Rooftop Gourmet

Robert Atkins eat your heart out! Carb-phobic consumers, cover your eyes. This whopping mouthful of an appetizer is my submission in Davio’s Boston’s Spring Roll Creation Contest. Davio’s is famous for their Philly Cheese Steak Spring Roll, which my tastebuds first got the pleasure of devouring six years ago at Spinazola, a foodie-centric Boston fundraiser. Since then, reminiscing that magical experience has led me to their downtown restaurant, and urged me to wolf down about fifteen during halftime at Gillette Stadium. These spring rolls are everywhere!

I stumbled upon this exciting contest on Facebook last week and noticed that I only had one night left to submit my recipe. My competitive nature led me to the Super 88 Asian Market in search of spring roll pastry dough because I wasn’t going down without making them for real in my own kitchen. The winner gets their spring roll creation on the Davio’s menu along side the gold medal winner from Philly.

Trying to stay within the same “comfort food” genre that Davio’s spring rolls fall into, I decided to give Vietnam a taste of the Deep South. Good old fashioned, homemade macaroni and cheese was the poison that I picked to become gift wrapped and fried. In the past, I have made several versions of homemade macaroni and cheese but I wanted to stick with something basic for this contest. I started by creating a light roux (equal parts butter and flour) whisked over medium heat to act as the base for my cheese sauce.

 Once the flour taste is cooked out, and a golden blonde paste is formed in the bottom of the pan, I poured in my milk and kept my forearm busy whisking away. The three cheeses I picked were Gruyere, Fontina, and Parmigiano-Reggiano because they are amazing melting cheeses, and they all have distinct, pungent flavors.

The Gruyere is funky and creamy, the Fontina is sharp, and the Parm is nutty and salty. I slowly added all three cheeses into my Bechemel and let them melt away and thicken the sauce. After everything was incorporated, and I needed to put yellow police tape up around my stovetop to keep me away from licking the spoon, I boiled my pasta.

I chose Ditalini because it was a micro-macaroni, perfect for stuffing inside of a spring roll wrapper. Once the mini tubes were al dente, I drained them and tossed them into the bubbling cauldron of cheese sauce. I was tempted to grab a fork and dig in, but this was a competition and I needed all the product that I made to practice my rolling technique.

Spring Roll pastry is different from spring roll wrappers, which I learned the hard way, after Siobhan came home with the transparent rice noodles. The transparent variety is typically eaten raw and stuffed with seafood and julienned vegetables, but in southern Vietnam, the deep fried pastry is more common.

 I finally found them, tucked away in the frozen section of the market and thawed them out on my countertop. To keep the pastry moist, I topped it with a clean, damp kitchen towel, which helped prevent the sheets from cracking.

These sheets are paper thin, and need to be peeled away one by one while you’re rolling them up. I gently brushed them with egg wash, which acts as a glue, and dropped a handful of macaroni and cheese in the center of the square. I made sure that I let the mac and cheese cool down before rolling them because the heat wouldn’t be good for the delicate pastry. Pinching, rolling, tucking, and folding… roll after roll until I reached my capacity and figured I’d have a heart attack if I made one more. I felt like I was smuggling pasta from a buffet into my neatly folded handkerchief.

 Once my makeshift deep fryer full of vegetable oil came to temperature, I started dropping these cigar-like tubes of deliciousness in one by one. The frying process was long and grueling, but my skin, and kitchen survived the trauma. I dissected my test victim and sliced it in half, revealing a gorge of flowing cheese sauce and a perfect bisection of tiny noodles. 

Threre wasn’t even enough time to blow on it to cool it down, before my brain told me to dive right in and take a bite. They were like Russian Matryoshka dolls of fried cheese… cylinders inside cylinders of mouthwatering, cheesy, euphoria. Just to add an orgasmic punch to the appetizer, Siobhan separated some eggs, and made a quick aioli laced with tons of white truffle oil. The three cheeses alone were something to ogle about, but when dipped in the aromatic truffle sauce, it was time to bring out the bibs. The crispy, thin skin of the spring roll wrapper was the perfect vessel to hold this down home, comfort classic.

 I ate two spring rolls and then took a break to watch some t.v, but I kept finding myself sneaking back into the kitchen for more carb on carb lovin’. I would pair this dish with a dry, crisp Sauvignon Blanc and a trip to the cardiologist. You will need a fresh wine, with triumphant acidity to cut through the richness in this spring roll. The other Davio’s fans have some great ideas, so it will be a true test to see if these fried, steakhouse sides hold up in the spring roll battle. Win or lose, I now have my go-to appetizer recipe for the start of the 2010 Patriots season.

Last week, we left the city and spent a few days house sitting in the burbs for my family. We got to spend some time with Gino, our new Golden Retriever puppy and cook an extravagant meal in my parent’s kitchen. My family doesn’t have as an adventurous palate as we do, so since they were gone, I wanted to make something that would typically never be seen in their kitchen. We walked Gino, or more like Gino walked us, down to John Dewars on Linden street, which is where I get my meat when I’m not in the city.

 They have the best quality meat around and they also stock some unusual ingredients. I went inside in search of foie gras. Foie gras is the controversial ingredient that is most commonly made in France. It is the fattened liver of a duck or a goose, and it is extremely delicate and expensive. The reason it has been so controversial is because of the process in which it’s made.

 Gavage is the technical name for the technique used to fatten the birds up when they are young. It involves jamming a tube down the bird’s throat and force-feeding it corn, five to ten extra times a day, in order to fatten the birds’ liver. Even though the technique dates back as far as 2500 B.C, and the animals don’t have a gag reflex, you can see why some people consider it inhumane.

 Whether you find it disturbing or not, the flavor of the foie gras is incomparable. Its rich, buttery yet delicate texture is a real treat, and I can see why it’s so expensive. Because it’s so rich, I only bought a small amount in order to make an appetizer portion for the two of us. Some people prefer their foie gras molded into a pate’ or a terrine, but I think it tastes the best when it is pan seared. Traditionally, seared foie is served with toast and some type of sweet sauce, usually made with berries to balance out the richness of the liver.

 Siobhan started baking early in the morning when I left for work the day before, because I had an idea in mind. She went out into the backyard and snipped a bunch of fresh sage from my mother’s garden and bought some fresh blueberries. I am not much of a baker, so I let her do her thing and I came home to a giant loaf of blueberry-sage bread. The loaf was dense and moist, studded with plump berries and swirled with a chiffonade of woodsy sage. The combination or herbs and berries was new and exciting.

I decided to dredge a few slices of the homemade bread in a beaten egg and make an insane French toast. After all, foie gras is a delicacy in French cuisine, why not let it rest on a bed of French toast? I slowly toasted the bread in a non-stick pan and got my foie gras out of the fridge. Because of its high fat content, you really don’t want to handle the liver too long because it will melt in your hands.

 Letting it melt would be an expensive mistake so try to keep it melting in your mouth and not in your hands. I let my pan get smoking hot before I even brought my foie near it. This was judgement time and I was getting a little nervous because if you sear it the wrong way or leave it in the pan it could literally disappear before your eyes. It was like trying to sear a pat of butter. The one inch thick slice of liver hit the pan and the whole kitchen started to sizzle, I quickly flipped it over after a few seconds and started basting it with all of the fat that had already rendered out of it.

 Before I knew it, the foie had shrunk in half and it was seared, and warmed throughout. I plated it atop my blueberry-sage French toast and garnished it with some blueberry compote that I had leftover in my freezer. Since the foie is super rich, I sprinkled some minced lemon zest on top just to cut through some of the fat and keep your palate fresh and clean. Our forks slid right through the warm foie and each buttery bite dissolved on our tongues. Classically Foie Gras is served with Sauternes, which is a French sweet, dessert wine. 

We opened a half bottle of Muscat de Saint Jean de Minervois or otherwise known as the poor man’s Sauternes. Just as syrupy and delicious but for a fraction of the cost. This dessert wine is served chilled, and it perfect to pair with belt-poppinly rich foods such as foie gras and Roquefort blue cheese. It is made from the Muscat blanc grape and is full bodied and sweet.

There are tons of beautiful flavors or ripe apricots, mangos, quince, and honey. It looks like a bottle of melted 24 carat gold and the finish is long and luxurious. I don’t know what filled me up more, the Muscat or the foie, but we definitely needed some time before I started our main course. Just when you thought I couldn’t make anything more intense than a foie gras appetizer, John Dewars runs a special on two pound Wagyu beef “long bone” chops! Obviously, I couldn’t pass that up so I grabbed one for myself and a more human-like steak for Siobhan.

Wagyu is one of the most flavorful grades of beef because it’s fattened and lazy, making the meat intensely marbled with flavorful fat. The cow’s diet consists of chestnuts and beer which I guess is a little bit better than corn through a tube. I obviously didn’t want to mess around with the magnificent flavors of the beef, so I simply seasoned it with salt and cracked black pepper and I rolled the bone in tin foil so that it wouldn’t burn on the grill. While I seared this giant sledge hammer, I went inside and made a quick goat cheese mashed potatoes with a sprinkle of chives. I cooked the long bone to medium and plopped it down with a mountain of mashed. I opened a bottle of 2008 Orin Swift’s The Prisoner because it it has enough raw power to stand up to this massive chop.

The red blend consists of primarily Zinfandel but also has traces of Cabernet, Syrah, and Petit Syrah. This is an explosion of fruit in your mouth! The ripe berries and the new French oak swarm your palate, followed by a soft tannic finish. If I didn’t have such an over the top steak on my plate, this wine would kick its ass and take its lunch money. If I was alone, I would have picked it up like a lollipop and eaten it like a Flintstone. Even Dino (I mean Gino) got to gnaw on the bone (that was the size of my forearm) after I was done with it. Yabba Dabba Do!

 One of my favorite vegetables has always been broccoli no matter how it’s prepared. Steamed, roasted, sauteed, or even grilled… its vitamin rich, dark green stalks are always delicious.

The bitter flavor is great on it’s own but when combined with other flavors such as garlic or chilies, the broccoli lives up to its full potential. One of my favorite Italian pasta dishes is orchiette (small, ear shaped pasta) with sauteed broccoli rabe and sausage. There’s something about the combination of spicy pork, and the buttery, wilted greens that really wakes up my taste buds.

Broccoli rabe, or rapini, is a member of the broccoli family that tends to be quite leafier. The stalks are edible and within all of the dark leaves, tiny little florets sprout out at the ends.

 Last night we decided to make pizza in a pan, and I wanted to incorporate all of the flavors of my favorite dish. Due to the warm weather, I have been grilling broccoli a lot lately, and the char from the grill combined with the bitter greens and some great olive oil is a wonderful combination of flavors.

 I dumped three huge bushels of rapini on my fiery hot grill and let them char on one side before removing them. I made a pesto-like concoction in my food processor with the charred broccoli rabe, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and some Pecorino cheese.

The bright green pesto was laced with black speckles from the grill and it added an amazing smoky flavor to the spread. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to make homemade pizza dough, so I grabbed some from the the supermarket and left it on the counter to rise a little bit.

 Once we had it ready to roll out, I realized that I don’t have a rolling pin, pizza stone, or anything else that is generally needed to make homemade pizza. We improvised rolled out the dough by hand and stretched it into a large skillet. The final result didn’t come out as thin as we had hoped but it was still absolutely delicious.

 I spread a thin layer of creamy mascarpone cheese on the dough before lathering on my charred broccoli rabe pesto. Next, I sliced up from fresh balls of buffalo mozzarella and arranged them on top. The contrast in colors was very eye catching. On top of all that, I sprinkled some spicy Italian sausage that I rendered down in a pan, and a dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Into the oven the pizza went, where it baked for about twenty minutes. I popped the light in the oven on a few times just to watch the thick slabs of mozzarella bubble and ooze down the sides of the crust. By the time we cut the pizza into slices, I needed a pair of scissors because the cheese was so stringy. I popped a bottle of 2006 Poliziano Vino Nobile di Montelpulciano from a small town in the hills of Tuscany. Vino Nobile or ‘Noble Wine’, is primarily Sangiovese, known locally as Prugnolo gentile, with small traces of local varieties blended in such as Caniolo Nero and Mammolo.

 This wine truly accentuates the terroir and the ancient Tuscan bond between soil, man, and culture. It’s deeply concentrated and well structured with aromas of herbs, oak and red fruit. On the palate, the wine is bursting with acidity and tons of black cherry flavor.

There is a subtle, leathery, tobacco note in the finish that plays nicely with the charred broccoli rabe. The pizza dough was crispy at the crust and pleasantly chewy in the middle. All of my favorite flavors came together on every single slice. The good part about making a huge batch of the broccoli rabe is that we have a wonderful pasta dish for tomorrow night.

I don’t know about you, but this heat wave is starting to get exhausting. With record temperatures skyrocketing to 100+, the last thing I felt like doing was turning on my stove or standing over a scorching hot grill. Just stepping outside onto the deck felt like walking into a giant oven. I came home from work, peeled off my sweaty button-down, and decided to make soup. Yes… that’s right, soup in a heat wave.

 Gazpacho is a traditional Spanish soup made from raw vegetables, that originated in the southern region of Andalusia.

Now a days, gazpacho has many different variations, and the term gazpacho is almost generic for chilled vegetable soup. The good thing about this refreshing, summer soup is that it can be made entirely in your blender or food processor.

Most countries have some type of staple, peasant dish that incorporates crusty, day-old bread into a fabulous meal, such as the Italian tomato and bread soup or panzanella, a cold bread salad. Gazpacho is Spain’s equivalent of these peasant dishes that takes leftovers and brings them to life.

 Since, the preparation is so simple, I decided to make both the classic red and white varieties. The red gazpacho is tomato based, and in my opinion tastes better when it is chunky and has some texture.

I didn’t have any day old bread, so I toasted some sliced white bread and cut the crusts off like I would for a toddler’s PB & J. I soaked the crusty bread in some ice water for about twenty minutes while I got my blender ready.

From there on out it’s just a matter of tossing in different ingredients as if you were making a smoothie. I rang the water out of the bread by squeezing the soggy toast in clenched fists and added that first, along with tons of cherry tomatoes, red onion, jalapeno, garlic and cucumber.

 Cucumber, bread, garlic and tomatoes are staples in red gazpacho, but I enjoy a little heat from the jalapenos. As the blender roared away, I added a stream of extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of Spanish Sherry vinegar. The bread thickens the soup and makes it all come together.

After everything is incorporated, I passed the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to remove some of the gritty skins, pulp, and larger chunks of bread. With the red gazpacho, I like a chunky texture so I reserved a small dice of all of the components that I folded into the puree after. I cleaned out my blender and refrigerated the gazpacho until it was time to serve. My white gazpacho is a little bit more elegant and refined than the red. I start off the same way, with the soggy bread, and garlic cloves, but I then toss in some toasted almonds.

 The almonds give the soup a nuttiness to balance out the sweeter flavors of white grapes. Into the blender goes some of the ice water, and some white grape juice followed by the Sherry vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil. I usually press the “liquefy” button on my blender for this soup because a smooth, velvety texture is more important. I also pass the liquid through the strainer twice to make sure there is no grit in the mouthfeel.

 The white gazpacho is then seasoned, chilled, and set aside until it’s ready to serve. The longer these soups sit in the fridge, the more flavorful they get, which makes leftovers a must. Since I set my thermostat for 68 degrees, I felt that it was okay to turn my stove on for only two minutes. I quickly seared some fresh scallops on one side until they were golden brown and caramelized.

 Seafood and gazpacho are a great combination. A lot of times restaurants will serve their gazpacho in a martini glass with a few jumbo shrimp dangling over the edge. I plated a few of the scallops like buoys in the middle of each soup and topped them with a few different garnishes. With two different soups and some light seafood, we needed a wine that was equally refreshing.

I chose to open a bottle of Fetish Field of Dreams Moscato, from the Barossa Valley, Australia. This wine is modeled after the slightly sweet, slightly sparkling wines from Northern Italy. The crisp, effervescence is so refreshing with the soup. When you pour the cold wine into the glass a foamy head appears, reminiscent of a Belgian Ale. It gives off aromas of flowers, white peaches and honeydew melons.

Unlike other dessert wines, the moscato is low in alcohol and isn’t sticky and syrupy, which makes it pleasant to serve with a meal. The subtle, sweet fruit complimented the spiciness of the red gazpacho, and was pleasantly elegant with the white. The tiny bubbles cleared your palate after each sip and prepared you for a slurp of a totally different flavor. After tasting the wine, and the soup separately, I realized that a few splashes of the bubbly moscato would actually give the soup a whole new character.

Marinating fresh berries in Moscato is also a great dessert when spooned over a creamy custard. We had plenty of leftovers of soup to bring to the pool the next day, but the Field of Dreams disappeared quickly. Thankfully, I didn’t start hearing voices about building a baseball field in the middle of South Boston, but if it meant that rain will come, I might consider it.

Today marks the 100th blog post on Rooftop Gourmet! It’s been ten months, lots of great food and wine, and many hours in the kitchen. Over the better part of last year, a lot has happened. I have learned so much about wine and food, and developed a level of knowledge that I never dreamed I’d reach so soon. You can read wine encyclopedias until your eyeballs pop out of your skull, but truly understanding wine comes from repetitive tasting (and reading while tasting, typically before you taste so that you don’t fall asleep).

 A great example of this is with my fiance Siobhan, who I met during my journey in blogging, and who has been extremely supportive and patient with me throughout the past year. If it wasn’t for her, this site wouldn’t look as professional, wouldn’t get updated in a timely fashion, and the food wouldn’t taste as delicious. She is the unsung hero, who has no voice on this blog, but contributes so much to making it what it is today. She probably wants to throw my laptop over the side of the roofdeck if I ask her to run out for another knob of ginger at 1o:30pm, or ask her to pause between bites for a picture of the cauliflower floret on her fork.

When I met Siobhan she didn’t drink red wine, and the only white she enjoyed was sweet Riesling. Over the course of the year, you could tell she became more open to trying different things, and of course more curious. I started her off with a few sips of my Pinot Noir, and by Christmas she was not only drinking, but thoroughly enjoying powerhouse California Cabs, and aged Bordeaux that reeked of wet leather.

She was like my little guinea pig. Her palate transformed from a “I’ll have a glass of the house Chardonnay” drinker, to a sophisticated wine drinker who can now pinpoint what region of Italy the red wine in her glass is from simply by smelling it.

My cooking techniques have become more elaborate and precise over the past year, and my food imagination has run completely wild. After the third week in September I thought I’d run out of ideas and have to shut down the website. Instead, I have a notepad in my Blackberry that has a list of ideas longer than my address book.

For the first couple weeks, I didn’t even have a camera. I just scrolled back to the beginning of the site to reminisce and realized that my blog posts were awful. Once I got my new camera, I did more research on food photography than I did for my senior year thesis. I now see food in a whole different light and love the artistic aspect it has. I have met so many fantastic people throughout the past year and reconnected with people whom I never thought read my site, and bonded over food or wine. I realized that not only cooking relaxes me but writing does as well and reconfirmed that the best feeling in the world is watching someone eat your food and hearing people say that they love reading about it.

In honor of my 100th blog post, my father gave me something special that he had stored away in his wine cellar for the past twenty years. Even though I have included it in this post, I must admit, I didn’t get a chance to open it this past weekend because everyone was away for the holiday, and Siobhan and I weren’t going to drink or bathe in six liters of Opus One. He was gracious enough to part with his 6.0 Liter (Imperial) bottle of 1980 Opus One, as long as we open it when he’s in attendance.

 It’s about time, because he just may have sat on this bottle a tad long. The prime drinking years for this vintage of Opus ended about four years ago, but then again the shelf life extends longer as the bottle gets bigger. This is only the second vintage of Opus One ever made which is now a brand name, and what once was a collaborative project between Robert Mondavi and Baron Phillipe de Rothschild.

This juice was bottled when these two pioneers, now hall of famers, were in their prime; two years before I was even born. I may be a little optimistic… but this has to still be amazing. Stay tuned to the day in the near future when we pop the dusty cork on this time capsule and see how the 1980 has held up over the years.

For my 100th post, I let Siobhan take over during the day when I was at work, because as a school teacher, she can only sit at the pool for so long during the day. Her task was to create a delicious side dish for the American Kobe beef flat iron steaks that I was picking up on the way home from work. She has a huge sweet tooth and has been bugging me to do a dessert blog for some time now, and I think this was her way of sneaking it in.

She ended up making a roasted corn creme brulee’ which was one of the most amazing side dishes to a simple piece of steak that I have ever had. Every steak house in the country should throw this on their menu in between mashed potatoes and Mac n Cheese. She simply roasted the fresh corn in their husks and then cut all of the kernels off the cobs. Roasting the corn in the husk retains so much more flavor than boiling them, which was what we were going for in this dish.

She macerated the warm kernels in heavy cream and milk for about twenty minutes to infuse the flavor and then got started with a custard base. She vigorously whisked eight egg yolks with some granulated sugar until they lightened in color and became gluey. With the boat motor, she pureed the corn kernels and heavy cream together before slowly adding it to the bowl. After the last drop fell into the bowl, the “batter” was incorporated and bright yellow. She divided the batter into all the ramekins she could find in the cupboards and placed them into a 325 degree oven.

A water bath around the ramekins helped cook the creme brulee evenly. I walked in the door when the cooking was almost complete and the entire condo smelled like roasted, buttered popcorn. She slid the ramekins out of the oven when they were still jiggly and let them cool in the refrigerator with plastic wrap until it was time to brulee’. In the meantime, I leaned over the countertop, admiring the impressive marbling in my flat iron steak.

American Kobe is a less expensive knock-off of the authentic Wagyu Kobe which comes from Japanese cows, fed strictly walnuts and beer, and massaged and bathed in Sake everyday. The result is a fatty, but evenly dispersed fatty, unbelievably flavorful beef. If only the #24 Kobe was as fat and lazy as this group of livestock, the Celtics might have an extra banner hanging from the rafters this summer. I didn’t want to take anything away from this ideal cut of beef, so I simply seasoned it with salt and freshly cracked pepper before throwing it on my grill. When it was just under medium rare in temperature, I slathered a dollop of black truffle butter on top of the steak and let the juices run into the flesh, and again with more butter while it was resting (welcome to Steakhouse 101).

I sliced the flat iron on the bias, against the grain to achieve maxium tenderness and it was perfectly pink and warm in the center. At the last minute before serving, Siobhan sprinkled some coarse sugar on top of the corn custard and threw it under the broiler to brulee’, or torch (note to self… register for a blow torch before your wedding). Quickly, the sugar carmelized and formed that crispy, rich crust that was just begging to be cracked minutes later by my fork. I plated the two heavenly, 100th blog post specials on the cover of the Opus One “coffin” that holds this massive bottle. As the primal flavor of beef at its best melted in my mouth, I took a bite of the fresh, sweet corn creme brulee that wasn’t too sweet and wasn’t too savory, and leaned back in my chair dreaming of what the Opus would taste like. Even though I was Opus-less, I thought back to all of the previous 99 dinners that we ate together, and wines that we shared and was the happiest I have ever been.