Sometimes there is just no reason to be extra creative and come up with your own spin on a dish.  Sometimes you just have to follow a recipe exactly as it is.  Sometimes you have to trust that the least amount of ingredients and cooking time is just right – no need for tweaking or fiddling with.  And sometimes, and only sometimes, do you just have to believe the hype.

Last year we had the pleasure of not only eating a delicious, long and leisurely lunch at Fergus Henderson’s offal-favorite restaurant, St. John, but we were lucky to meet Fergus himself (who happened to be relaxing and enjoying a few glasses of champagne at his bar).  As you can read (and listen to via podcast) in our earlier post about St. John, I was a bit heady from the vino and my confidence level shot up as I almost gave the man a bear hug for a fabulous dining experience.  His signature dish is one that has been copied over and over and over again by some of the greatest chefs – Roasted Bone Marrow with Parsley Salad and Vinaigrette.   We’ve eaten it at St. John, we’ve eaten it at Gabriele Hamilton’s NYC eatery, Prune and now we’ve eaten it at Chez We Are Never Full.  Many people may wonder what they hype of eaten gelatinous, greasy bone marrow on toast sprinkled with bits of rock or sea salt is all about (sorry, I just salivated as I typed that).  

Well, it is fatty, warming, unctuous, rich and as pleasing (to me) as the finest fois gras.  It is just f*cking good.  Most restaurants that sell Roasted Marrow charge a ridiculous amount – most of these bones cost less than $2 a pound (at least in my parts!).  If you can’t find marrow bones (we used beef bones, but veal are very popular as well), talk with your butcher about ordering some.  They freeze well and can be used to thicken soups (like our friend Marc did in this traditional soup) and stocks if you prefer not to have them roasted. You can make this at home for an easy and rich starter or pair it with a nice soup for a two-part meal.

We’re not reinventing the wheel here, we’re just paying homage to a fabulous, satisfying and simple dish from a pretty fabulous and simple chef.  If you don’t believe us, you can check out our friend Claudia’s post about the same darn thing.  We didn’t soak our bones like she did but they still came out perfect.

One of the most familiar (and enjoyable) flavor combinations to many cultures – sour and sweet or, as the Italians call it, agrodolce.  There is something about tartness and sweetness that just makes you want more.  Think Sour Patch Kids, Pisco or Whiskey Sours or your favorite Chinese take-out order.  Yes, sweet and sour is everywhere.

A traditional agrodolce is very basic and usually only includes vinegar, sugar and maybe wine.  Similar to the French gastrique, agrodolce was thought to have been brought to Sicily from the Arabs.  We took a few other sour/sweet combos and added them to our basic sauce, just to up the flavor a few notches.  Let me tell you folks, this is a winner.  Thanks to the amazing vinegar sauce we ate at Prune a while back, we figured the addition of raisins and cornichons wouldn’t hurt. In fact, we wished we had made more of the sauce just to eat it by itself.

This agrodolce would work well with many other things besides cornish game hen such as pork, chicken or fish.  Get a nice crust or crispy skin on any of those and the sauce will meld perfectly with it.  We hope you give this a try.

Gentle readers, please sympathize with me, for I, like a man who’s been dining exclusively on centipedes, have the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth. That this humiliation and defeat arrived, to twist a metaphor, at the hands of nothing more sinister than a pig’s foot, has only served to exacerbate these feelings of embarrassment and self-loathing.

Those of you already somewhat familiar with our body of work here at We Are Never Full may know that we are always ready to face down even the hardiest gastronomic challenges, frequently with all-to scant regard for liver, waistline and coronary arteries. It’s a kind of culinary cockiness and machismo that, strangely enough, we find so odious in TV food tools like Guy Fieri. I sincerely hope that this foolish trend, which continued during our recent trip to Montreal, has no lasting repercussions on our health.

Having heard about the restaurant Au Pied de Cochon (literally, at the foot of the pig) and its joyful, some may say reckless, use of duck and pork fat (& offal) in the preparation of traditional French and Quebecois dishes, plus several unique heart-stopping creations, we figured that it sounded like the kind of place we should visit.

“…a green salad tossed in warm, duck-fat vinaigrette and topped with a fritter of trotter mush…”

The red sign near the entrance cautioning patrons to be careful on the greasy floor should have been taken as warning, as should the glazed and listless gazes of departing patrons. Heedless, we proceeded to order the sliced tongue and the crispy PDC salad as starters. The former, which was beef tongue, sat nicely in our comfort zone. Meltingly tender and served with a butter-finished veal stock sauce and garnished with sliced cornichons for a texturally-satisfying crunch. We were intrigued by the latter when the waiter explained that it was basically a green salad tossed in warm, duck-fat vinaigrette and topped with a fritter of trotter mush. Yes, that’s right – the nerves, cartilage and natural gelatin from the pig’s foot, mashed together and seasoned, then breaded and deep-fried. Not a salad for dieters, but amazing tasting, wonderful mouth-feel, with the prince of vinaigrettes.

That we had ordered mains after this was our first major mistake, and the second was that one of them happened to be the pied de cochon with foie gras. (The fact that the other was a large tranche of foie gras with a side of poutine (more on this in a later post) barely registered.) Few are the times in my life that I have had a plate of food put in front of me and I have suddenly felt weak, timid and overawed – even at the most trying times I usually soldier bravely on before leaving the table bloated and sweaty – but, on this occasion I was defeated the moment I was served.

“…like the governor of a provincial state thrust into the spotlight of CBS News … I was suddenly way out of my depth and performed pathetically, embarrassing myself in the process.”

Never before have I even seen a plate of food that large for one person, let alone been prompted to eat it. It was gigantic. The pigs foot was large – maybe a foot long - and deep-fried, though that of itself caused little consternation as it was mostly bone, and was topped with a 4oz slice of seared foie gras, again, excessive, but perhaps not fear-inducing exactly. What really intimidated me was that the trotter sat on an inch-deep bed of creamy mashed potatoes and between two foot-long trenches – for that’s what they were – of button mushrooms and spinach in a cream and butter sauce. I would estimate there were two 6oz boxes of button mushrooms plus a cup of cream on the plate, and the whole thing must have weighed about 5lbs and could have served six adults. What was I to do in the face of such magnitude?

You’re right, I could have plowed in and tried to eat it all, and then admitted defeat gracefully later on. I could also have harangued the waiter for not giving me any idea of what a fool I was making of myself, but frankly, my spirit was broken. You see, I’ve always managed to perform creditably at the table before, even if I have ultimately been overwhelmed, but, like the governor of a provincial state thrust into the spotlight of CBS News for the first time, I was suddenly way out of my depth and performed pathetically, embarrassing myself in the process.

As these photos attest, I was barely able to make a dent in it, and in truth, it was my wife who ate the lion’s share. I had been psyched out and failed to regain my composure. Some would say, with good reason, that it was a shameful waste of food, but I prefer to think of it as a lesson in humility.

Indeed, chatting with the maitre d’ later on over calvados (one of the few things that can cut through thick layers of duck fat) I learned that this was Martin Picard, the owner’s, dastardly plan for this dish, — that no-one who orders it leaves unscarred. Everyone is dominated by it and no-one gets anywhere near cleaning their plate. So confident are they at Au Pied de Cochon of their ability to manifest gluttony so vaingloriously that they number every deep-fried pig’s foot they serve. Mine was 5141. So from now on, like a retired GI with a talisman made of shrapnel, I shall wear that number with pride and humility, in place of a hospital bracelet during the bypass surgery I expect to now need.

Au Pied de Cochon
536 avenue Duluth Est
Montréal, QC H2L 1A9, Canada
(514) 281-1114

Check out some other posts you might enjoy:

• Thursday, It’s Gloria Day
• Quickest Meal to Make… Ever – Pasta con Tonno
• Authentic Tortilla Soup
• South African Hot Toddies

Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton’s widely-revered nouveau American place on East 1st Street has been called a lot of things since it opened in 1999 – among them, “phenomenal” and “inspired” (NYMagazine), “wonderful food” (BlogSoop.com) and “immediate success” (NYC.com), and rightly so, in my humble opinion. Generally, we aren’t attracted to, can’t afford, and don’t really desire to visit big-name chef’s big-name restaurants and pay big-name prices for big-name signature dishes, all the while praying for the merest glimpse of said big-name chef, and this is precisely why our first review of a well-known (outside of NYC) restaurant is Prune and not Mesa Grill, Babbo, or Jean-Georges.

Owner and chef Gabrielle Hamilton, my wife’s new girl-crush, describes her aim when she started Prune as wanting “…an unassuming way to slip into the shallow end of the pool of New York City restaurants”, and she appears to have achieved this in Prune’s unassuming feel, no more than 10 tables, the austere, French-brasserie-style decor, and the small menu. Of course, Hamilton has also taken the restaurant scene by storm, serving simple, tasty dishes with a gusto that befits their often hearty, gamey ingredients, and in doing so, she has been widely emulated.

In his forward to Fergus Henderson’s St. John Bar and Restaurant cookbook The Whole Beast: Eating Nose to Nail, Anthony Bourdain says that Henderson’s signature dish of roasted veal marrow bones with parsley salad would be his last meal should he find himself moments away from the electric chair, adding that he was delighted upon finding an exact recreation of this in New York because he felt he had found a “kindred-spirit” who “gets it” – namely, Gabrielle Hamilton. This should not imply that Hamilton simply serves excellent knock-offs of other people’s food, but rather that the rediscovery of unpretentious, traditional dishes made from less popular cuts is now a growing trend in the UK and US because of people like Henderson and Hamilton.

Readers of this blog with any sense of our body of work and culinary proclivities will know that while we do not disdain chicken breasts and filet mignons, we are interested in exploring the eating and cooking of other parts of the beast, not because we are food fashion conscious, but rather because we understand that it takes more skill to make offal taste good than it does to present a fat fillet, and, as we said in our first podcast on rabbit, we believe it’s foolish and represents a small-minded snobbery to restrict yourself to prime cuts of the chicken, cow and pig. So, a trip to Prune was long overdue.

Amy chose the deep-fried sweetbreads (described by one peevish restaurant reviewer as Kentucky Fried sweetbreads) with bacon and a caper-lemon butter sauce, while I made like Bourdain and chose the veal marrow bones with parsley salad. The sweetbreads resembled nothing I’ve seen at KFC and, frankly, such a description is insulting. They were crispy, light, and tender inside with a sauce that had the tangy flavor of lemon and capers rounded out with the ineffable goodness that is a lot of butter. The marrow bones initially appeared slightly intimidating, especially when served with a small ramekin of what looked like fleur de sel, but armed with nothing but a teaspoon we bravely attacked them, bringing forth an amazingly translucent animal fat/juice along with the soft, gloopy, simultaneously sweet and savory wonder that is bone-marrow. Sucking the bones proved irresistible so tasty were they, and in the quest for that one last morsel greasy fingers slipped, knocking salt ramekin and contents onto an alarmed, but gracious adjacent diner. “But, what of the parsley salad?”, I hear you say. Well, of course, it was delicious too. A simple dressing of oil and lemon juice over a salad of flat-leaf parsley, thinly-sliced shallot and crunchy bites of cornichons (baby gherkins) complimented the rich and glutinous bone marrow perfectly. I can imagine making this salad with virtually any kind of roasted or grilled red meat or game, and I would guess we’ll be recreating it on these pages very soon.

While we readied ourselves for the arrival of our main courses, we struck up a conversation with two of our fellow diners (on the opposite side to those we had just showered with expensive salt). James, a soon-to-be food journal publisher from London, and his native New Yorker companion, Brian, had eaten at Prune before and while they also had the sweetbreads to start, they had the monkfish liver with warm buttered toasts in place of our marrow bones. “It’s quite oily and, er, liverish.” was James’ assessment of the latter dish, and you can’t argue with that.

As our main dishes arrived, Brian and James were experimenting with a very yellow wine from south-west France that was fermented in open barrels allowing it to oxidize and develop a more astringent flavor. The waiter described it as the “wild-west of wine-making” which, to anyone with the briefest understanding of the American frontier, would have connoted the brawny perfume of unwashed cowboys, saddle-grease and rotting chuck-steak. Happily for our erstwhile companions, it was only rather tart, like a young scrumpy cider, but they found it not to their taste, offering us a go on it, perhaps as a way of getting rid the quicker. I could have drunk a glass of it, but a bottle would likely have turned my mouth inside out.

Amy had ordered the rabbit in vinegar sauce and I the grilled quail with braised escarole and raisins on the vine for our main courses. My quails were perfectly grilled. Crispy-skinned with a hint of heat from red pepper flakes, but beautifully pink and moist inside. They were gamey and delicate, more like squab than any quail I’ve had before. Amy’s rabbit was, well, better than the one we made recently (even though that was very good) perhaps because of the oodles of butter in the sweet and sour vinegar sauce which also contained some warm whole cornichons — an unexpected, but highly successful addition. Our side dish of steamed asparagus tips (which could have used a little salt) came with an egg yolk (the white having been cut away) for dipping which we both thought was ingenious and delicious.

Meanwhile, James and Brian were enjoying their mains, respectively steamed razor clams with an almond-chili picada, and grilled branzino with fennel oil and gros sel. The clams and fish both looked excellent, especially the branzino which was charred to a dark, rich patina on the outside but remained white, flaky and moist on the inside. Their side dish was the particularly unusual boiled fennel shoots, which had a crunchy, wholesomeness rarely found in restaurant side dishes where the flavor of vegetables is usually masked by garlic, spice or a sauce.

As we concluded our meal with a distinctly average chocolate cake that was too dry, but with two excellent digestifs – mine an eaux de vie from Oregon made from pears, and Amy’s, her favorite, sambuca, we chatted some more with James and Brian about food and food culture in Britain and America. James argued that he thought Britain was slightly ahead of the states in terms of regaining its endemic food culture and reviving typical products. Perhaps it’s true that America, as a whole, has yet to rediscover its culinary roots and return to them in the whole-hearted way the British have – though many areas of the East and West coasts have been doing this for some time. But I would argue that any restaurant, chef or restaurateur who wishes to focus on quality local ingredients and traditional techniques should first eat at Prune and see how deliciously it can be done. Emulation is no bad thing if you get it bang on, and, for me, I would be perfectly happy if I never got to eat Fergus Henderson’s original bone-marrow dish at St. John in London, if I could dine on perfect knock-offs like Gabrielle Hamilton’s twenty minutes from my front door.

I think we’ll let the debate about where gastronomy is and should be heading, who’s in the lead, and who’s falling behind rage elsewhere. Our blog is not the forum for food snobs to poke holes in the successes and failures of various chefs, rather it is the place where we honestly appraise meals we’ve eaten whether we’ve cooked them ourselves or enjoyed the work of others. In this case, I cannot speak highly enough of our visit to Prune and I would encourage you all to give it a try if you’re prepared to be a little adventurous in your eating. This isn’t grilled locusts in peri-peri, this is honest-to-goodness food, simply prepared and given the respect it is due.

Although we haven’t made roasted bone marrow yet in our little kitchen, two food-blog friends did and I think they both look absolutely delicious. You can check out the first recipe here and please visit our friend Claudia’s Fergus Henderson recipe here.

Prune, 54 East 1st Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, New York. F, V trains to 2nd Avenue/Houston or 6 train to Bleeker/Lafayette. Reservations are recommended. Lunch 11:30 – 3:00 p.m. Mon-Fri; Dinner 6:00 – 11:00 p.m. Mon-Thur, 6:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. Fri-Sat, 5:00 – 10:00 p.m. Sun; Brunch 10:00 – 3:30 p.m. Sat-Sun.