Duck Fat Fries. This could be the whole post. Just say it over and again. Duck. Fat. Fries.
It’s not like it hasn’t been done before, but the duck fat fries at Brasserie Pip at the Copper Beech Inn are a graduate course in french fries. Perhaps not the flavor of duck so much as the indubitably crisp inside and out that makes each stick of potato a glamorous seduction of lips, teeth, and tongue. Remember searching the paper McDonald’s bag for the fry that’s translucently crisp, a matrix of potato starch and air that stays perennially cruncy? On the Steak Frites plate, the pile of taters is ALL crisp ALL the time.
But don’t eat too many because then you’d miss the steak. A splendid hunk of well-marbled beef, the strip steak might just be the best steak I’ve ever had, and that’s coming from a man who’s dined at Peter Luger’s – in Brooklyn – his fair share of times. Anderson’s strip steak is something to marvel at. Perfectly cooked to order, the flavor is intense, meaty, umami, beefy goodness.
Then there are the short ribs. Deceptive, they look neat and clean and taut and firm. As the fork folks into them, however, they melt like a chocolate sculpture, divinely soft beef falling into supple shreds at the invasion of that silver skewer. They are topped with delicately prepared spinach, and sit on a cushion of smoked potatoes – a revelation in what can be done with the tuber, and encircled in a sweet blackjack sauce that’s thick and perhaps a fleck too salty. Regardless, these are the best shortribs I’ve eaten, save for Grocery in Brooklyn, which it probably equalled.
Bex ordered the Scallops, which were perfectly seared atop a savory and flavor-dense cauliflower gratin. Bex said she’d have preferred a drizzle of sauce on the scallops, which were otherwise perfection in a mollusk shell (well, out of). As for me, I had but one sliver of a taste, but i thought they were just right. However, not having eaten the whole dish, I’d defer to her palate, as well traveled as it is.
For desert, we had… well, Bex had a glass of late season chenin blanc. I’ll get the name later. It was 18 bucks a glass, which worked out to, like, three sips. I got one of those sips. Damn. Heaven on the tip of my tongue.
Shit, Tyler. You roll in a fine joint.
Duck Fatty Fat
Foie Bras and Other New England Delicacies
Fois gras is glorious, but who conceives of it as a dessert treat? Tyler Anderson, Chef at the Copper Beech Inn’s eponymous restaurant and its more casual Brasserie Pip, does. Anderson gilds his splendid charcuterie plate with a “gold brick” of foie gras mousse. It tastses like a hazelnut parfait, only that’s just the first second it’s in your mouth. Like the confusing burning feeling when touching something very cold, the tongue perceives a slightly sweet nuttiness. Then the cool morsel begins to melt and the gamy richness of offal rises into the palate. The liver is ethereal, disappearing on the tongue as if it were never there, the aftertaste so clean and subtle, one has the idea to hush the restaurant that nothing may interfere with the senses.
Next to this treat is a dish of chicken liver pate topped with a splash of port. If the mousse is richness restrained, this is luxury revealed. The liver has been whipped to a creaminess envied by cream. The port wine disappears into the mild and unctuous bitterness of the liver.
On this night, the next morsel on the plate was a mangalitsa ham. Mangalitsa hogs have curly hair and a higher body fat content than your standard American pig. An issue of Saveur magazine from 2009 has a nice short piece on the mangalitsas (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_L1UB__fiez0/SV8WoWpskAI/AAAAAAAAA2c/hSpB9jBZnsQ/s1600-h/page22_350.jpg). The ham is a deep red with generous swirls of fat running through it like a flame tattoo on a biker. The mangalitsa enters the mouth like velvet and leaves it like smoke. The taste is deep and almost ancient, as if to say, here is the Platonic ideal of pork.
But then one comes to the final presentation on the plate, the house cured ham. And this is such a treat. Anderson’s house cured ham is magnificent, putting to shame charcuteries we’ve had elsewhere.
Next to the charcuterie was placed a gratin of macaroni. Bacon lardons and shavings of scallions mixed deep into the cheese made this a rare ultra-tasty mac-n-cheese. Across from me, Rebecca is enjoying the strip steak with duck fat fries. Those fries are, for lack of better term, insane. The duck fat doesn’t lend as much in flavor as it does in what happens to the fries when they are cooked in it. the potatoes are deep brown and seem to be crispy all the way through. The steak is a thick cut of marbled beef. The outside is perfectly crisp with a slight crust that dances close to, but isn’t quite, a char. The interior is perfectly pink and one can observe the multiple strata of beef that clearly led a priviliged life. One can imagine the cow that gave this steak, prancing around green fields eating wildflowers under the New England sun. One can taste the bovine joy in every bite.
