Please note that since writing this blog post, Waldorf has closed down
Some time ago I wrote a post about ‘First date food’. Little over a month later, I had a last date. I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘last date food’ and, in fact, it’s not often people talk about last dates given that a) you’re generally not aware that they’re last dates while you’re on them, and b) in many cases it’s never quite clear when you’ve stopped dating. With hindsight, however, this was most definitely a last date. And it took place at Waldorf, a trendy little Italian on the Johnny Jordaanplein, sister to the quirky Bep. I drank a lot of Italian Chardonnay and didn’t eat much more than salad, so I can’t tell you a huge amount about the food in general. My then-date, however, ordered artichoke ravioli, which has been haunting my food fantasies ever since.
It tasted earthy and deep and silky and feral and I wanted it, jealously and covetously. It gave me a feeling of deja-vu: I don’t think I’d ever eaten artichoke ravioli and yet it set in motion a kind of sense-memory, as though it were harking back to some childhood experience. Like your first ecstasy tablet, the feeling of which you repeatedly try in vain to recapture, I’ve been in search of artichoke ravioli ever since. Unable to return to Waldorf to satisfy this craving, I set out to recreate this quintessential dish myself.
I don’t have a pasta machine, and some misguided part of me thought that I could make ravioli using fresh lasagne sheets. Even my mother (who hasn’t cooked since my father retired when I was eight) expressed concern at this plan, but I crashed on regardless. Having made my filling of artichoke hearts, parmesan, softened onions, parsley, nutmeg, lemon juice and egg yolk, I moved on to the assembly part. Pretty soon, it became apparent that my platonic ideal was never going to work, despite enormous quantities of egg wash. Determined not to waste ingredients, I quickly came up with a Plan B. Ravioli were so March 2008 anyway – May is all about cannelloni. So I blanched the remaining lasagne sheets, rolled the filling into them and covered them with a mixture of parmesan and the sage butter I’d prepared for the ravioli-no-more, and put them in the oven. Fifteen minutes later, they came out looking quite edible, and I cracked open a bottle of Navarra Reserva my boss had given me for my recent hard work.
