The Spices: Chef Sortun worked with a palette of flavors provided by Lior Lev Sercarz, one of the city's foremost spice experts. More familiar blends such as za’atar and chai-whala were joined by such spices as mastic, mish mish, and Yemenite spice.
Artichoke Spanakopita with Za’atar: The first passed hors d’oeuvre used a tender artichoke heart as the base for a pastry-less "Spanakopita."
Lior Lev Sercarz: The founder of La Boîte à Epice, a Manhattan-based spice blending service, Sercarz not only sources rare spices from around the world but creates custom blends of his own. Here, he finishes the butternut squash falafel with black garlic and sesame. The fermented black garlic takes on a less pungent and far sweeter flavor.
Butternut Squash Falafel with Black Garlic and Sesame
Cassie Kyriakides Piuma: The chef de cuisine at Oleana applies the finishing touch, an orange yogurt, to apricot dolmades with loukanika sausage and cumin.
Pork Belly: Chef Piuma applies a rich muscovado caramel to the Berkshire pork belly "au 9 Poivres"—so tender, almost buttery, that it dissolves on the tongue, right along with the richly sweet sauce.
Lentil Sliders: We're firmly against the application of the term "sliders" to anything other than small beef burgers griddled with onions—but these earthy lentil patties, beautifully deep-fried and topped with pickled eggplant, were good enough that I didn't care.
The first amuse: Chef Sortun prepares the pomegranate spoon salad for her first amuse.
The amuse duo: Roasted chicken croquette with mastic and rosemary; and a Cape Cod bay scallop with pomegranate spoon salad, rashad seeds, and pomegranate granité. The resin of the mastic tree is often used in Greek and Middle Eastern cuisine.
Soup: A full-bodied wild mushroom and parsnip soup, prepared here with chai-whala spice.
Duck: Sortun's duck dish took inspiration from the Moroccan pastilla, a traditional sweet-and-savory pie. Here, the duck is topped with tiny strings of vermicelli—steamed, rather than boiled—with tiny bits of smoked cinnamon almonds giving the meat an occasional sweet crunch.
Pumpkin Kibbeh: My favorite dish of the evening hid a sultry lamb, with an apple compote on the side. Ground cashew and toasted pita gave a tiny crunch.
Still hard at work: Chef Sortun prepares the final course.
Grass-Fed Beef with Fenugreek Leaves, Aleppo Chilies, Sweet Potatoes, and Black Olives.
Happy endings: At plenty of tasting meals, dessert is little more than an afterthought. But Oleana's pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick is often cited as one of Boston's best; indeed, she and Sortun have opened a bakery and café, Sofra, at which she uses flavor and spice just as boldly as does the menu at Oleana. This quince and nougat jelly roll is accented with mish mish—crystallized honey with saffron and lime.
And finally: A cocoa macaron with a date terrine, yogurt-based chiboust, and Israeli orange blossom.
3 Comments:
Speaking of spices, I absolutely love Ana Sortun's cookbook.
shoneyjoe at 6:54PM on 11/09/09
Drool! Every single course looks and sounds wonderful. WANT!
jackiecat at 7:33PM on 11/09/09
I also love her cookbook.
Ana is very much a farm to table chef. She and her husband, Chris Kurth own Siena Farms– named for their daughter. Serious Eats readers have read Chris in a couple of my Market Scene reports.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/boston-massachusetts-farmers-markets-open-late-season-november.html
In this one he talks about how they inspire and challenge one another.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/06/market_scene_copley_square_market_in_boston_1.html
BostonZest at 9:17PM on 11/09/09