Midye Dolmasi and Midye Tava

A STREET FOOD SHELL GAME

While mussels are much appreciated wherever they are found, only the Turks have been passionate enough to turn them into a standard street food. Hawked by vendors mainly around the busy Galata Bridge that spans Istanbul’s Golden Horn, the bivalves offer delectable nourishment for visitors taking in the action.
 

Two mussel specialties are readily available in this quarter bustling with pedestrians, hawkers, and automobiles. One is made by stuffing the nicely salty, tender mussels with a rice pilaf studded with pine nuts and raisins. Called midye dolmasi, these may be served hot or at room temperature as part of the meze course throughout the Middle East, but on these street corners they are sold chilled.

 

The second dish, midye tava, is piping hot: mussels deep-fried until crispy in a light and bubbly golden batter right before your eyes. They are usually dipped into an aromatic tarator sauce, a blend of walnuts, garlic, milk-soaked bread, and olive oil, brightened with lemon juice.

Simit

AN EDIBLE BRACELET

 

Jewelry or bagel-like baked treat? This may be the rst question that comes to mind when you spot this big, sesame-veneered, spiraled bread ring sold mornings on street corners in cities such as Istanbul, Athens, and Tunis. One whiff should provide the answer, for the aroma of these toasty rolls is hard to resist. Traditionally eaten with either yogurt or jam, they’d be excellent vehicles for lox and cream cheese as well.

In addition to their satisfying texture and flavor, simitler (in plural form) provide entertainment as their vendors vie for attention, some with the most alluring cries. Others carry baskets of the breads on their heads, stacking the simitler in ever more creative arrangements that may suggest the tower of Pisa, complete with the lean.

Lahmajoun

PIZZA BY ANOTHER NAME

 

 As snackable as the more familiar Italian pizza, lahmajoun begins with crisp, yeasty rounds or squares of what is essentially pita dough—pide in Turkish—topped with a richly thick sauce of ground meat, preferably lamb, that has been simmered with a rich blend of onions, parsley, crushed hot chiles, mint, garlic, green peppers, tomatoes, and perhaps a breath of cumin and allspice. Freshly baked and served hot, it is traditionally garnished with lemon wedges.

Just like pizza, cuts of lahmajoun range from slightly limp and tepid street-fair food to gourmet treats, the entire round or square baked to order and the sauce carefully prepared. And much in the way peoples take their slices—folded up into a sort of pizza sandwich—lahmajoun can be rolled up for snacking convenience. Cut into small squares or wedges, it works equally well as a refined cocktail canapé. As a quicker, crisper alternative to the freshly made dough, the sauce may be spread over the thin bread known as lavash and then glossed with melted butter and briefly heated in the oven.

Baklava

PASTRIES TO SATISFY A SULTAN

Ethereally light and crispy layerings of flaky phyllo dough brushed with melted butter and decked out with chopped nuts and oozing, honeyed syrup make baklava one of the world’s most seductive pastries.

Baked in shallow rectangular or round metal pans, the still-warm treat is doused—and thus crisped—with ice-cold sugar syrup or honey. Cut into diamond-shaped portions, it is to be nibbled alongside Turkish tea or coffee, in this case preferably unsugared.

Already a popular dessert in the Topkapi Palace in the sixteenth-century days of the Ottoman sultans, baklava was reported to be one of the favorite treats in the harem known as the House of Felicity (a title perhaps due only in part to the presence of pastries). The dessert evolved over the years, baked in varying forms and with fillings of walnuts, almonds, or pistachios, though always fragrant with cinnamon, lemon rind, and orange blossom water.

One of the most popular riffs on the theme is bourma, known as shredded wheat, a dizzyingly sweet and chewy delight in which shredded phyllo is wrapped around nut fillings before it is baked and drowned in syrup.

Finding fresh baklava is no easy matter, but it’s crucial. Kept too long, the pastry becomes limp and tough and the nuts turn rancid. If not in a reliable restaurant, find good baklava in busy Greek, Turkish, or other Middle Eastern bakeries where turnover is high. Avoid any that is precut and wrapped, boxed, or canned.

Biscuits

CRACKERS FOR CHEESE LOVERS AND COOKIE MONSTERS

Soothing to stomach and spirit, English biscuits provide exactly the right foil for the firm and pungent cheeses of their home country. Technically, the word biscuit means twice-cooked, originally referring to rusklike biscotti or zwieback that were baked, then sliced and toasted, and other long-lasting varieties that were boiled prior to being baked. Today, in its English usage, the term describes all sorts of crisp crackers that are not to be confused with the fluffy, buttery biscuit rolls of the American
South.

The most authentic English biscuits are made by Carr’s, Hovis, Jacobs, and McVitie’s, and their offerings range from simple, lean white water biscuits to thicker, creamier varieties and sweet, cookielike, rustic whole wheat or wholemeal types considered digestives in England. (Companies are no longer allowed to make that claim in the U.S.) Most producers also offer the biscuits in pepper, cheese, or herb varieties that do nothing but compromise the flavors of cheese and limit the delightful crackers’ versatility.

Charcoal biscuits are an unusual variant — dusky gray, cosseting, chiplike wafers popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as gastrointestinal purifiers, and still used as such today. Composed of willow charcoal powder, wheat flour, eggs, salt, and the merest hint of sugar, they are teasingly gritty on the tongue yet innocently neutral in flavor, working as palate cleansers after intensely sweet desserts.

Where:
In New York, Myers of Keswick, tel 212-691-4194, myersofkeswick.com.

Mail order:
British Corner Shop, britishcornershop.com (search digestives);
amazon.com (search original digestive biscuits).

Further information and recipes: 1200 Traditional English Recipes by Ethel Meyer (2010);
food.com (search english digestive biscuits).

Tip: Look for Carr’s, Jacobs, McVitie’s, Hovis, or Miller’s Damsels brands in upscale supermarkets and gourmet food stores.

Artichauts à la Barigoule

LEAVING IT TO ARTICHOKES

 Artichauts violets

Even in its simplest incarnation—steamed or boiled, served with a dipping sauce of vinaigrette or lemony melted butter—the multipetaled bud of the Cynara scolymus thistle plant is a delight. In this Provence specialty, it is slowly simmered to silken tenderness in olive oil and a touch of lemon juice, with seasonings of onion and garlic and slivers of ham or bacon; mushrooms, carrots, and even the slightest trace of tomato may make an appearance as well. What must be present is thyme, or barigoule (Provence’s bastardized version of the Niçois word farigoule), the defining herb.

After having carefully trimmed the leaves and removed the thorny choke, some cooks choose to stuff the opened, raw artichokes with the aforementioned ingredients, then tie the chokes closed and let them simmer in the broth. Either way, small, young artichokes give the most tender results.

Served warm in a bowl that can accommodate a shallow pool of the pan juices, the artichokes make light and palatepriming appetizers.

This cooking method, known as à la grecque, renders the entire artichoke edible, so no need to tackle yours leaf by leaf; just use a fork and dig in, not forgetting to sop up the last of the savory juices with some bread or a spoon.

Further information and recipes:

Cuisine Niçoise: Recipes from a Mediterranean Kitchen by Jacques Médecin (1991);
The Lutèce Cookbook by André Soltner with Seymour Britchky (1995);
saveur.com (search artichauts a la barigoule).

See also: Carciofi Romaneschi

L’Ami Louis

A CLASSIC BISTRO

At first glance, a newcomer to this venerable bistro might decide he or she had come to the wrong address. Given its justifiable reputation for high prices—really high prices—L’Ami Louis looks like a dump. But what a noble dump it is. Opened in 1930, it is said not to have been painted since—a claim the smoke-andgarlic-glazed wine-dark walls do not refute. If you toss your coat on the rack above your table, realize that it will exude the faint scent of garlic until its next visit to the cleaner. That side
effect has not discouraged loyal patrons past or present, including fashion designers such as the elegant Madame Grès, stars of stage and screen such as Helen Mirren, politicians like Bill Clinton, musicians such as Seiji Ozawa, and anybody in jeans or a tux who is passionate about eating well.

At least that lingering aroma of garlic reminds all that they have partaken of a truly spectacular meal. For when the original chef, Antoine Magnin, died at the age of eighty-six in 1987, he left behind a well-trained maître d’ in Louis Gadby. Wood still fuels the stove and oven, and the same wood burns in the dining room’s ancient heater, a unifying touch that the previous chef valued. There have been two recent improvements—replacing the barbaric Napoleonic toilet and allowing credit cards, meaning that diners no longer have to arrive in armored cars full of cash.

As for the menu, fish lovers had best go elsewhere, as the only sea creatures tolerated here are scallops with roe when in season, roasted on the halfshell as an appetizer. The large, plump snails are also great starters, bathed in green-gold garlic and parsley butter, and so sizzling hot they appear to still be wriggling. Do not overlook the most awesome appetizer of all, the house-prepared signature
foie gras—not a pâté but rather a solid, rose-pink block, pure and chilled, like a dream of an indecently rich ice cream. Served with slabs of crusty baguette toasted over the wood fire, the dish would be a meal in itself at any place but Louis’s.

Draw breath and consider the main courses, among them what is surely the world’s best roasted chicken, the blue-footed Bresse specimen cooked in Normandy butter. If not that, then consider a succulently tender gigot of lamb or a lusciously blood-rare côte de boeuf, towhich not even the best American or Argentine steak can hold a candle.

Heat-burnished roasted veal kidneys, properly ruby-rare at the center, and golden roasted pheasant are also usually on hand. If you order a week ahead, you can have (for two or more) the traditional salmis of duck or pheasant, that medieval-tasting stew whose sauce is rich with poultry blood.

Accompanying the meat are delectable potatoes, sliced and roasted in duck fat or finely slivered and crisped. Should you be lucky enough to be at L’Ami Louis in the late spring, order a copper saucepan full of woodsy, earthy wild morels bathed in heavy cream

Vegetables? Well, maybe the first asparagus of spring, but Magnin didn’t like to fool around with such insubstantial fare, and neither does his heir. However, for exotic fruits and nuts—fresh almonds still in their green suedelike husks and tasting more like fruit—there is always a place at the dessert table.

A soothing frozen nougat dessert is about the most anyone can manage after a huge and hearty meal that is best accompanied by one of the house’s special Fleurie wines.

Where:

32, rue du Vertbois, Paris, tel 33/1-48-87-77-48.
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays and from mid-July to mid-August.

Aligot

THE WORLD’S BEST MASHED POTATOES

Silken smooth or rustically lumpy, mashed potatoes rank high among the world’s comfort foods. But no version is as wickedly rich or sensuously addictive as aligot, a fonduelike specialty of the Auvergne region in south central France.

Preparation begins with starchy potatoes that are cooked and pureed with butter, crème fraîche, and a hint of crushed garlic, and then dramatically finished at the table in a copper saucepan. There, the concoction is whipped and stirred, and whipped and stirred again, along with soft curds of the cow’s milk Cantal or Salers cheese or the acidic, nutty Tomme de Laguiole.

As a wooden spoon is worked through the mixture, it becomes elastic and stretchy. A skillful practitioner can turn the process into a veritable floor show, pulling the potato-andcheese-coated spoon high above the pot before dipping it back again, in an act reminiscent of mozzarella production.

As elegantly as it is presented now, aligot is believed to have originated as a shepherds’ dish, and it was much favored by supplicants stopping to rest overnight in the Auvergne en route to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. This delicious dish often accompanies roasted meats, and it is traditionally topped with darkly pungent, crisp-skinned blood sausage, as it is at L’Ambassade d’Auvergne in Paris.

Where:

• In Paris, Ambassade d’Auvergne, tel 33/1-42-72-31-22, ambassade-auvergne.com; 
• In  New York, Minetta Tavern, tel 212-475-3850, minettatavernny.com; 
• In Los Angeles, Spago, tel 310-385-0880, wolfgangpuck.com. 

Further information and recipe: Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins (1996);
cookstr.com (search aligote).

Agneau de Pré-Salé, Three Ways

SEASONED BY MOTHER NATURE

 Mont Saint-Michel crowns the largest salt meadow area in France

Serious gourmet cooks consider buying preseasoned meat an unforgivable gaffe, anticipating bland commercial spice mixtures at best. But when the seasoner is Mother Nature herself, who can argue?

Cavils end with a taste of the verdantly saline, lean lamb from France’s coastal provinces of Normandy and, especially, Brittany. There, lamb and sheep graze on the reclaimed salt meadows known as prés-salés, nibbling random herbs and bits of sprightly green seaweed along the way (or, in the hills around Provence, on the wild lavender that lends sweet overtones to the meat). These agneaux (lambs) or moutons (mutton) de pré-salé are treasured marks of quality on menus and in
butcher shops throughout France.

Restraint and balance being two of the hallmarks of the best French
cuisine, chefs and home cooks respect the elegant natural taste of this meat and are careful not to overpower it, hence the following favorite methods for appreciating this lamb and mutton.

Gigot aux flageolets à la Bretonne — Brittany leg of lamb with beans. 

A great classic roast that is fast disappearing from French restaurants in the U.S., this leg of lamb is adorned with only pepper and a few slivers of garlic, inserted close to the bone, before it is roasted to roseate perfection at an inner temperature of 145 to 148 degrees Fahrenheit (63 to 65*C).

Once cooked, the roasted meat lends its rich juices to beans, preferably the small, dried ivory or jade flageolets, or, almost as good, the creamy white haricots. After a good soak, the beans are simmered with onion, thyme, bay leaf, and garlic until tender, and then are baked to an inviting mellow brown color along with lamb pan juices and perhaps a touch of tomato.

True gigot, cut from a whole leg of lamb, is hard to find in American restaurants these days. Changing eating habits mean that not enough customers order roasted meat, so a whole leg
would lead to uneconomical leftovers. Thus, what often passes for gigot is really a lamb steak
cut from the leg and grilled or roasted to order—not the same thing by a long shot.

Carré d’agneau persillé — Parsleyed rack of lamb.

A cut that stretches from the loin of the carcass to the first rib, the rack or carré of lamb is really a long row of unseparated lamb chops — plump, tender, and attached to riblike bones that in this dish are typically “frenched”, the meat and fat stripped away from the bare bones to create a refined and useful set of handles. Roasted to a rare state, the rack is removed from the oven, lightly brushed with spicy Dijon mustard, and encrusted with a heady mix of bread crumbs, garlic, and minced parsley. Then it goes back into the oven until the meat is medium rare and the coating crisp, golden, and fragrant. The rack is carved into chop portions and hopefully laid alongside a square of creamy baked pommes Dauphinoise.

Navarin d’agneau printanier — Spring lamb stew.

Even the cherished salt meadow lamb includes some cuts that are better braised than roasted, among them the neck and shoulder meat. With the coming of spring, two-inch cubes of these cuts are gently stewed until almost tender with a little dry white wine, a few tomatoes, thyme, garlic, and a bay leaf. The meat is jeweled with new white potatoes, tiny onions, young carrots and turnips, and freshly shelled new peas, and cooked until tender; it’s served as a gastronomic celebration of the vernal equinox.

Of course, all of these methods are also applied to less exalted lamb, when it is the chef who seasons to taste.

Further information and recipes:

• The Food of France by Waverley Root (1992); 
• Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961); 
• foodnetwork.com (search rack of lamb persillade).

BILLINGSGATE FISH MARKET

“OF ALL NATIONS AND COUNTRIES, ENGLAND IS BEST SERVED OF FISH.”
—WRITER AND PHYSICIAN ANDREW BOORDE, 1542

Surrounded by the cold salt waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, Britain is a treasury of firm and flavorful fish, mollusks, and crustaceans—and there is no better showcase for its wares than a visit to the exciting Billingsgate Market at daybreak.

Operating in the fish trade since the sixteenth century, the market dates back to 1400, when King Henry IV granted the city a charter to collect tolls at several such water gates on the Thames. Today the U.K.’s largest wholesale fish center, Billingsgate, is spread over thirteen acres near London’s Canary Wharf, providing a great adventure for all early risers (or night owls) who love seafood.

Tuesday through Saturday, the colorfully boisterous market opens to the clang of a bell that sounds an on-your-mark signal at 4:45 a.m., and fifteen minutes later a second bell vibrates through the fog-filled dawn, indicating that the market is open for business.

The market’s gleaming white interior is drippingly wet, hoses keeping floors and counters immaculate until closing time at 8:30 a.m. There is nary a hint of acrid fish odor, but rather a clean and cool, sea-air freshness, reinforced by the sight of the market workers in their spotless white coats; some will conduct training tours for novices in the fish trade and, on advance notice, can accommodate tourists. Buyers from shops and restaurants work the aisles—sniffing, touching, calculating—before placing orders. Members of the public can be found making their way through the market, too, although the really big days for nonprofessionals are Saturdays, when some 4,000 jam the aisles and parking lots.

There are many imports here, but pay closest attention to the delectable local specimens: halibut and salmon from Scottish and Irish waters, flat and snowy Dover sole, red-spotted plaice, huge diamond-shape slabs of turbot, members of the cod family including whiting and haddock, slim green-white pilchards halfway between herring and sardines, miniscule whitebait to be crunchily fried whole. You will find all gradations of squid, octopus, and shrimp; sparklingly briny oysters from Whitstable in Kent, as well as Colchesters and Blackwaters from Essex and Helfords from Cornwall; Dublin Bay prawns; Donegal crab; Scottish langoustines; whelks; cockles, which look like ridged scallops; blue mussels; and periwinkles, which are tiny stoneblack sea snails. The variety itself (about 150 daily) is a tip-off to the diversity of London’s immigrant population; as seafood favored by each group is added to the larder, so, too, are sales staff speaking a United Nations of languages. Two coffee shops restore market workers and visitors with hearty breakfasts, and it is said that if you buy a piece of fish at one of the stalls, cooks at the Piscatorial Café will prepare it for you.

Where:
Trafalgar Way, London, tel 44/20-7987-1118, cityoflondon.gov.uk (search billingsgate).

BANGERS AND MASH

COMFORT WITH A BANG

Big, plump pork sausages sputter with savory juices atop a buttery nest of mashed potatoes, with overtones of pepper and a golden brown onion sauce lending a bittersweet burnish . . . This is bangers and mash, a lunch or dinner favorite in English pubs and a satisfying homemade supper to boot.

It appears in one of its most refined presentations at London’s stylish Green’s Restaurant, where Cumberland bangers are enhanced by strips of crisp, smoky bacon. More aromatic pork bangers hinting of sage, nutmeg, and mace are the specialty of Cumberland, while those from Yorkshire and
Lancashire are based upon beef.

These sausages were dubbed bangers after World War I, when water added to stretch the scarce meat of the filling caused the frying sausages to burst—with a bang. Usually fried or grilled in their own fat, bangers emerge more plumply moist and golden when brushed with butter and oven roasted, especially if their casings are unbroken. (Ignore the advice of those who say they should be pierced before cooking.) Devotees shun mass-produced bangers, especially if skinless, and lean turkey or chicken bangers in favor of those made by artisanal butchers who use natural casings and a pork
mix that includes just enough snowy fat to preserve juices.

Ideally, the boiled, starchy potatoes should not be pureed but rather broken down with an old-fashioned potato masher as butter and milk or cream are worked in. A few lumps add textural
contrast, providing the right purchase for the roux-thickened onion gravy.

Where:

In London, Green’s Restaurant, tel 44/20-7930-4566, greens.org.uk;

In New York, Tea & Sympathy, tel 212-989-9735, teaandsympathynewyork.com;

In Austin, TX, Banger’s Sausage House and Beer Garden, tel 512-386-1656, bangersaustin.com.

Mail order: For bangers, R.J. Balson & Son, tel 321-281-9473, balsonbutchers.com.

Further information and recipes: How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman (2006);
theguardian.com (search bangers and mash).

AFTERNOON TEA

EVERYTHING STOPS FOR TEA

One of life’s pleasantest indulgences is afternoon tea, preferably in London, although as this cosseting meal regains popularity, it can be enjoyed in upscale hotels and romantic tearooms around the world. A custom that originated in the nineteenth century, when life grew busier and the dinner hour grew later, a sustaining afternoon tea is a nibbler’s paradise.

It begins with delectable crustless sandwiches trimmed into rounds or finger shapes. Spread with sweet or herb-seasoned butter, filled with thin slices of icy cucumber, ham, or smoked salmon, or with spreads of meat or shrimp paste and miniature cress, these dainty sandwiches are mere preludes
to currant-studded scones and crumpets (the forerunners of the English muffin) and pound cakes such as the caraway seed classic, topped with clotted cream and fruit jams and marmalades.

Overdo it on those temptations and you might have to skip the final display of fruit and cream pastries, set out on silver trays or footed cake stands.

There are choices of teas, of course, ranging from the smoky lapsang souchong to the lemony,
bergamot-scented Earl Grey, the subtle black Chinese oolong, and the complex Darjeeling, lusty enough to be considered the coffee-drinker’s tea.

Milk or lemon? That depends upon the tea. There is even a choice of sugars, all delightful dilemmas presented amid flowers, bone china, and fine linens.

Newcomers take note: While the term high tea may seem to designate an even posher version of this afternoon meal, it actually denotes the opposite—a heavier meal that includes meat pies, spreads, and perhaps sausages, traditionally served as a tea-supper for working-class families.

Where:
In London,

• The Ritz Hotel, tel 44/ 20-7300-2345, theritzlondon.com; 
• The Connaught, tel 44/20-7499-7070, the-connaught.co.uk; 
• Brown’s Hotel, tel 44/20-7518-4155, brownshotel.com;
• Claridge’s, tel 44/20-7409-6307, claridges.co.uk;
• Hyde Park Hotel, tel 44/20-7243-5000, thehydepark .com; 
• Fortnum & Mason, tel 44/20-7734-8040, fortnumandmason.com; 
• Harrods, tel 44/20-7730-1234, harrods.com; 

In New York,

• Tea & Sympathy, tel 212-989-9735, teaandsympathynewyork.com; 

 Throughout the U.S., at most Four Seasons hotels, tel 800-819-5053, fourseasons.com.