The Food Maven Diary
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Back From Puglia
I am back from beautiful Puglia and I fully intended, as I said I would in my last letter, to write to you about a dinner party I attended a couple of nights before I left. The dinner was at Onera at 222 W. 79th St. (and Broadway), which is a contemporary Greek restaurant, meaning the food isn't traditional Greek food but what Italians call cucina creativa – creative cuisine. The chef-owner is Greek-American, Michael Psilakis, who also now owns Dona with my friend Donatella Arpaia.
The dinner was given by a very close friend who wanted to introduce his new girlfriend to a few good friends, a woman who has been living in California through the first year of their relationship. That's why we haven't met her before. The food was incidental to the wine at this dinner, although Onera's food is very good. The wines weren't merely good drinking, however. They were selected to tell the story of my friend's romance, A Love Story in Wine, you might say. It started with Iron Horse 2001 sparkling brut from the Napa Valley (California), the first winery she had ever visited – and of course the first winery they had ever visited together. The wine accompanied Onera's sensational raw fish appetizers. Hawaiian line-caught orange marlin is treated to candied quince, capers and toasted pine nuts. Bonito get a treatment with pear and cranberry marmalade, roasted lemon and fresh mint. Rainbow Runner is garnished with crispy artichoke, preserved lemon, dill, and extra virgin olive oil (my favorite). "White" tuna gets blood orange, fennel and shaved sweet onion. A plate with all four bite-sized pieces is $25. Some of these sound a little risky, but they are all delicious. Some people think this raw course is the best in town, and the best thing on the menu. But we went on to other pleasures, too many for me to remember now, especially after a week of heavy eating in Puglia.
Unfortunately, in the mess that is my office right now, I can't find the little notebook with all the details of this incredible dinner and lovely, loving story told through wine. I think my recounting will have to wait until I get through the piles of stuff that are surrounding me. I thought I had left the notebook next to the computer, but … What can I say? I am very neat otherwise. My kitchen is a paragon of organization. But I have never been very organized in my office. Further details of the many wines served that night, and the delicious food, will have to wait.
MEANWHILE …
Back in October, one afternoon with a group of Cook at Seliano guests in Paestum, at the height of pomegranate season, Bob Harned, my cultured partner and assistant, decided to count the seeds in this mythical fruit.
Pomegranates grow all over the south of Italy, and the ones on our table were picked from a tree only feet from our kitchen. They also play a part in Greek mythology: The goddess Hera is always shown holding a pomegranate, a symbol of fertility because of all its seeds, and two of the three famous Fourth and Fifth Century B.C. Greek temples of Paestum are dedicated to Hera. In the hills nearby there is also a church called Our Lady of the Pomegrante – Madonna del Granato -- which was probably built over another temple of Hera. That's the way these things happen: Monotheistic religions, like Catholicism, take over some of the symbolism of previous pagan religions.
But back to counting pomegranate seeds: Perhaps you heard this when I was on the radio. Pomegranates are supposed to have 613 seeds, exactly the same number as mitzvot in the Talmud, the Jewish book of laws and explanations of laws. It seemed like every year an Orthodox Jewish woman would call me on the air to tell me that when her children didn't believe that this was so, she would sit them down at the kitchen table to count them. And there would always be 613 seeds. We did the same, to prove or disprove the point.
So we counted and recounted, but we came up with only 385 seeds in our pomegranate. That was very disappointing to Bob Harned. He wanted to be a believer in the miraculous. But, as he always says, "nature loves variety."
I mentioned this somehow at the dinner at Onera and as soon as my friend Michael Whiteman got home – staying up late to digest our big meal with all that wine – he did a computer search and found this incredible website: http://www.aquaphoenix.com/misc/pomegranate/
Aqua Phoenix appears to be the site of Alexander Haubold, a Columbia University computer science professor. Somehow, on this pomegranate page he has tracked various people's counting and accounting of the seeds in a pomegranate. As you will see, every pomegranate is unique. There is no regularity at all. Nature does, indeed, love variety.
BEFORE I GO:
My next personal appearance is from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 16, at the Barnes & Noble store in Holmdel, New Jersey. It's at 2134 Highway 35 South. The phone number for inquiries is 732-275-0620. Admission is, of course, free. All my books will be on hand – the paperback "Soup Suppers", "Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania," and "Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food." All, if I might say, would make a good gift for Chanukah, which starts that very night, or for Christmas, only nine days later.
I'll be there to meet, greet and sign, of course, but maybe the best part is that this appearance is part of the Monmouth County Arts Council's Book Fair. If you download vouchers from their web site, www.monmouthartscouncil.org – and hand them to the cashier as you pay, the council will get a percentage of your sale. It should add up: The council gets 10 percent of the first $2,000 in sales, 15 percent up to $10,000, and 20 percent if the sales are more than $10,000. Thank you Barnes & Noble Holmdel for your generosity. Remember, the Monmouth County Arts Council only gets the money if you download and use their vouchers. Go to their website now, and I hope to see many of you there.
