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Corzetti is coin-shaped pasta that originated in the Italian region of Liguria. It is made by pressing dough sheets with two engraved wooden stamps that were traditionally etched with village or family crests, according to Back of the House restaurant group which opened a restaurant named Corzetti in San Francisco’s Union Square in August.
There executive chef Tali Missirlian roasts Yukon Gold potatoes until the flesh is tender and folds it into Italian 00 flour along with eggs and pecorino cheese. Then she rolls out that dough and uses corzetti stamps to form pasta discs that she boils and then serves with gently roasted hen of the woods mushrooms and taleggio crema seasoned with garlic, lemon, coriander seed, and thyme. She tops it with sage.
This is a variation on the traditional preparation, in which the pasta is served with olive oil, marjoram, and pine nuts.
Price: $22
For this vegan dish at the Miami Beach, Fla., location of Chotto Matte, a chain of restaurants specializing in Peruvian Nikkei cuisine, with additional locations in Doha, Qatar, as well as London and Toronto, chef Jorge Echeverry makes a leche de tigre, the term for ceviche marinade, out of yuzu, lemon juice, yellow tomato, oil, and onion. He slices lychee and combines that with the leche de tigre, cooked sweet potato, and Peruvian corn. He serves it in a tin and garnishes it with chive oil.
Price: $14
At Cavaña in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, beverage director Emilio Salehi found a Mexican corn whisky to balance this otherwise tequila-based version of a Manhattan.
He grills corn until it is charred and has a smoky, caramelized, nutty flavor and then splits a cob in two and puts both halves in a sous vide bag with a liter of Arette Reposado tequila, cooking it at 140 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. Then he strains it through a coffee filter, cools it and bottles it.
He uses 1.5 ounces of that along with ½ ounce each of Abasolo Mexican Corn Whisky and La Fuerza Rojo vermouth from Argentina, plus ¼ ounce of Punt e Mes vermouth from Italy and a bar spoon of Alma Tepec, a pasilla chile liqueur from Oaxaca. He stirs that with ice and serves it in a rocks glass over a large ice cube.
Price: $18
This all-day breakfast favorite is called The Black Dahlia at Denae’s Diner in Los Angeles, where chef de cuisine Norma Amaya sprinkles croissant dough with cinnamon and sugar, rolls it into a loaf, bakes it, cools it, and then soaks slices of it in French toast batter. Then she griddles it and tops it with whipped cream, a sauce of blueberries cooked with red wine and sugar, powdered sugar, almond brittle and a mint leaf.
Price: $13
For this variation on a Yucatán dish at Bacalar, a restaurant in the Rainey Street Historic District of Austin, Texas, chef and owner Gabe Erales presses masa into a circular round “as you would a tortilla,” and then fills it with a mixture of cooked lentils, ground pumpkin seeds, habanero pepper, scallion, garlic, edam cheese, hoja santa, Yucatán allspice, cloves, and oregano. Then it’s folded into the shape of a serpent head (“polkan” means serpent head in Mayan), fried and served with an herbaceous green emulsion of cilantro, epazote, hoja santa, parsley, pipícha, and green habanero peppers in oil.
Erales said the traditional version of this dish doesn’t normally have cheese, and is made with a local white bean instead of lentils.
Price: $16
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