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For my third guest-blog post in Married ...with Dinner's illustrious Drink of the Week feature, I unveil a new cocktail concocted for Reese's birthday party, the Levriero. After all, I simply had to do something with all that pompelmocello. Read on!
Photo courtesy Anita.
If there's one thing I adore about the foodieblogosphere, it's how inspiration spreads like ooey gooey jam over the peanut butter-covered surface of the web. Stephanie drew sufficient inspiration from my previous posts on making limoncello to pursue a batch or ten of her own. When I saw Stephanie after her first foray into 'cellifying, she spoke of doing a grapefruitcello, and thus the inspiration came full circle.
Many of you may already be aware of my almost pathological aversion to orange, but I really adore grapefruit -- all varieties, from the face-twistingly sour to pleasantly sweet-tart. I love the complex bitter-sour-sweetness of its flesh.
Straight away I made my way to the farmer's market the following Saturday and found a booth bursting with glorious globes of various shapes and sizes. "So," I asked both naïvely and curiously, "which grapefruit has the best flavor in the zest?" They were stumped. So I grabbed an Oro Blanco and a couple pink-fleshed puppies and lugged them home.
Now, in my past few rounds of playing the 'cello, I've learned a thing or three. First, as stated before, Everclear (the 151-proof stuff; we can't buy the rocket-fuel 190 proof in California) is the way to go. Second, I like my 'cellos a hair on the bitter side, not so cloyingly sweet, so I use a grater rather than a Microplane to extract a little pith along with my zest. And lastly, I dial down the sweetness even a touch more by making a simple syrup with a 4:5 ratio of sugar to water, rather than a standard 1:1.
The Pompelmocello, as I dubbed it (pompelmo being Italian for grapefruit), was a success. Surprisingly flavorful, it started off with a bright, orangey note, after which a pronounced grapefruit flavor came to rise, tailing off with a pleasantly lemony finish -- the full spectrum of citrusy goodness. It was sweet without being too sweet, with an intruiging bitterness that tickled the sides of the tongue.
The 'cello plays on -- I currently have a massive batch (as in, almost five liters!) of limoncello going, a cuvee if you will of Lisbon lemons from Hillsborough and meyers from Potrero Hill. My standby recipe follows after the jump. Cin cin!
Last year on Good Friday we brought home a baby girl. One lunar year later, we're still as proud and beaming parents as we were then. Today we celebrate her "birthday." Laissez les bone temps rouler!
All right, people. I have heard your desperate pleas for my opinion on Cyrus. I have to confess, I almost decided not to post it after such a delay, but I feel better knowing that at least one other blogger out there is still catching up from President's Day. And anyway, I did manage to scribble down my impressions on the bleary morning after, so why waste the effort?
My other hesitation in posting is that, despite or perhaps because of the amount of fawning praise I've read about it, I just wasn't over-the-moon about the place. I mean, don't get me wrong; it was good. Very good even. There were some things I really adored. But the whole was felt a little less than the sum of its parts. I think that had we not done this so relatively close on the heels of a life-changing meal like Alinea, I might have felt differently.
Nearly every thing they did well was mildly blemished, sort of a wabi-sabi approach, as if perfection would be an affront to the fine dining gods. As with another recent diner, they were very accommodating of dietary restriction, in this case DPaul's wheat problem ... with one little oopsie (read on). The service was professional yet warm and affable, but we ended up with a less than stellar table (why my reservation was inferior to others, I'm still not clear) with a lot of traffic, causing the back of my head to be brushed with every passing server.
Now the bar, that's another matter. We specifically arrived early to have the opportunity to sit at the bar and sample one of mixologist Scott Beattie's world-famous concoctions, and we were not disappointed. DPaul predictably went right for the bourbon with the Frankfort Manhattan, featuring vanilla- and citrus-infused Buffalo Trace bourbon, which has since become our house bourbon. I, in turn, tried the Pelo del Perro, a palate-tickling affair of Charbay Ruby Red Grapefruit vodka, Chinaco Silver tequila, grapefruit juice, lime juice, agave nectar, grapefruit foam and a red-salt rim. The garnish were three minuscule rosemary blossoms floating on top, each a tiny explosion of woodsy bouquet. Perfect.
Though we both partook of the 7-course chef's tasting menu, DPaul's was obviously occasionally different due to the absence of wheat. Also, we opted for different wine pairings to mix things up; I took the standard pairing, and DPaul selected the Grand Tasting pairing, customized to highlight the chef's tastng menu ... at approximately twice the price. Worth the differential? Sometimes.
We both agreed that it would be delightful to return and enjoy a meal in the bar area with some excellent cocktails. So, a happy ending by and by.
After the jump, the blow-by-blow description of our meal.
With some foods, it's love at first sight. Others make you work for it, requiring that you endure their flaws and imperfections to unveil their charms. Perhaps they intrigue you at first, capture your fancy, invite your attentions; but then they do something to irritate, confuse our outright hurt you, and you just don't know where you stand with them. No big deal, you say, there are plenty of fish in the sea, to say nothing of what grows on land. And so you take your affections elsewhere.
But then you catch yourself making furtive glances in their direction. Your curiosity is piqued. Sure, they're ... difficult, but somehow also interesting for it. If only you could crack the code and discover the inner beauty.
So it was with me and bucatini
Bucatini, for those not versed, is a cruel joke of pasta: Thick, spaghetti-like strands with a narrow hole running the full length. To try to twirl the pasta around your fork results in irregular, spattering flailing of the snake-like noodles, flinging sauce artistically all over your shirt, kitchen walls and occasionally ceiling. Then, once you've crammed the tangled mass into your mouth, dribbling sauce down your chin and onto your lap, you cannot even slurp the dangling tubes in, as the hole in the center of the pasta makes each noodle into a fine straw through which you suck saucy air. Even bucatini's most famous and celebrated dish, bucatini all'amatriciana, though deliciously bacony, is infuriatingly difficult to pronounce. (For the record, it's boo-cah-TEE-nee all-lah-mah-tree-CHA-nah.)
So, bucatini was destined to be forever too high-maintenance for me. So many other pastas, so little time. But ... being of Italian descent, I just couldn't bear to turn my back on one of my people's creations. Bucatini are beloved by millions. They can't all be pazzi. Can they?
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