Making tapas with friends at ArtEpicure

We spent Saturday night cooking and eating with friends. It's not something we do very often. Eating, yes, but at-home entertaining happens less than we'd like, in part because our place isn't really set up for many hands in the kitchen.

So it was a special treat to have a private class at ArtEpicure in Somerville, where Mark DesLauriers has a fab and funky kitchen that he opens up to for people who want to make food and be social.



Jars!



Cookbooks!



Sink with cat head!



Mark offers a variety of classes, from classic French to knife skills to working with octopus. We decided on the tapas workshop, so after a short introduction and a chance to open some wine, Mark set us to work.

Prepping watermelon and citrus:



Mixing meatballs:



Chopping peppers:



Displaying newly learned knife skeelz on the parsley:



Peeling asparagus for roasting:



The pace was easy and the work was fun. Mark was a great host, giving instruction where needed and keeping things moving without pressure. He was a quiet force in the background, keeping track of the steps needed for each dish and assigning tasks accordingly, so that the meal started to come together almost imperceptibly: First there was eggplant, sliced and salted, and then there were tomatoes, roasted, out of the oven, and suddenly there was a soft, scented eggplant ragout.



The parsley starred in a light cucumber salad with sherry vinaigrette dressing:



The fruit became a refreshing and delicious watermelon gazpacho (with baked prosciutto garnish):



The meatballs were paired with huge broad beans spiced with ras el-hanout:



There was also a fabulous traditional paella, for which I chopped the chorizo but missed the construction of the rest:



Once the food was ready, we gathered around the table to talk and eat (of course) until late in the evening.



As well as private group events, Mark holds open cooking classes (but they fill up quickly, so plan ahead). You should go.

Meanwhile, Mark gave us the recipes for everything we made. I expect the gazpacho to be a mainstay this summer.

Estragon, Boston: my new tapas addiction

On Friday I discovered a new talent: I can see into the future. Not very far, admittedly, but still, I had a vision that sometime around the beginning of 2009, I will be feasting on an entire pig's head.

The cause of my pignostication? The menu at Estragon, the South End's newest tapas place, which features the porcine cranium as one of its signature dishes. Apparently it comes with all the parts attached: tongue, eyes, ears (the bartender particularly recommends the muscles at the back of the neck). Sounds like the perfect way to spend a doubtless freezing January birthday, don'tcha think?

Friday night's dinner was not quite as decadent, but still lovely. We started out at the bar. As our dining companion Tim is a regular visitor to Estragon's adjoining deli, Las Ventas (he recommends their manchego-jamón serrano sandwich), we were treated to plates of thin, delicate jamón, an incredible tortilla española flavored with lemon (genius!), and a dish of fried, paprika-dusted chickpeas that the Boston Globe's review accurately refers to as "chickpea crack"--it took serious restraint to eat a dainty handful at a time, because my instinct was to grab an enormous fistful and shove them in my face.

We also got to watch the sangria machine:



The one downside to Estragon was the noise level; between the roomful of happy diners and the cranked-up music, it was hard to have a conversation. But just as we finished fighting over the last dustings of chickpea crack, our table on the sidewalk patio opened up and we were led outside to relative peacefulness.

And then we ate more: shrimp in garlic butter; a giant scallop finished with almond cream; tender cod cheeks; another plate of jamón serrano and manchego; veal sweetbreads; and a dish of peppery housemade sausage that was so good, we ordered an encore.

And then to dessert. There were only three choices, so we got one of each: a dense, moist chickpea poundcake with grilled peaches, a lovely version of traditional flan, and a trio of ice creams--honey-thyme, salted caramel, and turrón. I'm not usually a gelato girl, but once again, it was hard to share. Give me an unlimited supply of Estragon's fried chickpeas and this dessert, and I'd follow you into battle. (As long as you didn't mind that I'd weigh 300 lbs.)

And there were all kinds of tapas we didn't get around to trying: the calamari with blood sausage, the beef tongue, the frogs' legs, the roasted eggplant with chorizo, and of course the sea urchin and foie gras sliders.

It looks as though Estragon's menu is still evolving; a steak-and-quail egg dish Tim had tried previously was no longer listed, and the menu on Estragon's website is not quite the same as the one we saw. Which means we'll probably need to make a return visit sooner than January.

Oh well.