HG enjoys healthy gustatory pleasure from BSK’s inventive use of green vegetables. Bok choy is the green which enhances BSK’s Asian-influenced sole. BSK stir fries baby bok choy in a bit of peanut oil, soy sauce, sake, minced ginger and garlic. When the bok choy is wilted and has thrown off much water, BSK covers the pan and steams thin filets of Pacific sole draped over the vegetable. HG likes a dash of chile infused sesame oil on the fish. BSK dusts filets of cod with various spices (including turmeric), pan browns the fish, and finishes it in the oven. The cod is accompanied by Belgian endive (cut in half lengthwise) which has also been pan browned and finished in the oven. Cherry tomatoes, roasted until slightly wilted, are a nice accompaniment. HG likes to use leaves of raw endive as scoops for guacamole or super hot Szechuan ground pork. Fennel braised in butter and chicken stock is a BSK specialty and the perfect companion for BSK’s salmon, pan broiled unilateral. BSK also make a lovely salad of thin slices of fennel, radish and baby turnip (when in season). Goes nicely with Middle Eastern dishes or a slab of feta cheese. HG/BSK were introduced to salmon and braised fennel by Bob Judd, a good friend. Judd is a former advertising executive and author of many auto racing novels (he is to motor sports what Dick Francis is to horse racing). Some years ago Judd was based at the London office of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. He lived in the Hampstead neighborhood in a modernist house designed by the great Hungarian-born architect, Erno Goldfinger. In the sunny kitchen of that house, Judd poached a slab of Scottish salmon and braised knobs of fennel in stock heavily enriched with butter. HG/BSK, Judd and Judd’s then wife, a pianist, drank chilled Beaujolais Nouveau. Memorable. (An aside. Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, hated Goldfinger and his architectural style. He took his revenge by naming his most villainous of villains, “Auric Goldfinger”. Shirley Bassey sang the memorable theme song for the filmed version. Much to Erno Goldfinger’s chagrin, people would hum the song when first meeting him. He sued Fleming and his publisher and the case was settled out of court.)
