Slow Cooked

Appreciating Otto

I'm leaving for a quick trip to Paris tomorrow evening, but before heading to France I thought I'd mention a brief but noteworthy visit to Italy, or rather, to a corner of the Batali empire, here in New York.

I love Otto.  I love love love it.  One of my best afternoons this past summer involved leaving work early on a Friday and sitting at the bar with a book, a pizza, and several glasses of wine, chatting with the bartender and fellow office-sprung lunchers.  Otto can be noisy and crowded, but I'm rarely interested in waiting for a table; my heart belongs to the bar, always.

Eating at a restaurant's bar gives me much more freedom to scan and pick and order something, then a little something else, then maybe a bite of this, followed by some more of that.  Plus, I always love the birds-eye view of the action behind the bar - I am nothing if not nosy.  Which is how I ended up squeezing into the bar at Otto on Saturday night, and having a few glasses of wine - first, the Dolcetto D'Alba followed by the Barbera D'Asti - and some cheese and pasta.

Now, I don't think I've ever eaten at Otto and not ordered pizza, but after a plate of three cheeses (which, if I remember right included a New York State triple cream goat cheese, a Parmigiano Reggiano and a Pecorino Di Fossa, all served with a trio of sweet condiments: red-pepper flaked honey, an apricot compote, and something divine with sour cherries) we found ourselves looking longingly at the diner next to us.  First a plate of salumi tempted us, then a serving of pasta, and fearing that asking the gentleman for a bite of his dinner would be considered rude, we ordered the pasta for ourselves.  It was the bucatini, thicker than spaghetti noodles with a hole in the center, with tomato, red onion and chilies.  I love - love - anything with chilies in it, and though we couldn't finish the dish, I have to say that it gave the pizza a run for its (or would that be my?) money.

Of course, the perfect solution is just to show up hungry and try a little of everything, no?

Thanksgiving, on East 4th Street

November is a funny time to stop writing about food, I suppose; after all it's the perfect time for both eating and entertaining, both of which I've been doing plenty.  But, there's also that inevitable whoooosh of the days flying past as December - and then Christmas - and then New Year's - approaches, and well...time has gotten away from me.

But I've been doing plenty of eating, don't worry!  This year for Thanksgiving Kevin and I found ourselves with no travel plans and no urban orphans to adopt at our table, so we tried something new: we went out for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a completely strange sensation to make zero runs to the store for last minute items, to have no worries about timing the bird with the side dishes, to not have to set a table.  It was nice.  I'm not going to lie, I'm a big fan of the Process, so not having a kitchen teeming with foodstuffs felt weird, but on the other hand, we had a great meal.

We ate at Knife and Fork, which offered a $65 four-course tasting menu starting with a goat cheese salad, then poached lobster in a tangerine-pumpkin soup, turkey and ham with chestnut cream and brussel sprouts, and then a ridiculously rich chocolate fondant dessert which consisted of, basically, chocolate and butter.  The end.  I splurged on a gorgeous bottle of Stags Leap "Artemis" Cabernet ($117) which was staggeringly good, and then took a cab home to a kitchen with nary a dish to be cleaned.  And lo, I was thankful.

Mustard-Crusted Pork Tenderloin with Carrots and Lentils

Although I am far from a finicky eater, there are some foods I just don't like, and cooked carrots have always fallen into that category.  Which might make this dish an odd choice for dinner, but it looked easy, hearty, comfy and inexpensive - all things I like on a Monday night.  And it turns out that my OOSP dictum holds true; if you roast anything in olive oil, salt and pepper, it will be good.  Even carrots.

This was really good.  It wasn't fancy or special or impressive, but it was French-y and good and I like anything with a mustard zing to it.  I followed the recipe pretty closely, altering only the lentils, as I couldn't find cans of lentils and had to go with dried - to which I added additional mustard and white wine while they were simmering.  It was good.  I ate all my carrots.  Not bad for a Monday night!

Mustard Crusted Pork with Carrots and Lentils
Gourmet, Oct 2007
Serves four

•   1  pound precut fresh carrot sticks, cut into slivers
•   5 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
•   1  (1 1/4-pound) pork tenderloin
•   2  tablespoons Dijon mustard, divided (I used way more, but am a mustard freak)
•   1/4  cup fine dry bread crumbs
•   2 garlic cloves, smashed
•   2  fresh thyme sprigs
•   2  (15-ounce) cans lentils, rinsed and drained (I used a few cups of dried French lentils)
•   2/3  cup reduced-sodium chicken broth (I used veggie broth because the grocery store was inexplicably out of chicken broth and higher volume of it because of the dried lentils, plus white wine)

Preheat oven to 425°F with rack in middle.

Toss carrots with 2 tablespoons oil and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper in a shallow baking pan and roast while preparing pork.

Pat pork dry and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers, then brown pork all over, about 3 minutes total.

Put pork on a work surface and brush with 1 tablespoon mustard. Stir together bread crumbs and 1/2 tablespoon oil, then press onto mustard on pork to form a crust.

Transfer pork to pan with carrots and roast until carrots are browned and tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into center of meat registers 140 to 145°F, 15 to 22 minutes. Let pork stand 5 minutes; keep carrots warm, covered (or continue roasting if needed).

While pork roasts, heat remaining 2 tablespoons oil with garlic and thyme in a small saucepan until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in lentils, broth, and remaining tablespoon mustard and cook until heated through. Season with salt and pepper and discard thyme. Serve pork with carrots and lentils.

Knife & Fork

Tasting menus are always a gamble; diners are often asked to shell out money in the hopes that they get enough of the dishes they like and not too much of those they don't, on top of which is the suspicion that the dishes are showcasing what's plentiful in the kitchen, but not necessarily special.  On the other hand, a tasting menu is a good way to get a sense of a restaurant's story, and to understand the chef and the menu in a larger context.  Then again, tasting menus can be over priced and poorly paced…you see why I think of them as a gamble.

The tasting menu at Knife & Fork seemed like a sure thing, however: $45 for six courses at a restaurant where nearly everything on the menu appealed to me.  And surely for a very reasonable $45, the six courses would all be small, after all, most tasting menus cost more and feature five dishes at most.

Well, we were wrong about the size of the dishes, but the cost of the meal seemed even more reasonable once we started eating.  And eating.  And eating.  None of the courses was a miss, but by the fifth course, we were ready to cry Uncle.

First, a little about the restaurant: small, exposed brick, narrow bar, heavy rustic tables featuring a surprisingly fish-heavy menu and a wine list that includes both sake and an entire page of beers – in fact, the room itself has a casual, pub-like vibe that almost undercuts the serious food being served there.  Chef/owner Damien Brassel opened Knife & Fork in 2006 and designed his menu with an emphasis on sustainability and seasonality.  Starters are almost all $14 or $15, and entrees are priced at $27 or $28; there are many slow cooked and smoked dishes, with occasional Asian flourishes, like lemongrass and ginger in a butternut squash puree.

Our tasting menu started with an appetizer of fromage blanc over a disk of  butternut squash, topped with a sun-dried tomato tapenade and elderberry flower, which was notable for the unusual blending of both flavors and textures – it was refreshing and rich at the same time.  Next was one of my favorite dishes, a delicate piece of cured salmon topped with salmon roe, alongside wasabi crème fraiche and a sake-poached pear.  The third course, which was still considered an appetizer, was an enormous slab of pork belly served over creamed savoy cabbage with butternut squash-lemongrass-ginger puree, and it was so good, so rich, so over the top that I couldn't finish it, although the caramelized crust on the pork belly was basically meat candy.

At this point, we started to get really full and were speculating that maybe the additional courses included a palate-cleanser.  Not so.

The fourth dish was a grouper entrée, served with sautéed Russian fingerling potatoes and chanterelle mushrooms.  The fish itself didn't do much for me, but the potatoes and mushrooms were fragrant and delicious.  As the servers cleared our plates, we mentioned how full we were starting to feel.  Oh don't worry, you only have two courses left, they said, Just the meat and the dessert.  A meat course, we repeated.
The meat course was braised short ribs served over vanilla-infused potato puree.  I know that short ribs have become ubiquitous to the point of overkill on menus these days, but I still love them.  If left to order straight from the menu, I would happily have the cured salmon starter and the braised short rib entrée.  Happily. 

Dessert was a ginger crème brulee, and the only thing wrong with it was that we were too full to totally enjoy it.  And then, the chef sent out a dense chocolate cake topped with pistachio ice cream, just because.  We forced a few bites down and then more or less rolled ourselves to 2nd Avenue in search of a cab.

We had a bottle of Barbera D'Asti with out meal, moderately priced at $38, and the $45 per person tasting menu seemed beyond reasonable, considering the amount of (really, really good) food we were served.  When I return to Knife & Fork (and I plan on returning) I will stick to the menu, but this tiny rustic spot is definitely worth your time.

Knife & Fork (212 228 4885) is located at 108 E. 4th Street and accepts all major credit cards.