Chez Moi; Pop up

Later this month, I am hosting my first pop-up. It will be a four course meal, celebrating the bounty of Rhode Island and featuring local meats, seafood and produce. There will be a wine pairing with the main course, and diners are also encouraged to BYOB for the rest of the meal. This dinner is by reservation only, and seats are extremely limited. If you are a lover of great food and a supporter of local businesses and artisans, reserve a seat now! You can reserve your spot by email at abaff410@gmail.com or by phone at 401-954-7321. I hope to see both new and familiar faces!

Hand Rolled Cavatelli

     Being your average twenty-something year old culinary school graduate, I'm stuck between two interests that I hold very dear to me; eating gourmet food and saving money. Because of this dilemma, I eat lots and lots of fresh pasta. For any budget-oriented foodie, learning to make fresh pasta is a godsend. With a few cheap ingredients(flour, eggs, time) anyone can make a restaurant-worthy meal any night of the week. Cavatelli are a traditional Italian pasta that are hand formed and are said to look like 'little sea shells' although I don't see the resemblance. In my opinion, they are the perfect hand formed pasta. Their deep ridges soak up any sauce, making them extremely versatile and textural; they're thick enough to maintain an al dente texture when cooked yet not so thick that they're doughy; and best of all, they don't require any expensive machines or a huge investment of time. All you need to form them is a cavatelli board (also referred to as a gnocchi board or gargonelli board).
     The first skill that needs to be mastered is the dough, and with a simple ratio and a little practice, it's pretty simple. My favorite ratio when making pasta dough is 100 grams of flour to one egg. Almost every source online or in books will begin their pasta dough recipes with something like "make a mound of flour on a wooden tabletop and create a well in the center." While effective as a method of forming dough, this is an extremely messy technique and often discourages beginners because of the amount of practice it requires to avoid spilling egg on the floor. Instead, I make my pasta dough using an identical method, but in a large bowl with a flat bottom. This allows ample room to mix the dough just as I would on a table, but catches any run-off egg and incorporates it back into the dough.

     Form a mound of dough and create a well in the center and add the egg, one tsp of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Beat the egg thoroughly with a fork and slowly incorporate the flour until it starts to look like a crumbly mess and can no longer be mixed with a fork. Knead the mixture with your hands until all of the flour is completely incorporated and a loose dough is formed. On a table top, continue kneading for ten minutes, until the dough is very smooth. You shouldn't need much flour during the kneading and the dough should be moist but not sticky at all. form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and allow the dough to rest at room temperature for thirty minutes.

     After thirty minutes, unwrap the dough. when you poke it with your finger, it should leave a dent and not spring back. This means that the gluten has relaxed. To form cavatelli, start by rolling the dough out with your palms into a long, thin rope, then use a sharp knife to cut it into small pieces.

     The pieces of dough can stick together, so it's a good idea to lightly flour the dough, your cavatelli board and the surface you'll be putting the finished cavatelli on. Take one piece of dough, place it on the cavatelli board and push down and foreward with your thumb to flatten the dough and roll it into a cylinder that is imprinted with the ridged pattern of the board.

For those who prefer a video demonstration

and once more in Slo-mo

Your finished product should look something like this

Now all you need to do is boil them in water for 5-10 minutes and serve them with your favorite sauce.

Hand-rolled cavatelli with vermont sharp cheddar, provolone and toasted panko (A.K.A. Super cheesy mac 'n' cheese)

Persimmon (7-course tasting)

     Since its opening in 2005, Persimmon has been receiving praise from both local and national press. After making reservations for a seven-course tasting on a Saturday night, I decided to ask some of my friends and fellow members of the local food community about Persimmon, and anyone who had been told me with certainty that, a tasting at Persimmon was simply the best meal in Rhode Island. Ever since the first time I spoke with Chef Champe Speidel about Persimmon, for an interview with The Bay magazine, I had been wanting to try the highly revered tasting menu at Persimmon, and was ecstatic to finally have a chance to do so. The drive to Persimmon is scenic and tranquil, especially in the winter when the trees along the quaint streets of Bristol are whimsically decorated with Christmas lights, and the relaxing thirty minute trip felt like the calm before an inevitable, edible storm.
     When we arrived, we were pleased with the chic-yet-comfortable atmosphere inside. The room was small and cozy, but felt appropriate for a high end meal with low lighting and ample room between tables. Throughout the meal, our service was impeccable, never allowing our water glasses to become less than half full and clearing each course nearly the moment we finished, and we even received a visit from Lisa Speidel, Co-owner and wife of Chef Speidel, to introduce herself and check on our meal. At Persimmon's sister location, Persimmon Provisions, Chef Speidel breaks down whole animals and sells high end meat and poultry, so I was expecting to have a meal heavy in animal protein, but received the opposite. Throughout the entire meal, there were only a few bites of meat, and each one had been very carefully thought out and meticulously prepared, showcasing an endless respect for the ingredients used.
     The first course of the menu was a series of canapes, starting with a deviled quail egg with sturgeon caviar.

 This was an excellent bite to start the meal, encompassing a large part of Chef Speidel's cooking style: start with amazing ingredients; prepare them with careful and concise technique and allow the natural flavors to shine. The contrast between creamy egg and salty caviar was wonderful.

The deviled egg was followed by a bucatini cracker with salmon roe and dashi mousse. I love the concept of using pasta to make a cracker, and the execution was flawless. The cracker was crispy and light, and the dashi and salmon roe added both moisture and flavor. I also liked the stone slab that it was plated on

The third bite of our first course was a kombu-cured scallop with yuzu zest. I love uncooked scallops, and this was one of the best I've had. The addition of the yuzu was just enough for a citrusy fragrance, but not enough to make the scallop acidic and the cure was equally light, which I thought was perfect. With such beautiful scallops coming fresh out of the water here, it would have been a shame for any flavor to over power them, but this preparation was true to the delicate nature of the scallop.

  Next to arrive was a small quinelle of beef tartare with anchovy mayo. Tartare tends to be either extremely delicious, when prepared well, or totally off-putting, when prepared with poor technique or poor quality meat. As expected from a chef such as Speidel, who has had extensive experience working with beef as a butcher, this particular tartare was amazing. The beef had a nice sharp bite from shallots and garlic, and the anchovy mayo was salty and smooth. This was my favorite course of the evening, and I just barely resisted the urge to ask for a second portion. I don't eat a lot of red meat, and it is rare that a beef course is my favorite, but this small bite was absolutely sublime.

Our next bite was a small, spongey cake of green olives with a sunchoke purée and dehydrated olives. This dish was a nice display of both technique and flavor. The cake was light, yet moist and briney with the flavor of olives and the sunchoke puree was warm and creamy. I loved the tiny bits of dehydrated olives, which tasted like the savory version of a raisin.

The next bite to arrive was also one of the best of the evening. It was a crispy fried oyster with sauce ravigote and celery. The dredge was crunchy and the oyster inside was warm and buttery-tender. The sauce ravigote was executed perfectly and the small cubes of celery were, surprisingly, refreshing enough to balance out the richness of the oyster and the sauce. I found the addition of celery to be brilliant, and it is impressive to see that they managed to turn such a humble ingredient into something elegant.

The final course of our first course was a poached mussel with an edible shell. I've seen many modern chefs do things such as root vegetables in edible dirt, but this is the first time I've ever heard of a shellfish with an edible shell. The creativity here was great, and the flavors were as well. The shell was crunchy and sweet a great contrast to the salty poached mussel.

Our second course was a salad of roasted and smoked beets with house cured bacon, oranges, and goats' milk yogurt. The beets were still crunchy and they had a smokey-sweet flavor that set a good base for the rest of the dish. Although the ingredients all sound so different, everything came together well. The smokey flavor of the beets helped to tie the bacon in and the sweetness paired well with the oranges. The yogurt was a nice touch to mellow out all of the flavors and round off the dish.

The next course was a squid ink tagliatelle withParmesan cheese. With the exception of the canapés that made up the first course, this was the simplest, most straightforward dish we received all night. Serving something as simple as house made pasta with a light cream sauce and cheese as part of a tasting menu takes guts, because it is something so identifiable and transparent. In order for a dish like this to meet up to the standards of such a high-end meal, everything about it needs to be perfect, and it was. The pasta was made by very skilled, meticulous hands and was soft and silky. The Parmesan was rich and creamy, but the portion was tiny which worked to the advantage of the dish, because it was so rich. I grew up eating hand made pasta and have high standards for a good pasta dish, and this did not disappoint.

Next to arrive was octopus with scallops, chorizo and petit vegetables. Saying that both the scallops and the octopus were fork tender would be an understatement. The raw root vegetables had a nice crunch, rounding off the softness of the seafood and the chorizo gave the vinegary broth a nice spice. The broth that the seafood was in was acidic and powerful in flavor and was one of the single best components of the meal. This was a close second for my favorite course, and It would be worth making a trip to Persimmon just to order this dish when it's available on the a la carte menu.

The first of two meat courses was a veal sweetbread with apple, quince and date. A few minutes before this course came out of the kitchen, the entire dining room filled with the hearty scent of searing meat, and even after eating four courses, it made our mouths water. The sweetbread was velvety and savory, and the pairing of fruit was delicious and interesting. Each fruit was sweet, making them all pair with the sweetbread in the same manor, but each one had its' own nuances as well, making it fun to try first a bite of sweetbread and apple, then sweetbread and quince and finally sweetbread and date. This was a fun course to eat and portioned perfectly for something so sweet and savory.

Our last savory course was venison with roasted carrot purée and crispy potatoes. Had I not been told that this was venison, I wouldn't have known. While it had the flavor nuances of venison, it was not gamy or tough like venison in any way. The venison had a beautiful sear on it, and the tenderness suggested that it had been cooked sous vide before being seared. I loved the pairing of crispy, fried potatoes with the seared venison, and thought that it made the dish a very modern, elegant version of the classic steak frites found on French bistro menus.

Before our dessert course, we received a small amuse of mango sorbet with lemon grass broth. The sorbet was smooth and bright, and the milky, citrusy broth added some richness.

For the final course , I had a white chocolate semi-freddo that had a silky, luxurious texture. It was served with poached fruit including apples and tart cranberries which cut through the sweetness of the white chocolate. I was, however, already very full from the meal and would have been happy with a smaller portion. Our meal ended with some delicious petit-fours, including a house made peanut butter cup that was nothing like its store-bought counterpart.
     After hearing so much about Persimmon and talking to Champe Speidel about his unique cuisine, I had very high expectations for both the food and the service, and I was met by a meal that impressed. The blend of classical techniques and modern style made my meal at Persimmon an exciting dining experience.