stealing from restaurants

Last week, for a birthday party we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Gramercy Tavern.

To me, a really good restaurant comes down one way or the other: they serve excellent food that makes you think: I can come close to this at home if I spend some time on it, or it makes food that is so over the top and challenging that you know you could never do it.

Gramercy, in my view, is one of the former. I love the place. I love the dishes. And there were two that I just had to try to make right away (well, there are three I want to make, no, make that four, but the other two are going to need some time).

The first dish was an incredible squid salad. It was listed as calamari salad with carrots. When it came out, it was mostly squid, with a few squiggles of carrots, and a lovely dressing. This is PRECISELY the kind of dish that a prepared cook can make, if you know where to get good ingredients. And it is exactly the kind of dish that begs you to experiment with it. So I did.

I have written about squid before, and I'll reiterate some of those comments. For squid, smaller is better, and when you cook it, you cook it either very quickly, or for a long, long time. It was clear from the salad that this was a quick cooked squid. It was a bit chewy, but not rubberbands. And the squid were very tiny. Tinier than a home chef can get. So that calls for some changes in presentation.

And I also thought that I could change the vegetables and make the dish even prettier. The carrots reminded me of coleslaw, and while I did not have white cabbage in the fridge, I did have a couple of heads of red cabbage. Small heads, weighing less than a pound (again with cabbage, smaller is better). I shredded a head of cabbage with a sharp k nife (I had just gotten them sharpened, too), and then took two carrots, and shredded them on one of those box shredders (an essential tool in the kitchen). I also had the seeds of a pomegranate from Eric the stud citrus grower, and his wife Kim the citrus bomb. Finally, I had two small bunches of fennel, begging to be used.


All in the name of a squid salad. So here's what I did. After I had all the vegetables prepped, I got a bowl of ice water ready, and then a pot of salted water. Two minutes for the shredded cabbage, and then into the ice water. Then two minutes for the fennel. Out and into the ice water. And finally, one minute for the shredded carrots. When that was done, I took all of the vegetables, drained them, and put them on paper towel to dry (when you're making a salad, your vegetables should be dry, or the dressing won't adhere. Oil and water DO NOT mix). Finally, the squid. I had two pounds of small ones, although not as small as the ones in the restaurant. They went into the vegetable water, and here I learned something interesting. I had the timer set for three minutes, but when I tasted a squid after a minute and a half, it was ready. So, out they came too. I let them cool, separately from the vegetables. Not to the point where they were cold, but cool enough to work with. I sliced them longitudinally, into long strips, but I left the tentacles alone.

When everything was dry, I started on the dressing. I could not quite remember the Gramercy dressing, so I used some instinct. I had some apple cider vinegar, and I used a LOT of it - perhaps a third of a cup - and salt, and olive oil. I mixed this all up, and tossed the vegetables and squid. I tasted, and it was clear that the dressing needed something. I had forgotten that many of these ingredients (squid, cabbage and carrots), suck up acid like sponges. I was thinking the thing through and realized that I had pomegranate molasses. Hmmm. Pomegranates already in the salad... So in went a few tablespoons. Since there was the purple from the cabbage already, the color was not that disturbing, and it didn't mar the white of the squid.

Everything came together beautifully. If you can wait, let this salad marinate for about a day to make it REALLY good. The veggies stay crispy, and the squid stays chewy without getting yucky.

If you like squid, I guarantee you, you will LOVE this