CSA Week 11 and its Uses

Just great vegetables. That's what we've been getting from the Little River Market Garden. So I really don't want to do all that much to them. Why not "gargouillou" again?

This week brought yukina savoy, cutting celery, more heirloom tomatoes, and nasturtium flowers; some things from prior weeks were still holding up in the produce drawer of the fridge - multi-color carrots, baby turnips, savoy cabbage, dill. The sturdier stuff (carrots, turnips, savoy stems and leaves, cabbage leaves) got blanched and shocked, others went in raw. A shmear of salsa verde. A pile of finely chopped marcona almonds. A foam of the blanching liquid (emulsified with soy lecithin and frothed with an immersion blender). A sprinkle of Hawaiian red sea salt.

That's all.

Barceloneta - South Beach

I was sure I was going to love Barceloneta. I have a long-abiding passion for Spanish food, so when the team behind Pubbelly set out to create a restaurant inspired by the markets and bistros of Barcelona, it seemed aimed for my sweet spot. Indeed, even at Pubbelly, which styles itself as an "Asian-inspired gastropub," it was the Spanish influences I was most drawn to, and I found myself wishing they would just open a straight-ahead Spanish tapas bar.

Wish granted. Playing off the success of Pubbelly, its owners have taken over most of the rest of the short block around the corner from Purdy Avenue, heading in a more Asian direction with Pubbelly Sushi on one end, and in a distinctly Spanish direction with Barceloneta on the other, where Chef Juliana Gonzalez runs the kitchen.

So is it everything I hoped for? Almost, but not quite.

In my head, I imagined a Barcelona tapas bar like Chef Carles Abellan's Tapaç 24, a place with lots of small dishes served at a big bar. Barceloneta's layout is instead dominated by one long communal table that stretches most of the length of the room; and while there are other seating options - several 2- and 4-tops inside and outside, a few barstools around wine barrels - only about six of them are actually at the bar, which regularly gets crowded with people jostling for drinks while waiting to be seated.

(You can see all my pictures in this Barceloneta flickr set; apologies for the wonky lighting in several of them).

The menu, likewise, is not really a tapas bar format. Instead, it's divided into two sections: "Mercat" and "Bistro." Though it makes up the bottom part of Barceloneta's menu, let's start with the "Bistro" category, as it comes closer to the tapas bar of my imagination, featuring both some very traditionally Catalan dishes and others with more contemporary twists, though with portion sizes (and prices) that skew somewhat larger than customary tapas offerings.^[1]

As to the more contemporary dishes, one of my favorites was the Pulpo a Feira. Traditionally a Galician dish of boiled octopus sprinkled with paprika and served with boiled potatoes, Barceloneta's version takes a number of liberties. First and foremost, its initial appearance reveals no octopus at all, as it's hidden beneath a veil of thick potato foam. Also lurking within are bits of chorizo, piquillo peppers, and confited tomatoes, the surface then dusted with pimentón de la Vera and drizzled with chorizo oil. The peppers and tomatoes provide a nice bright contrast to the potato foam, which otherwise might overwhelm the dish with its richness.

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CSA Week 9 and its Uses

"Gargouillou" apparently was originally a humble French peasant dish of potatoes and ham. But it was made famous by Chef Michel Bras, who reinvented it as a composition of dozens (really - often 50 to 60 separate components) of various fresh seasonal vegetables, herbs, and flowers, painstakingly assembled onto a riotously colorful plate. It has been much talked about and much imitated; chefs the world over have used Bras' gargouillou as the inspiration or springboard for countless dishes, like David Kinch's "Into the Vegetable Garden." You can read about it in this New York Times piece, see a slideshow in this Wall Street Journal, catch it in video form here, or, just do a Google image search for "gargouillou." The pictures are so beautiful you can't help but smile.

So when I picked up my most recent share from Little River Market Garden and saw flowering hon tsai tai, perky Caraflex cabbage, "purple haze" carrots, and wispy fresh dill, among other goodies, a very simple take on gargouillous is what came to mind. The cabbage, hon tsai tai leaves and stems, and carrots were quickly blanched in salted boiling water. Last week's dinosaur kale was tossed with olive oil and oven-roasted till crispy and a bit charred. Last week's cutting celery, this week's dill, and the gorgeous yellow flower buds from the hon tsai tai went in raw. A dollop of last week's marcona almond brown butter vinaigrette, and an herbaceous salsa verde, both found their way onto the plate. I also took the blanching liquid from the vegetables, which had picked up some of their flavors and a nice soft green hue, gave it a bit of viscosity with some agar agar, and drizzled it around the plate.

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