Fried Brain Sandwich

Spring is green, right? Think spring and you think tender green shoots, green leafy canopies emerging from brown limbs, green peas, asparagus, and fiddlehead ferns. But it is not all green all the time. St. Louis sits at the confluence of sandy soil and German know-how that yields the White Asparagus of Belleville for about 5 weeks in April and early May. And then in late May come the fresh morels. They look like little brown brains on sticks and you can find them in local stores for a couple of weeks. At about $30 a pound (half what you might pay in New York) they are a deal. But still, once you've schlepped home with a half a pound and plopped them on the counter you begin to worry. $15 bucks for mushrooms. What should I do? With a lobster or steak or roast, it's pretty easy. The big ticket item is the center piece of a feast. But mushrooms?

In an episode of Futurama, Fry becomes a billionaire and pays millions for the last can of anchovies (which had become extinct with the arrival of Dr. Zoidberg's people on Earth). Fry has a single clear purpose in mind -- Anchovy Pizza. I am not so lucky. I began to suffer Morel Angst. Should they play a supporting role, perhaps accompanying a roast chicken? Maybe a co-star thing in a rich sauce with veal scallopini. Or maybe the ensemble treatment, casting them with the "green" stars of spring, fresh fava beans and green peas, perhaps in a risotto.

After a little research on the web, I found a NYT piece by Melissa Clark where she wrestled with her Morel Angst. She opted for the "caviar treatment" -- spotlight on the star with a minimum accompaniment. The preparation was a simple saute, essentially a cream of morels over toast.

I liked the idea, but I had my doubts about the toast. Obviously you want something to sponge up the sauce. It shouldn't disintegrate into goo, but it can't be so assertive that it elbows out the star. A brioche might do the trick, but I was fresh out (I did briefly consider running by Chez Leon to "borrow" a couple of the brioches that they serve with foie gras. It would be just right, buttery, but firm. Adding some structure but remaining in the background). Instead, I chose potatoes. Beautiful, small, pale, new potatoes. Another one of the non-green gifts of spring. I covered my potatoes with cold water, threw in some salt and put them on to boil. Then I started in on the mushrooms.

First rule of morels -- don't rinse or soak in water. Use a towel or brush to remove any dirt. If any are particularly large you can cut them in half. I sliced up three large shallots into thin rings. Don't mince them, you want some of their texture to remain. You might think about using Vidallia onion as a variation. I put a couple of tablespoons of good butter into a skillet a brought it over a medium heat. The dish is very simple. What separates it from Campbell's Cream of Mushroom On a Shingle is the quality of the ingredients. I used Devon Double Cream butter, but any premium butter would be right. This is the time to use the good stuff. The shallots went in as the butter warmed. The point is not to sear or caramelize anything. Just melt the shallots for a couple of minutes over medium to low heat. Then in go the morels. Saute them for about three minutes. They will absorb the butter, so keep an eye on the heat. Unlike everyday mushrooms, morels do not release much water.

Along the way add a small amount of dry white wine - 2 or 3 tablespoons at most. The liquid will help prevent scorching and the acidity provides an opposition to the cream and butter. As the wine boils off, add a cup or so of heavy cream. It should come to a light boil and thicken up. Add salt and several turns from your pepper mill. I had some lemon thyme from the garden, and so I added a few leaves. Skip it if you don't have fresh. After about 5 minutes you should have a rich earthy tasting sauce. Check the seasoning and remove from the heat. The whole thing should have taken about 11-12 minutes.

If you timed it right, the potatoes should also be done. Drain them. Arrange 5 or so in a cluster on each plate and spoon the morels and sauce over the potatoes and sprinkle fresh chives over them. I made two portions, each an extravagance of 1/4 pound or so of morels. But this will easily make 4 plates as elegant appetizer.

The effect was just I wanted. Hot steaming potatoes provide a firm structural element with the morels intersited among them. The flesh is firm, ever so slightly chewy. The taste is not of the deep forest like that of a truffle. It is at once dark and fresh. Think of a spring rainstorm. Gathering clouds, perhaps even a bit ominous. But still invigorating and in its own way an antidote to the winter blues.

Ingredients:
20 small new potatoes
1/2 pound fresh morels
3 large shallots (variation: Vidallia or other sweet onions)
2 tablespoons of premium butter
2 tablespoons of a dry white wine
1 cup of heavy cream
good salt and fresh pepper
A few leaves of fresh thyme
6 shoots of chive, minced.

Variations:
The same basic technique can be used to create a rich Morel Sauce for veal or chicken. The main differences would be to replace the white wine with Madeira (probably only a tablespoon or so) and to add about a half a cup of rich demi-glace at the same time. Let it reduce for about 5 minutes. Then add about half a cup of cream and reduce further. Just before serving, swirl in a tablespoon of cold butter.

A few years ago my bridge buddy Eryk hosted a party to celebrate the EU expansion (Eryk never needed much of a reason for a party). It was a pot-luck affair with each of us assigned to bring a dish from one of the new EU countries. Lucky me, I got Estonia. Pop quiz. For 10 points each, fill in the blank. Estonia, land of the ...? The national food of Estonia is ... ? Estonia leads the world in per capita consumption of ...? 0-for-3? Join the club. But after a couple clicks on the Internet, the fog began to lift.

It turns out that Estonia is cut through with rivers and steams emptying into the Baltic. Two items popped out of from a list of regional food stuffs -- crawfish and fiddlehead ferns. On a different site I came across a recipe for an Estonia vegetable and potato salad using sour cream as the binder. I redid the salad incorporating the ferns and the crawfish while trying to lighten the sour cream. I can't vouch for whether an Estonian would have thought it "authentic" or at least familiar. But I wasn't very happy with it. Once the first dollop of sour cream was folded in, the salad became too leaden for my sensibilities.

I was reminded of all this the other day when I came across a "cello" bag of fiddlehead ferns at Schnucks (cello is food-speak for cellophane packaging). I still liked the idea of pairing them with crawfish in a salad, but 86 the sour cream. For technique I turned to one of my favorite dishes -- Potatoes Vinaigrette -- thickly sliced creamer potatoes tossed with a simple vinaigrette. Dill is a classic companion with crawfish in the Baltic so that would be the primary note in the dressing along with fresh parsley. The crawfish and potatoes would be fairly soft and the fiddleheads would be firm, but not really crunchy. So I needed a textual element that could make a complimentary contribution. I decided on fresh fennel.

A Salad of Fiddlehead Ferns, Crawfish, Fennel, and Potatoes

Slice the creamer potatoes into 1/3 inch discs with the skin on. Place them into a pot and cover with water. Add a tablespoon of salt and bring to a boil. The potatoes will cook quickly, perhaps in as little as 5 minutes once the water is boiling. Remove and drain once the potatoes are done. Do not overcook.

Trim away the stems of the fiddlehead ferns. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil and add a tablespoon of salt. Place them carefully into the boiling water. My approach is similar to working with asparagus, although fiddleheads are little stringier. Taste one after 3 minutes. They should be firm but without any crunch. Remove when they are done and drain (Fiddleheads have a lot of iron in them and will darken the water -- don't worry).

Trim any blemishes from the fennel and then slice into julienne pieces about 2 inches long. Set to the side.

To prepare the dressing, peel the shallots and slice them thinly into rings. Place them a mixing bowl and add the 5 ounces of vinegar. Chop the parsley and dill and add the vinegar along with 1/2 teaspoon of salt, an ample amount of freshly ground black pepper, and a pinch of sugar. If possible, let the mixture macerate for 20 minutes. Then whisk in the olive oil. The parsley and dill will create a slurry and help keep the oil and vinegar in suspension.

You need to carefully combine all of the ingredients. The ferns and potatoes are particularly vulnerable to breaking up. One approach is to use a half-sized sheet pan with a lip on the edge. Spread out the potatoes and then layer the fennel, crawfish, and fiddleheads over them. Finally pour the dressing over the whole lot. You can then carefully mix everything together. If your are feeling lucky, just gently toss everything in a large mixing bowl.

When I made this, the potatoes were still warm. This was quite nice, but would have to be served very soon after the crawfish were added. Alternatively, the ingredients can be chilled before combining everything. The interplay of tastes results in a mellowing of all of the elments. There was also an interplay of "green" tastes from the fiddleheads and the parsley. The overall effect was almost creamy. It needed an accent note, so I served the salad in a mound over arugula leaves which provided the right peppery bite.

8 Creamer Potatoes - medium sized
10 oz of Fiddlehead Ferns
1 bulb of fresh Fennel
1 large or 2 medium sized fresh shallots
5 oz of White Wine Vinegar
18 oz of Extra Virgin Olive Oil - not to "green"
1/2 cup of chopped Italian Parsley
3 tablespoons of diced fresh Dill
1/2 pound of cooked crawfish tail meat
Salt, Pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

Fresh Arugula

If you've dropped by The Wine and Cheese Place on Forsyth in Clayton lately you may have noticed it. No, not the checkout counter that has moved from the left side to the right. Not the "gourmet" goods that have moved from the back of the store to the front. Something much more important. Take a sniff. It's still subtle but grows a little everyday. If they have recently roasted the nuts, you may need to walk over to the deli counter. It's the smell of cold pig and that's a very good thing.

We know (and love) the smell of hot pig in the morning, noon, or night -- bacon, spare ribs, pork chops, roast. But cold pig? Chalk it up to the FDA. Or to customers squeamish about meat that is not refrigerated. The smell of cured pig products -- salumi in Italian--is hard to find these days. It's the core constitute of the "old-world" aromas in places like Viviano & Sons or Volpi on the Hill in St. Louis or the Central Grocery in New Orleans.

But since May you have been able to smell, sample, and buy some of the best cold pig being produced in this country -- Salumi Artisan Cured Meats of Seattle. Salumi was co-founded by Armandino Batali, father of celebrity extreme-chef Mario Batali. The term salumi covers a range of cured meats (usually pork) that can be broadly categorized in two ways -- those made from single cut of meat such as shoulder or thigh (Coppa, Culatello, Proscuitto) and those made from minced, chopped, or ground meat stuffed into casings (Soppressata, Finccchiona, Cotto, etc). For the last few years foodies have been making the pilgrimage to the small storefront on Third Avenue South to sing the praises of Armandino's pig. If a round-trip ticket to Seattle seems too much effort to put out a plate of antipasti, you can order most items from their web site. But not everything. Not the Lardo.

Lardo. Cured pork fat studded with rosemary. John T. Edge suggests that the little extra 'o' is transformative -- "lard's leap towards transcendence." Bill Buford describes a dinner party / cult scene / communion with Mario Batali, in which the master placed a thin slice of Lardo on the tongue of each acolyte and proclaimed "Its the best song sung in the key of pig." An off-hand remark by Ian Froeb in his blog brought all of this back to me. Yes, Lardo is now available in St. Louis. What to do?

There's Lardo as communion wafer, a thin slice on the tongue. Take it like you do good chocolate. Don't chew. Let it sit there and melt away in the heat of your mouth. The first note is salt. But just as you think "salty", the idea is washed away by the riverlets of fat falling onto your tongue. If you are not ready for pure communion with a pig, John T. extols the simplicity of his favorite item at Salumi -- a slice of Lardo wrapped around a bread stick and briefly broiled. A pork pixie stick. You can spread it Nutella style on focaccia instead of butter. Or wrap grilled shrimp with a slice and then broil. All sound great, but there is a dish I have been dying to try -- Lardo pizza.

It was all the rage a few years ago in New York when it appeared on the menu at OTTO, Mario Batali's mid-level concept pizzeria/enoteca. No cheese. No sauce. It is simplicity itself, a pie draped in thin slices of Lardo, sprinkled with fresh rosemary and baked. The fat melts and infuses into the rising crust leaving behind ethereal slivers and tasting of pure pig. Because of the rarity of its one and only topping, the Lardo pizza has been slow to travel. I don't see the 30-minutes-or-it's-free guys rolling this out anytime soon. Kicking back on the sofa with a Lardo pie, a beer, and the remote is probably not a once a week thing. Make one for some friends. Serve it as a starter. Do thin wedges with cocktails. Make room for the transformative power of Lardo.

Preparation (terse):
- Make a pizza dough.
- Shape into a pie.
- Arrange thin slices of Lardo over the top.
- Sprinkle with fresh rosemary.
- Bake in a hot oven until done.

Preparation (verbose):
In a medium bowl combine the warm water and sugar and then stir in the yeast. Let it sit for about 5 minutes. The yeast will activate and begin to bloom and bubble. Add the olive oil, then the flour and salt. Work the contents with your fingers. The dough will be sticky at first but will soon clump onto itself rather than your hands. Once all of the dough has aggregated into a single mass, dump it onto a work surface and knead it vigorously for about 5 minutes, occasionally running it around the inside of your work bowl to blot up any flour that was left. Form the dough into a ball, Wipe out your bowl and then add a teaspoon more of olive oil to it, coating the lower half. Take the ball of dough and run it around the inside of the bowl so that it picks up a light coat of the oil. Cover the dough in the bowl with a towel. Set aside in a warm place with no drafts and allow to rise for an hour.

After rising, the dough should be spongy. Turn it out onto a floured surface and flatten into a disk, pushing out from the center. The melting Lardo will produce pools of oil that are gradually absorbed by the dough. You should form a slight lip around the edge of the dough to prevent the liquid from running off. Arrange the sheets of Lardo over the top of the dough and sprinkle with fresh rosemary (don't bother with the dried stuff). Pop the pizza into your hottest oven. Ideally it should be placed on a hot surface, a pizza stone for example. You can buy one or make your own by placing unglazed tiles on a sheet pan. The pizza should be done in about 8 minutes.

3/4 cup very warm water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 envelope dry active yeast
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoons sea salt
1/6 pound thinly sliced Lardo
Fresh rosemary

I've been eating a lot of salads lately. One problem remains portability--how do you eat a salad on the run? A simple solution is to make a wrap out of it; but focus on the greens. In particular, use sharper greens such as arugela to help overcome some of the dampening affect of the tortilla. Below is one example. But there are lots of variations to try. Subtlety doesn't work so well here, so look for strong flavors.

Chef Salad Wrap

Ingredients:
1 large flour tortilla
1 tablespoon Italian dressing
2 slices of ham
1 slices of Provolone cheese
2 slices of salami
3 or 4 cherry tomatoes, halved
a large handful of mixed salad greens, preferable including bitter sharper greens such as arugula or friesse

Technique:
* Warm the tortilla for about 15 seconds a side in a hot skillet, then remove.
* Spread the dressing over the center of the tortilla.
* Arrange the meats in overlapping slices in the center of the tortilla
* Pile the salad greens on to the tortilla. Use more than you might think can fit. But leave some room at the edge nearest you.
* Fold the left side in just a bit. Then fold the bottom edge up. Finally keep rolling from the left. Squeeze down to compress the leaves. The goal is a lot of greens relative to the amount of protein, fat, and carbs in the rest of the ingredients.

Ceasar Salad Wrap

Romain is high on texture but weak on taste. It tends to disappear a bit within the confines of the wrap. The trick here is to alter the traditional balance of the salad to give it some punch. But I stuck to the traditional ingredient list, using the the "form" of the salad as a guide. This lets me throw in a few croutons, which is pretty silly on the face of it. Still they added another textual element.

Ingredients:
1 large flour tortilla
1 tablespoon Ceasar salad dressing
3 Romain lettuce leaves, torn into large pieces
5 or 6 large seasoned croutons
3 anchovy fillets
Freshly grated Parmigiano-reggiano

Technique:
Same as above for the Chef Salad. The romaine leaves are bulkier than spring salad mix, so it may be more difficult to keep everything together. I use more cheese than I would for a plated salad. Still, do not overdo it. Salads, about all else, are about balance.