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IN THIS ISSUE

SUMMER READING
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
TELEPAN
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
By Mort Hochstein


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SUMMER READING
By John Mariani

Marc Forgione: Recipes and Stories from the Acclaimed Chef and Restaurant by Marc Forgione (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)--No chef has ever been prouder of his pedigree than Marc Forgione, whose father Lawrence, was a pioneer of what was called the New American Cuisine of the 1980s.  That Marc has distinguished himself by building on his legacy is evident on every page of this splendid new book, three years in the making.  He has some good stories along the path to opening his restaurant--including the time he unknowingly threw out a reporter from the NY Times-- then proceeds with a great deal of technique lessons in order to get the beginner to attempt dishes like his cuttlefish with papas bravas, chorizo and spicy mayonnaise and suckling pig face with mustard and pickles. There's a good section on cheeses and cocktails, too.

In The Charcuterie: The Fatted Calf's Guide to Making Sausage, Salumi, Pâtés, Roasts, Confits, and Other Meaty Goods by Taylor Boetticher (Ten Speed Press)--There have been several charcuterie books that have come out in the past few years, but this is easily the most authoritative and clear in its approach to a kind of food many people are fearful of trying at home. For a dish like the duck and lemongrass sausage patties alone, this book would be worthwhile, as for the pork bollito misto and the rabbit porchetta, which expand the usual repertoire of charcuterie. Some dishes are relatively simple, others take some doing and long prep, but everyone of them is packed with enormous flavor, and the instruction have been carefully edited for maximum ease.

The New Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook: 150 Fresh Ideas for America's Favorite Pan by Ellen Brown (Sterling Epicure)--There have also been a few cast iron skillet books out recently, so that it has almost become a genre of its  own.  The superiority and versatility of cooking on well-used, well-seasoned cast iron, which is very much in the American, not European, tradition should be unquestioned after paging through a volume that makes perfect sense out of using the utensil for everything from basic steaks and burgers to Rhode Island clam cakes, Vietnamese spring rolls, Cajun halibut, an a marvelous array of upside-down cakes.  I doubt many cooks anywhere have the depth and breadth of Ellen Brown, who in her career has written books on everything from wraps to gluten-free breads.  I'd trust her to cook a shoe for Charlie Chaplin and have him gobble it up with pleasure.

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    The rich variety and quality of restaurants on the Upper West Side, now all the way up through Harlem, increases about as consistently as the trendy restaurants that close each month on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn.  From the newly opened Tavern on the Green (reviewed last week) and Cecil’s to the well-established Bar Boulud, Lincoln Ristorante, Shun Lee Café, The Leopard at Des Artistes and Picholine, the West Side is as solid as any other section of the city in good restaurants.  Among the latter is Telepan, Bill Telepan’s exceptionally friendly restaurant that opened ten years ago near Lincoln Center.
    Telepan (below) had learned his craft at the three-star Alain Chapel near Lyons, then, back I the USA, at Le Cirque, Le Bernardin and Gotham Bar & Grill in New York, making his own rep at Judson Grill.  (He also has a new casual TriBeCa eatery named Telepan Local.)  With the kind of training he’s had, his grounding in French haute cuisine has made him one of the city’s most respected chefs, and his diligence has paid off with an intensely loyal crowd.
    The two dining rooms could hardly be lovelier, the summery pale green  walls, light wood floors, white tablecloths and wall-sized artwork of ripe fruits all work with the convivial lighting of the place (though for some reason, around 8 PM someone unnecessarily flicks on a dimmer) to buoy people’s spirits, and the sound level is very civilized for conversation. Waiters are nicely dressed, the greeting at the door is cheery, and the pacing of the meal is calmly professional.
      It is a cliché to say that Telepan is an “adults’ restaurant,” but with so many places now trying to appeal to a clientele more interested in the drinks and the vibe than the food and the enjoyment of an evening, it’s worth using the term here.
    Nothing on the menu makes you guess at what it really is; everything instead reads as if the ingredients came before the conception.  Pea pancakes ($23) with wild mushrooms and pea agnolotti were a simple, wonderful congregation of spring vegetables, while chilled pea soup ($14) with smoked pine nuts and herbed crème fraîche shows that when you’ve got great peas for so short a time, might as well flaunt them.  Lusty lamb sausage ($18) comes with fava beans and arugula with a touch of fresh oregano.
    Lobster bolognese—I’m not sure why it’s called bolognese—is a sterling example of Telepan’s refined taste and process: the lobster meat is melded with spaghetti, light herbs and a sprightly shallot-garlic-tomato broth. (It’s a pricey dish at $32 and shouldn’t add $5 to the four-course $85 tasting menu.)  Telepan’s is not an Italian restaurant but a whole lot of stultified Italian eateries around town could learn much from his gemelli di maiale ($28) with pork sausage, robiola cheese, pancetta bacon and greens.
    Among the main courses, I most enjoyed a fine snowy halibut ($40) with more spring vegetables, hash brown and garlicky ramps brown butter, and in a city with plenty of good pig dishes, Telepan’s Heritage pork “toscano-style”  ($35) with a white bean confit and wilted frisée is one of the best.  If possible, the seared duck breast ($38) with confited leg, rhubarb, farro grain, watercress salad and the fine addition of duck foie gras is the winner among all the entrees—as succulent and meaty and perfectly cooked as any duck I’ve ever enjoyed.
       Veteran patîssière Larissa Raphael is in lock step with Telepan’s culinary style, offering up carefully modulated tradition with bright new ideas, evident in her pineapple upside down cake ($13) with a terrific brown sugar financier and coconut ice cream, her buttermilk panna cotta ($14) with colorful rhubarb sorbet, rhubarb soup, and sesame seed tuile, and her chocolate crème brûlée ($15) with chocolate babka bites is tantalizingly rich.  If you order right after you finish your main course, a ten-minute wait for freshly baked pecan madeleines is worth it.  I also enjoyed the four well-selected artisanal American cheeses offered ($22).
    Sommelier Sam Clifton does not just stock a well-balanced wine cellar but does so, he says, by adding a “seasonal element to better complement our food and we promote the concept of drinking and eating in season.”
    If Telepan is full just about every night of the week it is not simply because it gets a pre-Lincoln Center or Beacon Theater crowd but because the people who dine here truly love the restaurant and have come to know what they like and what Bill Telepan and his staff consistently provide, which is first-rate, personalized food and civility.  I used to like Telepan very much, but now I love it more than ever, and think it ranks with the very best in New York.

LUNCH 
Wednesday to Friday; BRUNCH 
Saturday  & Sunday; DINNER nightly

 

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
By Mort Hochstein

    I heard a wine speech the other day unlike anything I'd heard before.
    I was conducting my annual hunt  for white wines for summer drinking and my  research this time around embraced  the vineyards of Spain and Crete.
    The speaker, representing the wines of Rueda, a vineyard area 105 miles northwest of Madrid, described them  as “one and done, ” meaning  the wines would be best forgotten after one year from bottling.  It's not the sort of comment you hear from winemakers who more normally stress ageabiliy.  The speaker was Michael Schachner, who covers Spain and South America for Wine Enthusiast.
    Verdejo (right), a grape unique to the region,  yields wines  that make for  good quaffing, inexpensive and unchallenging.  Though many of us at the tasting thought Viño Verde was Spain's best-selling white wine, we were  surprised to learn that Rueda is actually the nation's favorite white. These are wines that retail in the single digit  range up through the $20 level.
       There are exceptions to the “one and done” idea.   The majority of the Rueda's are fermented and aged in steel vats, and the few that go into wood will have a longer shelf life  as well as a higher, but still moderate price tag. The wines have a unique flavor, coming from  soil that is rich in calcium and magnesium, stony but easy to farm, with good ventilation and draining, and limestone outcrops on the hilltops. The common definer is good acidity and minerality, cloaked in citrus scents and flavors.  The fruitiness  sometimes carries a tinge of bitterness  which gives the wine even more distinctive  character.


    One of my  favorites was also the simplest, Gorgorito (left) from Bodegas Copaboca ($10.99),  almost transparently glass-like in color, with hints of lemon and grapefruit on the nose, nicely balanced with delightful minerality. Light in body and alcohol, it is the very model of a summer white.
     Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are relative newcomers to Rueda and are often blended with Verdejo. A growing number of wineries now produce barrel-fermented white wine, although new barrels are seldom used. Castelo de Medina showed as a most pleasant Verdejo ($18) with a bigger body than the norm, which had more than a year of aging before being bottled. Labels to seek out are  the lemony Montespina Sauvignon Blanc ($12)  and Campo Alegre, the most expensive of the lot I tasted at $30.
   

 

 

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Wine Column Sponsored by Banfi Vintners

Summering with Old Friends