The Concierge of Charleston

I will never make the mistake of a big ticket, open bar New Year’s celebration ever again. Courtesy of one of my favorite local places, I have uncovered the ideal solution to New Year’s woes.

in which i cry myself to sleep

So this happened. I heard almost all of my friends talking about how they were so excited to drink excessively, make poor life choices, and sleep in the next day. I actually did none of the above and had a far better new years eve. I didn’t even get to spend my time with my significant other and I still managed to have the absolute best time of all of my friends. It started with a veritable bang, my friends. Join me!

the night begins with fried risotto cake

A velvety mushroom bisque in which was delicately placed a crispy fried risotto cake. Atop of all of the above was shaved delicate white truffles. Chef John had told me a few weeks earlier that he had just come back from a truffle festival in Italy and it so inspired him that he decided to base his 7 course New Year’s menu around the concept of funghi. To which I immediately started salivating and booked reservations instantly. What had initially started as an intimate date night between my gentleman, who will henceforth be referred to as MC,  and myself overnight morphed into my hearing the following statement from my mother: “Well, honey, would you mind if your father and I joined? And also we have some friends that were looking to make plans.” From two to 12. Then MC couldn’t make it and I was going stag with my parents and their friends. This is marginally less awesome than it should have been. Anyway, let’s continue with the food!

lobster and beef satay

Grilled short rib and lobster satay with local bibb lettuce. Honestly, while this was a valiant effort and it was well executed, this was the least successful dish of the evening. The fact that a dish who’s elements included both short rib and lobster was the least enjoyable should say something for the caliber of the food coming out of the kitchen. The beef was a touch rubbery which was not the end of the world; however, I feel like the texture of the short rib overpowered the smooth buttery nature of the lobster. Normally I am all for the mixing and matching of textures when it comes to lobster and beef but in this particular incantation I feel like the dish didn’t mesh as coherently as it should have. The bibb lettuce salad was delicious and the tarragon vinaigrette was light and crisp, easily the best part of this dish.

seared snapper with lobster hollandaise

I truly do not believe I can commit to words how incredibly delicious this dish was. I have never had a piece of snapper so succulent and delicious as this filet was. I made a comment to a friend at the table, a man who’s nickname I will present without explanation: “Sparkles, this is the meatiest piece of snapper I have ever had. It almost tastes like grouper.” I do not lie. I appreciate local snapper a great deal; it is one of the most clean, flaky and delicious fishes that money can buy in Charleston. I have literally never had snapper like this before. It didn’t break apart instantly when I used the side of my fork to pull pieces off, it was juicier than that. The sear on the top was uncannily good. I’m just realizing that I haven’t even discussed the lobster hollandaise with you all yet. Let’s do that: it was AMAZING. I have never had lobster hollandaise before but that is the most superlative way to describe this rich, fatty, buttery sauce. It clung to the texture of the fish and its richness did not overpower the comparatively delicate flavor of the white fish. As far as I was concerned this was a knockout dish. A feast for the eyes as well as the palate.

scallop and pork belly

There are times in my life when I feel like I must have done something really great in this life or my previous one, that is not up for debate. This dish proves to me that I was put on this earth to enjoy food and to parlay my adoration for all things culinary for the world. The amalgam of flavors featured the beautifully crispy pork belly, the sweet succulent flavor of the oyster mushrooms and the sashimi-adjacent sear on the scallop. This palate created was nothing short of brilliant. I’ll revise that: it was more than a palate, it was a palette for my palate. My only complaint is that the sauce was a touch overboard on the truffles. The dish could have stood alone without more funghi although honestly I just sound ignorant complaining about too much truffle. Let’s just quit while we’re ahead and say that it was spectacular, which it was without question.

rabbit pot au feu

This was another dish that caused Sparkles and I to look at one another and say “Holy God”. Essentially, rabbit stew with parmesean gnocchi, peas, carrots, and pearl onions. Confession: any chef that uses pearl onions, especially in stews, is someone I’d like to hug and talk about our future together as best friends. Also, the gnocchi were light and fluffy, perfect to counterbalance the fatty cartilaginous breakdown of the rabbit.

In a somewhat related side note, let’s talk about how delicious a traditional French pot au feu can be. The direct translation, based on my limited personal knowledge of French (I regret that my taking French throughout all of middle school, high school, AND college is now ancient history) is literally “stock pot” with a specific connotation that the pot itself is used exclusively for stews. While the American equivalent would be beef stew or pot roast, I really enjoy eating this dish with oxtail, short ribs or, obviously, rabbit. In particular this beautiful, versatile meat is criminally underutilized in most American cuisine. Just gamey enough to have a distinctive flavor but not quite as off putting as something super lean like antelope or venison, rabbit has just the perfect amount of fat content and sinew that breaks down when cooked low and slow for hours. This results in a complex texture in much the same way as osso bucco, also resulting in a “no knife required” dinner. Insanely easy, really all that’s required is the initial browning of the meat for color. After that it’s a one pot dinner, consisting of any combination of the following: parsnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, gherkins, turnips, or leeks. This could be a revelation for someone looking to spice up weeknight dinners if rabbit can be tracked down. Imagine how insanely cool it would be to have friends bring over a bottle of Côtes du Rhône grenache or a Russian River pinot noir to pair with your rabbit stew for dinner. So French and sophisticated. I’m actually salivating thinking about this. Note to self: track down rabbit for weeknight pot au feu dinner with friends and MC.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten. Cru. New Years. Rabbit. It’s finally coming full circle. The rabbit was quite possibly the best dish of the evening. It was beautifully balanced and mouthwatering. It’s a shame it came out so late in the courses as I was pushing maximum capacity at this point. I had deliberately worn a dress with a touch of spandex in it because let’s be honest I came in fully expecting to gorge myself. I did. I am in no way ashamed of this. And then out came dessert.

baby biscuit

The biscuit itself was sweet and salty with just the right chewy texture in the center, more like a blondie than a true biscuit. I definitely appreciated the salt with the chocolate mousse; something about the combination of flavors with salt and dark chocolate just rocks me to my core, this coming from someone that’s not huge into chocolate to begin with. The real stars of this dish, however, was the caramel cracked corn and the vanilla crème anglaise. The corn had the same consistency of jazzed up corn pops cereal. I am not kidding, the chefs could have brought out a bowl of these to munch on instead of the actual dessert and I would have been surprisingly ok with that scenario. The one downside would be that I’d miss the velvety texture of that crème anglaise. It was decadent but frothy, whipped to an almost effervescent consistency. It was the perfect balance of cream and bubbles to soak into the biscuit, rendering the whole dish the most delicious variety of individual bites. Though I am not usually a fan of desserts, I could easily eat this at least once every two weeks. This is intended as a soaring endorsement as I don’t feel most desserts are good enough to merit my plowing through unnecessarily high amounts of carbs and sugar. Thoroughly delicious.

Even though I went stag and spent New Year’s Eve with my parents and their friends (the horror!), I would have to say that this was easily the best NYE I’ve had in a very long time. Everyone behaved themselves, nobody got out of control, nobody drank too much and I was in bed by midnight. If you have not spent your holiday like this before, I highly recommend having a civilized NYE if nothing else to avoid deep disappointment with the amateurs out at the bar.

The very best part about this particular New Year’s was the over the top delicious food. Cru Cafe is one of the top low key spots in town and now they can lay claim to being quietly one of the best NYE destinations in a city rich with high dollar open bar and multi-course options. I could not be happier that I chose to spend my time and money there. I can think of no higher compliment to pay all of the chefs and our server Johnny than by re-naming this heretofore dubious holiday “Cru Year’s Eve”. Auld Lang Syne, indeed.

Tonight, something happened that has not happened to me in a very, very long time. It was stupid and obnoxious; blood was spilled, tears were shed.

I had a kitchen meltdown.

What started as an innocuous evening filled with the promise of eggplant parmesean turned into a dour exercise in what-not-to-do in food preparation. Let me relay the events as they unfolded this afternoon.

2:30pm – I went for a run at James Island County Park. It was an unbelievably beautiful afternoon and I decided to push myself beyond my comfort zone. Let’s get real, there were a lot of attractive men that were also out jogging today and I didn’t want to look like I was limping along after having done just short of a mile. So naturally, I trotted myself out for just over 3 miles. I haven’t done this in a while and I honestly thought I was about to die. By the time re hydrated  stretched and whatnot I got back to the car and looked at the time it was nearly 3:30. Crap. I know that I’ll have to bust my ass to get home in order to get dinner ready in time.

4:30pm – Showered, almost cooled down, coughing and my shins hurt. But onward with dinner! This fabulous recipe that I found requires one to essentially make lasagna except with eggplant. Piece of cake, right? Lasagna is deceptively simple, it’s just the layers that are intimidating to the uninitiated.

WRONG.

4:45pm – Set up the assembly line prep area to dredge the eggplant in flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs. I am not a complete idiot, I have done this before with chicken parmesean. The chicken actually requires more legwork as tenderizing the breast is required in order for the chicken to cook evenly. The eggplant cannot possibly be more difficult to do than chicken. It’s a freaking vegetable; this item has never had a brain and therefore there is no possible way it can outfox me.

WRONG.

The eggplant decides that it wants to pouf flour directly onto my shirt the second that I gingerly place it into the dish. Not the worst cooking mishap but it’s enough for me to go outside and dust off my shirt, pulling on an apron upon my return to prevent further mishaps. My hands get extremely breadcrummy but it’s not the end of the world; I am used to this. I create a stack of approximately one eggplant’s worth of strips.

5:00pm – I put a large skillet on the stove over heat, adding about 1/4 inch of olive oil when it’s to temperature. Fry time. Eggplants are, once again, gingerly placed into the pan to avoid mess. I’m being really careful, there’s no possible way that I can get an oil burn if I’m going slowly, watching my hands, and not dancing to the Britney that just came on Spotify. I can’t, just can’t possibly burn myself.

WRONG.

5:02pm – Run to the sink and douse my burn in cold water. I feel sheepish as it’s not that large; my flair for the dramatic has overtaken my logic yet again. As I’m nursing my burn, I notice that there is thick black smoke pouring through the kitchen.

5:05pm – Yes. My eggplant is positively blackened. An amateur mistake, but clearly I was already having an off day in the kitchen. I throw out the first batch, dump the oil, wipe the pan and start with the next batch. This time, I stand and watch carefully. If I stand over the pan, meticulously watching the eggplant, it just has to cook evenly, right? If I’m more conscientious then I have to have this in the bag.

WRONG.

5:15pm – Bits of breadcrumb batter explode off the sides of the eggplant, seemingly mocking my growing disdain for them. I understand this is obviously the egg batter cooking but I have never seen eggplant parmesean spontaneously ping apart in a pan before. This is a whole new experience for me.

5:16pm – I pull the second batch of bizarre looking eggplant out of the pan and notice that the olive oil has taken on a dark black color. There is no way that I’m going to fry the rest of the eggplant in this swill so I dump it. Again. I have now gone through almost a quarter bottle of my olive oil, thank goodness it was inexpensive Publix brand oil.

5:20pm – New oil in the pan, new eggplant in the oil. Watching this batch like a hawk. This can’t happen again, right?

WRONG.

5:30pm – The wheels are rapidly coming off the bus.

5:35pm – On my third batch of oil.

5:45pm – Am I doing something horribly wrong? Or did I just inadvertently purchase Satan’s eggplants?

5:50pm – I realize that even after I finish frying all this atrocious eggplant I still have to cook it in the oven for an hour. I start to lose the willpower to finish and wonder where the bourbon is.

6:00pm – I FINALLY finish frying all the eggplant. Over an hour. I want to send a personal “eff you” to Tyler Florence for indicating that the eggplant “should only take about 20 minutes from start to finish”. I’m positive that Ty Flo himself couldn’t even prepare this eggplant himself in 40 minutes.

6:05pm – Start making the ricotta mixture. I go to the fridge to assemble the ingredients. It is simple, this recipe only calls for ricotta cheese, basil, eggs, and parmesean cheese. I definitely have enough eggs to make the cheese filling.

WRONG.

6:06pm – Meltdown.

6:10pm – Thank you; honestly, thank you sooo much Ty Flo for claiming that the eggplant will only require 3 eggs to dredge all four pounds of it through its ovum depths. REALLY APPRECIATE IT. I used five eggs initially because 3 didn’t even seem close and then, guess what? It required THREE MORE in order to get through the rest of the eggplant. That’s right for those of you keeping count: I have already used 8 eggs when the entire recipe calls for 5. I am now out of eggs.

6:11pm – I failed to mention earlier that I am making dinner at my parents house for them because I’m an awesome daughter. Also, being alive 56 years means automatically that your kitchen > my kitchen. I call my mother and ask her half-heartedly if she can return to the house with more eggs. I explain that I have not even put the dish into the oven yet and that it will be over an hour until dinner is ready. My parents opt to have dinner out and decide that we will table, to pardon the pun, the eggplant parmesean for tomorrow.

6:10pm – I concede defeat. I have, in fact, been bested by a vegetable.

6:12pm – En route to the grocery store.

6:20pm – Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese.

6:45pm – Bourbon.

7:00pm – Molten lava that is the mac and cheese is ready.

7:05pm – Shameful consumption of “dinner”.

7:15pm – Bourbon #2.

7:30pm – I look around the kitchen objectively for the first time and realize what a disaster it is. There are breadcrumbs on practically every surface of the counter top, grease consumes the range, the entire house stinks like burnt breadcrumbs and oil, and there is a huge pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

7:35pm – I realize that all the calories I burned today in my run are out the window with my liquor consumption and frozen food. Life. I’m doing it wrong.

7:45pm – Commencement of cathartic blog writing.

I have to admit, I do feel better about it now. Only marginally, there’s still this that awaits me.

white people problems

More bourbon is a necessity.