Dinner at Moto

I apologize for the blogging hiatus. We have been very busy celebrating Stephanie's birthday. More on that to follow.

Last Saturday, however, Stephanie was out of town, and I invited my friend John, a law professor who appeared earlier in this blog as Jonathan's dining companion at Le Bernardin, to a last-minute dinner at Moto. We took the 9:30 reservation, as it was all that was left as of Friday afternoon. Moto, for those unfamiliar with cutting-edge gastronomy, is one of these "molecular gastronomy" restaurants that serves food inspired and created by various scientific processes. Chef Homaro Cantu was kind enough to be interviewed for my paper on the copyrightability of recipes, and many of the dishes we consumed were created with patent-pending technologies.

The meal began when we were presented with edible menus that also served as both the amuse bouche and a legal statement. An edible strip of paper was attached to a piece of crisp bread, which were used to eat Indian-flavored lentils with preserved lemon. This was matched with the best cucumer juice shooter I've ever tasted. The shooter let us know that dinner would not simply offer a progression of "gee-whiz" flare but a seriously tasty gastronomic experience. The menu, however, very clearly warned us against attempting to recreate any of the chef's patent-pending techniques without first purchasing a license.

After some indecision about which tasting menu to order (the restaurant offers 5-course, 10-course, and the 20-course GTM menus), John and I settled on the GTM - Grand Tour of Moto - and we decided to order wine by the glass rather than purchase the course-by-course accompaniments. But more on the wine later.

Dinner began with a Vietnamese egg-drop soup, where the egg had been dipped in liquid nitrogen (as you will see, a familiar theme for the evening) and "cooked" in the warm, spicy soup. This was followed by one of our favorite courses of the evening, sweet corn ice cream with liquid nitrogen (LI) kernels and mussels and clams in bacony broth. Many of the courses, and most of the truly successful ones, made use of temperature contrasts such as this. By tacking between warm and cold, the meal seemed more like a dance than slog through a series of heavier and warmer courses. It made the 20 courses seem almost not insane.

The corn was followed by "synthetic champagne" where a liquid in a glass is combined tableside with a different liquid in a syringe over the glass, carbonating the resulting liquid, which, while tasty, bears little resemblance to champagne. Next came the only disappointing savory course, goat cheese snow with balsamic. The cheese had been dipped in LI and then shattered to create small white flakes. It was drizzled with the balsamic. I found the flavors too abrupt and poorly integrated. Another ingredient was necessary to bring them together - perhaps hills of bread.

The meal continued with a series of fish courses: hamachi sashimi (over-)marinated in "carbonated" clementine with parsnip puree, a delicious crab dish with passion fruit and "popcorn butter" sauce, and bass cooked in patented ovens placed on the table. This last course was served with heirloom tomato sauce and mushrooms. It was reasonably tasty, but John and I were surprised to have received very differently shaped pieces of fish.

The fish courses were briefly interupted for one of my favorite courses - "savory dippin dots" (no doubt a trademark violation on Chef Cantu's part). We received "peas and carrots," a spoon of frozen dots made from liquified and sweetned vegetable juices. I found it both delicious and playful.

We next received our meat courses. Tender bison in a red runner bean puree was eaten with patented "aromatic utensils," which sport spiral handles stuffed with sage leaves. After a bite of frozen jalapeno, we enjoyed a thrice seared beef ribeye with a pureed kielbasa sauce. The meat was divine; the sauce a bit peculiar and not especially helpful to the meat.

As we began a progression of nine sweet courses I noticed that John was looking a bit full. I think he had begun to wish that we had chosen the 10-course menu. John does not sport my well-earned girth, and having almost eaten himself to death at Joel Robuchon earlier in the month, Moto was proving to be quite a challenge for him. Committed gastronomer that he is, John tucked into the first "dessert" - mac & cheese where the "noodles" were made from hollowed out fruit and the cheese was a triple-cream mixed with white chocolate. The next dessert, "fettuccine alla dolce" was my favorite - sweetened pasta noodles (real noodles this time) with a lovely sauce. John really enjoyed the next dessert of cotton candy 3 ways - paper printed with cotton-candy flavored ink, a cotton candy truffle, and malanga root strips flavored with cotton candy and white chocolate.

By 1:30 am the finishing courses became something of a blur, but I must credit pastry chef Ben Roche for their daring contrasts of textures and flavors and their ability to put familiar sensations in unfamiliar contexts. Only one proved to over step the line, the next to last course of "chili-cheese nachos." At 2:15 the visual pun was simply too intense, as sweetened nacho chips were served with some kind of "cheese" and a salsa made of kiwi. I may have enjoyed this course had I tasted it earlier, perhaps after the mac & cheese, but 19th was too late to serve it.

The service at Moto was friendly, knowledgeable, and well-coordinated if a little less professional than one might expect for a bill this large. We received solid advice on wine selection, and our questions about techniques, ingredient sources, and other minutiae were all answered.

The wine program, however, leaves quite a bit to be desired. The wine list is quite small in comparison to similarly priced restaurants, and only four reds and four whites are offered by the glass. Admittedly, cuisine like this is not easy to match to wine. Even if you know what to match with shellfish, for example, how are you supposed to decide what to drink when the shellfish comes with a side of corn ice cream? We followed some of the staff's wine recommendations and went out on our own for others, but had little meaningful success either way. John and I seemed to agree that a diner at Moto is best served by choosing a glasses of white, red, and sweet wine that look interesting instead of making any attempt to match the wine to particular courses.

In sum, the dinner was a great success. The dishes were thoughtful, exciting, and most of all, delicious. Despite the muted decor, the atmosphere is alive with wonder and awe. I would happily go back and would strongly recommend even the 5-course meal for a very reasonable $65. Moto plays an important role in Chicago's current reputation as America's most innovative dining city.

Mas de Gourgonnier Les Baux en Provence 2003

I have been reading Rudolph Chelminsky's intriguing and disturbing "The Perfectionist," a biography of the 3-star Michelin chef Bernard Loiseau. It's a fascinating book for anyone interested in French gastronomy, the role of the Michelin guide, or the development of nouvelle cuisine over the past 40 years. Loiseau was famous for, inter alia, his veal chop, and reading the book inspired me to prepare veal chops following in "le style Loiseau." The chops were browned in my best butter and olive oil, then transferred to the oven to cook through. I removed them from the pan to rest, while I deglazed with rose and veal stock, which I reduced to a glaze. At the end, I added the veal back to the pan to coat with the glaze, and served it with Stephanie's potatoes dauphinoise and an excellent Boston lettuce salad.

I paired the veal with a wine not from Loiseau's Burgundy region but from Les Baux en Provence in Southern France. It is medium-bodied but deep red in color. Stephanie detected hints of basil and boiled peanut. I found it ripe and round, but dry and minerally on the finish - no doubt from the bauxite in the soil (the mineral was named for this region where it was first discovered). No doubt a Gevrey-Chambertin would have been a better choice, but it was a pleasant wine for $12.

On the Legal Consequences of Sauces: Should Thomas Keller's Recipes be Per Se Copyrightable?

A draft of my paper on the copyrightability of recipes in American law is now available at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=923712

While writing this article, I was fortunate enough to interview Charlie Trotter, Thomas Keller, Rick Tramonto, Homaro Cantu, Norman van Aken, and Wylie Dufresne. Comments are welcome.

Chateau Phelan Segur Bordeaux Rosé 2005 - A True "Claret"

The English call the wines of Bordeaux "claret" from the French word for "pink." This is because, many years ago, Bordeaux's wines were mostly rosés, not the deep reds and crisp whites we know today. A few producers still make a true claret, and tonight we tasted one in honor of the first day of Stephanie's vacation.

The meal began with baccala cakes with two sauces - corn and cilantro cream and orange and fennel "ketchup." With this we drank a rather robust and slightly funky Charles Elner Brut NV. The main course was homemade potato gnocchi in a crayfish and lobster mushroom ragout. This is where the rosé came in.

It had a slightly graying pink color, but a decidedly Bordeaux aroma of red fruits. Medium-bodies, dry, and crisp, it was just what a rosé should be. There is a hint of tannin, but the wine drinks beautifully.

(If my writing is less fluid than usual, I blame Emeril Lagasse whose show is playing in the background as I type.)

Call for Papers: Food, Law, and Culture Panel

I am currently soliciting paper presentations for a new panel on “Food, Law, and Culture” for the annual Law, Culture, and Humanities Conference to be held at Georgetown University, March 23-24 2007.

Last year’s conference included a handful of “Law and Food” papers in different panels. They were all well-received, and the topics they addressed seem worthy of integration into a single panel. The panel’s goal will be to begin theorizing about the place(s) of food in the law by exploring both the different ways law treats food and the various cultural norms about food that lie behind this treatment. My work, for example, analyzes the copyrightability of recipes through the lenses of aesthetic philosophy and the cultural history of cooks and cooking.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

Intellectual property rights in genetically modified foods
Hunger strikes and force-feeding prisoners
Last meals
Food torts, e.g. exploding sodas, fingers in chili, coffee in the lap
Government regulation of food and alcohol
Obesity regulation
Animal rights
Dietary laws and regulations in different cultures
Trademark rights in appellations of origin
Farm subsidies and international trade
Linguistic classification of food, e.g. kosher, 1st Growths, Organic
Sumptuary laws
Famine
Labeling, packaging, and branding
Rationing
Food stamps

The deadline for submissions to the conference is October 15, 2006, so please respond well before then if you think you might be interested in joining the panel. Also, please circulate this to any colleagues that might be interested. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely,
Christopher Buccafusco
chrstphr@uchicago.edu

Antichi Vignetti di Cantalupo Agamium Colline Novaresi 2003

Stephanie and I were enjoying the first couple episodes of Friends on TBS, and we decided to pair Joey's long hair, Rachel's old nose, and a lot of high-waisted pants with this bottle of obscure Piedmont wine. On the side, we had grilled pork chops and asparagus and some of the best fennel and mushroom risotto I've ever had.

Colline Novaresi is located north of Piedmont in the northwestern corner of Italy. The primary grape varietal is nebbiolo, famous for its role in Barolo and Barbaresco, but here it's known as Spanna. It's a medium-bodied red wine, with moderate oak and raspberry and blueberry notes on the aroma. Stephanie detected a bit of ash on the palate, and I found it to resemble the slightly citrusy character of a Rhone wine. I'd recommend it with red sauces, pork, chicken, and veal.

Be the first on your block to try a bottle.

Chateau Rives-Blanques Chenin Blanc Dedicace Limoux 2003

It's summer and it's very hot in Chicago, so I should be grilling, but I just can't stop purchasing fun cuts of meat to braise (that, and my grill isn't working). Tonight we had braised veal breast with white beans, carrots, and rosemary. The breast isn't terribly popular these days, but it's inexpensive and delicious. It has plenty of rich meat, some fat, and great bones for gelatinizing sauces.

To match I chose this Chenin Blanc from Southern France. Regular readers know how much I enjoy chenin, and I jumped at the chance to taste one from outside its normal French home (the Loire Valley). This was a very nice wine - dry, but with a certain roundness probably due to the intensely hot 2003 vintage. There's an aroma of wet dog, but once you get past it, the wine offers a nice mix of herb, grass, and melon notes. I'd prefer more acidity to increase its food-friendliness, but I guess it can't be helped in years like '03.

Bastille Day Eve Dinner

Les Bleus may have lost the World Cup final, but we were still in enough of a Francophillic mood to celebrate Bastille Day Eve last night with a four-course dinner. It was, in fact, something of a Cask 79 reunion dinner as we were joined by co-blogger Jonathan, our first guest diner at the new house.

Dinner began with Stephanie leading the group in a rousing chorus of "Chant de guerre de l'Armée du Rhin," aka La Marseillaise. After the singing, we sat down to a course that I have been hoping to make for some time: Roasted Marrow Bones with Parsley Salad. The bones are soaked overnight in cold water, then dried and roasted for 20 minutes in the oven. The gooey marrow is then scooped onto toast with a bit of parsley salad. After debating with Charlie over what to serve with course, I chose a bottle of Henriot Champagne Souverain NV, hoping its acidity would cut the richness of the marrow. It did just that, and it even nicely matched the shrimp Stephanie grilled in lieu of the marrow.

The second course was a hearty lentil soup garnished with lardons and lavender. The lavender added pleasant flavor in addition to clarifying the French theme of the dinner. The main course consisted of grilled quails served over mashed red-skinned potatoes with creamers full of collard-green sauce on the side. I had prepared the collard sauce once before and again found it worked excellently with the gamy quail. The quail, and the soup before it, were paired with 2002 Volnay-Santenots 1er Cru from Thierry et Pascale Matrot. I love the values offered by pinot noirs from the Cotes du Beaune in southern Burgundy, and this one was no exception. It was only medium-bodied, but its red-fruit flavors, silky tannins, and background acidity made for a delicious gustatory chord. Like some of the others wines we've tasted recently, this one promised to confirm my belief that even medium-bodied wines can age exceptionally well.

Dinner was capped off with a wedge of Roquefort and a half-bottle of Carmes de Rieussec Sauternes 2003, the second wine of the famous Chateau Rieussec. It was rather light-bodied and not terribly sweet, but it showed hints of botrytis and nice acidity. This is one to drink early and often.

Someone then suggested that we storm something; I believe I recommended the National Guard building around the corner; but the mood passed and we finished the wine. Vive la France!

Nicholas Joly Savennieres Clos de la Bergerie 1997

I had some time to kill before picking up my folks today, so I dropped by the House of Glunz on Wells Street. Every time I visit I marvel over the complete vertical of Nicholas Joly Savennieres Coulee de Serrant that they have dating back to 1992. When I have $1000 to blow on wine, these will be the first that I buy.

I love the chenin blanc grown in France's Savennieres appellation in the Loire Valley. For my money they are the best dry white wines available anywhere. Joly's Clos de la Bergerie is less exalted than the $80 Coulee de Serrant, but it is absolutely fanatastic. Joly practices biodynamic farming throughout his vineyards, and the corks tend to be covered in mold. But the wines are intensely flavored and perfectly structured, showing ripe fruit and bracing acidity. At nine years old, this wine was glorious and clearly improved the flavor of some rather middling pork chops. Even in the empty glass I can smell the lingering melon, honeysuckle, and peach notes. It could certainly last for another decade - unfortunately it was Glunz's last bottle.

Some Lovely Values from the New House

We have been settling down on Hirsch Street this week and have enjoyed a series of delightful wines that I thought I'd put together in a single blog post.

First, I discovered a bottle of Chateau Haut Batailley 1999 from Bordeaux's famed Pauillac region on sale recently. We had it with the left over leg of lamb, this time served with a cucumber and wild mint sauce. At seven years old it was beginning to show some maturity. And while it lacked a long and intriguing finish, it performed admirably for a classified growth Bordeaux priced at only $16. The wines from '99 are worth seeking out; they're considerably cheaper and earlier-drinking than those from 1998 and 2000.

The following evening we drank another older $16-bottle, this time a Bodegas LAN Rioja Gran Riserva 1996. Made entirely of tempranillo grapes and smelling decidedly of black truffles, this medium-bodied wine proves that ageworthy wines don't have to be enormously ripe and extracted. I have since forgotten what we ate with it, but the wine an incredible value, perfect for game.

Breaking from these hoary bottles I took at stab at a bottle of Carmenere from Apaltagua in Chile's Colchagua Valley. Carmenere was originally a Bordeaux varietal that was transplanted in Chile and mistaken for Merlot in the 19th century. After the phylloxera attacks in France earlier in this century, it was not replanted in Bordeaux and was thought to be lost until grape geneticists discovered in growing in Chile. Carmenere is noted for its often overwhelming bell pepper aromas and flavors, and while this wine was unmistakably Carmenere, it managed to combine the earthiness of the peppers with some ripe fruit and a well-toned finish. At $12, this proved to be a remarkably food-friendly and well-balanced wine.

Cos d'Estournel St. Estephe 1995

Stephanie and I just closed on our first home purchase, and to celebrate our ascension into the ranks of the landed gentry we selected a bottle of that most gentrified of wines, classified growth Bordeaux. Among a number of worthy contenders from the mid-1990s, we selected the Cos d'Estournel 1995 from the St. Estephe region on Bordeaux's left bank. Along with Ch. Montrose, "Cos," as it is known, was the highest ranking property in St. Estephe according to the 1855 classification (Deuxièmes Crus). To accompany such a noble wine, I roasted a whole leg of lamb (just for the two of us), and Stephanie prepared a delicious side dish of potato gratin.

The wine was bold, but not so big that it obscured the flavors of the lamb. At just over 10 years old, it struck a nice balance between lingering fruit and emerging maturity. The black currant notes folded over earth, lead, and fine tannins to create a wine of extraordinary depth and lasting pleasure. Like many other 95s, the Cos was just reaching the point where it wouldn't be considered totally inappopriate to begin drinking it, but its backbone of tannins, acidity, and forthcoming maturity indicates that it will offer many more years of enjoyable drinking.

Perhaps I'll buy another bottle to save for when we sell the house.

The World Cup Makes Me Hungry

I've been following the World Cup on television during the mornings, and I've found that I get hungry for lunch earlier than I used to. I've decided that my desire to eat lunch at 10:30 must be due to a fairly quirky phrase that the announcers use. In addition to misconjugating verbs following team names (e.g. "Germany have to score now" instead of "Germany has to score now"), the announcers refer to the various free kicks, corner kicks, and penalty kicks as "set pieces." The idea is that the ball is at rest, and the offense is allowed to develop something like a "play" to try to score.

I suppose it's a fine phrase, but those familiar with gastronomic history know that "set pieces" are actually the English translation of the French "piéces montees." Piéces montees were elaborate confections created by pastry chefs to rest in the middle of medieval and early modern feasts. They were inedible and often included moving parts, firecrackers, and live animals. See the lovely movie Vatel for recreations. So now, everytime I listen to soccer I imagine myself carried back to a world of non-stop feasting. It's especially bad when I'm watching Les Bleus.

P.S. To any readers whose French is better than mine, I'd love to know if Le Monde, etc. refer to corner, penalty, free kicks as "piéces montees."

Neckenmarkt Blaufrankisch Classic Burgenland 2004

Last night we made the mistake of roasting a chicken. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but we have yet to install our air conditioners for the season, and our oven is incredibly inefficient. After an hour of cooking, the kitchen had reached 100 degrees. To accompany the bird, I made le Puy lentils and Stephanie prepared a salad with a bacon dijon vinaigrette, topping mine with a pair of poached quail eggs.

She chose this Austrian red to wash everything down. This is our second Austrian red in a couple of weeks, and I must admit to being quite pleased with the quality of the wines. Perfectly ripe and round, this wine showed a bouquet of floral and fruity aromas and flavors. It lacked the tannins and acidity to be particularly deep or profound, but despite this lack of structure, it was restrained and drinkable. While it went fine with the chicken, I'd prefer it as a sipping wine for cocktail parties and such. And with an $11 price tag, one could easily buy enough for a crowd.

Mas de Boislauzon Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2001

Due to recent travels, Stephanie and I have been away from the kitchen for the past couple of weeks. We resumed our normal culinary routine last night when I grilled skirt steak roulades stuffed with carmelized shallots and chevre. Stephanie prepared polenta and assembled a green salad.

The local wine store was running a sale on some of its Chateauneuf's, so I picked up this bottle for only $20 (the average for CdP is between $30 and $70). Unfortunately, it seems, you get what you pay for. I should have been clued in by the unusual stamp on the bottle. Normally, CdP bottles portray the papal seal stamped in glass above the label.












This bottle, however, had only a representation of the pontiff's hat.

At five years old, it had lost much of its fruit character, but the earthly flavors that come with maturity had not yet made an appearance. The wine was rather too dry, with a somewhat chalky finish that eventually improved to taste of earl grey tea. For the money, I'd recommend buying a high-quality Gigondas or even one of the excellent Cotes-du-Rhone from Domaine les Aphillantes.