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.