Fizzed
Radicchio salads, cardamom apple bread, gravlax and French 75 dinners
I was no longer tired, and wanted sharpness above all else. I became hyper-attuned to how color diluted in low-lit rooms: grassy chartreuse in a sea-glass coupe next to the chocolate mousse, how much brine clouded a martini. The pink of the marble, the wine, the tablecloth, the juice of the steak, mirroring each other. All weaker than what they should be.
Chafing at the sedate, I spent a small fortune on Swedish salted licorice1 and peeled leaves off bitter chicories at home. Sensory provocation would drop me from pitch-black evenings into the fizz. I thought of one October “breakfast”: red wine followed by a salad of Castelfranco, fragola grapes, crumbled gorgonzola, and mint (really I was waking up at 10:30 and getting into town by 1 to eat). I iterated with radicchio, thinly sliced pear, toasted walnuts, and crumbled Danish blue. Red wine saffron vinegar and grainy mustard in the dressing.2
If you toss your apples in flour, they won’t sink in a loaf of bread3. Making applesauce causes me to feel like I’m on the prairie for some reason.
On Christmas Eve I crossed the Boulevard des Capucines and watched a woman carry a full seafood tower, on ice, out of Café de la Paix wrapped in cellophane.4
I was coming from a gravlax, French 75, and pomme purée dinner where they brought the entire dessert tray as the “menu”5, and headed for a second, then third, dessert: two Champagnes in black silk.
Recent eating (and drinking) notes: Pre-Christmas Michael’s girls’ night out dinner (pomegranate martinis, niçoise salad, tiny chocolate chip cookies, sherry); so much steak tartare; Kir Royales at La Coupole; dürüm on piping hot flatbread; Seine-side coffee and cognac; bathtub croissants; medicinal udon at Koya; Simran and Paul’s amazing New Year’s beef cheeks and polenta with lacinto kale, followed by Ballymaloe orange mousse and shards of chocolate
Raspberry-filled and lethal.
Last week I had another variation on this kind of salad, with finely-chopped dried figs and quince paste along with huge cubes of Stilton and walnuts.
Decrease the sugar to 1/2 cup, split the difference with applesauce, add 1/4 teaspoon cardamom.
A crab claw poked through.
I chose the chocolate “dôme” that looked like a breast: mousse layered over praline crust and draped under the glossiest ganache, with a piped button of cream at the center.