Why I Took Your Favorite Dish Off the Menu

Before you get mad at me, let me say a few things.

Complacency is bad. I truly believe that. Routine numbs us, mind and body; it narrows the aperture of our experiential lens, shutting out light we need to guide and feed us. Complacency is a UV-reflecting gray bubble of protection we build around ourselves, yet most accidents happen at home, near home, on the job, or in our cars. Those are the venues of routine, right? So be safe, for your own sake, and break with routine. Here are thirteen lucky suggestions from me, the chef-owner, family-guy, and thrillseeker emeritus:

1. Go to Paris for the weekend. If the Euro is too strong, which it is, go to Quebec City or Montreal.
2. Splurge on one great meal you will never forget.
3. Drive an hour in the direction of your choice. Get out of the car. Do something there. Drive back. (If you’re in the Seacoast area, avoid a due east heading.)
4. Spend twenty dollars more on a bottle of wine than you usually do. Taste the difference.
5. Go to a church service of a religion you do not believe in.
6. Visit that place you’ve always wondered about.
7. Volunteer at a nursing home, hospital or prison.
8. Ride your bike to work one day.
9. Plant seeds and water them. When they grow up, give your friends the fruits of your labor.
10. Learn a new language. Speak it badly, but speak it.
11. Go for a walk in a “bad” part of town. Bring your cell phone, if you’re scared.
12. Try the food you most dislike again, just in case you don’t dislike it anymore.
13. Sky dive, scuba dive, race cars, climb mountains, explore caves, dance, sing and educate yourself.

No school can do these things for us. No job can provide access to all these avenues of experience. We have to access them ourselves. So do it, as they say at Nike.

In the end, we should come back to what is important to us, but to experience the most out of life should be the fundamental desire of everyone. Obviously, it is not. So, adventurers unite. Preferably at Black Trumpet. Our new Spring Menu is coming soon!

Sorry for the diatribe. The above philosophy guides menu-making for me. Seasons bring new weather, new crops, and—for me—new ideas. Some past ideas that have pleased a great many people have already resurfaced at Black Trumpet. Over time, others will evanesce and reappear when their season calls for them. But with my unquenchable thirst for knowledge, my biological predilection for change, and our customers’ collective response to menu changes we have undergone thus far, I will continue to lure leery traditionalists with new dishes, get them hooked, and then remove them, not out of malice, but out of respect for ingredients and the seasons where they belong.

So, when faced with a dish coming off the menu--like the famous radicchio salad, for example--may I boldly suggest that, rather than mourn its loss, you might try a new dish. Broader horizons make bigger sunsets. Oooh, bumper sticker! Bumper sticker!

See you soon,

Evan

P.S. – We just took our first vacation as restaurant owners—Denise and I with our dynamic offspring duo—to the southernmost tip of the East Coast. The Everglades and Florida Keys were wonderful, but the best part of our trip was that our kitchen—under the leadership of Sous Chef Mike Piergrossi—and our dining room—headed up as always by lovely Lennie Blace Holt—ran as well without us as it did with us. We are very proud parents to return and find our one-year-old well cared for. Thanks again to all our staff for being so incredibly dedicated and caring.

Spring Blog 08: Let them eat rhubarb!

I recently had a conversation with Lauren, who has brought to our Black Trumpet kitchen her own docile demeanor and gorgeous culinary stylings, about the antsiness we chefs get at this time of year. Around here, Spring is a fat promise of green things to come. Mud notwithstanding, the world reemerges from beneath its snowy veil with colors unseen since November. Yet, here in the Seacoast area, Spring’s local bounty won’t result in ramps, fiddleheads and rhubarb for another month at least. The fiddleheads, nettles and greengage plums featured on our refreshing new Spring menu are coming from far afield, unfortunately. But soon, these items—along with ramps, morel mushrooms and early radishes—will push through the frosty New England mud and fulfill the promise of Spring.

In this little hamlet, where callus-handed, hardy fisherfolk once laid the foundation for our cozy village, Spring often enters with a whimper. Last year, on our opening night at Black Trumpet, it came with a blizzard. The neighborhood die-hards who still support us showed up in force. This year, in tune with Puxatawny Phil’s forecast, Spring enters with harsh winds, freezing temps and plenty of residual snow (in our yard at home, a quinzee on our deck is currently housing the 75-pound lamb we will serve to staff and their families on Easter Sunday). I like that Black Trumpet was born during the week of the Spring Equinox. I like that the anniversary of that day will always coincide with the season we associate with rebirth. That’s what I want the kitchen to be about, too: rebirth of creative ideas, rebirth of dormant ingredients, emergent seedlings in cold loam.

Speaking of cold loam, our current menu offers an arugula and dandelion salad in place of the usual Back River Farm greens. For six weeks out of every year, Garen over at the farm takes a little hiatus between crops to order, organize, cultivate and sow his fields and greenhouses. He does most of this with just his own two hands. Around the time of the Super Bowl, he and I go through catalogues and pick out ingredients for late Spring, Summer and Autumn menus. If the crops are successful, everyone benefits—not just our guests in the restaurant, but farmer’s market patrons and Enoteca customers as well. Garen grows beautiful food, and the community has begun to recognize his efforts, which is fantastic. Later this spring, Garen will be bringing me his “little head lettuces,” a mixture this year of deer tongue and dragon’s ear. Maybe we’ll call it the Tongue’n’Ear Salad. Or maybe not. Either way, we always miss Garen’s gorgeous greens when he’s between crops, and we look forward to the produce that lies ahead.

As for my own garden and our restaurant community garden at Strawbery Banke, I am growing extremely anxious to get my hands in unfrozen earth. We will be divvying up the weeding detail at the community garden again among our BT staff, but this year, I’ve invited the front of the house to participate as well. Christine, our bright and shining new star behind the bar, will hopefully contribute some of her landscaping expertise. The organic and heirloom seeds are in the mail. All we need now are a few dozen more degrees Fahrenheit.

In my conversation with Lauren, one of us (I can’t remember which one) said, “I’m sick of root vegetables.” My daughter Eleanor has sworn off snow. Berwick, where we live, has seen 112 inches of snow this year. Winter has had its way with us, and we are over it, ready for Spring like never before. Let them plant seeds! Let them eat rhubarb!

Your dedicated chef and friend,

Evan

PORTUGUESE WINE DINNER

Calling all foodies!

Our upcoming Portuguese Wine Dinner features some great labels from the once overlooked corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Typecast for its phenomenal dessert wines, Portugal also makes some great table wines that have only recently landed on our shores. A few of them have popped up on Julian’s wine list in the last year and have consistently won kudos from wine cognoscenti. We are lucky to be featuring the wines of Portugal, imported by Augusto Gabriel of Signature Imports, on Wednesday, February 27th.

Since we are targeting a food-rich region of the world for this dinner, and following the adage that the best wine pairings are those that feature foods and wines from the same region, I have decided to utilize Portuguese ingredients, techniques and recipes to help uncover some of the less heralded dishes.

We have all heard of, and probably enjoyed, Portuguese sweet bread (anadama), fisherman’s stew, and even kale and bean soup. But most American palates aren’t as aware of Portugal’s unique obsession with salt cod, or its deep appreciation for pork and lamb. Or its literary contribution to the world via Nobel-winning author Jose Saramago. But I digress.

Although not a particularly large country, Portugal has tremendous geographic diversity, making for a colorful palette of wine varietals. Also, such varietals as Tinto Roriz and Touriga Nacional cannot be found in any other wine growing region of the world.

So go to Portugal for a night! Join us on Wednesday, Feb. 27.

Obrigado,

Evan

OUR FIRST ANNUAL HOLIDAY GETAWAY

Generally speaking, I don’t stop moving long enough to appreciate what a good thing I have. Part of me fears that, if I stop moving, everything will stop moving. It’s part of the only-child syndrome, I suppose, this egocentric belief that so much—my business, my family, my daily kitchen deadline, global climate change--depends on me. To my thinking, hard work isn’t supposed to pay off until later in life. But every once in a while, I take a break from the hard work, and a ray of light breaches the mask of blood, sweat and tears, granting me a peaceful perspective of the world around me. Just such a moment recently occurred, so I thought I’d share it with what few loyal blogreaders I have.

Our Black Trumpet staff—a great amalgam of hard-working, lovable young folks—earned a special holiday treat in this, our first year of business. By answering myriad questions about the change of ownership, by proverbially hand-holding when Lindbergh’s patrons felt betrayed, by smiling through requests for outmoded but much-adored “classics” from the bygone era, by volunteering their time to help pound nails or paint trim, and by sticking with us through this time of change, our beloved staff deserved more than a simple house party or restaurant dinner. Working on the suggestions of two avid winter sportsmen on the kitchen crew, I put together a mid-week “weekend getaway” to North Conway. So, on the first day of this year, the morning after our hugely successful, dual New Year’s Eve wine dinners, we all carpooled northward on the Spaulding Turnpike as snow piled up to the tune of an inch an hour.

We arrived at the Red Jacket Mountain View Resort just in time for a shuttle to Mount Cranmore, where we embarked on our first exercise in the two-day fiesta: an hour of tubing down the well-groomed Cranmore Tubing Hill. Normally crowded, the hill on New Year’s Day had relatively few other tubers (not the botanical kind), so we enjoyed many runs down the hill before the sun’s descent.

After a brief sojourn to the base lodge pub for soul-warming toddies, we found ourselves embroiled in a snow battle that ended promptly when the shuttle arrived to return us to the lodge. The Red Jacket Resort has a few townhouses on premises that proved ideal for accommodating our crew. Four adjacent units housed all twenty-four participants, providing a two-day home base for recreation of all kinds.

Upon our return from the mountain, we were treated to lasagna by Lauren, one of the best home cooks we have in our so-called “professional” kitchen. It was, beyond a doubt, the finest tasting lasagna I have ever eaten. It was so good, in fact, that many townhouse dwellers enjoyed the leftovers for breakfast the next day. Denise, my always lovely and adoring wife, wondered aloud if I might learn a thing or two about making lasagna from Lauren. The implications of her statement are too ego-damaging to dwell on in these paragraphs, Suffice to say, I won’t be opening a traditional Italian restaurant anytime soon.

After a group dinner cleanup, we walked en masse through the continuing snowfall to the main hotel, where a video arcade room kept us busy for a long while. Denise dominated the air hockey table, her Canadian heritage showing itself in every lunge of her wrist. Rebecca and Christy dueled on the footpads of a game called Dance Dance Revolution. Casey held his own, as it were, on DDR while Monica showed a particularly violent talent for street shooting and hunting games, leading to speculation that she may have come to us through the witness relocation program, and that Monica is not her real name at all.

NOTE: Monica and Casey have since moved on to new careers. We expect them both back in the building, albeit on the other side of the bar, soon. Meanwhile, Christine and Rebecca have added to the Jon, Christy and Julian barstaff, tipping the balance in favor of females for the first time. As expert and beloved and Monica and Casey are, we are so excited about Christine—an experienced, professional bartender with a photography career on the side—and Rebecca—another spirited (pun intended) bar veteran with a decorative design background.

Back at The Red Jacket, the late night party (unfortunately captured by some nimble camera work on the part of Jon Plaza) included dancing, the usual party merriment and more lasagna. It was during this phase of the overnight extravaganza that I realized what a uniquely beautiful situation we have. At the party, as I looked around at a little townhouse living room crammed with our staff, I realized that our employees are friends, each with their own quirks and stories to tell, but essentially one cohesive unit committed to a cause we all believe in. It’s so incredibly satisfying to see our group operating as a living thing away from the living thing—the restaurant—that gives our passions a mutual context. I don’t know any other business, much less restaurant, that can boast such a crew.

Each of us at Black Trumpet operates on a bizarre urge to make people happy at all costs. It is in us. None of us tolerates a lax work ethic in anyone else because we don’t tolerate it in ourselves. But that will never stop us from enjoying our own lives. That combination is a rare and beautiful thing in this business. Denise and I are so lucky to have these guys aboard.

Thank you to our staff for continuing to bring a sense of pride to our daily routine. It shows. We adore you all.

ANATOMY OF A WINE DINNER, SET TO MUSIC

At Black Trumpet, we have put on three wine dinners and one beer and game dinner. In the olden days, Scott O’Connor and I collaborated on countless Lindbergh’s Crossing wine dinners. On November 7th at Black Trumpet, Scott returned (with some great organic and biodynamic wines) to a full house of old friends and wine dinner regulars of yore. The event, a departure from the structure of many past wine dinners, served primarily as a festive reunion for old friends who love fun food and hard-to-find wines. Scott and Tom’s return was clearly the focus of the event. As a bonus, the food and wines were quite well received also. So many guests at the most recent wine dinner asked me about the process I go through in pairing wine with food, I thought I’d use the blog to post some thoughts on the way our preparations work.

First, the concept. We pick a theme. Or a theme picks us. In other words, some impulse appears on the radar pointing me in the direction of a region, a varietal, a concept or a specific winemaker. Then, I find out if the wines are available in the state. If they are not—which is far too often the case (a later, more controversial blog will address the complications and frustrations of selling wine in the state of NH)—it’s back to the drawing board. If they are available, Julian—our daffy, dutiful and diligent wine guy—talks to distributors and arranges for individual bottles to be dropped off for tasting. I taste, usually with Julian and sometimes with a wine rep, and then the real thought process begins.

This is the scary part, because it offers some insight into the very greyest part of my grey matter. For example, here’s a non-sequitur digression coming at you for no reason:

I used to write songs. Not very good songs, but songs nonetheless. It was a form of creative expression, an outlet for the part of my brain that now gives itself entirely to menu making. Being a writer, I am prone to analogize, so it should come as no surprise that I have found a connection between songwriting and wine pairing.

For me, there are two ways to write a song. In the first scenario, music comes first. It could come from an instrument I am playing. It could come from another song I hear. It can even come out of the air itself. I wrote a bunch of songs when I was commuting on foot in Washington, DC back in my early twenties. The rhythm of my footfalls were the only structure I needed. I had a Walkman, as I recall, but I never really liked the way it cut me off from the world around me. So I would literally write songs as I walked, forming verse and then chorus, or vice versa, revising as I went on my merry way. You can picture the looks on the faces of those people I passed on the sidewalk. Eccentricity, I still contend, will one day be the new normalcy. Until then, I can only hope for the pity of strangers.

The second songwriting scenario is the lyrical approach. Words come from a separate muse (the Greeks had Erato in charge of lyrics and Euterpe in charge of music, as I recall), one that doesn’t heed meter sometimes. When words are more important, they can squeeze their own music from affricatives, plosives and glottals that make our language so complex (and sometimes vulgar). The rest is easy; just ask Bob Dylan.

Obviously, this analogy can parlay into a number of artforms and disciplines. Some poets are slaves to structure, obsessed with fitting ideas into sestinas and sonnets, while others let the words make the meter and the music. A single poet can, in fact, successfully embrace both approaches—those of Erato and Euterpe--in his career. Wallace Stevens might be a good example.

To make a long analogy short, wine is the music and food the lyric in this pairing process. Composing a menu can either begin with the words (ingredients) or the music (wine), and the results will vary depending on which comes first.

Back to the narrative.

So I’ve now got wine in my mouth, and I’m writing notes furiously, describing with words the indescribable complexities of aroma, flavor and finish. I am putting words to the music, body and soul of the wines. There is no question that this process is subjective. My palate, far from perfect, has its own leanings and longings. I have to keep these in check when tasting wine (and food, for that matter) because, at the wine dinner, our dining room will not be filled with clones of me. I end up with a page—no matter how many wines I’m tasting, it’s almost always one page—of tasting notes. The wines are then left open for an hour, and then a day, to let them open up. At these intervals, I go back to taste again, in hopes of detecting any other nuances, hidden notes, flourishes, etc. I write more words. At this juncture, I have a half-decent idea at least of the order in which I want the wines to be presented. This, too, can be rearranged as late as the day of the event. I also have a jumble of cuneiform runes and scratches in as many as four different inks on a crumpled page that has traveled with me in pockets, on clipboards, in notebooks. The proteins usually come first. For example, the young petit verdot has the kind of acidity and weight that call for a bird, probably a little bird, maybe partridge. Must find partridge! (This is only a simulation.) I edit as inspiration strikes. I think—always, always—about what ingredients are seasonal and appropriate with each wine, and soon a dish comes together.

Recently, Julian headed to Portland with our friend Mark to scope out some high profile wines from France that were being introduced to New Hampshire. His assignment was to come back with some big little wines that could be featured at our next wine dinner in January. He tasted twelve and selected six or seven with Mark’s help. Next step, I will taste these contenders and formulate a theme for the event.

Some Changes at Black Trumpet

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT, sort of

My talented, wise and beautiful wife, Denise, has made a big step in her career by opting to phase out a job that has meant a lot to her over the last five-plus years. IW Financial, a values-based investing research firm in Portland, has offered Denise a challenging work environment on the cutting edge of both technology and investment worlds since our return from Mexico in 2003. She will be phasing out that chapter in her career so she can focus on the restaurant more closely, in turn giving our beloved staff more centralized leadership. This change arrives as one of our most valuable players departs: Sarah is ending her tenure as Operations Manager after getting us on our feet these last few months. We will miss her dearly and wish her well in her endeavors. Casey, too, who has been a hard-working smiling face on the floor and behind the bar, will be stepping down from his role as General Manager. He will continue to work behind the bar while he seeks alternate routes during the day. As sad as these departures are for us and our team, we are all looking forward to having Denise around more.

October

Time for an update on our Black Trumpet goings-on:

MUSHROOMS

Mushrooms have been plentiful despite the lack of rain. Carrie, a line cook and assistant pastry chef, has expressed interest in seeking out mushrooms with me for a while. Last weekend, Carrie and I hiked into the woods around my house and came up with some beautiful boletes, a few hedgehogs and a big surprise--matsutakes!! Matsutakes are a hard-to-find wild mushroom that grows under certain conifers in damp, mossy woods. The New Yorker (or was it the Sunday Times mag?) recently published an article about the intense competition for matsutake harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. A great, must-read article that was more about immigration than mushrooms, it discussed a group of Korean migrant workers who were trumping the embittered local mushroom hunters by finding caches of matsutakes at nighttime.

If the rainlessness continues, of course, our supplies of local wild mushrooms will end prematurely, forcing me to buy all the mushrooms for our menu from nationwide distributors. There's no sport in that, but at least I won't have to wear my blaze bandanna and whistle loudly to notify hunters of my presence in the woods.


COOKBOOK

The wheels beneath the cookbook project are finally moving, now that the first phase of our opening is complete, systems are in place and running smoothly, and staff roles have jelled. I spent a few hours last week with James Haller, founding chef of the famous Blue Strawbery and co-author of the forthcoming cookbook. I brought some smoked pork to his house, which we heated up on his beautiful cookstove, and he made his favorite chocolate flan for dessert. We discussed the cookbook project, and he read a personal introduction he had written. It seems as though the scope of the book is still unknown. We are waiting for a publisher to take interest in the project, which would then give us a concrete deadline and motivate us to give the book a structure. Until then, we are still in the ideation phase of the project. So, if you or someone you know would like to publish a really great cookbook that spans thirty-seven years of cooking in three successful restaurants at the same address, please let us know so we can get more motivated.

More updates soon....

Evan