Dinner at Sputnik
Oct. 22nd, 2007 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quisletFaire season in Maryland has come to a close and the leaves are only now just changing, but I'm not ready to process all of that yet. Instead, let's talk food. ;-)
After a day of pinching duck confit and some heavenly braised cabbage into dumpling skins, I was ready for someone else to do the cooking. Dinner last night was at Sputnik, a whimsical little place right where Crownsville Road meets General's Highway. Much of the food there is informed by the produce and cuisine of the Philippines, which in turn borrows from China, Southeast Asia, Spain and Latin America.
It was marvelous slice of evening, providing a perfect transitional moment that helped me mentally "come home" from the last two weeks in Cleveland, Chicago and Revel Grove. The decor at Sputnik is comically retro: glossy white paint on corrugated steel, panels the orange of an astronaut suit, a patio area with kinetic sculpture and a pond that buoys a bushelful of plastic balls. It all feels a little like a set from Dr. Strangelove. We were the third (and last) table in the house, seating ourselves in the obvious location, equidistant from the two occupied tables, forming a minor constellation around the massive, spiky vacuum-tube-tipped chandelier that looks like the secret love-child of Sputnik I and a WWII aquatic mine.
We were seated by a lovely brunette who gave us our menus and talked us through the night's specials (achiote duck breast and jackfruit crabcakes with palmfruit, as I recall - wiki those ingredients and then try to imagine the flavors). The menu and wine list are bound plastic sleeves with printed pages inside, obviously to promote "safe reading." I settled into a glass of Seghesio Zinfandel, we ordered, and the bread arrived. It was brought to table by a tiny, smokin'-hot blonde, the bread itself nuclear-hot. An inverted cone spiral of metal held a napkin full of tasty dinner rolls dusted with white and black sesame seeds. An espresso cup of cut butter nestled among them, stealing warmth from the bread. The were obnoxiously crunchy on the outside, not unlike a good roll on a first-class inflight meal.
I had the house salad, field greens with roasted walnuts, gorgonzola, sliced apple and perfectly-unripe mango. It hovered exactly between ripe and green. It wasn't sweet enough for fruit-eating out of hand, but it was riper than the mango that is often used as a vegetable in southeast Asian cuisine. It was perfect for a fruited salad. The salad was nicely balanced by itself, but the dressing was out of this world. The menu listed it as a "wild berry vinaigrette," but it was fresh raspberries that had clearly been lovingly bruised in mortar and pestle, then mixed with fine sherry vinegar. It was positively drinkable. Each mouthful was like biting into a field of berries. I used my still-searing hard roll to sop every last bit of vinegared berry mash from the plate.
Impossibly, I found that I had already had my fill of duck for the day, so my entree was two slices of pork loin, each wrapped in bacon, resting atop a bed of "broken potatoes," brussels sprouts and stewed "dried plums." When did it become so wrong to say the word prune? The pork was seared on a rocket-hot grill, the char marks adding a bitter, burnt note to balance sweet, spicy prunes. The loin was otherwise unadulterated, simply wrapped in the pig-on-pig embrace of bacon, pointing to the simple truth that this is the filet mignon of swine. The broken potatoes are simply rough-cut red potatoes, boiled and seasoned in an unfussy way. The brussels sprouts contrasted their slight natural sweetness against the deep, earthy, pudding-like sweetness of the stewed prunes. The prunes (a natural pairing with roast pork) were soft without losing their structure, holding their shape when stabbed but surrendering like jam to the spread of a knife.
Herself had the seafood salad, a square plate of field greens buried in huge lumps of blue crab meat, chopped onion in one corner, boiled egg and crispy bacon opposite. A lemon wedge lay in a third corner, draped in salmon roe. Nestled atop it all were three slices of lightly smoked, seared scallop, delicate and ethereal in their perfection.
It wasn't the kind of night that asked for dessert, so I passed on the torte, ice creams, sorbets and Filipino coconut cake and just finished my Zin looking into blue eyes.
After a day of pinching duck confit and some heavenly braised cabbage into dumpling skins, I was ready for someone else to do the cooking. Dinner last night was at Sputnik, a whimsical little place right where Crownsville Road meets General's Highway. Much of the food there is informed by the produce and cuisine of the Philippines, which in turn borrows from China, Southeast Asia, Spain and Latin America.
It was marvelous slice of evening, providing a perfect transitional moment that helped me mentally "come home" from the last two weeks in Cleveland, Chicago and Revel Grove. The decor at Sputnik is comically retro: glossy white paint on corrugated steel, panels the orange of an astronaut suit, a patio area with kinetic sculpture and a pond that buoys a bushelful of plastic balls. It all feels a little like a set from Dr. Strangelove. We were the third (and last) table in the house, seating ourselves in the obvious location, equidistant from the two occupied tables, forming a minor constellation around the massive, spiky vacuum-tube-tipped chandelier that looks like the secret love-child of Sputnik I and a WWII aquatic mine.
We were seated by a lovely brunette who gave us our menus and talked us through the night's specials (achiote duck breast and jackfruit crabcakes with palmfruit, as I recall - wiki those ingredients and then try to imagine the flavors). The menu and wine list are bound plastic sleeves with printed pages inside, obviously to promote "safe reading." I settled into a glass of Seghesio Zinfandel, we ordered, and the bread arrived. It was brought to table by a tiny, smokin'-hot blonde, the bread itself nuclear-hot. An inverted cone spiral of metal held a napkin full of tasty dinner rolls dusted with white and black sesame seeds. An espresso cup of cut butter nestled among them, stealing warmth from the bread. The were obnoxiously crunchy on the outside, not unlike a good roll on a first-class inflight meal.
I had the house salad, field greens with roasted walnuts, gorgonzola, sliced apple and perfectly-unripe mango. It hovered exactly between ripe and green. It wasn't sweet enough for fruit-eating out of hand, but it was riper than the mango that is often used as a vegetable in southeast Asian cuisine. It was perfect for a fruited salad. The salad was nicely balanced by itself, but the dressing was out of this world. The menu listed it as a "wild berry vinaigrette," but it was fresh raspberries that had clearly been lovingly bruised in mortar and pestle, then mixed with fine sherry vinegar. It was positively drinkable. Each mouthful was like biting into a field of berries. I used my still-searing hard roll to sop every last bit of vinegared berry mash from the plate.
Impossibly, I found that I had already had my fill of duck for the day, so my entree was two slices of pork loin, each wrapped in bacon, resting atop a bed of "broken potatoes," brussels sprouts and stewed "dried plums." When did it become so wrong to say the word prune? The pork was seared on a rocket-hot grill, the char marks adding a bitter, burnt note to balance sweet, spicy prunes. The loin was otherwise unadulterated, simply wrapped in the pig-on-pig embrace of bacon, pointing to the simple truth that this is the filet mignon of swine. The broken potatoes are simply rough-cut red potatoes, boiled and seasoned in an unfussy way. The brussels sprouts contrasted their slight natural sweetness against the deep, earthy, pudding-like sweetness of the stewed prunes. The prunes (a natural pairing with roast pork) were soft without losing their structure, holding their shape when stabbed but surrendering like jam to the spread of a knife.
Herself had the seafood salad, a square plate of field greens buried in huge lumps of blue crab meat, chopped onion in one corner, boiled egg and crispy bacon opposite. A lemon wedge lay in a third corner, draped in salmon roe. Nestled atop it all were three slices of lightly smoked, seared scallop, delicate and ethereal in their perfection.
It wasn't the kind of night that asked for dessert, so I passed on the torte, ice creams, sorbets and Filipino coconut cake and just finished my Zin looking into blue eyes.
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Date: 2007-10-23 03:21 am (UTC)