Yes We Publican

Two posts into our second life and already this blog is in a rut: yes, I'm going to write about Publican, too—this time about the Allagash beer dinner. Why? Because I want to ruin it for us by telling you how great it is, so that you'll go, and we'll never be able to sit in the Watson Seats again. It happened at 112 Eatery in Minneapolis, you know—though, let's be honest, the entire freaking world already knows about this place.

Actually, we didn't even get to sit in the Watson Seats this time, but we did sit at about the same spot of the bar where we did for the New Holland beer dinner back in August—the fact that I initially wrote "a few weeks ago" instead of "August" gives you a sense of one of the challenges we're up against in writing this blog. Anyway, that had been a crowded affair, with lots of standees and many Friends of the House. We had charming if mildly distracted service from a guy named Paulie, who sealed his place in the Munch Detective pantheon by sneaking us a couple shots of Sortilège, which ought to be sad cliché (it's a mix of maple syrup and whiskey—and indeed, it is Canadian) but capped a night of mesmerizing pairings. Is there a more perfect beer for a snout-to-tail joint like the Publican than New Holland's Charkoota Rye? I think not—though, as the name implies, you have to like smoky flavors. But, friends, Chicagoans, gastronomes, who among us does not?

All right, where was I? Oh yes, at the bar at Publican with Watson, looking enviously at the couple of British spies who had commandeered our favorite seats. What, not spies? Just balding guys with trenchcoats who ate very slowly? OK, fine. Paulie was on the case again tonight, and once again he delivered the goods. It's amazing how a little extra in the pours and a side shot of cider will get a couple to want to come back pretty much every week.

Yes, yes, we're easy marks and we like our beer. And wine. And liquor. But for god's sake, man, what about the food?

First up tonight was a velvet-on-velvet combination of wee Nantucket scallops (remarkably crisp yet not overcooked) and celery-root puree. Pureed with what, you ask? Butter, silly. A couple large truffle shavings were actually superfluous. I never remember in my own cooking to add like to like—you hand me some small, sweet scallops and I start thinking about drowning them in balsamic vinegar—but here the textures created an inimitable mouth-bath of silky richness. The Allagash pairing was the Curieux, and a good thing, too, because due to a comical series of misinterpretations and one startling gesture of bad faith, Watson had poured out a glass of the stuff I'd been drinking just the night before. It's true I was asleep on the couch at the time and had said something profound like "Grrzzflltt" when asked if I was done with my beer, but it just goes to show that you never really know anyone. So the manifestation of a glass of the creamy, saisony stuff (aged in bourbon barrels, doncha know) was even more welcome than it would have been otherwise.

As good as this was, we were knocked back by the followup: squid pizza. Actually, squid-arugula-tapenade pizza. Oh yes, there was guanciale on there, too. Them's hog jowls (snout-to-tail, remember). And then there were some Fresno peppers and lots and lots of salt. I will want this dish on my deathbed, but I hope to have it many more times before then. The peppery Allagash Fluxus stood up to it but was ultimately overwhelmed. I should mention somewhere—here, perhaps—that this dinner was much less crowded than the New Holland one; my theory is that the New Holland guys have a lot of friends in Chicago, whereas no one knows that guy from Portland.

Onward! Paulie draped himself over the back of the chair (no, he's not a cat; it's the easiest way for him to talk to bar patrons) and let us know that he was about 80 days into a periodic 90-day TV fast. "I've read everything in my apartment," he said, "including a book by Leo Buscaglia." He then nabbed two suspiciously full glasses of Interlude, a rich red-purple ale with an intense grapiness, and slid them before us. It was about as plummy as you could imagine a beer to be, and we wondered (a) what could be paired with it and (b) whether Paulie would sink so low as to read Dan Brown. We got an answer to the first question with the arrival of plate of turkey, a meat I do not care for.

And yet... and yet... oh, Publican, we love you so. Here the turkey was done two ways—first as a smoky hamlike slab and then as a, uh, breaded and deep-fried turkey finger? That part didn't enchant me, but the pseudo-ham was topped with little roasted brussels sprouts, slivers of pear, and shavings of actual ham. (A New Yorker writer or Frank Bruni would call this ham on not-ham pairing "witty." I will not.) The denseness of the dish cried out for red wine—or, conveniently, winey beer. As anyone with tastebuds knows, fruit beers can be abominations of sweetness or amiably pointless. Interlude doesn't actually have any fruit in it, which is probably the secret of its success (it's the blend of yeasts and the barreling that do the work), but it provided the same kind of sweetness that a chutney might, in other circumstances.

Paulie, who had by this time taken to calling us his gang, swept our plates away, brought over the beer guy for a chat, slipped us some cider, and announced that he'd served three tours in the military (Somalia, Yugoslavia, and, um, Iraq? We were getting a little hazy by now) and has a bullet still in his leg. Obviously, we were in love.

Dessert arrived and sent us nattering back to childhood—albeit a much fancier and stranger childhood than either of us actually had: chocolate gelato, with salted peanuts, scorched little marshmallows, and a dildonic piece of candied banana. This came with Allagash Black, a smooth, dry stout that slithered across the palate. The only thing that would have made it better would have been two short glasses of the crimson Cantillon kriek that had been poured from the taps in front of us all evening. Why, thank you, Paulie, don't mind if I do. And I take back that crack about fruit beers.

Is there something unseemly about us gorging ourselves into oblivion while being fawned over by a veteran pantomiming friendship? There is. In our defense, we weren't actually gorged, and we totally bought the act, especially in its last scene. We thought the play was over, so we rose to go. Paulie was down the bar, with another couple, whom he turned quickly from to come shake our hands and say, "Let me walk you to the door." Which he did. It was charming, it was a little strange, and we made a reservation for next week's cider dinner on the spot. Whatever it is, it works. And we tipped very well.

For the people all said "sit down"

If I'm going to tell you the story that's awakened the Munch Detective from hibernation, I have to tell you about the Watson Seats.

The Watson Seats are those two seats that are tucked away by themselves, revenue-maximizers that are crammed into some corner of a restaurant or into some awkward short row of a theater or sports arena. For example, there are Watson Seats at Midway Stadium (first-base side, top row of Section K) and at the McGuire Theater at the Walker Art Center (Row O). The beauty of Watson Seats is that their relative isolation lets you experience whatever you're there for as though it belongs to you and your companion alone. There's nobody hogging the armrest next to you, nobody eavesdropping as you whisper a critique of that bad jazz ensemble, nobody breathing garlicky breath in your general direction. While most people think the Watson Seats undesirable because they're too far from the action, they're always the preferred seating for Mel and me.

We discovered the Watson Seats last week at The Publican. They're the only two seats on the short side of the L-shaped bar, and they offer a great view of both the kitchen and of the woman who labors with great concentration over the fresh oysters: shucking them, sniffing them delicately, nestling them gently into beds of shaved ice. When Mel and I walked into the Publican at 9:00 on a Thursday, we expected to have to wait a while, having been told by the New York Times Style section some months ago that Thursday is the new Friday. Not only were we seated immediately, we were shown by happenstance to the Watson Seats, where we had excellent beer (including two beauties from Michigan: a Dark Horse Fore Smoked Stout and a New Holland Brother Jacob Dubbel) and delicious, I-never-woulda-thought-of-that seafood-plus-meat dishes (littleneck clams with pork shoulder, squid with kielbasa; both are much more than the sum of their parts). Mel also had oysters—Bagaduces from Maine, described on the Publican menu as "unyielding and brackish"—while I pounced on the homemade crackers that accompanied them.

While we enjoyed our beer and our food, we also enjoyed the show. The Publican is always unbelievably busy, but the staff never seems harried. Nobody’s pitching a fit in the kitchen. Everybody, from the cooks to the busers to the servers, knows exactly what they're doing and knows how to get from point A to point B quickly and unobtrusively. The only ripple happened when the restaurant's co-owner Donnie Madia—leather-jacketed, groovy-spectacled and Jim Jarmusch-haired—walked into the kitchen around 9:45 and started talking, tasting, making the rounds of the kitchen and bar before he started to work the room. Mel and I had a great time watching him. We could tell that he was seeing everything, even in the parts of the restaurant he didn’t seem to be looking at.

Donnie was stationed at the door as we were leaving. "How was your dinner?" he asked. "Terrific," I told him. "This place makes us really happy." "Oh, you had the best seats, those seats at the oyster bar," he enthused. “We love them,” I replied. Donnie grinned and turned to the woman at the host stand and said, “Hey, can we do a favor? They love those oyster bar seats. Will you put a note in the system so they get those seats whenever they call?” Mel and I (who, I should note, are by no means prone to falling for a suck-up or a glad-hander) swooned. It was a cool thing for him to do, and a supremely savvy one, because those few keystrokes turned us from people who really like the Publican into full-on Publican regulars and evangelists. We’re going tonight for the Allagash beer dinner, and will report on the food and the drinks—and whether we enjoyed them from the Watson Seats.

Trust your own crust

When will I get over my conviction that people who write cookbooks know more than I do, simply by virtue of their having written cookbooks? Maybe I'll get over it when I write my cookbook, topic TBD. (Judging by what's been coming out of my kitchen lately, a meditation on noble culinary failures might be worth exploring.)

My feelings of inferiority are even stronger if said cookbook writer is English and glam and the sister of my darling Daniel Day-Lewis. But listen up, Tamasin Day-Lewis: Your tart crust was ucky. And I knew it didn't seem right when I was putting it together, but I soldiered on, thinking that you couldn't possibly steer me wrong.

Hmph.

Day-Lewis's pie-dough recipe in The Art of the Tart calls for a cup of white or whole wheat flour, four tablespoons of unsalted butter, a pinch of sea salt and two tablespoons or so of ice water. Not enough fat, I thought, and not quite enough water. I was right on both counts. I whirred the (white) flour and salt in the food processor for a few seconds, cut the cold butter over the top of the flour, put the top back on the processor and started working the pulse button. I was waiting for that magical moment when the mixture starts to look like coarse cornmeal . . . and it never came. Know why? Because there wasn't enough fat.

I didn't want to overwork those four paltry little tablespoons of butter, so I laid off the button and started drizzling in some ice water. Day-Lewis warns that too much water makes the crust liable to shrink upon baking, so I was very judicious. But her prescribed two tablespoons (say it with me now) weren't enough to bring the dough together. So I added a bit more water. Then a bit more. And more still. The moment the dough looked the slightest bit clumpy, I dumped it onto the counter and pressed the clumps into a ball, smooshed the ball into a disk, wrapped it in plastic and banged it into the fridge for a half-hour.

When I rolled it out, the damn thing still cracked like the leather seats in a '91 Buick Park Avenue. And when I tasted a scrap, it was flat and floury. (Do you taste raw pastry dough? I did this in front of my father once while on Thanksgiving pie duty and sent him into paroxysms. In my opinion, if it doesn't taste okay raw, it's not going to taste okay baked.)

Despite its dryness, the crust did indeed shrink when blind-baked. It cracked and leaked filling all over the place (this is why I always put my tart pan on a baking sheet). And it tasted flat and floury. The innards were delicious, though, which rescued the project from utter failure.

So, Tamasin, I do owe you thanks for the lovely filling recipe, which I'll certainly use again, and for reminding me that I should more often trust my instincts about whether a recipe is good or not. Say hi to your brother for me. And try this pie-crust recipe, which has never once failed me.

Chard, Gruyère and Crème Fraîche Tart

9-inch unbaked tart shell, chilled
2 heads of Swiss chard
1 cup crème fraîche
4–6 T. whole milk
1 egg, beaten, plus 4 egg yolks
3/4 c. Gruyère, grated
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Strip the leaves off the chard, and wash leaves and ribs carefully. Set the leaves aside for something else (you can sauté them with a little olive oil and garlic and serve them alongside this tart, if you like). Then slice the ribs as you would celery, in 1/4-inch widths, and steam them until tender. Drain and let cool.

Bake the tart shell blind for 15 minutes, then remove the beans, prick the bottom with a fork, brush with beaten egg, and return to the oven for 5 minutes. Turn the oven down to 350 degrees F.

Beat together until smooth the remaining beaten egg, yolks, crème fraîche, and milk, then stir in the cheese and cayenne pepper and, sparingly, some salt and pepper.

Quickly assemble the layer of cooled chard ribs on the tart bottom, pour the custard over the chard, and cook until browned, about 30 minutes.

A Nice Sangy

For reasons I have never investigated, my father, who grew up in the Midwest, has a tendency to call a sandwich a “sangy.” He also—again, for reasons uninvestigated—has long called my sister “Bears-o.” (My sister in no way resembles a bear.) Hence, one of the refrains of my childhood was the lunchtime query, “Care for a sangy, Bears-o?”

Often, she did, and yesterday, I did, too. Unfortunately, my father lives hundreds of miles away, and I’m a grown man, so I had to make do on my own. What we’ve got here is a little mother-of-invention-ish, but it’s also a bit indebted to a sandwich creation in a Chicago brewpub called the CB&J, which is a wonderfully lethal fried mush of cashew butter, Morbier cheese, and fig jam, served alongside a coup-de-grâce of macaroni-and-cheese. Lacking all of those things, I settled for this instead.

First, take a nice hunk of sourdough wheat and slice off a couple of nicely matched slices. Smear the outsides with duck fat. (Yes! The year of duck fat continues!) Resist the urge to call it done. Get a nonstick pan going at medium heat—it is, by the way, more or less all right to heat up a Teflon pan with nothing in it, as long as you’re not using super-high heat and put something in it eventually. Put one slice of bread duck-fat-side-down and listen for the sizzle.

While that’s happening, cut a few healthy slices of cheddar—or, if you’re really going for a knockout, Cotswold. Place them on the bread as it’s sizzling. Layer on a few slices of roasted red pepper (jarred is totally fine). Pick up the second piece of bread and smear some globs of jalapeno jelly or other hot-sweet condiment on the side that doesn’t have any duck fat on it, before pressing it down onto the rest of the sandwich (duck-fat-side up!). Once the bottom of the sandwich has browned up, carefully flip the whole thing and give the top side the same treatment, which won’t take long.

Slide the greasy melty darling from the pan and pile some pickles or rice chips on the side. Console your arteries with the thought that…. um, well, there is no consolation for them, actually. Especially if you used the Cotswold.

Rustlin' Evidence

Pizza is a thing we like to make. You may not feel the need, given the general ubiquity of the form across the country, but to my taste most of it is just unimaginative. New York style? Greasy, limp, and overhyped—seriously, it cannot even be considered edible unless it’s beneath a tidal shoal of hot pepper flakes. Chicago style? Indigestible wodges of cheese drowning in oregano, poured into an oily shell. I know people (like Watson) will jump up and say, “But you’ve never tried this place or that place.” And sure, there are exceptions—New Haven style and Sicilian style, for starters--but for pizza you really, truly bond with, you’ve got to make it yourself. At least I do.

So the optimal Melvin-style ‘za is both a years-long work in progress and an impossibility. There will always be another variation to try, whether in dough makeup, saucing, toppings, or temperatures. What’s below is just last night’s incarnation of a kind we’ve been tinkering for a while, called The Rustler after its inspiration, found at Minnesota’s Pizza Lucé.

Before we get into that, we’ve gotta talk crust. People, crust is not scary. It is not hard. And it does not even take that much time. Here’s all you do for a crust that is crisp, not puffy or oily, but also not crackery: measure a scant tablespoon of yeast into a quarter cup of warm water, then add a pinch of sugar and dissolve. In a large bowl, mix roughly 2 2/3 cups white flour with a very healthy tablespoon of your favorite salt. We’re using kosher right now, but coarse sea salt adds a nice crunch. You can use a little rye flour in place of some of the white if you must. Once the yeast proofs, mix it into the flour along with 2 tbsp. each olive oil and milk. This has been a point of great variation—the milk makes for a crispier crust, but adding too much of it can lead to weird exudations later on. Also add another quarter cup of water—I like to swirl this around the yeast bowl to make sure you get all that bacterial goodness.

Mix everything together a little and see if it’s too dry. For years, I aimed for a dry dough, but this was wrong. You want what comes together here to be wet but not sticky—you’ll get a feel the more you do this. So add some more water if it seems like a good idea, but try not to wait until things are really coming together because it’s harder to incorporate the water after a while. If it gets too wet, hey, add a little flour. (This is not astrophysics.) Knead the dough for just a few minutes—it can be very satisfying to pick this moist ball up in your hand and slam it down into the bowl or onto a board, if you’re using one. I tend to just use the bowl, since the dough is wet enough not to leave any flour behind. In any event, grease a bowl with some olive oil, put the dough into it, turn it once, and leave it to rise.

Oh, no, a rise! How long is this going to take? What do you take me for? You childless yuppies have no idea how real people live!

Let it rise a whopping 30 minutes. You’re going to need that time to prep the other ingredients and heat up the oven. Speaking of which, my preferred oven temperature right now is 520, but of course YMMV. 500 is a pretty good benchmark. I’ve taken it up to 550, but that has a tendency to set off smoke alarms and the like, as well reduce the cooking time to something like a minute and a half, which isn’t ideal for most toppings.

I could write a treatise here on toppings, but the general point is Kenny Shopsin’s mantra: if there is something you like to eat, eat it. (This is perhaps better known as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s mantra.) I’ve had success with artichokes, cilantro, pureed cauliflower, apples, anchovies, and dozens of other things. Whatever. We need to focus on the Rustler or this entry will never end. However, it is worth mentioning that tomato-based sauces are not in favor Chez Melvin right now—a swab of olive oil, a dab of anchovy paste, a blorp of chipotle salsa are more like it. (I am at the moment heavily influenced in this by Manetta’s, in Long Island City, New York.)

The Pizza Lucé Rustler uses a tomato-y barbecue sauce and a mix of cheddar and mozzarella, topped with mock duck, sliced red onion, banana peppers, and pineapple chunks. (I have to say that Lucé’s crust can taste like a waffle-tread sneaker, unfortunately.) What’s pictured above uses similar toppings, but we’re using Trader Joe’s meatless strips, and we skipped the banana peppers because, um, well, we forgot them. The critical element at work here, though, is the sauce, Smoke Daddy Sweet and Smoky, which is heavy on the molasses and the vinegar. (We gave this stuff a tryout because Watson hung out with Señor Smoke Daddy as a vacationing child.)

By this time you have these things prepped and the oven heated, the crust is essentially ready to go. You can, however, let it rise for hours if you’re so inclined. No one will die. Lightly grease a pizza pan with vegetable oil (not olive oil), and stretch the crust out to fill in—it should be pretty elastic and shouldn’t require rolling. Swirl a nice layer of the sauce, add a blanket of mixed cheeses, and then dot everything else around to your satisfaction. Throw in the oven on the bottom rack for about 10 minutes. Then move it up—unless you like a very black crust—for another five or so. You will absolutely know when it’s done—everything will be nice and caramel-colored, the mock duck will be only just starting to carbonize, and there should be only a very little bit of liquid (from the pineapple, mostly) left on the top. Pull it out, slice it up, chomp into your first piece, and scorch the roof of your mouth. At least that’s what I do. More temperate souls might wait 5 or 10 minutes—you could make a nice salad, say, or pour a strong beer. We went for the Left Hand Smoked Porter, which made for perhaps a too smoky ensemble. But hey, you know what you like.

The cream police

"I thought carbonara had cream in it," Melvin said when I showed him the recipe as part of my proposal that we make do with what's in the pantry tonight instead of venturing out into the eyeball-hardening winds currently scouring Chicago. Nope, no cream, which is one of many things I've learned in years of following periodic flareups on forums like Chowhound.com about what makes for "authentic" carbonara/fettuccine Alfredo/Caesar salad/martinis/insert your own classic here.

I'd never tried to make real pasta carbonara before tonight, and now that I know how easy it is I'm thoroughly embarrassed that it took me so long. You probably have everything you need for it in the house right now: bacon, eggs, pasta, Parmesan, salt & pepper. Easy peasy.

(Note: No picture today. We really need to invest in a better camera around here, so that our tasty creations don't end up looking like the dog's dinner when we post pictures of them online [although I hear tell that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog].)

Pasta alla Carbonara
adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper, The Italian Country Table
Serves 4

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 cup (4 oz.) freshly grated Parmegiano-Reggiano cheese
4 large eggs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound egg tagliatelle

1. Set a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until crisp (be careful not to burn the brown glaze that forms on the bottom of the pan). Cover and set aside.
2. Lightly beat together the eggs, 2 teaspoons of the cheese, a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper in a small bowl.
3. Cook the pasta in boiling water until it's cooked but still firm to the bite. Remove 1/4 cup of the pasta water and add it to the bacon pan. Drain the pasta thoroughly in a colander.
4. Reheat the bacon over medium heat, scraping up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the pasta to the pan and toss to blend. Mix in the eggs, stirring until they firm up and cling to the pasta. Season generously with black pepper.
5. Turn the pasta into a warmed serving bowl, and pass the rest of the grated cheese with it at the table.

Eggs à la Charlton Heston

I know Watson just posted about a fantastic mishmash breakfast, but frankly fantastic mishmash breakfasts are something we do a lot of around here. The warhorse of the group is something that we call Mexican Eggs, though it is sometimes about as Mexican as Kenny Shopsin’s African Green Curry Soup is African (i.e., it is essentially just our idea of something that people in Mexico might like). It derives, as the mushroom lasagna did, from Annie Somerville’s Fields of Greens, and if that means we’re in a rut, so be it. It is a very tasty rut.

What you do is this: sauté up some red peppers—or green if you like them; we do not. You can also include some onion (red or white) or garlic, if you’re so inclined. As things fry up, toss in either some grated jalapeño or a spoonful or two of hot salsa—right now we’re favoring the Frontera chipotle salsa, but suit yourself.

Wait, did I say grated jalapeño? I did. Next time you pick up some fresh ones, toss a couple in the freezer. When the time comes, pop them out and without defrosting set to work on them with a box grater or microplane. You get nice little spicy bits and much easier cleanup than when you wrestle a live one.

While the peppers and what-have-you are frying up, slice up a flour tortilla. (Do not use corn tortillas because they are always unappetizingly mealy.) Beat four or five eggs and set aside. Chop a little cilantro and some scallions, if you have them. Also grate a nice pile of cheese—cheddar is a favorite here, but lots of standardish white and yellow cheeses work just fine. Pause to wonder why there seems to be very little actual good Mexican cheese, yet seemingly endless varieties of the blander kinds.

As the peppers stick and blacken a bit, add the tortilla slices. Push them around a little, and maybe add another spoonful of salsa. Add the eggs and mix in well. As the eggs start to set up, add the cheese. Serve immediately and garnish with the cilantro, scallions, and more salsa. It will not be the prettiest plate you have ever presented, but this is a mishmash breakfast, not Hot Potato, Cold Potato, for goodness sake.

You can vary the specifics in this essentially to your heart’s content. We’ve been working in some Trader Joe’s veggie chorizo lately (add it just before the tortilla strips). It adds a bit more spice, depth, and color to the final product. And for a couple white middle-class Northerners who don't know jack about Mexico, those are all good things.