2019 Philadelphia Kitchen Notebook
An in-depth look at some of our favorite dishes and cocktails from our time on the ground in Philadelphia.
Dueling Pastas
Mark and Eric Plescha make pastas with both vibrant flavor and radiant color. And they’re doing it in double. The Pleschas have a penchant for two-toned pasta dishes. For their menu at Charcoal BYOB, in Yardley, Pennsylvania, a luminous green arugula radiatori and an umber Castle Valley rye radiatori are combined and sauced with bacon bolognese and sous vide liquid egg yolk. An earthy, carrotorange casarecce and (okay, beige) horseradish casarecce are tossed together in coq au vin ragù—with the carrot pasta lending sweetness and the horseradish a piquant pop. The Pleschas also combine squid ink rigatoni with Calabrian chile rigatoni and smoked paprika shells with sauerkraut shells. To achieve those eye-catching colors and embellished flavors, the Pleschas make an egg-free pasta dough—usually with semolina (except in the case of that rye radiatori)—and saturate it with highly concentrated liquids: carrot juice, blanched and puréed arugula, Crystal hot sauce, beet juice, cranberry purée, etc. They use the Arcobaleno AEX18 to extrude the pasta to its destined shape (they currently rotate between 20 dies) and toss the raw, complementary pastas together before service.
Cocktail Nostalgia
For his current menu at R&D, Bartender Aaron Deary is updating maligned cocktails of the 1950s, including the White Russian, for which he takes all the traditional ingredients—vodka, Kahlua, heavy cream—and makes a clarified milk punch. “My goal was to stay true to the drink, just offer a different approach with the preparation,” says Deary. Because White Russians don’t have citrus (“and are gross with it”), Deary developed a new technique for clarifying cream. First, he heats heavy cream to 260°F, which curdles as it cools. He heats and cools the cream once more. In a cambro with vodka, Kahlua, and Scrappy’s chocolate bitters, he drizzles a “wee” bit of lemon juice (an imperceptible ½ ounce) over the liquor. Slowly he adds the curdled cream, which breaks as it hits the lemon. The batch rests at room temperature one hour, then another two hours in the walk-in, at which point Deary ladles off thick curds from the top of each batch, and then filters the liquid below. Three ounces on ice is enough to transport an editor to (a much more sophisticated version) of her freshman year of college.
Eat Gelato for Breakfast
After working in Chicago fine-dining, Pastry Chef Melanie Diamond-Manlusoc and her wife Liz moved to Philadelphia and partnered with Maggie Lee to open FlowState, a coffee shop, bakery, and coworking space in Fishtown. FlowState has 18 seats for rent (with 40 more coming later this year), and you can buy packages from $3 to $30 dollars—ranging from WiFi for three hours to an all-day seat with unlimited coffee, plus breakfast or lunch. In addition to panini and wraps, Manlusoc stocks her case with crullers, cookies, muffins, and her true pastry passion, gelati. If we were to sit all day at FlowState, we’d opt for brioche con gelato, a riff on a classic Sicilian breakfast for which Manusloc smashes honey-cashew, frutti di bosco, and Mexican chocolate gelati in between a hybrid Mexican concha-Filipino ensaymada bun. Just watch the drips on your keyboard.
Salmon Tail for Two
It’s adorable and delicious. It has state fair vibes, and it’s also an affordable dinner for two: salmon tail from Chef Alex Beninato at In the Valley. ITV (as it’s better known) is the cozy bar-restaurant nextdoor to fine-dining Laurel, both owned by Philadelphia Chef and Rising Star alum Nick Elmi. Chef de cuisine at Laurel, “Top Chef” fave Edmund Konrad, introduced Beninato to the chubby little fish ends. “Eddie came to me with the tails and asked if I could use them for something. I thought they would go well with congee but I’d stick to the French theme we have here,” says Beninato, who sells the tails as a recurring off-menu special. “After deboning the tail, I put it back together with meat glue, circulate it super low at 104°F for one hour, and then deep fry it in canola oil for seven minutes,” he says. For only 18 bucks, he serves the tail whole with truffled rice porridge (with a splash of vermouth) and garnished with dried Brussels sprout leaves and dehydrated fermented red cabbage. Just squeeze half a burnt lemon over top and have at it—with a knife and fork or your bare hands.
