i rarely get too personal on ceF. i pretty much keep it to food. but i felt the need to share this with you and if at all possible to even ask you for a small favor…

together, just this past week, we all watched in horror as mumbai became a war zone. we saw the death and destruction – and the innocent people who were being terrorized. as a nation we felt shocked, angry, even helpless. and we also felt thankful that we were home and that our loved ones were safe. we sat around our thanksgiving tables and spoke of what was happening in india, saying "can you believe this?" and  "how incredibly insane the world is"…

late wednesday night when i got home from a decadent pre-thanksgiving dinner with friends, and i finally got around to checking my voice mail, all i can remember was a message from my dear friend santos. he said he had bad news and went on about something to do with his wife "the beloved" and that she had been shot in mumbai and that he’d almost lost her but after emergency surgery it seemed that she would be ok… i didn’t even play the whole message. i was confused. i’d been busy all day and had seen something on the news that afternoon, but in the midst of my life, i had turned it off – never so much as thinking… so i immediately called his number and his sister answered. santos had been sedated but she patiently filled me in while i broke down and cried. she told me that rudrani was stable, and that santos was leaving in the middle of the night to get to an airport to fly to baltimore to go to the embassy to get his papers in order, so that he could immediately fly to mumbai and be by her side…

rudrani had been at my house for a dinner exactly 2 weeks before – just 2 days before she left for india.

but let me start at the very beginning…

i met santos about a year ago on the nashville scene’s food blog called ‘bites‘. there was no denying that this guy knew his food, but he could also make you laugh out loud with his witty repartee and seemingly endless trivial knowledge on virtually everything. on occasion, the ‘bites’ contributors and commenters would get together for lunch and so, santos and i finally met for the first time at prince’s – a nashville institution, and immediately became fast and furious friends. santos is a 110% latin american man from venezuela, and well, santos loves women. so being a woman around santos is delightful. he pays attention to detail. but make no mistake about it, at the end of the day there is only one woman for him. the beloved. his beautiful wife, rudrani about whom he can’t stop talking - and with the kind of adoration and devotion that you rarely see. and he never calls her by name. it’s always "the beloved".

and then i finally met her. and ok – so she’s gorgeous. but she’s also majorly fun and well, just lovely. and smart. and caring – to all creatures (she has bonded with my cat, merle) and she LOVES to eat. let me tell you, this woman is a serious carnivore. and so there were gatherings and dinners – and well, then i had two friends…

rudrani devi is a very spiritual woman, a true shaman who was fulfilling a deep desire to journey to india in the wake of her teacher, master charles cannon, joining him and about 20 other people on a meditation retreat. one week ago while having dinner in mumbai she was shot execution style while under a table at the oberoi hotel. the man next to her was shot in the head and died in her lap. alan scherr and his 13 year old daughter, both from the meditation group were killed.

santos lopez holding his beloved, rudrani devi at the hospital in mumbai.

santos has called me a few times from mumbai. one of the things he has mentioned is his desire to make a wonderful thankgiving dinner for his wife and their families. a thanksgiving dinner like no other. a day of food and celebration, a way to rejoice in the gratefulness of rudrani’s return to him, their home, their life together… and he asked me to help make it happen.

so in turn, dear readers, i come to you. because this year i traveled to nyc to be with family and i didn’t cook a lick. and so i need recipes. and i know they will be tried and true and fresh, not only in your mind but on your palate.

if i may ask you to leave in the ‘comments section’ some recommendations, or perhaps even a link to a post of a dish that was an absolute winner… that would be so nice. and if you would, please be specific. and i’d like it to be something traditional, something that really wowed you – the dish that you’ll be sure to make next year. we need it all – from the perfect turkey, a classic but out-of-this-world stuffing, a wonderful cranberry dish - to a few sides and of course desserts. oh, and there’s only one stipulation. no pork. at all. i know, i know. but we can do this….

and with your help, from these recipes we will comprise our menu. and i will be sure to report back to you with pictures and huge thanks in making rudrani’s december thanksgiving even more memorable…

i know that i can count on you…

i mean if not you, who?

yes yes, scallops again. and again and again. have i mentioned how we love them over here? and have you seen the scallops that have been available lately? i’m not sure i even want to know how exactly it is that they are getting so huge, but i bought one yesterday that was like a small tenderloin, weighing in at 5.5 ounces.

but hey, i like them big because then it is ever so easy to sear the wholly hell out of them and still have them be good and rare in the middle. because that right there is what it’s all about in the world of scallop cooking. achieving the perfect crusty deep golden exterior that is basically pure umami – while not rendering the meat inside to a hard puck-like substance.

this dish was totally ripped off from a local restaurant here in town called 360 bistro. chef john david crow makes a dish like this that i absolutely love and so i decided to try my hand at replicating my last dinner there – or at the very least, come close. chef crow is a friend and i almost called him to get some pointers, but then i just got to cooking and well, i am telling you – 20 minutes from start to finish and we were eating a damn fine plate of food. which is once again proof positive that cooking does not have to be a long, drawn out laborious process. this was truly quick and painless with a huge payoff.

both the apple and the cauliflower were roughly chopped and thrown into separate pans with some water, covered and left to steam about 10 minutes. the cauliflower was then thrown into the food processor minced garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. while it pureed i drizzled in about 1/4 cup of my best olive oil. when i stopped the processor and spooned a bit of the cauliflower into my mouth i smiled. it was absolutely exquisite. dear readers, mashed potatoes have nothing on this. i am telling you. trust me. i care about you. all of you. this cauliflower puree? a winner… and yes, go butter or cream it up if you feel you must, but after this, i was giving the ol’ arteries a break. and really, a very good buttery spanish olive fit the bill wonderfully.

by this time the apple was soft and it got thrown into the chinoise sans water, and strained down to a very fine consistency. the sauce then went back on the stove to reduce down a bit more with some sugar and a pinch of salt.

the scallops got a good deep sear and were plated atop the cauliflower and then drizzled with the apple reduction. the parsley was ‘just because’ it was a rather drab and colorless dish – but regardless of its pallor, i am telling you… this was phenomenal. and on the healthy scale it ranked pretty high.

except we ate the entire head of cauliflower. the 2 of us. and as good as it was in the moment, it was A LOT of food.

an aside: i went through a raw phase once where nearly eveything got pureed. nuts, seeds and vegetables make delicious pates but the quantities get skewed when it’s all in a slice or a ball. i’d make chocolate cakes with nothing but nuts, avocado, coconut oil, agave and raw cocoa powder and the fat/calorie count was high as a kite. also raw macadamias are dangerously good when pureed with nothing but salt and onion…

the scallop thing? we’ve got it bad. and being the versatile little buggers that they are, it’s fun to dress them up according to what’s happening in your refrigerator, the season, or just your mood…

scallops, it’s what’s for dinner…

              

my rss feeder broke.  and i didn’t realize it for 3 months.  mostly because i (still) don’t even understand what exactly an rss feeder is, or what it does – talk about being oh so techno savvy… but my stat’s were dropping off and well, try as i might to just ignore the cold hard numbers, i started to take it personally.  was it something i said?  something i cooked?  where did so many of my bleaders go and why would they leave me after all we have meant to each other? 

but before i called my therapist, i called mark from simpler computing! and he quickly came to my rescue – again.  thank you mark.  you solved the mystery and now once again you are so totally my blero. 

so listen up – all you techno losers out there that just like to cook and write and take a little photo here and there, but do not want to bother your pretty little heads with html and templates and embedding and wordpress editors that suck and the like, call mark.  today.  he can tweak your blog into submission.  AND he likes to cook… (btw – ceF is still under construction as i type so please bear with…)

speaking of liking to cook… here’s the deal.  i cook a lot.  but sometimes it’s just dinner.  and sometimes it’s not my idea of a blog worthy post.  and usually it’s just that i’m too lazy to write.  but it’s totally me, not you.  you, i adore.  you make my life better, adding an entirely new fangled dimension that did not exist just 16 months ago. but still, i am often unmotivated, or perhaps even more often than that, i’m just reading OPB’s…

so what happens is that some of these dishes fall by the blogosphere’s wayside.  but i thought since we were dealing with feeds and feeding, i’d show you what gets fed around here to my immediate world.  so i’m going to hit you with a fair few of what i’ve not bothered to bother you with until now, along with some pictures. take a deep breath – here goes…

look familiar?  this one was made with the half and half, as per ripert’s recipe.  was it better?  yes.  did i LOVE it?  not so much.  it’s ok.  kinda brunchy, not desserty.  i like custard.  life is good.  and eric, you’re totally cool and sexy and hot and all those things.  but my tony still has you beat, big time. i hope you can understand…

ok so i realize i am blogger #4721 to make jim lahey’s no knead bread.  but i did it.  quietly.  and it was a good and crusty loaf of bread that if nothing else looked very, very impressive. 

i baked it in my romertopf that i dug out and dusted off.  although it stays unused and because it looks so beautiful – i keep it.  i’m sure you understand such things.  so, i soaked the terracotta in water and then baked the bread as per the direction for a dutch oven.  i felt my dutch oven was too big and i didn’t want a 2" high bread.  somehow, this worked out quite nicely.  so take a chance, dear readers – bake no knead bread.  oh, and have i made this again since?  nope.  will i?  maybe, probably not.

this was made quite awhile ago.  it was panko encrusted chicken livers served over what i think was swiss chard and finely sliced ‘delightful tiny purple potatoes’ and shallots sautéed with pimm’s and port.  what?  you think they may not have been tiny and delightful?  you are sooooo wrong….

i present to you… delightful. tiny. purple. potatoes.  i only wish i could have been in the room when the marketing team thought of that.  can you imagine what the discussion would have sounded like?  i only know they were republicans with bad haircuts.  after that, i know nothing.

so now you ask, what the hell is that?  that, my dear readers is a watermelon salad with mint leaves, chili oil and feta – topped with a very anti-locavore piece of barramundi from costco via australia.  in a previous life i lived down under (husband #1) and ate this fish regularly.  perhaps i didn’t need to sit the barramundi on top of the watermelon, but it seemed like a good idea at the time… and it was our dinner that night and we were happy enough.  so stop smirking.  thank you.

i made this last weekend and it was good and rich and saucy and chicken thighey – all that with trofie pasta thrown in for very good measure.  it’s what patricia wells eats when she’s at home in provence, a recipe that i picked up from feeding groom.  oh and it’s got sherry vinegar and garlic cloves and dijon mustard and lots of tarragon and minced sundried tomatoes… it’s more wintry than it is septembery in nashville, but i had 4 chicken thighs in the freezer and suddenly this just happened…

ok are you ready to hear what this was supposed to be?  what it almost was… what i wished it might have been and what it could be if i ever decide to take it on again?  salted butterscotch pudding with chocolate covered bacon.  thank you and goodnight.  the end.  by claudia. 

except it never really thickened properly.  and benton’s bacon is crazy salty.  so salty that i forgot just how salty it was therefore making it an out and out wrong bacon choice.  because it seems that is actually possible.  to make a wrong bacon choice.  you’d think not, but what this dessert needed was a thin cut good bacon that crisps up in a curly, artsy strip, and only then could it be dipped into lindt chocolate and put into a pudding recipe that WORKS.  because this recipe did not.  and another blogger tried it and it didn’t work for her either.  so. oh well,  we all drank our pudding and chucked the wayyy too salty pork.  seemed sinful but we got over it.  we lived and learned, moving onwards and upwards – with the comforting knowledge that bacon rarely ever lets you down…

so not even a little pretty.  AND the wrong color bowl.  but it was just a simple dinner of fresh crowder peas with bacon.  the bacon did just as it should, redeeming itself from the previous mishap.  there was something else served with this but really, i have no idea… i think it was grilled tilapia.  unexciting, quick and easy and not exactly memorable – but hey, not every night can be foie gras…

OK – EVERYBODY STAND UP AND STRETCH.  NO REALLY.  BECAUSE I AM NOT DONE.  BATHROOM BREAK?  GO ON.  I’LL WAIT….

oh, hi, you’re back.  wonderful, because i was worried… ok, just a few more…

this was lazzaroli’s sweet potato and ricotta ravioli.  i dressed it up with a side of kale, done in a sauce of olive oil, cream, honey and sage, and then dusted the pasta with nutmeg and parmegiano.  again – super fast and easy.  (tommy noodles, you are a nashville godsend… thank you for giving me an option that is first rate and still allows me to get creative.)

yes, i too jumped on the bandwagon thanks to michelle from thursday night smackdown and all the rest of you that grilled the hell outa a bunch of pizzas…  except michelle was the one who took my call on a saturday night so i could get very specific information about the whole pizza grilling process.  this particular pizza was taken from her post and it was damn fine.  i cooked down some swiss chard in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and used copious amounts of minced garlic and ricotta.  i also sliced up a big ripe yellow tomato with red stripes running through it (we will miss you beautiful heirloom tomatoes),

awesomeness, no?  well yes – but… from here on in i’ll stick to the pizza stone with my oven set to broil and 550f… because grilled pizza is too damn white on top.  and flipping it before the toppings go on doesn’t allow the cheese and sauce to bake into the dough and well, my grill runs hot (it’s infrared) so even on the lowest setting it never got the top brown and i kept having to turn the flame on and off so as not to scorch the bottom and was nervously moving it to the top rack and well, i like my pizza stone in my oven.  so if i had a real charcoal grill which i don’t and do not plan on getting because it’s too much work and i am not willing (go on – think of me what you will but there are extenuating circumstances… like a boyfriend who is also happy with oven baked pizza’s), maybe that would be better.  but as it stands, and i repeat – i am a pizza in the oven kinda gal – set to broil on super high heat with the stone on the very bottom rack.  but i made the obligatory grilled pizza.  yes i did.

i present to you… voodoo mac and cheese

do you read gild the (voodoo)lily?  if not, you need to read gild the (voodoo)lily…  heather is very smart and very funny and this bitch can cook.  and i mean that in a good way.  heather is another one of those foodcentric people that seriously knows how to put ingredients together.  like if you turned your pantry over to her, she’d blow your mind.  and you’d be thinking all, why didn’t i think of that?… and the answer is because she KNOWS MORE THAN YOU DO.  plus she’s a botanist.  a freakin’ botanist... so she’s always growing and foraging and well, it’s a little bit intimidating.  heather could totally kick your ass and never even touch you…

anyway, back in july she made something called garden mac.  for her it was merely a ‘clean your fridge out’ kinda dinner, and i’m thinking – mac and cheese with roasted tomatoes in a bechamel base?  sign me the hell up. 

the ingredients i used were as follows; mostaccioli pasta, the 4 cheeses were – asiago, parmigiano reggiano, st jerome and fontal.  and for the garden part – fresh thyme and heirloom tomatoes, kale, onion, squash and zucchini.  i drove all the ingredients about an hour south, down to my friend shannon’s house and we spent the day cooking and drinking wine and talking and laughing and then we sat out on the porch overlooking her farm and had a late lunch…

and for the grand finale i give to you an extremely abbreviated version of my veal stock mission…

bones arrive from snook’s.  i tried for weeks to find a local source.  nada.

20 lbs.

because i am awesome…

i made brown and white stock.  i followed the ruhlman way.  it is the only way. (great version here)

otherwise when you die, you go to culinary hell where you are forced to live on nothing but shoney’s buffets. (please click on the shoney’s link.  there are no words…)

and hey, thanks so much for reading.  i realize this post was a commitment. 

you can go now…

catfish coujonettes with tartar sauce
(joe shaw from the standard – nashville, tn)

i love nashville.  i really do.  and i live here by choice because, well, i could pretty much live anywhere i wanted.  i’m, for the most part – unencumbered.  yet i live here, in the buckle of the bible belt – to the amusement of some and the befuddlement of others… 

now, to say that nashville, a city of well over a million – is perhaps wanting in a few areas, would certainly be an understatement. the lack of worldly culture, the fashion, the food scene… don’t even get me started. but even i must admit that it’s suddenly coming along in leaps and bounds. so even if i am not louis vuitton and tiffany’s, or anthropologie and urban outfitter’s target demographic, it’s somehow comforting for me to see that they’ve hung their shingles here – as have whole foods and trader joe’s (thank you god.) 

yes, i love nashville.  but it’s all because i am part of a community of people that i deeply respect and adore.  after 10 years of working closely with the songwriting community and now more recently, steeping myself in the food world, i’ve encountered some of the greatest people i could have ever wished to know.  talented, worldly and brilliant people with big hearts and open minds… and that trumps culture and fashion – even restaurants, any day.  plus our music scene will KICK YOUR ASS no matter where you’re from and no, it ain’t just country…  and well, if you think i’m wrong – think again…

so, lookie here!  it was the james beard foundation’s maiden voyage to our fair city – a dinner to benefit ‘an oral history project that seeks to preserve the lore and techniques of classic american cooking traditions’.   so like ok, it’s not exactly starving children in need, but hey, i for one love a good story and i’m just glad they deemed nashville worthy of the event.  so last thursday night, we were graced with the lovely presence of diane harris brown, beard’s director of educational and community programming – who, by the way does a STUNNING julia child impersonnation… and then there were the chefs, hailing from the southern regions…

so, the first shot of the evening (above), and my white balance was on the wrong setting.  i am really so very not a photographer – i just play one on my blog.  but boy did i ever come across as effective with my nikon rig.  the flash diffuser really pushed my look over the top into pure professionalism on steroids.  so i did what i could within my limited knowledge of how the buttons and settings work, and here was the event in pictures, be it as it may…

duck breast bruschetta with sweet potato spread and onion sweet pepper relish
(joe shaw from the standard – nashville, tn)

shucked oyster shooters with mennonite tomato puree, horseradish and pickled okra
(joe shaw from the standard – nashville, tn)

open faced blt with candied hog jowl bacon and randy barnes heirloom tomatoes
(joe shaw from the standard – nashville, tn)

the little blt’s were by far the best of the hors d’oeurves – but as you know, it’s hard to beat candied bacon…

house cured salami with lima beans sott’olio and sartori reserve sarvecchio parmesan
(tandy wilson from city house – nashville, tn)

low country shrimp torchon, vanilla cream corn panna cotta and smoked blueberry
(tyler brown from capitol grille – nashville, tn)

i thought this was quite good…

over easy raviolo with gardner grove pullet egg, sage brown butter, kabocha squash and chanterelles
(mike lata from FIG – charleston, sc)

ATTENTION !!! … this dish from mike lata was STUPENDOUS.

black eyed pea dusted sunburst trout with benton’s country ham and field pea ragout
(john fleer from sunburst trout company – canton, sc)

collard wrapped dw farms lamb barbacoa with spiced peach compote
(martha stamps with karla ruiz from martha’s at the plantation – nashville, tn)

peanut crusted eaton creek sweet potato pudding pie with sky high meringue and jack daniels plum sauce
(martha stamps with garret wallace from martha’s at the plantation – nashville, tn)

a huge thank you to martha stamps from martha’s at the plantation for making the evening both possible and a success…

because this whole blogging thing has somehow become a big part of my life, and well – if you, dear readers, had never showed up - then just what would be the point?   so again, thank you.  and so that you know, i adore each and every one of you and wish we could all have one big group hug.  and then i would cook you lunch.  and i would really try to impress you, yes i would.  because after all, a lot of you would have had to travel very far to get your hug – and it’d be the very least i could do…

SO LET ME JUST SAY THAT THIS WAS TOTALLY FREAKIN’ HARD…

and you know i’m not big into capital letters – so it had to have been REALLY tough. 

ok – i picked 5…

and the winners are:

comment #6 – klinde – hers was the longest and she referenced the sound of music and well, i know every lyric to every song from that movie and i had the record and played it on my little victrola in my bedroom in forest hills, queens – and so YES i am old…  but it’s not my fault, ok?  anyway – klinde was convinced she was going to win and so i didn’t have the heart to rob her of that fantasy. 

comment #11 – tim johnson – he did lose points for misspelling the word limerick but then he forged forward and really did write a good one… and who doesn’t love a rock solid limerick?

comment #30 – mary – she hit me heavy with the high brow quotes and almost more adjectives and adverbs then any one comment could possibly expect to hold.  something about envisioning herself there on a natural high… i liked the vibeyness.

comments #38, 41 and 42 – cary and sarah – because they double teamed me and then there was that "dirty little food porn secret" reference – and well, it’s hard not to like that in a couple.  at least if you’re me.

comment #55 – richard – because he’s also from new york and he feels my pain…  and if you have to ask you’ll never understand.

if the winners could please email me at cookeatFRET@gmail.com with your addresses, ‘the nashville scene‘ will get these tix right out to you.

so thanks for playing along.  big thanks to the wonderful nashville scene – but mostly dear readers, thanks for being my cyber buddies.

i’m honored.

hey nashville?  we need to talk, ok?  because here at ‘ceF‘, i’ve got something both exciting and wonderous to tell you - AND to give you.  well not all of you.  but 5 of you.  yep, 5 of you and your one very special friend.  so that’s 10 whole people whose lives i get to enrich, expand and perhaps even alter – forever.  dear readers, can’t you see the absolute ENORMITY of this?  i just knew you could.

and suddenly, i’m feeling very oprah’esqe…

so here’s how it works… ‘the nashville scene‘ has generously given ‘ceF‘ 5 pair of tickets to this totally awesome event.  so if you’re going to be in nashville on april 30th, and would like to attend ’IRON FORK‘,   the culinary event of the year (details listed below), please just leave a comment telling me why you’d like to go – and be sure to get your point across, ok?  i will pick the 5 best comments.  because it is my blog and quite frankly – i’ve got all the power here – within the unlimited confines of my cyber walls.

all entries must be in by monday april 21st at midnight
winners will be announced tuesday april 22nd at noon

        Don’t miss the culinary event of the year!

On Wednesday, April 30^th, Whole Foods Market Presents Nashville Scene’s Iron Fork, benefiting St. Luke’s Community House, at LP Field’s West Club Level Riverside. The fun lasts from 6:00-10:00 p.m. with samples of award-winning cuisine from Menu of Menus 2008, the Scene’s guide to Nashville city dining, two complimentary drink tickets, and live entertainment. Watch 5 of the best chefs in Nashville battle it out in a head-to-head chef’s competition better than anything you’ll ever see on TV!  Or enjoy a refreshing glass of delicious Blue Moon ale in the Blue Moon Beer Garden hosted by 107.5’s Woody and Jim.

The 2008 competing chefs are:

Bobby Benjamin – Flyte World Dining
Clay Greenberg – Lime/Virago
Deb Paquette – Zola Restaurant
Sean Norton – Watermark
Will Ulhorn – F. Scott’s

Sampling restaurants include Agave Tequila Lounge, Alleycat Lounge & Tex-Mex Grill, Drew’s Brews Coffee, Fire-N-Ice Bar & Grill, Flyte World Dining & Wine, Green Hills Grille, Mad Platter, Mere Bulles Restaurant, Nero’s Grill, PM, Qdoba Mexican Grill , Ru San’s Sushi and Seafood Japanese Restaurant, Saffire Restaurant & Bar, Sitar Indian Cuisine, Star Bagel, Watermark, Whole Foods Market, Wildhorse Saloon, and Wildwood Oak Fired Kitchen.

And it’s all for a great cause!  Bring your family and friends and help raise money for St. Luke’s Community House, since food is the very foundation of St. Luke’s services. Volunteers deliver around 100 hot meals to area seniors every week day through their mobile meals program. Through a partnership with Second Harvest, St. Luke’s distributes emergency food boxes to hundreds of our neighbors each year. With major support from the Bank of America Foundation, St. Luke’s began offering culinary classes as part of their job skills training program that serves men and women trying to find a better job.

$25 advance tickets can be purchased through the nashvillescene.com or you can buy your ticket at the door for $30 the day of the event. Presented by Whole Foods Market, and sponsored by Blue Moon, 107.5 The River, and Jive! A Digital Print Factory. You must be 21+ with a valid I.D.  Parking is free. For more information, log onto www.nashvillescene.com or call the Iron Fork Hotline at 244.4989 x341.

i’m in nyc slowly eating my way through the entire town.  just know that i do this for you, dear readers and i will report back in detail very soon.  in the meantime, on this auspicious day i wanted to leave you with my 15 minutes of true nashville fame. 

if you are drinking coffee – put it down now or it will shoot through your nose and ruin your computer forever…

the nashville scene 2008 lust list
(scroll until you find the older looking woman in reading glasses)

thank you and good night

there are those with the serious belief that if nashville were to have only one food to call their own, ‘hot chicken’ would be it.  many nashvillian’s are quick to claim this fiery fare, whereas say barbeque for instance, is more of a memphis kinda thing.  but hot chicken?  we got ya hot chickin, rat he’a.  but as are most things that rely on taste - whether it be art, a pair of shoes or your cologne of choice - the best of anything is highly debatable.  but even so, if per chance some mighty fine spicy fried chicken happened to be on your mind, this town is where you’d find it.  and arguably, ‘prince’s’ would be the place.

in an unassuming strip mall on a rougher side of town you’ll find ‘prince’s hot chicken’.  it’s got a cheery vibe with walls colored a close cousin to ‘tiffany‘ blue, a fact that few of the patrons – and to their credit – would ever know.  this is a down home kinda place.  straight forward and to the point.  white meat or dark.  then choose your level of pain.  mild still makes your nose run and puts sweat on your brow.  there are tales of native cajuns who ordered the extra hot – but just couldn’t do it.  i’m not sure who would ever want to go there and why, but i suppose if you’re drunk enough, it’s available.

i mean it’s pretty much your standard fried chicken, but the crust is now loaded up with varying degrees of cayenne pepper.  it’s perfectly crisp and even the white meat stays on the moist side.  you really can not fault this chicken.  it’s a finely executed bird with some major freakin’ attitude.

the place was pretty busy and the tables were all taken but ileka, a beautiful and kind woman, invited us to join her at her booth as she had just stopped in for a ‘medium breast’ solo lunch (and you KNOW what i mean so stop being 12).  every order only hits the fryer when placed so you’ve got about a solid 20 minute wait ahead of you.

my friend Z brought along some semblance of a green vegetable to surround the otherwise bereft plate of anything considered truly nutritious.  there were also below mediocre ore-ida style frozen crinkle fries that you ate for no other reason than a possible cooling factor, a decent potato salad and a so-so coleslaw.  but the cakes were damn good.  we ordered two.  an almond cake with lemon icing and a very very fine version of the much loved southern caramel cake.

and then there are the locals, born and raised on the stuff who still yearn for it on occasion.  i happen to know one “mr. pink” who is quite partial to the hot chicken experience so i took him a medium spicy breast to go.  while i was driving, with both the windows and the heat up, i suddenly noticed that the smell was permeating my clothing and hair and i had this powerful olfactory recollection of ‘white castle‘ burgers left in my car one summers day.  did you ever see the seinfeld episode where jerry valet’s his new bmw and then has to sell his car?  anyway, i lifted the bag only to see the cayenne infused oil bleeding onto my leather seat.  toxic leakage…

one of my dining buddies told me that prince’s used to give you a section of newspaper with every to go order so that the bag wouldn’t ruin the carpets on your floorboard.  he told about a friend of his who used to keep a white frisbee in his trunk to contain the stain since it would invariably soak through the newspaper after eating through the bag.  

then it melted the frisbee.

eastside fish is quite simply a tiny storefront off of a central road over on the northeast side of town with one table inside and a picnic table outside.  we lucked into a beautiful november day, sunny and 68 degrees, perfect for dining al fresco.  you go inside, wait in line, place your order and then you get a number and wait some more.  this place has quite the reputation and gets some traffic - so those filets are hitting the oil one after the other, and it takes a bit of time - about 15 minutes - to churn these fried-to-perfection babies out.  and then your number is called and in a brown paper bag resides the beast, wrapped in deli paper secured by a toothpick stuck through to the bread.  ingenious?  i’d say so… 

the "king fish" consists of two filets, weighing in at over 1 1/2 lbs. sandwiched between 4 slices of white bread.  these golden, crunchy filets come dressed with the following: hot sauce, mustard, onions and pickles.  and please do not even try to improve on that by adding anything more - like for instance the god awful american cheese slice that is offered as an ‘extra’.  just say no.  our king got split two ways.  no upcharge.  (a joke.)  for our beverage selections, my dining partner opted for the orange soda while i went directly for the diet dr. pepper.  there were crunchy onion rings and the obligatory white beans, both quite good.  we opted out of dessert but eastside offers tons of pies and cakes, all baked fresh on the premises. 

this past sunday NPR’s ‘the splendid table‘ did ‘a segment on eastside fish‘ with jane and michael stern, who write the monthly column "two for the road" for gourmet magazine, an ongoing, cross-country guide dedicated to ferreting out the best in american food. (fyi – i took that line directly from their bio as i was thinking i couldn’t improve on it.) a big shout out to merita and george who work at eastside fish.  thanks for making us feel so welcome and for filling us in on the eastside scoop as well as filling us up with some mighty fine food.  these are some hardworking folks who seem to have a passion for what they do.  just the nicest people you’d ever want to know. it was all i could do not to mention that dessert was somehow spelled wrong on their signage, but i suppose in the grand scheme of all things culinary… who really cares?

eastside fish 2617 gallatin pike nashville, tn 37216 phone: (615) 227-8388

i never do this…
talk about nashville restaurants out there in cyberworld
really ever
but
this was truly outstanding
here, in my nashville
finally…

enter: laura wilson and kim totkze from ‘ombi restaurant‘ on elliston place.

are you kneeling? because if you’re a foodie in this town - you sure as hell should be

now when it comes to restaurants i am a little difficult to please.  i think i know good food.  so i never blog about the dining establishments in this town. because it’s a small town and i don’t wanna be that person. but still we venture out on occasion, hopeful. and usually if not always we pay our bill and leave, shaking our heads in disbelief as to how the doors stay open to whatever place we’ve gone, wondering all the while – can nashville really be that undiscerning?  and then i go home and cook for a few weeks until i’m able to get past the restaurant ennui that permeates my life here.

last night my friend and i went to ombi for a few reasons.  there was the mismatched set of dining experiences from another nashville food blogger that got me curious – and a post/comment over on ‘nashville bites‘ which led me to email laura directly.  her response, an excerpt of it below, was just the kind of thing i both was interested in and loved hearing.  i am currently reading ‘the united states of arugula‘ by david kamp which talks specifically about the american food revolution.

Is Nashville changing?  I think so.  But I also think that the country is changing.  We have really started selling things like sweetbreads, sardines, marrow bones and veal cheeks at a faster clip than before.  I think that a great deal of that is brought about by the level of discourse on the internet, and just the fact that everyone is talking about food, where it’s grown, how it’s made.  From a chef’s perspective, the amount of dialogue is a bit staggering.  I’ve been cooking for 17 years; most of them peppered with one review every 3 or 4 years, and the occasional praise or castigation.  I am trying to listen to both positive and negative criticism with a fair and even mind, and give to each the credence it deserves, without it changing my long view, my personal perspective.

so on a quiet monday night at 7 pm we sat down at ombi and i asked laura if she would just feed us.  i wanted to make not one decision.  and over 2 hours later my friend and i were stunned.  we were looking at each other like ‘surely we’re not in kansas anymore…’.

we began with a wonderful burgundy on laura’s recommendation – joseph drouhin’s chorey-les-beaune, obscure to me in my limited knowledge of wines but it worked perfectly with our dinner.  all 7 courses. 

but first a little bowl of popcorn appeared on my table.  and hey, get this.  this wasn’t just any popcorn.  this popcorn had white truffle oil on it.  and so i wonder, why hadn’t i ever thought of that?  in all its richness and simplicity – this was quite the idea…

and then there was the perfect scallop accompanied by polenta and pancetta, a crab cake with a perfect fennel salad, 3 perfectly roasted oysters with a bloody mary cocktail sauce, an intermezzo of citrus sorbet before heading on to the meat courses like sweetbreads with preserved lemon – to blow your mind, shredded pork shoulder with butternut squash dumplings and finally, a perfect duck breast prepared with perfectly crackled cracklings with a sleek corn pudding next to mushrooms cooked in what was i am guessing was a duck demi-glace.  perfect?  i’d say so…

it was the attention to detail.  it was how the flavors worked together.  it was world class.  near flawless and sublime.  it was, finally, a great dinner right here where i live.  hallelujah.

so for those of us that call nashville home and love to eat, you know the list, the nashville ‘top spots’ and i’m sure you have your favorites.  now i urge you to take yourselves to ombi and eat laura’s food within the confines of a well executed architecturally designed space.  and make sure she is in the kitchen that night. 

please – by all means, report back…