The Raw and the Cooked
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IN THIS ISSUE: One Gourmet editor picks fruit, another grills, the rest of us lunch, and an unusual word is used twice—can you find it?
Appetizers
Tira Us Sù
Sixty percent of the Gourmet editorial team recently met for a power lunch at Danny Meyer’s restaurant Ci Siamo, situated in the strange elevated parkway of Manhattan West that leads to the giant döner of Hudson Yards. The A.C. was strong, the bubbly rosato selected by the somm was just the thing for a serious work meeting, and the food was great—chef Hillary Sterling has dialed in her giant wood-burning hearth to char-wilt asparagus and slow-roast carrots; the cheese top of her onion torta came out perfectly bruléed, and the crab cavatelli brought some pleasant chili heat.
But that’s not why we’re writing about Ci Siamo. We were tickled to find, in the elevator back to street level, a side table topped by a classic fiasco of chianti and chunky bistro glasses, available for both ascenders and descenders to make a little toast in the Otis. We took advantage, and our spirits lifted higher even on the way down. —Sam
A Rose Apple Is a Rose Apple Is a Rose Apple
Deep in a Hawaiian valley, atop a tiny island in the archipelago, I tasted about six tropical fruits I’d never even heard of. Members of a commune now partially abandoned had once foraged in these hills, sampling a dizzying cornucopia of angiospermous bounty. One will especially linger in my memory: the common rose apple. Known in Hawaiian as ʻōhiʻa loke and in science as Syzygium jambos (new drag name), the rose apple tree produces a small yellow orb not dissimilar to a guava. But when you bite into the fruit’s crisp exterior, the almost melony flesh yields something unmistakable: the sweet perfume of rosewater! All of the romance and fantasy of the real thing, with none of the too-concentrated aftertaste one gets from overdoing it with a bottle of rosewater at home. The trees can be invasive, but indulge if you come across its fruit. They’re found in the Caribbean, Central and South America, the tropical Pacific Islands, and all over Southeast Asia, their probable birthplace. But beware picking and eating the fruits right off the branch: my friend warned that unwashed produce foraged in places like this valley can harbor slugs carrying Rat Lungworm—“three nouns you don’t want anywhere near each other.” —Alex
The Raw and the Cooked
By Amiel Stanek
Putting an overabundance of grilling enthusiasm to good use.
Twenty years into my cooking life, I can finally count patience as one of my kitchen virtues. I have learned to wait, to give food the time it needs to be its best self. I salt my meat the night before so it is seasoned through and through, and let it air-dry in the fridge so the exterior is primed for a hard sear. I let ingredients temper when they need to temper, chill when they need to chill. I know better than to check on a braise too often, to poke and prod that which wants to be left alone. My food is better for it.
This hard-won patience goes out the window as soon as grilling season rolls around. I wait dutifully for every briquette in the charcoal chimney to glow red before dumping them in the kettle—not an issue. But then I am Ready to Grill. I cannot for the life of me manage to give the coals even five minutes to die back to a sub-inferno level of heat before restlessly clicking my tongs a few times and throwing food onto the grates. This is a problem because few things actually want to be cooked over this raging heat. Burger patties incinerate. Sausages burst. Fat-capped pork chops disappear in great balls of fire. And, perhaps most tragically, heroically burnished steaks turn out not rare but raw, made to take a long walk of shame back out to the Weber for remediation.