He began with butternut squash. He ended with a squirt of sunflower cilantro pesto and a maple balsamic flourish. In between, Pankaj Pradhan built a polenta that can startle even an Italian-American-cuisine hotspot like New Haven.
Pradhan built his butternut squash polenta the other day at the new “vegan-vegetarian” restaurant he opened this month across from the Criterion Cinemas on Temple Street called Red Lentil.
Needless to say, the final product was a vegan’s dream come true — bursting with color and a sensuous balance of textures and flavors. Even the plate was part of his canvas. (Click on the play arrow above to watch Pradhan at work.)
“You eat with your eyes first, then with your mouth,” said Pradhan, a 33-year-old native of India who picked up the secrets of 40 native cuisines while serving as a Carnival Cruise Lines chef before opening the first Red Lentil in Watertown, Mass.
Paul Bass Photo
In the kitchen of his new Temple Street outpost, he made the base for his gluten-free, vegan polenta entree by baking a buttnernut squash, mashing it, then mixing it with cornmeal, basil, rosemary, salt and pepper.
He baked a sheet pan of the polenta, then cut three slices. He sprayed them with an olive oil, canola oil, and water mix, then started searing them. “Make sure the grill is nice and hot,” he advised. “you don’t want to grill something for a long time.”
He grabbed five spears of asparagus, coated them with olive oil, threw them on a separate sizzling grill, added pinches of pepper and kosher salt.
While the two grills did their work, Pradhan turned the flame on low to heat up a tomato and oyster mushroom ragout.
As a self-styled “contemporary fusion” chef, he aims to add a modern signature to traditional recipes. You can get eggplant parmesan or chicken paremsan or polenta at any number of fine Italian restaurants, he noted; he’ll make his vegan or dairy-vegetarian, work from scratch with all fresh ingredients, and add an unexpected ingredient or taste, perhaps from another cuisine. He tends to work in threes — creating dishes with proteins, greens and carbohydrates, with several main components that work together.
“Fusion does not mean putting three different things in one plate,” he explained. “You’ve got to blend the tastes. You’ve got to mix the seasonings and the herbs.”
That’s what he did when the polenta slices had just enough brown color on the edges and the asparagus a slightly blackened skin. Pradhan placed the polenta slices on a plate at odd angles, ladled on the ragout, slid the asparagus spears on top. He shook and squirted the sunflower cilantro pesto. Then came the lines of maple balsamic vinegar crisscrossed from one end of the plate, across the piled entree, over to the other end. The scene was a portrait of the artist as a young chef at work.
The final touch: a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds. It may have been nice to look at. It was nicer to tear into, however beautiful the untouched art. To paraphrase a popular early ‘80s saying: Forget art; let’s eat.
The eyes ate first. The mouth wasn’t far behind.
Red Lentil Vegetarian & Vegan Restaurant, 25 Temple St., 203 – 891-7105. Open for lunch and dinner, Monday through Sunday.
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