after dinner sneeze

t says:  g and I ventured to Talula’s Garden [again].  Rather than go through the whole spiel (we’ve already been there a few times), let me just tell you about the two items in particular that stood out.  As the title of the post suggests – they both have to do with goat.  The first:

What a crappy pic! iPhones must be afraid of the dark.

What is poorly photographed above is a goat tortelloni, with ricotta gnudi, peas, and a herb-goat jus.  The tortelloni were perfectly cooked, with wonderfully textured goat meat inside – it was more like a pulled goat, not like a pocket of ground meat – and the meat was not the least bit “stringy”.  The peas made g smile (she loves peas), as they had some bite to them and were full of flavor (both from the pea and from the jus).  And yes – that sauce/jus was ridiculous[ly good] with an herbiness and a meatiness that I could not believe for how thin it was.  Actually – I kind of want to know the concoction of herbs used so we could grow them in our garden (i.e. our one pot on our patio) and could use it, ourselves!  The ricotta gnudi are the same as the past appetizer we’ve had; they are of a familiar texture (like a ball of mozzorella), and I really want to like them more, but I just wish they’d take on more flavor from the jus surrounding them.  Otherwise, they taste of mild cheese that I, personally, find hard to appreciate, as compared to the surrounding elements, it comes off as a bit bland.  But it didn’t matter for long, as I simply cut them into smaller pieces to increase the surface-area-to-volume ratio and dunked them into the jus, thus solving the problem at hand.

The other amazing goat of the evening was a goat cheese that they put on the “Masters Collection” cheese plate.  To be honest, g and I generally don’t love goat cheese, but if it’s on a cheese plate, we’re going to give it a whirl.  We find that the goat cheese flavor is all too often overpowering, and the texture can sometimes be a gritty nightmare or so thick that it’s challenging to chew/swallow.  But not this goat cheese.  The texture was superb – something between “creamy” and “goaty” (I couldn’t think of another adjective than “goaty” – by this I’m referring to that characteristic way goat cheese crumbles in your mouth), and it had this mix of savory cheese funk with some inherent sweetness that was addictive.  I felt that I could eat it for breakfast (stick some honey or preserves on it), or lunch/dinner (stick a slice of prosciutto on it), or even dessert (stick a dab of chocolate on it).  Actually – it reminded me a lot of the goat cheese we had at Ad Hoc.  I wonder if it was the same or not.  Hell – for all  know, this could be some simple $3-a-pound goat cheese made in Jersey.  But I wouldn’t care if it was – as a matter of fact, I’d buy it by the pound!  I’d make some gnocchi and cheese cake with it!

We did eat other things which were very good, too (they brought back the squash blossoms appetizer!).  But it’s really hard to think of those dishes when the goat was this good.

I am going to take a second to be critical, though …let’s talk about the brioche with the ramp butter.  It’s just not the same!  When Talula’s Garden first opened, they started the meal with these “rolls” (if you call them that) that had a skinny cylindrical stem and a bulbous top – kind of like a mushroom or a muffin.  I thought that it was a brioche – but maybe I’m wrong.  They were probably a nightmare for servers to carry on a dish (they easily fell down with the slightest nudge), but something about them was so delightfully airy and warm and inviting.  Now, we’ve noticed that they’ve been replaced by what seems to be just the top, bulbous part of the former roll.  And somehow, this is a very different animal – I think it’s a textural change, as the ones we had were a little more dense/crumby.  I’m immediately reminded of the Seinfeld episode where they try to make muffin-tops without the muffin-stumps – it just didn’t taste as awesome as making the whole muffin and ripping off the top (although in this case, the stump and top were equally good in the original and superior to the new, revised version).  Perhaps it’s a completely different recipe (i.e. a completely different bread), and I’m just longing for the former.  I don’t know.  Either way – it’s not like I’m not going to eat it – it’s still a darn good bread.  And it’s still some darn good ramp butter.  And really … nothing compares to the original pot-bread, anyways (i.e. bread baked in a terra cotta pot ca. early 2000’s at Django).