[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: December 8, 2008]
Slithering slowly into winter, I began the week ten years ago by venturing to the restaurant at the Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side.
I'd heard complimentary things about it, but it was dead quiet when I dined there, and the cuisine was nothing more than slightly expensive hotel cooking, competently done. After making the error of ordering a horribly sweet apple martini in the bar (my fault), I ate seared local foie in a duck consommé sprinkled with black truffles, and then a beef filet with a shredded oxtail garnish and a bit of marrow bone.
Fine, but one had the feeling that the same meal was being reproduced at any number of fancy hotels around the world. A bottle of Calera Pinot Noir indicates my ongoing fascination with American reds (it didn't last).
After a few days eating at home, I planned a dinner party for guests at the new apartment. A long day's shopping expedition introduced me to the Bayard Meat Market, one of Chinatown's treasures. According to my diary, I found pig uterus and anus among the meats on offer (true, and doubtless they are still available there), but I was looking for salt cod and was out of luck. I did pick up some pig kidneys, though, which I used in the appetizer:
Rognons à la Foch
This was my play on a dish served at Antoine's in New Orleans. There it's foie gras à la Foch, the duck or goose liver served on hot toast spread with paté, and smothered with a Madeira sauce. I simply substituted kidneys for foie.
I must have tracked down some salt cod, because the next course was:
Bacalao con huevos
This was followed by a bird from the Greenmarket:
Faisan aux morilles, quennelles de Fricandeau, pommes purées
As for the quennelles, I suspect some sort of veal forcemeat, but I really can't remember. Salad and cheeses followed. I served a 1996 1er Cru Chassagne-Montrachet and a 1995 1er Cru Vosne-Romanée. It seems an age ago, now that we are all looking for bargain bottles from Portugal.
The dessert was my own version of a Scottish dish, Atholl Brose. The original is more like a drink than a pudding; it calls for oatmeal, honey and whisky, but I make it by smashing oatmeal cookes into crumbs and steeping them in honey, whisky and heavy cream.
To finish up the week, a visit to a new neighborhood restaurant which didn't stay the course. It was called Privé, and I have a vague recollection that it was roughly where Veritas is now. It sought to evoke the atmosphere of a private club; all very well, but the food was a bit dull. Gnocchi with wild mushrooms, followed by salmon on cous-cous. This was a week where the food was better at home.
Next week, I shall end up in Philadelphia.
