Today, the unthinkable has happened: L'Etoile has essentially run out of food for the season. This isn't to say that customers will actually go hungry—the Crawford Farm lamb, the Lange Farm beef, the Cherokee Farm bison, and the beautiful local greens from Rock Spring Farm, tented under hoops heated only by the midwinter sun, are in plentiful supply—but there are two weeks left of local potatoes, tops, and three weeks left of beets. One case of apples remains in the cellar, and only three of celery root. Even the beauty heart radishes are running low.
"I know it sounds strange," Piper says, "but I don't know what I'm going to serve. We can call California like everybody else, but it wouldn't feel right. What are people going to eat?"
She bangs open a door in frustration and stalks into the kitchen's old walk-in refrigerator. Surely there must be something she's overlooked. She claws through a dozen boxes looking for enough sound root vegetables to serve with the trout. Eventually, she pulls out a fullish box of crosnes, the sweet, corkscrew-shaped root vegetable, popular at the moment in France, that some people have occasionally mistaken for elaborately carved baby turnips on the plate. "Aha," she says, letting a handful of the tiny tubers slip through her fingers as if they were gold coins. "We started doing these a few years before anybody knew what they were. We got Harmony Valley to grow them for us. They're popular at places like Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, and the price has been bid right up, but we've got to have them. And we have them now."
"They can't be worth the effort," I say, anticipating the massive amount of labor it must take just to peel the things, and discounting the mild taste.
"But they're, they're … little buttersluts," Piper blurts. She flushes the deep pink color of a chiogga beet and hides her face in her hands. "I mean, they're great when you braise them in butter."
Matt Overdevest, a senior cook, who has been trying to pretend he isn't eavesdropping, suddenly propels half a cup of coffee through his nose.
At dinner that night, the trout, lightly peppered and sprinkled with salt, smeared with buttery mascarpone cheese and baked in parchment with sunchokes, celery root, and buttersluts—I mean crosnes—is a triumph. For at least a little while longer, California can wait.
Chef's Secret
From Odessa Piper: Produce can speak at different levels in a dish if you cook in "octaves"—use celery and celery root in the same dish, or stuff squash blossoms with sautéed squash.
Pinterest
