Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 32

Breakthrough MEALS

Some of the foods
we thought we hated-
until a dish changed our mind.

SICHUAN STYLE

I grew up in a small town in the middle
of New Jersey with a boisterous ItalianAmerican family. Thanksgiving was an
all-day affair with two feasts-the
lasagna first (both cheese and meat
versions) and the traditional turkey
later on. One Thanksgiving, however,
the lasagna was different: it had this
bland, pulpy vegetable in it. From that
day on, I thought eggplant was a travesty that ruined any Italian dish that it
touched. Chicken parmesan? Yes. Veal parmesan? Of
course. Why in the world would you swap out one of
those meats with eggplant? I never bought it, I never
ordered it, I wanted nothing to do with it.
But one day, at a Sichuan restaurant, I let my cheffriend order the eggplant in spicy garlic sauce that she swore
by. After my red-oil dumplings and hot pot, I needed a
vegetable. So, I extended my chopsticks, grabbed a piece,
and was surprised to find it delicious. It was sweet, salty, full of
garlic, with an umami heat-flavors I thought eggplant could
never offer.
Now, at Wine & Spirits, eggplant is a must-have for our staff
lunches from La Vie en Szechuan, and I will eat a healthy
portion. Maybe one day I'll give eggplant parmesan a chance.
-RACHEL DELROCCO TERRAZAS

SILKY SAWARA

It's not that I didn't love fresh sardines, grilled on an open fire at
fiestas in Galicia, served on a slab of a baked potato. But mackerel
was different.
Between the oily texture of the flesh and the scent of low tide, I
avoided what seemed like a garbage fish for years.
It wasn't until a sushi chef slipped some saba onto a bed of rice
and passed it over to me that I had my first joyous taste of
mackerel, whether or not I knew it at the time. He just called it
saba, cured with salt and vinegar, with the fresh clarity of the sea.
Soon enough, I learned its true identity, as well as its cousin,
Spanish mackerel (sawara). Clearly, freshness and care made the
difference, but by acclimating to saba and sawara as sushi and
sashimi, I have also developed an affection for more rustic
preparations of mackerel. There's a Japanese grocery, Katagiri,
near W&S's NYC office, that sells four slices of saba to go, and
I'll often take this home, sear it and enjoy it over rice. Recently,
they had a cleaned, whole mackerel, which I took home and
pan-roasted with garlic and ginger. That's something I never
would have eaten years ago... -JOSHUA GREENE

WINE & SPIRITS

FA L L 2 0 1 8

I knew it was going to be a
long night when I would
walk into the kitchen and
see a pot on the stove
filled only with one inch
of water and a steamer
basket inside. Broccoli was
coming-stinky, mushy,
steamed broccoli. I would race
my dad and sister to the table to take my pick at the
smallest stalk and proceed to push it around my plate, mash it
and try to hide it. No one was allowed to leave the table until it
was eaten, and every dinner with broccoli turned into an epic
negotiation. "I will eat the tops of two stalks if I don't have to
eat the trunks."
When I went to culinary school, broccoli was often a side
during family meal but rather than steam it, we threw the florets
on a sheet pan with some salt and a drizzle of oil and into the
oven it went. Budding culinarians, we would sometimes forget
about the broccoli and it would come out of the oven a tad more
than singed. This is when I fell in love-add a little lemon zest
and a new food addiction was born. When I work as a private
chef, I often make this as a side, with the addition of slivered
almonds and Parmesan cheese. -DEANNA GONNELLA

illustrations by Vivian Ho

HAUTE BRASSICA

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018