clementine marmalade pudding

When looking at the rind as vessel and component in a sweet preparation, cooking in a syrup became an obvious choice.
Clementine rinds are already sweet and tender; candying renders them kidskin supple.
The addition of marmalade and a steamed cake made with the pulp utilizes every bit of the fruit.
A sticky sweet confection wrapped around orange-scented cake.
Fruit cake turned inside-out.

clementine marmalade pudding

candied rind:
6 clementines

Hollow out each of the clementines by running a teaspoon around the perimeter of the pulp, separating it from the rind. Scoop out a section at a time, being careful not to tear the rind. Reserve the pulp. Place the rinds in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Place pan over medium high heat and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 8-10 minutes. Invert rinds on a rack to drain.

450g water
375g sugar
96g glucose or corn syrup

Place water, sugar, and glucose in saucepan and set over medium high heat. When syrup reaches 46ºC/115ºF, add rinds, submerging them so that their hollows fill with syrup. Cook until syrup reaches 108ºC/227ºF then remove the rinds and invert them on a rack to drain. Reserve syrup.

Marmaladepudding1

marmalade:
1 clementine
1/2 of the reserved syrup from above (reserve the other 1/2 for glazing)

Peel the clementine and slice into thin strips. Roughly chop the pulp, discard any seeds. Add the rind and pulp to the reserved syrup. Cook over medium high heat until it comes to 104ºC/220ºF, stirring often. Remove from heat and cool.

steamed pudding:
reserved pulp from hollowed clementines
50g muscovado sugar, or brown sugar
50g unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
80g flour
3g baking powder
1g baking soda
pinch salt

Place pulp in bowl of food processor and process until pureed. Scrape out puree and measure 80g for pudding. Reserve remaining puree for sauce.
Place sugar and butter in bowl of food processor and pulse until well combined. Add egg and pulse until incorporated. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Add to food processor along with the 80g puree and process until well blended and creamy.
Place a teaspoon of marmalade in the bottom of each of the clementine rinds. Fill with batter to just below top of rinds. Place on steamer insert or basket, leaving 1-2" between each clementine. Steam, covered, over boiling water for 5-7 minutes or until surface springs back when pressed. Remove and allow to cool slightly. While still warm, brush the top and sides with the remaining reserved syrup. Serve warm or at room temperature with clementine sauce.

clementine sauce:
230g reserved puree
85g sugar

Place puree and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for 2 minutes and strain sauce through a fine mesh sieve. Serve warm or at room temperature.

yuzu miso

"At night with the 'kettle' of yu-miso on the fire I hear it reproaching me"
—Ryota

The Japanese Tea Ceremony is a a way of life that transcends rituals and customs. Throughout its four hundred year history, it has inspired philosophies and aesthetics that have come to define the Japanese culture. One aesthetic principle that arose from the Zen influence is wabi-sabi.

Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of the transient beauty that exists in the humble, modest, imperfect, and even in decay. It is finding refinement in the unrefined.

It might be said that wabi-sabi is seeing a flower in a dying bulb.

Or, maybe even, finding poetry in a citrus kettle.

Yuzu miso, as the name implies, is a yuzu-scented miso from the Shizuoka and Nagano prefectures in Japan. It is typically used in Dengaku, an ancient form of miso cuisine, where various foods are lightly grilled, glazed with miso, then finished grilling.

Commercially prepared yuzu miso is made by simmering white (shiro) miso with sugar, then blending in yuzu zest. The ancient preparation, yuzu gama (literally, yuzu kettle), where the seasoned miso is cooked in a hollowed-out yuzu, is far more romantic in concept and exemplary of the Japanese approach to cooking.

To make yuzu gama miso: Blend together 150g shiro miso, 38g sake, 50g mirin, and 17g sugar. Slice the tops off of 4 yuzu. Remove all of the pulp and membranes from the insides, leaving only the rind. Pack the seasoned miso into the hollowed-out yuzu and replace the tops. Place on a baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes at 350F/178C, or until miso is bubbly. Will keep in refrigerator for up to a month.

Over the years, I've attempted to grow nearly every type of allium that I could find seeds for. Shallots and cipollini are perennial favorites because they require little space to grow and will keep throughout the winter when stored in a cool, dark place. I'm still experimenting with garlic, looking for a variety that will flesh out into plump heads instead of the paltry ones that I've been getting. And with onions being so readily available, I don't usually grow them unless I find an interesting variety.

Last fall, a friend gave me a bag of a sweet onion variety called "Candy", which I promptly deposited in a makeshift root cellar. Months later, I found they had begun to sprout. Sweet onions, because they have a higher water content, are not great keepers.

When bulbs sprout, the new growth draws on the energy that is stored in the parent bulb. In the case of alliums, the quality of the edible flesh becomes compromised and, eventually, consumed. Instead of composting them, I decided to force them like hyacinths, if for no other reason than to watch something grow.

Many flowering bulbs such as hyacinth, tulips, and narcissus can be forced to flower out of season, provided that they have been exposed to temperatures between 35-45F for a minimum of 12 weeks. I buy bulbs in the fall and store them in bags of peat moss in a spare refrigerator to force after New Years. To start them growing, simply place in a vessel with a mouth that is just narrow enough to allow only the base of the bulb through. A glass with tapered sides is perfect. Fill the glass with just enough water to cover the base of the bulb (left image). Submerging the bulb will cause it to rot. Alternately, bulbs can be supported by filling bowls with small stones and maintaining the water level. After about a week (center image) the roots begin to emerge and the shoots start to take off. After 2 weeks (right image) the bulb sends out multiple roots to support the vigorous growth. Bulbs forced in water can take 3-5 weeks to bloom.

I had intended to watch them grow— perhaps to flower— but upon tasting the new shoots, I found they were mild and sweet and begging to be braised with yuzu miso.

nesselrode pie

One of my clients, an elegant elderly woman, has an insatiable sweet tooth. Seriously— how she has survived as long without developing diabetes should make her a medical curiosity. Because her disposition is as sweet as her tooth, I made her something special for the holidays: marrons glacés. I knew she would like them because of her fondness for all things sweet and French.

Making marrons glacés is a labor of love. It's a four day process that requires an investment of time and careful attention— though not the kind that one would lavish on creating one of the Great Gateaux. The bulk of the labor is in peeling the pellicle from the chestnuts— a tedious task that I have yet to find a shortcut for. I did experiment with microwaving them in 10-second intervals, with mixed results. While some of the nuts peeled easily and cleanly, one out of five turned out hard and dry. But once they're peeled, the rest of the process requires little time and effort. Twice a day, a sugar and glucose syrup is brought to an increasingly higher temperature and viscosity, then poured over the chestnuts for a twelve hour soak. The process is repeated six times, followed by a drying period. Impregnated with sugar, the chestnuts become a denser, silkier version of themselves.

As I'd hoped, Ms. Sweet Tooth loved them. She ate her way through the box while recounting stories of childhood holidays in Paris, where her mother treated her to the candied chestnuts. Curiously, she stopped in mid-sentence, her attention clearly swept away by another memory, turned to me with wide eyes and whispered "Can you make Nesselrode pie?"

Not knowing what else to say, I told her the truth: I had no idea what Nesselrode pie was.

Apparently, I wasn't alone— the internet is full of people who were as much in the dark as I was. And some of those who knew what it was confessed that they had never laid eyes on one. And yet others waxed about it in mythical proportions. Was Nesselrode pie the unicorn of desserts?

Further searching led to several articles in the New York Times. One, from 1988, stated the following: "While for years it was a popular American Christmas dessert, Nesselrode pie left our collective culinary consciousness about 30 years ago and has hardly been heard from since." Another, on thefoodmaven.com, Arthur Schwartz claims "It's extinct now— no restaurant serves it, no bakery makes it— but this old New York dessert still lives vividly in the taste memories of many."

So, Nesselrode pie isn't a unicorn after all. It's more of a Javan tiger. But what exactly is it?

In the 1988 edition of "Larousse Gastronomique", Nesselrode is described as "The name given to various cooked dishes and pastries, all containing chestnut purée, dedicated to Count Nesselrode, the 19th century Russian diplomat who negotiated the Treaty of Paris after the Crimean War." It goes on to describe a salted chestnut purée, served with sauteed sweetbreads or roebuck steaks or used to fill profiteroles that are served with game consomme. Larousse makes no mention of Nesselrode pie, but says of its predecessor Nesselrode pudding "It consists of custard cream mixed with chestnut puree, crystallized fruit, currants, sultanas, and whipped cream." This edition of Larousse doesn't mention that original versions of the recipe include maraschino liqueur and were served frozen.

By most accounts, Nesselrode pudding was created by Count Nesselrode's chef, Monsieur Mouy, although that claim was contradicted by Eliza Acton and Mrs. Beeton, who both give credit to the French chef Antonin Careme in the recipes that are published in their books. In fact, Careme himself accused Mouy of copying his chestnut pudding and was outraged that he named it after a [non-French] foreigner. The feud was put to rest when E. S. Dallas published Mouy's recipe in "Kettner's Book of the Table" in 1877, pronouncing it "the most perfect of iced puddings."

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, Nesselrode pudding was a fashionable holiday dessert in Europe and then in New York. As was popular at the time, iced puddings, or coupes, were molded into fanciful shapes by skilled pastry chefs. The pudding did not freeze hard because of the liqueuer, challenging Victorian pastry chefs to devise ways to prevent them from melting on the table. In "The Royal Pastry and Confectionery Book" (London:1874), Jules Gouffé illustrated a meringue cloche modeled after a thatched beehive that he designed to slip over an iced pudding to act as an insulator.

Because of the skill needed to make and serve an iced dessert, Nesselrode pudding was exclusively available in restaurants and hotels that catered to the upper classes or in private homes that employed a capable staff. It was just a matter of time before a creative and enterprising baker adapted the challenging iced version into a more approachable pie.

Enter Mrs. Hortense Spier, credited with serving the original pie at her restaurant on the Upper West Side of New York City. The restaurant closed before World War II, but Mrs. Spier continued to make the pie for many of the city's leading restaurants including Lindy's and Longchamps. According to Bernard Gwertzman in a NYT article, "My memory [of Mrs' Spier's pie] is of a lot of whipped cream, chocolate shavings on top, candied fruits in the custard of the pie, and a rum flavor throughout. The original Nesselrode had chestnut puree; later recipes omit this ingredient." Sounds delicious, doesn't it? So, what happened?

Like all things popular and trendy, Nesselrode pie ran it's course. As the neighborhoods surrounding the restaurants where the pies were served changed, so too did the tastes of the residents. Unceremoniously, Nesselrode pie faded from our tables and now lives in the realm of forgotten dessserts alongside Baked Alaska and Charlotte Russe. I'm told that they're holding a place for Molten Chocolate Cake.

So now that I know more than I ever thought
I'd care to know about Nesselrode pie, I could answer Ms. Sweet Tooth's question; "Yes, I can make Nesselrode pie". And I did.

But I did one better. I made my version of Nesselrode— with marrons glacés, and candied buddha's hand citron, and real maraschino cherries (sour cherries macerated in simple syrup, cherry juice, maraschino liqueur, and some toasted cherry kernels tossed in for a boost of benzaldehyde).

For Ms. Sweet Tooth, I made a traditional pie, based on the the description of Mrs. Spier's, with a creme bavaroise base in a pastry crust, studded with the candied chestnuts and citron and the maraschinos, crowned with whipped cream and a dusting of chocolate shavings. She was very grateful.

For myself— well, I just played around with the components in a modern design.

And— I made Monsieur Mouy''s recipe for Nesselrode pudding* (it's actually just a very decadent ice cream), mainly because I wanted to taste its origin, but also because It provided me with an excuse to dig out my vintage jello molds. Abandoned and forsaken— the Nesselrode, just like the molds— were begging to be unearthed. Dusted off and polished up, they look shiny again.

*Monsieur Mouy's (Mony) original recipe can be viewed in Kettner's Book of the Table. Scroll to page 312 for Nesselrode Pudding. (note: 1 gill= 142g/5oz)
Caremes recipe (from Mrs. Beeton) can be found here. Scroll halfway down the page for Nesselrode Pudding.

Download recipe: candied buddha's hand citron

Download recipe: marrons glaces

Download recipe: real maraschino cherries

Download recipe: nesselrode pie

thai pie

With the last of the kaffir limes I wanted to make a variation of Key Lime Pie. Have you ever wondered what prompted the use of sweetened condensed milk in this classic American dessert? I have. Apparently, the first pie was made in the Florida Keys in the late nineteenth century, shortly after Gail Borden introduced the product in the US in 1856. Before modern refrigeration, cooks in the hot climate of Key West had to rely on canned milk as fresh milk was not readily available. The rest, as they say, is history.

Although there are many applications for sweetened condensed milk, I can recall only ever using it for two things: Key Lime Pie and dulce de leche. See where I'm going?

Despite the warnings on the cans, I still make dulce de leche by boiling the sealed can in a pot of water. It's so easy. Unless you let the water boil away and the can explodes. Years later, I'm still cleaning that mess.

The caramelized flavor of the dulce de leche reminded me of the palm sugar in the Nahm Jeem Plah Poa Ubon sauce of the previous post. Along with the kaffir lime juice, I had the base in which to build the flavor profile of the sweet, tart, salty, spicy sauce that I so love. Don't worry— I left out the garlic and fish sauce. The salt is in the pastry crust and the spice, along with coconut powder, is in the meringue topping.

Download recipe: Thai pie

thai shrimp cocktail

I've always poached shrimp in the conventional way: in a pot of simmering court bouillon. Sometimes I poach it in butter or olive oil, but then, that's confit, isn't it? Same with sous vide.

Recently, I was shown a different method by a culinary student at the restaurant, who learned it from another chef. His way is with residual heat. Instead of cooking the shrimp in the simmering broth, boiling broth is poured over the shrimp that's been spread out in a hotel pan. The pan is immediately covered tightly with plastic wrap and set aside. Depending on the size and quantity of the shrimp, it takes 10-15 minutes until they are perfectly cooked. What I like about this countertop cooking is that they are never tough or overcooked.

Peeling and deveining shrimp is a time consuming task. Sometimes, I buy them already deveined, but always with their shells on for flavor. Decapods (ten-footed crustaceans) carry their intestines on what appears to be their backs, but are actually their bellies. To remove the intestinal tract, the flesh along the belly must be slit open, leaving thin flaps that I find visually distracting when presenting them whole. These long, thin filaments peel away easily and are tasty morsels, though they rarely accumulate in quantities that would comprise a meal. These trimmings— the rare and esoteric by-products of cooking— are the cook's reward.

I think what I like best about Thai food is the balance of sweet, salty, tart, spicy and umami. Nowhere
is this best exemplified than in the sweet-sour garlic dipping sauce Nahm Jeem Plah Pao Ubon— a lively combination of lime juice, palm sugar, thai chilies, garlic, and fish sauce. It's an alarm clock of a sauce— it awakens the senses, makes you sit up and pay attention. I prefer it over cocktail sauce as a dip for poached shrimp. It's delicious poured over hot, grilled fish or steamed rice. In hot weather, I drizzle it over icy-cold watermelon or freeze it and rake it with a fork for a refreshing granita. It's so good that I could drink it, and I do—diluted with sparkling water and sometimes in a sake cocktail.
Using kaffir lime juice brings it to a whole other level, adding complex floral notes along with a bracing acidity.
I wanted to use it with the shrimp bellies and rice noodles in a cold salad, but because it is so thin, I was having a hard time getting the sauce to cling to it. It's not such a bad thing having a pool of it in the bottom of the dish to slurp up, but I was looking for a cleaner presentation. Of course, I could've thickened it with xanthan or ultratex, but looking at the rice noodles, I realized that they were the perfect vehicle to carry the flavor. With a nod to an entirely different cuisine— Italian— and the dish Spaghetti All'Ubriaco, where pasta is cooked in red wine, I cooked the rice stick noodles in the sauce. Infused with the flavor of Nahm Jeem Plah Pao Ubon, the noodles 'dressed' the salad neatly and cleanly.

Nahm Jeem Plah Pao Ubon
parts are by volume, not weight

3 parts nam plah (fish sauce)
2 parts water
2 parts palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 part finely minced garlic
1 part minced fresh thai bird chili, or 1/2 part dried
3 parts fresh kaffir lime juice

Place all ingredients except for lime juice in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. When the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and add the lime juice.

autumn pudding

from behind cascading leaves
the sun emerges like a sleepy child

heavy eyelids
blink
fractals of gilded light
a gentle yawn
exhale
a universe of scent
both familiar and exotic

leaves drift
fall
rustle a lullaby

I bid it sweet dreams
and eat my way across the autumn sky

parsnip vanilla pudding
butternut squash, autumnberry, kaffir lime gelee
candied pumpkin

Download recipe: Autumn pudding

autumn leaves

I sometimes find myself out of synch with the seasons.

Like last week when I had to talk myself out of making spaghetti with jalapeno tomato sauce— a simple, summery sauce of barely cooked ripe tomatoes— because it was November.

Or, like yesterday, when I booked a holiday cocktail party and my head filled up with visions of sugarplums and other wintry fare.

Today, the rake calls. It's all about the leaves.

Raking leaves is definitely not my ideal of fun. But like all chores, once I find a rhythm, it becomes meditative. Not today though— I'm too preoccupied with cocktail parties… and hors d'oeuvres.

Cocktail parties prevail in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years. To my clients, a few hours of drinks and passed hors d'oeuvres means that they can entertain without the stress of formal dinner parties. There are no expansive (or expensive) menus, multiple place settings, or seating arrangements to deal with— just a well-stocked bar, a tasty selection of finger foods, and a capable staff to serve and execute.

I've seen a lot of hors d'oeuvre trends come and go in 20 years of catering. The once popular notion that anything wrapped in pastry or made in miniature was de rigueur is long gone. Modern tastes favor lighter fare with clean, bright flavors. (That said, I welcome the occasional request for pigs-in-a-blanket and sliders)

Presentation, too, has come a long way. I remember etched silver trays with elaborate floral arrangements complete with trailing ivy that the servers carried around like bouquets. The food became lost in these. Nowadays, I aim for vibrant food, simply arranged on white porcelain platters. When the food lacks visual interest, I don't hesitate to add something to the plate— but only if it makes sense and adheres to the philosophy that nothing belongs on a plate of food that is not edible, functional, or relevant.

As I tackle the leaves, I think about canapes and how they're a fitting model for the perfect hors d'oeuvre.

Canapes cover a broad range of foods that we eat with our fingers. They run the gamut from basic cheese and crackers to the old-school French vol-au-vents and barquettes. In between are smörgås (open-faced sandwiches), crostini, and savory tarts. Their common denominator is a dry, crisp base that makes them neat and easy to pick up and eat, and a moist, often creamy, topping. The textural contrast between the two— dry and wet, crisp and creamy— are a basic gustatory pleasure and primed for an update.

Cheese & Crackers

goat cheese on carrot-beet-parsnip crisps

And as the leaves pile up, I think, again, about crisp.

How to reinterpret cheese and crackers?
Start with the cracker and add flavor.

Crackers are basically flour, water, and fat. Certainly, doughs can be flavored with concentrated liquids or with dried flavor in modest amounts, but these introduced flavors are often muted by the large ratio of flour that is required to produce a crisp product. If the ratios are thrown too far off, we lose crisp.

Pure flavor can be extracted from produce with a juicer into liquid flavor and can be further concentrated or distilled, or the solids can be dehydrated and ground into powder. Potentially, these flavor-packed products can replace water and flour. But, of course, it's not that simple.

Juice is not just flavored water, it contains fine solid particles and compounds. Fruit juices may also contain acids, pectin and reactive enzymes that effect texture. Ground dehydrated solids may resemble flour but do not possess the gluten that will allow it to behave like milled wheat. Luckily, we are not limited to wheat flour— or even starches from grains— to produce crisp.

There are other starches that gel liquids. They are so effective that only small amounts are needed. They don't interfere with base flavors because they are odorless and colorless. The gels, when dehydrated, form flexible films that turn crisp when heated. Technically, these are called glasses.

Unlike raking leaves, glasses are fun to play with.

Ultratex is a tapioca-derived modified food starch that thickens liquids much like cornstarch, but does not require heat to activate. Adding 2-3% of Ultratex to a cold, thin liquid will instantly tighten it into a sauce. Thicker gels (5%) are quick to dehydrate and form crisp brittle films that are slightly papery.

Tapioca Maltodextrin is also derived from the cassava root. It is a mildly sweet polysaccharide. TM is best known for its ability to stabilize fats and transform them into powders. It forms slightly stickier films than Ultratex. When the two are combined, (at a rate of 18% TM to a 5% Ultratex gel) they form sturdy glasses that when baked at a high temperature during the final stage of dehydration (while they are still flexible) they make the most stable glasses, even in the presence of humidity.

Methylcellulose (A types) and Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (E, F, and K types) also form films that dehydrate to glasses. Methocel glasses differ from Ultratex and TM in that when they are finished at a higher temp (100C), they turn from shiny and transparent, to matte and opaque.

Texturally, all of these additives produce thin, brittle crisps.
Visually, the methocel crisp looked most like a cracker, albeit,a fragile one.
It needed more bulk.
Aeration gives the illusion of bulk without actually adding any.
Methocel F types are used to create and stabilize whipped things.
Problem solved.

making a mold of autumn leaves out of silicone plastique

Juice crackers:

Bring 230g juice and 80g sugar or isomalt (isomalt is less sweet) to a full rolling boil. If the juice is not acidic, up to 10g of lemon juice can be added for flavor and balance. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely. In a small bowl, blend together 6g Methocel F50 and 8g Ultratex 8. Drop the powder blend into the center of the juice mixture. Cover the clump of powder with the blades of an immersion blender and blend until dispersed. Hydrate in the refrigerator for 4-6 hours, or overnight. With a mixer, blend until light, foamy, and opaque. Spread on silicone sheet or molds and dehydrate until film can be peeled off in one piece. Return to silicone and bake at 225F (100C) for 10-15 minutes. Immediately remove and bend or form into desired shape, supporting until it cools and hardens. Crackers can be made ahead and rebaked briefly to crisp.

To be clear, I use the term 'cracker' loosely. These are not crackers in a conventional sense— they lack flakiness. More accurately, they closely mimic the texture of a tuile or gaufrette wafer, but with the pure flavors of carrots, beets, and parsnips, un-muted by starch.

I'm dreading the acre of leaves that still need to be gathered and disposed of.
In joyful procrastination, I've created another pile of leaves in the kitchen.
The irony is not lost on me.

As always, nature inspires.

ginger pumpkin cake

More play with dehydrated flavor sheets in batter.

This time— dehydrated pumpkin in a fresh ginger root cake. This sheet, because it contains solids, is more of a chewy leather than a brittle crisp and converts to a soft, melting texture in the moist environment of the batter.

On the left are random strips embedded in the batter. On the right, strips were layered horizontally. Notice how the as the cake rose, it broke and disrupted some of the sheets. Interesting pattern, but I was going for a layered cake look. Next time, I'll try laying them in vertically.

Besides adding visual and textural interest, I think the true merit of this technique is in producing a cake with a baked-in filling. Now, to figure out how to get the frosting in there too.

Download recipe: ginger pumpkin cake

bbq cornbread

The step from bbq grits to bbq cornbread, while by no means a leap of imagination, was simply another exploration of the marriage of bbq sauce and cornmeal. I was curious to see what a sweet and acidic medium would do to a product that is typically coarse and dry. The flavor was predictably good, the reward came in the moist and tender crumb that I have not been able to achieve with dairy products alone.

I also wanted to explore the notion of folding chips of dehydrated sauce into a batter. This worked out quite well as they rehydrated in the moisture released in baking and formed soft, melting pockets of flavor that were well defined– not unlike chocolate chips. In that context, the doors of extrapolation have swung wide open.

Download recipe: bbq cornbread

pulled beef bbq grits

Grits are not something that I normally go to as a side dish. I have my New England upbringing to blame, but a recent trip through the Carolinas may have changed that.

I have long wanted to visit the city of Charleston SC for various reasons. The food, the flora, the antebellum architecture, the colorful history– all compelling draws. Underlying these was a romanticized curiosity about a city that had spawned and/or inspired many of my favorite authors– and sustained me through the 850 mile drive.

We arrived in Charleston late on a Sunday night. My husband, who had driven the entire way, opted to hang back in the hotel while I went out, hungry and restless, in search of local flavor. I found an old, established restaurant not far from the hotel and ordered a Dark 'n Stormy and Shrimp and Grits. The cocktail was an antidote to my road-weariness. The Shrimp and Grits, though lacking finesse in presentation and execution, was soothing and comforting.

Strolling back to the hotel, I was hyper-aware of my surroundings. Flickering gas lanterns lit the cobbled sidewalk. Soft breezes carried the mingled scents of decay, gardenias and salt marsh and the sound of soulful blues drifting from a distant nightclub. Was it my overactive imagination or the rum that caused me to believe that I could feel the stirrings of the ghosts, angels and demons that haunt the city? The whole time, I was thinking about the Shrimp and Grits– not about it's flaws– but about how eating the dish was like riding a bullet shot straight into the heart of a place.

I ordered cheese grits for breakfast the next day and noted how comfortable they were with eggs. I ordered them again, two days later in Asheville NC, with some excellent BBQ and marveled at how perfectly they foiled the tangy/sweet/smoky sauce and succulent meat.

The trip continued with stops in Virginia and Pennsylvania, where I picked up more memories of places, people, and food. I indulged in extraordinary tasting menus that were masterful, poetic, and delicious. I returned home weary from travel, yet revitalized, and– strangely– craving grits with BBQ sauce.

beer-braised pulled short ribs

bbq grits

purple snow pea salad

rau ram

To make bbq grits: Bring 1 cup of beer to a boil. Stir in 1/4 cup corn grits, reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until beer is absorbed and grits are creamy. Stir in 1/4 cup bbq sauce and 2 Tablespoons smoked butter.