Pursuing piquancy
Dec. 24, 2006

Traditional U.S. Christmas fare is winter comfort food: warming, heavy, starchy, rich and soothing.

And — let's face it — often quite bland.

Starting on Dec. 26, we crave tastes and textures that will wake us up and prod our palates back to attention.

Crispness, coolness and saltiness can help. But even more effective, we think, is piquancy — PEEK-n-see — which is almost as much fun to say as it is to taste.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, "piquant" (PEEK-ent or Pe-KAHNT) means "pleasantly pungent or tart in taste; spicy."

Fans of Mexican food and bottled salsa know the related word "picante." Interestingly, both words come from verbs that mean "to prick."

Piquant drinks and foods can help our taste buds bloom again. Here's a sampler of recommendations:

The Famous Deli Pickle at Erbert & Gerbert's is among the best we've eaten anywhere.

Tradition-minded delicatessens, now nearly impossible to find in the Midwest and difficult even out East, always offer a choice between old pickles and new pickles. Each sort has its devoted partisans.

Happily, Erbert & Gerbert's deli pickle combines the best features of both: the squeaky-taut skin and mildly tart freshness of a new pickle and the salty, dilly, garlicky flesh and melting-soft center of an old one.

Whether ordered whole, halved or quartered, your pickle will be neatly wrapped in butcher paper for traveling. Its surprisingly subtle flavors will leave your mouth scrubbed clean.

Ginger tea at Pad Thai Restaurant. Pad Thai's tea strikes a delicate balance between the peppery heat of ginger root and the mellow sweetness of white sugar.

A fairly short brewing time yields a gentle, almost floral spiciness that refreshes a tired palate and invigorates the drinker. Our favorite tonic against the cold.

Salsas at Tacos Juanita. Like all Mexican restaurants in the Chippewa Valley, Tacos Juanita accompanies its baskets of free tortilla chips with a thin but decent Salsa Fresca — a blend of canned tomatoes, garlic, onions, salt, spices and cilantro.

But savvy regular customers also ask for the two spicier house-made salsas, one red and one green.

The spicier red is a clingy, pleasantly hot, slightly smoky mix of dried and fresh red chilies, lime juice, onion and garlic. The even spicier green is an even clingier salsa of blended tomatillos, whole cilantro leaves and chunks of crushed garlic. Its bright, insistent heat comes from pickled jalapeños.

Both have enough salt and punch to work well as condiments — which is how most diners should use them. Only confirmed heat heads should employ either as a regular dipping salsa for chips or tortillas.

Start with a little to test your tolerances, then apply a dot, dollop or deluge to add perky flavor to tacos, burritos, beans and rice.

Horseradish mustard at Ray's Place. Thanks to Huntsinger Farms and Silver Spring Gardens, Eau Claire is the horseradish capital of the world. And thanks to Silver Spring and Ray's Place, Eau Claire has a hand-mixed tavern mustard worthy of the city's exalted status.

It's a mustard that is, well, worth rooting for.

In a Main Course review of Ray's published in the Leader-Telegram in 2003, we wrote: "Use with caution! This mustard must rank among the hottest anywhere.

"Try a heaping teaspoonful, as Jeff did recently, and first your tongue will sense a mustard-powdery tingle and some pleasant horseradish heat. Chewing ignites the fumes. Swallowing condenses, then explodes them up the chimney flue that leads from throat to nose — and instantly, the rich, lovely terror of hot and pungent blasts into nostrils, sinuses, eyes."

Use Ray's mustard sparingly, or blend with sour cream and a little milk to make a sauce. There's no better accent for hot ham or roast beef.

The Mixed Pickle at Flavor of India. Few Indian meals are considered complete without condiments: chutneys, raitas (cooling drinks or sauces made with spiced yogurt) and pickled vegetables and fruits.

Eau Claire's Flavor of India offers an outstanding Mixed Pickle that is a must-try for people who relish profoundly spicy flavors — or suspect that they might.

The pickle features slivers and chunks of mango, lime and lemon peel, medium-hot green chilies, lotus root, turnip, carrot and an exotic fruit called karanda (Latin name: Carissa carandas) — all salted down and then preserved in a vegetable oil heavily infused with mustard seed, thyme, black seed (nigella sativa), cumin, coriander, turmeric, fenugreek and much powdered red chili.

The fruits and vegetables take on a tightly focused flavor that is electric in its intensity and astonishing in its impact: a superconcentration of salt, spice-heat, smoke and bitter citrus seamlessly blended into one eye-opening, delicious, unforgettable wham!

If used as the Indians do, in tiny amounts, the pickle and its oil can add bold new life to bland food, especially to rice and bread.

Here's to the pursuit of piquancy!

Main Course, the Leader-Telegram's restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners' Notebook, a sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of the month.

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