[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: November 23, 2009]
I suppose it's a venison time of year, and this week ten years ago I prepared a nice saddle with a red wine sauce and chestnuts and baked sweet potatoes. A 1990 Nuits-St-Georges "Les Vaucrains" was surely a decent accompaniment.
Later that week, to a bistro of which I have good memories, Trois Jean. An Upper East Side haunt, it served much the same good but expensive version of cuisine grand-mère that L'Absinthe still serves today. Jean-Louis Dumonet was the chef (I believe he's not involved in private and corporate catering in the city), and he could send out a good blanquette de veau and cover just about anything with truffle shavings. I ate that soothingly white dish here ten years ago, preceded by a Lyonnaise specialty, cervelle de canut, a cheese spread with chopped herbs and shallotts so-called because of its supposed resemblance to a humble silk-worker's brain.
A '97 Châteauneuf-du-Pape went with the veal, and the meal finished with a chocolate pyramid. Honest cooking, now increasingly hard to find done this well.
The other New York dining-out moment of the week was brunch at Friend of a Farmer. I am not a brunch eater. It gets in the way of dinner, unless taken so early it might as well be called breakfast. This faux-rustic joint on Irving Place has for years summoned a line for brunch tables. Not sure why. There was a shepherd's pie and a lasagne my notes call "lousy." The best thing was corn bread with apple jelly.
Next week: a swift round-trip to London just before the holiday.
