Ruth Tobias

Two joints in one—the cozy, family-oriented Front Door & the dark, boozy Back Door—Charlie’s opened 45 years ago (in 1966) & has remained my sentimental Albuquerque fave for about half that time. Is it the city’s 5-star best? I can’t honestly say it is, since the red & green chile are inconsistent—& red & green chile are, of course, the be-all-end-all of Southwestern & especially New Mexican cookery. But when they’re good, they’re great, & everything else rocks all the way out, from the chicken & jocoque (a type of sour cream) enchiladas

to the como se llama with Polish sausage & beans to the torta de huevo—a sort of frittata in red chile—to the Navajo taco & all the oddities in between, containing such incongruous stuff as pastrami, sauerkraut, & 1000 Island dressing.

Still, I met my match this week while in town for Thanksgiving: the Mark Special.

It starts with carnitas whose crisped chunks, like good barbecue, almost slide unctously apart rather than break up in strands. These are scattered across generous mounds of chopped fideos—think soupy, ultra-comfy Mexican spaghetti; cheese-smothered calabacitas—think succotash, here with squash & corn; quelites—think sauteed spinach; potatoes fried with onions; & of course frijoles. But don’t, as you eat it, think at all; just take giant forkfuls of everything, separately & mixed together, letting a rich bit of this enhance the flavor of a tangy bit of that, combining & contrasting until suddenly you find you’ve eaten nearly the whole thing. Then scoop up that last bite with a piece of 1 of the fried dough squares known as sopaipillas.

Then squeeze some honey from the bottle on the table into the rest of the pocket & munch until your eyeballs pop out.

If you’ve got another millimeter or two of space, snitch a little of your mom’s smoky, indeed practically blackened, chiles rellenos

or grab 1 more chip to dunk into the guacamole or the kill-you-softly salsa on the appetizer sampler. (I’m not such a fan of the queso, done Texas-style with Velveeta, though I realize it’s not illegit.)

Then take a nap & have kaleidoscopic nightmares about how on earth you’re going to stuff down turkey with all the trimmings the next day. Yes, do it all exactly like that. Such are holidays in the Land of Enchantment.

To catch up for last week: I do believe this picture says it all. More about my adventures at the annual wackfest in Paul’s Valley to come.

I learned some cool shit this weekend while taking the Level 1 Wine Certification class at the International Wine Guild. Such as: Madeira is patriotic! And Madeira is awesome. And The Stereoisomers would be a good name for a band.

And that not even good old, plain old potatoes—roasted in plain old fat with plain old onions & not enough garlic to complicate matters—pair with absolutely everything (take, duh, a light-bodied sparkling wine).

But they sure go beautifully with this.

I suppose that should be equally duh in the sense that Germans do have a storied way with kartoffeln as well as Riesling. But beyond a geographical rationale, I wouldn’t have thought that a semisweet white would shine so clear & bright against that oily, earthy landscape; I’d have guessed it would sort of…make a dull smear.

Try the pairing yourself, tell me if I lie. Dare.

Last week, for the 1st time since the series launched in the fall, I didn’t name a Dish of the Week. It wasn’t for lack of nominees, believe you me. On the contrary, the embarrassment if not downright mortification of riches we encountered during the Bacchanalia that was our jaunt to Boston left me feeling all but helpless to choose. The same goes for this week, really; I could close my eyes & throw a dart at this post on Russell House Tavern or this one on Neptune Oyster, for instance, & come up with a winning candidate.

So I’ve decided to beg the question a bit by featuring not a new dish but a true classic. There isn’t a serious diner in the city who isn’t familiar with this longtime signature of Barbara Lynch’s powerhouse dining destination No. 9 Park (of which more to come)—& who, I wager, wouldn’t include it on a list of Boston’s all-time greatest dishes (along, perhaps, with pizza from the original Pizzeria Regina, Clio’s lobster & sea urchin cassolette, Oleana’s fried mussels with hot peppers & tarator sauce, oysters in black bean sauce at Peach Farm & so on).

And on May 3, 2010, the prune-stuffed gnocchi with foie gras, vin santo & toasted almonds proved every bit as extraordinary as it did the 1st time I tried it some 8 or 9 years ago,

as impossibly luscious in flavor as it is uncannily silken, almost delicate, texturally.

Famous as this luxury item is, however, not a lot of people seem to know it’s actually inspired by a humble snack from Fruili–Venezia Giulia: gnocchi di prugne can be found throughout the streets of Trieste, the cuisine & architecture of which strikingly reflects its Austro-Hungarian legacy. Pulling one out of a paper bag from a bakery & biting into it in a sunny piazza one morning a decade ago in that remarkable city remains among my dearest & most revelatory (not to mention stickiest) culinary experiences—so the chance to relive it, albeit in decidedly more extravagant fashion, at No. 9 Park is always a thrill.

Having just formulated my policy against naming anything eaten outside of the US as Dish of the Week for practical reasons of availability, I’m breaking it for chorrillana, an insane scramble of french fries & chunks of beef fried up with egg & onion; after all, it would be so easy to recreate at home. I tried it twice in Santiago—once at Galindo (see here) & once at El Parrón, where the topping seems rather to have been sauteed in a red wine sauce.

Given its location in a giant modern mall, El Parrón has a surprisingly swanky air about it;

it’s apparently well-known for its traditional Chilean cuisine, particularly parrillada, an extravaganza of mixed grilled meats we were still too stuffed from our seafood blowout at the Mercado Central that afternoon to attempt—although we somehow made room for what I guess translates literally as queso de cabeza, or head cheese (edit: an expert tells me it’s actually called arrollado, meaning “rolled”),

& pastel de congrio, a sort of crab casserole that was unfortunately rather gruel-like in comparison to the custardy versions we had elsewhere.

Still, the chorrillana was the be-all end-all—what’s that, ser todo terminar todo?

In town for less than 48 hours, I as usual spent about half of them drinking up the free WiFi juice the Flying Star at Paseo del Norte & Wyoming pumps out. Of course, it came with actual food; as I’ve suggested, the New Mexican–American deli/diner/coffeehouse repertoire of this wildly popular citywide franchise, rounded out by a bakery counter bestowed with many a local blue ribbon, is highly likeable—as satisfying as could be, really, under the presumably corners-cutting circumstances of such a high-volume operation.

For instance, even artlessly photographed in its takeout container for the road trip back to Denver, the Fiesta Morning Sandwich is a beauty, eh?

Spilling over the sides of the huge housemade “cheesy chile bun”—extra-chewy, with a nice hard yet thin crust & a strong hint of onion—is a fine mess of cheddar, green chile &, usually, egg, but in this case tofu that I’d have sworn was a bit curried, though that may have been a trick of the hue. In any case, the mixture was so bold, funky & moist it didn’t really need the chipotle salsa (also distinctive for being far smokier than it was spicy). And I didn’t need to eat again til home.

For a complete description of not only this spread of 4 terrines—guinea with morels, rabbit with prunes, pork with pistachios, & head cheese, accompanied by piccalilli, cornichons, mustard & crusty bread—but also the savagely cool hotel bar whence it came, click here.

But you can pretty much get the full story just by feasting your eyes.

***Published for the week of 1/18/10, edited on 1/25/10.***

Seppie usually translates as “cuttlefish,” but our server at Il Punto in Hell’s Kitchen translated it as “calamari”—i.e., of course, squid, but since calamari was also listed in a couple of dishes on the menu, I’m all in a muddle as to whether she just didn’t want to give me pause w/r/t some spooky sea creature I’d never heard of or whether they just use the words & concepts interchangeably, however inaccurately (sure, squid & cuttlefish are relatives, but that’s not the same as the same). Granting that I can’t swear on dead people that I’d know the difference in a taste test, I choose to think a) that deep down I would & b) that the 2 dishes I ordered in the course of 2 visits (full review soon) referencing seppie indeed contained cuttlefish.

Then again, I could totally be convinced these were flakes off a layer of skin from an angel flayed alive in outer space.

How could something sliced so thin as to be translucent, possessing a flavor so exquisitely delicate & washed clean, hold up to slivers of sundried tomato & roasted pepper, petals of marinated artichoke heart? But it did; along with spritzes of lemon juice & frisée with a touch of lemon vinaigrette, the dish was a study in the compelling presence of the barely there.

“What lobster is to the New England States, Chicken Fried Steak is to this part of Oklahoma.” So claims the menu at Bob’s Pig Shop, 1 of the happiest places on god’s greenish planet. Not only is it home to the Okie Noodling Tournament (see here, here & here); not only is it run by the one-of-a-kind Phil Henderson, a wildly yarn-spinning sage with a soul of gold; not only is it a treasure trove of hard-won Americana—but it’s a genuine roadside BBQ j-o-i-n-t with an 80-year-old smoke pit.

Now, as both a childhood Okie & a Bostonian in much of adulthood & spirit, I have to admit I’ve never gone gaga over either lobster or chicken-fried steak. In its natural richness & sweetness, just a little of the former seems to me to go a long way—doing its best work as part of an ensemble rather than as a solo performer. As for the latter, 1 too many limp, gray gristle disks on my grade-school cafeteria tray led me to take personal offense at chicken-fried steak as an abomination of the red-state dinner plate on the order of pigs in a blanket & anything in white gravy. I’ve snubbed it ever since.

But when I saw it on the menu at Bob’s, I knew this was our chance to reconcile, chicken-fried steak & me. And kiss & make up we did.

Served on toasted housemade sourdough with lettuce & tomato, the cube steak was coated just thickly enough in a zesty seasoned breading & deep-fried. It was also supposed to boast a little housemade buttermilk ranch; mine didn’t, for some reason, but it didn’t need any after a few squirts of the tangy signature table sauce (whose recipe, I’d guess, is fairly close to this one).

Speaking of seasoning, I couldn’t resist a side order of the seasoned fries.

Thick-cut & tossed in salt, black & red pepper &, if I recall correctly from my last visit, a little cornmeal, they’re so lip-smacking they don’t even need ketchup.

In retrospect, my only regret is that I didn’t take home a few orders of homemade tamales & cobbler. But then, as they say, regret is just another word for an excuse to return.

For better or worse, in episode 510 of Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives, Guy Fieri featured a crumbling little corner joint in downtown Albuquerque called Cecilia’s Cafe,

which, even if it weren’t just the sort of fiercely local, downhome fave gastrobsessive-compulsives like me & the author of Gil’s Thrilling Web Site (whose trusty blog I consult regularly before trips down south)—&, of course, Food Network bloodhounds on the scent of “authenticity”—gravitate toward, could obviously play one on TV.

Gil’s abovelinked blogpost provides plenty of background insight; the most useful tidbit I can offer you is as follows: #4.

That’s the chiles rellenos plate with beans, rice & your choice of red or green chile; both are among the purest forms of the stuff I’ve ever encountered, containing little more, so far as I could tell, than roasted hot peppers distilled down to their very essence. (More on the green variety in a later post.)

The beauty of the stuffed chiles themselves was likewise their purity. So often they’re battered beyond recognition, amounting to giant jalapeño poppers. Hell, amounting to giant blobs of fried cheese. If Cecilia’s coating contained any flour at all, it was negligible; if my life depended on guessing by sight & taste exactly how these were made, I’d guess they were dipped in egg, fried, then rolled in cheese, topped with sauce, & broiled. Is that even doable? I don’t know, but these made me believe it is.

They’re filled, of course, with more cheese, but not too much; the chile, in short, isn’t just a vehicle for fat but the ingredient in its own right it should be. Fine  frijoles too, cooked simply & with respect for the integrity of the pinto per se.

***

Read more about Cecilia’s here.