Good to be in the know

What should a chef do when he has a bunch of new recipes to try out but has no normal outlet for the creativity? Obviously, he should invent a fictional persona - complete with Mexican wrestling mask - and gather his friends and relations at a café in the depths of Cambridge for an after hours underground dinner. Obviously.


Please meet Chef Delicious. He is not nearly as scary as he looks. In fact, he is rather lovable, especially after you try his food. Chef Delicious is a professional chef in the Boston area who cooks New American food with a focuses on local (to New England), seasonal, and sustainable ingredients. He knows the farmers in the area, he knows when and what the land surrounding Boston produces and more importantly, he knows how to use it all.

I had been looking forward to his Mexican-influenced winter feast for weeks. It was my second Chef Delicious dinner and I could hardly wait, having a good idea of the quality of the food in store for me. To put things in perspective, attending this dinner was so important to the Texan, that he shook off a fever in the middle of his bout with the flu by downing a mouthful of pills of various shapes and sizes and demanding to be brought along to the dinner. Against my better judgment (the Texan may know yeast, but I know viruses), the Texan came along. I didn’t have the heart to deny him a feast, Chef Delicious style.

The Texan’s suffering was well worth it. A group of about 18 people gathered at a café past closing hours (as a favor from the café owners) to mill about drinking tart margaritas, smearing toasts with a spicy chicken liver pate, and hovering over absurd amounts of Island Creek oysters. With at least half the available oysters safely housed in my belly, the time finally came to sit down at long, white tablecloth-covered tables decorated with grant silver candelabras. At one end of the table, sat Alex Whitmore of Somerville’s Taza Chocolate fame. At the other end, my close friends from grad school. I got my dose of celebrity and friendship all in one, topped off by a ton of oysters. The dinner was barely under way but I was already a very happy girl.

First course out consisted of giant platters piled high with large mussels with orange peel and cilantro, paired with a lightly hoppy pilsner. Normally, I hate hoppy beer, but paired with the citrusy mussels, both the beer and the mollusks were transformed, playing perfectly against one another. I only wished I could pour the mussel juice into a glass and drink it. For breakfast. Every day.


Next up, a smooth black bean soup, garnished with a small dice of sweet parsnips and carrots poled in the middle. The black bean soup must have passed through about 15 sieves – it lacked the body I would have liked to have in a winter soup. I heard quiet longings for a crouton or crumbled queso fresco from people on either side of me and I agreed with both. Something was missing. Overall, not my favorite course. And not the easiest to photograph – ergo, the empty plate.


The next course set everything right. Oh how very right. Oxtail mole with sauteed spinach, roasted mixed winter vegetables and roasted potatoes. I don’t have the words to describe this mole. The sauce was thin but packed with flavor, redolent of peanuts and sesame. The meat cooked till it came off the bone, making for a mouth-coating collagen-rich velvety sauce. I wanted to bathe in the mole, to rub it on like lotion every day for the rest of my life. That recipe shall be mine, mark my words. The sweet, juicy winter vegetables played very nicely with the mole love. I was getting happier by the moment.


Next, an aged goat cheese with super sweet red grapefruit sections and a green salsa style sauce with parsley, sesame oil, and perhaps a touch of mint. Building harmony where none was expected, the sum of the course was far greater than it’s parts.

To calm the overstimulated taste buds, a palate cleanser of a sweet lemon and chili sorbet, served in wine glasses.


As if that wasn’t enough to please and satiate, there were two courses of Taza chocolate-centric desserts, beginning with a creamy spiced hot chocolate, followed by a chocolate tart with a cacao nib-studded whipped cream. To say that the tart was rich would be an understatement. The chocolate was very dark and a little bitter, almost tannic in its intensity. I was approaching unconsciousness just two bites in. one bite later I had to admit defeat. Too rich for my blood and too late in the evening for my cranky post-doctoral body.


All that was left to do was to thank Chef Delicious profusely for a wonderful and intelligent meal (it's an odd to say about food, but Chef Delicious' preparations really are intelligent. His food is unusual and thought-provoking, with flavor combinations reminiscent of but not quite in line with the expected). I reminded him yet again that I am an excellent chopper and am happy to assist and any and all future Chef Delicious endeavors, thanked his lovely wife, brother, and sous-chef who helped prepare and serve the meal, and rushed to get home, to bed, to sleep, to digest… and to reflect on how good it felt to be surrounded by amazing people, great food, and to be the envy of all the folks staring at the elegant gathering inside the closed café, wishing they were invited to the party. Hehe. Life is good in the underground.

Notes from Uzbekistan

I have some pretty freakin' cool friends, I have to say. One of my many cool friends, Travis, whom I met while in grad school, also happens to have a supremely cool job. This job allows him to travel to parts of the world that most could not identify on a map, but happen to have extensive culinary and cultural histories. Having just gotten back from one such place, Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan), Travis wrote me a great long email telling me about all the food he ate while on his trip, pictures included. I was captivated. In addition to being totally cool and having an awesome job, Travis is also an eloquent and engaging writer. I asked his permission to repost his email here in the form of a guest post because a) it's wonderfully well-written and b) no one knows where Uzbekistan is, much less what is eaten there. I think this post will serve as education along with fascination. So without further ado - a cool post from a cool person with a cool job. Feel free to envy Travis (and me, for being his friend). Thank you, Travis!


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I returned from Uzbekistan last night. I am struggling with the jet lag, so I thought I would waste some time by sending you pictures and descriptions of a few of the dishes I had while in Tashkent.

First of all, I did eat a significant portion of my meals at small, street side cafes and chaikhanas (teahouses). Most of the food at these establishments is everyday Uzbek or regional fare but still tasty...and definitely cheaper than eating at larger restaurants and hotel chains. I would also argue that because of the turnover rate and hot soups, it is probably a little more sanitary as well.

I did eat plov on several occasions, but did not have my camera with me at those times... so the disappointment is no pictures of plov. Tashkent plov is a heavy affair... laden with mutton and sheep tail fat (the locals contend that several cups of green tea after the meal help the passage of all this fat through the system... call me not convinced). On top of the mutton is the ubiquitous slices of horse meat. Depending upon where you eat it, there is typically a boiled egg or two included (chicken or quail). At one place, they had apricots in the rice, which was quite nice. In Tashkent, the plov isn't an aromatic dish like you would expect from related South Asian rice dishes. The rice isn't as good as jasmine or basmati like in neighboring countries to the West and South.

OK, on to the dishes that do have photographic evidence. First, there are two main soups in Uzbekistan that you can get at just about any cafe or chaikhana: laghman and shurpa. Laghman has large noodles (think udon) in a spicy broth with large chunks of garlic, green beans, onions, and mutton. The actual contents vary from establishment to establishment and from day to day depending upon what fresh vegetables are available that day. Like most dishes in Uzbekistan, it is eaten with "non" (yep, very similar to the Hindi word naan for bread...but this bread is leavened). Shurpa is a little different than laghman in ingredients, but the broth is somewhat similar. Shurpa consists of root vegetable (potatoes, turnips, carrots, etc), onions, and, again, mutton (usually on the bone).


I also had a very common Kazakh dish called Besh Barmak (literally "five fingers" as it was traditionally eaten with the hands). It is a heavy dish consisting of diced horse meat and boiled noodles. Think of it as a horse stroganoff without the sour cream and mushrooms. Because the dish can get dry, it is generally also served with a steaming bowl of what can only be described as "horse consomme." If you are wondering about the flavor of horse just let me say it is somewhat "gamey" and very reminiscent of how the actual animal smells.


When the horse broth was being brought to the table before the main plate, the waitress was about eight feet away and I thought to myself, "yep, that definitely smells like horse." The odor completely filled your nose with a deep, musky animal scent. It was overwhelming. Usually on the side is a small container of yogurt that can also be mixed into the dish... thus almost completing the transition to a stroganoff-like dish. Few spices were used on the meat and probably consisted of mostly coriander... which I wasn't really expecting.

I also had the opportunity to eat at a really good Korean restaurant. Now you might be thinking, "what the hell?" when I mention Korean food in Tashkent, but you have to remember that after World War II, Stalin relocated vast numbers of North Koreans to Central Asia. Many of these communities still exist and there are still cultural, familial, and business relations with Korea. I ordered the bi bim bop as you usually cannot go wrong with that in a Korean restaurant. I wasn't disappointed.

Bi bim bop is one of those "some assembly required" Asian dishes that allows you to personalize the dish to your own tastes. In addition to the large, sizzling stone bowl containing the egg, rice, meat, sprouts, and spinach, there was a number of smaller dishes of "salads" (as the wait staff called them) to modify the dish. Central to this was the homemade kimchi. It was very nice, but not overwhelmingly spicy. As you can see in the photo, there were a variety of other salads to either have individually or mix into the bowl. I ate most of them!


I hope you enjoyed the descriptions... feel free to pass them along to anyone that might be interested in Central Asian cuisine... or just interested in novel foods.



P.S. I really hope I matched the correct picture to the description. If I didn't, please correct me Travis!