Shoulder season, typically the time between a touristy region’s peak and lesser-visited months, has arrived in the Hamptons. Judging from the crowds this past holiday weekend, locals and visitors are discovering all the South Fork has to offer in early spring, enhanced by the visual appeal of flowering trees and early crops arriving at local markets. It’s also when you will see menus beginning to lighten up, perhaps with a bit of comfort remaining to ease the transition.
“As the season for things comes about, that’s when I adapt them to the menu,” says Michael Rozzi chef for 1770 House in East Hampton since 2013. “Right now, we are offering tuna sashimi, which incorporates blood oranges, citrus representing the end of winter, and early spring peas are coming in. We have sweet spring pea soup, and lighter, flakier, tilefish with artichokes.”
While outdoor dining in the garden at 1770 House is not quite optimal yet, Rozzi satisfies those fireside tavern cravings with entrées like black sea bass with chanterelle mushrooms and saffron sauce. “I look at our spring menu as two representations of different looks,” explains Rozzi, “one being weightier, fuller flavored, richer; and then the other lighter, cleaner, and more delicate.”
With these delicious offerings being more than enough reason to dine at 1770 House, the Sunday homebodies in us can also embrace these dual flavors with Rozzi’s recipe for spring sweet pea salad over toast slices of semolina loaf and Mecox Bay Dairy gruyere, bresaola, spring onion, and Milk Pail grape vinaigrette made from einset grapes, a seedless table grape variety grown by 12th generation farmer and pomologist Jennifer Halsey-Dupree.
“It has that salad and bruschetta combination,” says Rozzi of this layered yet light starter, pairing early season onions with the bresaola, the classic Italian delicacy of thinly sliced, air-dried, salted beef from the Valtellina region in northern Italy. The dish also ups the ante with Alpine-style gruyere, sweet spring peas and warm toasted bread. “It all sort of meets in the middle at room temperature,” he says.
While Rozzi chooses to keep with a northern Italian cooler-climate food profile by fermenting his own vinegar using Halsey Farm’s einset table grapes, (“Whenever interesting things sort of show up on Jen Halsey’s produce list, I like to grab ’em,” the chef says) a combination of an excellent white wine vinegar with just a splash of red wine vinegar in it will work in this terrific brunch or a late lunch item.
Pair the complex flavors and textures here with Channing Daughter’s Tocai Friulano (or as winemaker Christopher Tracey calls it, the “quintessential prosciutto wine”) while enjoying the now-quiet shoulder season.
Chef Michael Rozzi’s Spring Sweet Pea Salad
Ingredients
- 2 cups shelled sweet peas, blanched in salted water, shocked in an ice bath, strained dry
- 1 cup hard Gruyere cheese, grated into large shreds
- 1 cup bresaola (dried Alpine style beef tenderloin, prosciutto, or bacon)
- 1/4 cup red bunching spring onion, sliced on the bias (scallions are a good option as well)
- 1 loaf semolina bread with sesame seeds, sliced, brushed with olive oil and lightly toasted
- sea salt, black pepper, pinch of fresh thyme and parsley to taste
Directions
- Lightly toast your bread and arrange two slices on each plate.
- In a mixing bowl combine all the salad ingredients and mix in the dressing, using as much as you like.
- Spoon the salad over the warm bread and drizzle a little more dressing on the plate.
- Garnish with a few pea sprouts when they are available.
