News You Can Bruise for 2009 January 25

After a long delay I wrote captions for all the pictures I took at Per Se and put the gallery online. I don't think I want to go again because it was so damn expensive, but it was a good experience. And they really stuff you: after the dinner there was sorbet, then a dessert, then a supplementary dessert, then chocolates, then nougat and caramel candies and hard candies and truffles and hazelnuts.

S: This is a good, down to earth hazelnut.
L: It's the kind of nut you'd like to have with a beer.

And they gave us bags of cookies to take home as well.

Not pictured: the various breads they brought around in a basket (my fave: the pretzel bread), and a few of the drinks they poured/made for us as non-wine pairings.

While going through the menu, I made a list of all the foods and cooking terms I hadn't heard of before, with links that probably won't last long, but oh well:

• Sauce vierge
• Meyer lemon suprêmes
• crosnes
• Castelvetrano olives
• Trappitu olive oil
• Cardoons
• Matignon, the cooking process that produced carrots Sumana considered perfect.
• Oyster plant, another term for watercress.
• Arrowleaf spinach, a term that only shows up in menus, so I don't think it's a real species of spinach.
• Agnolotti, which according to Per Se was a shape of pasta but according to Wikipedia is a ravioli with a specific filling.
• Salvatore Brooklyn ricotta
• Diane St. Clair's butter and buttermilk.
• pecan sable