ON20 goes to the James Beard House

Executive Chef Noel Jones of the PolytechnicON20 in Hartford was honored this week with the opportunity to show off his expertise at the James Beard House in New York.
And since I never turn down the chance at a good meal, I jumped at the opportunity to attend.

After champagne and hors d'oeurves in the garden, which included Stonington fluke sashimi and PEI mussles with an edible shell, we nestled into our table in what appeared to have once been the library.

The dinner began with a Starlight Gardens tomato salad marinated in a 25-year aged balsamic and stuffed with goat cheese and parmigiano-reggiano crisps. Our first course was also paired with a 2009 Huia Sauvignon Blanc.


Our next course has been on the ON20 menu for some time now, but this was the first chance I've had to try it. As I knew I would be, I was enthralled.


A Flamig Farms golden egg, poached one hour sous vide, topped with a truffle-infused beet sauce and shaved summer truffles and paired with a 2009 Domaine Joseph Cattin Reisling. A bouillon spoon was key for lapping up every last heavenly drop.

Our next course consisted of pan roasted Maine diver scallops over a sauce bercy with a crispy scallop chip that made me wonder whether I had ever truly tasted a scallop before.


Accompanying the scallop was a 2007 Chatom Vineyards Chardonnay.

Next we enjoyed a playfully plated vegetable stuffed Point Judith squid with a squid ink demi glaze and a 2009 La Croix du Prieur Rose.


The fifth course was a velvety Colorado lamb loin served with a chickpea cake, caramelized baby carrots and a bordelaise. After the first several bites we all forgot our manners and polished off the last few meaty morsels with our fingers, washing it all down with a 2008 Chateau Haut Bayard Montagne-Saint-Emilion.


For dessert, a summery blueberry tasting with a blueberry ice cream sandwich, a white chocolate macaroon with blueberry filling and blueberry shortcake, all paired with a 2009 Bricco Del Sole Moscato D'Asti.


It's not often that we get to enjoy such dinners from the other side of the plate so a spectacular meal combined with a show of support for a chef and his team that we know and love, made for an experience to remember.

Vegetables Really Can Be Delicious

For a taste of Southern India, this week we visited Udupi Bhavan on Saybrook Road in Middletown. To help explain the difference between the Northern and Southern cuisines of India, our friend Gabriel came along as our guide. A classic Hatha Yoga instructor who studied at the Yoga Vidya Gurukul Ashram in Maharashtra, India, it is safe to say that Gabriel has seen the country from many different angles.

Yoga Vidya Gurukul

Mainly lighter, less oily and mostly vegetarian, the Indian food of the South also tends to be more austere than richer, more heavily spiced food of the North.

One of India's many temples, in the Southern city of Hempi

Rice is an important staple in Southern cuisine, more so than in the North, as does tamarind, coconut and a variety of pulses. Dosas, a crispy crepe made with lentils and rice, are a typical South Indian favorite.

Masala dosa, a popular variety stuffed with spiced potatoes served with sambar, a broth of red lentils and tamarind.

According to Gabriel, the food offered at Udupi Bhavan is generally considered "fast" food in India, something you would grab a bite of while out, but not often cooked at home. Not at all like our McDonalds or KFC, I'd rather have a curry than a BigMac any day of the week. Even Mr. Meat and Potatoes himself was surprised to find he enjoyed our 100% vegetarian dinner.

An abundance of food

We let Gabriel order for us and we ended up with more food than we could possibly eat. We had palak paneer, a mixture of spinach, cheese and tomato, vegetable korma, a curry dish made with coconut milk, and malai kofta, vegetables dumplings in a spiced yogurt sauce which turned out to be my favorite of the meal.

In addition to plenty of rice, each dish was also accompanied by a cup of raita, a cucumber and yogurt dipping sauce that is typically eaten by stirring it into one's rice. Gabriel also insisted we try another South Indian staple, spicy diced pickles. The key, he said, is to mix little bits of pickle into a bite of food for a sporadic kick of spice.

Train ride to Hempi

As Gabriel plans his fourth trip to India and beyond, we wait and see where our next adventure will take us. One can only hope it's somewhere delicious.

Phở-tastic

The food of Vietnam is known for being light and colorful. The abundant use of fresh herbs, vegetables and spices, the minimal use of oil and the precise balance of flavors and contrasting textures has helped gain Vietnamese cuisine the reputation for being the healthiest in the world.

Bordered by China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west, Vietnam is steeped in a culinary tradition all its own. Exhibiting influence from various methods of Southeast Asian cooking, Vietnamese is an individualized kind of cuisine where many dishes are often blended at the table, leaving the exact combination of ingredients up to the diner.

While Asian cooking generally uses lots of flavorful herbs and spices, in Vietnam herbs are not just used to enhance the foods; they are part of the meal itself. Fresh, flavorful herbs such as mint, basil and coriander, snipped into large pieces, are an accompaniment at every dinner table and are often found in popular noodle dishes.

Indeed, Vietnam's national dish is the delicious phở (pronounced fuh), a broth made with rice noodles and brimming with savory greens such as basil. Commonly made with beef, phở can come in many forms but is typically served with bean sprouts, lime and chilies on the side for each person to add to their own bowls.

Vietnamese cuisine is also distinguished by the generous use of dipping sauces, which help to give the food its distinctive flavor.

A typical sauce combines garlic, chilies, lime juice or vinegar, sugar, and the hallmark ingredient, fish sauce. Known as nuoc mam, fish sauce is made from salt-cured anchovies that are placed in a barrel raw and left to ferment. The quintessential Vietnamese ingredient, fish sauce can be found in almost every dish.

In addition to the plentiful use of fresh, nourishing herbs, another reason why Vietnamese cooking is considered so healthy is that meat is generally viewed as a condiment rather than a main dish.

Meats are most often cut into thin strips or slices, soaked in a simple marinade of shallots, lemongrass and fish sauce, and then quickly grilled.

The ideal way to eat these morsels is to dunk a piece of meat into a dipping sauce, then pick up some herbs and rice and put the complete bite into your mouth.

Another important component of Vietnamese cooking is that of balance.

In Vietnamese culture, the five basic elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Metal and Wood have great influence over daily life and are seen as instruments of maintaining life's balance. Vietnamese cuisine reflects an integration of these five elements into the nutrition, taste and colors of their dishes.

The balance of nutritional elements such as liquid, protein, fat, powder and minerals; the incorporation of the five common colors in the presentation of their dishes: yellow to represent Earth, black to signify Water, red for Fire, white for Metal and green for Wood; and the skillful blend of the tastes of sweet, salty, bitter, sour and spicy; all characterize the influence of such beliefs.

Such balance is also demonstrated through ingredient selection and the manner of serving the dishes according to the season and weather conditions.

For our foray into Vietnamese cuisine, we popped into the highly regarded Pho Boston in West Hartford. With an extensive menu and competent staff, it was a great place to stop for a delicious and healthful meal.

To share, we couldn’t pass up the chim cút chiên, crispy, spiced roasted quails marinated in ginger, soy and five spice. The birds were so perfectly flavorful and juicy that we sucked every last scrap from the tiny bones.



Adam selected a non-threatening hủ tiếu xào bỏ, or beef and vegetable chowfun

and I ordered the hủ tiếu nam vang, a phở variant with shrimp, crab, fish balls and cakes, pork, rice noodles, scallions, onions and cilantro.


After picking out each morsel with my chopsticks, I found I was completely full. Still, I tipped the bowl to my lips and drank the savory broth, not wanting any to go to waste.

If you visit Pho Boston, which I definitely recommend you do, the noodle soups are a must. Make sure you squeeze some fresh lime into the broth and mix in some spicy chili paste, then, enjoy!

Hungry for Hungarian

This week, with the help of our Hungarian friend, Mária, we not only learned to make a classic Decsy family meal, but we also had our first experience with homemade pasta.

Mária, whose family lives in Budapest and to the west of the Danube, brought with her a peculiar looking tool reminiscent of a cheese grater with a spackle knife. This tool, called a galuskaszaggató, was how we were going to make our pasta.

Once our pasta dough of eggs, flour, salt and water was the right consistency, we spooned a little at a time onto the galuskaszaggató. While holding the grater over a pot of boiling water, the dough was then pushed through the holes in the galuskaszaggató with a flat, wide scraper until every last nugget had plopped into the water. When the galuska, or pasta dumplings, had risen to the top of the water, they were ready to be strained.


Over the top of the galuska we ladled csirkepaprikás, a typical Hungarian stew with bell peppers, onions and chicken in a thick sour cream sauce. The most important ingredient of paprikás is mild, sweet paprika.

Although the sauce in our paprikás recreation was not as thick as it should have been, according to Mária, not one bite went unsavored.

The perfect compliment to the csirkepaprikás was a simple, thinly sliced cucumber salad with vinegar, garlic and salt. I don’t know what it was about the combination of the two dishes, but they just worked so well together.

For dessert we mixed pureed chestnuts with a little rum and sugar and topped the resulting paste with whipped cream. This concoction, called gesztenyepüré, is very popular in Hungary and was just as easy as it sounds to make. Although it could have used more sugar, and for the heck of it a bit more rum, but it was still surprisingly good.

To wash it all down, Hungary’s most famous red wine, Egri Bikavér, or Bull’s Blood. A blend of at least three of the following varieties; Blauburger, Portugiser, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Kadarka, Kékfrankos and Zweigelt, it is said to have given strength to the people of Eger to fight off the invading Turks in the 1500s.

Adam and I were both pleased to get back on track with an easy and delicious meal and the help of a few friends, and since we’ve discovered a simple way to make homemade pasta, I feel another experiment coming on.