Books, Arts & Manners: O Sogni Dolci

Recently, I was asked by a friend what foods, drinks, and meals have made a lasting impression on me. As I pondered the question, odd things came to the surface of the food memory-such as the super-super-superlative brownies and cheese-filled manicotti made by my friend and neighbor Marylin Buckland, crown jewels of their kind; I never thought either brownies or manicotti could be sheer bliss. To the mind also comes a dish of eggplant with other vegetables, eaten at the Jockey in Madrid, everything tender yet firm, and with a texture I’d never known before in a savory eggplant pudding.

I remember also an utterly different and exquisite duck-with-orange dish invented by the very great chef Seppi Renggli for the 1983 Barrel Tasting at the Four Seasons restaurant. The Barrel Tasting is an annual event at which a number of California vintners each show a wine in two versions, as a baby in the barrel and as a mature adult, from an earlier vintage, in the bottle; this to enable the haute volee of the wine world to see how a particular wine will develop. For the 1983 Barrel Tasting Chef Renggli filled a scooped-out orange with small pieces of skinned roasted duck and a little of its sauce; some of the skin of the roasted duck lay on the side of the plate deliciously refried in butter, with not a speck of grease in flavor or texture. This was truly a marriage made in heaven.

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Nika Hazelton

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Recently, I was asked by a friend what foods, drinks, and meals have made a lasting impression on me. As I pondered the question, odd things came to the surface of the food memory-such as the super-super-superlative brownies and cheese-filled manicotti made by my friend and neighbor Marylin Buckland, crown jewels of their kind; I never thought either brownies or manicotti could be sheer bliss. To the mind also comes a dish of eggplant with other vegetables, eaten at the Jockey in Madrid, everything tender yet firm, and with a texture I’d never known before in a savory eggplant pudding.

I remember also an utterly different and exquisite duck-with-orange dish invented by the very great chef Seppi Renggli for the 1983 Barrel Tasting at the Four Seasons restaurant. The Barrel Tasting is an annual event at which a number of California vintners each show a wine in two versions, as a baby in the barrel and as a mature adult, from an earlier vintage, in the bottle; this to enable the haute volee of the wine world to see how a particular wine will develop. For the 1983 Barrel Tasting Chef Renggli filled a scooped-out orange with small pieces of skinned roasted duck and a little of its sauce; some of the skin of the roasted duck lay on the side of the plate deliciously refried in butter, with not a speck of grease in flavor or texture. This was truly a marriage made in heaven.