New on the Menu: Traditional pasta dishes and pastrami pierogi
This dish at Piccola Cucina Casa, which opened in late April in the Brooklyn, N.Y., of Boerum Hill, is a favorite of chef Philip Guardione, whose grandmother made it for him when he was growing up in the Sicilian city of Catania, where the dish is from. It’s named for the opera Norma, composed by Catania native Vincenzo Bellini.
To make the dish, Guardione cubes eggplant and fries them until they are golden, then he adds them to his tomato sauce made by simmering tomatoes in olive oil with salt, and pepper. He lets that simmer while he cooks macaroni pasta, which he strains, adds to the sauce with a little of the pasta water and plates it with ricotta cheese, basil, and Sicilian olive oil.
Price: $20.95
At Knife Italian, which John Tesar opened in Dallas in March, the chef makes a traditional pasta alla Bolognese using a recipe that’s actually from Bologna, Italy.
“Being that we wanted Knife Italian to be an Italian steakhouse, I wanted to have rustic, authentic dishes on the menu that could be shared and also complemented our dry-aged steaks,” he said.
He starts by sweating finely chopped onions, celery, carrots and garlic in olive oil and then adding ground veal, pork, and pancetta, browning them, and then adding tomato paste, milk, white wine, and thyme, bringing it just to a boil and then simmering it for 60 to 90 minutes.
He adjusts the seasoning and then adds cooked pappardelle pasta to it to coat it. Then he plates it and garnishes it with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Price: $28
At Little Dipper, an astrology-inspired cocktail bar that Bobby Papachryssanthou and Steven Duran opened in Midtown Manhattan at the beginning of May, beverage director Alyssa Sartor developed this cocktail inspired by Pisces, a sign of compassionate but strong-willed people who represent the “primordial waters of the creation itself,” according to a representative of the bar.
She starts by making tomato water by buzzing chopped tomatoes with water and a little salt in a blender and then straining the liquid into a container.
She makes a pepper-cucumber syrup by simmering chopped cucumbers and yellow bell peppers, plus one habanero pepper and a little salt, in simple syrup and then straining that.
To make the drink she shakes with ice 2 ounces of tequila, an ounce of the tomato water, ¾ ounce of the pepper-cucumber syrup, and half an ounce of lemon, and strains it over a large ice cube into a glass half-rimmed with pink salt. She garnishes it with a slice of habanero pepper and a rolled cucumber slice, resulting in an unassuming looking savory cocktail.
Price: $30
To get ready for this this dish on the spring menu at Ruse in St. Michaels, Md., executive chef Michael Correll scales and cleans whole tilefish, scrubs the cavity with salt water and hangs it in his walk-in in front of a fan for seven days.
“What we yield is a super dry/leather-like skin that produces the crispiest skin you can cook and flesh that has a more steak-like texture,” he said.
He also makes a fish sauce caramel by simmering fish sauce with Demerara sugar, ginger, garlic, Thai bird chile, shallot, and lemon grass until it has a syrupy consistency and then adds cilantro, mint, Thai basil, and makrut lime leaf, lets it steep for 10 minutes and strains it.
Separately, he makes a fish sauce vinaigrette by buzzing together garlic, bird chile, dried shrimp, and palm sugar into a paste and then adds lime juice, fish sauce, and tamarind paste.
He makes green papaya salad by shaving green papaya on a mandolin and mixing it with halved cherry tomatoes, toasted and crushed peanuts, blanched string beans cut into 1-inch pieces, dried shrimp, and torn Thai basil, cilantro, and mint.
He makes an herb salad by tossing Thai basil, cilantro, mint, and chives in lime juice and extra virgin olive oil. He also makes a basil oil by adding grapeseed oil to blanched dried basil, buzzing it in a blender it for five minutes and straining it through a coffee filter.
At service he sears 6-ounce portions of the tilefish and places it skin-side down on a plancha, cooking it 70% of the way before flipping it. He seasons it with fleur de sel and lime juice.
He tosses the papaya salad and vinaigrette together, places that on the bottom of a bowl and tops it with the fish.
He drizzles the fish sauce caramel around it, followed by the basil oil, and tops the fish with the herb salad.
Price: $38
Two New York City institutions, Veselka and Katz’s Deli, have teamed up for this dish that’s now available at Veselka’s new location in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg.
Katz’s famous pastrami is used as the filling for Veselka’s pierogi dumplings, which are boiled, and then fried if the customers want them that way, and then served with a ramekin of spicy mustard.
Price: $12 for 4 or $22 for 8