Watercress, Romaine, Point Reyes Blue Cheese and Pink Peppercorn

Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad

  • Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad
  • Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad
  • Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad
  • Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad
  • Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad
  • Mandy Aftel’s Point Reyes Salad

NOTES

Mandy used her very own seasoned salts for the salad (pink peppercorn and ginger), and she added a drop of makrut lime essential oil. Since most of you don’t have access to such potions, I adapted the recipe to include some freshly ground pink peppercorn in the dressing. Point Reyes blue cheese is a raw cow’s milk cheese from Marin County, just North of where Mandy lives. It is widely available in specialty cheese shops around the country, but any medium strong, creamy blue will do.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add pink peppercorn to a mortar and pestle and crush completely. Add minced shallot, sherry vinegar, lemon and honey. Stir to dissolve. Set aside to pickle.

2. Prepare the watercress by removing all tough stalks and adding the tender shoots in bite-sized pieces to a salad spinner. Cut the romaine into 1” pieces and add to the salad spinner along with the watercress. Wash and spin the lettuce to dry. Add to a large salad bowl.

3. Add olive oil to the shallot mixture in a slow stream, whisking to emulsify.

4. Add the dressing to the salad and toss to coat. Season lightly with sea salt to taste. Top with thinly sliced Point Reyes blue cheese and serve immediately.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

EASY

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SERVES

3

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PREP TIME

10 MINS

For the dressing

  • 1/4 
    tsp 
    pink peppercorn
  • 1 1/2 
    tsp 
    sherry vinegar
  • 1 
    tbs 
    fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 
    tsp 
    honey
  • 2 
    tbs 
    minced shallot
  • 1/4 
    cup 
    extra virgin olive oil

For the salad

  • 1/2 
    bunch 
    watercress
  • 1/2 
    head 
    romaine, outer leaves removed
  •  
     
    Point Reyes blue cheese

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add pink peppercorn to a mortar and pestle and crush completely. Add minced shallot, sherry vinegar, lemon and honey. Stir to dissolve. Set aside to pickle.

2. Prepare the watercress by removing all tough stalks and adding the tender shoots in bite-sized pieces to a salad spinner. Cut the romaine into 1” pieces and add to the salad spinner along with the watercress. Wash and spin the lettuce to dry. Add to a large salad bowl.

3. Add olive oil to the shallot mixture in a slow stream, whisking to emulsify.

4. Add the dressing to the salad and toss to coat. Season lightly with sea salt to taste. Top with thinly sliced Point Reyes blue cheese and serve immediately.

When Foster Curry opened the door of his Berkeley home dressed in flannel pj’s, I knew I was 24 hours early for my blind salad-date with his wife, writer and master perfumer Mandy Aftel. Asking for just 30 minutes to get themselves together, they would still entertain me, despite my inability to keep a calendar. Therein lies the Berkley spirit.

Hours later, we had had not yet unpacked a single grocery. There were too many distractions, starting with a dramatic etched glass goblet of pure frankincense from Oman. A scent as old as time, frankincense is made by scraping the bark of a tree until goopy resin oozes out. Caught in a heady vortex of hundreds of flower, tree, and plant essences, I nearly missed my flight home.

An “organ” is the technical term for the perfumer’s bench, a crescent-shaped desk with five terraced-tiers of shelving and hundreds of apothecary bottles on display. The bottom row is lined with darky, sticky, resins derived from trees, but might as well be primordial plasma. Above the resins live the flower and plant essences. Huffing the mysterious witchy vials tests your sense of smell and recall, but moreover, it challenges your entire life experience. Unable to recognize the most common scent in its platonic form, you have to wonder, what else have you been missing?

This sensorial game carried from Mandy’s workshop to the kitchen, where we come upon a drawer lined with an encyclopedic collection of slender glass spray bottles. I had come for the salad, and somehow found myself elbow-deep in the dessert offerings; edible scents are best experienced spritzed over a spoonful of vanilla ice cream or chunk of dark chocolate. Each bite further crossed my wires – I tasted pimento berry and bergamont, and they didn’t taste like perfume or soap, they were delicious. After a Willy Wonka style sampling, we chose a makrut lime flavor to add to our salad. While I was initially skeptical that it would pair with stinky blue cheese, by this point, I couldn’t be surprised to find it was in fact a perfect match.

Mandy’s collection traces the globe. The oils and resins are never mixed with synthetic ingredients, which means a precious perfume might fade from your skin in a matter of hours (a custom scent fetches upwards of $2000, so every minute counts). But the ephemerality of it all is precisely its appeal. It’s no wonder that artists like the late Leonard Cohen can been be counted amongst Mandy’s list of clientele –this is poetry and music for the olfactory sense.

Mandy Aftel In Her Own Words

Mandy Aftel: This is where I keep my perfumes, these are my materials. There are top notes, middle notes, and base notes. The top notes are familiar, usually from gardening and eating. They are very light in color, they reach your sense of smell very quickly, and disappear within about half an hour. Then we have the spices and florals. Their scents are more pointy and sharp. And on the bottom shelf are roots, barks, and resins from trees. These have been in man’s spiritual life since the beginning of time. When you make perfume, you make stuff from all three areas.

Julia Sherman: And you can mix anything?

MA: Oh yeah. I work in food too. So, I do stuff with flavors as well as in fragrance with these materials. I also make a face elixir, this one is made with jasmine. [Mandy gives the oil to Julia to smell]

JS: I love jasmine. When I was in India, I became obsessed with trying to find real jasmine oil. I followed many different men down dark alleyways in search of it. Fake jasmine oil smells like toilet bowl cleaner to me. I never found the good stuff.

MA: Good luck. It’s very hard to get anything real unless you know what you’re doing. You want to smell real jasmine oil from India? You want to smell the difference? I guarantee you will smell the difference right here.

JS: Tell me about the edible scents.

MA: I sell essential oils to chefs, ice cream makers, candy makers, really really fine chocolate makers, and mixologists. I make essential oil sprays which are easier for finishing food and for alcoholic drinks.

JS: Tell me about the book you are working on with Daniel Patterson?

MA: It’s a reading cookbook called The Art of Flavor: Practices and Principles for Creating Delicious Food. It backtracks out of creating perfume into food. Perfume is really disembodied flavor. Let’s try some of the oils. Take a piece of chocolate.

JS: Gladly.

MA: I know you wont get this. Its very very ordinary. Its mind-blowing when you find out what it is. [Mandy sprays the chocolate with a solution]

JS: I don’t know.

MA: Lavender. Incredibly good lavender. Camphourous lavender. Lavender absolute. So it’s like a lavender flower

JS: Wow. I usually hate lavender in food.

MA: So do I, but that one is very different. Ok so welcome to my world!

JS: Great. Happy to be here.

MA: Part of my work is broadening people’s about consciousness of how complex plants are once they have been distilled. Like this damascena rose from Turkey.

JS: So did you try a million different kinds of rose to land on this one?

MA: I try a million different kinds of anything I own. I am a really labor-intensive joyful shopper. Once I find my source, it often disappears or goes downhill so I have to look for it again. But I really enjoy the hunt.

JS: So, did Leonard Cohen wear perfume?

MA: He wore Oud  Luban whenever he went out. He also wore ancient resins. He really loved it. I had been communicating with him for almost twenty years. I went to his memorial—his personal memorial. He was a fan of mine, and I sure was a fan of his.

JS: How do perfume and cooking intersect?

MA: Flavor is about understanding ingredients from the inside out. And to understand them, you have to understand their facets, and how their facets interlock with one another, and how to best utilize that. Kind of like perfume: you need to use top, middle, and base notes to make something delicious.