There are a passel, no a fat lot of words you should avoid when discussing food, and revelatory is one of them, as are all its forms: revelation, revelatory et cetera. But WTF is a girl to say when she truly, unmistakably has a REVELATION when she puts something inside her mouth? How can you describe a dish that has revelatory qualities WITHOUT using the word revelatory? Let’s try and skirt it, shall we? This is gonna be AWESOME, or as someone I recently blocked on facebook often says, AWSOME sans the center “E”. As in, “this voodoo doll I just made of Mariah Carey is SOOOO AWSOME.” Gag me.

So I wanted to make really succulent, disintegrating pork tenderloin and I knew slow and low was the name of the game. You know me, if it’s slow and low, it’s en sous vide, right? Sous vide pork tenderloin, however, needs a little somethin’ somethin’ to get the juices flowing, so for a moment I pondered sauce. The bed of sunchoke gnocchi I planned to serve it on was non-negotiable, and in terms of complementary flavors to sunchokes, I tend to like something earthily sweet.

Agrodolce came to mind, which is an Italian sweet and sour sauce. Italians often prepare rabbit in sweet and sour sauce, or coniglio in agrodolce.  I once dined on this dish in the wine cellar of an elderly woman who had painstakingly prepared the rabbit the same way she had been taught by her mother, who had learned it from her own mother and so on. The bella nonna looked pleased but pained when I complemented her on the succulence of the rabbit. She explained that she loved making it, but couldn’t really eat it anymore because of all the tiny rabbit bones that inevitably infiltrate the sauce.  Trying to be ever-helpful, I suggested she substitute chicken for the rabbit instead, since the bones were larger and easier to avoid. Her eyes grew as big as figs and she shuffle/stomped off.  I ran the conversation through my head trying to figure out if I had misspoke, in my shaky Italian.

She avoided me for much of the night, sending her husband to our section of the table with any subsequent courses. Befuddled about my apparent lack of manners, I drowned my sobriety in bicchiere after bicchiere of Barbaresco. The wine must have fortified me- and slackened my tongue- for I cornered the sweet little woman and accosted her in ubriaco Italian asking her what I had done. She was either a kind soul or a pious one, as her eyes softened and she apologized for the abrupt end to our earlier conversation. She explained to me that it would simply be unthinkable to use any other meat in coniglio in agrodolce because that was just how it had been done forever. Why was I, some enterprising New Worlder, waltzing into her country, her region, and telling her how to prepare her food? Even if it made complete sense it was still an abject imposition on tradition.

And now would you look at me? Obviously I did not learn my lesson, because not only am I making an agrodolce sauce for pork tenderloin, I’m MAKING IT WITH CRANBERRIES- the horror! The cranberry element adds the perfect element of tart piquancy you want in a sweet and sour sauce, thus enabling me to use Verjus instead of vinegar for a slightly sweeter take on the acidity factor. Here’s the thing about this sauce though. It’s fucking revelatory. I can’t help it, there are no other words to describe the lip-licking delight that is this sauce.  Older readers might remember sunchoke gnocchi has appeared here in a previous life, so I won’t post the recipe, but rest assured, if you’re looking for a clever use for sunchokes, there is no other place you’d rather be.

Pork Tenderloin Cranberry Agrodolce

Serves 4-6, 8 hours inactive, ½ hour active time

• 1 pork tenderloin
• 2 cups cranberries
• ½ c honey
• 3 bay leaves
• Salt
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 medium shallot, chopped
• ¾ c Verjus

1. Heat the water bath to 185°F. Place the tenderloin, cranberries, honey, bay leaves and salt in a food safe vacuum bag and seal.  Immerse in the water bath for 6-8 hours.
2. Remove the tenderloin bag and separate the tenderloin from the berry liquid.
3. In a medium saucepan, saute the shallot in butter for 3 minutes, until just softened. Add the contents of the tenderloin bag as well as the verjus, minus the tenderloin. Reduce for 6 minutes, or until the sauce thickens slightly. Just before service, add the tenderloin, which should be in pieces. Stir to heat through, and serve over pasta, such as sunchoke gnocchi.

I have two somewhat distinct passions in the kitchen- from scratch at home with heavy Piedmontese influences versus haute modern cuisine.  I usually keep them separate- doing weeknight pasta meals whilst dreaming up molecular concoctions to spend the entire weekend perfecting. I’ve been so heavily-steeped in modern mania the past few months, however, that my dough extruder began to collect dust and my forearm muscles are appreciably smaller for lack of rolling out pasta sheets. This tells me it’s high time to reconcile my polyamorous tendencies and find a way to let everyone come out and play.

I had to ask myself, is it possible to mashup the two with satisfying results? The answer is a resounding YES, at least as far as this dish is concerned. Grant Achatz creates flavor profiles through a process he refers to as “flavor bouncing.” Essentially, you begin with a base flavor and think of things you want to add to it. In this instance, I wanted a potato-centric dish because I’d just dug the last of the potatoes from the garden.

In keeping with my traditionalistic side, I opted to make gnocchi from the potatoes, but I practiced the art of flavor bouncing to determine pleasing yet unusual combinations. If potato is at the center of the dish, does it marry well with cashew? Yes, definitely. Would I then cover it in a red, meaty sauce such as a Bolognese? Absolutely not- the cashew would get lost in such a heavy Italian flavor bomb.

use a pastry bag to pipe gnocchi- helps with uniformity

If it has to match cashew and it has to match potato, how about something light yet still rich- like coconut milk? Now we’re talking. I like my coconut milk with some spice and I’d conveniently made up a new batch of Panang curry paste recently (I make it in volume and freeze it to use over the course of six months) so that pairing was obvious. Does Panang match potatoes, coconut milk and cashews? 100%.

Since the coconut milk would be infused with Panang, I’d inevitably lose the intensity of coconut flavor. The solution? Coconut bubbles made from blending coconut juice/water with soy lecithin. Since we’re now firmly entrenched in Thai tastes, my mind wandered to Thai basil and peanuts which, again, pair well with the rest of the dish. I opted to make Thai basil oil because I felt it should be a separate element on the plate rather than mixing into the Panang foam or just an afterthought as sprinkling chiffonaded basil on top of the dish may have been.

I thought of how so many Thai dishes are garnished with a smattering of crumbled peanuts, but texturally-speaking I did not want the peanut crunch to distract from the pillowy cashew gnocchi. I solved that by powdering (with Maltodextrin) the oil that gathers on top of a natural jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter powder is something I will be revisiting often. It whollops unmistakable flavor on your taste receptors, but does it in a delicate way that has you scouring the kitchen for a spoon large enough to shovel the stuff in.  Pea sprouts round out the dish by adding a fresh, springy crispness to every bite.

Because cashew gnocchi is quite possibly one of the best ideas ever to claw its way out of the catacombs of my cerebrum, I owe it to you to share the recipe. And also the technique since it’s a little different in that it involves a pastry bag rather than rolling out snaking tubes. You achieve stellar uniformity this way- the only problem is that you’ll definitely want to make more than you think because when you’re sweating away over a boiling vat of water snipping gnoccho by gnoccho off the piping tip, inevitably you will eat approximately one half of the gnocchi you fish out of the vat with your slotted spoon. Also, be prepared for forearm soreness if you tackle the daunting task of cranking out a batch for ten people. I think I’m going to enter just that part of my limb into a bodybuilding competition since my muscle curiously appears to be permanently flexed now. I slathered it in some coconut oil and am now trying to fashion a forearm bikini out of strategically-placed lettuce leaves. If I win I’ll share the bodybuilder medal with you, don’t worry.

You can serve these gnocchi with whatever you like, but I HIGHLY recommend sautéing them in butter with pea sprouts, nestling them on a slick of panang foam, dappling them with Thai basil oil and peanut butter powder and finishing the masterpiece with coconut foam.  Here you are, darlings, hope you love them as much as I do.

Potato Cashew Gnocchi

Serves 4-6

• 2 lbs baked garden potatoes (use a starchy rather than a mealy potato)
• 16 oz cashews ground to a fine powder in a spice grinder
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp salt
• ½ c whole milk
• 1 c all-purpose flour (you may need more or less, depending on thickness of the batter- be judicious, starting with less)

1. Boil a large pot of salted water and take out a piping bag with a large, round tip (this will determine the size of your gnocchi- feel free to choose what you want, but know the smaller the tip, the harder to pipe).
2. While the potatoes are still hot, run them through a ricer along with the cashews. Place the resulting mixture in the bowl of a stand mixer along with the butter, eggs and salt. Mix until uniform consistency is reached.
3. Add the milk and flour alternately until you have a thick, gloppy batter. It should not be too runny or the gnocchi will not set correctly, but if it is too thick, the gnocchi will be dry and you won’t be able to pipe it easily. You can do a test dollop if you wish.
4. Place one quarter of the mixture in the pastry bag and cover the rest so it doesn’t dry out. Over the pot of boiling water, squeeze out lengths of gnocchi and snip them into the water with kitchen shears. I find that I can do two at a time if they are roughly 1” in length. Any more than that and the dough pulls too hard and makes for misshapen gnocchi.
5. Drop about 20 in the water per batch and remove them when they float to the top. Reserve them in a buttered dish, stirring them to keep them from sticking while you make the remaining gnocchi.
6. At this point, serve as you wish, though I highly recommend pan-frying the gnocchi before serving, and perhaps heeding the suggestions above in terms of accoutrements.

There is a lot going on with this dish and yet each mouthful is pure, refreshing, almost crisp.  The multi-layered flavor profile of the Mangalitsa pig jowl probably has much to do with the fact that the rest of the dish unites so beautifully. There is a lot to cling onto in the jowl, and it helps each of the other ingredients to shine in a different way.  I had the great pleasure of meeting Heath Putnam recently, proprietor of Wooly Pigs. Heath is all about Mangalitsa pigs, which are a highly specialized breed of pig whose main distinguishing characteristic is that they are much fattier than typical American pigs, including most heritage breeds.  Since we all know that fat is flavor, you can imagine how creamy and succulent these babies taste. The Mangalitsa was first imported to the US by Wooly Pigs, and to date they remain the primary stateside supplier.  The company was founded a few short years ago, and has the noble distinction of selling their first pig to none other than The French Laundry.  I encourage you to learn more about this robustly flavored breed, as well as the European slaughtering techniques that produce more globally classic cuts of meat.

I picked up a jowl from Heath recently, and I gave it the true attention it deserved.  If you know me at all you know I can’t resist throwing things into the sous vide, but I wanted to add depth to the flavor, so I lightly smoked the jowl first.  It was a challenge keeping my smoker at 150°, so I only smoked it for an hour, but it was enough- the smoke clung to the brined jowl in just the right way.  After smoking, I tossed it in the sous vide bath at 150° for 36 hours. Once I removed it it was tender as filet mignon, lightly smoked, and ready to transform ordinary pasta dishes into otherworldly palatial experiences (yes, that’s a pun on palate- no, I don’t apologize for it).  I used the jowl in a typical ragu one evening, unfortunately it was dark, much wine was imbibed, and the camera sat languishing in the corner. Suffice to say that if you ever find yourself laden with smoked sous vide Mangalitsa jowl, you can’t go wrong replacing the pancetta portion of a typical Bolognese with it.  Remarkable.

From the success of the ragu I knew I wanted to spruce up another pasta with the jowl, and I’ve been on a bit of a gnocchi kick lately, hence these perfectly coddled gnocchi made from Okinawan purple sweet potatoes. The sweetness in the potato highlights the smokiness in the jowl and becomes richness personified.  I only added the favas and chickpeas because they were in season, startlingly fresh, and both provided two welcome textural additions to the otherwise relatively soft dish.  I will leave you with a quick warning about shelling the peas and beans of spring. BUY EXTRA!! Half inevitably meet their fate in your mouth before they ever see the inside of a frying pan.  They are worth the time it takes to shell them, since one secreted bite of raw chickpea or fava is like eating spring.