#gabe ulla

click for better quality & to see the full image. sometimes they get cut off weirdly!

click for better quality & to see the full image. sometimes they get cut off weirdly!

click for better quality & to see the full image. sometimes they get cut off weirdly!

Celery Salad With Raisins, Pistachios, and Blue Cheese

Adapted from Estela by Ignacio Mattos with Gabe Ulla

For optimal cheese shavings, Ignacio Mattos insists on a Microplane chocolate shaver. A cheat, if you do not own one of these, is to put the cheese in the freezer for an hour or two. Then shave with a Y-peeler, regular vegetable peeler, or paring knife, or grate with the large holes of a box grater. None are perfect replicas. But they are close. If you forget to freeze the cheese, no problem. The pieces will be crumbly. Far from the end of the world.

Ingredients

4 oz (about 2 cups or 115 g) fresh Thai birds-eye chiles

2½ cups white vinegar

2¼ cups water

¼ cups granulated sugar

½ tsp kosher salt

4 piece of blue cheese, such as Bayley Hazen or another semisoft blue

2 Tblsp raisins, either golden or black

1 Tblsp chardonnay vinegar

2 cup celery (about 5 to 6 stalks)

¼ cup pickled chile liquid

3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, or more as needed

Kosher salt

½ Closely packed torn mint leaves

Grated zest of 2 lemons

2 tsp fresh lemon juice

¼ cups pistachios toasted then roughly chopped or smashed

Directions

Make the Pickled Chiles

Rinse the chiles and place them in a medium heatproof container. Combine the white vinegar, water, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour over the chiles and let cool. Refrigerate. They’ll keep for at least three months.

Make the salad

If you think about it, put the hunk of cheese in the freezer for at least an hour before you’re going to serve the salad.

Add the raisins and vinegar to a small bowl and macerate for at least 15 minutes.

Rinse the celery well, including the leaves if they’re intact. Cut the stalks into ¼-inch slices to make 2 cups of sliced celery. Submerge the celery in a bowl filled with ice and water for 5 minutes. This helps the celery slices perk up and go crisp. Strain the celery and pat dry.

Drizzle the pickled chile liquid and olive oil onto a large serving plate.

Add the celery slices to a large bowl and toss with ½ teaspoon salt. Really get in there so the salt coats the celery and helps it open up for the dressing. Add the mint, celery leaves, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Strain the raisin-soaking vinegar into the bowl with the celery. Massage the dressing into the celery.

Scatter the raisins and pistachio pieces over the pickling liquid and oil. Scatter the celery on top of the raisins and pistachio pieces. If there is dressing left in the bowl, spoon it over the celery. If any spots on the plate look dry, add a splash or two of oil.

Our Good Friends at Eater have compiled a list of America's most expensive tasting menus using The Price Hike's own "REAL COST" metric, which means they're letting your know how much dinner will cost after tax, tip, and sometimes wine pairing. It's a fine list, and we hope more outlets (and restaurants) will start using REAL COST as a way of displaying prices, as it lets diners know precisely how much they'll spend without any annoying mental arithmetic.

Chef Alfred Portale talks with Eater's Gabe Ulla about the menu prices at Gotham Bar & Grill and about the possibility of opening up some new joints. It's a great interview, though to be precise, Gotham's mains, on the current online menu, are $35-$49 (with one exception: a $26 squash entree on the "weekly specials"). Starters are generally $21-$29. 

There's also caviar service ($100-$325), large-format steaks that can range from $115-$135, as well as a tasting menu, which rose by $15 last year, following a three-star New York Times review.