Alien Ingredient #6: Dragon Fruit

I've known of these so-called dragon fruits for a very long time and I've seen lots of them around before, but none of them have seemed ripe enough for me to ever want to buy, until now. Spending some of my formative years in Texas (and specifically, crawling the bodegas and mercados), I have a good bit of experience with cactus fruits of many types, so I had a good idea that the hard bricks I had seen before were not ripe. This particular one was bright red and yielding, good signs of ripeness. Here you see it in comparison to a 48-count navel orange.


It turns out that I have grown the cacti that yield these fruits without ever connecting the dots—mine never fruited. The fruits are often called pitayas (pitaya blanca, Hylocereus undatus, with white flesh, and pitaya roja, H. costaricensis, with screaming fuschia flesh) and come from cacti that originated in Mexico and Central America, cacti that we often lump together under the common name Night-Blooming Cereus. They really do bloom at night (and for one night only!) and when they open, the white and cream blooms are spectacular and particularly fragrant.

The flesh of the fruit is white with small black seeds. Unlike the seeds in prickly pear (Opuntia spp.) fruits (tunas in Spanish), these seeds are small and barely noticeable when you eat them. Based on my experience with other cactus fruit, I was expecting to have to separate the seeds from the flesh and then make candy, agua fresca, sorbet, or jelly with the flesh. This fruit is very pleasant to eat from the rind with a spoon and is firm enough to dice for a fruit salsa. The firm but yielding flesh tastes first of pear (without the granular stone cells) and finishes with hints of strawberry and kiwi. It is not particularly sweet, just delicious.

Vote: yes, please! But not at $3.99 each!

Alien Ingredient #5: Banana Flower

We were all super excited to get into this banana flower. It looks cool and exotic for starters. I have seen banana flowers for sale before at the big Korean supermarkets, but they have never looked like they were in good condition, so I always passed on them. And interestingly enough, I have never been to a Thai, Vietnamese, or Cambodian restaurant that featured them or I would have tried them out already.

After boning up on our banana flower prep skills on YouTube—who says the Internet is not a great thing?—we peeled this flower down to expose the flowers/immature bananas at the base of each petal.



And then we kept on peeling until we got to the tender heart that we split with a knife. After removing the fibrous core, we put a fine chiffonade on the banana flower and put the bits in acidulated water to keep them from oxidizing.

The taste of the raw flower was of bitter banana rind. We were hoping that blanching would help eliminate the bitterness. Not so. This dish of Banana Flower and Shrimp Curry looks great, but none of us could get beyond the bitterness of the banana flower.


Vote: Two thumbs down. We'd eat it if another chef brought it to our table as a special treat, but we won't be ordering any for ourselves. Major let down.

Alien Ingredient #4: Epazote

"Looks like a Chenopodium, doesn't it?" I asked myself when I bought this bunch of epazote the other day because it sure looks like one of the herbs in that family, like the lambsquarters (C. album) that we have growing all over the back yard.

Funny that I should think that. It turns out that epazote was until recently classified by taxonomists as a Chenopodium, the same family that contains quinoa (C. quinoa). This native of southern Mexico, Central America, and South America has been moved from C. ambrosioides to Dysphania ambrosioides, for the one of you who actually cares about this kind of stuff.

I've long known of epazote, principally from reading in my Mexican Spanish-language cookbooks and in the Foods of Mexico by Diana Kennedy. I've also heard that it grows as a weed around these parts, but I have never encountered it growing in the wild in any of my foraging expeditions.

Epazote has been available for years from my produce company, but their price for it has always been prohibitive. And I have seen lots of dried epazote at various tiendas about town, but when I try a new herb, I want to try it fresh. Now that Food Maxx has big bunches of it for cheap, I brought this big bundle to the restaurant to check out.

It's a strong herb for sure, reeking to heaven of shoe polish, kerosene, and other scents that would warn most humans not to eat the stuff. The word "noxious" comes to mind. The taste of the raw leaf is a lot milder and not all that offensive. Blanched in water, the medicinal and industrial flavor comes right back. Sautéeing it doesn't help either. It is clear that a little bit goes a long way. And I read that the younger leaves are less potent than the older. The presence of panicles of flowers on this bunch would argue that this is pretty mature epazote.

Traditionally, it is used for its carminative (anti-flatulent) effect when cooking black beans. I will certainly add epazote to my beans in the future to see how it changes the flavor, but I don't have high hopes for it. I suspect that it is one of those things that you either grow up eating or you don't eat at all.

Vote: Mom, do I really have to finish all my epazote?

Alien Ingredient #3: Culantro

It's not exactly accurate that I've never used culantro before; many years ago, a local farmer brought me three tiny leaves to play with, leaves that were much smaller than these. He was trying to grow it for me, but apparently, the herb is very tough to germinate and doesn't really care for our climate here in Virginia. Nonetheless, I wanted the guys on the crew to play with this cilantro-flavored herb from Mexico and Central America that often goes by its Puerto Rican name, recao. I've also heard it called sawtooth herb, a name that it comes by quite naturally as you can see in the photo.

Culantro and cilantro are almost interchangeable in cooking, but culantro is more pungent. I like culantro for cooked applications because the leaf is a lot sturdier. It is especially at home in the sofrito (seasoning base) called recaíto that is the basis for a lot of Caribbean and Central American dishes.

The rest of this bunch went into the various dishes for which we use cilantro.

Vote: As long as culantro is a lot more expensive than cilantro, we'll keep on using cilantro.

Alien Ingredient #2: St. Germain

Elderberries: we're surrounded by them. We even have a guy who supplies local elderberry syrup to the restaurant. So with all that, you'd think I would be up on elderflowers and their potential. Not so.

I've been reading a lot about St. Germain over the last year: I get a lot of trade magazines and many of them have articles on the resurgence of the classic cocktail and the use of all kinds of specialty liquors, liqueurs, and bitters. I keep seeing cocktail after cocktail featuring St. Germain, an elderberry flower liqueur just launched in 2007.

We don't have a big bar program at the restaurant and so I don't get to play with all that many new drink ingredients. And I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a lovely control state where the state has the liquor monopoly. What this means is that we restaurants (Bar? Bar? You can't have no stinkin' bar in the antediluvian Commonwealth!), especially those of us not located in the major metro areas, can have a hell of a time getting specialty beverages such as St. Germain.

In fact, I think I tried about a year ago to acquire some St. Germain, only to be confounded by the Commonwealth. For giggles I tried it again last week and was surprised to find it on the standard price list, not the special order list, and was even more shocked to find that our local ABC store had it on the shelf.

Maybe those of you who frequent the ABC store already knew this, but I did not. It's not like we hang out down there with a restaurant to run and all. Also, we just cannot walk in down there and buy liquor. We have to phone or fax the order in and then go pick it up at least 24 hours later. So, we have no incentive to visit our friends at the local ABC store and thus are the very last to know what is in stock.

Long story short, a bottle arrived at the restaurant and I cracked the top. Wow! Now I knew what the fuss was about. This liqueur has a gorgeous perfume of passion fruit, pears, dried peaches, and dried apricots, but mainly of passion fruit. I could definitely work with this.

I can see lots of dessert and sauce applications for this liqueur. How about a splash of it in a fruit salsa, or crème anglaise, or crème brûlée? But mostly I can see excellent cocktails and I devised one that is still unnamed.

1-1/2 parts vodka
1-1/2 parts St. Germain
1/4 part Campari
2 dashes orange bitters
1/2 part fresh lemon juice
1/2 part simple syrup
Float of prosecco

Rim a chilled martini glass with colored sugar (this cocktail is tart). Shake all ingredients except the prosecco and strain into the glass. Float prosecco on top. Cheers!

Vote: Bartender, hit me one more time! A must-have for our bar and our dessert menu.

Alien Ingredient #1: Dwarf Truffle Peaches

Dwarf truffle peaches. The name was enough to get me to order a jar of these sight unseen. I mean seriously WTF do peaches, truffles, and dwarves have to do with each other?

These come from Italy where they pickle the immature green fruit that they thin to reduce the fruit load on the trees so as to increase the size and flavor of the remaining peaches and/or so as not to overload the branches to the point where they might snap.* After pickling, they are packed in a truffle oil. This jar contains a full kilogram of product and a good liter of nice tasting truffle oil. In fact, the biggest win of this product may be using the truffle oil to flavor dishes long after the peaches are gone. I can already imagine browning spätzle in it or dressing green beans in it.

[*The original text, quoted from manufacturer's web site read: "any unripe tiny green peaches off the trees at the end of the season". There aren't unripe green peaches on trees at the end of the season.]

The peaches are the size of very large olives and are very crisp all the way through. The pit is undeveloped as you can see in the photo, so the whole thing is edible. The pickle cure is a bit vinegary but also a bit sweet. The peaches themselves are very crispy crunchy in a pleasant way. You wouldn't want to eat more than a couple of them (nor most other pickles) but they will make neat garnishes for charcuterie plates and would definitely make quite the upscale martini garnish.

You gotta love the label that looks like it was cooked up on somebody's home computer and printed on his ink jet printer. How sketchy!

Vote: pretty cool product packed in an oil that may be more useful than the product itself. We like these cute little guys.

Index to the 2011 Series

During 2011, twice each month, on the first day and the fifteenth, I posted about what had happened at the restaurant since the previous post. The whole series gives a picture of a year in the restaurant business. This is the index to the series.

2011 was a crazy year that saw three of the worst months in our history and five of our best months ever. It started horribly in January and ended with a horrible December that saw no holiday parties and very sparse bookings for New Year's Eve. But on balance, 2011 finished up about fifteen percent from 2010 and the improved cashflow let me perform long-delayed renovations.

Given the roller coaster ride in 2011, I have no idea what to expect in 2012 as we start our tenth year at this location, except for more of the same.

January
January 1: New Year's Eve redux, trying to close the 2010 books
January 15: First snow of 2011, 2010 books closed, root vegetable tasting, new lunch menu, Valentine's menu planning, IRS woes, head line cook leaving

February
February 1: January worst month ever, escalating shrimp prices, Valentine's menu set, new cooking classes set, searching for new line cook, wine dinner canceled
February 15: Valentine's redux—"brutal," chef's tastings, cooking classes, staging line cook candidates, seafood vendor goes out of business

March
March 1: First local green veg of 2011, new lunch menu published, dining room renovation starts
March 15: Cooking classes start, new table top purchases, new table linens, dining room reconfiguration, South African wine dinner

April
April 1: April Fool's menu, taxes and more taxes, more renovation, tasting dinners
April 15: Food show, new chocolate, new menu covers, first morels, cooking classes end, new chairs arrive, new divider built, anticipating our annual vacation

May
May 1: Spring rains, asparagus and morels, dining room painting commences, Apple Blossom Festival, annual holiday
May 15: Recovering from annual vacation, prom/graduation/Mother's Day trifecta, deck opens, asparagus!, dining room painted

June
June 1: Rain, rain, rain!; busy-busy pre-Memorial Day; softshell crabs, English peas, strawberries; French class visits; Glen Manor Vineyards wine dinner; hypercaffeination; phone scams
June 15: Softshell crabs and asparagus are done, cherries arrive, dining room ceiling painted, wine list renovation, public demonstrations, planning for Linden wine dinner

July
July 1: June a fantastic sales month, produce company imposes minimum order, why dishes sell—or don't, Linden dinner redux, holes in the dining room walls, planning for garlic dinner, summer vegetables arrive in the market
July 15: Corkage fees and etiquette, lunch just dies, the health inspector visits, it is pickling season, peaches and corn arrive, local rabbits and lambs, electrical wiring

August
August 1: 100-degree forecast as bad as a blizzard forecast, it is hot in the kitchen, garlic dinner redux, shell beans arrive in the market, squash crop fails, tomatoes arrive, we respond by making fresh mozzarella daily, tweaking the menu
August 15: Business is on a roll, bad year for tomatoes, battles with the City, the dining room makeover is completely finished, Budweiser gets thrown out

September
September 1: Hurricanes and earthquakes, oh my!; annual Harvest Dinner redux; telephone data line woes; new coffee cups; public demo in hurricane rains
September 15: Leaves are falling on the deck, deluges of rain kill business and the grape harvest, Duck Dinner, new local beef turns out tough, more rabbits, first cassoulet of the year, ceiling collapse in the newly renovated dining room

October
October 1: Trees are starting to turn color, we get snubbed at Taste of the Town, drastic lunch menu changes, cool weather halts seafood sales, preventative maintenance, bar renovation commences, butterflies and hummingbirds stop in during migration, working in the dark, possible meals tax increase, Barrel 27 wine dinner
October 15: Crazy busy during leaf season, Around the World in 8 Courses, Balloon Festival weekend, another ceiling collapse, rude customers, hurry up and bake cheesecakes, exhaustion

November
November 1: Accademia di Cucina Italiana dinner; Quickbooks woes; short of table linens; overcooked risotto; sheer exhaustion; snap frost; celery root, collards, sweet potatoes and daikon appear at the market; dishwasher woes; hatchet job review; snow is forecast and really happens!
November 15: Business falls off a cliff, negative cashflow, new sculptures for the walls, wine list renovation, lots of chef's tastings, dishwasher woes get worse

December
December 1: Thanksgiving week redux, open or closed for Christmas Eve?, chef's tastings, dishwasher is fired, bar renovation is complete save for delivery of bar stools, unemployment hearing for fired dishwasher
December 15: Business is awful, no holiday parties this year, starting to close 2011, fired dishwasher denied unemployment, scramble to publish New Year's Eve menu, bar stools delivered and bar is reopened, line cook resigns, prep cook promoted, photoshoot, planning for staff Christmas party