Docsconz- The Blog

Guest Post: Greg Kuzia-Carmel

(ed. note: Greg Kuzia-Carmel is a talented young cook from Albany, who is following a dream to be the best  chef that he can be. He is currently a stagiere at the restaurant Mugaritz in San Sebastien, Spain under the highly acclaimed chef Andoni Luis Aduriz. Mugaritz was ranked as the fourth best restaurant in the world in the most recent compilation of Restaurant Magazine. While I think it is silly giving a numerical ranking at that level of restaurant, it does serve to indicate its general level of quality and respect. Working in the kitchen of a restaurant like that is bound to leave indelible effects. I asked Greg, if he would be interested in writing an occasional piece on his experiences as he has the time and interest. This is his first submission. It isn't easy to make me blush, but he did. -JMS)

John Sconzo is a person of incredible and particular interest to me in both what I do professionally and who I am as a person (though, as I get older I find that these two areas vex over each other more and more).

You see, Doc’s passion for gastronomy on all levels and in all disciplines is unprecedented. In this day and age when it’s easy enough to pick up a copy of any of the mass distributed garbage tabloids, snatch some of the food world headline garbage, and call yourself a foodie, its wonderful to come across those few people who really know that there is more to this. Years of training, long hours, demanding clientele, cry-baby employees, fish guys who get stuck in traffic, etc., not all of us are trying to put together the best appetizer using potato chips to be a long shot for a $100k. We are interpreters of history, craftsmen, artists (per se), business people, interior designers, architects, mathematicians, scientists, athletes, and more and more it now seems, psychiatrists. It’s wonderful to follow Doc’s chronicles of the diverse human offerings in this categorically small but interesting world.

Doc interests me as well because he calls home some of the great land that I was brought up on, Upstate New York, an area I am intensely proud of and loyal to. The preface to Michel Bras’ Essential Cuisine says in short that the one of the greatest ways to show ones love of their land is through gastronomy. This is certainly a feeling that I have come to embrace, and judging by Doc’s work with the slowfood movement in Saratoga and relentless support of his surrounding markets, I’m willing to bet he’s drinking this metaphorical koolaid too…

When Doc offered to let me write a guest blog for him, I couldn’t have affirmed quick enough. It has taken me a few weeks to figure out what I want to write here, and most importantly, deliver something with substance that I think would be interesting to Doc’s substantial following. So here’s what I got, a short tale of one young man who pretty much got dropped into a High School Culinary Votech class merely to fill an empty period in his sophomore year schedule and is now the only American cooking at the fourth best restaurant in the world, and what that transformation has become.

The Green Spider - Jose Duarte's Taranta in Boston

The Celtics and the Green Monster at Fenway Park are not the only things that are green in Boston. The unique Peruvian-Italian restaurant Taranta, located in Boston's North End has developed a reputation as being one of the most eco-friendly restaurants anywhere. That a restaurant should be devoted to green initiatives is no surprise. That it should exist in an older building in the heart of a major urban area is a bit of a surprise, a very welcome one, because if it can be done in a situation like that, it should be able to be done anywhere.

Chef/Owner Jose Duarte was born in Peru, raised in Venezuela in a community of Southern Italian emigrés and educated in the United States. He has an MBA in Food Service Operations. With an Italian wife, Duarte opened Taranta in Boston's heavily Italian North End  as a classic southern Italian restaurant, but within a few years, he started using some Peruvian ingredients in his cooking. Per the December 9, 2004 Boston Globe review:

"Luckily, there's Taranta. Jose Duarte, chef/owner, started out serving Southern Italian cuisine, then began using ingredients from his native Peru to feed his cooks before the restaurant opened for the evening. Later a few ingredients such as rocoto peppers crept into Italian dishes on the menu. When those met with success, Duarte became bolder, and the result a few years later is an intriguing melding of the exotic and more familiar Italian."

Peru has a longstanding, successful tradition of fusing cuisines, including Andean, Spanish, African, Japanese (see Nobu), Chinese and to a lesser extent Italian based upon a diverse population mix in the country and an incredible diversity and variety of available ingredients. Duarte's cooking takes advantage of this natural bounty and cultural bent towards combining and adapting cuisines to create new, synergistic ones.

Though he was cooking innovative food, Duarte had not yet started his revolution to green. While he has always had an interest in being green, it wasn't until 2007, that Duarte seriously moved his restaurant in that direction, steadily increasing and improving their initiatives and reducing their carbon footprint. Duarte is very quick to point out that his initiatives are not solely based on idealism. While he is happy to contribute to a better planet, he stresses that all of his initiatives make economic and financial sense for him and his restaurant. It is this latter aspect that makes others sit up and take notice of what he has been doing. The bottom line, according to Duarte is that it pays to be green. (For a sense of a timeline of Taranta's green initiatives see their blog Taranta Going Green.

I had an opportunity this past week to visit with Chef Duarte at his restaurant along with my son to see for ourselves, some of the eco-friendly initiatives that they have undertaken. We toured the restaurant to see the rechargeable LED lights he uses on the dining tables instead of candles. Duarte says that they use so little energy in their production and operation, even compared to candles, that they save the restaurant money and they have an added benefit of safety. In the photo above, he stuffs the butcher paper that they use to cover table tops to protect the linen and decrease cleaning costs into the light fixture. He left it that way during my entire visit to no ill effect. Try that with a candle!

The wine list at Taranta is filled with organic and biodynamic wines. It even boasts of a wine from Chile that is so eco-friendly that it is certified to be carbon-neutral in its delivery. Whether or not it is any good, I could not personally say, though Duarte said that he was quite pleased with its quality and value.

 

In the kitchen Duarte started talking about how even small details are important. I have personally used utensils and take out containers made from potato starch, but Duarte showed us drinking straws that the restaurant uses. Made from corn and are not just land-fill friendly, they are in fact, fully compostable! From there he took us out behind the restaurant to show us the relative levels of compost, recycling and trash coming out of the restaurant. With an average trash bin filling on average once per month, mainly due to packaging materials, the landfill bound trash from Taranta has been reduced to only 1% of their total waste with the rest going to compost and recycling.

Duarte has installed a number of energy and water saving devices in the restaurant including tankless water heaters  and special low water, high pressure faucets used to clean pots and plates. Other energy saving endeavors include powerful but extremely efficient warm air hand dryers in the rest rooms, occupancy sensors to control lights and the use of filtered used cooking oil for the restaurants to power the truck they use to haul their produce.

 

These and all the other initiatives Duarte has undertaken in his restaurant are certainly laudable and ripe for emulation, especially if, as Duarte insists, they make economic and business sense, with a very positive effect on their business bottom line. It is certainly good for a restaurant to have a reputation for being as green as Taranta is, but that alone is not enough. Fortunately, Taranta also has a reputation for serving outstanding and unique food.Rather than have us take it for granted, Chef Duarte whipped up a few dishes for us.

 

He served us three dishes, two of a decidedly Peruvian-Italian bent and one more classic Italian. One of Taranta's signature dishes is Gnocchi di yucca con ragu verde stilo seco Peruviano - Cassava root gnocchi with a slow braised "Chicha de Jora" green lamb ragu and shaved parmesan (Spicy). With a classic Italian look and taste, the Peruvian connection would have only been obvious from having read the menu. The gnocchi, outsourced to Duarte's specifications were light and tasty. The sauce was rich and complex with wonderful, umami rich chunks of lamb. That the "parmesan" was from Argentina rather than Italy was acceptable because it was good and in tune with the rest of the dish.

He also whipped up a tasty Orechiette con salssicchia- Orecchiette pasta with aji Amarillo spicy Abruzzese sausage, Izote blossom, cherry tomatoes and green peas and Pan roasted mussels - Pan roasted fresh cultivated P.E.I. mussels with Sicilian Marsala and tossed with Italian Bacon and roasted shallots, both delicious.

 

 

Even if Taranta was an otherwise ordinary restaurant, it would be one worth rooting for to see them succeed because of their highly responsible way of doing business and serving as a model for others. With a unique style of food that is both fun and delicious, I would want them to succeed even if they weren't green. That they are both delicious and green makes for an outstanding combination. I look forward to their continuing evolution towards total sustainability.

Taranta

Full-screen

210 Hanover St
Boston, MA 02113
617.720.0052

Removal requested ()Restore requested  -  -

Placement on map is approximate

Toro: Tasty Tapas in Boston

Much has been written about the growth of Spanish restaurants and cooking in the United States in recent years. Led by Jose Andres' Jaleo in D.C., there has been an incredible growth of this cuisine (perhaps my favorite). New York City has sprouted quite a few including restaurants like Casa Mono and Bar Jamon, Boqueria and the more upscale, about to open Aldea. Chicago has Mercat a La Plancha, San Francisco is graced by the recently opened Contigo and Los Angeles appears to have gone ga-ga over Andres' Bazaar. These are but a few examples of this phenomenon. Another is Ken Oringer's Toro in Boston, where I had the opportunity to dine earlier this week.

I went with a small group of friends. As we arrived at the restaurant, Chef Oringer was standing outside, comforting his daughter. With three major sporting events in progress, the restaurant was busy, but not crazy. We were led to a center table with a view looking into the busy open kitchen. We asked the kitchen to send out their best and weren't disappointed.

Starting with cocktails. we sampled a few different ones. Being a gin fan, I was particularly intrigued by two similar cocktails, "El Gitano" and "The Gypsy". "El Gitano" consisted of Hendricks gin, green Chartreuse and Meyer lemon, while "The Gypsy" was Plymouth gin, yellow Chartreuse, St. Germain Elderflower liqueur and lime. I had "The Gypsy" and tasted "El Gitano." Both were marvelous.

    

The Gypsy                             El Gitano

I tasted  some other cocktails including the Nantucket Mule and the Calimocho, a concoction of red wine and coke that was strangely charming.

The kitchen started sending out food at a good clip. Our first dish was Escabecheed Island Creek Oysters with foie gras, citrus foam and grains of paradise. I'm generally an oyster purist, preferring them with just a squeeze of lemon, but this went down just as smoothly. The seared foie was enough to provide additional richness but not so much to obscure the lovely raw oyster. The foam provided the requisite citric acidity, while the grains of paradise added a slightly exotic note. I first heard of the spice at Star Chefs from none other than Chef Oringer.

  

The oysters were followed by a board filled with a variety of tapas including asparagus tortilla with green garlic allioli, Mahon marinated in oil and juniper, ventresca with tomato-caper relish and escalivada of marinated smoked eggplant, peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes. All were quite tasty, my favorite being the tortilla, which was given wonderful flavor by the asparagus.

 

Toro is big on offal. The dishes pictured above are Salad of green beans marinated in cascabel chili with charred beef heart, romesco and marcona almonds and Honeycomb Tripe braised with peppers and applejac. These dishes, though clearly containing strong Spanish influences are more the product of a Spanish-American fusion. In the former dish, cascabel peppers would not likely be used in Spain, as they tend to avoid anything with a Scoville unit attached to it, the occasional padrone pepper being an exception, but that is more like a culinary version of Russian roulette. The dish was not particularly spicy, but it was tasty. The tripe was delicious. Presumably the applejack was a substitution for a cider. Whether the tapas are strictly Spanish, is not really important, however. What is important is that they contain the essence of Spanish tapas and are in fact, delicious. Yes, on both counts.

 

The meal continued with some exceptionally delicious dishes, including the Gambas al Ajillo, the classic Iberian shrimp and garlic dish, creamy croquetas de bacalao with crispy lemon and kobeyaki lacquered sweetbreads with crispy shallots.

   

The sweetbreads, in particular, were perfect, crisp exterior with soft, delicious sweetbreads with minimal adornment. The sweetbreads were allowed to really shine and they did. That was my favorite dish of the night.

It is funny how one's anticipation can affect one's response to a dish. When the croquetas were served, I did not hear the full description and missed the part about the crispy lemons. They looked to me like fried calamari and that's what I was expecting when I ate one. The sweetness I discovereed and wasn't expecting was somewhat off-putting at the time. Later in the meal, I found out what they were and tried another one. This time expecting not calamari, but fried preserved lemon, I had a very different response and found it to be quite enjoyable. There is a lesson there somewhere.

 

By this time we had moved on to a wonderfully bright, but dry Manzanilla Sherry that was recommended by Toro's Bar Manager, Courtney Bissonette. I had never had this jerez before and found it to be simply delightful and eminently food friendly.

 The food continued to flow. The next round consisted of asparagus on the plancha with marinated mushrooms, ramp vinaigrette and torched uni, Grilled corn with alioli, lime, espelette pepper and aged Cotija cheese, a quail egg over sauteed greens, and Island Creek razor clams on the plancha with a piquillo vinaigrette.

 

These dishes were all very good, but the corn, a house signature dish despite its having origens more Mexican than Spanish, really stood out as tasty. The razor clams were very good, though I generally prefer them less adorned than these were.

We were starting to reach our saturation point, but we still had a way to go. A charcuterie platter was brought that included serrano ham, La Quercia ham, house cured guanciale,house cured morcilla (blood sausage) and house cured Spanish style ham. Served with cornichons and mustard, the various porcine products were all good, with the La Quercia from Iowa being particularly impressive. None of them will make me forget jamon Iberico de bellota, but then their price point and value were quite reasonable.

 

Roasted bone marrow with pickled green almond salpicon and oxtail marmalade was simply lovely.

The savories ended ona particularly high note with a pork belly served with cardoons, chantennay carrots and smoked maple powder.

 

 

For dessert we were served classic Spanish churros with a chocolate dipping sauce. The chocolate had been spiced with pimentón, giving it a deep, smoky flavor. For a nice touch, they included a birthday candle.

We ate very, very well at Toro. Given the quality of what comes out of the kitchen and the bar, prices are quite reasonable. It is therefore no surprise to me that they are as busy as they are.

1704 Washington St
Boston, MA 02118
(617) 536-4300