review: pomodoro, my love

pomodoro / 24 harvard street / brookline ma / 617-566-4455 / 11am-11pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / cash only / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)

of all of the restaurants i've been to, pomodoro is possibly the fairest of them all. understand that The List is not a ranking of all of the restaurants i have ever been to. rather, The List is a ranking of the restaurants i would go back to. if it were the former, alinea and the french laundry would surely be on it; but i'm a student, and i'd rather pay my tuition than fritter away my summer savings on incredible, incredibly expensive food.

i've been to pomodoro twice: once when charles' parents were visiting, and this past sunday for my birthday. and my, oh my. the first time it was great: they had to add a table extension to fit all of the food on the table, and appetizers magically expanded to fit the size of our party and then some, without asking and without extra charge. and the food: the food is amazing. this is the best italian restaurant i've ever been to, and one of the best restaurants i've been to in general. this is the restaurant with the warmest service i've had - and for that flawless, generous service, i am really thankful and surprised.

for my birthday dinner, we started with some calamari. this is the first place i had actually ate calamari - i have a history of disliking it - and it's just fantastic here. it's not cooked too long, or too briefly - it's perfect. it comes with a tomato sauce that's nice and thick, impossibly and brightly red, and is the best such sauce i've had at any restaurant. they brought us some mussels just because, and they were amazing - this is also the only place where i will eat mussels. they were cooked in a sort of cream sauce with fennel sausage in it, which was a surprisingly good combination.

as a main course i had risotto with crab, mushrooms, and some sort of sweet, mild squash. it was rather delicate, almost sweet, and extremely good. didn't overtake the crab at all, and i thought it was an excellent and unusual risotto. i have a bit of a bone to pick with the pretty but useless crab claws that were in my bowl - they had meat on them, but the only way to get it was to gnaw at the claws. i generally dislike any food that's difficult to eat. i hate working too hard when i eat - i'm willing to work had to taste the flavors and texture, but i don't want to spend the whole night trying to extract the food so i can eat it. my mother had a steak with mac and cheese, which was also good - the steak was aged, so it had a pretty mellow flavor that i had some trouble identifying as beef. i wonder if it was the cut, the aging, or the source of the beef? at any rate, it was tender, but not too tender.

the weak point of many italian restaurants is the dessert, and when we came before, it was true. we had the creme brulee, and it was kind of watery and definitely too eggy. this time, we said no to dessert, but they brought us two, anyway: a fig bread pudding and a tiramisu. that tiramisu was fantastic - not too light, not too dense, with a perfect balance of coffee and creamy mascarpone. the fig bread pudding was a little bit less toothsome, since it had a bit too little liquid. i thought it tasted like their leftover bread made into bread pudding. i have no problem with this - i just wanted a bit more eggy creaminess to it. the chocolate sauce that came with the bread pudding was amazing, though - dark, not too dark, and not too sweet, with depth. mmm.

it's a little difficult to describe why i like pomodoro so much. it has to do with comfort, in a way - when you're having dinner at pomodoro, you feel like you're having dinner catered to you in your own very chic living room. it's like the chef is focused just on you, even though you know they're not. rarely is the service in a restaurant so warm - it can be very efficient, noiseless, seamless, friendly, but ultimately it's usually professional and a little cold.

i thought the food was better this time than it was last time - a little more interesting, a little more polished. this is also the only italian restaurant i've been to where so many of the pasta dishes look interesting. i guess i'll just have to go back.

p.s. i do have a bit of a pet peeve with the restaurant - one they've tried to remedy. in the winter, when it's cold, every time the door opens, the whole place gets a blast of cold air because the restaurant is small. there's a heavy curtain at the entrance, which gets some of the cold air, but it's too close to the door to do much good. your warm cocoon is thus interrupted by the cold, uncaring world outside at times, but not enough to deter you from feeling very, very good by the end of the night.

it was worth my $3.79

one and a half cups of sugar for $3.79. fancy, super-molasses dark brown sugar (billington's dark brown molasses sugar).

i'm behind on my issues of gourmet because of studio, and i flipped through the...november? december? issue and glimpsed a two-handled bowl-cup filled with some sort of unctuous, delicious-looking joyful thing. after all, who can resist eating out of such cute dishware? i happened to think about the pudding as i was at the supermarket one day, and invested in a package of billington's dark brown sugar, the designer sugar at star market that also happens to be very good.

i was thinking about the pudding in the context of my new oblong tart pan; i mulled it over for a few days before i decided it was a good idea to put a brown sugar pudding in a tart. i wanted to have a nice, buttery, flaky tart shell with the pudding, some sort of fruit layer, then ganache. make the tart shell with bacon fat, and you would have one of the richest desserts imaginable. as for the fruit, i thought about oranges, or berries, but ultimately decided to go with a seasonal (and cheap) choice: apples. i was sure that they would go well with the pudding, but i didn't know about the chocolate. since fondue always involves fruit and chocolate, and apples are often a part of the fruit selection, though, i thought i'd go for it.

i bought pink lady apples at star market because they were pretty, and i discovered that they're a great apple - they stand up to a lot of cooking and don't get mushy, and the texture is nice and firm. they're a fairly tart apple, too, which was a great contrast to the deepness of the pudding and chocolate.

unfortunately, the tart shell didn't really work out that well. i may have added a little too much water; and i thought there might be too little butter in the recipe. it turns out i was right - it tasted a bit floury, and a bit tough. it did cut well, but i've made better tart shells.

the tart filling was another matter entirely - i really liked this tart, as it was more adventurous that i've been in the past. i did it as a cold dessert, though i think the ideal way to make the tart is to bake the shell, then dump in very cold pudding, top it with hot apples, and drizzle chocolate on it. i had conceived of the tart as being cold, originally, because i wanted the ganache to entirely cover the surface - thus making the interior a surprise. this involves having a tart pan with high enough sides to admit that much filling, which is not the case with any of my tart pans - whoops! lack of foresight on my part...heh.

but the pudding is definitely a winner - i would make it over and over again, because it had a better texture than any other pudding i've ever made. i suppose it's the cornstarch? i'll have to revise my rather negative view of cornstarch - which is based on those all-too-viscous technicolor sauces that you get at bad chinese restaurants.

without further ado:

brown sugar pudding
(adapted from gourmet nov 2006)

2 cups half-and-half
3/4c packed dark brown sugar
2T cornstarch
2 egg yolks
1/4t salt

1. stir together half-and-half, brown sugar, and cornstarch in a 2- to 3-quart heavy saucepan and heat over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved and mixture is heated through (don't let it boil).

2. whisk together yolks and salt in a medium bowl until smooth, then add hot half-and-half mixture in a slow stream, whisking. a good way to do this is to have nonskid bowls or to put your bowl on a silpat so it doesn't move as you pour with one hand and whisk with the other. i do not condone the use of kitchenaid mixers, pretty as they are.

3. return mixture to saucepan and cook over moderate heat, whisking, until mixture reaches a boil, then boil, whisking, 1 minute (it'll thicken). pour through a sieve into a clean bowl. press plastic wrap on the surface to cover the pudding and chill (or serve warm).

[serves 4-6; doubles easily, though the stirring time will be longer]

i just ate three pieces of cake

it's a good thing i didn't eat breakfast. because i just made a cake that made me remember why millions of people survived without chocolate cake for centuries.

typically i'm not a huge fan of vanilla-flavored cakes; they tend to be overly dry, or have too much vanilla...essentially i've come to realize that i'm just not a fan of vanilla in general, unless it's ice cream. ice cream is one of the few venues in which producers manage not to go overboard (in the case of good vanilla ice cream).

i recently made shuna fish lydon's caramel cake. it had a gorgeous photograph: it was golden-brown (closer to a dark brown), somewhere between a golden cake and gingerbread, with a larger-than-normal crumb. it looked moist, but not too moist, not dry, and just...beautiful.

but when i made it, for some reason it didn't come out quite correctly - it was a beautiful goldeny color that usually doesn't happen, but it was not the deep dark color that i had been anticipating with a watering mouth. the disappointment was accordingly cutting. it had lovely subtle overtones, and gorgeous undertones of caramel...but i just couldn't get over the lack of color.

fittingly, the cake that made my day was french. ah, those french. i checked my food blogs today and discovered a good-looking cake : le gateau piege from chocolate + zucchini. i've been looking for a cake that can stand on its own, without needing frosting - that elusive one-layer cake that is stealthily delicious even though it's only one layer and has no frosting.

a cake like this has to be better than all other cakes, because with no frosting there's only cake. accordingly, that crumb better be good, it better not be too dry, and the flavor has to be more pure and stunning than normal.

and this is it. this is the cake to end all cakes. well, really i'm overexaggerating here, but this is a good cake. it's a light - but not in the way that angel food cake is light, ie, spongily light - orange-flavored cake. it's butter, sugar, eggs, and flour with an orange flavoring. (and this is why it's french: it's delightfully unadorned). it actually does have "frosting," too - you butter and sugar the pan, and it develops a lovely, lightly caramelized crust.

this is the cake.

le gâteau piège (adapted from chocolate + zucchini)

For the pan:
1T butter
1 1/2 T sugar

For the batter:
1/2 cup plus 1 T unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup plus 2T sugar
2 eggs
1 medium organic orange, scrubbed
1 cup flour
1 T baking powder
large pinch salt

1. preheat the oven to 350F. butter a 9" or 10" cake pan with the butter. dump the sugar in the bottom of the pan and swish it around until it coats the bottom and sides of the pan.

2. cream together the butter and sugar. add the eggs one by one and mix until thoroughly combined. grate the zest from the entire orange over the bowl. juice the orange and add 1/2 cup of the juice (give or take a little) to the batter. mix until smooth.

3. in a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. whisk the flour mixture into the batter and mix until just combined. scrape into the prepared pan and bake for 20-30 minutes, until the cake is golden and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. let cool on a rack for ten minutes (no more, or the caramel on the crust will harden and stick to the pan), then flip onto a serving plate. let cool completely before serving.

preoccupations : the meat pie

looks like a muffin, but really it's a nicely flaky crust shaped like a muffin that contains a mixture of pork, beef, onions, carrots, peas, and other sundry things. and baked together for close to an hour, it definitely hits the spot. if we consider the shape of the pie, i find it a bit lacking - i think what is really needed is a muffin top pan (or, no pan at all) so that the pie is shallower.

but let me start from the beginning. what i was aiming for was basically comfort food - but luscious, stick-to-your-ribs, mind-blowing, "this is just a meat pie??!" comfort food.

i especially love things that you eat with your hands, and that is what a meat pie is (yes, i realize the photograph has a fork in it). we eat with forks and knives so often that it's surprising and completely sinful to eat something with your hands, which hide the food object while you consume it furtively. a meat pie is different from buns, muffins, cookies, rolls, all of those other things that we eat with our hands. you can cradle it in your hands, and there is something about
a completely sealed pastry enclosure that makes you think it must hold something wonderful inside. because it's handheld, you can be completely selfish and keep it all for yourself, unless you're a generous soul, and this makes it all the more sinful because you don't want to share it with anyone. and this is what a meat pie should be.

i would say the pastry lived up to what the pastry should be: buttery, flaky, slightly thick so it was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside where the juices cooked into it. and the meat pie is one of the cases in which i will use an egg wash (fruit pies get the whole milk and sugar treatment). mmm. i used the pastry recipe from richard sax's home desserts, which is to say, i got the ingredient amounts from it; i always make the pastry the same way. and i'll tell you - i thought that it was going to be tough and rubbery this time because the dough was a little stretchy, but i think it was just that i didn't chill the dough sufficiently (it was on the top level of the fridge for an hour). unfortunately, the pastry was a little ugly shapewise, because i didn't cut the pastry into identical shapes and kind of patched them together, but i think i could work out a good system in the future.

the filling wasn't as good as the pastry, but i thought it did the job pretty well - it just didn't reach the heights that the filling is supposed to reach. once you've committed to doing the work to bite into the thing, whatever is inside better be good. i originally was going to leave the house and get some potatoes, so i could blend the mashed potatoes with the ground beef/pork mix that i had, but i decided not to because i was lazy (and poor). so i did some onions in bacon fat and thyme, with a bit of a sherry reduction as the onions browned. then i did the beef, adding some of the leftover pizza sauce (reduced crushed tomatoes, basil, and onions) i'd made for new year's and some sour cream to keep it from getting too tough. i did a bit of peas and carrots (frozen, sorry...) and mixed all of it together with a couple of eggs and breadcrumbs mixed with sour cream and the meat juices, and a couple tablespoons of maple syrup for good measure. fold that up into the pastry and pop it in the oven for an hour until the pastry is browned, and you've got your meat pies.

so let's talk about this filling. flavorwise, i thought it was great - the seasoning was right, and the meat to veggie ratio was good (i think it could have used a bit more veggies). i was particularly pleased that there was about the right amount of liquid in the meat pie - which is to say that there wasn't too much at all, so you don't bite into it and spill it all over yourself. but i think it was the wrong decision to use the ground meat - there's something about a meat pie that wants you to really be able to bite into it, and the ground meat just isn't quite assertive enough. so maybe little bars of steak with a little more chew would have been appropriate in this case. let me differentiate here between two different kinds of meat pies: the type i made today are handheld, but there is also the type that's large and that you eat slices of. the larger ones, i think, are best made with ground meat because it will slice more easily; however, for a handheld little beauty, i think it would be better to use more discrete pieces of meat.

and there you have it: my first try at meat pies. i think the most disappointing thing was the shape of the pie, and in the future i'll make them by hand without a mold, instead of using a muffin pan.

since the meat pie was such a hodge podge of stuff, i'm including just the recipe for the pastry here:

go-to pie and pastry crust
2 1/2c flour
1/4t baking powder
2T sugar
1/2t salt
2 sticks butter
5-8T cold water

1. mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. cut half the butter into small pieces and toss in the dry ingredients. mix together the butter and dry ingredients with your hands, two knives, or a pastry blender (i prefer my hands) until it resembles coarse meal. it will turn slightly yellow. if you use your hands, then the motion you want is basically rubbing the flour and butter together between your fingers to moosh them together.

2. cut the other half of the butter into small pieces and toss into butter-flour mixture. rub into the flour mixture with your hands or a pastry blender until the butter is in pieces the size of small peas - the mixture will turn slightly more yellow.

3. add 5 tablespoons of cold water one tablespoon at a time, sprinkling the water into the mixture and turning it over so the water is somewhat evenly distributed. toss dough together until it comes together, adding more water by the tablespoon if you need more. the dough shouldn't feel overly wet - just very slightly damp.

4. divide mixture in half and press into a ball. flatten the ball into a disc on top of a large (18" long) piece of plastic wrap, then wrap tightly. make sure the edges aren't cracked - push the edges of the crack together. chill at least an hour. when you roll it out, put another piece of plastic wrap on top of the disc so you don't need to use flour (cheap trick, yes, but it does work wonderfully well).

[makes enough for a 9" pie - top and bottom crusts]