roses milk red berries

The weather has not been kind to my roses this year. Constant rain has left them battered and mouldered. In between downpours, I've tried to salvage what I could by taking cuttings to bring indoors. These heirloom Reine des Violettes are a feast for the eyes and nose; a small bouquet fills the house with their rich, spicy perfume.

Tasting the petals, I was struck– not only by their intense aroma–but by the way their tender, velvety texture reminded me of young spinach leaves; a prompt to wilt them in sweet almond oil.

wilted roses

raw milk curd

strawberry curd

raspberry drupelets

salted almond crunch

The white heels of rose petals are typically trimmed away as they tend to be bitter. I've left them intact because I like bitter when it plays with sweet, tart, and salty.

The milk curd is the curtailed first stage of cheese, where a tablet of rennet is dissolved in a teaspoon of water and quickly stirred into a quart of 100F raw milk. After about 30 minutes, the milk proteins coagulate into a tender wiggly mass.

Strawberry curd is a variation on a lemon curd that came as a special request– the challenge was to make it without eggs or butter. After many trials involving various combinations of gels and starches, I concluded that the best texture and flavor release came from gelatin and cornstarch.

asparagus rose

prosciutto asparagus olive oil lemon rose

I once worked for a chef with an exacting standard for detail. His mirepoix were perfectly uniform 1/4" dice and his mise en place were works of art, craft, and geometry. Besides his knives, which he wielded with the precision of a surgeon, his favorite tool was a ruler.

I learned a lot about OCD from him.

He must have seen some of those same tendencies in me because I was given some of the fussier tasks that he normally did himself. When he wasn't there to walk me through it, he would leave detailed notes– complete with drawings– of components or new dishes that he wanted me to work on. Eventually, as I became more familiar with his aesthetic, and he with mine, I was just given a list of dishes and left to interpret them.

On one of those lists was a dish that I fixated on: Fresh pea risotto with prosciutto rose. I immediately saw the dish in my head; a pale green mound of risotto topped with a loosely coiled ribbon of prosciutto. I couldn't figure out how prosciutto rose even fit into his style so I proceeded with my vision.

When I showed him the dish, he glowered at it. He insisted he had specified prosciutto lardons. I showed him the list and he conceeded that it had been his mistake but he never did explain how someone confuses lardons with roses.

In the end, he liked the dish as I had made it. My reward for pleasing him was to make 150 more just like it.

asparagus risotto

robiola bosina

prosciutto rose

deep-fried rose petals

asparagus salt

A recent job took place on a privately-owned modern villa here in Northwestern Connecticut. Hidden behind 8'-high stone walls was the most extraordinary vegetable garden that brought to mind the gardens of Monticello, Versailles, and Villa Borghese.

Highly ornamental, yet fully functional, it featured symmetrical parterres edged with clipped boxwood in elaborately knotted patterns; the pockets planted with herbs and vegetables. Red and green lettuces were planted in alternating blocks to form edible checkerboards. Iron trellage towers supported beans and tomatoes. Antique terra cotta cloches protected tender seedlings. Gurgling fountains, imposing sculptures– there was so much to admire and draw inspiration from that I quickly went into sensory overload.

In that formal setting, herbs and vegetables were treated and displayed with a deference that is usually reserved for ornamental plants and flowers. One stunning border featured roses interplanted with asparagus. The slim stalks of asparagus rising out of the ground echoed the thorny stems of the roses tipped with tight green buds. The gardener revealed that there was a beneficial logic to the pairing, but I was too distracted to take note.

I can however tell you about the logic of pairing the flavor of roses with asparagus. They are united by several aroma compounds, most notably alcohols and aldehydes and also some ketones and esters. Among them are:

Valeraldehyde (warm, winey, slightly fruity, and nutty)

Phenylacetaldehyde (earthy-sweet, fruity, floral)

Octanol (fresh orange-rose, slightly herbaceous)

Vinylphenol (vanilla extract)

Nonyl Alcohol (floral-citrus, slightly fatty, bitter)

No matter how much research I do on these compounds, the scientific names always shock me. They serve as a reminder that everything we perceive as wholesome, natural, and organic is, in fact, a complex composition of chemicals.

asparagus black truffle

Asparagus with Black Truffles and Butter.

Just reading it made her mouth water. She hadn't known that she craved it until that moment. There was no need to read through the menu.

The plate was set before her unceremoniously. Three fat stalks of naked asparagus. No truffles. No butter. She suddenly understood the agony of pigs who moved earth with bare snouts, driven by a primal fervor, only to have the object of their desire snatched away.

She ached with unrequited truffle-lust.

"Yes ma'am, I assure you that there are truffles in the asparagus."

Had he spoken with less conviction, she would have handed the dish back and demanded satisfaction.

Had he not been so lucid, she could have come unhinged.

She poked the asparagus, moved them around the plate.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Nothing.

He said they were in there.

She lifted one to her nose, sniffed for evidence, found none.

Was he lying?

She caught his eye.

I assure you…

Even before taking a bite, she knew that the asparagus were perfectly cooked. She had cooked enough of them herself to recognize the graceful arch; the way they bowed from their own weight when lifted. Familiarity did not diminish the pleasure she took in the first resilient bite and hexanol flavor that transported her to grassy green meadows, concertos of birdsong.

Sparrow grass.

Asparagus always elicited these sensations; they were welcome and expected.

The surprise came a moment later.

It began as a peripheral warmth, skirting around the edges of her tongue. Wave after wave of volatile compounds, unleashed by the grinding of teeth, undulated and rose up through her olfactory bulb. Odor molecules mated with receptors in an orgy of scent.

Caprylic. Pheromonal. Primordial.

She began to feel a sound welling up in the back of her throat. She fought to suppress it as the server returned to inquire about the asparagus. Afraid to speak, she could only mumble and nod and let her eyes say the rest. He was well out of earshot when she dared to release it.

Part snort, part grunt, it arose from a place of deep satisfaction; a gleeful pig giggle… the ecstasy of the sow.

sweet pickled black cod

I can't say that I've ever been a fan of commercially made sweet pickles. More often than not, they're cloyingly sweet or too heavily spiced to win me over. That all changed when I encountered a product that showed me what a sweet pickle should be.

Low Country Products, located in South Carolina, makes a line of artisanal pickles, preserves and soups. Their website buzzes with all of the right trigger words: handmade, handpacked, small-batch, farm-driven, local, seasonal– but ultimately, the proof is in the pickle.

While I can't vouch for any of their other products, the Sweet Cucumber Pickles were an epiphany. The list of ingredients reads like Grandma's recipe: cucumbers, cider vinegar, sugar, garlic and pickling spices. Long after the pickles were gone, I kept the jar of brine because it was just too good to discard.

Miso-glazed black cod was another epiphany. Nobu's iconic dish was the west's introduction to the sustainable sablefish, or black cod, and the ancient method of curing in a sweet and acidic marinade of sugar, sake, mirin, and miso. Using this method with the sweet pickle brine rendered the flesh lush and silky and allowed for deep caramelization without overcooking.

Being an advocate of flowers-as-food, I'm delighted to see that edible flowers are becoming more readily available at grocery stores, though it concerns me that they are being marketed as garnishes and destined to become nothing more than a gratuitous flourish, replacing the token mint sprig on a desert, instead of relevant components of a dish.

Perfumers recreate scent profiles by carefully selecting and blending flower essences– can't we do the same with flavor?

My intention with this dish was to integrate the flavors in the sweet pickle brine with a purposeful selection of flowers. Yellow and purple chive blossoms reinforce the garlic, dianthus petals (which taste of cloves) supports the warm spices, and the sour bite of oxalis leaves (the flowers close up at night) substantiates the vinegar. Borage, had it flowered in time, would have been a fitting reference to the cucumber.

tree peonies

I have the good fortune to live near a peony farm. It's no ordinary farm and their peonies are anything but ordinary. In fact, at this time of year when the plants are in full regalia, the gardens are aptly referred to as "Peony Heaven".

Cricket Hill Garden is a world-renowned grower of rare Chinese tree peonies (Paeonia suffruticosa). The owners Kasha and David Furman were among the first to import the plants into the US and have grown hundreds of cultivars over the past twenty years on their seven acre farm. In conversations with David, it's apparent that he is a man completely fulfilled by a career that grew out of his obsession with the Chinese culture and a passion for their national flower. He speaks freely of his travels through China and the political tribulations of gaining permission to import the plants from a country that– at the time– was embarrassed by the sensual nature of the flowers.

Tree peonies do indeed arouse the senses. They unfurl their luminous petals slowly and luxuriously to reveal their flamboyant centers. The flowers are as large as a dinner plate, smell heavenly, and bear fanciful names such as "Purple Butterfly in the Wind" and "Green Dragon Lying on a China Ink Stone". At about 100$ per plant, they are expensive, but as they are known to live hundreds of years, I see them as an investment in the future.

One of my favorite salads involves shaved bulb fennel, fresh herbs, and olives, simply dressed with lemon juice and walnut oil. The addition of silky wisps of salami or a fresh tangy chevre rounds it out to a meal.

The ether anethole is responsible for the sweet (up to 13 times sweeter than sugar) anise flavor of fennel. Many of the tender annual herbs are united by this aromatic: basil, dill, tarragon, chervil, and hyssop all partake in anise love. Anethole is widely used as a flavoring for liquors. Because it is less soluble in water than in ethanol, it will produce a spontaneous microemulsion, a phenomenon known as "ouzo effect" when water is added– turning a clear solution milky white.

A deli slicer makes shaving fennel a breeze. I'm always fascinated by the forms that fall off the slicer. A cross-section of the heart, with its long gangly arms attached, look like alien sea creatures. The end-cuts reveal a succession of delicate petal shapes.

Typically, the shavings go directly into an ice bath to keep them crisp and hydrated. The swelling that occurs when their cells fill with water further distorts the shapes.

I knew what I was hoping for when I submerged a handful of the petal shavings into chilled rhubarb juice, but I wasn't sure that it would happen. A few hours later, I nearly squealed with delight as I lifted the petals and watched them fall onto a plate.

Pale pink. Curled and cupped. All I could see was peonies.

rhubarb fennel spruce tempura

rhubarb and fennel tempura

humboldt fog ripened goat cheese

rhubarb fennel spruce consomme

While considering other worthwhile applications for flavored beer/soda outside of the beverage realm, tempura batter became glaringly obvious.

Tempura batter is all about texture. It should be light and shatteringly crisp. The best way that I know to achieve this is with a dry mix that consists of 1 part baking powder (10g), 1.5 parts cornstarch (15g), and 10 parts flour (100g) mixed with 20 parts (200g) carbonated water.

The carbonated water, which can be club soda, seltzer, or even beer, is mixed in at the last minute for three reasons:

1- The carbonation (carbon dioxide) bubbles inflates the batter but dissipates quickly.

2- Liquid activates the alkaline and acid in the baking powder to produce carbon dioxide gas that further lightens the batter. Part of the reaction takes place upon mixing and part is activated by applying heat.

3- The batter should be cooked before the flour granules fully absorb water molecules (gelation), which would inhibit crispness.

For these reasons, tempura batter should be mixed just before dipping and frying to produce optimum crispness. Keeping a dry mix on hand and being familiar with the proper viscosity of the batter makes it practically effortless to mix a fresh batch for each order.

Tempura was introduced to Japan by the Portuguese and adapted from the Portuguese "tempero", meaning "to season". Contrarily, tempura batter is typically neutral in flavor. Using spruce beer in place of the carbonated water was an opportunity to introduce flavor into the batter. The spruce flavor was not as pronounced as I had hoped– starches have a tendency to mute flavor– but it did push through and produced a more dimensional tempura.

I was curious if the yeast in the spruce beer would have an effect on the batter. Logically, it shouldn't–yeast is slow to activate– but there was something irresistibly brittle about this batch of tempura that warrants further exploration.

This also got me thinking about all of the commercially available sodas that could be used to flavor tempura.

Limonetto/shrimp… Orange Slice/carrot… Dr Pepper/duck… Root beer/Vidalia onion… anyone?

dandelion wine

"The golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ran, then gushed from the spout below, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom.

Dandelion wine.

The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered."

~Ray Bradbury "Dandelion Wine"

As far back as I can remember, I've had a major crush on books.

As a child, I would enter the local library with the awe and reverence reserved for cathedrals. It was there that I would worship the written word; a place to receive the sacrament of ink on paper at the altar of ideas, imagination, and information.

Then, as now, books were magic carpets that transported me to worlds where anything and everything was possible. And I could be home in time for dinner.

I was eight or nine when I read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I have read it numerous times since to relive the wonder of childhood. It's a simple book; a semi-autographical collection of stories woven together into a strange and dreamy tale of an ordinary summer, filled with extraordinary moments, in a 12-year-old boy's life. It was an introduction to subtle and complex themes that revealed themselves like layers of an onion, with two in particular that keep me coming back:

The ecstatic awareness of being alive.

And the transubstantiating magic of dandelion wine.

In the book, dandelion wine is a metaphor for life itself; a prosaic weed transformed into a mystical elixir with the power to "change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in."

Having never tasted dandelion wine, I can only imagine its flavor will be sweet, slightly tart, mildly bitter. It may not turn out to be the most delicious of beverages, but I fully believe that on a cold wintry day, when I head down to the cellar and raise a glass to my lips, that the snow will melt, the sky will turn blue and–if only for a moment–it will be summer.

That is the power of flavor.

That is the magic of books.

Download recipe: Dandelion wine

sakura

People who have the means and leisure to travel at whim often do so in pursuit of a passion. Some follow the sun, others follow food, music, art, or sports. Romantics follow their hearts.

Me, I would follow flowers.

At the top of my itinerary would be Japan in March. There you would find me, in a cherry blossom-induced delirium, standing like Julie Andrews on top of that mountain– eyes up, arms outstretched; twirling like a dervish–reveling in a blizzard of cherry-pink petals.

The Japanese are serious about cherry blossoms (sakura) and the ancient custom of flower-viewing (hanami). The cherry-blooming forecasts (sakura zensen) are watched fervently and the occasion is observed with reverence and enthusiasm.

Cherries belong to the plant genus Prunus, and are a member of the large family Rosaceae, which includes other aromatic fruits such as almonds, peaches, plums, apricots, apples, pears, quince, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, loquats, and roses.

The flavor of cherries are defined by benzaldehyde (sour cherry, bitter almond) and coumarin (vanilla, sweet grass, hay).

black sesame ganache

cherry yogurt panna cotta

rose-mahleb semifreddo

raspberry meringue

pink peppercorn crisp

sour cherry glass

maraschino almonds

cherry petals

cherry leaf

Download recipe: Sakura

chocolate violet carrot

Occasionally, I find fallen nests when cleaning the hedgerows. They are irresistible to me, these vestigial homes; fragile and singular as snowflakes.

I find colonies of violets in the hedgerows, too. Their cheerful pale blue flowers and heart-shaped leaves look content in the cool, moist environment. Unfortunately, these are the common dog variety (Viola canina) and are not graced with the perfume of the sweet violet (Viola odorata)

Although sweet violets have been widely used in the fragrance industry for centuries, they have no significant culinary tradition aside from the Victorians, who were fond of garnishing sweets with the crystallized flower. Their symbolic connection to spring and haunting aroma have been venerated and romanticized throughout history by artists, poets, monarchs, and even Gods.

Napoleon shared a devotion to violets with the Empress Josephine. During his exile at Elba, he promised his followers that he would return in the spring with the violets. This set off a loyalist obsession with the flower, immortalizing the violet as the emblem of the Imperial party, and earning him the nickname "Corporal Violette". He is said to have been buried with a lock of Josephine's hair and violets in a locket.

In Greek Mythology, Zeus ordered the Earth to create the most beautiful of flowers in tribute to his love, Io. The result was the violet.

Ion, the Greek word for violet, lends its name to the terpene Ionone, the defining aroma compound in violets. Ionone is a megastigmane, or a degradation of beta-carotene. Not surprisingly, carrots contain a fair amount of ionone, as do raspberries, tobacco, roses, and black tea.

chocolate nest

violet ice cream

carrot filaments

blackberries

johnny-jump-ups (Viola cornuta)

calendula

violet dust

Download Recipe: Violet nest

peas parmesan prosciutto

My kitchen is beginning to look like a dairy lab with containers of cream at various stages of infusion and ripening. Fortunately, the local grocer stocks pasteurized cream, so I don't have to go far when inspiration strikes.

fresh peas

parmesan

prosciutto

lemon thyme beurre monté

The first of the infusions– lemon thyme, was made by gently warming the cream to 125F/52C to more readily allow the release of essential oils from the herb, then chilled and infused overnight before culturing. It occurred to me while churning this butter that I could perhaps have saved a step by letting the infusion take place simultaneously with the culturing. It's back to the store to test that idea. Of course, I could have skipped the ripening stage and churned the butter directly from the chilled, infused cream, but I am currently enamored with the plangent and resounding flavor of cultured butter.

Infusing at the cream stage is, so far, turning out to be an effective way to introduce other flavors into the butter. Here, lemon thyme, whose terpenes can be assertive and overwhelming to more delicate flavors, mellowly haunts in the background of the finished butter, which is turned into a beurre monte for this dish.

Beurre monté was brought into modern cuisine by Thomas Keller at The French Laundry. It is an emulsion in which cold butter is gradually whisked into a small amount of hot water and can be heated up to 180F/82C without breaking. While it is typically made with water, I've used a lemon thyme and wine stock in a 1:4 (stock:butter) ratio to reinforce the flavor and lighten the richness of the sauce.

This dish also reflects another current fascination with pliable Parmesan , an emulsion of cheese

sherry, and sodium citrate. In the Umami burger, I used sake to boost the glutamates. Here, sherry was used to test Heston Blumenthal's groundbreaking discovery of diketopiperazines (DKPs), a compound unique to sherries that are produced by yeast activity during secondary fermentation and enhance glutamate-rich foods. Anyone who has nibbled on a well-aged cheese while sipping sherry will recognize and appreciate this symbiotic relationship. As always, flavor is what grabs my attention, but the consistency of this product also appeals to my sense of play. At room temperature it is as soft and malleable as playdoh. I can tell you about the restraint that it took to roll these pea-sized balls, but I'll spare you of the inner-child-induced 'sculptures" that took place after.

The effect of salt on dry-cured meats such as prosciutto di Parma or serrano ham is purely chemical but the transformation is so profound that it seems supernatural. Opaque muscle filaments are rendered translucent, flavorless proteins break down into concentrated glutamates, and muscle fats fragment to form a kaleidoscope of aroma compounds that range from fruity, herbal, grassy, floral, to nutty and buttery. Again, one couldn't ask for more in terms of flavor, but these hams also possesses a silky suppleness that allows it to be molded by compressing finely chopped or thinly sliced pieces. One advantage to breaking down and restructuring prosciutto is that it can be presented in playful forms that retain a resilient bite without all the chew.

Prosciutto di Parma and Parmesan cheese share not only an indelible terroir, but also similar aroma compounds. Another connection is that the pigs, whose hind legs are destined for prosciutto, are often fed the whey from the production of Parmesan. The trinity of cheese, ham, and peas is rooted in the advent of spring, when the harvest of peas marks the end of lean winter months and the beginning of the celebratory feasting season, an apt time to break out ripe-and-ready hams and cheese.

I can't say that my winter months have been lean, but I'm ready for some celebratory feasting.

Bring on the peas!