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.