1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (130 page)

At Alinea, visual surprises and puns abound.

Spain has Ferran Adrià, that molecular wizard whose culinary feats stunned and delighted foodies around the world (see
listing
). And Chicago has Grant Achatz, whose similarly innovative cuisine can be enjoyed in a spacious, peaceful restaurant called Alinea.

There, Achatz works his flavor miracles on dishes that look and sound improbable—until the first bite dispels all traces of doubt. These are dishes that force diners to reevaluate their ideas about food and flavor, dishes that anyone claiming the title of knowledgeable gourmand must experience firsthand.

They are creations that fall into the category dubbed molecular gastronomy, which perhaps would be better described as reduction cooking—a modern twist on a long tradition of classic French techniques such as simmering down broth repeatedly to achieve maximum flavor concentration, or scraping browned drippings from a roasting pan for the most intensely rich sauce base, a demi-glace. A similar idea guides the notion of espresso, in which coffee beans are dark-roasted and ground to a fine powder to allow intense, complete extraction of flavor.

With all sorts of technical innovations at their disposal, a cadre of well-educated, science-savvy chefs have been taking these notions even further: reducing ingredients to their most essential, concentrated flavors and presenting them in minimalistic forms such as foams or sheer, glassy gels. (In the best case scenarios, these will be combined with bits of solid food.)

“Ingredients plus manipulation equals finished dish,” Achatz writes in his book
Alinea.
And what finished dishes they are, consistently presented in the most original ways and created not to shock, but to enhance the inherent qualities of the ingredients themselves.

In one dish, that might mean a silk-sheer strip of translucent bacon that is dried under low heat rather than fried to crispness, and suspended from a delicate wire “swing.” (Hanging the bacon not only shows it off to advantage but also keeps it from crumbling or becoming soggy, as it might if lying on a plate.) And the tricks don’t stop there. To round out the flavor profile with a touch of aromatic, candied sweetness, light lacings of dried apple and fresh thyme leaves are “glued” to the bacon with beadlike pipings of butterscotch.

A blast of flavor is an Achatz goal, and one he certainly achieves in his signature black truffle explosion—sliced black truffle and gelled black truffle juice topped with a gentle roll of silky romaine and a crunchy wafer of Parmesan cheese. One can find similarly subtle eruptions
of taste and texture with ingredients as lofty as caviar or as earthy as beets. An ethereal combination of gelled cucumber and green almonds looks like a modern glass paperweight but tastes a whole lot better—cool, both sweet and bitter, and teasingly salty. On the rustic side, Achatz serves what is essentially a Japanese
donburi
casserole: pork, vegetables, and tofu steamed in heady broth. Where’s the hitch? The ingredients are steamed in a sealed plaster globe. Broken open with a big wooden mallet at the table (by the diner, no less), it emits clouds of mouthwatering aromas.

When a thick, celadon-green plastic sheet is thrown across the table and Achatz himself appears armed with all manner of sweet ingredients—fruit (some fresh and some in syrup or jam form), nuts, and chocolate (variously in bits, syrup, and cream)—it’s time for dessert. This lot comes in tubes and bottles, with which Achatz proceeds to do a Jackson Pollock of sweet dribbles, to be combined and eaten with fingers or spoons.

These creations and many more may appear on a menu that changes with the seasons and with Achatz’s latest inspiration. It may not be a dinner for every night, but then no one goes to Alinea simply because he or she is hungry.

Where:
1723 N. Halsted St., Chicago, tel 312-867-0110,
alinearestaurant.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Alinea
by Grant Achatz (2008).

What do gods eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? According to the ancient Greeks, ambrosia was the food of choice on Mount Olympus. The word itself comes from the term for immortality, a quality the amorphous but presumably delicious substance—whose exact components have never been specified in any text—was said to bestow upon anyone who ate it.

Enterprising Southerners were clearly inspired by that tantalizing promise when they conceived of what would become one of the region’s most iconic and time-honored desserts, which began to appear in cookbooks toward the end of the nineteenth century. At its most basic, ambrosia is a layered salad of thinly sliced seedless oranges (preferably navels) topped with freshly grated coconut and a little confectioners’ sugar, chilled well and then piled high in a punch bowl and neatly ladled out into bowls. Juicy, sweet, and cold, the dish was originally intended as a light, easy dessert to enjoy after a heavy meal—say, Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. And, presented in this way, ambrosia is indeed a treat, one that’s both refreshing and surprisingly satisfying, especially if a generous sprinkling of sherry is added to the fruit.

Many, many variations on the theme have grown up along with the dish. Some Southern cooks add layers of sliced bananas or cubed pineapple, and sometimes both. Some substitute the easier-to-find sweetened coconut. Many prepare a mixture of fresh orange juice, honey, and a little Cointreau or rum and pour it over the top of the fruit-and-coconut layers before chilling the dish. All are appropriate and pleasing tweaks that don’t deviate too far from the original. But a version of ambrosia that seems to have first appeared in the late 1950s, involving
canned mandarin oranges, canned pineapple, marshmallows, maraschino cherries, and mayonnaise … this, as its chilling list of ingredients makes clear, is something to avoid at all costs.

Where:
In Savannah, GA
, Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, tel 912-232-5997,
mrswilkes.com
Mail order:
For seedless navel oranges, Hale Groves, tel 800-562-4502,
halegroves.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Southern Food
by John Edgerton (1993);
The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern
by Matt Lee and Ted Lee (2009);
Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking
by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart (2012);
saveur.com
(search ambrosia).

Abigail Adams, apple pandowdy fan.

The much-loved apple has played a starring role in countless pies, crisps, crumbles, cobblers, pandowdies, slumps, grunts, betties, and more. A baked pudding, the betty consists of alternating layers of sugared and spiced fruit and golden-brown, buttered bread crumbs, combining into a delectable mix of meltingly soft aromatic apple and crunchy crumbs. It’s a classic dessert that likely derives from the English pie-making tradition. First referred to in print in 1864 (although no one has ever been able to identify exactly who Betty was), the sweet treat achieved mass popularity in the United States after World War II—probably because it was easy to prepare on increasingly busy weeknights—then went on to become a mainstay of 1950s high school home-economics classes. All marriageable girls were expected to be able to make it—and why not? Its preparation is straightforward and the result is aromatic, homey, juicy perfection.

Pandowdy is another fine stage for apples, differing from apple brown betty in its use of a pastry crust (rather than layers of bread crumbs) that is pressed down slightly into the mixture; it also often contains maple syrup or brown sugar. The “dowdy” in the name isn’t meant to be disparaging. Traditionally, dowdies were dishes of cooked fruit baked under a crust. In colonial days, “dowdying” meant slashing a pastry so as to submerge the crust into the dish’s succulent filling—which probably explains how the dish got its name.

Eighteenth-century Americans baked this fragrant dessert in a skillet overnight, setting it in the embers of the hearth and then serving it in the morning for breakfast. Said to have been beloved by former first lady Abigail Adams, it is considered a precursor to the modern cobbler, crisp, or crumble.

The first step for both of these desserts is to choose the right apples, which is to say, those with a balance of sweet and tart flavors and a flesh that doesn’t break down in the oven; good options include Cortland, Northern Spy, or a
combination thereof. These should be peeled, cored, and cut into chunks or slices, then tossed with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

The best way to serve these treats is gently warm. Although vanilla ice cream seems an obvious accompaniment, better to copy the old English tradition of setting out a pitcher of cold heavy sweet cream to be poured over each serving.

Where:
In Boston
, Durgin-Park, tel 617-227-2039,
durgin-park.com
;
in Bethel, ME
, The Bethel Inn Resort, tel 800-654-0125,
bethelinn.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Politics and Pot Roast
by Sarah Hood Salomon (2006);
The American Heritage Cookbook
by the editors of American Heritage Publ. Co. (1964);
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
, 13th edition, by Marion Cunningham (1996);
epicurious.com
(search maple apple pandowdy; apple brown betty lewis);
foodnetwork.com
(search apple pandowdy lagasse).
See also:
Tarte Tatin
;
Apple Pie
.

Not even such iconic American foods as hot dogs and hamburgers enjoy the status conferred on apple pie, the dessert that seems synonymous with all things homespun, simple, and true. Odd, considering that apple pies of all sorts are produced in virtually every European country, and that England’s centuries-long history of meat and fruit pies is undoubtedly the inspiration behind this most American passion.

These days, apple pie can get short shrift as a mass-produced dessert, in coffee shops and chain restaurants where crusts approximate wet cardboard and canned apple fillings are mawkishly gooey. For the most part, that leaves home bakers to preserve the reputation of this national culinary treasure, a golden-brown, double-crust pie filled with juicy cinnamon-and sugar-enriched apples. And protect it they do, with great pride and many strongly held opinions.

One of the most common sources of argument among apple pie mavens is the type of apple best suited to the task. Some swear by greenings or Granny Smiths, their critics contending that these very sour fruits require too much sugar, resulting in a filling that is wet and syrupy, in an unpardonably soggy crust. Those whose chief concern is the possibility of a hot, sweet liquid oozing all over the oven choose the Golden Delicious, the least flavorful option but the driest. True cognoscenti opt for the snow-white, sweet/tart Cortland and/or the firm, full-flavored Northern Spy, both at their best between September and November. (Whichever the apple in your pie, it’s wise to place a piece of aluminum foil under the pie pan in the oven, lest even the most reliable varieties result in a dripping, sticky mess.)