Osteria Elisir (D.C.)

When Elisir opened a year and half ago, it was a formal white-tablecloth restaurant serving modernist Italian dishes. Judging by the photos of Chef Enzo Fargione’s work, like the ones in the review stories proudly displayed on the wall near the restrooms, the kitchen was concocting dazzling sculptures so beautiful I imagine it was difficult to take that first bite.

For whatever reason, be it the formality or the price of the tasting menus, despite excellent reviews, Washington didn’t bite, as least not enough for the restaurant to make money. So Elisir was transformed into Osteria Elisir, a casual Italian trattoria with an a la carte menu of antipasti, pasta and meat and seafood entrees. The tables were bared. The walls were repainted in shades of brown and decorated with mirrors and half wine barrels.

I never visited Elisir in its original formal incarnation but was pleased to enjoy dinner there recently, about a month into its casual transformation. The food may not have been as artful as it once was, but it was still quite good. Tender porchetta infuses a bowl of tagliolini pasta with smoky, salty flavors augmented by a conservative sprinkle of smoked mozzarella and bitter arugula. The stringy noodles have a rough texture like they were hand-cut and reminded me a bit of ramen actually.

Although the rigatoni doesn’t appear to also be homemade, it has good texture and flavor, graced with a mushroom-rosemary sauce and pieces of burrata, which is interesting to find in a pasta instead of by itself as a starter where I’ve usually encountered the creamy mozzarella.

The beets in our salad starter were superb, served with mâche greens, oranges, goat cheese and fried artichoke chips. We also had artichoke in our other starter, roasted this time and served with a mix of bell peppers, fennel, frisee, olives and capers. This was good too, although the most pedestrian of the dishes we sampled. Artichokes also appear on the menu fried with lemon, mint, garlic and anchovies.

As a big fan of olive oil, I couldn’t pass up the olive oil and sea salt sampler to accompany our bread basket. It featured a trio of oils from Liguria, Tuscany and Sicily and three accompanying sea salts infused with black olive, red wine and basil. The oils were all quite good and I particularly liked the basil salt, although I couldn’t detect much flavor in the red wine salt. Our meal ended well with a tasty warm almond cake served with ricotta gelato and prosecco-pear gel.

As good as the food was, I wish the service had been better. While our server was quite friendly, there appeared to be something amiss in the dining room, as he seemed to be a bit harried. That Elisir really overdoes the “whisk away” move only added to the sense of rush that surrounded dinner. My cocktail was removed with about a fourth of it left, and I probably would have eaten that last olive in our salad if given the chance. Annoyingly, the also employed the irksome practice of removing one diner’s plate before the other is finished, a move I wouldn’t have expected at a restaurant of this caliber. As fast as things were moving in the dining room, apparently the opposite was going on at the bar, as drink orders (our and our neighbors’) took quite some time to materialize (for which our server kindly made up for with a comped glass of wine).

When Elisir opened, it generated a significant amount of buzz and excitement. Despite the difficult time it may have had, I can’t help but wonder whether, in its new incarnation, things will be any easier. By moving from formal-modern to casual-elegant, the restaurant put itself in direct competition with a number of other fine Italian upscale-casual establishments downtown, such as Fiola and Bibiana. If the dishes at Osteria Elisir were able to retain some of the restaurant’s prior modernist flair, I think it would be on to something, but its current menu, while well-made, doesn’t have that sort of distinction.

Osteria Elisir, 427 11th Street NW (between Pennsylvania Ave. and E Street NW), Washington, D.C. (Metro Center). (202) 546-0088. Reservations: Open Table.

Carrot-Sweet Potato Soup with Bacon

Spring has arrived, but as lamented recently by The New York Times, that doesn't necessarily mean spring produce is available. It's starting to appear though: I saw fresh strawberries at the supermarket this week and the asparagus is looking great. The really good selection won't arrive for me until June, when my local farmers market returns from hiatus.

Until then, I'm stuck with supermarkets (or farmers markets further afield). That's not necessarily so bad. Even pretty typical produce can be satisfying if made well.

When it comes to supermarket produce, carrots and celery are always available and generally in great quantities. Using it up can be a challenge, particularly the celery.

Cynthia Damico, a frequent contributor to the blog A Reluctant Foodie, offered up this simple carrot soup last year.  I followed a few of her suggestions for switching it up: adding sweet potatoes, seasoning it with tarragon and finishing the soup with Greek yogurt.

I paired this soup with a Celery and Peanut Salad inspired by the popular celery stick with peanut butter snack.

Carrot-Sweet Potato Soup with Bacon
Adapted from Carrot Soup by Cynthia Damico for A Reluctant Foodie as adapted from EatingWell:  EatingWell on a Budget (2010), March/April 2011

1 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, diced
1 shallot, minced
3 garlic cloves, smashed
Salt, to taste
4-5 medium carrots, peeled and sliced thin
1 sweet potato, peeled and sliced thin
2 tbsp. chopped tarragon
1 tsp. dried thyme
4 cups low sodium chicken stock
1 cup water
1/2 bacon, cut into 1/4-inch strips (lardons)
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup lowfat Greek yogurt

1. Heat butter and olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, shallot and garlic, season with salt and cook until softened, about 6-8 minutes. Add carrots, sweet potato, tarragon and thyme, stirring to combine with onion mixture and cook for about 5 minutes. Add chicken stock and water, increase heat to bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Heat a medium frying pan over medium heat. Cook bacon lardons, remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.

3. Add pepper to soup. Puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in Greek yogurt. Serve in bowls topped with bacon.

Celery and Peanut Salad

To accompany my Carrot-Sweet Potato Soup with Bacon and use up that other perennial vegetable--the celery--I concocted this simple salad inspired by the classic snack of celery sticks with peanut butter.

Celery and Peanut Salad

2 cups of celery (about 4 stalks), sliced at an angle into 1/8-inch thick pieces
6-8 mint leaves, roughly torn
1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. white wine vinegar
1/2 tbsp. honey
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup chopped unsalted peanuts

Combine celery and mint in a medium bowl. Whisk together oil, vinegar, honey and salt. Pour over celery and toss to combine. Top with chopped peanuts.

The Feed: April 17, 2013

The Feed is my weekly round up of interesting food-related stories from newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites.

Washington Post: “The Washington Post Cookbook,” by Bonnie S. Benwick.
Three cheers to Bonnie Benwick, who is deservedly pleased to see the publication of the Washington Post Food section’s first cookbook, an effort she oversaw last year while serving as interim Food editor when Joe Yonan was on hiatus (a task she exceled at, as evidenced by the Post’s win in my Food (Section) Fight! last year). Benwick provides a nice preview of the book, out this week, which is comprised of recipes from the Post’s archive chosen by readers.

U.S. News and World Report: “You’ll Gladly Die for Your Children; Why Won’t You Cook for Them?” by Yoni Freedhoff.
Echoing themes from Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat, Freedhoff examines why many parents too often turn to unhealthy convenience and restaurant food for feeding their children and offers some suggestions for how to change this.

Washington Post: “Greek salad days,” by David Hagedorn.
Hagedorn presents an insightful look at the Greek salad, describing its classic form (horiatiki) and some modern twists courtesy of D.C. chefs serving Greek-inspired plates, including Mike Isabella, whose Greek eatery Kapnos is due to open soon. The best part of this article is the revelation that the new chef at Ripple is planning a hybrid panzanella-Greek salad featuring fried bread with garlic and thyme. I’ll definitely be heading there this summer. He includes some great recipes, including his take on the horiatiki and dakos, a Cretan salad similar to panzanella.

New York Times: “Ice Cream’s Identity Crisis,” De Gustibus by Dan Barry.
As a kid, I loved Breyer’s Ice Cream and, even though I didn’t care about ingredient like I do today, I remember being struck by their ads proclaiming the ice cream was made with just milk, cream, sugar and natural flavors. Barry reveals that today’s Breyer’s is a very different product, with many of its newer flavors having strayed from the company’s natural origins to use all sorts of processed ingredients. I found, for example, that Breyer’s Extra Creamy Vanilla contains diglycerides, one of the ingredients the brand thumbed its nose at in this ad from 1983. So processed are some Breyer’s flavors that they can’t even call it “ice cream.”

Salon: “Sustainable pork farming is real,” by Barry Estabrook.
Salon profiles Missouri pig farmer Russ Kremer, whose farm that uses sustainable methods to farm pigs was the inspiration of Chipotle’s recent memorable ad. It’s an interesting story about why Kremer abandoned more industrial methods of raising pigs after it almost killed him.

The Kitchn: “12 Food Writers Share Their Favorite 3-Ingredient Cocktails,” by Faith Durand.
While I have no fear of wild cocktail concoctions, sometimes it’s nice to keep it simple. The Kitchn has assembled a great list of easy classics like the Negroni, Moscow Mule and “Pink” Gin.

The Atlantic: “Look How Quickly the U.S. Got Fat (1985-2010 Animated Map),” by James Hamblin.
It’s clear that obesity is a serious problem in America. This animated infographic shows just how quickly this has spiraled out of control: in the late ‘80s, there were no states with obesity rates above 15 percent; in 2010 there were no states with obesity rates below 20 percent. Yikes.

Toasted Fazzoletti with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts

Today is the Day of the Mushroom, an apt time for this food holiday to come along when mushroom fanatics are busy foraging for all sorts of unusual varieties of fungi.

Originally, I had planned to celebrate this day with Funghi Calabresi from the Mario Batali Cooks mobile app. But the recipe was so poorly written that I was not entirely sure what I was doing was correct. The results were fine, but not Day of the Mushroom-worthy.

Shoot for "honey-colored" when roasting the pasta flour.

Thankfully, the April issue of Food & Wine has a great recipe to showcase mushrooms: Toasted Fazzoletti with Chanterelles and Hazelnuts. The toasted pasta flour and nuts complement the mushrooms' earthiness. And Fazzoletti is one of the easiest pastas to make at home, since it requires no precision cutting.

You may cut the fazzoletti precisely, but I prefer irregular shapes.

The homemade fazzoletti takes some time to make due to several steps of resting time for the dough, so be sure to plan ahead to allocate enough time. The dough recipe was a little challenging, but not insurmountable. Be sure to watch the flour while it roasts, since it could burn. I removed mine from the oven a little earlier than the recipe called for, since I was concerned it could smoke.

Don't leave the cooked fazzoletti in a bowl too long before adding to the sauce, as they will stick together.

Another challenge with the dough was getting the consistency right. When it came time to roll it out in a pasta machine, it was really sticky. As I kneaded the dough, I added a generous amount of additional flour. After it seemed the pasta flour alone wasn't going to produce a smooth enough dough, I added all-purpose flour, which made the dough a little softer and thus easier to work with.

As I mentioned earlier, fazzoletti are easier to deal with than say linguine or fettuccine, in part because you can just cut the dough into random squares. The recipe called for making 2-inch squares, but rather than discard a lot of little pieces, I made mine more irregular. In the final dish, when the pasta ends up folded into random shapes anyway, it doesn't matter how perfect they are. In fact, I rather like the more rustic look of their irregularity. Be sure not to cook the noodles ahead of time, since they will stick together (prying apart hot noodles is a pain--speaking from experience here).

Although chanterelles were used in the original recipe, I made it with more common cremini mushrooms.

Mushroom aficionados will want to use the chanterelles as called for in the recipe or another interesting mushroom. Unfortunately, Whole Foods stopped their unusual mushroom promotion the weekend I was buying ingredients for this dish, so I had to settle for cremini mushrooms, which were still quite delicious.

Toasted Fazzoletti with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts
Adapted from Toasted Fazzoletti with Chanterelles and Hazelnuts, Food & Wine, April 2013


1/2 cup hazelnuts
6 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 lb. mushrooms, such as chanterelle or cremini, thickly sliced
Salt
Fresh-ground black pepper
1 large shallot, minced
1 tbsp. chopped thyme
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
2 tbsp. sherry vinegar
1 cup low-sodium chicken stock
3/4 lb. fresh toasted fazzoletti pasta (see recipe below)
1/4 cup snipped chives


1. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Spread the hazelnuts in a pie plate or on a baking sheet and toast for 12 minutes, until the skins split and the nuts are fragrant. Allow the nuts to cool a bit, then transfer the nuts to a clean kitchen towel, fold the towel the nuts and rub the nuts vigorously between the two layers of towel to remove the skins. Coarsely chop the nuts, if desired (I left mine whole).

2. In a large, deep skillet, cook 4 tbsp. of the unsalted butter over moderate heat until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until all of the liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms are golden, about 8 minutes. Add the shallot, thyme and crushed red pepper and cook over moderately high heat for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the vinegar and cook until evaporated, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Add the stock and simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook the fazzoletti until al dente, about 3 minutes (I recommend cooking them in two batches to avoid crowding the pot). Drain and add the pasta to the skillet, along with the remaining 2 tbsp. of butter. Cook over moderate heat, stirring, until the pasta is coated with butter. Stir in the chives and serve in shallow bowls, garnishing with the toasted hazelnuts.



Fresh Toasted Fazzoletti
Adapted from Food & Wine, April 2013


3 cups durum wheat flour (or pasta flour), plus more for dusting (I used about a cup of all-purpose flour)
5 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp. kosher salt


1. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Spread 1 cup of the flour on a baking sheet and toast for about 30 minutes, stirring once, until fragrant and honey-colored (I pulled mine a little sooner, about 25 minutes total). Let the flour cool.

2. In a food processor, combine the toasted flour with the remaining 2 cups of flour and pulse. With the machine on, add the eggs, milk and salt and blend until the dough comes together; turn out onto a floured work surface and knead 2 or 3 times to form a soft, supple dough. Wrap the dough in plastic and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours.

3. Cut the dough into smaller pieces (judge this based on your pasta machine; the original recipe said 4 pieces, but I did 8, since that worked better in my pasta machine). Using a pasta machine on the thickest setting, run 1 piece of dough through the machine, dusting with flour. Fold the dough in thirds and run it through the machine at the same setting. Continue to run the dough on successively thinner settings until you are 1 setting from the thinnest (I made the dough a little thicker than this--setting 4 on a Kitchen Aid pasta machine). Dust the dough with flour and drape over a floured work surface while you repeat with the remaining dough. Cut the pasta into 2-inch squares and dust lightly with flour. Let the squares stand at room temperature for 1 hour, tossing occasionally.

Book Review: Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss

A few weeks ago I did something I hardly ever do. I ate a Cheeto. And not just one, of course, but the whole bag, since how do you stop with just one? Or even 21, which is a single serving as defined by Frito-Lay, delivering 150 calories from 10 grams of fat, 13 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of protein, plus about 10 percent of the recommended daily allowance of sodium and just a trace of fiber. Its ingredients include whey protein concentrate, monosodium glutamate and “cheese seasoning.” A Cheeto may be orange, but it’s no carrot.

Why did I do this? I’d just read “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food,” a New York Times Magazine article by Michael Moss that preceded the recent release of his book, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. In the article, he talked with a former Nestlé food scientist about what makes Cheetos so appealing. The scientist honed in on the product’s “vanishing caloric density,” a phenomenon of the food melting in your mouth in a way that tricks your brain into thinking the food has fewer calories, allowing you to eat more before becoming satisfied, a trick Moss compares to popcorn.

It’s the sort of anecdote that makes Salt Sugar Fat an appealing mix of nutrition-minded facts about familiar junk food brands augmented with first-hand insider information that gets behind the “it’s bad for you” rhetoric we all know to be true and into the reasons why, nonetheless, we still crave it.

Moss argues the key to these cravings are the foods’ balances of sugar, fat and salt, which processed food companies carefully formulate to achieve the “bliss point,” that right mix of taste and texture that will attract the most consumers. Each of these ingredients acts on consumers differently, and it was fascinating to learn about this. Sugar, for example, is more attractive to children than adults, and there’s a point to which consumers start to like a product less when it has too much sugar. Getting the sugar right is important, since this is the element in the trio that will “hook” you, unfortunately quite literally for some over-eaters who must swear off sugar to counter obesity. Fat, in contrast, has no bliss point—the more fat the better.

Salt is perhaps the most elusive one, given that it’s not really a food (it’s a mineral and therefore contains no calories). I was already aware that salt is a flavor that your palate can become used to, requiring increasingly greater quantities for you to really taste the saltiness (I’ve read this is why some chefs are prone to over-salting their food). What I didn’t realize is how this state isn’t permanent. Anyone who craves salty snacks need only abstain for a period of time and their craving for salt will go away. Once pleasurably salty foods will, with time, taste over-salted, an experience I had eating McDonalds after years of swearing off such fast-food restaurants.

Some may be surprised to find that many of the industry insiders Moss spoke to do not eat the snacks they helped to perfect. Some purposefully avoid them, while for others, junk food is just not part of their lifestyle. After all, these are highly paid executives, and it’s an unfortunate truth that unhealthy food is most consumed by—and therefore most targeted to—lower income brackets. It costs more to eat a diet of varied fresh fruit, vegetables, lean meats and whole grains from farmers markets and upscale grocers than it does to subsist on processed convenience foods from the corner store.

These economic issues have been touched on before, most effectively by Tracie McMillan in The American Way of Eating but also Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. While Pollan suggested that Americans should be willing to pay more for their food to eat better, McMillan rightly pointed out the unfairness of this, given that Americans pay more for other services (like childcare) than other countries. While Moss’ book gives good context to these broader socio-economic issues, its greatest value lies with its insider views, particularly the insights into the foods’ science.

While Moss deftly describes the science he sees at work, he’s not taken in by it, particularly the companies’ efforts to address obesity, a problem they are aware of and willing to wade into but not at the cost of their profits. His critique of the Nestlé research center in Switzerland reminded me of Pollan’s recent takedown of molecular gastronomy in Lucky Peach. In both cases, the writers see talented, smart people who could be solving real problems but are instead engaged in work with less lofty goals:

“The research center was all very impressive and state-of-the-art…but ultimately it was disappointing. By the end of my visit, I came to realize that if Nestlé was going to save the world from obesity or any of the other ill effects of processed foods, it wasn’t going to be in our lifetimes. The food that people bought in the grocery store was so perfectly engineered to compel overconsumption that Nestlé’s scientists, for all their spectacular technology and deep knowledge of food science, were finding it impossible to come up with viable solutions.”

Overconsumption is a key concept in Salt Sugar Fat. Moss writes about how companies, particularly the soda makers, target their marketing to “heavy users,” people who already use their product a lot that they believe they can sell more to. It’s easy to see how this has played out at the store. As a kid, I remember soda was sold in single-serving cans (12 oz.) and bottles (16 oz.), and the multi-serving two-liter size. Today, 7-Eleven sells a Double Gulp—a serving meant for one person—that’s 64 ounces,  almost as much product as the two-liter package once meant to serve a group. A 64-oz. Coke contains the equivalent of 44 teaspoons of sugar, nearly 1 cup or as much as I would put in a batch of cookies.

When Americans can so easily buy a 64-oz. Coke but have limited options for buying fresh carrots (see the USDA’s new food deserts map), it’s no wonder that obesity continues to be a problem. With increasing healthcare costs that can be linked back to diet (diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, to name a few now common afflictions), something must be done to get Americans out of the convenience store and back in the kitchen. Moss isn’t offering any solutions, but it’s a wonderful contribution to the “problem definition” discussion that those concerned about how we eat are having these days.

Celebrate National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day

April is Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month, and in fact April 12 is Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, so it is most appropriate today to celeberate this cheesiest of national food holidays.

Grilled cheese is something people can get pretty particular about. I have a friend who swears they are best made with cheap white bread and processed American cheese. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are quite a few gourmet incarnations with added meats, vegetables and an assortment of cheese and bread combinations.

Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle. I like to keep it simple but use really good ingredients. My favorite grilled cheese sandwich uses buttered good sourdough bread and a mix of gruyere and sharp white cheddar cheeses. I like to mix it up though; the sandwich picture above uses 12-grain bread, for example.

See that little bit of cheese on the right that fell off the bread? You know when that gets crispy that it's going to be awesomely good.

Assembling the sandwich carefully is very important. Although shredded cheese will melt easier, I find that makes a real mess when it's time to flip the sandwich. Instead, I prefer layering small, thin slices of cheese, alternating between the gruyere and the cheddar.

The cooking technique is also important. If you cook the sandwich too fast, the bread will toast before the cheese has a chance to melt. I like to start with a cold frying pan set over medium-low heat. So the first side spends a lot more time cooking than the other side, but this allows the sandwich to slowly come up to temperature, giving the cheese a chance to melt.

For added flavor, I like to borrow a few moves from another cheese favorite: traditional Swiss cheese fondue. I swipe a raw cut garlic clove across the surface of the pan before I heat it. Then, as I layer the cheese, I add sprinkle of ground nutmeg and fresh ground white or black pepper. A sprinkle of truffle salt would be good too, but that might be getting too fancy.

The Cook In / Dine Out Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Makes 1 sandwich

1 garlic clove, peeled and cut in half
2 slices good quality bread, such as sourdough or 12-grain
2 teaspoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 oz. aged gruyere cheese, thinly sliced
1 1/2 oz. sharp white cheddar cheese, thinly sliced
Pinch of ground nutmeg
Pinch of fresh-ground white or black pepper

1. Rub the cut side of the garlic clove on the bottom of a frying pan. Set over medium-high heat. While the pan is still cold, spread 1 tsp. butter on one side of one piece of bread and lay in the pan buttered side down. Layer the cheese on top of the bread, alternating between types and adding a sprinkle of nutmeg and pepper about halfway through. Place the other piece of bread on top and spread the other tsp. of butter on top of that piece.

2. Cook the sandwich until the cheese starts to melt and the bottom piece is nicely toasted, about 10 minutes. Carefully flip the sandwich over and continue cooking until the other piece of bread is toasted, another 3-5 minutes. Remove from pan and slice in half. Be sure to eat any bits of cheese that escaped the sandwich and browned in the pan.