Ahead of the Curve

Image of asparagus with fried farm egg courtesy of The New York Times.

Mado was just reviewed in The New York Times! I'm officially ahead of the curve.

After enjoying one of the best meals of my life at Mado with my supper club in March, I took F for dinner last month, and he finally understood what I had been raving about. He has been talking about his hanger steak ever since, and chose to celebrate his 30th birthday there last night.

Our good friends and fellow Top Chef devotees joined us for dinner. A group of talented cooks and shrewd epicures, they were smitten with the buttery pate, somehow spicy and reminiscent of Christmas; the asparagus with fried farm egg; the crisp trout that tasted like camp fire; the Gorgonzola polenta; the wood-smoked chicken that fell off the bone—the list goes on and on. We each ordered a different dish, and tried them all.

Our friend J, especially, knows food. He sends me articles about how to make homemade pasta sauce and what to do with ramps. He bakes the best scones I've ever tasted and knows everything about kitchen knives. As our waiter cleared the last plate from our table, J asked, "Can I work here?" Our genial waiter (who, in answer to our questions about the menu, earnestly mapped the cuts of pork on his own body) took J's question in jest.

But J was absolutely serious about donning an apron and heading back to the kitchen. And in that moment, I knew the dinner was a success.

In her extremely positive review, Monica Davey of The New York Times captures the mood of Mado perfectly: "On a cold, rainy spring evening, Mado offered escape without effort, the smell of a wood grill... a momentary journey to some quiet farm while still sitting in the city’s chaos."

After my third visit to Mado, I can safely say it's my favorite restaurant. I can't wait to go back.

Mad About Mado

I met my supper club for dinner last night in Bucktown/Wicker Park at Mado, home of the fabled Rolled Pig’s Head from my previous post.

Although the restaurant is relatively new, husband-and-wife chef-owners, Robert and Allison Levitt, are already known around town for their daily seasonal menu of farm-fresh meats and produce.

Mado is an unassuming, even ugly brick building on an otherwise dreary side street populated with shuttered buildings and empty lots. Until recently, it was a pizza joint with bright orange walls and plastic furniture. The windows are still tagged with spray paint, but inside, the orange walls have been stripped to reveal warm brick. The dining room is intimate and unadorned, and the food is outstanding.

We were tucked into the back corner at a long rustic table for eight. Our group arrived slowly, so we opened a bottle of wine and chatted until the last member of our party had arrived. By that time, we were all ravenous. S suggested ordering family style and the rest of us heartily agreed. We started with two plates of the meats, featuring Country Pate, Rolled Pig's Head and Tuscan Chicken Liver Pate accompanied by Freshly Baked Sourdough, Grain Mustard, and Pickled Vegetables. The assorted meats arrived on antique, pig-shaped cutting boards.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was excited about the Rolled Pig’s Head, but was possibly even more excited to be dining with a group of people who were just as enthusiastic about trying something new. For four hours, we talked about food, and less important subjects, like men. It was refreshing to dine with a group of girls who are as passionate about food as I am—most of them more passionate and more educated about the subject I have only recently come to love. When I said that I’m looking for a pasta machine, they each had suggestions about the best one on the market. They agree that a culinary tour of Chinatown or the Korean neighborhood would be an ideal way to spend an afternoon. And without blinking an eye, they ordered Rolled Pig’s Head and critiqued its taste and the merits of its texture.

When the meats arrived, I am ashamed to say that we spent a good amount of time debating which meat was which. We finally puzzled out that the soft, pillowy mound on one end was the Country Pate, the grayish meat in the middle must be the Tuscan Chicken Liver Pate, and the strips that looked like Prosciutto must be the Rolled Pig’s Head. Of them all, the Country Pate was the unanimous favorite—smooth and delicate and addictive.

We followed the pig with a selection of appetizers: Roasted Baby Carrots with Gorgonzola; Grilled Calamari Panzanella with Red Onion, Vinegar Peppers, and Capers; Confit Pork Kidneys, Grilled Bread, Hard Cooked Egg and Mustard (first photo below); and Fried Farm Egg Bruscetta with Truffle Butter (second photo below).Absolutely everything was wonderful. We raved over the crispy bruscetta oiled with truffle butter topped with a runny, salty fried egg. The carrots with gorgonzola were a surprising delight—and an aesthetic extravagance, with orange, yellow, and red carrots. I didn’t know that carrots came in yellow and red!

Next, we ordered two bowls of the home-made Rigatoni with Grilled Radicchio, Walnuts and Gorgonzola: Followed by: Rainbow Trout Stuffed with Braised Swiss Chard and Confit Pork Belly (Pictured below with Rosemary-Roasted Potatoes), Hanger Steak with Gorgonzola Polenta , and Casuela of Farm Egg, Braised Pork and White Beans. With sides: Rosemary-Roasted Potatoes (pictured above) and Creamy Polenta. It would be a daunting task to describe each of these marvelous dishes, so I won’t try. I will say, however, that I have never tasted polenta quite like this. The polenta I make at home tends to solidify as soon as it hits the plate, while this was rich and creamy and tangy. I could eat Mado’s polenta with every meal for the rest of my life.

And the desserts: Chocolate Cream Pie with Almond Cornmeal Crust, Caramel Biancomangiare with Crispy Chocolate and Coffee-Chili Syrup, and Migas Bark. The Migas Bark turned out to be chunky sheets of chocolate which, while certainly delicious, did not quite live up to the exotic promise of its name. The Chocolate Cream Pie was stunning, but the Caramel Biancomangiare was something special.

I will admit that I did not know what it was, so I did a little research and discovered that biancomangiare is a Sicilian-style almond custard with almond milk. It is believed that Sicily’s Arab conquerors and four centuries of Spanish domination inspired this distinctive dessert featured in the cookbooks of the Italian Renaissance and served in large troughs of snow at the banquets of the Medici court.

Shaped with a decorative mold, Mado’s biancomangiare was soft and light with a delicate caramel flavor. Tiny balls of chocolate graced the top and rolled down the sides, and the coffee-chili syrup pooled around the bottom. A single spoonful combining the soft biancomangiare with the crispy chocolate balls and the spicy syrup was startling and extraordinary.

Eight girls, 2 bottles of champagne, 7 bottles of wine (BYOB), 2 plates of assorted meats, 4 appetizers, 2 bowls of pasta, 3 entrees, 2 sides, 3 desserts, and 4 hours later, I headed home completely satisfied—and completely enamored with Mado.

(Mado photo courtesy of Menu Pages.)

An Offal Experience

Last night, I ate pig’s head.

I ordered it willingly—and eagerly—after having read an article in this month’s issue of Food and Wine about facing your culinary fears. Lisa Abend describes her first time ordering this delicacy in Spain:

... the bartender in Cuenca set the plate before us and we beheld a huge pig mask—with holes where the eyes and snout used to be, and glistening pockets of fat beneath the cheeks... We wanted to eat it, or at least wanted to be able to say we had. Yet one tentative bite revealed grease, and gristle, and—ick—a few charred, bristly hairs. We each choked down a mouthful, then pushed the rest away.

This seems at once disgusting, delicious, and dangerous—a culinary experience straight out of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, which F and I watch with fascinated horror and a tinge of longing. How I wish I could get paid to travel the world for the purpose of eating—even if it does mean eating such delicacies as a rattlesnake’s still-beating heart. This is adventure. This is life!

Ms. Abend’s second experience with pig’s face, years later, is comparatively tame:

When it came time to order that night, it no longer occurred to me to feel squeamish. Face had become just one more thing to eat. And indeed, the pig face Dan and I ate that night at Atrio was delicious. The chef, Toño Pérez, had pressed it into a disk roughly the size and thickness of a chocolate chip cookie. Fried until it was golden brown and crunchy, it tasted deeply of Iberian pig. We called it “face bacon,” and laughed as we ate it.

Her second pig's face seems almost ordinary. Comparing it to something as familiar and delicious as a chocolate-chip cookie decidedly lowers it on Zimmern's bizarre foods scale. So, while dining on “face bacon” can still be considered an experience, it’s certainly not an adventure.

When I saw Rolled Pig’s Head on the menu at Mado last night, my enthusiasm may have frightened my dinner companions. I pictured Ms. Abend’s pig mask rolled into a tube, empty eye-sockets grotesquely stretched, snout jutting from one lumpy side, bristle and gristle texturing the horrible landscape. This was certain to be an unforgettable culinary adventure.

In a quick Google search for “rolled pig’s head,” among an alarming wealth of references to a man who rolled a severed pig’s head into a mosque in Auburn, Maine, I discovered the blog “Offal Good,” by Chef Chris Cosentino, Executive Chef of California’s Incanto. In a post called “Let Them Eat Pig’s Head” Chef Cosentino provides an illustrated step-by-step guide to making this dish, officially called Porchetta Di Testa. He instructs us to take an entire pig’s head and remove the bones, which results in the pig mask that Ms. Abend describes. I am certain Chef Cosentino would not mind if I pasted one of his marvelous photographs below, to better illustrate this gruesome sight.
We then season the pig’s head and marinate for two days in the fridge, after which we roll it up, tie it, and place it in a sous vide bag (fancy French for “vacuum-packed plastic bag”). Cook, then place into an ice bath and let it sit in the fridge for two days. After two days, cut away any stock and fat, and untie. Slice and serve.

My Rolled Pig’s Head arrived arranged on an antique, pig-shaped cutting board. It did not have eye-holes; nor did it resemble a chocolate chip cookie. I am not enough of a pork connoisseur to know what it should taste like, but I wanted it to taste distinctly like something, whether “Iberian pig” or bacon, and I wanted the “charred, bristly hairs.” Instead, it tasted like a very mild Prosciutto, with the same oily surface. I was strangely disappointed, but at least I can say that I ate the de-boned, marinated, and boiled head of a pig.

Next time, however, I want the full pig-head experience. I want the gristle, the bristle, and the snout.