new york

has some quality food. yesterday, a large, hand-made ravioli stuffed with shredded pancetta, morels, and fresh english peas, served on a tomato coulis with cubes of steamed squash, micro-basil, and a slice of toasted baguette.

another hiatus

but not for lack of fine dining. tonight at no-name: grilled purple chicory; wide, flat, fresh pasta with lemon, cracked black pepper, and Parmesan; blinis with creamed corn; grilled yellow wax bean bundles wrapped in prosciutto and roasted; a strawberry tart with vanilla bean pastry cream. the wax beans in particular were outstanding: double-cooked, they lost their fibrousness but were still firm and the prosciutto binding rendered out and became crisp and smokey. the pastry cream in the tart was also noteworthy: i initially mistook it for some kind of poppyseed custard but it soon dawned on me that it was actually just packed with tiny black vanilla seeds.

curry

soup today was coconut chicken and red curry. it wasn't even close to being spicy enough, but the flavour was right and it was sprinkled with large clumps of chopped cilantro leaves, vermicelli, and roast chicken. what it tasted like more than any other thing was laksa -- all that was missing was the handful of thick rice-flour noodles and a sprinkle of chopped laksa leaf (Persicaria odorata, related to buckwheat and also known as vietnamese mint even though it is nothing of the sort).

soup and sandwich

'soup and a sandwich' may be the most riffed-upon comfort food theme i know. thomas keller's version is now famous and features a cup of early-girl tomato water and a brioche toast sandwich stuffed with aged farmhouse cheddar. baudrillard would be proud. today, in no-name, i saw a tray of what looked like toasted rice cakes. i figured they were croutons and got a cup of ramp and potato soup (like a hot vichyssoise, but better -- ramps are garlic greens and have that same spicy aromaticity as garlic but with a more vegetal overtone) and put one in it. john came up behind me and suggested that i try one on it's own: it turned out to be a circular sandwich of thin-sliced brioche and cowgirl creamery goat cheese, toasted and then brushed with clover stornetta butter infused with butter.

basil, frisee, pineapple, jicama

sam, who puts together the vegan selections at dinner in no-name, made a skewer composed of a slice each of jicama and pineapple, sandwiching a leaf of frisee and sweet basil. very nice, more so because i hardly ever encounter jicama in large enough slabs that the natural sweetness and juiciness is apparent.

dairy products

the morning lineup in no-name now includes a cheeseboard that, to be honest, is quite extravagant. yesterday the cheeseboard featured a triple-creme brie that had been aged to the point of near-explosion, a tomme de ma grand mere, a huge port salut, and an unidentifiable but really good blue cheese. they've also taken to making the yogurt with straus organic whole milk; coincident with that change, the yogurt became tangy and balanced, smooth and unctuous. the degree of improvement is almost difficult to believe and is probably at least partly due to raelene getting more familiar with how this yogurt culture works.

transports

ill-effects from yesterday's chili onslaught: none. no-name has had these tiny peanut-butter cookies filled with a dab of house-made banana jam for about two weeks now. completely gluten-free, they dissolve in my mouth and make it happy. for dinner, sam had also made phyllo cups and filled them with chevre whipped and then lightened (honestly) with whipped cream and topped with shreds of pickled red onion. there was, in addition, a tray of deconstructed brownies that were deep and dark, tasted vaguely alcoholic, and produced a slow-growing, subtle heat. further investigation revealed that the unfamiliar flavour was a combination of madagascar vanilla and five-spice powder -- sichuan peppercorns (not really a peppercorn), star anise, cloves, cinnamon, and fennelseed -- and the heat from smoked cayenne.

chili

we had a chili cookoff today. our judging team ("looks good, but how would you market it?") was by far the most organized (some would say anal) of them all. i don't think i've ever eaten more different kinds of chili in a single day. there was plenty of excellent chili, and the best entries were standouts: the midwest chili connection had made their own buns and sausages for a minneapolis-style chili which was itself a little underspiced but which had a rich, full flavour. robert morgan's 3 day smoke in your eye, make your grandma cry chili featured beef that had been first smoked and then grilled before being stewed in an almost adobo-like sauce (he tied for first place in the "traditional meat chili" category). at one end, in a bowl of ice, josef desimone had a large mound of rare ahi chunk chili, with cubes of pico de gallo gelee -- not chili, but really good. a team of brazilians tried to pass off a creamy seafood moqueca as chili in the "where did you grow up" category (it wasn't chili either, but was pretty good on rice), and team bunny diablo made a rabbit-based chili that had the same thready texture that ropa vieja has. special mention to the tasty, vegan, locally-grown chili made entirely with sun ovens-- it took 2 days and 3 sun ovens to separately cook the beans and the other vegetable components.

hiatus, followed by beets

after a long hiatus spent mostly in portland, i returned to the fold today to find, at lunch, tiny cups filled with tiny cubes of steamed rainbow beets (the ones striated and splashed with gold, red, and purple) and shreds of shiso. a steamed beet is a beautiful thing. in slice, the improbable smoothie of the week was The Pineapple King: pineapples, sandpiper strawberries, agave syrup, spearmint, crushed ice, and macadamia nuts. improbable but marvellous.

potatoes

no-name surpassed itself in the spud department today. russian banana potatoes, about 5 inches long, roasted and caramelized with garlic, ginger, and shallots, were tender and savoury. roasted fingerling potatoes served cold with trumpet mushroom shreds and green garlic were a perfect counterpoint -- dense and full of garlic flavour.

braising

the long, slow, low-heat cooking of braised beef makes each slice almost the ultimate comfort food -- tender to the point of being unctuous, full of deep, beefy flavour, and good even when cold. they should serve it with mashed potatoes loaded with butter, chives, garlic, and black pepper. it would rock out.

hello april and passover

a long hiatus, some of it was spent in hawai'i. i returned to find myself in the thick of passover preparations. today, on the first day, passover-friendly dishes abounded at no-name today. top on my list: perfectly-cooked slices of flatiron steak flavoured with haroset -- or their version of it anyway, a relish of black mission figs, apricots, dates, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and ginger. the vegetarian section yielded a salad of black-eyed peas with mozzarella and roasted zucchini, awash in olive oil and red onion slices and emanating a powerful scent of basil and garlic. concluding remarks by a dish of mango chunks in an unctuous cream composed of young coconut meat, dates, vanilla, and ginger juice.

holy m

this morning, we had a small regiment of smoked mackerel benedict plates in the specials line at no-name -- mackerel hot-smoked long enough for the fat to render, then topped with a poached egg (admittedly, a little over-cooked) and a perfect hollandaise, all on a piece of tender biscuit. coconut water goes very well with smoked mackerel. who knew?

salad days

there was barely time for lunch today, but what food! when i ducked into no-name towards the close of service, the grill line was unstaffed but there was a heaping tray of strips of perfectly-cooked beef tenderloin and a thick, softly-crunchy sauce of yogurt, cardamom, and pistachios to go with. the only salad left was of arugula and rocket, dressed with pine nuts, olive oil, some champagne vinegar, and shavings of pecorino.

beef

kobe beef burgers at lunch today. they taste more like normal beef burgers than i'd thought. these also had remarkably little flavour -- my hypothesis is that they weren't cooked enough. burgers need a total of a half inch or more of cooked meat in them, so a half-inch burger needs to be almost fully-cooked, with only a thin stripe of pink in the middle in order to have a rich, round, beef-y taste to them.

excellence in flavour awards

excellence in flavour award goes to the roasted mushrooms -- crimini, beech (hon-shimeji, apparently), and porcini -- glazed in white miso. these were cold, crunchy (but not crisp, an important distinction), and just salty enough. tonight, we are especially looking forward to the minted lamb burgers. i would have served them with a yogurt, cucumber, and cumin sauce, but i guess feta and hummus are good choices too.

zucchini

in no-name there were small pancakes of shredded zucchini and a little bit of thyme, browned on the flat-top and served with a large bowl of creme fraiche. zucchini is a great vegetable to grate -- it's got more body than cucumbers and doesn't collapse into a soggy pile, and it also has the most beautiful colour transition between the deep green skin and the paler inside. shredded, individual sticks of zucchini go from forest, through chartreuse, to avocado.

cod

everyone's favourite thing should be a well-cooked (which is to say, just barely cooked) piece of fish. tonight, at no-name, thick filets of black cod, pan-fried with matchsticks of carrot and bean sprouts. these were crusty and caramelized on the outside and, at the centre, nearly translucent. the salad of roasted golden beets, toasted walnuts, and goat milk creme fraiche was also very good. in the dessert line, there were halved passionfruit looking unfamiliar and mildly disturbing (after the initial confusion about what they were, the tray was mobbed) and cups of goat milk yogurt with toasted almonds and dried blueberries.

proche-orient

the foods of the near east: this was today's theme in no-name. there were slim filets of swordfish, hashmarked from the grill and marinated in a turkish mix of paprika, parsley powder, and lemon juice. i don't really understand the appeal of swordfish. on the side, a salad of fingerling potatoes, boiled, then grilled and tossed with olive oil, roasted tomatoes, garlic, and wine vinegar. the real winners were oven-roasted kale (crunchy, light, slightly smoky -- they have enough internal structure to not wilt in the oven, and a low enough water content that they dry out quickly enough to not scorch) and adas bil siq. this last was a lebanese soup of green lentils, chard, cilantro, onions. warm, slightly grainy, comforting, and full of soft shreds of chard, and with a bright note of lemon.

whirled peas

as i said to john tonight, as he was shucking oysters, the chefs in no-name make me happy more regularly than the prospect of world peace. tonight, for the third day running, they were ploughing through what must have been a monster shipment of some sort of canadian oyster with a large, lumpy shell; they tasted like the sea -- salt, with damp limestone and the smell of cold iron. they were so good they were better without the persillade of chopped onions and jalapenos.

these, with sam's green onion rice cakes, made dinner superlative: discs of cooked brown rice, garlic, and scallions toasted on the flat-top then brushed with mae ploy (brilliant!) and topped with ruby-red micro-greens. dessert tonight was better in the vegan bar, since they had sliced bananas and almond butter, and a salad of strawberries, navel and blood oranges*, and spearmint.

* i don't understand the continued appeal of these apart from the striking visual and the high levels of antioxidant anthocyanin pigmentation. blood oranges almost always taste vaguely like small animals, say, rabbits and they make everything they're mixed with taste like rabbits too.

healthfest

we had an author and his wife in for a talk about healthcare and i brought them in to no-name for lunch. they were (rightly, i think) blown away by the food. the salads are always interesting and tasty. today, the best of them was raw tatsoi with matchsticks of carrots, golden beets, and parsnips -- three different kinds of crunch, and the particularly woody taste of parsnips -- dressed with a creamy hempseed dressing and topped with soy-toasted pumpkin seeds. these last were thin-shelled, like double-fried potato puffs. to balance this healthfest, there was also a tray of pork and veal swedish meatballs in white gravy, thin slices of yogurt and cumin marinated leg of lamb, and buttermilk biscuits of startling delicacy.

sprout

had a glass of the mixed berry and lime rejuvelac at slice. it was a deep purple, but tasted strangely watery. when i got back to my desk and looked it up, i found that it was (yet another) fermented beverage made from sprouted wheatberries. definitely an acquired taste.

dickens

after almost a full week away from the fold, food of a uniformly -- and startlingly -- high quality. at charlie's, it was seafood day and red, steamed crawdads were piled high next to trays of grilled asparagus and mac and cheese. there were rumours also of broiled eel at the asian station but people were piled four-deep around it and it was clearly going to be hopeless. slice served up a smoothie today of spearmint, pineapple, strawberry, and white grape juice. the mint was key, of course.

for dinner, no-name outdid them all with a salad of greens and dried sour cherries and an enormous beef tenderloin stuffed with sauteed bloomsdale spinach and mushrooms. the roast on that had been perfectly done. in section, the slices were ovals of roseate meat studded with mushrooms, with a caramelised exterior, and no blood in sight. it was so tender i cut it with my recyclable corn spoon. raelene, the pastry chef at no-name, threw in a maple syrup and chocolate chip bundt cake splendid in the balance achieved by its moist crumb. this bundt cake was so good, in fact, that it prompted someone at table to remark that it was like sitting in a wingback chair in a warm library on a snowy day, with a cup of hot tea and a cat curled around your feet, reading dickens.

the old world

sometimes, the oddest things show up in the no-name food line. over the last couple of weeks, they've been doing classics of european comfort food. chicken chasseur/cacciatore, grilled skate with brown butter sauce, coq au vin. today, next to the grilled endive, there was a large tray of fresh bucatini all'amatriciana, fat ropes of pasta lavished with a thick, clinging sauce of tomatoes, chili-infused oil, and pork fat. scattered throughout were tiny squares of the pork that had been fried until they were crisp and the fat had rendered out into the sauce. the traditional meat used here is guanciale -- dry-cured pork jowl -- and the morning news gives instructions on making guanciale for those so inclined. if you're lazier, niman ranch makes and sells the stuff.

oyster shooters

the chefs went a bit nutty today and almost everything has a goofy name. lunch was chicken devotion,a french version of cacciatore. the chicken was moist and tender, napped with a white wine, shallot, and parsley sauce full of thin-sliced mushrooms. i also took an enchanted short rib of beef braised in red wine, mushrooms, and garlic until all the collagen and fat had dissolved into tenderness and delight.

then, after lunch, john told me that he was serving up oysters and vodka tonight. i suggested freezing the vodka into a block of ice for service and, lo!, was there not a brace of shotglasses filled with malpeque oysters and ice-cold grey goose vodka at dinner.

soup

it's not odd, i don't think, that simple things make me happy. today, at lunch, there was a bowl of chicken noodle soup full of cubes of tender (but not mushy) breast meat that had been grilled ahead of time, such is the love with which our chefs lavish us. the broth was perfectly clear, rich, round-flavoured, and meaty.

at dinner, no-name had a shipment of very young thai coconuts. in mine, the flesh gathering on the inside shell was barely opaque and was so gelatinous that it slipped up the straw like it was barely there.

cylindricality

had lunch today with meng, who always follows his stomach. we walked over to pintxo, the tapas cafe, where the meal began with a white miso soup with tiny tofu cubes. the miso was good but it's unclear if the base was dashi; its characteristic smoky, proteinaceous aroma (from the combination of sun-dried bonito and kelp) was absent. the tiny plates rapidly covered my tray: a small mound of ahi sashimi garnished with tiny alfalfa sprouts and a teriyaki sauce, two blue point oysters each with scallion diamond nestled in its folds, thai fried rice, and a slice of grapefruit-glazed teriyaki chicken. the thai fried rice was a pleasant surprise, having first been cooked in a combination of coconut milk and cream, then fried with shrimp and chinese wax sausage (a fatty, thin, air-dried sausage coated with edible wax). on the side, a small pile of baby asparagus sauteed with thin slices of shiitake mushroom and a thin, cornstarch-based mushroom sauce. dessert was a small shotglass of bananas mashed in coconut milk and a slice of green tea custard of melting consistency, perfect on its own and regrettably drenched with a lemon-honey sauce. the bananas in coconut milk in particular was a flavour of home that i'd forgotten -- the peranakans have a small dessert of coconut cream thickened to a fragile solid with tapioca flour, with slices of ripe banana embedded within, the whole deal usually wrapped in a single rectangle of banana leaf cunningly sliced and folded to form a box.

at dinner, no-name featured little cylinders of golden beets no longer than my little finger, with a small hollow scooped out in the top and filled with chevre and toasted walnuts, the whole drizzled with citrus-infused balsamic vinegar and dusted with tarragon. that was the highlight of the day.

perfect foods

holding a freshly-toasted english muffin this morning, i roamed the breakfast line until i saw a vat of whipped banana butter. it was light but full of banana flavour, and surprisingly good. they certainly hadn't acidulated it enough to create an objectionable taste (bananas and acid don't go well together) but it hadn't turned brown. quite a feat. with a smear of apricot conserve, it came close to being a perfect food. a freshly-toasted muffin half is key.

at lunch, there was a beautiful lentil stew with puy lentils, wafer-thin slices of jerusalem artichoke, and roasted mushrooms. the jerusalem artichoke, as everyone knows, is actually the enlarged storage root of the sunflower, or girasol. they're a trendy but usually charmless starch, but today they supplied a soft crunch and starchiness that went beautifully with the lentils. sometimes the chefs put neat names on dishes and they decided to name this hearty, warming dish with a slightly musty flavour haleine du hiver, or breath of winter.

there were also beef cheeks supplied by the harris ranch beef company and braised to the point of collapse with guinness stout and the traditional vegetables. these beef cheeks were brilliant too, with a mellow, round flavour, and they were a startling shade of mauve; the onions, carrots, celery, and tomatoes had melted away into the gravy. the salad of frisee, gojiberries, and toasted hazelnuts, lightly dressed with a lavender-infused vinaigrette; that didn't hurt either.

capsaicin

lunch was seared tiger prawns with a guajillo chiffonade and a salad of oiled, chargrilled leeks. guajillo is a chile native to mexico, of medium heat. the chiffonade wasn't really a chiffonade, but it did add an interestingly smokey flavour to the perfectly-cooked prawns. they were so fresh, tender (but firm) that they squeaked and crunched under my teeth. (it sounds unappetising, but these were some very good prawns). the grilled leek salad was a brilliant move: bright, verdant green with hashmarks of black, and with just enough bite to be interesting. the high heat had made the leeks tender and wilty and perfect.

chervil, chervil

the abundance of chervil continues. this morning, next to the omelet station, there was a scattering of small plates each bearing a half of a toasted english muffin saturated with salted butter (oh yes.) and topped with dungeness crab, avocado, and a poached egg. the chervil and chive hollandaise was marvellous, but the yolk of the egg alone would have been sauce enough.

volatile flavour compounds

the prawns in thai green curry were tasty; they were squeakily crunchy, perfectly done having probably been thrown into the curry just before service to cook in its residual heat. as a rule of thumb, the green curry is the spiciest of the thai curries but this was not the case here. there was mild, mellow heat, and then a gentle retreat. the chocolate chip banana bread muffins on the dessert line were great -- light and deeply-flavoured with zones of liquidy banana and chunks of chocolate (guittard, for the chocolate snobs). raelene has a light hand with the spices, and the cassia and nutmeg were just barely detectable. cassia is a type of cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia) with a generally higher concentration of the volatile flavour compounds than the variety of cinnamon used in European cookery (C. zeylanicum). cassia is generally more pungent than Ceylon cinnamon, and tends to be the variety used in north american cooking. the abominable flavoured gums that reek of cinnamon and proliferate so inexplicably here are the archetypal cassia product -- a heavy hand with an already formidable spice -- so Raelene's variety of restraint is always welcome.

maillard reactions

mashed potato covered in browned cheese must be one of the original comfort foods. warm, moist, crunchy and soft at once, and milky on the tongue, yet with the complex flavours that browning gives. for these flavours, born from the interaction of amino acids and reducing sugars in the presence of heat, we have the maillard reaction to thank. no-name stuffed this into balsamic-marinated baby portabella mushrooms and they were really good.

the pastry chef at charlie's reached a new state of divinity today with a caramel chestnut marjolaine. seeing it on the menu, i stopped by on my way to an afternoon meeting and it was, verily, a dacquoise -- two layers of surprisingly stable meringue sandwiching a filling of heavy cream, chestnuts, and hazelnut. also, the whipper of the cream in the no-name creme chantilly bowl struck today, for the first time in weeks, that happy medium of a slightly-sweetened, soft, unctuous colloidal suspension of air in fat. the two went very well together.

sandwich

no-name features flank steak at lunch this week, rubbed in cocoa and roasted ancho chile powder. they cook it medium-rare and slice it thin across the grain. my relentless pedantry has borne fruit! of this i made a sandwich with 7-grain bread, smoked cheddar, spicy dijon mustard, and sunflower sprouts -- the best sandwiches always are exercises in restraint and moderation. mysteriously, there were also trays and trays of what were billed "wild mushroom bouchees," puff pastry shells filled with mushrooms shredded and cooked with garlic and creme fraiche (and, the sign claimed, thyme, although i didn't taste it). these were good -- flaky, buttery, meaty, garlicky -- but seemed more like hors d'oeuvres than lunch food. as a token concession to balanced nutrition, i scooped up a poblano chile stuffed with brown rice and tomatoes, then lavished with jack cheese, and an egg salad sandwich garnished with a small half-round of cucumber and a sprig of the aforementioned and ubiquitous chervil.

when i walked through after lunch service, a plate of soda bread had been thoughtfully placed on a side counter. it was full of chocolate chunks and dried strawberries and had a beautiful, slightly burnt crust.

an embarrassment of riches

as i proceeded back from my sojourn to distant buildings, i snagged dessert first from cafe7 (the one with the good pastry selection). they had a camembert out that was appropriately liquid and mushroomy in flavour, as well as a reconstructed strawberry shortcake: two pieces of cream biscuit sandwiching a white chocolate mousse and a strawberry mousse filled with chunks of fruit.

at no-name, there was oven-roasted butterfish marinated in soy sauce and chinese rice wine, just on the right side of being undercooked. there was also a brilliant salad of arugula, baby dandelion leaves, pine nuts, and parmesan, dressed in a chervil-tinged vinaigrette. the parmesan and pine nuts make it deeply satisfying (being meaty and salty), the dandelion leaves and arugula keep it real. the chervil (which is all over the place, there must be a glut. it's even in the egg salad sandwiches) makes the vinaigrette bright, sparkly, and faintly lemony. it was good times.

cut off the short loin

dinner was a spinach and semolina gratin with roasted golden beets, caramelized onions, and thin-sliced bavette steak cooked with sherry vinegar, and a side of sunflower sprouts, carrots, and chevre, dressed with lime chutney. the chefs here really let the meat sit, rest, and re-absorb juices before slicing, which is perfect. the carver was massacring it by slicing along the grain but we soon put that right, and the resulting slices were rosy-pink all the way through, juicy, meaty, and tender.

the flavours of australia and the sun rising

arrived at work just in time to snag the tail end of breakfast: a quiche of leeks and dandelion greens, and an omelette stuffed with linguica and crabmeat. for lunch, we went to charlie's for the first time in months. the channa and urad dal cooked with garlic, ginger, onion, tomatoes, turmeric, whole chili, cilantro, arugula was deeply-flavoured as usual, and liberally dusted with chopped cilantro. there was also a guy behind the cutting board fileting large whole-roasted red snappers. the flesh was moist, flaky, and meaty, and they served it with a chutney of mint and coconut. the procurers must have had a field day with the fish since snapper filets were also on offer in slice (grilled with a grapefruit, blood orange, and thyme sauce, they tasted somehow australian -- bright and with a zingy flavour), served alongside a barley pilaf cooked with red savoy cabbage, pears, fried carrot chips, and sage. the barley had been slightly overcooked and it would probably have been better to use pearl barley instead, but the flavour was interestingly sweet.

then, for dinner a thai young coconut filled with sweet liquid but with flesh that had hardened out of the almost liquid gel that you can get if you knock a green coconut off the tree in your yard. the salad of black beans, dried roma tomatoes, onions, mozzarella, tarragon, thyme, rosemary was meaty and satisfying, though the addition of tarragon and thyme was inexplicable and gave the whole thing a strange flavour better suited to a sauce to accompany fish. the successful salad of the night was one that tasted of sunrises and mist burning off the sea: golden beets, dried blueberries, red onion, olive oil, orange juice, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, and agave. it makes me happy that our chefs experiment.

hot beverage

also, there are squares of scharffen berger chocolate in the microkitchens now. steaming a cup of milk and then dissolving 6 squares of chocolate into it (3 bittersweet, 3 semisweet) and dropping in a curl of orange peel and a cardamom pod produces a quite magical beverage. full fat milk only, of course.

rices

i've never really understood why wild rice is so popular -- it has its place wherever a nutty, dry , highly-flavoured grain is needed, but there's no need to go putting it in salads with soft, mild leaves like butter lettuce or pairing it with delicately-flavoured foods. in any case, slice today served up boxes of cilantro-lime roasted scallops with steamed kale and cauliflower on a bed of wild and basmatic rice. individually, each component was irreproachable, but nothing there really could stand up to the rice.

cross-bearing

last week, they had cold, roast french fingerling potatoes with grilled red escarole, parmesan, olive oil, and pepper. i could eat this for days. today, no-name had a vol au vent filled with wild mushroom ragout, medium-rare slices of grilled flatiron steak, a seafood gumbo of prawns, scallops, snapper, and a curried cruciferous salad of broccoflower, broccoli, and cauliflower.

the Cruciferae are a family of flowering plants now known in the official taxonomies as the Brassicaceae -- cruciferous or cross-bearing because of a floral structure common to the family in which the corolla, or inner whorl of petals surrounding the anthers, is usually composed of four petals forming the shape of a cross. this family of plants contains everything from bok choy through broccoli, though what is perhaps more amazing is that broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and kale are all cultivars of the same species (Brassica oleraceae) selected for their dramatically different leafing expressions.

kombucha

they made a smoothie today of young coconut, mango, and agave syrup. it was quite nice. for dinner, there was a venison stew that must have had red wine in it -- rich, with clear flavour and meat fork-tender without being mushy, it was a tremendous comfort food served with basmati rice and a coconut curry soup. over dinner, we concluded that the broiled skate would have been more classically accompanied by a brown butter instead of a mignonette, but that fussing with these piddling details would be churlish. the team also made a simple and inspired salad of strawberries and grapefruit with mint. clark made my night by sneaking up behind me while i was in line for some cucumber with a large, apparently empty olive jar that on closer inspection proved to contain a mat of kombucha culture.

small plates

lunch today at the small plates cafe. of the selection, the standout was a beef carpaccio with a raw quail egg, its top carefully removed to reveal a lemon-yellow yolk against the delicate pale blue of the shell. the cornmeal-dusted pan-fried trout was also good with its sauce of sage and brown butter: the chefs had dusted only the flesh, leaving the skin to turn crisp against the pan. as an afterthought, i picked up a small rosette of house-smoked salmon with a tiny salad of thin-sliced cucumbers dressed with sour cream nestled in the center.

this week, a host of interesting smoothies at slice. the most promising was one composed of macadamia nutmilk, bananas, agave syrup, raw cacao pulp, and vanilla. it tasted like a mild chocolate banana shake, even though the cacao pulp tastes nothing (to me at least) like chocolate. in brazil, the juice-stands with which the streets are strewn sell blends of cacao with mint, raspberry, acerola, or lemon.

dinner was a plate of ravioli (butternut squash and goat cheese) in a tomato cream sauce. on the side, broiled skate wings that were golden brown on the outside and barely-cooked inside, drenched in a mignonette of shallots, champagne vinegar, and pepper, and a slice of grilled flank steak full of beefy flavour.

the role of glutamate crystals in deliciousness

at the american table, lunch was a pizza of roasted mushrooms, parmesan, spinach, and a white cream sauce, some field greens with a balsamic vinaigrette, and a creamy sweet corn and crab bisque garnished with garlic shrimp and truffle oil. on the way out, i picked up a reconstructed s'more: a house-made graham cracker smeared with a bitter chocolate ganache and topped with a small piping of marshmallow fluff that had thereafter been thoughtfully bruleed. the pizza was thin and chewy-crusted, and the mushrooms, sauce, spinach, and parmesan came together beautifully. the parmesan was the unidentifiable element that made the pizza noble, adding the rich savouriness that you also get from seaweed, miso, tomatoes, some of the hard, proteinaceous cheeses, and MSG. the reason for this is glutamate, and parmigiano reggiano (the good stuff anyway, that comes in big wedges with the originating producer's code number printed on the outside in dot-matrix) is so full of it that it forms into long, needly crystals. you'll also have noticed these in pecorino romano. these are long, needly crystals of deliciousness. but i digress, for the reconstructed s'more was also marvellous, and the crab and corn soup remarkable (there was brandy in there, and a smoky kick from perhaps a roasted poblano or some such).

at dinner, the chefs at no name served up a panoply of delights. it was one of those fridays when all the flavours came together: muffuletta sandwiches, tube pasta in a roasted pepper cream sauce, carved turkey, smoked sturgeon. all these were john the chef's brainchildren, and they show traces of the six years he spent in new orleans before coming to cook for us. the turkey had been injected (using an enormous, 2 foot long syringe) in multiple places with cranberry juice, leaving the breast meat striped with rosy bands and juicy. the food infrastructure here in mountain view also includes a hot smoker, hence the slab of flaky, hot-smoked, caraway crusted sturgeon, sliced finger-wide and served with creme fraiche. and then, back at the desk, there was, in a small cup, a baked white peach filled with a maple-pomegranate reduction, whole roasted unsalted pistachios, and mint.

pushing the envelope

one of the smoothies of the week is made of spirulina, kiwi fruit, apple juice, and gojiberries. deep green and grainy, it is full of the sharp biting sensation that kiwi seeds give as you crack them open between your teeth. raelene's pistachio bundt cake was out at lunch. it had the friendly colour of good chartreuse and a slightly lemony icing sugar frosting. next to it was an enormous bowl of softly-whipped cream and a plate of cacao nib cookies, each such a deep brown it was almost black, and with a sparkling line of sea salt down the center.

persimmons

this morning, next to the vats of yogurt, there was a small white bowl of deep orange puree: this was an unmistakable sign that the persimmon puree had returned. made from hachiya persimmons, the puree was almost completely free of tannins and had a soft, mellow flavour that goes well with unsweetened yogurt. no one else seems to like it, since there's usually lots of the puree still sitting on the counter after the breakfast service is over. i'm told that fuyu persimmons are eaten as hand fruit here but hachiyas are not, since they become almost liquid by the time they've ripened to the point where their tannins subside enough for edibility. back home, we ate overripe hachiyas cold from the refrigerator on hot days and it was always a particular pleasure to extract the gelatinous lozenge from each squashy quarter slice.*

at lunch, the slice crew served forth trays of salmon roasted with a tamari, molasses, and pomegranate glaze and served with a salsa of halved, stewed, spicy kumquats. the salmon was crusty outside and rare inside, quite a tour de force. the wild rice and kabocha cakes with roasted oyster mushrooms that came with were less exciting, but you can't have everything. and, of course, tonight the enormous slab of seared ahi came out again. words are inadequate to describe the pleasure.

* -- some fruit, like good meat, is better after having gone through a process of controlled decay. what dry aging is for beef, bletting is for hachiyas and medlars.

then, there was applesauce

there was yogurt, made by the house with harold mcgee's own culture from india, now over 50 years old and still going strong. many of us are partial to the vanilla-flavoured variety although the vanilla is said to have an inhibitory effect on the culture. next to the vats of yogurt was a bowl of house-made applesauce, which carried with it a trace of the slightly resinous flavour of the winesap apples from which they were made. at dinner, there was a roughly-chopped salad of raw tomatoes, red onions, and cucumbers. the tomatoes have a ways to go before they're in season enough to explode with flavour, but the salad was excellent nonetheless. the meat and grill line looked different tonight because there were several slabs of whole roast beef tenderloin, perfectly cooked to a point between rare and medium-rare. they'd let the meat sit for long enough that the carving station wasn't awash in juices and each slice was a even, rosy pink through to the centre. next to the beef, what appeared to be an unusually large and angular pork loin turned out in fact to be a enormous slab of seared sushi-grade ahi tuna, rubbed with paprika. thin, garnet slices fell off the block and lay, improbably large and beautiful on my plate, napped with a honey teriyaki sauce and wasabi aioli. (is it an aioli if it doesn't contain, primarily, oil and garlic?) the tuna was meltingly tender, irreproachably fresh, and was completely wiped out before i could get seconds.