Sunday, October 02, 2005

Urban flight

So it was a challenge: come up with a menu for tonight that represents the very urban-ness of my loft. For my first big dinner here, cook up stuff that fits with the brick walls and steel pipes and screaming fire engines and guns blasting and construction trucks making their daily morning racket. Okay, maybe not so much the guns and the fire engines, but you get the picture. This food cannot be tame. It has to zing, it has to, according to commenters, pile high and fuse market flavors. It has to have street character and restaurant sophistication.

So I decided to take myself to the Italian neighborhoods of New York. Pile on the cannelloni, the cannoli, but make it modern! Spice it up! And fuse it – bring in the wasabi, the Serrano and Fresno peppers, the lemongrass, the lavender.

I turned on the TV last night and there on Bravo, I hear the familiar music of the Godfather. Perfect. Let my work begin. Here’s the menu. Eight mains, four desserts, twenty people. Let’s see if anything comes of it.



Grilled figs with Fantome goat cheese, honey and rosemary

Crostini with gingered beef and wasabi flavored crème fraiche

Flatbread with assorted roasted peppers, hot chiles, scallions and mild cheese

Gougeres with aged Parrano cheese

Diced heirloom tomatoes with Chianti Classico olive oil, Balsamic vinegar and slivers of Parmesan

Cannelloni with grilled zucchini, shrimp and thyme butter

Puff pastry with caramelized onion

Grilled shrimp on lemongrass skewers with Asian lime sauce



Key lime tarts with toasted meringue

Chocolate cigarettes

Orange cannoli with coffee mascarpone filling

Baked moonglow pears and berries, with lavender flower topping


Madison Oct 05 019
always start with the dessert

10 comments:

  1. OK. That clinches it. We're definitely coming!

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  2. Suddenly, my breakfast oatmeal has lost all its appeal. What a menu!

    That flatbread recipe sounds like a perfect lunch, but I admit to a particular fondness for roasted peppers. I can just imagine how all those tastes and textures (so import, texture) would combine and melt on the tongue. mmmmmm

    Do you have a sous-chef? Need one?

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  3. Most definitly willing to drive from Chicago for a meal like this! Will bring bottle of Montepulciano!
    jeff

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  4. Tonight's offerings met and exceeded expectations. Wonderful gathering - superb flavors, dynamic invitees, arty ambiance - molto gratzie!

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  5. oh, now that is impressive, my friend. and to answer your question, fortunately, no one has yet to tell me i suck in real life. but they could be just being nice.

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  6. that was spectacular.

    as I said repeatedly. but with increasing slurriness, as the wine was also spectacular. brava. beautiful cooking, beautiful apartment, and of course very urbane.

    we love you nina!

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  7. Hey, I forgot to eat the moonglow pears!

    Everything was swell, Nina. Thanks a lot!

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  8. Me too. I don't suppose that there are any pears left, are there?

    I don't know how you do it but that meal (and the company) was spectacular. Thanks

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  9. Well, that's certainly a better menu to choose from than Clemenza would have. I'd like to see you do potato gnocchi though, something like Lydia would do from Lydia's Kitchen on the PBS cooking show. Hey, what can I say, there's a lot of Italian mommas down here

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  10. My deepest thanks to all who came. Your loyalty and goodness have been such gifts this summer! I apologize, therefore, for soliciting loft warming tokens as well, but my apology here is not too sincere as those "mere tokens" (NOT)that you came with meant a lot to me.

    I wrote my Monday Vice post which, predictably, has something from last night in it, but I have to HAVE TO do some work now. I'll put it up shortly after class.

    Thanks. Many many thanks.

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