The Food Maven Diary
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Tomatoes, A Civilized Restaurant, This Week In Lynbrook
Boy, am I consistent. And proud of it! Last week, I decided to make a warm tomato sauce for pasta that I haven't made in several years. I had been too lazy in the afternoon to chop the tomatoes for a raw sauce, my original idea, and now I was home from a movie and starving. Besides, one way or another I had to save some tomatoes from rotting. They were on their last legs, having been bought at the Greenmarket at least a week before.
The ingredients for my raw or warmed sauce are not unusual – just olive oil, garlic, and tomatoes (and fresh basil or parsley if I have any in the house) -- but they should be perfect. This recipe is also about technique. The garlic and tomatoes are not so much cooked as they are heated through on a low flame, which results in tamed but still piquant garlic, tomatoes that retain their fresh flavor, and olive oil that doesn't loose any of its delicious raw edge, which it does when brought to a high, cooking temperature. Naturally, at this moment of the summer when the garlic I am using is only week's old, the tomatoes are at their peak, and I just opened a new bottle of very precious Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil, my ziti rigati was beyond beyond. Il Ottimo! (The Best!)
As I was eating it, I wondered if I had ever put this recipe up on my website. I mean … what I was eating was so sensational (yes, I do say so myself) that I felt a need to share it. It ends up; it's here, as a Maven's Diary entry from July 1999. And even though Ralph Waldo Emerson thought that "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds," consistency is a virtue for food writers and cooks, and the recipe I posted back in 1999 is so surprisingly the same as what I improvised the other night that I was very proud of myself. You will be proud of yourself, too, when you make this dish before the tomato season is over.
The main difference between what I cooked the other night and the recipe on my Food Maven website is the tomatoes themselves. According to the written word, I should have used salad tomatoes, not plum tomatoes, but it was plum tomatoes from last week's Greenmarket shopping that I needed to use up. Salad tomatoes will give off more juice than pulpier plum tomatoes, but it really doesn't make much difference otherwise, as last night's bowl of ziti rigati proved. A good tomato is a good tomato and a precious thing. If you get more juice than you think is needed, drain the pasta about a minute before is cooked "al dente" and finish it by keeping it warm with the juicy sauce for a couple of minutes.
Funny – the recipe was posted after a visit to Rona Jaffe in the Hamptons. Six years later, I visited Rona for the first time since then and she still has an empty refrigerator. She's consistent, too.
THE MOST CIVILIZED LUNCH IN NYC
One of the most luxurious and pleasurable things in life, as far as I am concerned, is a long lunch with people you love on a day when you don't have to get back to work. But where to go when you want to get together with old friends and really talk? And eat well. And feel a little special. And not spend $100 a person.
The Gotham Bar & Grill is the answer. It is always one of the most civilized restaurants in the city. It is comfortable, spacious, quiet enough to even whisper a secret (but not empty, as one of my friend's pointed out), impeccably served by a formal but warmly hospitable staff, and, of course, it serves trend-setting chef-owner Alfred Portale's pitch-perfect food. He's the guy you can blame for towering salads and towering everything else on your plate, and for your chicken breast being placed on top of the potatoes instead of next to them. But, remember, under the hands of the master who invented these now-clichéd plate presentations they can still be a delight, not an annoyance, or just plain silly.
On top of being a wonderful restaurant, Gotham Bar & Grill has a $25 fixed price lunch – served all year, not just during a restaurant week. I ordered the lunch, not only so I could report to you on it, but also because it appealed to me. I was very happy with a salad of watermelon cubes, cucumber, and feta on a slice of tomato, with oil and vinegar. Sounds weird. Tastes great. I keep hearing about watermelon in salad – it is, after all, a first cousin to cucumber (think about it) -- but I have somehow not taken the opportunity to try it my own kitchen. It was such a good combination – the salty and creamy feta against the sweet watermelon and crisp cucumber, dressed with a fruity but not aggressive oil and I don't know what kind of vinegar -- that I will be making this salad myself now.
My main course was sautéed skate, two substantial pieces with a nice crust from the hot pan, which came in a bowl with a mushroom broth, amazingly flavorful fingerling potatoes, and who remembers what else. It was delicious, I ate very last drop with a soup spoon, and I felt it was light and healthful, too. That's a lot from one dish. For dessert you get three flavors of sorbet on the fixed price menu. Rhubarb was my favorite of the trio that also included kiwi and coconut. They were all so smooth and creamy they could have passed as ice cream.
SELIANO IN LYNBROOK
Did I mention already that my Cook at Seliano in Lynbrook class is this Thursday, Sept. 1, at Polly Talbot's A La Carte on Atlantic Ave.? Through slides, stories, music, and food I attempt to take my groups on a virtual culinary vacation in Paestum, in Italy, the base for my actual cooking vacations. I'll be cooking for you, too -- a Salerno-style risotto; Caponata Napoletana, a dried bread and tomato salad (a key dish in Neapolitan cuisine), and a ricotta Bavarian for dessert. Come join me. We still have some room. For more details, check out Maven's Appearances. Or call A La Carte at (516) 599-2922.
