OMG IVAN DOES CRUNCH & CURVEBALLS
We gathered. This time to celebrate David and Geri's 30th wedding anniversary. Well, that was the pretense anyway. Any excuse, and don't get me wrong, this was a good one, but let's be honest, any excuse to have Ivan do his magic is a good excuse! David selected a 2007 Riesling from Mueller Thurgau Franken, very tasty, a bit of a spritz thing going on here. Don't be fooled. Not all Rieslings are sweet, this one wasn't, it was up front with its fruits, but dry...
Just to get the juices flowing
Ivan first sent out a few plates of Edamame. Holy cow, he did a
variation on the recipe he did last time. Tossed with black bean sauce,
white wine, sweet Thai chili sauce and butter - lots of butter, these
little seed pods are mixed in with some carrots and onions and topped
with a handful of cilantro and 10 of us transformed instantly to a wake
of vultures... Sadly, there were no spoons so David pioneered the use of
a knife to get to the last of the sauce. Last time around Ivan had
tossed the dish with shiitake and asparagus, and suggested you could add
a tiny bit of teriyaki sauce if you wanted to. Let me simply suggest
that you try and make it sometime, you won't believe how tasty it is!
(FYI, the pictures on the sides are clickable, and
open in a separate window – start in the top left and close the window
to return here...)
After collecting the plates – and
knives – the waiter brought us Japanese soup spoons. Whatever was coming
next, I knew I wasn't going to let them clear my spoon at the end. It
was an Ahi Shabu Shabu with snow crab. In a bowl, on top of a nice piece
of the crab meat were two perfect slices of sashimi grade yellow fin
tuna topped with a tiny dice of
OK, we've done the soup, it's time
for a sandwich. Ivan is playing with us now and produces what he is
billing as a Monte Cristo. The Monte Cristo, usually a meat and cheese
sandwich dipped in batter and fried or deep fried, is a variation of the
French croque-monsieur but Ivan isn't going to do anything French here
at all. A Monte Cristo Ivan-style is made of Moloka‘i sweet bread with
prosciutto, gruyere and a slice of seared foie gras, battered with a
panko and macadamia nut crust and deep fried. On top he drizzled some
black pepper-infused honey and placed a slice of green apple. My
cardiologist would be gladdened to here that there were several pieces
of arugula on the plate, but is probably "tssssssking” up a storm right
about now... The French would doubtless be rolling their eyes but any
foodie in Hawai‘i would love the genius of this creation! The first hit
is of the hot honey and the mac nut crunch but right on its tail are the
meat flavors. The foie gras was doubtless seared with something, perhaps
a little garlic, but it, as always, melts in your mouth and complements
the crunchy exterior of the sandwich perfectly. The gruyere was subtle
and the prosciutto was practically not there – it's so thin and all, but
as a whole it was better than any Monte Cristo I have ever eaten
anywhere and, I am betting, as novel as anyone reading this has ever
even heard of!
How to
follow a sandwich? Well, how about an antipasto course? Ivan warned me
before anything came out that this was going to be fun, now I think what
he really meant was he was throwing some curveballs and mixing it up a
bit... A classic in any Italian meal is a bruschetta, you know, a little
slice of grilled bread with chopped tomatoes, garlic and basil... maybe
some parmesan. Fuggedaboutit! Not
with Don Ivan at the helm. He started traditionally enough with the
slice of grilled bread, but veered hard away with a generous slice of
Scarmozza cheese (tastes like a smoked mozzarella) with a piece of
crispy prosciutto. You've got to add this to your repertoire in
the kitchen! Just lay some sliced prosciutto on a baking/cooling rack
and pop it in a 4000 oven for 6-7 minutes. It crisps up quickly enough
and tastes like bacon without the fat. I can think of about 100 ways to
use it! Anyway, it looks like Ivan ran his under the salamander for a
minute or two and served it with mixed greens in a lemon vinaigrette.
Geri said she could eat a huge bowl of just the salad, it was indeed
that good, but the star was the bruschetta. The crunch of the bread on
the bottom and the "proshute" on the top was a great counter-point to
the soft smoky cheese in the middle. Ivan said several times over the
evening, "everyone loves crunch" and he proved it again with the very
next course.
Another
curveball. Ever had a
Panzanella
salad? Made with day-old bread, fresh tomatoes and mozzarella? Well, you
guessed it,
fuggedaboutit!
Ivan called it panzanella but bread is the only thing it has in common
at all. Let's start at the bottom. There was a black pepper butter sauce
on the plate. In it was some green and yellow zucchini, eggplant and
grape tomatoes. Atop that was a small, remember we have 7 to 8 courses
here, filet of mahimahi that Ivan had crusted with croutons before
sending it to the broiler. Crunchy top, soft delicate fish and
oh-so-slightly al dente veggies. Perfectly ambrosial! And crunchy to
boot!
After the fish dish comes, of
course, a meat dish. This one is kind of an East meets East thing that
blends the Far East –
But wait, there's more! More as in another meat dish! Moroccan short ribs on a bed of cauliflower puree. Let's start with the cauliflower. it was really interesting to me. It looked like mashed potatoes, had an ever so slight grain to it and tasted just like roasted cauliflower. I wasn’t quite sure how he did that, probably just the right amount of time in a food processor I thought, but it was just great. He later said he had mixed in a bit of mashed potatoes for texture. A delicate sort of neutral flavor under the Moroccan spiced short ribs was just the right balance. Very tasty, indeed. There was among us a vegetarian who had been forced to push a few plates out into the crowd but, during this, our last course before the dessert, he was treated very well, indeed. Ivan had plated some of the pureed cauliflower and topped it this time with a number of large grilled shrimp and made a cilantro lime sauce that looked AB FAB, as they say! If I confess to a tad of jealousy Chris, at least, would understand as he watched this dish meet with moans of appreciation while he popped a grape tomato he had earlier snatched off the side of a passing plate. We watched in awe, our moans quickly snuffed, as the waiter bowed and presented Ivan's triumphant homage to our vegetarian friend. I didn't get to taste this one, but I am certain that it was as good as it looked and Chris fell silent for several minutes, the rest retuned to their moaning...
I know what
you're thinking, it's been a while since we've had a little crunch and
you’re right. Ivan knew he had to finish with some crunch and something
different to balance out all those different flavors and cool the palate
and you'd be right if you guessed he wasn't going to pull something out
of the Joy of Cooking to accomplish all that... As desserts go there are
usually just two kinds, fattening and delicious or just delicious. Well,
until I read the recipe this morning for how Ivan made the cheese (from
scratch) I had assumed this dessert was in the latter category. There
was fruit (good), cheese (kind of the consistency of very light cottage
cheese and that is supposed to be good)... Well, the dessert was just
fantastic but once I started paying attention there were some signs that
perhaps I had slipped it into the wrong category. Drizzled over it was a
judicious amount of brown butter maple sauce. Really not much more than
a tease as it was sooo yummy. Look at the picture, most of it was the
cheese and like I said, it sort of looked like cottage cheese, but Ivan
told us it was buttermilk/ricotta cheese. This morning I found out it
has 2 cups of buttermilk, 2 cups of heavy cream, 8 cups of whole milk
and a cup of lemon juice in it!! OMG! Ya think I put it in the
wrong category? LOL! Well, I can't tell you how glad I was that
Ivan put it on the menu, it was everything it was supposed to be! The
cheese was light and slightly tangy, the fruits were perfectly ripe and
sweet and the little sour dough croutons were crunchy. With a tiny bit
of the maple, every flavor and every texture played an important role in
the complex and yet simple balance of our last course!
I can't wait until someone comes up with another excuse!
Above all, Thank you Ivan! And thanks to Bonnie for
putting it all together and thanks to David and Geri [in the foreground]
for inviting us!
Lighten up David, you take everything so seriously!
Click to enlarge; apologies to those of us cut out of the picture
Where's Ivan?
Pahk Rocks!
Ivan Rides again
Dinner Opus in 9 Courses
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