Easy elegance: veal marsala

Some friends came over for dinner one night not too long ago, and I arrived home from work only 20 minutes prior to their arrival.

In that 20 minutes, I set the table, put out cheese and olives, made a quick salad of baby greens and a simple vinaigrette, put some fingerling potatoes on to boil, and dredged three veal escalopes in flour.

After my friends arrived I prepared the veal marsala. It is so easy. It would be good with chicken too if you can find escalopes or if you want to make them yourself by pounding out chicken breasts.

Here is the recipe:

2 or 3 veal escalopes
1/2 or so of flour seasoned with salt and pepper
4T butter, divided in half
8oz mushrooms thinly sliced
1c. marsala
handful of parsley finely chopped

Melt 2T butter in a large pan over medium heat. Add sliced mushrooms and cook about 10 minutes until the mushrooms begin to brown. Remove mushrooms from pan and set aside. Rinse and pat dry the veal. Dredge the veal in the flour. Melt the other 2T of butter over medium heat. Place the veal in the pan and cook until browned on each side. It shouldn't take much longer than a couple of minutes per side if the pieces are thin. Remove the veal to a dish. Add the marsala to deglaze the pan and turn up the heat. Reduce the wine for a couple of minutes. Add the mushrooms to the pan and warm. Pour over the veal, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

I really liked the fingerling potatoes with this dish. I boiled them and then stirred in some butter, roasted garlic and chopped parsley.

Dinner at Z Kitchen

Last nights some girlfriends and I were the dinner guests of Bryon Zupon, the Duke undergraduate who has earned a reputation of late as an inventive and talented chef. His unconventional set up and techniques have been lauded on NPR and the New York Times Magazine.

We had a wonderful meal! All of us love food and it was a treat to experience the surprising and creative combinations of flavors. Bryan executes flawlessly. He presents the food beautifully with an attention to detail. I especially liked when he pulled out an eye dropper to place small, graduated dots of concord grape syrup on the plates with our fish. I have an eye dropper in the medicine cabinet but it really hadn't occurred to me to keep on in the kitchen!

For such a young person, Bryan is a confident and gracious host. He is way cooler than I or any of my friends were in college! We were glad to spend time with a young man who is talented and very clearly passionate about food. He approaches food with imagination and curiosity that leads to surprising pairings like chocolate and sesame powder or miso and butterscotch. His talent lies not only in his imaginative dishes but, perhaps more importantly, in creating dishes that are a perfect and very precise harmony of flavors. That's hard to do, especially when the flavors are as seemingly dissonant as miso and butterscotch.

Bryan has had some critics in the Durham food circle. Personally, I find that mean-spirited and probably motivated by jealousy and cynicism. I don't get that approach (and don't bother posting a comment to explain it to me because I'm not interested).

Here is our menu:

Starter: Scallop, pimenton-parsnip puree, avocado, blood orange oil, grapefruit, espelette pepper, tomato-cumin chutney, mustard, Sichuan peppercorn

Soup: Chestnut and sunchoke veloute, steamed wild mushrooms



Fish course: Red snapper, fennel, raisins, candied olive, concord grape syrup



Main course: Bacon-Wrapped-Bacon Buns
Pork belly, Nueske’s bacon, miso-butterscotch, snow peas, pickles, kim chee



Cheese: Beet, chevre, pistachio, orange blossom honey, carbonated grapes, Manni olive oil, Maldon salt, grated chocolate



Dessert: Blackberry and goat’s milk ice creams, sesame chocolate, pickled Fuji apples, roasted pineapple



My friends and I unanimously agreed that the soup and the bacon wrapped buns were our favorite. The cream soup was made of Jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes) and garnishes of wild mushroom were shitake and hen of the woods. The soup with silky smooth with the mellow earthiness of the mushrooms. We all wanted to lick the bowls. Bryan admits that this dish is not particularly inventive but it is so GOOD that who cares! It was probably the best soup I've eaten.

The bacon buns were made of pork belly cooked sous vide for 24 hours at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Pieces of pork belly were then wrapped in bacon and put in soft, doughy Chinese styles buns and served with miso butterscotch sauce. They were perfect. I could have eaten twenty of them. Bacon wrapped in bacon. Hello? What's not to adore about that? I'm so glad I'm not a vegetarian!

The dessert also deserves a mention. The tart, crisp apples, the sweet, soft roasted pineapple and the chocolate with a faint whiff of sesame were very strange but delicious combinations with the goat milk ice cream. It was bold and exciting. We agreed that the meal was the best any of us have had in a long while.

We paired each course with wines recommended by Seth and Craig at the Wine Authorities. I was especially pleased with a very lovely white Burgundy and a cabernet franc, also French. Those two guys are geniuses at wine pairings.

Toast Paninoteca

Toast Paninoteca is a new place on Main Street that opened a few weeks ago. I headed over there for lunch to try it out. As the name suggests, the restaurant features paninis and other wonderful concoctions on bread. The paninis are hot, grilled sandwiches, the tramezzini are cold sandwiches, the bruschetta and crostini are grilled and toasted respectively and topped with various things.

With bread as the main ingredient, high quality bread is essential. Toast's bread comes from the Rue Cler bakery and Guglhupf, so it doesn't get much better than that in Durham. Plus they are supporting local Durham businesses.

I am partial to any bread that is hot and contains melted cheese so Toast makes me very happy. I intend to try all of the panini. For my lunch I had a panini with rapini, Italian sausage and cheese, I think asiago but I cannot quite recall. The rapini, aka broccoli rabe (though it has no relation to broccoli), was seasoned with roasted garlic and a hint of red pepper flake. It reminded me of a pasta recipe from the Puglia region of Italy that I like to make.

In the next week or so, Toast will be getting it's liquor license to serve beer and wine. I am looking forward to going after work with my girlfriends for a glass of wine and some roasted mushroom, thyme and gorgonzola crostini and maybe some bacalao crostini.

Hunting for food

A few years ago I considered becoming a vegetarian. Obviously I decided against it. I like meat, fish and fowl (except turkey), especially bacon, steak and pâté. At one point I wanted to be a butcher but that is another story.

I decided that I could only eat meat in good faith if I was willing to kill it, clean it and fix it myself. I do not really have the option for regularly fishing or hunting or even raising (can't keep a cow in the city limits) my own meat, but theoretically I am mentally and emotionally capable of doing this should the occasion arise. Anyone who does not have the stomach for killing another creature to eat it should be a vegetarian. It's not right to be capable of eating meat only if it comes in the sanitized form of neat little cuts in tidy plastic containers, is it?

Reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma pushed me over the edge. I signed up for a hunting education and safety class.

My goal is to go pheasant, quail and/or duck hunting. I only want to hunt what I will eat so no turkey or deer hunting. I'm not a huge fan of venison, and I don't really want to deal with an animal that I cannot carry out of the woods. My general rule of thumb: if it is big enough to trample on me then don't aggravate it by shooting at it.

There are two exceptions: I would love to hunt boar and alligator. Boar are apparently mean and scary. I just want one to eat not for trophy. YUM. Boar is tasty! Same with alligator. They have big teeth but they sure taste good stewed or on the grill, and they make lovely handbags!

In all likelihood, most creatures will be safe. I'm not a very good shot.