Dish of the Week: Rice cakes

Where: Zengo, The Source

Think of rice cakes and what comes to mind? There’s a good chance it’s the baked, crispy, not particularly flavorful discs that come stacked in packages from Quaker Oats. I recall them well as a snack from my school lunch box days and will sometimes—albeit rarely—grab a bag to keep at my desk as an adult despite a few click bait articles I’ve come across ridiculously declaring them a food high on the glycemic index.

Then, several restaurant week seasons ago, I encountered a short rib soup at The Source with a component I’d not run into before: the bowl was filled with little cylinders—rice cake sticks—and they were nothing like those crispy discs. The rice cake that is a staple of many cuisines of Chinese, Korea, and other Asian cultures are a mix of glutinous rice flour and water molded into different shapes. The broth or sauce the cake is served with coats its foil, with a permeation factor that varies according to the thickness of its specimen. And boy is it chewy. But not in the way an al dente pasta is, giving you a resistance in the center.

The texture is a bit more like if you combine the sensation of the noodle with the squeaky pop of biting into a cheese curd. There’s a softness to the gluey rice, but it stays on your tooth for quite some time (definitely a texture that takes some getting used to).

Though mostly prominent in Annandale, I did run into it recently in Chinatown on Zengo’s latest test kitchen menu, a Mexico-to-Korea hybrid that runs through March.

In a Korean style calamari, Rhode Island squid, shitake mushrooms, and rice cakes swim in a red, spicy broth. It’s a study in graduated chewiness; each of the main components displaying a slightly different degree of that toothsomeness. The chewy rice cakes take some getting used to and I dug through my bowl for more white cephalopod flesh over glutinous rice mass (though when covered in chili paste it can be hard to distinguish one from the other). I’m told the texture sensation is eventually addicting. I’m still trying to catch on.

Small Bites

Cornilessen Take Two
If you were tempted but missed Dino’s Frank Cornelissen wine dinner the first time around, he’s bringing the wines back. Following up on what Dean Gold calls “one of the wine highlights of my life,” he’s refined the food menu after having further considered the wines they’re to be paired with. And the wild wines are more than a bit more consistent from bottle to bottle than they used to be. Gold is pouring not only seven wines but two of Cornilessen’s grappas. The dinner is $124 plus tax and gratuity and will be held on March 15. Also on tap for Dino in March is a duck dinner at the end of the month.

Progressive Wine and Cheese Pairings
Chinatown’s Flight Wine Bar teams up with Union Market’s artisanal Righteous Cheese shop for a Tuesday tasting on March 3. Hard to find cheeses will be paired one each with sparkling, white, red, sherry, and dessert wine respectively. It’s $10 a pairing, a little bit of a discount for a second or third pair until you decide to get all five for $40. Reservations can be made by emailing the bar.

James Beard Semifinalists
We mentioned it the other day in a Morning Roundup. But we’ll spill a little more ink here to note the local contenders recently announced as semifinalists for prestigious James Beard Foundation awards. These are long lists, allowing up to 25 nominees per category. That will be culled down to much smaller groups of finalists in late March before awards are given out in late April. Fiola Mare is a contender for Best New Restaurant with Fabio Trabocchi also being nominated for Outstanding Chef, Barmini for Outstanding Bar Program, Mark Furstenberg of Bread Furst for Outstanding Baker, Caitlin Dysart of 2941 for Outstanding Pastry Chef, Jaleo D.C. and Vidalia for Outstanding Restaurant, Ashok Bajaj for Outstanding Restaurateur as is Le Diplomate’s Stephen Star, Komi and Marcel’s for Outstanding Service, Derek Brown for Outstanding Spirits Professional, and Marjorie Meek-Bradley for Rising Star of the Year. Anthony Chittum of Iron Gate, Cedric Maupillier of Mintwood Place, Tarver King of The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm, and Peter Chang supposedly opening a restaurant in Rockville, are seeing if their name will be called from the Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic slate. There’s a local contender in every category except for outstanding wine program.

Deli Movie
Last years’s Washington Jewish Film Festival included the movie Sturgeon Queens about a long-standing, appetizing store anchored in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The 2015 festival, which runs through March, has a deli movie in this year’s lineup, too. Deli Man will screen on Saturday at the DCJCC, but it’s sold out because people love delis and there will be a discussion with the director, Joan Nathan, and DGS owner Nick Wiseman following the screening. But if you really love deli, you can see it on Monday night at the JCC in Rockville.