Filled, Fried and Fabulous
I was re-reading, for the umpteenth time, Calvin Trillin’s “Alice, Let’s Eat,” smiling at his account of approaching the home of a superb cook — “Alice claims that when we are walking there for dinner she is often forced to grab me by the jacket two or three times to keep me from breaking into a steady, uncharacteristic trot” — when I realized that I, too, quicken my step when approaching either of Chris Avila’s Santa Cruz restaurants.
Last Sunday I was striding down Walnut Street towards Soif, spurred on by hunger and anticipation, telling myself that I was only minutes away from the lamb meatballs with almond sauce. And the bruschetta with chevre, pumpkin seeds and pomegranate molasses. And the farinata. I wasn’t trotting, of course. Striding is generally as fast as I ever ambulate, but if I’d known about the stuffed squash blossoms awaiting me, I’d have broken into a highly uncharacteristic gallop.
Two big, fresh squash blossoms had been stuffed with gorgeous Dungeness crab, battered, deep-fried and then set atop a salad of watercress and drizzled with an ever-so-slightly-creamy mustard vinaigrette. “This is the single best dish we’ve ever had here,” J. proclaimed after his first bite and the next day he repeated, “That was the best dish we ever had there.” By today he’d reduced his wistful commentary to “DAMN, that dish was good.”
And it was. I asked one of the cooks what was in the batter, and he told me he just dipped the stuffed blossoms in all-purpose flour, then into beaten whole eggs and then back into the flour. The success of the dish, of course, relied on impeccably fresh ingredients and an attentive server ready to rush the finished dish from fryer to table.
Most of the zucchini blossoms in our garden at the moment are puny but I’ll be monitoring their progress, and when they’re big enough to stuff, I’m going to try replicating this dish. If Calvin Trillin is in the neighborhood, I’ll tell him to trot on over.
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 7:14 pmand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
oh wow i HAVE to have this! looks great!!
September 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am
you are making me feel very very bereft that i keep kosher.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Ooh…Those squash blossoms sound outrageous. It hurts me that Dungeness aren’t common out where I live—they are so sweet and perfect.