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Squid ink roasted oyster
At Sagaponack in New York City’s Flatiron District, chef Philip Choy makes a squid ink butter by sweating shallots and garlic in olive oil, deglazing the pan with white wine, letting it reduce, and then adding sherry vinegar and lemon zest, and letting it reduce further, and then adding that, plus squid ink and the oil of rendered ’nduja sausage, to room temperature butter. He puts that on raw oysters on the half shell, roasts them for five minutes and then finishes it with a squeeze of lemon juice. He finishes it with roasted nori seaweed, shichimi togarashi, and scallion.
Price: $6 per oyster
Bok & Beet Salad
For this dish at Blossom & Brass at the Collage Culinary Experience food hall in Costa Mesa, Calif., executive chef Juan Vera combines raw bok choy and frisée with orange segments, cashews, chives, pickled onions, fennel lives, shiso, furikake, and blue cheese and dresses it with a vinaigrette made with beet juice, honey, rice vinegar, coriander and sesame oil. He garnishes the salad with edible flower petals.
Price: $18
Salvador Dali
Babou’s, the new cocktail bar at the Hotel Swexan in Dallas, is named after Babou, the pet ocelot of painter Salvador Dali. Bartenders Kyle Buckelew and Mitch Hardee wanted to express the artist’s style, imagining the times when he would stroll through New York City with his unusual pets.
The combine an ounce each of Hamilton 86 and Clement Agricole rums, 1.5 ounces of acidified pineapple juice, ¾ ounces each of strawberry banana syrup, and El Guapo Creole Orgeat with five drops of tiki bitters and a squeeze of citrus juice. That’s all shaken and poured over crushed ice into a glass shaped like a peacock and garnished with berries.
“The combination of two very different rums with a mix of tropical and citrus juices and seasonal fruits served over crushed ice in a peacock glass felt like something Mr. Dali would carry with him on his walks,” they said.
Price: $20
Mushroom Korma
As part of the special Diwali menu at Khan Saab Desi Craft Kitchen in Fullerton, Calif., founder and executive chef Imran Mookhi makes this vegan version of a traditionally creamy-heavy curry. He lightly browns onions and mustard seeds in oil, and then adds ginger-garlic paste, green chiles, and curry leaves until the onions turn dark brown. Then he adds sliced tomatoes, cooks them down and then adds chile powder as well as powdered coriander and turmeric. He adds water and when it starts to boil he adds whatever mushrooms look good at the market. When they’re cooked he adds coconut milk, reduces it to a gravy and finishes it with chile oil and cilantro.
Price: $17
Tamarind ribs
For this dish at Immigrant Food in downtown Washington, D.C., executive chef and culinary director Ben Murray submerges riblets in a liquid of orange juice, soy sauce, water, garlic, onion and charred scallion, and braises them until they’re tender, then he removes the ribs and cools them.
He makes a sauce by simmering ketchup, apple cider vinegar, honey, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, chile garlic sauce, water, and tamarind concentrate, and reducing it to a sauce.
Then he tosses the ribs in cornstarch and deep-fries them before tossing them in the barbecue sauce and plating them with chopped scallion and black and white sesame seeds.
Murray says the sweet-and-sour nature of the tamarind makes for a great barbecue sauce because of its deep and rich flavors.
Price: $18
