My student Chung-Ching and I celebrated his newly minted Ph.D. with lunch at Pricci. It's on Pharr Road, a section of Buckhead that is surprisingly quiet given its proximity to the hectic buzzing surrounding Lenox Square. (Believe it or not, there's another restaurant in Forest Park named Pricci that is listed as serving Argentinian and Afghan cuisine. Perhaps they bought a cookbook and started at the A's...)
I started with a caprese salad of buffalo mozarella and tomato. I don't know of many places in Atlanta that serve this dish. I came to love it when I lived in New Jersey and this was an outstanding specimen. Chung-Ching had proscuitto and melon. That tasted great as well; you can see the ham in the meat slicer in the menu, ready at a moment's notice.
Here is Chung-Ching with his seafood pasta. All the portions at Pricci were very generous in size.
I had veal picatta, which hit the perfect balance between tartness and buttery richness.
Chung-Ching somehow managed to find room for dessert. He had tiramisu. I decided to try the cheese sampler, which came with three very different cheeses and a pickled pepper. Everything on my cheese plate balanced out wonderfully.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...
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