My dinner was better than yours.

Why, you ask? 

Simple.

I went to Nosh.

Stop - Rewind - Take it from the top.

Having decided that it was high time for me to take a nice little break from life, I hopped a plane to Denver and hitched a ride down to Colorado Springs for a few days.  Okay, so it was handled with slightly less vagabond-esque charm.  Point being, though, that I'm on vacation and that means at least one mealfest.

Mealfest, you ask?  Less simple, but all the better for it.

It means spending no less than two hours at the table, due to the amount of courses served, time spent enjoying the meal - really enjoying it - and no less important, enjoying the company.
It means being able to talk over the food, about the food, the service, and the ambiance (note to reader:  overused Italian music and/or cheap mariachi hats do not count as ambiance).
It means a still-poor post-college kid dropping $100 on a meal and not even trying to feel bad about it.
It means the sincere discussion of the social ramifications of the holiest of matrimonies with your entree.  Which may or may not be polyamorous (we're still working out the logistics).

It means, quite simply, that this was not simply a meal.  This was an experience.

The experience, as it were - because that's precisely what we had.  Nosh's The Experience.

First, a note on Nosh.

Nosh is (and I quote) "an intimate yet vibrant downtown restaurant and bar focusing on delivering new experiences in flavor, sight and sound..." 

A touch eager, I should think, as I don't recall my eyes and ears being blown away by anything spectacular.  The restaurant itself is contained within a larger business building (making it a touch hard to find for those unfamiliar, although completely worth the mild effort required).  We arrived on the early end of dinner, to an uncrowded space with our choice of tables and, more importantly, in time for happy hour cocktails.
The lighting was dim-chic and the music just low enough to ignore.  A wall-to-wall scene of giant Koi perhaps nods its head to the subtly-included Eastern flavors and ingredients sprinkled throughout the menu.

Now, on to The Experience.

Of course Nosh offers a full menu, focusing on what I like to call 'Fancy American' edibles.  Most would refer to it as 'Upscale Modern American'.  Potato, potahto.  End result, we have a collection of dishes, many down home favorites, many fine dining influenced, and many internationally tinted (usually tastefully americanized).
The focus is on small plates and shared food, with nearly every selection coming in two sizes.  I'm going to break off on a tangent here and say how incredibly in love with this idea that I am.  I love shared food.  It gets people to talk, it gets people to truly experience.  It stops being about just eating a meal, and it starts being about coming together.  End tangent.
Further, they've hit a sweet spot of offering interesting and very well prepared selections without heading into 'scary' territory.  Now there may be some valiant foodies out there who simply won't give out their oh-so-coveted five-star rating without 'the perfect foie gras' on the menu... but the truth is food, no matter how passionate you are about it, is still a business.  And if the majority of your clientele won't eat what you're offering, you're doing it wrong.  Sorry.

So there's that.

So you can pick and choose from the menu, or you can put your mouth in the sweet, supple hands of fate.  Or, in this case, the whims of our server.

We opted for the latter.

The Experience is just that - the chance to sit back, relax, and let your server and kitchen team put together a four-course menu for you.  No, you don't have a say (unless, I suppose, you're deathly allergic to something).  Yes, it's a good idea.  The staff is knowledgeable, and the food delicious.  It's also a bit of a deal at just $20 a head, and the aforementioned lack of the more 'out there' choices (at least in the collaborative mind of America) makes this option all the more accessible.

We started off with some cocktails - a Cherry Sour for my friend, and a Dark 'n Stormy for myself.  The Cherry Sour being a cousin of the Amaretto version, and considering that almond and cherry flavors actually get confused on many palates means you're liable to be happy either way.  I heard good things, and my personal favorite part (read; the only part I actually got to try) was the Italian cherry garnish.  Well worth it, though, as it had a succulent, meaty bite similar to that of a kalamata olive (which, by the way, is the olive that started my love affair with olives in general).
The Dark 'n Stormy featured a Vanilla-Caramel dark rum, with lemon and ginger notes.  Reminiscent of a Long Island, but a touch darker and, in my opinion, far superior.
Neither, I think, would live up to a "true" cocktail bar, where the list of ingredients can sometimes require an almanac and a compass to get through, and a thirty minute wait per drink is both expected and worth it.  However, Nosh is in no way claiming to be a cocktail bar, and at only $5 each on happy hour, both were well worth the second round.

Now, however, the story really begins.

The first course was the Calamari.  Simply done, perfectly fried strips of calamari steak served with an Asian-hinted house sauce and lime wedge.  Too often do I steer away from calamari, because too often is it overcooked, rubbery, and, in a word, gross.  Hence the beauty of someone else choosing your meal, as this is, to date, the best calamari that has had the pleasure of being devoured by yours truly.  The sauce was clean and flavorful, and the lime added a spritz of brightness that was a wonderful accompaniment.

Following this came the Beet Caprese.  Roasted beet slices served with a duo of basil and tomato pestos, balsamic glaze, house made chips and labna cheese, and perfectly toasted baguette.  I'm a fan of good beets.  I'm a fan of good pesto.  I'm (now) a fan of fresh labna.  You do the math.  The baguette (technically extra) is a must, as spreading about any mix of these flavors on the chewy-yet-crispy bread makes for a mouthful of happy.  Rich, creamy cheese with smooth pesto and robust beets - there is simply no wrong to this plate.

Next up was the Mac 'n Cheese.  Made with penne noodles, three cheeses, pulled pork, and in our case fresh jalapenos and anaheim peppers, this dish perhaps leaned over the line between 'macaroni' and 'meat and pasta with cheese'.  Nevertheless, the flavors were on par.  My friend found this dish to be on the "too spicy" side, but I (and my admitted tolerance) found it rather mild on this front.  While not my personal favorite version of this classic, it's definitely one for the books

Finally our main arrives - the Oven Roasted Chicken.  Served with brown-butter applesauce, charred onions and burnt scallion sauce, this was, in a word, delectable.  Further accented by a pair of eight-hour braised apples (which, we were told, took three days to prepare) - the word tender simply does not have enough meaning to apply here.  While I must go on record saying that this is not the single most moist piece of bird I've ever had (that record is currently held by an Airline Breast in Paris), the bone-in flavor with a clean, crisp sear was, simply put, succulence.  The brown-butter applesauce will hold a spot in my fondest of dreams.

Despite the end of The Experience, we couldn't leave without dessert.  We are, after all, sane.

While Nosh offers a small host of digestifs to finish the evening, we opted for something a bit more solid, and settled on the Chess Tart.  Described to us as similar to a southern pecan pie, we dived into a vanilla tart, topped with whipped cream and fresh blackberries (subject to season, of course), served with house-made white chocolate pocky sticks and strawberry coulis. 
The tart was buttery, flaky, light, and all things good.  The fresh fruit and coulis were the perfect mates to the dish, and I am stealing that pocky so hard it's not even funny.

Spectacular on all fronts and, combined with the massage I had the night before, entirely worth the trip.

My thanks to the team at Nosh for a truly wonderful experience.

And they said unto me; Capers

And so it came to pass that the clouds did part, and the angels did trumpet, and the coming of...

... Okay, that's not exactly how it went down. But, through some means, nefarious or otherwise (I tend to favor nefarious, but it just takes so much planning) I obtained my first Good Foodie Challenge.

Capers.

My first thought; Just what have I gotten myself in to?

I kid.

Capers tend to be one of those things that you love or you hate. On second thought, I've never heard anyone declare their undying food-love for capers, but it's a lot nicer than saying a lot of people just hate them.

I, at least, get along with them well enough. The flavor is sometimes described as pungeant and piquant.

Piquant? Really? To me, this is one of those words that you throw around when you want to sound like you have every right to be talking about whatever it is you're spouting, but really have no idea. In the end, it's just another way of saying something adds that little something, and it's a good something. In a word? Tasty. Such a term may be too pedestrian for the big wigs, but I've yet to grow into mine, and it suits me just fine.

The question remains, though, as to just what a caper is. And what it is, is, is the bud of a plant. Not to be confused with caperberries, which are the actual fruit, and are roughly grape-sized. Capers, on the other hand, range from the size of the end of your pinkie to, say, the size of a BB pellet. As a rule, the smaller, the better.

Unless you're picking up enough to last you through the next apocalypse, you'll find them in a brine, having been dried first. Imagine a little pea looking thing in a jar of salty liquid. Sounds delicious, no? Fine, fine, but stick with me a little longer, we're getting to the good part.

Now that the quick lesson in food anthropology is dealt with (yes, you can put away the pitchforks), we can get on to the point - just what do you do with them?

Capers have found their way into the hearts of a few dishes, at least, acting as a unique flavor element in a sauce (like remoulade) or simply tieing things together as a garnish (try some with gravlox). One dish in particular stood out to me, though, when deciding on how to bring the capers to bear.

Chicken Piccata.

Usually done with a cut of meat that has been pounded flat (escalope, or scalloped) in order to both tenderize and reduce the required cook time, I figured I'd up the anti a bit and turn it into a roulade. That is to say, put stuff inside, roll it up, and slice it. You also cook it somewhere in there, for the record.

To assist the following description, I posit to you the following visual aide; a picture of the end result.



So my photography is even more amateur than my... everything else.  Surprise, surprise.


As you may have figured out, you clever reader you, taking it from a flat cut to a roulade meant I had to fill it with something.  That something decided to be some good grain mustard and fresh tarragon.  A nice compliment to the more sour and high pitched flavors of the lemon and capers?  A method to my madness, it seems, does rear its head on occasion.

After this treatment (with some salt and pepper, of course), it's a simple matter to roll up the chicken, dredge it in flour, and start searing it in a pan.  After a good sear has formed, pop it into the oven to finish cooking.

But where are the capers!  I can hear the cries from here (yes, that does mean I can hear into the future - I'm full of nifty talents like that).  Fear not, for they will bring their powers to bear in the sauce.  And since we're making a pan sauce, we need those delicious chicken drippings to make it happen.

So once the chicken is cooked (and has been given a bit of a rest so that said drippings will... you know... drip), we start on the sauce.  First a bit of lemon so that the acid will pull all those tasty bits from the pan, then some stock (okay, I was using vegetable broth) for bulk.  A bit of mustard, some more fresh tarragon, and yes, the capers (rinsed - remember that brine means they're basically packaged in salt).  Of course, unless you want this to be a nice caper soup poured over the plate, it needs to be thickened. 

Enter what I affectionately refer to as roux pellets.  All you have to do is take a bit of butter, rub a bit of flour into it (about equal parts) and knock it into little balls.  Toss a few of these into the mix, and you'll have something that looks downright edible instead of something you need a straw for.  Note that, as with all things roux, you'll need at least a good simmer to get it to do its thing.

I suppose I should mention that yes, the chicken was plated over a bed of braised collards.  Do you get the details on those?  'Fraid not.  Patience is a virtue, as they say.  I will say, though, that they were rather tasty.

And there you have it.

They said unto me, capers.  And I say unto them, done and done.