Gluttony Loves Company: What We're Eating These Days

Double Down, Done Right

2012-01-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

In this post, you will learn how to break all boundaries of common decency.

I'd heard of the double down from KFC when it was announced, and I always thought it was a novel innovation but never really cared to try it, because, well, KFC is kinda gross. But recently I discovered that they wern't even doing it right. All this time I thought it was a burger with fried chicken instead of bread for buns. I had no idea it was actually nothing but a bacon sandwich (sort of like a BLT, but with fried chicken) and while that's great, it's falling short of its full potential. Here then is the ultimate double down. And, in keeping with this month's theme, it is more or less paleo (a few places I forgot things but they can be handled with easy substitutions).

The start to any great story begins with bacon. Well, one and a half packages of bacon. Rather than the thick cut stuff, which is delicious, we went for thin strips because from our last burger experiment we knew that the girth of the burger can quickly grow out of control, resulting in an unwieldy sandwich. A few strips were fried extra crisp so they could be crumbled and put into the burger, and the rest were to be used as a topping (and for snacking).

Demonstrating proper chopsticks frying technique.

The night before we brainstormed for an hour on how to improve on the avocado. We came up with the concept of guacamole onion rings. Thick cut onion slices were first dipped in an egg wash, then breaded with a combination of almond meal and coconut flour. Then the raw rings were coated in guacamole (avocados, garlic, shallots, jalapenos, lime, cilantro) and put into the freezer for flash-frying later.

Best thing is, it's paleo! Actually the best thing is it's deep fried and delicious, but it's a selling point.

Of course, hand chopped beef is a must. See previous post for details on how.

This is my version of the training scenes in the Rocky movies, where I chop beef to prepare for fights.

I come bearing gifts.

For the buns, the plan was to use fried chicken breasts. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations indicated that normal chicken breasts would be too thick to make a good burger, so we pounded the breasts thin. This of course had the desirable side effect of making bigger buns, to accommodate bigger burgers.

The meat tenderizer is one of the few kitchen instruments (my industrial stick blender being another) that actually looks more bad-ass than its toolbox equivalent.

Even though the buns were skinless, we nevertheless bought full chicken breasts and skinned them ourselves. We then cut the skins into thin strips and fried them up crisp, also to be used as toppings.

A golden crisp chicken skin strip is worth more than its weight in gold.

Each burger contained: a quarter minced shallot, a pinch of minced jalapeno, a tablespoon of grated Parmesan, one crumbled bacon strip, a dash of Worcestershire, a dash of Tamari (wheat free), and a tablespoon of rendered chicken fat (from frying the skins). And salt and pepper.

I'm really big into even portions.

The beauty of this hand ground beef is much less shrinkage during cooking, for reasons still unclear.

The "buns" were fried first, since they had to be finished under the broiler to melt the cheese into them. The thin breasts were dipped in an egg wash then breaded with a cajun spiced almond meal.

The breasts had to be held down in the frying oil to keep them from curling up.

While the buns are frying, we have time to make the sauce: garlic aioli. With an electric mixer it's quite easy to make. Crush a few cloves of garlic, squeeze the juice of half a meyer lemon, add a teaspoon of cider vinegar and two egg yolks. Beat this at high speed and VERY SLOWLY add a drip of a cup of light olive oil. The first part is most critical as the yolk and oil emulsify and turn a uniform pale yellow. If this doesn't happen and the oil instead beads up, you might as well throw the mix away and start over.

I'm not going to lie, I only make mayonnaise because otherwise that attachment for my mixer goes completely unused.

Now the burgers need to be cooked. While those are going, start the eggs frying. What's best is to take the pan which had the bacon, pour the oil off into a bowl and clean the pan of carbonized bits. Into the bacon fat mix in a spoonful of paprika and a spoonful of red chili. Use this oil to fry the eggs, it will result in wonderfully fragrant smoky eggs.

Note the bowl of spicy, rendered bacon fat, and the buns with cheese ready for the broiler.

When the burgers are just about done, the onion rings need to come out of the freezer to get flash fried. The rings are coated in a beer and coconut flour batter (ok, beer isn't paleo, but beer batter is SO GOOD) and deep fried for about one minute.

By freezing the rings beforehand, we could have a hot golden shell around a cold guacamole inside.

Admire the fruits of 4.5 hours of labor. The Ultimate Double Down: 2/3 lb handmade beef burger. Two fried chicken breast buns with melted Gruyere cheese. Topped with lettuce, tomato, sauteed onions, sauteed mushrooms, bacon strips, crisp chicken skins, a spicy egg, avocado and fresh garlic aioli. Comes on the side with guacamole onion rings.

Everything but the kitchen sink.

My face is the caption.

Burgers Redux

2012-01-02T00:00:00.001-05:00

This blog's been dormant for over a year, and it's time to bring it back. First stop: the paleolithic period, which encompasses a relatively long (by human standards) or short (by velociraptor standards) period of history, between 2.6M years ago to 10K years ago.

In the time between my last post and now, I moved to CA, started a job, graduated from school, and started working out at a Crossfit gym. What's interesting about them is that they all seem to adhere to the "Paleo diet" which is basically eating nothing but meat, veggies and nuts. Now I must admit, I have followed a similar dietary intake for years, eschewing the typical heaping mounds of rice for more meat and veggies (examples here, here, here and here), but as with all things I believe in a degree of moderation. I think the fundamental problem is that diet seems geared toward high performance anaerobic athletes. At least, none of the Olympic-caliber runners and swimmers I've met eat anywhere remotely like this. But me, food is the goal. Working out enables me to eat more. Nevertheless, I decided for this blog reboot I would try to show how it is possible to stick to Paleo principles while eating unhealthy.

So the key step in making a burger: hand-ground beef. The reason? Quality and consistency. Typically, ground meats are made with the trimmings from the various other cuts that are sold. While there's no problem with this per se, you don't exactly get a choice in what sort of meat you're getting. Also, for a store like Whole Foods you're only given two choices: 10% fat or 15% fat. I asked the guy there and he said it was company policy to not offer fattier ground meat (damn hippies). This aside, the main problem with machine ground meat is the consistency. Using a grinder makes the meat homogenous and smooth. Have you ever noticed how a burger tastes nothing like a steak? That's partly because the meat has been almost pureed, and the texture of a burger is entirely different. Finely ground meat puts lots of air the burger, and gives the burger a spongy, bland quality. By actually chopping the meat (don't forget, in French ground beef is haché) you get a varied and more chewy consistency, akin to eating a real steak but shaped in convenient burger form (and without the grain of the meat). So let's dive in.

Step one: buy a nice hunk of meat. In my case, I bought 4 lbs of chuck, which has a nice fatty layer. We've experimented in the past with adding pork fat to the burger to get the juicyness ratio up, but the problem is that if you do that it's dangerous to make a rare burger, since pork needs to be cooked through. So these are going to be all-beef burgers.

Round one: meat intact, starting the first Grimbergen double. Cleaver sharp.

Before diving in to this meat, start the bacon to cook: since paleo people can't eat sugar, you'll need to use an uncured bacon like Beeler's uncured bacon. It's got a subtle smoky flavor and intense burst of pork fattiness that's strong without giving a greasy mouth feel.

One of the better-known forms of pork belly. Don't forget about the Bacon Tax: cook about 20-30% more bacon than you'll need, since some inevitably gets eaten as cooking progresses.

The first step is to cut the meat into small cubes, this is done with a slicing motion with the knife. Try to start with a cross-grain cut, since that typically ends up being more difficult later on.

This is what a paleo loaf of bread looks like.

The first step is small cubes. Hmm, this might evolve into a paleo popcorn recipe later on. Take a break, sharpen the cleaver.

Once the meat is cubed, you'll have to start actually chopping with the cleaver. You'll need to frequently re-steel the blade, or you're quickly get frustrated and need more force than necessary. Then bits of meat and fat fly everywhere. The easiest is to imagine mincing the meat like garlic, but with a heavier hand. You can tell when the meat is "ground" consistency if, when it is scraped off the chopping block, it holds together like a sheet. It took about 40 minutes to get 4 pounds of meat into a giant ball of minced goodness.

This might seem like a lot of work, but keep in mind that in paleo times, folks were struggling to wrap their heads around concepts such as "raft" and "spear" much less "electric meat grinder". Also, on to the second Grimbergen.

Now, set the onions to caramelize. What I like to do is put the lid on for the first 5-8 minutes at medium heat so that the onions sweat a little and wilt, so that there's more contact with the pan. Then turn the heat up and take the lid off, so the liquid burns away and the sugars caramelize (but it's the onion's OWN sugar, so it's still paleo!) giving the nice golden color.

Toward the end frequent stirring is necessary if a uniform golden color is desired.

While the onions are doing their thing, prepare the mix-ins for the burgers. It's a bit like Coldstone, but delicious. In these burgers we've got: grated Parmesan cheese, finely minced shallots, jalapenos, crumbled bacon, and butter. The Parmesan cheese is strictly for the umami (うま味) or natural MSG, and gives a flavor enhancement. The shallots likewise aid in giving the burger a savory taste without imparting any strong flavor. The japalenos are for kick, and the bacon and butter are self-explanatory.

By making nice equal piles for each burger, we lessen the chances of spontaneous fights at the dinner table over who got more what. Two Grimbergens down, add a Bear Republic Racer 5.

Individually putting the patties on foil allows easy application to a hot grill pan. Each patty is a little under a pound.

For the buns, we've got giant-ass Portobello mushrooms. Often relegated to meat-substitution roles, the Portobello mushroom is actually the quintessential bun. First observation: when cooked, the Portobello stays together yet supple, even with juices everywhere. A normal bun, even if toasted, falls apart when exposed to the bursting juices of a well-made burger. The typical scenario: you get your burger on a plate open faced, ready to be customized. You put your condiments on the burger, close it, and pick it up. Already the side of the bun under the meat patty has turned into a soggy mush, ready to fall to pieces. This doesn't happen with a Portobello. Second observation: the Portobello is naturally concave inside, which aids in trapping all the delicious extras inside, maintaining the overall burger integrity.

This looks oddly alien. The caps were roasted on both sides so that the juice could drain out.

The end product: a 1 pound handmade burger stuffed with butter, bacon and jalapenos. A Portobello mushroom bun. Burger is topped with tomatoes, lettuce, bacon strips, avocados, caramelized onions, melted Camembert cheese, wasabi mayo and a fried egg. Goes great with a Rogue Chocolate Stout (not Rogue like the gym equipment but the brewery).

Chuck Norris doesn't always eat burgers, but when he does, he eats this burger.

Burger stayed intact and structurally sound throughout the eating process. When Charlie Sheen talks about winning, he's describing a pale approximation of this feeling.

Portland, Oregon: 4 Awesome Days

2010-11-07T16:36:00.000-05:00

My friend Ajay recently finished his PhD (how's that work?) and so he and his wife moved to Hillsboro to take a job at Intel working on, well, being a badass mostly. So after months of promising, I finally found a weekend in my own mad dash to the finish to go visit them. Turns out that was a good call. Upon arriving late Thursday night, I was greeted with two adorable kitties. They're siblings.

While the kitties were sleeping, Ajay made a quick batch of Dosas to go with the leftover chicken curry and coconut chutnet in the fridge. This also began the case of 12 bottles of Delirium over the course of the weekend.

He also promised to show me how to make the Dosas from scratch. To begin, you need to soak some rice and some daal (turns out it's called Urad Daal) in equal quantities in water overnight. The Delirium didn't go in this.

The next day we went for a walk in downtown Portland. Turns out, that being on a river and all, there are a lot of bridges.

But cities are not all about bridges, there's a pretty awesome little intersection, at SW Alder St and SW 10th Ave, that's just a huge collection of food trucks. Here's our haul for three people.

We begin with bacon cheezeburger dumplings. Yes, succulent little morsels filled with beef, bacon, cheez, and onions.

Next is vegetarian Peruvian fried rice. I gotta be honest, I didn't get the Peruvian part of this, just seemed a bit like fried rice with a lot of soy sauce and spice. But it was good.

A spicy pork Banh Mi. We told them to make our mouths burn off, but it hardly registered, I guess they thought we were bluffing. Even after seeing how Indian Ajay is, too bad they didn't believe us. But it was tasty because the bread was very fresh and toasty.

Thai food. Actually, we got this because we were waiting for the Peruvian fried rice, and Miss Wang wanted one of the Thai iced teas, but then we felt bad for insisting they add no ice, so we bought some food too.

Korean BBQ. When we asked the ladies working inside if it were possible to have an all-meat platter (as opposed to rice too) they kinda gave us a look like, well ok since we don't get this request often but don't tell your friends. Ooops.

Fried Haddock from the Frying Scotsman. Probably some of the best fish & chips I've ever had. Ajay hates fish, and he loved this. We had a choice of Cod, Halibut, and Haddock, and he battered and fried it on the spot, which is why it took a little longer but was well worth the wait.

After stumbling home, we continued with the Dosa batter. The first thing is to pour the rice and daal into a blender, in this case a Blendtec. When the thing turns on it sounds like you're on the tarmac at the airport.

After liquifying the stuff, mix it all together thoroughly one more time in a big bowl. Put the mixture, covered, in a warm oven overnight for the starch to ferment a bit.

While this is going on, relax the rest of the night with a Delirium. Cat's got the right idea.

Saturday morning, we decided to start with a good Indian breakfast: fresh idyappam, egg curry and these small sweet things that I have no idea what they're called. To make the egg curry, fry cumin and mustard seeds in hot oil until they start to pop. Then add a whole pile of chopped onions, and reduce the onions to a paste. Add some coriander and garam masala (homemade by Miss Wang!) and red chili powder, although it's not strictly necessary. Once the paste is reduced, you add halved hard boiled eggs.

Our plan for Saturday night was to have Ali over for dinner, so in the morning I started by browning a whole leg of New Zealand lamb in a stock pot. Once it browned, I added wine and chicken stock and let it simmer for hours.

To the simmering meat, I added some fresh herbs: rosemary and thyme, along with some whole cloves of garlic.

In the meantime, Ajay was making the Idyappam: first you made a rice flour and water paste, then put it through this contraption that makes thin streams of dough. This stuff goes, with some shredded coconut, into the steamer trays shown here.

Oh hai.

We had some leftover dough so Miss Wang made a sweet: balls of dough filled with a chutney of mashed cashews, rasins, sugar, and coriander. They were kinda like Indian mochi.

To round out the meal, Ajay made coffee his way, which is instant coffee made with milk and sugar instead of water.

After breakfast/brunch/lunch, we checked on the dough, and while it had risen, it wasn't quite ready so we went and walked the cat.

Yeah, it's pretty unclear where they got the idea this was cool with the cat. The fact that they actually had to buy a harness for a chihuahua and adapt it should have clued them in.

By the evening, the dough had risen sufficiently that it was ready to make the Idlys and dosas. Idlys are made in the same steamer contraption, but the dough is different.

By now, the meat had completely fallen from the bone and was just simmering nicely. Mmmm, a pot of braised lamb. It's like medical grade morphine. To this I added whole peeled tomatoes, some salt and pepper, and let that stew down some more.

While I was finishing up the lamb ragu and putting the pumpkin bread in the oven, Ali and Rachel had come over and we started on the Idlys and chutney. This chutney is very simple but delicious: unsweetened coconut, minced green chilis and minced shallots.

Here's the main course, lamb ragu on fresh egg pasta.

After dinner was the pumpkin bread, which amazingly turned out just right. It's hard to get baked goods just right in someone else's oven the first time.

After that giant meal it'd seem prudent to take a break from food, but Sunday morning we were right back at it. Ajay took me to an awesome tiny Taqueria in Hillsboro, Taqueria Ochoa.The menu offered all sorts of food with 7 different kinds of meat: Carne Asada, Carnitas, Pollo, Mole, Lengua, Tripa, Chorizo. We got lots of everything.

I forget what these are called, but it's basically a pile of meat on fried dough. $3 each.

Here's the real win though: $1 soft tacos, that come basically as fast as you order them. Out of all the meats, the best I thought was the carnitas: super juicy, succulent pork that was exploding with flavor. Anyway, we got 16 soft tacos.

After this epic Sunday brunch, Ajay and Miss Wang went off looking for houses, so Ali picked me up and we went to have a snack: Voodoo Donuts, in SW Portland. The line is insane, but the colorful locals keep your mind off the wait. In this box we have a maple bacon eclair, a mango risen donut, a boston cream pie, an old fashioned risen, a chocolate glazed risen, a plain cake, and a devil's food cake. My favorite was (surprise!) not the maple bacon, but the devil's food cake. Oh, we ate all but one of these in the time it took to drive from Voodoo to Cascade Barrel House.

A few sour beers later, I was ready to rejoin Ajay at a Lebanese restaurant, Nicholas' Restaurant. Ajay tried to warn, but we ordered too much anyway. Starting with a giant flatbread,

Some delicious tabouleh and falafel in fresh hummus, with a pool of olive oil:

A giant skewer of meat with grilled onions and tomatoes.

And finally, a crispy pastry.

We returned home completely full and satisfied. We couldn't even attempt to try the pastries (too full) so we brought them home. Monday morning, we thought about going a bit easier for breakfast, so we cooked something simple: Ajay and Miss Wang made some typical breakfast items from home. Miss Wang made a rolled omelet, which consisted of a scallion pancake (葱油饼) covered with two beaten eggs, some shredded cheese and shredded pork (肉松) then rolled up and sliced.

Ajay made something he said is often served in train cars. It's an omelet with fried green chilis and shallots, served with white bread. It's meant to be quite spicy.

Monday night we were going to meet up with Ajay's coworkers from Intel, but we got hungry and couldn't wait, so we ducked into Deschutes Brewery, for some wings and burgers. Apparently this time of year is the hop harvest season, so there were some interesting seasonal brews.

When we finally met up with them, at Henry's Tavern, all we had room for was to split a big hotdog.

The End. And yes, that is a snuggie.

Home Ground, Grilled, and Consumed Burgers

2010-10-28T12:42:00.000-04:00

Much fuss has been roused recently by doctors, dietitians, experts, and not so experts on the dangers of red meat. That might be all true, these people all know a lot more than I do, but no matter what they say it won't change the fact that red meat is delicious. So what's a healthy carnivore to do? Well, as much as I love burgers and steaks, it's just too expensive to eat them every day anyway, so it's more of a special occasion thing anyway. And when I do have them, I like to make them so good that I forget for a moment that it's probably killing me. And by using good ingredients, hopefully it's a little less toxic than it might otherwise be. This is how it's done.

First, a good burger has bacon. So let's cook up some bacon.

Now, burgers are lonely all alone. They like to be with friends. So let's marinate some of their friends before continuing on so that they won't be all alone come chow time.

Now, to get on with the burger itself. We decided to try grinding the meat by hand, like back in the day. I once had a pasta sauce in Italy from some tiny mom and pop lunch spot, and the hand-chopped meat was so succulent and tender I figured the secret was in the preparation. So we start with cubes of beef with a little pork thrown in, and start chopping.

While one of us is chopping the meat, we also want to add some other goodies to the burgers, including caramelized onions.

Here's the breakdown of the burgers. The burgers contained minced shallots, jalapenos, cubes of butter, and crumbled bacon bits.

On the grill, the bits of fat and butter makes for some nice flare-ups. Which adds flavor to the corn on the side.

Once they're done, it never hurts of course to add more bacon, and onions.

And here is the glorious, finished final product. The result: a burger that has wonderful texture variation, thanks to the hand-chopped meat, and bursting with the flavors of the add-ins (like ColdStone, but done right) all highlighted by the richness of butter.

Quickbreads

2010-03-13T23:23:00.000-05:00

As the name suggests, quickbreads are those that don't need time to rise, replacing yeast with a leavening agent such as baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or hartshorn (ammonium bicarbonate, traditionally extracted from deer, hence the name). Interestingly enough, in the US most people my age have never seen ammonia used for baking, but in Europe it is still quite easy to find and gives finished products a distinctive pungency.

It was recently remarked that I'm a lot more confident at the stove than in the oven (something is wrong with those prepositions) meaning that I seem to have a much better idea of what I'm doing with savory and cooked dishes than baked and sweet. This is true, not having much of a sweet tooth myself, the only time I really bake is for others. There are however a handful of sweets that I do enjoy making and eating, and banana bread is one of them. I can't count the number of times I've made it, I've even made it in America, France, Italy, and Switzerland! And, as last night showed, I can get a loaf into the oven in about the same time it takes to uncork a bottle of wine and pour it. Without further ado:

In ONE bowl, throw, in order,

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter (oil, grapeseed is good)
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
dash of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder (sprinkle the last two all over)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

with a fork, mix this as little as possible while getting rid of major lumps. The secret is that with baking, overmixing batter messes with the gluten proteins, giving the finished product a hard, chewy consistency. That's why often you're instructed to mix the liquids and drys separately, to get homogeneity without imparting chewiness. But if you add the ingredients in the right order, you can mix the liquids first and then bring the flour in later, so you get a nice spongy loaf without having to clean two bowls. Nevertheless, less stirring you do, the better. Let the batter sit for 5 minutes if you can, otherwise if you're going for a speed record immediately mash in 2 or 3 really ripe bananas. How ripe? Basically, if your roomates aren't trying to throw the bananas out when you're not looking, they aren't ripe enough. If you want, throw in half a cup of chopped walnuts or chocolate chips. Now for the real secret: parchment paper. With parchment paper, the loaf comes out perfectly, no torn corners, no buttering or oiling the pan. Leave the batter in the pan, in the oven, for 50 minutes at 350. This is more or less what you ought to see when it comes out.

Roasting a Ducky

2010-02-07T20:26:00.000-05:00

Those of you of tougher constitution who haven't managed to block out the horrific scene that was my stock making incident last year recall that I used many a cow product. Well, turns out that not everyone takes kindly to cow products, which means I'm at it again, whipping up another batch of stock this time of the feathered origin. But more on that later.

I was walking around whole foods one Sunday and I saw a whole duck, all nicely wrapped up. If it were not for the fact that it cost $20, I would have bought it on the spot. Instead, I bought a whole chicken for $5 to practice roasting a bird. I haven't done a whole bird in ages, and I sure didn't want to ruin an expensive, delicous duck.

That very night, I roast and ate the entire bird. Turns out I can still make a tasty bird. Also turns out I can still eat a lot. Emboldened by my previous night's success, I returned the next day to Whole Foods. On approaching the poulty section, I actually said out loud, "Your turn now, ducky" which earned me an odd glance. Here's the duck after having been legally acquired and brought home.

I'm not sure which part bothers me more, the "excellent" part of the "young" part.

My preparation was simple. Place a bed of sliced onions in a glass baking dish, stuff the cavity with onions and a few orange slices, and pat the skin with salt and pepper.

I started the oven at 450 for 20 minutes, then lowered to 350 for the remainder of the baking time. While this was in the oven, I filled a stock pot with the carcass from the night before (gross as it might be, at least I'm not wasting anything!) and the duck neck bone.

While this was going, in a stroke of perfect timing Ajay came back, and made some Uttapam.

About the time these were done, the duck came out of the oven, all browned and crispy.

Together, these made a delicious meal. It was sorta like eating a super ethnic fusion version of Peking duck.

New York: Gus and Gabriel's Gastropub

2010-02-05T17:56:00.000-05:00

It seems to be a fad among restaurateurs these days to take something basic, simple and comforting like macaroni and cheese and "gentrify" it as if somehow in its original incarnation it doesn't belong on the menu of a fancy restaurant. Another fad is to take street food from various regions and embellish it, serve a portion a quarter the size and charge double the price. Both of these practices, in my opinion, are exercised by those people who completely miss the point. That being said, there is no harm in trying variations on timeless classics, and this is where I principally diverge from the recent New York Times review of Gus & Gabriel Gastropub.

Having exhausted the usual UWS offerings (at least those reasonably priced), a friend and I recently chanced upon the Gastropub, which occupies an unassuming nook between Amsterdam and Broadway on 79th street. Aside from a decidedly odd name (it reminds me alternately of either a curious stomach ailment or some grommet to prevent plumbing from leaking) the interior is very well thought out, and makes an otherwise narrow, claustrophobic space cozy without being oppressive. The service is awful; it's never been clear to me how servers in New York get it in their heads that they can behave in a way so contrary to the title of their position, but here is no exception, and this was proven no fluke as the second time I came on a different night it was more or less the same story.

We were feeling hungry but indecisive (the feeling had carried over from earlier in the evening trying to choose where to dine, I suppose) so we eschewed the normal app+main routine and ordered practically every appetizer to share between us. This meant we got Arugula and Frisée Salad, Potato Leek Soup, Nachos (for two), Paella, and Bone Marrow.

The salad was decent but I have yet to feel like I ever get my money's worth with a salad from a restaurant. You get suspicious when the plate is heavier than all the food on it.

My problem with this soup, and this applies to almost all soups that I don't make at home, is that it was way too rich. I understand that "Creamy" Potato Leek soup has some implications to the texture or consistency of the product, but it doesn't necessarily have to become a cream and butter laden affair. The thinly sliced crisp sweet potatoes on top were a nice touch though.

Nachos are, by definition, awesome. Nachos made with house-fried tortilla chips are twice as awesome. These nachos were almost as good as those at Amsterdam Cafe, our default nacho joint. They get points for using shredded pork instead of ground beef, as well as exercising restraint with the amount of cheese. However, and this relates to my rant above, there is just something too neat about these nachos. Nachos should be sloppy, messy, and to some extent greasy. These had all the right characteristics, just not quite enough. Keep in mind though that we are real connoisseurs of nachos, and by all normal standards these are excellent.

The paella was okay with a major caveat--it came in a porcelain bowl, which means no bits of burned rice on the bottom! There wasn't that much either, which is excusable because this is an appetizer.

The real coup of the evening was getting Ada, a reasonable vegetarian (I don't know any unreasonable vegetarians, this is a personal choice) to try bone marrow! The succulent fatty marrow was served with thick slices of fresh red onion, a masterful touch, atop the most butter-rich toast I have ever eaten. I don't know how they got all that butter into such small slices of bread. They reminded me of those TV commercials for kids cereals where they advertise how much flavor they can cram into those tiny morsels of sugared corn meal. Each slice of toast had a substantial heft, from all the molten butter.

Needless to say, Ada wasn't a fan of the marrow. But she tried it. I secretly maintain that her recent performance in the Miami half marathon (1:39, 3rd place in age group) is partially attributable to the bone marrow she ate. But don't tell her that.

San Francisco: SQPR - Or How We Killed a Whole Farm

2009-12-25T00:44:00.004-05:00

I was recently in Princeton Junction, New Jersey at my friend Nancy's home. I asked her why it's called Princeton Junction (as opposed to Princeton, nearby) and she explained that it's really West Windsor, except having "Princeton" in your name makes property values go up, so people like it. Really? That's kinda sad. Even the NJTransit station in Princeton Junction says West Windsor on the overhead sign.

Anyway, as Nancy and I were cooking and eating blueberry sourdough pancakes, an apple pie and a pumpkin pie, her family came home and Nancy introduced me to her grandma as a "guy who can cook, but also can eat" in Chinese. Besides being extremely flattering, this reminded me to post a recent food adventure we had in San Francisco.

This Christmas, I got a whole 4 days off, and for this vacation I went home to Berkeley. I always arrive at SFO, so this time instead of going straight home I took BART and then a bus to meet Nancy at SPQR, a trendy Italian restaurant on Filmore street. Even though it was Tuesday night, we needed a reservation which Nancy's friend kindly provided, as she works there and managed to finagle us a spot at 8pm. I was in disbelief that one needed a reservation on a Tuesday night in San Francisco, but sure enough all attempts to seat ourselves at 7:50pm failed, and we were advised to return in 10 minutes. When we did come back at 8pm, we had to wait longer still during which time we perused the wine list, which featured solid entries but nothing extraordinary. The menu, however, is noteworthy. Unlike menus at similarly priced restaurants, which are usually sparse and formatted like a Dick & Jane novel (three sentences per page, quadruple spaced) the menu at SPQR had a great variety of options, all densely packed on a single side of paper. Without further ado, here is our selection, aided by recommendations from our very amicable waiter and including a few gifts from the chef, apparently because we were friends of the restaurant.

Chopped chicken liver, balsamic vinegar, warren pear jam & crostino

This came as a surprise, and set the tone nicely. I haven't had many experiences with liver aside from foie gras, which isn't out of avoidance simply happenstance. The pâté was tasty, if not a bit heavy on the vinegar, which undercut the richness a bit. Although I suppose that turned out to be a good thing, given the marathon of eating which lay in store.

Burrata, peperonata, watercress & aged balsamic vinegar

I've waxed on about burrata in the past, so there's no need here. I will say that the appetizer properly utilized the burrata in that it was very light on the vinegar, so there were no dominant flavors, allowing the subtle creaminess of the burrata through. Another nice touch was the crisp crunchiness of the watercress in contrast with the luscious burrata. Burrata is hard to go wrong, but it takes skill to really bring it out.

Pork belly ‘croccante’, pickled pullia peppers & gremolata

If anything, our two appetizer choices were cop-outs, in that honestly, a chef has to try pretty hard to go wrong with either burrata or pork belly. Still, this is not a typical Italian cut of meat, so it was worth the shot. I recently read an interview with a chef who lamented that pork belly has become a fad, and it needs to go. That may be all good and true as I have seen it pop up on a number of western menus, but until I see a dish that gets pork belly like the Chinese and Vietnamese can, I don't see why they shouldn't keep trying. As they say, "Don't sell the bike shop, Orville" (I'll send a $10 Jamba Juice gift card to whomever gets that reference right, in the comments) Suffices to say, this was tasty, but didn't capture the essence of pork belly. In order to get it croccante, it also lost a lot of its melt-in-your-mouth smoothness, ending up like a chunk of bacon. Which isn't bad. But then don't call it pork belly.

Maccheroni, braised duck leg ragu & cavolo nero

I recently made a duck leg ragu myself, and in my opinion it was a pretty good duck ragu (even going so far as to make the orange-infused pasta by hand) so I wanted to see how I stacked up. The first bite said that I was way outclassed, that this was a far superior dish, but as I continued to eat I changed my mind a bit. Each bite was indeed bursting with flavor, but it was hard to pinpoint any flavors in particular. By the end, it just tasted salty. So while this dish was more flavorful, because it was just a lot of flavor, without some sort of theme or inspiration, I didn't think it was as good as it could have been.

Red wine risotto, partridge, partridge egg & alba mushrooms

This was my least favorite dish. Upon seeing the dish, I immediately knew there was more than red wine making the dish so richly red; it was colored with beets, and I hate beets. I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but beets gross me out. I think it might have to do with the fact that they are evil, but to me beets are sickly sweet to the point of tasting rancid, and even though the partridge eggs were a savory delight I couldn't avoid the overpowering beets in every bite. It was so strong I don't know why they bothered with the red wine, none of the usual flavors one gets with risotto came through.

Lamb shoulder, chestnuts, mushrooms, parsnip & dandelion leaves

Even though the photo makes it look like the food was applied to the plate by an overzealous four year old, in normal lighting it did look elegant. The parsnip was very nice in offsetting the richness of the lamb reduction coating everything, giving the dish some balance. If there was anything I learned about SPQR, they are very liberal with the salt, and lamb being a powerful flavor in and of itself, to be able to discern individual flavors at all one needed to take generous helpings of the parsnip with each bite. But, the lamb flaked with a fork, was juicy and tender and everything I'd look for in a chunk of meat.

Veal sweetbreads, braised winter vegetables & castelvetrano olives

Unfortunately for PETA, my conscience, and most importantly calves, this was my favorite dish. The sweetbreads were breaded and fried, as per tradition, except unlike the rest of everything else, they were not over salted. The crunchy shell kept the interior succulent and dripping with juice; this is the texture the pork belly was striving for. The winter vegetables, with consisted of a variety of squashes and potatoes, were even a bit bland, which is to say perfect. I think a good meal needs variety in all aspects, even the intensity of flavors, and given everything thus far has been bursting with flavor, some delicate vegetables set a nice balance.

Chocolate baci & mascarpone cream

This was a demi-order from the chef, a gift when we thought we couldn't eat any more. Each bacio was topped with a dollop of a mascarpone-enriched cream, belying the small size with again, a burst of flavor. Usually I am very particular about chocolate, but what made this fantastic is the fact that besides the beet risotto, which I didn't eat much of anyway, all the tastes tonight were savory. So a burst of rich chocolate was just right.

All in all, SPQR was a fantastic eating experience. Although it may seem like I was fairly critical of several dishes, one thing to keep in mind is I usually don't even eat at Italian restaurants in the states at all. Given the abundance of good food I'd grown accustomed to in Italy, I have very high standards and the issues I took with the food had as much to do with our menu selection as the way the dishes were prepared. Best of all, all this good food is served in a bustling but very down-to-earth atmosphere that is welcoming (once you find a seat) and unpretentious.

Pesto n' Pasta

2009-11-21T22:34:00.003-05:00

Next weekend I'm having something of a cook-off against someone who makes a most delicious brownie. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of anything but pure, dark chocolate squares, so for me to be positive at all about this brownie is remarkable, and enthusiastically so is frightening. So it stands to reason that I'm up against stiff competition, and I'm going to need to bring my A-game. Who talks about their A-game when referring to the kitchen? No one. Now my typical attitude toward cooking is improvise on-the-fly, read the manual only when necessary, but I realized that with so much at stake, I should stick with things I've either done before or at the very least practice a bit beforehand.

At home we have one of those hand-crank Italian doohickeys. It's a bear to setup and clean, but it sure makes pasta making easy. Seriously, the hurdy gurdy man's monkey could make pasta with this thing. Even so, before these things came around people (particularly the Asians), have been making exceptionally fine noodles for ages. I thought, since I don't have this contraption here anyway, and I want to make a particular type of pasta, better practice now or risk shame later.

Since I was only making a single serving, I just kneaded two eggs and a bit over a cup of flour into a ball. I kept kneading and adding flour until I got a nice resilient ball, the viscosity of play-doh. Then I divided this into two, and let it sit for an hour. In the meantime, since I didn't want to make the actual sauce I was going to make next weekend (too much prep, I'm exhausted and lazy) I opted for a simple pesto.

Pesto, at least as we know it in America, is actually pesto ligure, or pesto genovese to be exact. It's basil, olive oil (regional), garlic, pine nuts, and a hard cheese. Several Italians have explained to me that the Ligurian basil is unique and that's why that sauce became so famous within Italy. It's traditionally served atop trofie, which is an egg-less pasta that resembles little bits of twisted rope, whose nooks and crannies make perfect carriers for the light sauce. But this isn't the only pesto around. Akin to how curry just means "sauce" to Indians, or how wódka means "water" to Poles (I wouldn't crack that joke if literally every Pole I met while I was there didn't make that joke for me) the composition of pesto varies regionally in Italy. According to my Il Grande Ricettario, among the dozen variations of pesto given, pesto alla trapanese contains some hazelnuts and tomatoes, while pesto siciliano has almonds. One of my favorite pestos, and I can't remember where it originates, is made with pistachios. Anyway, I didn't have fresh basil, but I did have fresh Arugula for a salad I was going to make. So, while the dough was settling, I gathered the ingredients you see below:

a large chunk of grana, a parmesean-like cheese (think of it as sparkling wine to champagne)
three small cloves of garlic
a bunch of arugula leaves
some walnuts
EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil, damn Rachel Ray)
salt to taste (but careful, some cheese is very salty)

I do have pine nuts, but walnuts actually go better with arugula in my opinion, as they both have a subtle astringency. The other important point to make, as was made to me the first time I cooked with an Italian, is that the garlic is best not overdone. In the past I used garlic like a Keralan uses coconut--Kerala being, according to Wikipedia, a possible mis-portmanteau of the words "coconut" and "land" no joke--and it's a total waste of every other ingredient you put in the dish. The other point that's worth making is although I have a cusinart blender, there's something about the uniformity of machine-blended pesto that's unappealing to me. I prefer to have coarse, hand-minced texture variations in my pesto. Anyway, once that's all mashed up it's time to pour the EVOO and mash with a mortar and pestle, or lacking that the back of a mini ladle.

The mashing process is really important as it really brings the juices out of the arugula leaves. For that reason pesto is even tastier a few days after it's made, once the flavors have had a chance to mingle.

While that's sitting, and the arugula is working up the courage to ask the arugula to dance while the walnuts and cheese are already moshing in the middle of the floor, it's time to roll out the pasta. First, liberally flour the surface and rolling pin, then work the dough ball out into a thin, flat sheet. Thickness to preference, but this dough will stretch back quite a bit so the thinner the better.

Now, using a long Japanese sashimi knife I did my best to cut tagliatelle, which is about the next width up from fettuccine.

Already I could see the pasta was way too thick, which both validates my urge to practice now and makes me nervous to try this at the main event. Knowing just how much the dough likes to retract, I can pre-compensate by rolling the sheets even thinner, but I don't know how good I'll be at handling them. Homemade pasta is only as impressive as it doesn't suck. Anyway all cooked up and dressed with pesto, it looked something like this.

So what did I learn? Apparently I have to go to great lengths to invent reasons why I am making pasta, whereas in truth I'm probably just carbo-loading for a 4M race I've got tomorrow. What? Ridiculous, I don't even believe in carbo-loading.

Stock Up and Save!

2009-11-14T11:33:00.003-05:00

A good cook isn't measured by how much foie gras he/she can stuff into one dish, or their creative use of gold flakes as garnish for a dessert; those speak surely to the creativity of the cook, but the true measure of a cook lies in the basics. Marinara, beurre blanc, pickled radish, flash-sautéed shrimp all basic dishes in various cuisines and also reliable metrics of the competence of a cook in the respective cuisine.

I was recently at a French diner where the steak sauce, besides containing unreasonable amounts of butter, had a wonderfully robust flavor and it was due not to the herbals that gave it fragrance, but the richness of the meat stock on which it was based (you can't say anything in French cooking is butter-based, that's doesn't tell anything at all). This all came back to me the Sunday after dinner when I was walking by a butcher stall at an outside market, and on the spur of the moment I asked, "Do you have bird carcasses and rendered duck fat?" Why yes they did, and so swinging by Whole Foods for marrow bones on the way home I'd amassed quite the collection of meaty products.

With hobbies like this, I probably have a hard time making friends.

My mom is a firm believer in the scientific fact that certain flavors are hydrophillic (water soluble) and others are hydrophobic (oil based). So, to bring out the latter, before boiling all this good stuff in water I threw it all in a pan,

I hear the kid across the hall in 3B is looking for his pet.

fried it for 10 minutes in a generous helping of duck fat, then tossed the whole pile into the broiler for the same, resulting in a nicely browned pile of meats and meat juices.

On top I garnished with some rosemary, thyme, marjoram, pepper, and sage. All this went into a big stock pot with two onions, some carrots and a stalk of celery and boiled for days. Seriously, four days.

It looks like a Michael Bay movie in there.

During this time, I constantly skimmed the fat off the top, saving it all in an empty yogurt container (empty being redundant here, I'm not sure what sort of fellow would pour liquid meat fat on top of yogurt) and easily filling one and a half quart-sized yogurt containers. Yikes!

Around day four of this involved affair I decided I wanted to have short ribs for dinner, so I went and bought two packages of oxtails, a pile of lamb bones, and pork short ribs and threw them all in as well.

After an hour of boiling all together, I took the pork ribs out, ate them, then threw the bones back in. Come on, it's going to boil for another three days, it's all good.

After adding the lamb bones I noticed the stock took a much more pungent aroma, so to partially counter this I added two thick slices of ginger and two cloves of garlic. Problem solved.

On Saturday morning, I took all the bones out, leaving another macabre scene at my kitchen.

If this turns your stomach, grave robbing is not for you.

Now that most of the solid matter was gone, I needed to do a final skimming to make sure I got all the fat out. To do that, I added more water, boiled then let it cool. The fat rose to the surface and solidified, where it's easy to pick off. While I was waiting for that to happen, I did another experiment; are pancakes better when made with one egg or two? To answer this, I made two identical pancake batters (flour, baking powder, salt, buttermilk powder, eggs (1 or 2) pinch of sugar, dollop of whole yogurt, and milk for consistency).

I think I like them more with two. With just one, the pancakes were more cake-like, crumbly and delicate. With two, they had a much more substantial, dense feeling. The texture of breads is also very dependent on how long the flour is mixed (has to do with proteins in gluten) so I tried to do the same for both, but I suspect I mixed the two egg batter a bit longer. After our little pancake diversion, I did the final skimming and also strained the stock for all remaining solids.

I think I just made PETA's top 10 most wanted list.

After boiling for another hour, the several quarts of stock was reduced to a thick, concentrated brown syrup. I let this cool a few, then poured it into an ice cube tray. This way, I have easy-to-use quanta of yummy meat goodness.

How do you fit 10kg of meat in an ice cube tray?

Well, that pretty much sums up a week's adventure of making meat stock. Hopefully these 14 cubes will last me a while. Now just what do I do with a quart and a half of animal fat...

Yakiniku, from Harlem and France

2009-11-08T00:40:00.001-05:00

Yakiniku, or 焼肉 for our Kanji loving audience, means grilled meat. Well, that pretty much sums up this post. I'm off to eat more grilled meat.

Starting over, the other weekend I had the opportunity (curse?) of driving my friend's car in the city, ostensibly to go buy large items from Target across the Hudson in New Jersey which would otherwise be impossible to haul home on the subway. The problem is, on the way to Target in Edgewater we passed by Mitsuwa, a large Japanese marketplace. So on the way back, primary objective complete, we stopped and I raided the place for everything I remembered from childhood, hanging out in the kitchen with grandma. But I also had a secret agenda. A few days before this weekend errand excursion, Ajay, a labmate and I were discussing the difference between Yakitori, Yakiniku, and Korean BBQ. Me, being the worst part-Japanese in the world, had the least to offer to the conversation, which was held between an Indian, a Taiwanese, and myself. I am ashamed. This conversation naturally made us think of having a grill session in the near future, which all came back to me as I stood in the aisle of Kobe and Wagyu beef neatly packaged in Styrofoam trays. $94 later, I walked out of Mitsuwa supremely happy with myself.

The next night, Ajay, Shih-An and I gathered around the electric grill my grandmother thoughtfully got for me when I moved into this apartment, a year and a half ago. That cooking utensil has without a doubt gotten the most use out of all the other gadgets in our kitchen. All unwrapped, the spread looked like this:

The more I look at this, the more I realize we're sick people.

All in all, we had an Unagi to be broiled, two packages of regular beef chuck steak, a package of Wagyu sirloin, one Kobe chuck and two Kobe tri-tips.

First, we went about it in a civilized fashion, cooking individual pieces with slices of Negi, or Japanese scallion. We also had a package of shishito peppers, which we put on the cooler portion of the grill.

An electric grill that makes nice grill marks? Yes please.

We consumed the meat with Yakiniku sauce, which is a soy based dipping sauce with sesame, citrus juices and spices. The higher quality beef was so finely marbled I could almost describe it as biting into beef cheesecake; it had the buttery smoothness of filet mignon, but a lot fattier. Mmm beef cheesecake...

A piece of tri-tip in it's last few seconds on earth.

We finished off by wrapping the scallions in pieces of the lesser-quality beef (which were still delicious, being intrinsically fatty and meaty) to make Negimaki, something my grandma used to make all the time.

There has to be some colorful metaphor to describe what my kitchen looked like after we were done. Something involving wildebeests, lions and a hyena or two, but truth be told it was pretty gruesome in the way a morgue is spotless. We consumed everything.

So wrapping up the Harlem part of our adventure, later on in the week Kent and I decided to check out a restaurant that was recently featured in the NY Times, Le Relais de Venise - L'Entrecôte. The history of this joint is summed up nicely on the main page, so best check it out. Or evening there began at 8:30pm on a Friday night, which is probably the worst time to be looking for a bite in New York city. But, thanks to the efficiency with which this place herds people through the entire dining experience, we only waited 5 minutes before being directed to our table in between a group of boisterous Brits and a French couple (and their new iMac). True to form, the waitress in her maid's outfit asked us only how done we'd like our steak, wrote our responses on our paper tablecloth (rare), and brought us glasses of the house wine.

Not being a connoisseur of wine, I can't say much intellegent about it other than it didn't offend my palate. It's the wine that motivated the whole inception of the restaurant, and it's from Toulouse so I guess it's a bit like a Bordeaux. Let's just say it was drinkable, and leave the second pass analysis for the professionals.

The salad came shortly thereafter, a mid-sized pile of romaine leaves and walnuts, slathered in a mayonaise-thick dressing. In my best guess, the dressing was olive oil, dijon mustard, cider vinegar, marjoram and thyme. It tasted great, except it was way too thick and in order to coat every leaf they had to put on way too much, so when all the leaves were gone the plate was coated in an unappetizing slime.

What's this shrubbery doing at a steakhouse?

Between the salad and main course came a 10 minute pause, and I couldn't tell if it was intentional or not. I'm leaning toward not, since all the waiters did look extremely harried as if they were barely keeping up. I didn't mind the break, as up until now it had felt like the Model-T of dining; assembly line efficient and no options for variety. Anyway, after our brief intermission, where our expectations (and hunger) rose a few notches, our plates arrived.

The main course, a meager few slices of meat in the establishment's "secret sauce" accompanied by a pile of freshly fried potatoes. The meat was cooked exactly as we requested, which being a skirt steak isn't too tall an order, and just the right texture. The sauce, while not exactly understated, wasn't as overpowering as I had feared. As you can see from the photo, if the sauce had been bad there was enough on there to ruin the meal. Apparently the name of the game tonight is to guess the ingredients, so I'll venture it's butter, butter, beef stock, flour, and more butter. It's herbed with some sort of bouquet garni, heavy on the sage. The fries were--and I'm not a huge fan of fries--everything you want in a fry: very hot, crispy, no rancid oil flavor, and tasted like potatoes instead of ambiguous starch. I consumed the 6 slices of meat in mere minutes, so the second helping arrived right away. Their policy is to serve the meat in two stages, to keep it warm throughout your eating experience. In my opinion, they do that so the butter sauce doesn't solidify on your plate into a greyish-green mass. As our waiter served our second helping, I asked if they had any sort of "all-you-can-eat" plan. She looked shocked and offended.

After we finished our second helpings, we glanced briefly at the dessert menu before passing on the small selection of uninspired offerings, cake à la mode, ice cream and the like. Forty minutes and about $70 dollars later, we found ourselves on the same street corner whence we began, although by now a small waiting crowd had formed. To sum it all up, it wasn't bad at all, but I think they're stuck in some undefined category and they would benefit to choose a direction. For one, they have an efficient mechanical flow through dinner, with no options and french fries an integral part of the meal. In that case, they would do well to lower the price and perhaps offer multiple servings to encourage people to stay longer and drink more. On the other hand, the meat is tasty enough that if they gave it a better presentation and perhaps a more upscale side dish, people would be more cognizant of what they were eating and appreciate it in the moment. As it is, it's like "hey come here what do you want?-too bad here's a steak anyway oh you're done ok don't get these lame deserts just get out" and as tasty as it was, and as reasonable as the bill was, you can't help but still feel a bit underwhelmed.

Dinner Potpourri | Mamaroneck, NY

2009-08-30T01:52:00.004-04:00

Although better known for our forays into the extreme and massive eating varieties, my cousins and I can also be quite sensible. Case in point, after my recent trip to Hawaii (post forthcoming) I was so stuffed with rich food that I suggested we make lighter fare. Of course you can only take the tiger out of the jungle and not vice versa, so to speak, so this may not meet the normal definition of "light"...

Shrimp and scallop dumplings
Kale with ham and onions
Grilled wild cod with lardo
Chocolate soufflé à la mode

For the dumplings, we chopped four or five slices of ginger, four cloves of garlic and a medium bunch (7-8) of scallions, and set this aside.

Into a blender went half a pound of shelled, de-veined shrimp and two giant scallops (another half pound worth) along with:

2-3 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp sherry
1 tsp seasame oil
1 egg white
1 tsp white pepper

and blended the mixture until it was chunky.

We folded the chopped ingredients into the meat, then filled dumpling skins. One trick to make the dumpling skins stay shut is to use an egg yolk as glue when closing them.

Ok I'm sick of calling them dumplings because let's be honest, in the English language some words win (grandiose, irk, obfuscate, supreme, torrential, to name a few), and some words lose (masticate, Uranus, Gaylord, penal, dumpling, you get the idea). So let's call them by their real name, 水餃 instead.

After boiling the 水餃 (the theory that 水餃 rise to the surface when done is baloney, the buoyancy of 水餃 in water is dependent entirely on relative densities, and thus on the filling of the 水餃) for about 4 minutes, a quick pan fry in peanut oil gives a nice finish to the skins.

For a dipping sauce, I prefer the traditional mixture of chinese black vinegar (黑醋) and soy sauce. If this is not available, cider vinegar will do in a pinch.

The kale was especially yummy because it is home grown in Mamaroneck. After picking it, it's important to thoroughly clean the leaves (especially if it's store bought) and soak them in salt water for a half hour.

To make this southern inspired dish, just sweat a chopped medium onion, a few minced cloves of garlic and a diced pound of uncured ham in a pan until the ham is lightly browned.

Then throw the kale leaves in, a cup of chicken broth, and cover with the pressure cooker lid. Give it 40 or so minutes to cook, then kill the heat and let the pressure dissipate on its own as it cools.

The fish is especially exciting because many the ingredients came from the home garden. We got two large wild cod fillets from Whole Foods (although I suppose those could have come from the garden too) and pouched them with

home grown fresh rosemary
chopped onions
home grown tomatoes
thin slices of lardo
generous coarse ground salt and pepper
a drizzle of olive oil

If any of you have ever spoken to me, you'll know my deep and firm belief that lardo is the best thing, ever. Ever. I first discovered it living in Italy, and have since only found it in the best stocked delis specializing in selling overpriced things. In this case, Grand Central Market, in Grand Central Terminal. Lardo is in a nutshell what you would get if you somehow brought together the world's brightest minds into one room without an ego explosion, and had them ponder the question, "What is the simplest substance that invokes abject terror in every ADA member?" It is pure pig fat, dry cured with hints rosemary. I defy anyone to find something that I wouldn't eat with a slice of lardo.

Once these are pouched, they should be grilled for 7 minutes, at 450ºF-500ºF.

The soufflé is a simple, and although the recipe seems anything but light, because it is a soufflé the sheer voluminousness cancels the weight of the cream and chocolate. Also note there is no butter in the cake itself.

First coat the inside of a soufflé dish, or lacking that any glass dish, with butter, then sugar. Tap out any excess sugar, and set aside. Since we had only a baking dish, our soufflé will be more like a fluffy brownie, which isn't so bad either.

In a medium saucepan bring to boil one cup of heavy cream, and reduce heat to a low simmer. As this is simmering, whisk in a mixture of

3 egg yolks
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp flour
a pinch of salt

Pour the eggs in a thin stream, whisking the hot milk continuously so as to make a custard without overcooking the eggs. As this solidifies, turn off the heat, and mix in the better part of a 10oz Sharffenberger bittersweet chocolate bar, and a dash of vanilla extract.

Once the pan has cooled and the mixture resembles an oily, springy dark mass, set aside on a cool surface.

In the meantime, with an electric whisk beat up

7 egg whites
1 Tbsp sugar
pinch cream of Tartar, or dash white vinegar

Until medium peaks form. Not too stiff, just medium. take about 1/4 of this mixture and fold it into the chocolate mass to lighten it a touch, then fold the chocolate into the egg whites.

It's important not to over-fold, which kills the egg white foam. A little non-uniformity is good (look what happened in 1984, for example) and shows up well in the finished product.

Bake this in a 375°F for 30 minutes, more or less depending on the aspect ratio of your vessel. When opening the oven, be careful not to open too quickly as that will cause the middle to sink. Also resist the urge to check during the baking process, the inrush of cold air will also damage the center. For those with opaque oven doors, it is best to saw a rectangular port-hole in the oven door with a reciprocating saw (use suitable pilot bit for starter hole), then affix a window fashioned from a tempered glass (Pyrex, etc) with a silicone gasket to minimize heat loss. When the baking is done, cut and serve immediately.

Although this meal may seem like a conflict of tastes, because each of the flavors was restrained and understated (except perhaps for desert), we had no problem eating them all together. Paired with a crisp apple cider, whose sweetness complimented the ginger of the 水餃 and rosemary of the fish well, everything could be eaten together.

For the 水餃 we considered that adding a bit of shredded cabbage would be nice, or perhaps some ground pork, but none of that is strictly necessary. They we just a little bland eaten alone, which didn't matter anyway because they're usually had in soups with a strong stock flavor and other ingredients, not pan fried. The kale was wonderfully hearty, which it always is, but even more so when stewed under pressure with all the flavors.

Note that we've experimented with using ham, bacon, and variations thereon; in this particular case, it's better with ham. In my view, this is meant to be a tangy, light but satisfying dish. The grease from the bacon dulls the tangyness somewhat, and adds a weight unnecessarily. Next on the list to try and most promising are smoked ham hocks.

The fish was intensely subtle, if we allow me an oxymoron. The first thing I noticed upon opening the pouch was the smoky flavor, which actually coated the outside of the tinfoil, along with the fresh, real rosemary flavor (as opposed to the dry stuff) coming from inside the tinfoil. Because we kept the foil pouches on the table, this smokiness added a whole dimension to the eating experience. Upon biting, the texture of the cod was perfect; this is a very light, flaky fish rich with juices. A second different smokiness was added by the lardo, followed by a more mellow rosemary flavor, which we attributed to both the freshness of the rosemary, and also the lardo which itself has some rosemary undertones damping the real stuff. The tomatoes and onions rounded out the flavor perfectly with both acidity and sweetness. I could go on here, but I'm getting hungry again.

To round it all off, we had the soufflé with some Whole Foods vanilla ice cream. Based on the taste and nutrition facts, I'm pretty sure this is relabeled Breyers, which is fine by me.

Honestly, call this a shortcoming of mine, but I'm not super good with describing chocolate. The soufflé itself was wonderfully fluffy and airy, and it wasn't too sweet, and did taste like chocolate, and... yeah. It was good.

So all in all, that's what we call a light dinner.

Il Tour del Gelato | Pavia, Italy

2009-08-10T16:30:00.000-04:00

So it happened that for a week in May, I found myself back in Italy for some last minute work-related chores. Because I couldn't take long off school, I had to cram what normally would be a two week trip (three, if you normalize to Italian efficiency) into 6 days. After pulling several 12+ hour workdays, by Sunday I was so sick of being in the office I needed a diversion.

It always amazed me when I lived here how many gelaterias were crammed into a city that could in its entirety fit inside Central Park. What amazed me even more (and correspondingly dismayed me upon arriving in New York) are the standard prices that all the gelaterias follow: 1,80€ for a small, 2,20€ for a medium, and 2,80€ for a large. Extras such as chocolate syrup, whipped cream, cherries etc. were similarly standardized. It seems that all the gelaterias, save for those in Florence, follow this pricing guideline. I don't think it's government regulated, but it's one of those things that wouldn't surprise me if it hadn't been suggested in the past.

Anyway, on this particular balmy Sunday my extreme stir-craze and my love for gelato converged, and I decided to do an almost-half-marathon whilst getting a small cone of gelato at every gelateria I could think of. Because the city is so small, if I'd gone any sensible route I'd probably only have accrued 5 miles and hit every spot, so I had to make a serpentine path around them all. Here's the course right here. When I set out to do this, I realized that I needed some sort of fanny pack; not only did I need to carry a camera, the apartment keys (Italian door keys are about the size of that hunk of metal King Arthur pulled out of that rock) and ID, I needed about 40€ to buy all that gelato. Wow. 40€ of gelato. I also wanted to finish this thing under an hour and a half.

1º Tappo: Gelateria Sottozero
Distanza: 0.4 mi

Even though it was about 92 degrees that day, I hadn't started sweating as it was right down the street. Passersby probably thought I just really needed my gelato fix. Got a small cone of cioccomenta (mint chip) and annanas (pineapple). In Italy, a small cone can have up to two flavors, and is the equivalent size of an XXL cone at Grom in NY.

2º Tappo: Gelatoterapia
Distanza: 0.9 mi

Gelatoterapia is the favorite gelateria of my friend Elena, who is a right global citizen (although she spent a few months in Voghera, the apparent backwaters of Italy) and thus her opinion counts. One good things about them is they have the flavor cassata, which is based of the Sicilian cake of the same name. The gelato is an almond cream base, and is filled with chocolate chips, chunks of candied fruit, and rum. Awesome. Anyway, I got a small cone of this and kept on trucking. Minor sweat on the brow developing.

3º Tappo: Il Melograno
Distanza: 2.7 mi

Il Melograno, or pomergranate, was closed. Thank goodness, because I had my first drip of sweat off my nose, and my shirt was getting damp. I had to run a mile around the periphery of the city, and the sun was hitting hard.

4º Tappo: Gelateria di Capriccio
Distanza: 2.9 mi

I was silly to think that all the gelaterias would be open on a Sunday, but two in a row got me worried. The specialty at this place was the granita, a Sicilian invention. Because Sicily is so hot, legend has it that monks (always with the monks) would climb a nearby volcanic mountain where there were snow caps year round, shave the ice and mix it with sugar and flavor to make a refreshing desert. It's an even lighter alternative to gelato, since it is usually made without dairy. Their best granita flavor is grapefruit, and I sorely missed it.

5º Tappo: Gelateria la Perla
Distanza: 3.9 mi

This hustling bustling gelateria right outside the city center had spacious outdoor seating, something the more central gelaterias could not afford. To get here I had to run alongside a small river for a few hundred meters, and because the water here is so still, and the mosquitoes so dense, the reflection of the sun on the water actually heats you up more. So I arrived here dripping in sweat, and to your prototypical Italian "cool guy" (i.e. bright red or green madras shorts, tight polo, sweater worn around the shoulders, aviators and ridiculously dark tan) I probably looked insane. Which is also not far from how I was feeling, after my chocolate dipped cone with cioccolato fondente (dark chocolate) and straciatella (vanilla with swirls of melted chocolate). On my way back along the river, I decided to switch from cones to cups.

6º Tappo: Gelateria Corsi
Distanza: 4.8 mi

This gelateria is the favorite of my good Italian family, Enrico and Silvia. Although their portions are decidedy smaller, and the flavors are a bit limited, it is decidedly pleasing. No frills, just light, fluffy gelato at just the right temperature so it melts quickly. I had a cup of variegato all'amarena (vanilla with swirls of black cherries in syrup), tried not to drip sweat on the passersby, and hoofed on. Pace: still under 8 minute miles.

7º Tappo: Gelateria Vanile
Distanza: 5.0 mi

This is widely regarded as the worst of the good gelato places in the area. You know something's suspect when "vanile" means nothing in any language I know, (vaniglia is vanilla in Italian) and it looks like they spent all their money on the swanky facade. After choking down a cup of pesca (peach) and feeling vaguely naseous, decided that their problem was twofold: one, they use too much cream, not enough milk, and second their freezer is too cold. Result? Their gelato is too much like Hagen-Daz (another made-up name, coincidentally) and not enough like il buon gelato artigianale.

8º Tappo: Il Cono Verde
Distanza: 6.6 mi

After that double header of over-creamed gelato, I had to run 1.5 miles directly into the sun, along the riverbank. I felt my throat begin to swell up, probably because of all that sugar and not enough water. Sweat drops and mosquitoes kept getting stuck in my eye, adding to my misery. Fortunately I was rewarded with this little gem of a gelateria. This is perhaps the best-kept secret in Pavia. Although it's off the beaten path, il Cono Verde has some of the most interesting flavors, such as pera e menta, (mint and pear) or cioccolato ficchi (chocolate fig). I got a cup of crema (custard), one of the richest gelato flavors with more cream than usual and egg yolks, because I felt like it was an effective way to add another dimension to my misery.

9º Tappo: Gelateria Pampanin
Distanza: 7.3 mi

Okay, I won't lie, Pampanin is located about 200m at the far end of a large open square, and I walked all 200m of it. I started having dizzy spells when I had to run up a short flight of stairs, and my steps were heavy with cream and sugar. I thought a bit about my triathlon coming up in two months, I thought about how not all was lost, that I could still get in shape in time for the race. Then I was almost run over by a smart car. Getting run over by a smart car is about as hard as getting alcohol poisoning from Michelob light. Pampanin specializes in the Italian equivalent of ice cream sundaes, with rich layers of gelato, melted chocolate (like actual melted chocolate, not chocolate syrup) whipped cream and wafer cookies. I think I wretched. But, I labored on with a cup of fragola (strawberry).

10º Tappo: Gelateria dei Mille
Distanza: 7.6 mi

On the way here, I got to run over one of those ancient covered bridges, so old that the road was cobblestone as well. Apparently Albert Einstein, when he wasn't riding bicycles or rejecting unification theories was a big fan of this bridge as proclaimed by a plaque mounted at the apex of the bridge. Once over, this place was only a few hundred meters on the other side. It specializes in Sicilian deserts like baba' and cannoli, which on any other day would have me salivating but today just made me turn away. I opted for a cup of one of the more fun gelato flavors, puffo (smurf). Yes, as in smurf, the blue hippies who lived in mushrooms. As there is a regulation on the hunting and capture of smurfs, even for consumption, I can only imagine that this is artificially smurf flavored. In seriousness, it's blue like the animal but it's flavor is more of a cross between anise and bubblegum. Who knew.

11º Tappo: Cesare
Distanza: 8.3 mi

This is the oldest, and most famous gelateria in Pavia. This crowd outside is the line, and apparently you have to be Italian to figure out its order. Cesare is known for two things: in the winter, the hot chocolate, in the summer, the granita. As this was summer, I got a small cup of the granita di mandorla, (almond granita) which instantly transported me back to Sicily, a place I visited for a day just so I could one day in the future write that sentence. Seriously. It's almonds ground into a powder, mixed with water and sugar and frozen into a slurry. Even though there's no dairy, it's very creamy and refreshing. I think at this point I would have preferred a tall glass of water and a bed, but this was seriously the second best thing.

12º Tappo: Peccato di Gola
Distanza: 10.2 mi

Because the line at Cesare was so long, I managed to recharge a bit, just so I could run a big loop around the eastern periphery of the city. Here's a tip when choosing gelaterias: If the awning says "Liky Liky ice cream network", and you're not in Japan--whose culture has made a science of hijacking English words--you probably won't leave satisfied. But, not one to take my own advice, I had a small cup of limone (lemon) and left full, with a headache, and a bad taste in my mouth.

13º Tappo: Era Glaciale
Distanza: 10.3 mi

This place is relatively new, less than a year old. It's not so bad, with a good range of flavors and it's open late. This is just up a hill from the 12th place, so I can't say I was excited for another cup, actually I was dreading it with my whole body and being, but as it was the last stop, I "buckled down" (if one can ever say that in relation to eating gelato) and had a small cup of my standby favorite, cioccomenta.

The run home was mostly uneventful, with the sun beating down on my left side, and my gasping breaths were interspersed with waves of nausea. The run was 11.7 miles in total, which isn't quite a half marathon, but if there were any way to scientifically convert 11 gelatos into extra miles, I'm sure I'd be on my way to a full marathon. Moral of the story: don't let yourself get so stir crazy that you need to do dumb things like this.

Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Birthday Cake | New York, NY

2008-11-26T12:12:00.003-05:00

Everyone knows that chocolate truffles are so aptly named due to their physical resemblance to the real truffle, not for being embedded with bits of the exotic fungus. I always wondered what then would make a cake a "chocolate truffle cake". I assumed it was because "chocolate truffle" sounds more appealing than "chocolate", just like "German Chocolate Cake" sounds more delicious than a plain chocolate cake, even if it really did just start as "German's Chocolate Cake". Turns out though, that anything with enough chocolate ganache has the right to bear the truffle title, and so I'll maintain the status quo. The following recipe I lifted from a 1996 Bon Appétit, and is reproduced with minor modifications forthwith.

The Cake

2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
a dash of salt

1 stick butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups buttermilk (or 1 cup whole milk, 1/4 cup lemon juice)

2 squares semisweet baker's chocolate

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside. Melt the chocolate either in the microwave or on the stove, making sure it doesn't burn. (But if it seizes due to moisture or overheating, don't worry, it doesn't matter) Mix together the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla with an electric mixer. Then, while beating, pour in the melted chocolate.

To this mixture add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk in small alternating increments, making sure not to overmix-this yields a chewy cake, not the most appealing.

Pour this into a 9" springform, and bake for about 70 minutes at 350°F.

The Filling

1 cup heavy cream
12 oz bag frozen raspberries, thawed and squeezed of liquid
1 tbsp Tuaca or similar liqueur
1 tsp vanilla

Whip the heavy cream, powdered sugar and liqueur in a heavy, cold metal bowl in an ice bath until the peaks are stiff, but before the cream turns to butter. Add the raspberries and continue to beat, but at a lower speed until the berries are fairly pulverized. Store in the fridge.

To cover the sides of the cake, beat an additional 1 cup heavy cream and 1 tbsp powdered sugar.

Chocolate Ganache

1 cup heavy cream
1/2 stick butter
2 tbsp sugar
12 oz semisweet chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the ganache, temperature control as you melt the chocolate is critical. If it gets too hot, the chocolate solids separate and it becomes useless as a topping (but still tastes fine and can be put into a cake). Just throw it all into a double boiler and stir constantly as the chocolate melts. As soon as the mixture is homogenous and shiny, take it off the heat.

Assembly

The cake box I got from the local bakery can handle a cake 7" in diameter, so I first had to make stencils for the cake cutout and the cardboard backing on which the cake rests.
The next part is to slice the cake into layers. My favorite way to do this is with a thin, taut wire which I learned from the way they cut clay in pottery. Unfortunately, my closet in the apartment is shamefully under stocked, and all I had was some speaker wire. So, I stripped a long piece, and braided 4 strands together to make a suitable wire.

Now, we cut the cake into the smaller circular shape, and then into three layers.

Now, we have to let the cake cool so that when we spread the whipped cream based raspberry filling it won't immediately melt. So, let's have lunch, courtesy of Ajay.

Once the cake is cooled, and the ganache somewhat as well, we can start with the bottom layer. Between each layer of cake is first a layer of ganache and then raspberry.

Once all three layers are assembled, the top is covered with a presentable layer of ganache.

I spread a bit of the ganache around the sides as well, just to give the layers a bit of cohesiveness and keep any crumbs from getting in the whipped cream.

After all that work, this is what it should resemble, more or less.

And the the lucky recipient:

And a slice:

Pavia, Italy | Frit-tata!

2008-08-06T08:35:00.003-04:00

I've been making my own sort of frittatas for several years now, and I've more or less perfected the process in terms of speed of preparation and presentation. So I figured, let's document it this time. Bad Idea.

In a large bowl, throw in

a small onion, sliced into ribbons
3/4 cup olives, sliced into rings
1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 cup almonds
2 tsp dry basil (fresh is better)
1/4 cup grated parmesean
salt
pepper

Actually, one of my favorites is almonds, cherry tomatoes, and dill but it's not quite as nutritious.

Now add to this mix 4 eggs and 2 Tbsp milk or cream. Beat gently, but not too much otherwise the frittata gets foamy and brittle as it cooks.

Pour this into a liberally oiled (or better, buttered) pan on LOW heat. Low heat is critical. You want this to cook gently.

At the proper temperature, a frittata five minutes into cooking should look like a slightly rabid version of what you put into the pan: more or less the same, but foaming at the edges.

As the layer of clear uncooked egg begins to thin and the cooked underlayer creeps up to the top, you're going to want to put the pan under the broiler to finish off the top.

This is where I went wrong. My broiler sucks, and I could hold my hand directly under the "red hot" heating element for 20 seconds. My pan has a plastic handle and can't go in the oven meaning I had to leave the door open, further exacerbating the problem. With no cooking after 10 minutes I took it out of the broiler and stuck it back on the stove. Big mistake. Now the bottom of the pan, which was already terrible to begin with, dangerously under-oiled to begin with (trying to skimp on fat NEVER pays) had bonded incredibly tightly to the frittata. Result? Messy, broken frittata.

I usually have my failed frittatas with some boiled spinach and a healthy serving of shame.

Pavia, Italy | Shrimp Avocado Salad

2008-08-03T14:55:00.003-04:00

Salads aren't the first thing that come to mind when you think of gluttony, nonetheless a good salad can be quite indulgent. And I don't mean in the saturated with sugary oily ranch dressing and crumbled bacon and garlic butter soaked croutons and chopped eggs and seared tuna and--hang on, making myself hungry.

Okay, in my opinion a good salad has pretty much all you need to make a proper main course. A variety of ingredients, especially of lettuce (not just iceberg) is key, and the dressing should be light and complimentary, never dominating or masking.

Today, per Lauren's recipe, we have a shrimp and avocado salad.

First make the dressing in the bottom of a bowl:

a squeeze of lemon juice
olive oil
a teaspoon of Dijon mustard
2-4 cloves chopped fresh garlic
a pinch of freshly chopped tarragon
salt
pepper

I'm not going to even bother giving precise proportions, since it's such a matter of personal preference. Beat this with a fork until the oil emulsifies and you have a translucent dressing. Set aside and beat occasionally, like when you're frustrated with life.

Next, you find avocados in Italy (no small feat) and chop up two of them, and de-seed and dice two tomatoes.

In a large pan, sautee a pound of shrimp, some chili flakes, 2 cloves minced garlic, and salt and pepper.

By the way, my stove has one of the most powerful (for a non-commercial stove) gas burners I have ever seen.

Pour this over a bed of mixed greens; I used two endives and a mesclun mix. This should feed four normal people, or me, 1.5 times. I think the bitterness of the endives, the intensity of the mustard and the smoothness of the avocados form a perfect trio of balancing flavors. The spicy shrimp just makes it all the better.

Oh, and anything with this much avocado in it is automatically indulgent.

Pavia, Italy | Homemade Apricot Gelato

2008-07-06T11:32:00.002-04:00

So I'm sure as we all know, gelato is Italian for ice cream. Traditionally a gelato has a lower milkfat content than ice cream, and it's actually meant to be stored and served at a degree or two above the freezing point of water, which accounts for its soft creamyness in spite of the reduced amount of fat. Nowadays though, there are very good gelaterias which serve gelato in all sorts of consistencies, some creamier than others. In fact, since gelato really just does mean ice cream, you can go to the store and buy Hagen-Daas "gelato" (although you may not find it in all the outrageous flavors gelato comes in, for example "Smurf" flavor).

At Enrico and Silvia's, we recently made gelato that was a bit closer to sorbet than ice cream. Instead of using cream as called for in the recipe, we used lowfat milk. The ingredients are simple:

200g milk
400g blended apricot purée
140g sugar

First you weight out the apricots, allowing 90g for the pits:

Then, go to town with the blender:

Mix in the milk and sugar,

Now pour this all into the gelato maker. I think this one's particularly suited for gelato, because the rotor turns faster than I've seen with ice cream makers. It's awesome that you don't need to put it in the freezer, or pour salt and ice around it like with other machines. It's also really heavy.

Half an hour later, yum!

チーズケーキは,いかがですか?

2008-03-23T19:46:00.004-04:00

Chiizukeeki wa, ikaga desu ka? Or, translated formally: "Say about them cheesecake, how is you be feeling?"

If my winter phase was sweet potato and apple pies, my early spring phase is cheesecake. One look at my eating habits and there's nothing to question, after all: cheesecake = cheese + cake = (cream + fat) + (sugar + carbs) = decadent + delicious + indulgent + awesome.

There might be a more fundamental reason though, and it has to do with Italy. When I first moved there over a year ago, I made great friends with Enrico and Silvia, who upon finding out I had some Japanese blood in me told me with great enthusiasm that they'd just made a Japanese Cheesecake. I didn't know how to tell them that cheesecake was about as Japanese as rap music, besides the Italians have such advanced cheesecake skills I can't imagine how anything else would compare.

I'm going back there in April for a week, a vacation in business clothes so to speak, which just means some last minute preparations for my job this summer. In January when I was there last I promised them next time I'd cook them a big dinner, the enormity of which has been slowly creeping to the forefront of my mind. I've got to come up with a menu that doesn't offend Italian sensibilities (hint: skip the Chicago deep-dish pizza) yet doesn't allow any direct comparison to regional cuisine, the confrontation I'd lose for sure. What's worse is concepts I hold near and dear to my heart, i.e. fat = health, the meatier the better, and "not quite right? Add a stick of butter" aren't exactly embraced warmly over there (but kissed superficially on both cheeks, perhaps).

So let's cut right to the chase. For the standard graham cracker crust, I mush all together

6-7 graham crackers
1/2 cup ground up grains
2/3 stick of butter
a tablespoon of sugar
a dash of salt

and press that into the bottom of a springform pan. Bake this at 350 until it browns nicely, about 10 minutes.

Now, put into a bowl

1 1/4 sticks butter
1 cup sugar
the rind of one lemon
the juice of aforementioned lemon
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

and whip that up nice and smooth.

Now if you're like me and love eggs, you probably bought jumbo eggs and will want to be careful in the next part. If you have NORMAL eggs, mix in

8 eggs
2 1/2 packages of cream cheese
a few tablespoons of cornstarch

otherwise you'll probably want 6 jumbo eggs. Now whip, beat, cream, liquefy and aerate that into oblivion. Aerating is critical for the proper cheesecake consistency, I use a stick blender held near the surface so it picks up the air. Then I go at it with a whisk and a healthy amount of reckless abandon, and certainly total disregard for the batter spatter on the walls. Pour this into the springform as so,

now stick this in a water bath and bake it at 325 for about 1:20. If your water bath is as big as mine, you'll want to use hot water, otherwise if it's smaller use cold water.

While this is baking, boil

10oz. strawberries
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 stick butter

until the strawberries have long given up any discernible shape or structure, then boil some more (that'd be about 20 minutes by my count). Purée this, then mash it through a strainer to remove all the seeds.

If you wanna have fun, do the same with blackberries. This time I didn't add as much sugar, but a touch of cornstarch for consistency

1 carton of blackberries
1 teaspoon of sugar
1/3 stick butter
1 tablespoon cornstarch

and mash this through a strainer as well.

Now let your cheesecake cool for a good 8 hours, or a few less if in the fridge. Slice it lengthwise with a bread knife, or even better a thin long wire. I smeared the sour blackberries inside the cake, then re-assembled it and coated the outside with the sweeter strawberries, for a nice zing and contrast.

おいしいですよ!

Today's cheesecake is a modified version of something I found on epicurious.com, unfortunately the precise recipe link I have lost since I was clicking around randomly and didn't save the page. The principle modification is the addition of fruit and a crust, but I also didn't fold the batter with beaten egg whites, I just beat the whole thing until frothy. I prefer a slightly denser cheesecake to the fluffy airy sorts.

Pork Roast Baconchicken - Oh, and Cheesecake

2008-03-11T23:05:00.000-04:00

No matter what you call it: Chicken Roast Baconpork, Chick'o Bacon, Bake-a Chicken, Chickeny Pork, or just pork pork chicken, it sounds wrong. And for good reason, it's roughly 4,500 calories in a bread pan. As a matter of fact, the only reason I didn't call it simply Death is it lacks a key death ingredient: foie gras. Nevertheless, it does a fantastic job of packing a lot of energy in a small package, and tastes delicious doing so.

The genesis of this project came Saturday morning as I was perusing the smattering of food stands which crop up every weekend in Union square. A sign caught my eye, "World's best bacon" and of course 5 minutes later I found myself carrying two pounds of the meat home along with the rest of my groceries from Trader Joe's. It dawned on me (way post fact) that I had a big pork roast in the fridge which I should prepare before it went bad and this put me in a conundrum because I really wanted nothing more than to make my bacon. Not one to compromise, I decided I would have them both! So began the Pork Roast Baconchicken.

Accessories to murder.

To start, I opened up the pork roast until I had a thin flat sheet of meat. You probably need a sharp knife for this. On this, I layered two thinly shredded chicken thighs (never get breast, it's too boring)[you know what I meant] and the pan fried bacon.

Then I took some spinach and thinly sliced mushrooms, and made a nice happy layer of those.

At this point it was getting pretty massive, so I decided I needed some congealing foods; what better to hold fatty meat together than fatty dairy? I beat two eggs and a half stick of melted butter together, and poured that on with a mixture of shredded Gruyère and Manchego cheeses, to get this magnificent pile of goodness.

Rolled up this went, in the breadpan in a 350 oven for 45 minutes.

While that was baking, I took it upon myself to make a little cheesecake. I'm gearing up to making myself a full Cassata--the ultimate desert to end all desserts--so I figured I'd try making a Ricotta cheesecake. I found a recipe online that looked simple enough, so I gave it a whirl.

First, you make a graham cracker crust in a false bottom pan with

1 cup crushed graham crackers
1/4 cup crushed grains
3 T sugar
1 stick butter
a pinch of salt

I'll be honest the recipe called for less than a stick of butter, but between friends I'd just as well assume the recipe writer must have been feeling pressure from health-interest groups. Anyway mush that all together and bake it for 10 or so minutes, to give it some crunch.

While that's going, get mixing in a bowl:

5 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 T flour
30 oz. ricotta cheese

When this is all beaten and smooth, fold in 2 cups of blueberries. I have to note that the original recipe calls for some mace and nutmeg, although in the quantities prescribed would totally overpower and ruin the ricotta flavor. Ricotta is delicate, don't hit it with a mace.

Well whatever you decide to do, pour this into the pan, taking care to break the fall of the cheese so that it doesn't break up the pre-baked crust. Now bake this for a good 1:25, until the center is almost set. Leave this in the oven 20-30 minutes after the oven's been off, otherwise if you're too greedy (or just in a rush to vacate the oven so someone else can use it) the center will fall as it cools.

You might be wondering what happened to photos of the Pork Roast Baconchicken... hmm well, I was hungry and I forgot to take photos. In my defense, it was super tasty. Not gourmet in that the complex marriage of subtle flavors augment and intermingle with each other to--no, it was just awesomely fatty and filling.

Pie's the Limit | More DIY Culinary Adventures

2008-02-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

As of late I've been pulling 12+ hour workdays, and while I'm sure it's nothing to our i-banking readership (of which I'm sure we have none anyway) it's plenty for me, the end result being that when I come home, I am utterly incapable nay unwilling to apply one more ounce of brainpower. This has steered me toward cooking as a happy, mindless way to while the hours away between working and sleeping. I've recently been on a pie kick, and one of my ongoing projects has been the sweet potato pie, which is also appropriate given where I live (soul food Harlem).

A common issue I have with most store-bought sweet potato pies is the thing's so over-spiced, it does nothing to differentiate itself from a slightly darker, sweeter pumpkin pie. To me, a perfect sweet potato pie retains all the spicy undertones without completely masking the sweet potato flavor, which you want to taste if you went to the trouble of peeling and baking those potatoes in the first place.

Take four medium or three large sweet potatoes, and place them in a 400 degree oven for a bit over an hour, turning them over once. They're done when the meat inside shrinks shriveling the skin, and a sweet sticky sap oozes from them. While those are baking, in a mixing bowl place

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup coarse multi-grain flour, such as from Bob's Mill
1/4 cup white sugar
a dash of salt
1.something sticks of butter, still cold

cut this together with a pastry knife--you know, that kitchen tool that looks like it was carried by the fifth, less intelligent ninja turtle--taking care not to over-mix as the lumps of butter is what will make the crust flakey versus crumbly. I find the addition of the multi-grain cereal a satisfying complication to the texture of the crust, although you may omit it in favor of more flour for a lighter, traditional crust. The inclusion of sugar is also optional; I prefer a slightly sweet crust, but personal preferences vary. Once this has the consistency of peas in mud, slowly sprinkle in some ice water, just enough so that the mixture looks kneadable (but never knead crust).

One way I make crusts is to roll the dough out onto waxed paper, then stick the sheet in the freezer for a minute so that the waxed paper peels right off. Then just press the dough into a pyrex pie dish, and stick back in the fridge.

By now the yams are done, so you can peel them and put them in another mixing bowl. Along with them add

1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Now whip--with a whisk or otherwise--the potatoes and sugar until you have a gooey homogenous mass. I like the addition of maple syrup in place of all brown sugar, I find the sweetness much more fragrant in the final product. Taste, and if you insist you can add more sugar but it should be plenty sweet. Now to spice the mixture:

1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. white pepper (optional)

I'm a firm believer of the concept that white pepper, in the right amount, makes everything better. After you mix this all together, the potatoes should have cooled enough that if you mix in

4 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream

the yolks won't cook. So go ahead and do this, give it a final beating, and pour the batter into the cooled pastry crust.

Now bake the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for about an hour 15, give or take. Now let the pie cool for an hour or two, and dig in!

A Casual Dinner For Two

2008-01-11T09:48:00.000-05:00

The past two weeks I've been studying for my qualifying exams, and the timing turned out that the point at which I'd reached my absolute limit in terms of crash-cramming information absorption was also a day before my friend Elena--who's been interning at the UN here in New York--headed back to Italy to finish her thesis. Not missing an opportunity, I decided to cook a send-off meal.

The day before the dinner I went to the Fairway market on Broadway, where I purchased the bone-in lamb chops for the main course, as well as the scallops for the appetizer and the bottle of Guiness for the desert. Now if I were feeling mischievous, I'd stop the entry right there and leave it to you to reconstruct the menu, but I digress.

I got six chops, upon which I caked a tapenade of

1 cup oil-cured Moroccan olives, finely chopped
1 foot-long branch of fresh Rosemary, de-branched and crushed
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
pepper to taste

and put in a tupperware to sit in the fridge overnight. Every now and then I'd give the tupperware a shake to keep things exciting in there.

While that was marinating, I made a ginger cake. The recipe isn't mine, although I lost the Bon Apetit from which it was originally derived.

In a saucepan, bring to boil

1 cup Guiness
1 cup molasses
1 1/2 tsp baking soda (add when boiling)

The addition of the baking soda will cause the syrup to foam furiously, just add in small increments and try not to wonder how a cake so delicious started as a liquid so foul.

While that's cooling mix together

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 T ground powdered ginger
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cardamom

and in another larger bowl, beat together

3 eggs
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup grapeseed oil
1-2 T grated fresh ginger

Once this is lump-free, slowly add the cooled beer-molasses syrup (so as not to cook the eggs) until they're combined, then stir in the dry ingredients being careful not to over-mix the batter. The batter will be very runny, almost liquid.

Now pour this into a 5"x9" breadpan, and throw that into preheated 350 degree oven for an hour. When done, the top will be springy and a caramelized crust will be beginning to form. Let cool in pan to allow the caramelized top to harden. When cool wrap with foil and leave out.

Now go ~~back to study for quals~~ on with your life until the day of the dinner. About three hours before you'd like to eat, you're going to want to take

3 potatoes (russet, yukon gold)
2 carrots

and slice them as thinly as humanly possible. Feel free to use this opportunity to show off how sharp your knife is to whoever isn't around to watch. Put the slices in a large vat of cold water which will bleed out the excess starch. While this is happening, sauté in a pan

2 shallots, finely minced
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1/8 tsp cloves
2T butter
a splash of Kirsch

and reduce it to a thick sauce. Now take the potatoes and carrots and dry them off (literally, taking a towel and drying them off) and let them sit a moment to dry some more. Take that window to shred some cheese; in my case, I used a combination of

8 oz comte
8 oz really sharp provolone
4 oz gran padana

Now arrange the potatoes and carrots in a thin layer at the bottom of a bread pan, brush with a portion of the sauce, sprinkle with cheese and pour a small amount of heavy cream on it. Add another layer of potatoes and carrots, then repeat. Do this until the near top of the pan. Pop this into a 350 oven for about 40 minutes; then if you want, pour on some more cream, and top with a layer of just comte cheese, and turn the oven up to 400 for 15 minutes to get a nice brown layer on top.

Now turn the oven down to 150 to keep this warm, in the meantime fry up some bacon. Fry the bacon halfway; cook it, but don't let it get crisp or too shriveled. Take the bacon strips out of the pan, saving the fat for later. Just to emphasize a point: even if "later" is a completely ambiguous reference toward the future, one should never throw out bacon grease as it's always great to have around just in case. Wrap each sea scallop with a slice of bacon, then skewer with a toothpick to keep the critter from running away. Arrange them around an oven-proof pan, then douse liberally with some white wine--in my case a 2005 Château Ste. Michelle Sauvignon Blanc--then, for the coup de gras I would say (see how I did that?) place atop each scallop a thin pat of butter.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then cover and set aside. Now in a small saucepan, pour

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup red wine
2 T chicken stock
4 T brown sugar
1/4 tsp white pepper

and bring to a low boil. You'll want this to reduce to almost nothing, so monitor it closely that it doesn't burn.

Now go back to the pan with bacon fat and sauté one minced clove of garlic. Before that has a chance to brown (thereby diminishing its pungency) throw in a large bunch of de-veined Chard broken into small pieces, and sauté until just wilted, remove from heat before all the crunch is gone. Cover this too and set aside. With Elena minutes away (well, to be precise: minutes away from going to pick up Elena from the subway stop, I'd rather girls not walk alone at night in a neighborhood where the Laundromat's patrons are kindly requested to remove clothes pockets of all bullets before laundering) it's time to arrange the meat on the skillet for cooking. Take each chop and compress firmly with the tapenade, so that it may form a nice crust when cooking. You should get something like this:
Now everything's ready to go. Just make sure you kill the heat to the balsamic glaze, which should have reduced by now. So now it's time to relax and enjoy company. I find there's a fine line between staying out of the kitchen entirely and boring someone while you chop potatoes; if you'd taken my advice and assuaged your infatuation with razor sharp knives while no one was around, there's less risk of the latter happening. I feel that people want to take a peek in the kitchen just to see you in fact did prepare all the food yourself--although the extreme disbelief shared by all my dinner guests is getting mildly insulting--at the same time, no one really wants to lean against a wet countertop watching you prepare from scratch. Well, I suppose if you're Ming Tsai it wouldn't be so bad... Anyway that's why I go to all the trouble with the prep work.

To prepare the appetizer, just put the scallops in the broiler fairly high up for 4 minutes, then turn each scallop over and return to the broiler for another 4 minutes. When they're done the scallops will have lost all their translucency, and if the timing's right, the bacon's crisped. I didn't get the bacon too crispy, so I'll have to work on that.

This is a fairly substantial appetizer, so either give folks some time to digest it, or make friends with the right people (case in point: at Yakitori Taisho, a St. Mark's staple for Japanese skewered and grilled food, upon seeing the menu she said "Awesome grilled chicken skins! That's fat right?"). When dinner's ready for the main course, put the chops in the broiler for 5 minutes per side, then finish by browning them on the stove over high heat. While those were in the broiler (you took the gratin out of the oven when you broiled the scallops, right?) you took the gratin and made thin slices, then laid those on hot plates so that the stratification of the gratin is visible. On top of this, I put the sautéed chard, around which I circled the lamb chops. Of course the final presentation is up to you, but I like radial symmetry. Now take the balsamic glaze, and drizzle it over the chops. Apply sparingly, don't overdo it.

You might argue that plate is way overladen with food, and you're right. But remember: this is Gluttony Loves Company, not Martha Stewart Dinner Plate Arrangements. Even though this was a lot of food, we can't forget desert! Taking the cake and slicing the middle to get the moistest section, arrange two thin slices each in bowls and microwave for a minute. Top with vanilla ice cream. Yeah, that's a pretty lame desert in how easy it is, but let's be honest, how wrong can you go with awesome cake and ice cream?

Well, that's pretty much it. The total cost of the meal, if you already own all the spices, is about $60, more than half of which is the lamb and scallops, no surprise. If you add wine, which in my case was the fantastic aforementioned 2005 Château Ste. Michelle Sauvignon Blanc with the scallops, and a decent 2005 Château Haut Montaud Bordeaux with the lamb, you come to $80 which, in my humble opinion (IMHO?), is highway robbery for a dinner like this in New York. As a bonus, if you manage against all odds to spill something on your shirt (true story), you can immediately change and no one's the wiser.

Palermo and Trapani, Italy | snack food at its best

2007-06-18T18:46:00.000-04:00

Rather then subjecting you to another long-winded description of every single multi-course dinner over my past trip, I've decided to up the food:text ratio a bit. Turns out the specialties in Sicily, street food and pastries, lend themselves well to this style of writing since each morsel of food stands on its own.

Let's start with the best-known Italian food item besides pizza, (hey! It wasn't invented in Chicago after all!) a cannolo, plurally known as cannoli.
A typical Sicilian cannolo will have a filling of sweetened ricotta with bits of chocolate and candied fruit peels. In order to preserve the crispness of the shell, cannoli are filled at the last minute, and a good cannolo shell will partially shatter when you bite into it but never makes a mess, since it's held together by the stickiness of the filling like when you freeze a bottle and it explodes but is suspended in frozen animation. Boston has two famous Italian bakeries, Mike's and Modern's. Sicilian cannoli have the following differences that I noticed: (1) American cannoli use some mascapone cheese in the filling, whereas Sicilian cannoli are filled exclusively with ricotta. Mascapone has a higher fat content, which makes American cannoli a bit heavier, with a slightly slimier residue on the tongue. (2) Sicilian cannoli are not as sweet, especially those from Catania. (3) Sicilian ricotta is much fluffier and more watery than the ricotta used in the US; although this might initially seem bad, because they have less sugar, the overall cannolo experience is very refreshing. While the American ones might leave you with a heavy feeling in the stomach, a Sicilian cannolo will make you feel light and nimble, and you can therefore easily eat a dozen or so. (a lesser known but equally effective way to power-up the body)

Gelato here is mostly like gelato in other parts of Italy, except the pistachio flavor is always available, and outstanding. Due to Arabic and African influences in Sicily's past, lots of western Sicilian cuisine involves pistachios and pine nuts. Sicilians like to stuff gelato into brioches, which in comparison to French brioches are chewier, less flaky, and sweeter. Basically a perfect vehicle for gelato as even in the end when there is melted gelato everywhere, nothing leaks. Here is a brioche stuffed with pistachio gelato:

Next on the list we have a true Sicily-only delicacy, the arancino/i/a/e. (depending on who you talk to) An arancino in a nutshell is a rice croquette, large like an orange (hence the name) except instead of plain rice you use risotto, and the filling is one of three different things: burro, which is melted butter and mozzarella cheese, prosciutto mozzarella, which is cubic chunks of ham and mozzarella, and ragù which is beefy meat sauce. The balls are coated in fine bread crumbs and deep fried, so the surface has refined crunchiness that most deep fried foods lack. If you'd like a more intense description, click here. The shape varies from place to place, with arancini in Palermo and the west being spherical and large, while the arancini in Catania and the east being more conical like a stout sugar cone from the ice cream parlor. Here's one:

Here's another:
The first time you pick up an arancino you're in for a surprise; it feels like a pound or so, and you'll wonder how much damage it could do if it hit someone in the head. But that has never happened, ever because it's best used eaten.

Back to sweeter things, there are a variety of pastries which at first glance look French, but always have a Sicilian twist.

What we have here is a raisin twist and a beignet-looking pastry called a zeppola. The rasin twist, while as delicious as anything made of butter, sugar and raisins can be, isn't the star of the show. It's all about the zeppola, and how Sicilians have perfected the doughnut. If you can imagine the freshest fluffiest Crispy Creme doughnut you can with the butteriness of a French beignet, then multiply that by the cool smoothness of Sicilian ricotta, you have the zeppola. The ricotta usually has bits of chocolate mixed in, and zeppole come in different shapes; here's a twisty one:
Now Sicilian ricotta is perhaps the best sweet filling in the world, but for a savory snack you can get the same dough filled with prosciutto and mozzarella. This is a unique treat because the dough is a tad sweet, and so is prosciutto. The mozzarella is however salted more than usual, so it presents an intense contrast. Furthermore the salty ones are sprinkled in fine bread crumbs before being fried, so the shell is incredibly crunchy. Delicious!
Moving on, we have the babà. Variants exist in practically every cuisine (even Chinese, although Chinese deserts are extensive when you think about it) and are simply sponge cakes soaked to the point of drippy saturation in sugared rum, then topped with some custard and fruit. Sometimes they are hollowed out and stuffed with custard. In keeping with the theme of contrasting extremes, the syrup soaking the cake is almost mouth-puckeringly sweet, while the custard is cold and creamy but lacking sugar, so it coats the tongue as you eat it and keeps the sweet syrup from overpowering the overall flavor.
Finally, we made a stop at a large and apparently well regarded bakery in the center of Palermo, Spinnato. It's more of an Italian food megaplex, with a bakery, gelateria, chocolatier and cafe all spread out over two blocks. Here I got a small sample of some typical pastries.
Starting with the erect fork, we have a cassatina. My only regret on this trip is I didn't get a good photo of a real cassata. A cassata is my favorite cake in the whole world, and most likely one of the deadliest. Take a normal sponge cake, and soak it in alcohol. Then layer it with ricotta and chunks of candied fruit and sometimes chocolate, then encase the whole thing in marzipan and more chunks of candied fruit. If in my life I ever make it to a position of great importance and power, I'm going to celebrate by turning off my phone, sitting down by myself with a cassata and slowly eating the whole thing without interruption. Come to think of it, I might even do it again in July before I leave.

Back to the cassatina, it's just a mini-cassata. Obviously without the volume of a normal cassata the density isn't as effective but it's a tasty morsel nonetheless. In the middle we have two puff pastries filled with custard, standard fare. On the right are two Sicilian staples; almond flour cookies filled with honey and chopped almonds.

I take that back, I have another regret. In a neighborhood of Palermo, there is an ancient open market called the Vucciria, which as I learned from Wikipedia Italy derives from the French boucherie, or butcher. This meant back in the day it sold meat, but now there are many fish vendors as well. Anyway in the later afternoon guys set up small gas stoves around the square, upon which rest gigantic iron woks. In these woks these vendors mix all the extra bits of meat collected from the local butchers, mostly bits of entrail, gristle, and fat. (basically a Chinese dream come true) When you walk by you'll smell the simmering spiced mass of meat, then for 1,50 they'll take a roll and stuff it full of this dark mixture, top it with cheese and you have the most flavorful meat sandwich ever. It pours juice so the roll quickly gets soaked soggy and while it's a mess (also because sometimes they wrap the sandwiches in newspaper) it's so much fun to eat because in each bite you can have five different kinds of meat, and the texture is a great adventure. I wish I'd gotten a good photo of that.

Paris, France and Trieste, Italy | A Week of Food

2007-05-12T17:35:00.000-04:00

A month ago I spent a week traveling with a friend from undergrad years, Carenina. We decided to split our time between Paris and Trieste, Italy. The first day in Paris, a nice co-worker of Carenina's took us out to dinner, so I took the opportunity to offer up L'Ardoise. Finding a table on Saturday, at least this time of year, wasn't difficult although in the middle of our dinner the restaurant was full.

I took tuna tartare with mustard and celery, while Carenina and Steve took prosciutto with asparagus and poached eggs.

My tuna was sushi fresh in texture and taste, and surprisingly the mustard did not overpower the celery, which was mixed with a little lemon juice for backup.

The prosciutto met my high Italian standards, although as appetizers go I would have found it a bit heavy. Not that I would ever say anything bad about food with eggs, but the combination of egg yolks and salty prosciutto did not go down as effortlessly as I expect an appetizer should.

For first courses, I got a roast pork belly with carrots and potatoes and toasted bread crumbs, Carenina got free range chicken with onions and fennel in a sweet cream sauce, and Steve got potatoes and veal kidney.

Let's take a moment to expound on the wonders of pork belly. One of the fattiest cuts of the pig, it's used to make bacon but difficult to find uncured outside of a Chinese butcher. The Chinese have a great dish in which the pork belly is braised and then subsequently boiled with dried vegetables and wine so that the alternating layers of fat and meet begin to separate. It literally melts in your mouth, and the fat dissolves first leaving the juicy bits of meat to chew. For reasons I hope are clear, this is one of my favorite dishes.

When I read the description in a French restaurant, I imagined I'd be getting something else. After all it takes a certain disregard for customer health to serve a block of fat, although given this is the country where they force-fatten animals to make their livers tastier, I shouldn't be surprised. The belly was broiled skin side up, so that as the meat cooked the fat melted and dripped into the meat, making it all the more flavorful. At the same time, the skin and top layer of fat caramelized, adding a wonderful crunchy texture. So let's reiterate: a top layer of almost burned crunchy fat, right under that liquefied smooth fat, sitting on top of a striated layer of meat and fat, right on top of a tender, almost flaky layer of meat. I think my joy can be neatly summarized by Carenina who upon seeing it said, "That's disgusting" and then upon tasting it said, "Hmmm..." even though we know she was thinking that it was the best thing, ever. The cute melange of carrots and bread crumbs just served to absorb some of the fat, as well as provide textural variation for the slimy greasy pork.

The chicken was also tasty, arguably requiring even more skill to execute since it didn't have the intrinsic advantage of being more than 50 percent fat. To make up for this handicap, the sauce was rich with cream and butter, and flavored with nutmeg and cloves. Fennel is used in southern French cooking to make deserts, so the sweet sauce with fennel and onions went naturally. To keep the dish from tiring the palate, the chicken was salt rubbed and roasted with chives, so the sweet/salty balanced nicely and stayed interesting.

I have less praise for Steve's kidneys. Like the chicken they came in a cream sauce--this one more savory--and the potatoes were competently mashed and buttered. Problem with kidneys is the homogeneous texture and taste, together with a homogeneous cream sauce, served with homogeneous potatoes, and you begin to think you're eating one of those astronaut's meals through a toothpaste tube. The flavors were all there, but I could only eat two bites before the onset of palate fatigue.

For desert I got a layer pastry of strawberries, custard and cream. My hesitation at destroying the beautiful presentation lasted only long enough for me to realize how delicious it was, after which I went at the light, flaky wafers and rich custard with a reckless abandon. As far as I could tell the strawberries were unsweetened and even a little tart, while the strawberry drizzled on top was quite tart with lemon juice. Thus the only real sweetness came from the custard, so on this warm night the overall desert still had plenty of lightness.

Carenina got a baked plum with custard and black currants. Her custard was richer in eggs and sweeter, although because the black currants are more sour and the overall volume was lower, it worked out well. Steve went traditional and got a cheese plate, which I did not get to try. Most likely something to do with all the cream and strawberries on my fork.

On Sundays there is a grand farmer's market at the Bastille. We went hunting for breakfast, and after sampling some Moroccan snacks of meat and pine nuts in a Phyllo dough shell, we found a vendor selling goose eggs. Aside from the natural excitement of feeling like you're eating someone's baby dinosaur, goose eggs only have minor texture differences from chicken eggs. High on possibility, we bought tomatoes, fresh basil, goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and spiced olives. Then we made two big omelettes of two goose eggs each. These together with fresh French pastries and tea, sitting in a sunny living room with the sounds and smells of a farmer's market wafting in through the large open windows, make a morning grand.

Later on in the week I found myself with time to kill, so I headed over to a Jewish quarter near the Marais to get one of my favorite fast foods: a Kebab. A pita filled to the brim with tahini, tomatoes, salad french fries, grilled eggplant and greasy fried meat.

Ok so this one didn't come from the Marais, but bonus points for the Notre Dame in the background.

Then I washed it down with some yummy sweets. A cornbread date cake was both sickeningly oily and sweet, but maintained a strong corn flavor. The poppyseed cake was standard fare, and the Baklava was great in that wasn't the modern kind made of phylo dough but a precursor made from a more cakey dough loaded with sesame. The best part though was the apple cake, which was loaded with chopped walnuts, cinamon, chunks of apple AND dried apple.

Clockwise from top: poppyseed cake, Baklava, apple cake, corn and date cake.

On our way back from Paris we stopped in Pavia for dinner with a few of my coworkers before going to Trieste. There's a restaurant in Pavia, Il Cupolone, that specializes in meat and I'd been craving my all-time favorite: lardo. Here are a few glamor shots of Italian meats.

First we have prosciutto on toasted bread, then prosciutto with melon, and lardo with honey. It's like eating creamy meat, if that's possible. Between the appetizers and steak Fiorentina we had pasta, including an excellent smoked salmon pasta, but lets be honest: steak Fiorentina.

Steak Fiorentina, unlike every other cut of Italian meat which is pounded out of the third dimension, is much like an American Porterhouse: thick, juicy, and dense. Even better, in some strange Italian tradition, the steak can come precut to facilitate scarfing.

The next day we headed off to Trieste, but not before grabbing some excellent focaccia from Griffini, a bakery in town. Unlike most sweet focaccias which are just sprinkled with sugar, this one's loaded with rasins as well. The focaccia is baked for halfway, then glazed with sugar and olive oil, and then put back in the oven. The result is a wonderfully moist bread, with crystaline sugar on the peaks and gooey decadence in the valleys. It's like taking a bite into a syrupy donut and a sugar biscuit at the same time. (a good thing)

Trieste, being the largest natural port in continental Europe (or something like that) is known for its seafood. Also, since it's right by Slovenia, and was occupied for a while by Germans, it's got some ethnic overtones. We had two memorable meals in Trieste. The first was at a far out of the way trattoria named Suban, which was situated several miles inland atop a hill overlooking the water. After an hour and a half of blindly trusting Google maps on a Blackberry, we arrived at 9pm. At first we wern't sure what to think because the place was practically empty, although an hour later it was bustling and loud. As our waiter handed us our menu, he proceeded to list either modifications or complete substitutions to every dish written, rendering them useless. In the end we decided to share an appetizer, an eggplant soufflé with a curried carrot sauce, then get individual main courses.

After the appetizer the waiter came by to take the rest of our order, and right as we were about to tell him our choices for seconds, a silent man pushing a cart topped with two silver domes emerged from the kitchen. The silent man removed the two domes with a flourish revealing two large grilled hunks of meat, a leg of lamb and a round of pork. My choice of stuffed duck breast, which seconds ago was on the tip of my tongue disappeared and I curiously found myself saying, "roast leg of lamb". The silent man nodded his silent approval (perhaps he will get a commission) and floated away.

Minutes later our first courses came. Carenina had been craving gnocchi all week, so she finally got her wish with gnocchi in a Brie sauce. These gnocchi were a cut above the ones I get in my neighborhood. Much more refined than those to which I am accustom, it was impossible to discern any starch texture at all, instead they were little puffy balls of silky creaminess. Then you add Brie, and well...

I tried Jota. Jota, I learned only later, is a local stew made from a variety of leftovers, one of which is always sauerkraut/pickled cabbage, giving the soup a characteristic zing. I don't think I'd eat it everyday, but it had a memorable flavor and the other ingredients of carrots and small chunks of meat made it a hearty first course.

Our second courses arrived. Disappointingly that I didn't get the whole leg, instead the silent man carved me a few slices and left with the better half, leaving me wanting. I just know there's a moral buried here from someone less obtuse than I. Carenina got her originally planned dish of a pork chop stuffed with cheese and rocket, a type of salad green.

For dessert we shared a chocolate mousse, which was competent if not exceptional. As we were getting ready to pay the bill, we saw the waiter bringing another table what looked like milk in wine glasses. I inquired, and was told it was a lemon sorbet with vodka. So we got it too.

It was really good in the sense that I'm glad I didn't have access to more, as there's no doubt I'd drink it like water and end up under some table, somewhere. It was so fluffy and creamy you'd swear it had cream, but it was just lemon, sugar, water and vodka. Apparently Sicilian granita is like this, I can't wait.

We had our second great meal at an unlikely place: the restaurant at our hotel. A tip for budding restaurateurs, don't name your restaurant "____'s Bar and Grill", and especially not "Harry's Bar and Grill". People don't expect fine cuisine from a name that reminds them of a dirty pub in London.

As if to shatter all our preconceptions, the restaurant not only had an innovative menu, the presentation was fantastic. Due to the fact that this was a seafood restaurant and I have no concept of fish names in Italian, we both opted for the fixed price menu.

Before the first courses, we were brought a small snack to whet the appetite; a savory potato custard. I know that sounds an awful lot like mashed potatoes, but the egginess and paprika sprinkled on top made it seem more like a creamy deviled egg. Immediately after came anchovies on a bed of green beans. I couldn't figure out what green herbs were rubbed into the anchovies, but it was tasty nonetheless. Then came my second encounter with Jota, this time it was entitled "The cook's re-interpretation of a Triestian classic dish" and compared to the Jota I had last night, I'd agree. This was blended smooth, and the tartness from the cabbage wasn't as prevalent, instead the sourness was in the egg-white foam on top. Again it was good and interesting, but I don't know how much sour soup I can take. The ravioli were the only item that contained meat, with some pancetta and mushrooms in a seafood broth.

The evening's highlight was the main course, which in keeping with the previous courses came impeccably laid out. It was lobster steamed perfectly laid atop a bed of chopped cucumber, celery and scallions, drizzled with a balsamic glaze. This was the freshest lobster I've had so far.

Our deserts were equally creative, although I think they arrived out of order. Our first desert was a rich, intense mousse of chocolate and coffee, with cracked coffee beans floating inside. This was so strong its flavor still lingered well into our second desert, which was a strawberry puree with an ever so lightly baked meringue. The candied mint leaf was perhaps meant to cleanse the palate between deserts.

The last night we spent back in Pavia, and we were both so exhausted from the traveling and fine dining we had dinner at a local dive, a pizzeria called Vecchia Pavia, or Old Pavia. No one initially believes me when I tell them it's completely possible for anyone to eat a gigantic sized pizza here, but the crust is so impossibly thin it's really not too filling at all. The toppings are varied and plentiful, everything from ten different kinds of cheeses, to mussels, to pepperoni. (bell peppers)

The best part of this trip is it's gotten me to be more appreciative of the culinary opportunities available to me here; therefore, I've already booked another trip, this time Sicily! Coming soon.

Tel Aviv, Israel : Good Eats in the Land of Milk and Honey

2007-03-28T04:39:00.000-04:00

Last week I spent 5 days in Israel with my roommate from undergrad days, Jon. He'd been waxing on and on for several years on how great the food is over there, and now that I'm just a hop away I decided it was time to brave the Middle East (of which the dangers are minimal I was promised by many) and eat my way through Tel Aviv.

Arriving in Tel Aviv at 2AM, Jon took me to a homey place down by the beach called the Mitbahon, or Little Cabinet. It was so named in reference to Israel's female prime minister Golda Meir, who used to hold her cabinet meetings in her kitchen. I was too hungry to remember to take any photos, but we both got a stew of beef and carrots on a bed of couscous. Other than how the meat fell apart like fresh fish, the couscous was completely different than what I usually get. It had a very fine, light fluffiness that was the perfect complement to a rich meat stew. It was spiced ever so lightly, I could have imagined there was some Parmesan cheese mixed into the couscous if the place wasn't Kosher.

The next morning we went to Cafe Basel, where I had a chicken and date salad with string beans and a spicy relish. As a side I got grilled fish cakes with a whole roasted fennel. Along with all this came a loaf of fresh bread. I didn't realize how much I missed whole grain bread with a real crust.

Along the way to the beach we stopped at a juice bar. They had these awesome looking fruit and yogurt cups, but since I'd just eaten I got orange and carrot juice. I noticed that oranges and carrots are both sweeter than usual, but the oranges also seem to be more tart.

Later for dinner Jon took me to another homey place, this one inhabited by Hungarian Jews, where I had Goulash. That's right, I ate Goulash. It's a rich beef stew with loads of paprika and onions. We ate it with a cucumber and tomato salad, with chunks of crusty bread. I forgot to take a photo because I was surrounded by singing smoking drunk Hungarian Jews.

Jon was planning on taking me to Coffee Bar, one of his favorite high-end restaurants in Tel Aviv. Trouble is dinner isn't till later in the evening, and while we were walking on the beach we got hungry. So, we stopped at a burger bar. The weekend I was there, a huge Israel-England soccer match was going on, and so the whole place was inundated with English tourists. I don't hate English people, and I know for a fact that American tourists are terrible. But for some reason before coming to Europe I had the idea that English were better behaved than Americans. I was waaaaay wrong. Moving on, burgers at Agadir's are absolutely 100% awesome. First, you choose a size. I got the biggest, 350g. Then you choose from a huge list of toppings, including some real nice cheeses. I chose a fried egg and a grilled Portabella mushroom. Then the waiter's going to ask if you want the Onion Bread, and you're going to have to say "yes". You know that flower onion or whatever that you can get at Chili's? This is better. They forgo the stupid presentation business and take an onion, smash it, and deep fry it. This way you get maximum surface area for fried goodness adherence. Have a look see.

It might look like the cook had a loss of motor control, but this is the right stuff.

After this light snack, we did some more walking on the pier until our hunger came back. Unfortunately, with nice restaurants comes good ambiance and that means low lighting. I couldn't get any good photos of the food, but iPhoto (shameless plug) did an acceptable job touching things up.

I started with a yellowtail carpaccio with grapefruit wedges and melon slices. In Italy I have beef carpaccio about once a week at lunch, so this was a deliciously refreshing change.

For a main course, I got a pork chop (!) with green beans and roasted potatoes. The pork chop was grilled with finely minced green peppers, and the potatoes were roasted
with whole cloves of garlic.

Jon got a Filet Mignon, which was unbelievably thick yet cooked perfectly. It tasted like eating butter, which is delicious even if you don't like butter.

No, that's not a grilled heart, that's a chunk of Fillet Mignon.

For desert I had a trifle. When I was little and my parents still entertained guests, my mom made a killer trifle. This was aaaalmost as good.

We hung out with some friends at a really nice bar called Betty Ford, until we got hungry again. At midnight, we went to Moses, which also serves awesome burgers made from a blend of beef, veal and lamb. Compared with all beef burgers this had a whole lot more flavor, which can be a good or bad thing depending on what you're in the mood for.

The next morning we were so disgusted with ourselves we went to the gym, and spent just enough time there to justify going to Loop Noodles for breakfast. Usually I choose Asian restaurants carefully, as I'm somewhat picky when it comes to Chinese food. Although this place was in no way authentic or loyal to a particular cuisine, it was saved by the amazing quality of the ingredients. My salmon flaked apart under its own weight, and Jon's eggplant while in no way rubbery had a much more substantial texture. The appetizers, potstickers and chicken satay were normal finger food fare.

After lunch we took the bus to Jerusalem, and stopped for Shawarma at a stand on the street. I like Shawarma because as they are cutting the meat off the big turning spit, I imagine myself jumping the counter and attacking the spit with both hands. The really cool thing about this place is they baked the bread right in front of you.

That evening, I went to the Israeli Olympic training center with a friend from UCSD, they have a pretty cool gymnastics gym there. I did enough exercise to feel good about going to a supermarket afterward, and doing some research. This is what I found.

I tried to get some direct translations for the food, but I kind of stopped when the first thing was "Fried Stick Snacks -- Falafel Flavor" The junk food includes a blueberry cheesecake, pudding with whipped cream, falafel flavored sticks, soup almonds, sweet sesame cookies, raspberry fig newtons, an orange chocolate bar, granola cookies, and chocolate creme. Here's the aftermath of the research.

In medical terms for your heart, this is called "the last straw."

I must say, the quality of the junk food is excellent. Even in the one dollar pudding and whipped cream cups, we have real dairy whipped cream. Also, the granola cookies actually taste like they have some grains in them. Anyway all that good food spread out gave me an idea.

Step 1: Mix the cheesecake, chocolate bar and a smashed raspberry newton.

Step 2: Sprinkle on crushed granola cookie and falafel sticks, then pour on some chocolate creme.

Step 3: Mix it all up and garnish with a sesame cookie. Delicious.

The next day I had a 3pm flight back to the land of pasta and... the pope, so we started the day off right with a breakfast from Bugsy. For $10, this is what you get: coffee, grapefruit juice, an omelette with steak, a salad, sweet potato fries, garlic toast, and a few grilled veggies.

Since we were pressed for time, we made a short walk to a different neighborhood, where we had an awesome home-cooked lunch.

All the food is already laid out for you to choose, and you just pile as much as you can onto your plate and start gorging.
On my plate you'll find garbanzos, lentils, meat on an artichoke heat, a red pepper stuffed with chicken, some sort of spiced squash, a big ol' meatball, and seasoned rice.

Go to Tel Aviv. Eat.

Cooking At Home

2007-01-21T12:28:00.000-05:00

We here at Mangez like to eat a lot. That's why we're professionals. Going out and eating a lot is appealing because you get to enjoy your gluttonous stupor without the impending cleanup hanging over your head. Of course if you're slightly smarter you just get yourself a totally awesome significant other, but not all of us have that luxury.

One drawback about eating out is although you ate a lot, you can't quite visualize the raw materials you consumed as would be seen sitting on a supermarket shelf, since your food comes prepared. Yes, there's nothing like a home-cooked meal to tell you that you just ate one large eggplant, two medium zucchinis, a carrot, an onion, 4 cloves of garlic, three tablespoons of olive oil, half a pound of sausage, a dozen chopped olives, a diced hot pepper, three ripe tomatoes, a half cup of red wine, and a cup of corn meal. And salt and pepper to taste.

NYC: Pizza Pizza!

2007-01-02T23:02:00.000-05:00

Every major city offers a wide variety culinary delights, but each city also has its claims to fame. San Francisco has top notch Dungeness crab and Chinese food; Chicago has deep dish pizza and steaks; Kansas City is a major barbecue mecca; Boston is known for clam chowdah and other seafood. In New York, they pride themselves on thin crust pizza.

Three of the very biggest shrines to thin crust are Patsy's, Totonno's and Lombardi's. All three claim a long history with classic New York City pizza, and all three claim to be the original and the best. There are various Ray's pizza joints around the city (Famous Ray's, Original Ray's, Famous Original Ray's, Original Famous Ray's, etc. etc. -- none of which are affiliated with each other). They are a joke as far as their claimed history goes, and their qualities vary from pretty good to downright atrocious. We will not mention the Rays' here. If you're in the city and you see one, eat there at your own risk.

Patsy's
The first we tried was Patsy's. Patsy's has many locations around Manhattan. They all feature a standard, pleasant, non-descript decor -- plain but solid wooden chairs and tables and not much else. The pie is fabulous. While I generally like my pizza with toppings --Patsy's margherita is a classic delight. The crust is crispy, and it's never burnt or undercooked in any one spot. It has a nice flavor, too. The sauce is sparingly applied, but has an intense flavor that means there's no need for a huge amount. It's rich, neither too sweet or tart, and has just the right amount of seasonings. The cheese is also sparingly applied, but since it's fresh mozarella, a little'll do ya. After all that, it's just a matter of fresh leaves of basil. It's simplicity, yet it works when the ingredients and skills involved are so high quality.

But lest you think the margherita is the only thing to get there, let us assure you that the classic pepperoni is wonderful too. The pepperoni is thick sliced and spicy, but not too salty so it melds with the other flavors in the cheese and sauce without overpowering it.

Totonno's
A Zagat's quote appears prominently on Tottono's storefronts and menus: "Only God makes better pizza." In my opinion, that only has a chance of being true if we don't count Chicago deep dish and stuffed pizzas -- in particular, Lou Malnatti's. But that's another post. Totonno's crust is crispy, but a little less so -- more chewiness, and a better flavor to the dough. The sauce is applied more heavily, and it's a little sweeter. Not too much, but just a bit. While you can tell that Totonno's also uses quality cheese and toppings, the flavors somehow have less depth and intensity than Patsy's. Since I'm a sauce and toppings kind of guy, the fact that Totonno's leaves so much exposed crust can be a bit bothersome; but that's a matter of opinion. Still, a quality pizza, and the one I go for when I need a pie delivered for the big (Steelers) game. (There's no Patsy's outlet near me.)

That leads us to

Lombardi's
I'll make no bones about it: this is a tourist trap if there ever was one. Well, OK, so there are bigger tourist traps -- most of Times Square, for instance. Still, in my opinion, Lombardi's might legitimately claim to have invented the NYC-style pizza, but they now coast on their rep.

Lombardi's has just one location -- on Spring Street in NoLita (North of Little Italy). A cash-only establishment like Patsy's, the lines of gaping-mouthed, loud, obnoxious tourists stretch around the Lombardi's intersection perpetually.

The Lombardi's pie has a really excellent crust -- proof that the coal-fired brick oven thing really does work. It's light, airy and crispy -- not much flavor, but the crust was clearly intended to be merely a delivery vehicle for cheese, sauce and toppings.

Unfortunately, the crust is the only thing that's good about a Lombardi's pie. The cheese -- bland and tasteless. The sauce -- all tomato and no herbs or flavors. And the toppings -- of a quality that I might buy at any chain grocery store. In most cities and small towns, Lombardi's would be memorable note. In New York? Why bother, when you can hit Patsy's or Totonno's?

New York: Gribnitz -- The Legend Lives (But We May Not)

2006-12-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

Way Back When

When I was a wee tyke – or rather, in junior high, I was a devotee of the Frugal Gourmet. Jeff Smith would cook all sorts of delicious foods, then geekily explain their origin history and place within a culture. (Sure, Jeff Smith would eventually be accused of child molestation, develop a (literally) crippling paralysis due to his gastronomical excesses and die (from some eyewitness reports) an irritable, wheelchair-bound old man, but at that time, he was my hero.)

One episode of “the Frug” featured guest cook Itzhak Perlman, who is better known as the leading classical violinist of his generation and a founding member in the classical music world of the so-called “Jewish mafia.” (Other members of this group included Pinchas Zukerman, Shlomo Mintz, Emmanuel Ax, Zubin Mehta, and of course, that very famous Jewish cellist, Yo-Yo Ma.) As the two of them made holiday dishes, Perlman waxed nostalgic about a dish his mother used to make: chicken skins, rolled around a small ball of seasoned chicken fat) and deep fried in rendered, liquefied chicken fat until it was a crispy crunchy tasty heart attack waiting to happen. Of course, my mother, watching with disgust as Mr. Perlman’s eyes glaze over in rapture, failed to notice the drool trickling out of the corner of my mouth. Someday, I vowed, I would have this wonderful-sounding delight.

Through the years, I would shamelessly corner every Jewish person I befriended and ask if they had heard of this dish, knew of a restaurant that served it, or had an elderly grandmother who could cook it and invite me over for dinner. Mostly I was met with looks of puzzlement and disgust.

The Mission

Then I met the eminent Dr. Josh Joseph. (I refer to him as “doctor” not because he has an MD (yet), but because he is worthy of great respect.) Josh became, if anything, more fascinated by this dish – which he informed me was called “gribnitz.” A couple months ago, he showed me an old cookbook that he bought at a used bookstore that contained a recipe, and a couple weeks ago, he told me excitedly that he had found a butcher (right in my neighborhood, oddly enough) that sold the two essential ingredients – rendered chicken fat and chicken skin.

Last night, I showed up at Josh’s residence with some beer, and found him waiting with three pounds each of chicken skin and fat, along with some chopped onion. Oanh, having washed her hands of the whole affair (“That sounds like the most disgusting thing ever,” she said foolishly) ,decided not to come, and Josh’s significant other, Erin, looked at us with a look that can only be described as a barely concealed mixture of disgust, revulsion, pity and exasperation. But never mind the naysayers: A dream was about to be fulfilled!

The Experience

Having lost the original recipe, we basically relied on an Internet recipe that told us to “Cook the skins and onions in the fat until crispy.” But how to begin, specifically? Deciding that chicken fat, like other animal fats, would likely have a low smoking point, we decided to start with the fat in a cold skillet, warming it up and then adding onion for pre-flavoring and finally putting in the sliced pieces of skin. This proved to take entirely too long, plus the chopped onion began burning way before the skin was cooked. While eventually the skins turned crispy, we became impatient and decided to get a small pot and dump in about two inches worth of fat. Armed with searingly hot fat in the pot, we added skins, nearly causing an explosion of crackling oil before putting a lid on and leaving it cracked. This worked much better.

It wasn’t long before the smell of fried chicken-y goodness filled the kitchen. And our clothes. And the apartment. Our hair. And eventually, the entire floor.

But it was worth it. The skins, seasoned with freshly chopped onion, garlic salt, pepper and chili powder, were crispy, greasy goodness. They were surprisingly not as intensely chicken flavored as we expected and in fact resembled pork rinds that had the mildest hint of poultry deliciousness infused into them. They were also surprisingly light – not in terms of cholesterol, of course, but in terms of filling us up. Three pounds of skin dealt with our hunger, but they didn’t make us all that full.

And it turns out that one doesn’t need that much chicken fat for frying – a better ratio would have been three pounds of skin to one pound of fat. Which means, for those of you paying attention, that we had roughly 1 ½ pounds of fat left. (Half the fat went into the pans, and about a third of that went into our stomachs.)

The Corollary

It was decided that making some vaguely latke-ish potato pancakes would be the only ethical thing to do (so as not to waste all that chicken fat.) Previously baked potatoes were re-baked, mashed, and mixed with onion, softened (room temperature) chicken fat, salt, and egg substitute (real eggs don’t agree with Josh’s stomach). The result was pounded into submission (literally – Josh used his fists and did what can only be described as a culinary equivalent of Iron Palm training to make sure everything was truly mashed and mixed.)

Latkes are light, crispy treats. What we made last night were “croquettes.” Crispy and delicious, to be sure, but so soaked in chicken fat that Josh’s vision started to blur and his limbs began to tingle. (This was an effect I noticed myself the next morning.) The fattiness wall, when we hit it, hit us back hard.

And after finishing a couple more beers, we got the piece de resistance – the sight of chicken fat congealing on our plates, in the kitchen, on the pots, floors, stove, EVERYWHERE. We felt like weeping.

A Gold Medal Performance

No woman is perfect, of course, and while I’ve heard no complaints about Erin (Josh’s girlfriend, for those not paying attention), I’m sure that she is no exception. But any woman who’s willing to endure the stench of fried animal fat, and then clean up the resulting kitchen mess – and it was one of the biggest, most nauseating messes I’d ever seen – is worth commending. To be fair, Josh did try to half-heartedly do some cleaning, as did I (sort of), but so comatose, sluggish and pathetic were our efforts, that Erin let us soldier along for a full 10 seconds before taking charge and shouldering us out of the way to do 97% of the cleanup work herself. And she did such an awesome job that the kitchen looked better when she was finished than it did when we began. So bless you, Erin. (I’m sure Josh’s (vegetarian) roommate would say the same).

The Aftermath

My sleep that night was filled with vaguely nightmarish dreams that involved being smothered, and I believe a hazmat team was needed to clean the men’s room at my office the next day. Also my limbs felt tingly and twitchy and, despite numerous brushings, my mouth insisted on tasting like rancid chicken fat. Lovely.

Rome, Italy: Asinocotto

2006-11-27T08:52:00.000-05:00

There's something to be said for a language that allows a restaurant to be named "Cooked Donkey" without sounding something vulgar. I had the occasion to spend Saturday in Rome, visiting my college friend Nancy who was traveling over Thanksgiving with her family.

After walking for 13 hours, we were famished and so went down the list of New York Times recommended restaurants. Due to lack of foresight, we didn't make any reservations which proved to be a bad idea on a Saturday night this time of year. Every restaurant we called was fully booked. One restaurant looked promising but their number was disconnected, so we went ahead and called some friends with google maps to help us find the place. After a 40 minute walk, we arrived to find that they were full as well. About to give up, we hesitantly tried one last restaurant, a tad pricier but described as homey and straightforward which is what we were shooting for. We lucked out with a reservation, but as if to earn our meal, had to really book it to get there. 55 brisk minutes later, we were at the door of a very unassuming hole in a large concrete wall.
A cheery waiter greeted us at the door and led us to our seats. Because our reservation was for 8:30, the restaurant was mostly empty, but it did get completely full as the night progressed. I learned later that our waiter was in fact the head chef Giuliano Brenna, and the two sous-chefs in the kitchen were doing the cooking.

As I will cover in greater detail some other time, one of my greatest discoveries thus far has been Lardo, which is a general term meaning seasoned, cured fat. From an animal. Slices of it. So naturally the appetizer we chose to share was Salumi di Oca e Lardo alle Spezie con Marmellata di Pomodoro Verdo. (spiced goose cold cuts and lardo with green tomato relish) Traditional Italian appetizers contain sliced meats, so this was a standard dish made special by lardo.
The dish came with two different cold cuts, along with the special lardo variety which is seen in the middle having thick white stripes. The upper meat, which falls under the general category of salami in Italian, was tasty if unremarkable. To me, a good salami can be soft and textured yet not leave a slimy feeling on the roof of your mouth. Often I find salami is too dry to enjoy chewing, or if it is soft it leaves an unpleasant film. This did neither. The lower meat had a more distinct flavor, but it was orthogonal to the tomato relish, and was best alone on bread. I'm also not a huge fan of meat with a lot of gelatin which this seemed to have. The lardo was a different story. I had heretofore experienced pork lardo, which although has exquisite texture (recall the joy of eating pure fat) is admittedly weak in the flavor department. Because this lardo has strips of meat and fat, it makes a delicious combination especially on a slice of dry bread topped with a spoonful of the relish. It was light as appetizers ought to be, yet not boring.

For first courses, Italians traditionally have a starch dish, either pasta or risotto. I had Orechiette con Melanzane e Capesante al Bacon e Pecorino. (shell pasta with eggplant, scallops, bacon and pecorino cheese) Now we can all agree that bacon and scallops together are sublime, which is what dominated this dish. I wonder if this wouldn't be better as two separate dishes: bacon and scallops, or eggplant and pecorino. It was hard to taste the latter two ingredients. The eggplant, of which there was little to begin with, was a bit tasteless and mushy. Again, the dish was carried by the scallops and bacon, which is not bad at all. On a frivolous note, the cutting job of the ingredients made eating simple, there was no chasing food items around the plate with the fork. Although to be fair, if someone were chasing me with a fork I'd do my best to run as well.

Nancy had Stracci alle Erbe con Ragù d'Anatra, (herbed sheet pasta and a duck sauce) which is the dish I wish I'd gotten. The sauce was hearty enough to stick to wide sheet of noodles, strong in tomatoes all the while letting of the duck flavors through. The sheet noodles were gratifying to bite into, and the area of the pasta had a resetting effect on the palate which meant each bite did not overpower the taste buds, even though the duck was pretty salty. Awesome.

The second course is the meat course, sometimes accompanied by potatoes. I had Faraona in Salmì con Te Verde e Verza, (guinea fowl marinated in green tea with cabbage) an excellent dish with one minor problem. Although the surface was great to eat, flavor and texture and all, the meat toward the bone was very dry. Nancy had Carrè di Agnello alla Birra Scura, Sedano e Zenzero, (rack of lamb marinated in dark beer, with celery and ginger)

which too was excellent, minus another small quibble. The lamb itself was great, juicy with the right amount of char and robust caramelization. The problem, and this may have to do with a poor supply of ginger, is the celery and ginger bed on which the lamb rested was by and large tasteless. It absorbed some of the wonderful lamb juice, but didn't add anything special.

For desert we split a cup of sorbets. The flavors were strawberry, lemon and apple. Italians really get sweets right. They use sugar sparingly, so flavors fully develop without the skin inside your cheeks clenching as it normally does when it's hit with a wave of sweetness. Fluffy and light, a good way to finish the meal. There were much more interesting items on the menu, such as decadent chocolate cake, mousse, coffee pudding, rice pudding and poached pears but for some reason I really like sorbets.

In summary, I recommend this restaurant as a complete package. Of all the dishes only the duck pasta dish really struck me as outstanding, but the other items were still fun and adventurous and together with friendly, relaxed service the evening was wonderful. Of course, thank you Nancy for the treat!

Pavia, Italy: Street Food

2006-10-04T03:13:00.000-04:00

Despite not having a working postal system, living in Pavia has its perks. One of them is the monthly open market where vendors from all over Europe (remember these countries are the size of Oregon) bring their goods to sell. If you can't wait that long, there is also a square in the city where local vendors come every day.

This particular weekend was special for several reasons. There was a huge city wide party going on, called the Festival of Knowledge. Something about the way the locals greeted me with "Hi, nice to meet you, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS PARTY??" clued me in to the rarity of the event. More importantly, my friend Laura had just finished an internship in Switzerland and was doing a roundabout goodbye Europe tour before starting her job at Clorox. (did you think the Swiffer mop invented itself?)

The best thing about Laura (well in the sense of, what really stands apart from her intrinsic good nature) is she not only supports my eating disorders, she actually encourages them. I think it's because she secretly wants to eat like me but can't due to social pressure. We set out Sunday morning to eat our way through the open market. We decided to start with the heavy stuff first.

We stopped at the German stand selling what else, sausages. I got a big bratwurst stuffed in a white roll loaded with mustard and sauerkraut. Laura got a skewer of grilled pork and a bun. And beers. If I had to choose between eating a package of bacon or bratwurst for a Sunday morning breakfast, I'd choose the bratwurst.

Next we stopped at a dried food stand, where I got 200g of dried Porcini mushrooms and 1kg of tricolor tortellini. Then we stopped again at another German stand and got a slice of a huge apple tort. It came with the perfect sauce, made of honey and cream. Not too sweet and sickeningly rich. Eating it elicited the same response as when you pick up lead for the first time; you do a double take when you realize how dense it is. I also liked the wood fork.

After that we stopped at a pasticceria stand, where we discovered the Italian love for almonds. As a universal fan of all things remotely related to marzipan, I was overjoyed. We tried to take a representative sample. In addition to the sweets, they also sold a southern Italian specialty: balls of chopped ham and provolone like cheese wrapped in a soft polenta shell and DEEP FRIED. It was good.

Next was the stand which advertised sweets made only of dried fruits and nuts. We went out of curiosity over the three foot mold of Italy made of layers and layers of dried fruits and nuts, but the lady was so nice I ended up buying two things. One was golf ball sized coconut and cherry smooshes, and the other was a cappuccino flavored square that was really yummy. It had pastes of all sorts of nuts and a creamy coating of something. I'm not being very specific but what you really need to take away from this was it was good.

We were near the end now, so right before leaving I got 250g of prosciutto, and watched as the man cut thin slices from a giant chunk of meat with a very springy thin knife. I think I am officially not a fan of prosciutto, preferring instead the slightly leaner and drier speck. But it was good meat. Bless Italians and their abundance of pork products.

There were a few things we didn't try: coiled ropes of dried sausage, (all called salami, if you ask for pepperoni you'll get a funny look and bell peppers) loaves of bread three feet across, some donut ring type pastry, (ok, not trying that was a mistake) some Polish sausage, and various candy stands. But all in all, it was a good effort.

Coming up soon: gelato.

Montreux, Switzerland: Mmm Cheese

2006-09-30T08:34:00.000-04:00

Cave Des Vignerons -- The Vinters' Cellar

I recently spent a weekend in Montreux, Switzerland, a small resort town a few kilometers south of Lausanne at the foot of the Alps. It's known primarily for its Jazz and music culture, and I bet it's the only place in Continental Europe outside maybe a wax museum where you can see a statue of Freddie Mercury. My friend Ali was invited to give a talk at ESSCIRC, which is the European Solid-State Circuits Conference held this year at Montreux. This presented the opportunity to eat savagely, and having subsisted at this point on two weeks of pasta and tomato sauce did nothing to help my restraint.

Aside from chocolate, a standing army, and punctual trains the Swiss are known for Fondue and Raclette. Fondue is a hot-pot style of eating things, and Raclette is the reverse process where instead of dipping food items into melted cheese, melted cheese is poured on food items. Raclette is actually both the name of the dish as well as the regional cheese used. Fondue (meaning "melted") was originally just melted cheese and stale bread, but the enterprising Swiss and to a lesser extent the French have widened the meaning to mean all sorts of objects dipped in a variety of hot liquids.

After Ali and I checked into the hotel we asked the desk for a restaurant recommendation, one which served authentic, typical Swiss food. I hoped this wasn't an invitation to send us to the local tourist trap, but she had a disarming maternal friendliness about her, most likely due to her non-Swiss orgins. (Portuguese) She directed us a few blocks down the mountain to La Cave Des Vignerons. I'm only half joking about the mountain part. Our hotel was situated near the top of Old Montreux, which is built up the side of a steep hill, steep enough that there's a overhead cable tramway going up the side.

After scouring the mountain a bit, we belayed our way to the ingress of the restaurant. It opens up to a shady bar, so for a moment we thought we were being set up by the Swiss mafia (arch enemies of the Swiss army, perhaps) but a lively elderly lady ushered us into the main eating area, which was a lot more pleasant. The inside of the restaurant was typically old Swiss, with exposed wood columns, a stone floor, and dim chandeliers.

Because I wanted both fondue and Raclette, Foundue Moitié (of Gruyere and Vacherin cheeses) seemed a bit excessive so instead we got Fondue Bourguignonne, which is (you're going to love this) a stock base of lard and oil. This fondue is typically served with cubes of meat instead of bread, but our host explained that they serve slices of meat (à la Hot Pot) and they use a less fattening, more flavored broth.

An old wive's tale is that fondue and especially cheese fondue is never to be accompanied by cold beverages such as sodas and water, reason being that it hardens the cheese in the stomach and impedes digestion. Fortunately they make a logical exception for chilled white wine, so we had a bottle of the local. It was a tad dryer than I like, and had a pretty unremarkable flavor but it turned out to go well with the richness of the fat soup.

Before the fondue came a small dish of foie gras and salad. It's difficult for me to say anything bad about the taste of foie gras. With our fondue came six different sauces. A Dijon style mustard, plain mayonnaise, garlic mayonnaise, caper mayonnaise, paprika and pepper mayonnaise, and butter. The butter was for replacing any grease that fell off the meat as it made its way from the pot to your plate. The broth itself was excellent without any sauces. It had elements of Fondue Bacchus, which adds vegetables and wine. The viscosity of the fat (most likely granite hard at room temperature) gave the bubbling liquid an incredibly substantial feeling when stirred, but the addition of thinly sliced carrots, onions, and celery took a lot of the greasiness away. The broth was incredibly aromatic with white pepper, cloves and bay leaves. The only disappointment was the lack of a large ladle for spooning the broth in larger volumes, but my arteries were secretly cheering.

After eating all the meat, we were ready for Raclette to top off. It seems that most people do this in the reverse order, but I can't imagine some bubbling cheese is heartier than meat in boiling fat. We got our plates with pickles, potatoes, onions and bits of dried bread as our Raclette was warming up. A Raclette machine is an overhead heating element with an under-hanging stand for a vertical wheel of cheese, so that the exposed edge of the cheese begins to bubble and melt. The rind is kept on, one so that the core of the wheel can get all gooey and melty without escaping and two because the toasted cheese rind is the tastiest thing ever. After some time of watching impatiently as the cheese bubbled and browned and smelled altogether delicious, our host brought it over and scraped generous piles onto our plates. (hence the name Raclette, which sort of means scrape)

Eating Raclette is a guilty pleasure. Obviously you're eating copious amounts of creamy hot melted cheese. But the process of eating is like when you take the last bit of crust from a toasted cheese sandwich and gluttonously use it to mop up the cheese drippings off your plate, except that's exactly the point. The cheese is now the main event, and the pickles and bread are condiments. The only thing that could be better is if they figured out how to make grilled cheese sandwiches in between two pieces of Raclette rind. But no matter, we had two servings each.

By now our wine was gone, so we ate our desert of chocolate fondue with a half bottle of local red. Like the white before it, it had a similarly unremarkable boquet but it was really cheap, especially as Swiss prices go. The chocolate had an excellent consistency although I wished it were a little darker, perhaps they needed that dilution to arrive at the creaminess. Nonetheless this didn't stop me from eating the rest with a spoon when I finished all my fruit. After all this, we finished our meal traditionally with a glass of Kir.

If you recall my description of our hotel location, maybe you can find a soft spot of your heat that isn't appalled by our massive consumption to pity us and our trudge back up the hill.

Pittsburgh

2006-05-29T01:43:00.000-04:00

A co-worker recently had to travel to the Pittsburgh sales office and asked me, as a noted Pittsburgh Steelers fan and glutton, for recommendations on eating establishments.

As a small city, Pittsburgh has a goodly number of eating establishments, and some of them are quite competent. But there are only three places that are worth making the trip to Steelers country for.

Robert Wholey's Fish Company is the only place in the city to buy truly fresh seafood. The fish market supplies every halfway decent restaurant, and any home chef, with a large variety of surprisingly fresh fish and shellfish. Wholey's has also developed a nice side venture with its prepared foods, available for takeout or eating at small standup counters and tables. Two varieties of fried fish -- scrod and haddock -- are mild and flaky and moist on the inside and slightly soft and lightly crunchy on the outside. Truly, it's the equal, in its own way, of fish and chips I've had in Scotland and in London. Wholey's also makes a mean batch of fried zucchini and excellent stuffed clams, and the crab cakes are very competent. But stay away from the fries.

The O -- aka the Dirty Dog or the Original Hot Dog Company -- is one of those fixtures of any college town -- greasy, cheap food that tastes oh so good after a night of cheap beer. The dogs are, of course, house-made and crispy and juicy and flavorful. But for me, the real draw is the fries -- which are twice fried to give them a crispy, bubbly texture outside and a creamy smooth texture inside. Order the fries (the small order is something like one pound of potatoes) with cheese sauce and gravy for Pittsburgh's answer to Montreal's poutines. Ah, yummy.

Gullifty's is hardly a well-kept secret. This Squirrel Hill diner has respectable diner food -- it tastes a little better than what you'd get at Bennigan's or Houlihan's, but when you get to dessert -- aaahhh. The crepes are as fine as I've had anywhere, and I'm told the other desserts are jsut as great. (The crepes are so go I'm never willing to give them up to try something else when I go.)

I mention the Potato Patch last only because its seasonal. It's a stand located in Kennywood Park, a smallish amusement park which is worth a visit for any true roller coaster fan. (Kennywood has the rides of a major coaster park but the prices and crowds of a smaller park. For historical interest, take a ride on the Thunderbolt, the finest wooden roller coaster still in existence.) The Potato Patch has THE BEST french fries I've ever tasted.

Don't get me wrong. There are other competent restaurants in Pittsburgh. You can get decent meals at a variety of restaurants. But nothing that you couldn't get at any mid-sized or major city in the United States.

P.S. Yes, I left out the big one: Primanti Brothers. This is really Pittsburgh's claim to culinary fame -- Primanti Brothers, open 24 hours, is a Strip District institution. They are known for their monstrously thick sandwiches -- two slices of thick challah bread that are filled with generous meats and cheeses -- like any good deli -- as well as a huge pile of fries and cole slaw. Needless to say, the sandwich does not come with any sides. Unbelievably enough, this Pittsburgh native has never actually eaten at Primanti Brothers. It's definitely on the list, and it sounds great. We just can't recommend it. Yet.

NYC: Kuidaore -- or "Getting the 'Itis"

2006-04-30T22:37:00.000-04:00

There is, among many of the gluttons of the world, a favorite way to spend the day -- through a sort of hit-and-run, guerrilla style of eating. In Osaka, they call it kuidaore -- which means to gorge oneself on food and drink throughout the day until you collapse from pain, pleasure and sheer fullness. You start the day and go from restaurant and eatery and street stand to restaurant to eatery and street stand, eating and drinking along the way, until one's stomach warns of an imminent explosion on the level of Monty Pythonesque "just a thin mint" proportions. They do it in San Sebastien, Spain, too -- txikiteo -- going from tapas bar to tapas bar, eating just the one or two specialties of each establishment and washing it down with the perfectly chosen wine before going on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, until the sun comes up. If Boondocks is to be believed, the end result is known as "the 'itis" -- that incredibly potent blend of food coma and pain.

Here's the version we did last Saturday:

Otafuku
Son Cuba
Dirty Bird
Mandler's Original Sausage Company
Big City Diner

We started with the standard takoyaki and okonomiyake at Otafuku, then headed into New York City's Meatpacking district for some mussels and fries (moules frites) at Markt, which had come heavily recommended.

But unwilling to submit to the hour-long wait, we went next door to Son Cuba. We ordered five tapas-style appetizers. Cuban-style spare ribs came out having clearly been through a saltwater boil -- moist and falling off the bone tender, but relatively flavorless. The spicy sauce poured on top was good, but failed to mask this fact. Ham croquettes were fluffy and light and crispy, and paired ideally with a garlicky tomato sauce. Cuban meatballs were a bit dry, but nicely spiced. And the gambas al ajillo were passable, though we suspect the smallish shrimp were overcooked and perhaps not as fresh as they could be. Not that they were in danger of going bad -- far from it. But definitely not, say, sushi quality shrimp. The gripe we had with this place? Overpriced. Granted, it's a meatpacking district restaurant. But the price for five tapas was more than the rest of the day's eating combined: $87 including two drinks.

Walking east from the Meatpacking District on our way to the Union Square area, we passed by Dirty Bird to Go, which features double-dipped free range fried chicken. Because we never pass up a chance to find good fried chicken (the best Southern-style fried chicken in NYC is still, I'm afraid to say, Popeye's) and because I liked the name of this establishment, we stopped in to pick up a quick sample -- the two piece snack. In retrospect, the sight of confused-looking suburban white kids in the back should have clued us in on what we were in for: fried chicken that was hot, juicy and greasy, but with absolutely no flavor or character. Moreover, I doubt that the chicken had been "double dipped" since the batter fell right off on the first bite. I guess it would have been OK -- but at $8 for two pieces of fried chicken, we wanted something orgasmic. Nope.

This trend was to continue at our next stop: the Mandler Original Sausage Company. Since the goal of true guerilla eating is to have a little at each stop -- quality and variety over quantity -- we asked them to give us one of their most signature sausage -- a garlicky German-style knockwurst. It was the second-best damn hot dog ever. At $7, I wish it could have come in at No. 1. Good mustard selection, though.

Pissed off over the rip-off Dirty Bird chicken, we went to another rumored place for fried chicken -- the Big Daddy Diner. We were a bit dismayed when we discovered that the fried chicken they offer is of the honey-dipped variety. Here at Mangez, we don't believe meats should ever be sweet. But assured that the chicken was worth a try, we dug in. The breading was only slightly sweet, with plenty of garlic and herbs for flavor. Chicken was tender. And the outside was slightly greasy and chewy. We generally like fried chicken to be crispy and crunchy on the outside, but Big Daddy's fried chicken would make an ideal picnic-variety of fried chicken. It's not so great fresh out of the fryer, but it would be awesome cold, spread out on a blanket in Grant Park. Of course, if I were in Grant Park, I'd be in Chicago and thus have Harold's fried chicken instead. But still. It'd be great picnic fried chicken anywhere else in the country.

And to add to the delicious fried chicken was a huge pile of freshly made fluffy tater tots. Clearly not those high-school cafeteria Ore-Ida variety, these were earthy, slightly starchy, salty and greasy. Best tater tots I can remember eating.

So. Five stops in four hours. Two great places, three overpriced, overrated stops. Gluttony at its finest. Yum.

WARNING: New York City: Cajun | ACME -- What the F^%$@#???!!

2006-04-28T22:50:00.000-04:00

You might think this is a subjective opinion, but it's not: it's fact. The finest American regional cuisine hails from New Orleans. And among the finest establishments in the French Quarter is the Acme Oyster House -- crawfish boils, fresh shucked oysters, great po'boys.

Now, we're realistic. We know that any Southern cuisine is going to lose a bit on its trek north of the Mason Dixon line. But we had high hopes for ACME, a bar and grill in Noho because of our fondness for its New Orleans namesake.

Now, one word that describes all New Orleans cuisine is flavorful. Whether its a rich bowl of gumbo or a crawfish boil or a muffaletta or any number of local dishes, the flavors are rich and sumptuous and bold. Sometimes, when done badly, New Orleans-style food is boldly bad. But at least it's interesting.

But ACME's gumbo tasted of the world's most inoffensive rice porridge. The blackened catfish with country gravy tasted low on the blackening and smothered in an inoffensive "gravy" of milk and flour. The macaroni and cheese had no cheese flavor whatsoever. And the "hickory barbecue wings" tasted like frozen fried wings covered with a dark sweetened honey. None of it tasted horrible. But it was just boring. And that's a word we never thought we'd use to describe New Orleans restaurant.

New York: Japanese Comfort Food | Otafuku

2006-04-16T21:56:00.000-04:00

One of our goals is to persuade our Goddess friend doing the overworked I-banker thing in Tokyo to move back Stateside. Not having gotten around to taking her up on her invite to visit her there and have her take us around on a glutonnous fest, we can't comment on how Otafuku stacks up, but I can't imagine that it wouldn't at least be a reasonable substitute for Osakan street food.

Otafuku is an East Village take-out joint that serves okonomiyake and takoyaki. While we had been meaning to try it for a while, it was my cousin Colin who first tried it and came back to urge us to stop procrastinating and give it a shot. Then he made me go there with him. This weekend, I took the wife.

Okonomiyake is a sort of a cross between a pancake, fritter and hash browns. It's a patty of shredded cabbage, seafood (shrimp is our choice), held together with a mysterious white batter that is then fried on a griddle and served hot with various sauces on top and bonito flakes on top. It's crunchy, gingery, hot and satisfying -- yet seems fairly healthy.

Takoyaki are most generally described as octopus balls. Finely chopped bits of octopus are mixed with a liquidy batter (we believe dairy is involved, but who knows?) then put into hot greased versions of mini muffin tins and cooked at high heat. The outside sears and solidifies, then a worcestershire-ish sauce and a Japanese version of mayonnaise are applied on top. The inside is a scalding mix of creamy cheesy goodness with little chunks of delicious chewy octopus, while the outside is slightly crunchy. Awesome.

Though neither the wife nor I are of Japanese descent and thus did not grow up with these two things, they easily fit into the category of comfort food, delicious on a warm day like today but also satisfying on a chilly spring/fall day that has some winter in the air.

You all should try it. Oh, and we hope this makes it easier for our Goddess to give up Tokyo and Japan.

WARNING -- New York: Chinese/Shanghai | New Green Bo

2006-04-16T21:32:00.000-04:00

Sometimes food guides that we normally find reliable can be dead, dead wrong. For instance, New Green Bo, a Chinatown hole in the wall described by New York magazine and Citysearch and others as being an outstanding example of good Shanghaiese cuisine, actually features shitty and disgusting cuisine, all of which diminishes the charm of being seated at a grimy overcrowded table, given completely rude service, and having to listen to the shrill appalling owner yelling at the waiters to get people out the door faster.

There a few staples at a Shanghaiese restaurant that I demand.

Shao Lung Bao: aka soup dumplings. This is probably Shanghai's most well-known culinary achievement. A steamed dumpling filled with a nicely flavored pork or pork-fatty crab combination, plus a dollop of delicious soup broth that explodes in your mouth in a wonderful burst of flavor. To be fair, New Green Bo's versions (pork and pork-and-crab versions) were competently done, though the broth could have been richer and the skin a little thinner. Several others in Chinatown do better renditions.
Tong Po pork: chunks of pork belly that are braised or slow-cooked in a clay pot for hours in a mysterious wine-spice liquid, then served alongside Chinese-style steamed white bread. Done properly, it is rich, moist, fatty-greasy, and soft. We only have found one place that does a truly top-notch version in New York, though certain places do OK. NGB's version involved taking not-so-fresh, low-quality pork belly, boiling it and overcooking it, and then glopping a disgusting sauce that tasted of a simple sugar syrup with red food coloring on it. The result was tough, tasteless, sweet and achieved the paradoxical quality of being both fatty and dry.
Fried yellow fish in brown sauce: Shanghaise brown sauce is a very familiar staple in that region's cooking. Fish, because Shanghai has such access to fresh seafood, is simply fried, then smothered in the sauce. We were served something so small and bony with so little meat, they felt the need to give us two -- and we still didn't get much out of it. And the brown sauce? It was an overcooked version of the sweet-and-sour sauce that used to pass for Chinese food in the prairies of Nebraska where they probably don't know any better.

To sum it up, New Green Bo is an insult -- both to its customers and to the well-deserved delicious reputation of Shanghaiese cuisine.

New York: Korean Barbecue | Getting Black-Listed

2006-02-20T22:06:00.000-05:00

"So, did we eat a lot?"
- My cousin Colin to our waitress at Yakiniku JuJu

If we ever needed evidence that waiters and waitresses use superhuman control to avoid telling us customers what they really think of us, we received it last night at the conclusion of nearly two and a half hours of us -- me, Oanh, and my cousin Colin -- showing the proprietors of Yakiniku JuJu the true meaning of the phrase "all you can eat."

The restaurant in question offers all-you-can-eat Korean-style barbecue from Sunday through Thursday, at $25 per person. I take credit for discovering it one night after meeting Oanh as she finished her workday and accompanying her on a walk to stretch our legs. My eagle eyes detected those four magical words, and my excited screams of delight raised the eyebrows of one departing customer who assured me that it was "really good."

Now, we've bragged before about our ability to put away mass quantities of food. I married Oanh at least partially because she kept up with me bone for bone at a massive ribfest on one of our earliest dates. But our abilities pale in comparison to those of my cousin Colin - who once once ate five Whoppers while waiting for us to pick him up for a birthday dinner at the Palm Steakhouse. (He finished the full dinner at the steakhouse, BTW.)

So of course, when we find an all-you-can-eat restaurant, our thoughts always, always go to Colin. I mention Colin here especially because he's going to be contributing to this blog on an occasional basis.

So when you enter Yakiniku Juju, the kitchen is adjacent to the entryway. To get to the eating area, you go up the narrowest circular staircase I've ever seen, and you emerge on the second floor, which has seven tables.

For the uninitiated, Korean barbecue involves platters of raw marinated meat that you cook at your own circular tableside burner/grill. It's the urban equivalent of a backyard barbecue experience because you get to play with fire and cook the meat to your specifications. Also it's very delicious. We liked the description on the menu, which paraphrased, said "The marinade is made of 13 natural, nutritious and delicious ingredients that, when make the meat less fatty, yet tender and delicious. It is thus an effective weapon to power up your body."

As I write this, I am so damn powerful I can pick up and toss automobiles with one arm.

Perhaps the waitresses sensed trouble brewing when we placed our initial orders. Oanh and I both chose to order the classic short ribs (kalbi), but Colin asked her if he could get a variety.

"Sure. What would you like? How many?"

"How many?" we all thought, ideas racing through our heads. "We can get multiple orders at once???"

Our first order? Four portions of shortribs, four of sirloin, four of spicy pork, four of chicken, and three of lamb. For the record, the lamb was a new one in our book -- we'd never had Korean barbecue lamb.

This prompted an alarmed look from the waitress as she hurriedly warned us all that if we failed to finish any food, she would double our bill.

Ha.

You know how you usually have to sacrifice at least a little quality at an all-you-can-eat restaurant? Well, not here. The marinade made all the meat flavorful and delicious. Once the grill got hot enough, the sugars in the marinade carmelized and crisped, imparting that familiar wonderful charred flavor. Even the chicken, which has a tendency to dry up, stayed juicy on the grill. And the lamb -- well, some people think lamb has a strong unpleasant flavor/odor, but the marinade made sure that even Oanh was willing to eat it.

We estimate our first order consisted of approximately two pounds of meat. And the startled waitress took a while bringing the second round. When we ordered a third round, she tried a desperation move: "Would you like some vegetables?" No problem. The onions and green peppers cooked nicely on the accumulated meat fats sizzling on the grill and hit the spot nicely.

Which brought us to round four. This took a while getting to us, mostly because the waitresses started ignoring us in hopes that we'd just give up. I did feel vaguely bad that we were making them make those trips down to the kitchen -- but we agreed that our concession to chivalry should involve offering to sit and eat in the kitchen. But at this point, we realized we had been eating for two and a half hours. So we decided to order dessert: a standard Asian dessert is red-bean ice cream, but Yakiniku serves up two scoops with a side of candied red bean syrup, adding a nice extra touch.

Colin and I in particular just couldn't stop uttering the words, "Awesome" throughout the meal, as in, "This. Is. So. AWESOME. Yes. Awesome."

Remember how the waitresses tried to slow us down by ignoring us when we tried to signal for more meat? Well, they couldn't wait to give us the check, and practically sprinted to run the card and get our signature. "Let's get them closed out before they change their minds and we have to go kill a fresh cow!" was clearly their thinking.

So as I was signing the receipt, Colin asked his famous question. And the waitress blinked once in shock, and barely kept her true reply from coming out of her mouth: "Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? The three of you ate EIGHT POUNDS OF MEAT in under three hours! Of COURSE you ate a lot, you greedy little pigs!!"

But instead, she valiantly bit back her retort, and replied, "Yes, yes. You did very well."

So did they. We'll be back, though I guess we'll have to use pseudonyms when we make reservations from now on.

New York: Caribbean | Hidden Finds

2006-01-17T23:19:00.000-05:00

There are three types of people who really get into restaurants. The first are the scenesters. They follow restaurant reviews and buzz solely because of the scene: the subdued, elegant lights; the burnished woods or metals in the decor; a celebrity chef, and of course, the requisite celebrity and hipster customers. They're not there for the food. For them restaurants are just places to go before the clubs start happenin'.

Then there are the "gourmands." These are the people with the refined tastebuds. They tend to be Francophiles, though these days they might "rebel" and boast of eating trips to San Sebastien or Barcelona or Melbourne. For them, an eating experience worth savoring invariably involves names like Vongerichten, Keller, Bocuse and Robuchon. And while the owners of these names definitely deserve their reputation, eaters who focus on these names alone tend to turn their noses up at a lot of good stuff that deserves their attention.

The last category is the one that Oanh and I belong to. We're as likely to drool over a sublime slab of foie gras frais studded with pistachios as we might over a perfectly grilled Nathan's hot dog with the works. We covet Goody's Amish-country potato chips (fried in lard!) as much as we adore a perfect slice of o-toro sashimi, and we love the Colonel just as much as we love Maestro Batali.

Being a part of this voracious, gluttonous demographic has its disadvantages: vanity forces us to work out excessively in order to burn off the megacalories we might consume in any given time, and our brains aren't as efficient as they could be because at least a good third of our brainpower is always dreaming about food.

But on the other hand, eaters like us tend to find treasures in unlikely places -- and recognize them when we see them. Case in point is a frail old Jamaican lady and her son who operate a non-descript food truck on the borders of New York's financial district -- around the corner of Pine Street and Front Street with the unlikely name of "Mother's Home Cooking."

Mother's opened, to the best of my knowledge, in early fall of 2005. At first glance, it looks like any number of lunch trucks that operate in areas with large numbers of corporate drones, serving the standards: hot dogs, sausages, chicken parm, pizza, etc. Quick, cheap, greasy fare that cubicle dwellers can take to their desks to scarf down as they pore over the latest financial reports or legal briefs even as they keep an eye on market movements and surreptitiously IM their friends. And there's nothing wrong with such food.

But Mother's, attracted my attention because -- and I'm aware that this is an incredibly racist thing to say -- at least in the early days of business, its clientelle was almost exclusively black. And I'm going to go out on a politically incorrect limb here to say it, but black people know how to eat well without spending a lot of money. Anthony Bourdain has a theory about why that is, but that's a discussion for another time. The point is, when I see a large number of African Americans eating the same thing, I'm tempted to lay out odds that whatever that foodstuff is, it's incredibly delicious. I never do, because the more important thing to do in these cases is try to find out a: where they got it and b: ask for a taste. (You'd be surprised -- sometimes the answer is actually yes.) (Side note: Mother's clientelle now includes a lot of Asians, who also tend to know good cheap food. Not a lot of gwailo have caught on yet, but Mother's has more than enough business so who cares?)

But I digress. My attention drawn, I quickly noticed a signboard with my favorite Jamaican standards: jerk chicken, stew chicken, oxtail, curried goat, fried chicken. And they came with great sides, too: peas and rice, fried plantains, mac and cheese, and baby bok choy. (OK, I'm not sure that last one is authentic Jamaican. But it's good, too.)

I had lunch plans that day, but made a note to return the next day, when I made an even better discovery: the menu had changed. Mother, it turns out, changes her menu on a whim, depending on what she feels like cooking or what she can get fresh. She knows quality, and she delivers it. Wahoo!!!

I have to admit that that first experience with Mother's was bittersweet. Waiting in line impatiently, I decided to try that Jamaican mainstay -- jerk chicken. The first fall chill was in the air, so when it came time to take my order, and the quaint kind-eyed lady asked me if I wanted the jerk chicken "spicy," I said confidently: "Absolutely yes. Spicy, please. With some fried plantains and some rice and peas too!" I mean, I'm not like some milquetoast country club Greenwich boy whose idea of piquant is a bowl of congee with gasp picked vegetables! I make Thai food! I make gumbo! I can take a little heat!

Taking my new treasure back to my workplace, I immediately tucked into my meal. Beautiful! Spices that were at once rich and comforting, with a lightly charred flavor that complemented the flavor of tender, fall-off-the-bone chicken, with a bit of heat that tickled the tongue and moved into my sinuses

before exploding into a vast ball of flame that made me scream in pain like a heroin junkie in detox.

To be honest, I don't actually know what a junkie trying to go cold turkey feels like. I experimented and indulged in a variety of addictive substances in college. Some were legal (Harold's fried chicken) and some were not (none of your business). But I could quit all of them without any physical anguish. Emotional pain? Of course! Who wouldn't weep in remembrance of a Lou Malnati's stuffed pizza? But not physical pain.

But I believed, eating that jerk chicken that day, that I was experiencing what a drug addict must feel like. Each bite was so heavenly it had to be better than anything that came out of a crack pipe, and the aftermath was so anguishing it was like crashing from a high and withdrawing at the same time (I think.) Yet, I couldn't help but take another bite to get yet another taste. The departmental secretary, who can see me from her desk, couldn't help but to notice big, fat tears, rolling down by flushed, spice-stained cheeks as I desperately alternated huge ravenous bites with enormous gulps of ice water (the only liquid I had readily available) and feeble attempts to blow my nose. Occasionally I would jump up and down in an effort to take my mind off the pain in between bites, as sweat trickled down my forehead.

It's good that my job doesn't involve meeting with clients or the public, because my performance at lunch that day certainly would have gotten me fired. Instead, word of the bizarre gustatory performance I put on spread quickly as people suddenly found excuses to wander by my desk and stare in awe and disgust.

I was magnificent. Plus, my boss left me alone that afternoon, probably because my appearance in the aftermath of that meal nauseated her.

After that first experience, I stayed away from Mother's for a bit, simply to avoid the possibility of bad flashbacks. But I've since been back many times, and eaten many of her specialties: curried goat, which comes with a small marrow shank; fried chicken that she batters before your eyes before frying in a small cast-iron skillet, baby bok choy flavored with some mysterious smoked meat, blackened oxtail stew over rice ... Mother's has never disappointed me.

Yet, Mother's Home Cooking will probably never make into Zagat's, or get a review in The New York Times, or get a listing in New York magazine. That's partly because it's not even always there -- some days, Mother takes the day off, and she certainly never serves dinner. But mostly, it's because it's not that kind of place -- the same way Jackie Chan will never get an Oscar because he's not the kind of actor who gets Oscar's. And the gourmands will never know what they're missing.

Suits me fine. But if you're in the Financial District on a weekday -- check it out. Just don't ask for the spicy version of the jerk chicken.

NYC: Fried Chicken I Yoan Ming, others

2006-01-07T22:02:00.000-05:00

Ah, fried chicken. Was there ever a more glorious and delicious concept?

I'm Chinese by ancestry, and one of the most offensive things I ever said to my mother was that if I ever was forced to limit myself to one cuisine for the rest of my life, it would be American Southern food -- particularly if we include New Orleans-area cooking in that category.

My mother was horrified even after I assured her that my choice was not due to a deficiency in her cooking -- she's a miraculous cook, and her Chinese-style barbecue ribs are still better than any restaurant's version.

But if I gave up Southern food, I'd have to give up fried chicken. Crispy, flavorful, with a delicious slight juice and grease with every bite. I like it when the batter is spiced with paprika, chili, salt and black pepper, and I love it smothered in barbecue and hot sauce. There's just no situation in which fried chicken isn't a deliciously appropriate choice. No way am I giving that up. Uh-uh.

(And of course, we can't forget slow-smoked ribs and brisket, collard greens, chicken-fried steak, and biscuits and sausage gravy. Red beans and rice; rich, dark gumbo; crawfish boil ...

...

...

Sorry, I had go compose myself for a bit. All better now.

The point is, my devotion to Southern food was so clear cut in large part because that was where the fried chicken was.

Here in New York, however, two things are true:

Quality Southern food is hard to find. (Yes, I've even done a cursory search of Harlem, though I'm assured that I need to look more thoroughly. And I will.)
There's a crappy Chinese takeout place every other block, and they all serve fried chicken wings -- quality varies, and I usually think it's not worth the time. (Oanh disagrees, but she's more a wing fanatic than a fried chicken devotee. Amateur.)

I've tried quite a few "foodie" fried chicken recommendations, but was generally not impressed with all of them. They were all right, but they were overpriced, and came in ridiculously small portions -- $15 for two pieces? Are you kidding me? I was weaned on Harold's -- $4.00 for a full dinner -- four pieces of the best chicken EVER, plus fries, bread, and cole slaw (not that anyone ever ate the slaw. No way you'll convince me that fried chicken needs to be anything but inexpensive.) In short, Popeye's was a better choice in NYC.

But one night, on one of Oanh's wing cravings, I noticed that a local Chinese joint also offered hot, spicy fried chicken thighs. $3.60 for four. What the heck, right?

Aside from meeting Oanh, that had to be one of the luckiest choices I've ever made. The wings arrived hot, garlicky, juicy and featured more-than-liberal doses of freshly ground black pepper. Imagine that -- great fried chicken that comes from a place other than the South! Though Southern cuisine is still my top choice, the line has officially been blurred. Sorry to say that this chicken only comes in a thigh variety -- I suspect they use the breast for their Chinese dishes, and who knows what happens to the legs? But finally, an acceptable, non-mega-chain fried chicken away from Harold's and the South Side of Chicago.

Harlem still awaits my full exploration. But in the meantime, I know where to get a fix.

Oh -- you want to know the place of my new discovery? It's at Yoan Ming -- 1407 Madison Ave. between 97th and 98th St. Find the phone number yourself -- they'll deliver on the Upper East Side.

Don't ever say I never gave y'all nothin'.

New York: Pho | Treasure Hunt

2006-01-03T23:28:00.000-05:00

What is pho? It is a form of Vietnamese street food/fast food that makes a darn good meal anytime you want something hearty, filling, but not heavy. In its simplest terms, it is a beef noodle soup. The beef broth is special flavored with roasted spices for hours on end, while the noodles are quickly cooked right before service. The beef accoutrements include sliced, rare/raw eye round (which cooks in the hot broth); tendon; tripe; and brisket -- but squeamish Americans can generally opt out of all but the first one.

Pho is often underrated by people who don't know just how to eat it. To wit: when the (large) bowl arrives, you should quickly put in the accompanying raw bean sprouts and various fresh herbs (basil, chili pepper, fresh lime juice, etc.) There's no need to use all of it -- many don't, but your experience will be better if you experiment. Then -- and this is crucial -- you need to squirt in hoisin sauce and red chili pepper sauce to taste. Again, experimentation is key, and it should go without saying that it's far better to add more chili sauce to an underspiced broth than to suffer through a bowl in which you went overboard with the heat. Duh!

Before we go any further, let's have a moment of silence for the pho standard bearer of the East Coast, Hu Tieu Nam Vang, located at 7 Beach Street in Boston. Kent only found out the name of this restaurant just now, as it has always been referred to as "the Green Chopsticks place" by every non-Vietnamese speaker of his acquaintance -- and even his wife, who doesn't fall into that category. (Oanh insists that she always knew the name, but didn't want heathens to butcher the pronunciation.) The Green Chopsticks Place (GCP) closed for good this fall; after decades of opening for nearly every day, the owners lost their lease and decided they deserved a break. And how. The news was greeted by us with howls of despair and (alternately) stunned, shocked silence.

Left bereft of the ultimate (unless you count Oanh's father) (and no, we're not giving you his address. He'd just hurt you if you showed up at his door anyway), we're off in search of a decent substitute on the East Coast that might just measure up. (Chicago residents are lucky in that they can find a wonderful pho place in Little Saigon: Pho Xe Tang -- top notch stuff.) We're also told that the San Francisco Bay Area and the Arlington, Va., area have great Vietnamese food, but we'll need to do more <burp> research before making a report.

But this weekend, we went off to try a few places that semi-reliable sources had suggested. In New York, we generally go to Thai Son for pho. It's passable, but the broth is always missing an ineffable spice that makes it seem a bit bland. The fried spring rolls rock, however.

Our first visit of the day was Nha Trang Centre. This place had the second-worst pho we've ever tasted. Immediately we noticed that the broth was far too clear and light colored, and indeed it was tasteless, with skimpy amounts of noodles and a few meagre slices of forlorn-looking beef. The only place that's ever given us an inferior rendition was L'Annan, which somehow has managed to garner enough success that it's become an NYC chain. L'Annan's rendition was not tasteless; it was slightly sour and putrid, and the meat within was of a quality that would incite a prison riot. We're mystified, and we suspect that L'Annan's owners make animal sacrifices to a powerful demon in exchange for success (probably by running the poor thing over with a car) -- and then cook up what's leftover the next day.

But we digress. Nha Trang was a disappointment, so we set off to try two other places: Cong Ly, located at 124 Hester Street in Chinatown, on the corner of Hester and Chrystie. And we fared quite a bit better. Though portions were a bit small, the steamed spring rolls were rolled well, and authentically -- fresh herbs, shrimp, pork and rice noodles melding together nicely with the accompanying nutty sauce. The skin was a bit thicker than it needed to be, but it was forgivable.

The pho featured a nice rich broth that, while inferior to the GCP, was rich enough to give Thai Son's a good run for the money. It might even be better, though it's close enough that we want another taste or a side-by-side comparison before making that decision. Oanh reports that the chef is, unfortunately, from the northern part of Vietnam, and thus tends to go a little light on the spices. But still, a respectable attempt.

Oanh did not have the pho. Instead, she ordered the Bun Bo Hue, noodle soup with a richer, thicker, spicy beef broth with a thicker round noodle with cubes of stewed beef and oxtail -- a soup not that easy to find on the East Coast, in our experience. She found this to be adequate -- not great. The flavor of the broth lacked the richness, heat, and flavor one typically associates with this dish, but Oanh was happy enough to find even a mildly inadequate version of this dish that she didn't complain. Much.

We had planned to visit Pho Bang, which came recommended fairly highly. Unfortunately, we got sidetracked exploring the East Broadway area of Chinatown, a part more immigrant than touristy, and ended up trying a fabulously great Chinese seafood restaurant with orgasm-inducing ginger-and-scallion crab and Foojow-style fried fish, and by the time we finished -- remember, that's two bowls of noodle soup, two orders of spring rolls, and a full Chinese dinner -- all in four hours -- we were done for the night and waddled home. (A review of Pho Bang and this last restaurant will be forthcoming.)

Hey, that's what happens when you're gluttonous food whores with attention deficit disorder.

Boston: Barbecue | Bison County

2005-12-31T15:42:00.000-05:00

It goes without saying that the best barbecue is generally NOT on the East Coast. You have to go to the meat-intensive parts of the United States for that -- the Midwest, the South, etc.

But a great place we've found to satisfy our jonesing for good smoked pork is Bison County, located on Moody Street (the main drag) in Waltham, MA. The decor is pretty generic, like most Southern/BBQ restaurants -- wood tables, faux decorative items like feed bags, farm tool advertisements, etc. Basically, it's a genteel, "safe," Disney-ized vision of what a Southern dive/biker bar would look like -- without the grit, grime and danger.

But enough about that. It's the FOOD we're interested in. The habanero fire wings are always moist and succulent, with an outstanding flavor that's at once familiar and yet different from the standard "Buffalo"-style sauces you find everywhere ad nauseum. And don't let the word "habanero" fool you -- though we love hot, spicy food that burns the tongue and makes your intenstines whine in protest, this ain't it. There's just a very mild kick, a nice char, and a succulent, meaty whole chicken wing. These wings make awesome starters, and it's the only app we ever get here any more.

Of course, the main attraction is the 'cue. While we argue about whether the baby backs or the country-style spare ribs are better, either choice delivers true smoked flavor (complete with that telltale red ring right under the crust that is the sign of true slow-cooked barbecue done right -- no, the pinkness does NOT mean your pork is undercooked!) and moist tenderness. The meat is always flavorful. The baby-backs have a nice firm texture, while the spare ribs are marvelously meaty and just the right level of fatty. We always get the familiar Texas sauce -- a brown, slightly tangy mollasses-and-vinegar sauce that most people are familar with, though next time we'll be giving the Carolina style sauce a try as well.

(Our first encounter with Carolina style went quite badly -- the sauce was easily 75 percent vinegar and made the meat inedible. But just last night we had a decent-tasting rendition of Carolina sauce that was quite good. We're not sure which one is the true authentic version, but we're now willing to risk a less-than-sublime experience at our beloved Bison to give their Carolina stuff a try.)

As blasphemous as it might sound, we realize that sometimes you want to eat something other than barbecued ribs. We rarely do, but they do serve bison tips here (hence the name) and bison burgers as well as barbecued chicken. The tips are quite decent, and we've been told that other entrees are well-executed as well.

But we mustn't forget the sides. The cue comes with a variety of side-dish choices. The most key in the list are the sweet-potato fries, which are outstanding and crispy. As sweet potato fries are not that common, we never miss this chance to eat them. The garlic mashed potatoes are also good -- though the consistency varies from dense and slightly lumpy to overly smooth, they're always good. Very garlicky. The normal fries are very respectable too, but with such great sweet potato fries available, why bother?

Oh -- as a side note, Bison has a decent-sized variety of good beers available, both on tap and in bottles.

That's why Bison is our favorite restaurant in the Boston area. The barbecue is the best we've found in the city: forget all you've heard about Redbones, Rednecks, Linwood Grill, and all the rest. We've tried them all, and Bison puts them all to shame. It also tops anything we've found in New York, though to be fair, we haven't yet tried every barbecue place in Harlem, Queens or Brooklyn yet.