sale (“another method of truffles: boiled and sprinkled with salt”) was served alongside gustum de betacios et pullus (“a taste of beetroot and chicken”). The black truffle part of this course (tubera) was wrapped with a piece of chicken skin and served on the end of a small metal sword. This came to us balanced over an opaque white bowl into which was poured the gustum, a broth heavily flavored with roasted beets and honey. We swirled the chicken piece in the broth before eating, and then slurped the flavored broth afterward, directly from the bowl.
Presentation continued to matched taste. The next dish, pisam coques (“cooked peas”), was conceptualized as a visual and culinary representation of the ocean. On a spread of whipped mascarpone cheese (representing the sea foam) lay a small piece of mackerel topped with a bit of caviar. Cresting above it, representing the waves, was a fried piece of enoki mushroom. It was light, salty, and not too fishy, a postmodern deconstructed bagel with cream cheese and lox (hold the bagel). Luckily, at this point the pretense of Roman forklessness was dropped, and we were able to enjoy this ocean without making a mess. The cutlery also served to mark the shift from appetizers to main courses and a progression to heavier and meatier foods: fish, then bird, then various meats.
Oceanic wavy blue glass plate and whipped mascarpone
At this point we began to confront our expectations more directly. The briny taste of the “ocean” course highlighted the fact that we had not seen, heard about, or tasted garum, the fish sauce ubiquitous in Roman cooking, or its counterpart, liquamen. Liquamen was regularly listed among the ingredients in Apicius’ version of any given recipe, but we could not tell whether it was included in any of the re-imaginings. However, in cooking with anchovies—a key ingredient for making modern garum—modern chefs can discover much hidden flavor to a dish, so perhaps it was indeed everywhere, just not announced.
We were also surprised by the lack of pork. Pork was so significant to the meat portion of the Roman diet that pork consumption can be linked archaeologically with Roman identity. Larger group tables at Next were able to pay more for the option of a suckling pig: in this case, it was reserved for the highest class and we, dining as mere plebians, were not permitted parity of porkiness.
Furthermore, while we were pleased with the unimposing decor devoid of cheesiness, the minimalist, grey-walled room did not quite fit with the rest of the Roman experience. The non-obtrusive scenery functioned to turn the diners’ focus exclusively onto the food at the table — which made this food, along with its plating and cutlery, the sole decorative art and conversational centerpiece. There would be no distractions from the mosaic plates, salads on monocles, or gold-plated crustaceans. Achatz had curated these accouterments like a Roman emperor, flitting through the provinces gathering a variety of marbles. For the ancients, however, not only was the tableware for show, but the whole space. An extreme example comes from Tiberius’ villa at Sperlonga where a large cave was outfitted for outdoor dining. The decoration included multiple over-life-size sculptural groups — including, most appropriately for a cave, Odysseus preparing to blind the cyclops Polyphemus. None of these diversions at the palace of Achatz.
Our next course provides the perfect example of how the food itself made the setting. The servers brought out a large stone dish filled with smoldering pieces of wood, setting it on a raw chunk of slate. As it was set down, a lump of raw dough coated with poppy seeds, tied up in a piece of cord, was brought along and dropped in the middle of the dish. This, we were told, was a personalized miniature oven and the bread would be baked by what our server dubbed — with all the self-consciousness of a good Plautine servus callidus sharing a witticism — charmelization, the cooking of the dough over the charred wood. The server also informed us that this was how Roman soldiers took their bread on-the-go, but for us, the real Romanitas was in the active participation in the process and the performative presentation.
The segmenting of the bread
The platter was then covered again with the lid, and we moved on to other courses while smelling the baking bread. The suspense, as we wondered what would appear once the lid was removed, added its own spice to the next few courses. When the oven was finally opened, the bread was revealed, beautifully baked. By pulling on the string tying it together, the bread magically collapsed into quarters. Our server explained that because the Romans did not use butter, he would top our bread with a liquified beef fat. This bread, for sure, was both panem and circusem.
Prawns of gold and olive, bread baking in background
One of the dishes theatrically served as we waited for the bread was the maritime isicia de scillis vel de cammaris amplis (“Rissoles of squid or large prawn”). What we actually ate was a prawn, but it was surrounded by an armored suit of sliced olives — shockingly the only recognizable appearance of olives throughout the evening. The real prawn shell had been removed whole and put to the side, decadently painted with real gold.
Our final meat dish contained the most impressive display of the mains. The food itself was oxtail, based on sales conditos ad multa (“aromatic salt used for many purposes”), but the visual focus was the salt of the title. The oxtail was served pot-roast style in a small glass bowl mixed with pieces of turnip and some fried pieces of horseradish for extra flavor. This glass bowl rested in the middle of a much larger copper bowl richly filled with aromatic salt (salt with cloves, anise seeds and other spices). Lining the back of the bowl were smoldering cinnamon sticks, driven into the salt like stakes protecting the Greek navy positioned in the sand of Troy. Between the smell of the spices and the tactile pleasure of the salt (no one could keep themselves from running their fingers through it), we were reminded how much a good meal appeals to all the senses.
sales conditos ad multa
The final dishes were desserts, accompanied by a last, very sweet wine from the Canary Islands. The penultimate course, gustum de praecoquis (“stew of apricots”), we now remember very fuzzily, as an Aristodemus-like haze from the wine and food had set in (our notes from the evening at this point merely say, “Where’s my cheesecake?”). The meal then satisfied the saying, ab ovo usque ad mala: having begun with an egg, emulsified into the magical first drink, it ended with an apple. Not quite an apple, though: that “apple” in the final, towering fruit basket was but a final illusion. Pulling out slices we found not fruit but a delightful candy-shelled ice cream. Alongside it, a final, memorable taste, donum felix (“happy gift”), a piece of taffy fittingly made of mastic, the tree sap that comes from the island of Chios, birthplace of Homer.
When asked about the historically-based Paris menu in the NY Times, Achatz had mused that it’s better for a good restaurant to choose the replication of a philosophy over the replication of a recipe. His Roman meal at Next might not have been exactly what Apicius had in mind, but the philosophy and aesthetic were solidly Roman. Thumbs up!
