fooditude

Faux Philip at ESCA

2010-09-26T13:24:00.003-04:00

I live near Esca, a high-end restaurant specializing in southern Italian seafood. For years I've passed by, figuring I'd go in there one day when the occasion arose. Well, finally it did: my dad's birthday.

The food was pretty nice, but the service was surprisingly bad. The menus took forever to arrive, as did the drinks. And we were feeling a little rushed since we were on our way to the theater. My dad asked the bus boy for the waiter's name, but he didn't know; apparently this was the waiter's first day. Uh-oh.

At least this gave us plenty of time to catch up. Just as my mother was recounting the plot of the latest movie she'd seen, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, another waiter walked into my field of vision who looked A LOT like Mr. Hoffman himself.

Was the actor preparing for a role as a waiter? Could it really be him? Judge for yourself:

You can only tell the two apart because one of them is busy peeling back fish skin. I was quite disappointed when faux Philip took FOREVER to fillet my mom's pink snapper, because when everyone else's dishes arrived, they were all cold. They had been sitting there on the fillet table the whole time. Shouldn't a place of this caliber have a better system? We had to send the other dishes back to be reheated. And after all that, there were still plenty of bones in the snapper. Had faux Philip ever even filleted a fish before? Odd, since Hoffman's new movie is called Jack Goes Boating.

I'm not sure I'd go back to Esca, despite the fact that the food, once it arrived, wasn't bad. Because, despite the celebrity sighting, we certainly did not get celebrity service.

Mozaic Restaurant: Ubud, Bali

2010-09-23T18:36:00.000-04:00

There's not much argument that Mozaic is the best restaurant in the Ubud area of Bali. It's got a world class chef in Chris Salans and is so much more than just a fancy-schmancy resort restaurant, which are so numerous in Bali.

There are four prix fixe menus available:

The Discover Menu, featuring Asian and fusion influences
Vegetarian Tasting Menu
Chef's Tasting Menu, focusing on Western tastes
Chef's Surprize Menu, including premium ingredients like truffles, caviar and fois gras.

We shared the Discovery Menu and the Vegetarian Tasting Menu and we were not disappointed. Here were some of the highlights.

This amuse-bouche had a sweet-savory tension, culminating in a unique tomato sorbet.

Sorbet appeared again, this time laksa leaf sorbet over yellow fin tartare. Laksa leaf is also

known as Vietnamese coriander and has a refreshing minty taste.

The next course was a selection of seafood with soft shelled crab as the centerpiece. It came with burnt cauliflower florets, curry leaf meuniere and curry emulsion. I'm not a huge fan of the foam craze in haute cuisine, but it really worked well here.

Then came a hearty Australian beef tenderloin with ripe Balinese jackfruit, in a reductino of vermouth, balsamic and cardamom, with eggplant caviar and Dukkah spices. Dukkah is an Egyptian spice mixture, often used with nuts.

The highlight of the entire meal was a simple sounding dish that really took us by surprise: parmesan-crusted potato gnocchi over a pumpkin sauce with an herb emulsion. These gnocchi were delicate and soft, but had a perfectly caramelized crispy exterior.

The real star of this show, however, was the spice you see in the lower left-hand corner of the photo: candied long pepper. Regular readers of this blog will know my enthusiasm for long pepper, the superior cousin to the more common and sharp-flavored peppercorn. Here is my previous post on the subject. Combining this warm and pungent flavor with a crust of sugar was sheer brilliance.

I've made no secret that my favorite fruit is the mangosteen, and it was a joy to try mangosteen sorbet as dessert. Subtle, fragrant and tart, it was the perfect closer. It was served with mint geleé and black rice tuile.

Savory Donuts

2010-09-21T12:32:00.005-04:00

I've been busy traveling and haven't had much time to post, but after trips to India, China, Indonesia, and beyond, I have many new tastes to talk about.

I was just in Jakarta and was looking for fresh flavors in Blok M Plaza. They have lots of fast food borrowed from the West, but sometimes with a twist.

"Savory Donuts" is something I hadn't seen before, nor did it sound too appealing. I gave it a shot, and I wasn't disappointed. Salty, sugary, oily. It was just as gross as I had imagined.

Alta

2009-03-12T15:34:00.015-04:00

Wrap something in bacon and there's a good chance it'll be pretty darn tasty. But this is also the reason I try not to eat tapas too often. The Spanish really know how to use rich ingredients to create bursts of flavor. That's great, as long as I don't start bursting at the seams as well.

Tonight I plan to visit my fave tapas place in New York, Alta, on West 10th Street. To prepare myself, I thought it would be nice to remember the last time I was there last July. I dined with Rob Sheffield, rock critic and local genius. What a feast we had! White sangria put us in a festive mood (it's nice and strong!) We sat upstairs at the edge of a balustrade looking down on the ground floor. The list of tasty morsels is long and colorful, so we just started choosing at random. Pretty much everything we ordered was excellent. We started with the grilled Japanese eggplant scallion gratinee, aleppo pepper & toasted sesame seeds.
Then we tried grilled chorizo-wrapped gulf shrimp with whipped avocado lime mousse. Don't let that word chorizo fool you. Basically, it's bacon!
Next up were the lamb meatballs with spiced butternut squash foam and lebne. Delish. Lebne, by the way, is kind of like Greek yogurt.
Following closely behind in this parade of calories and saturated fats, we had crabmeat canneloni with crème fraîche-verju foam, almonds and halved grapes. Oy.
Think that's rich? How about crispy duck confit. Unh.
Believe it or not, we were still hungry! We tried the Danish pork ribs with kecap manis and coriander. I couldn't resist something that included kecap manis, the sweet Indonesian soy sauce I grew to love while living in Bali.
"Oh sure, that's pretty fattening," I can hear you say, "but isn't there some dish made with about a stick of butter per serving?" Not to worry: the specialty of the house is the crispy, carmelized Brussel sprouts with Fuji apples, crème fraîche and pistachio nuts. In-sane. Scrumptious to the point of being unfair.
After such a repast, what dessert could possibly add enough calories to fill the corners of our appetites? No problem. First we tried the warm chocolate fondue with almond-scented grappa, with a side of Marcona-almond-and-orange biscuits. Actually, this was the one item I found hard to take. The alcohol of the grappa was so intense and stinging that it seriously detracted from the total pleasure of the dish.
Such concerns were short-lived, however. To put us over the edge, we ate Crema Catalana, which the Spanish claim is the predecessor to the French crème brûlée.

As I get myself ready for this meal, which is now just a few hours away, I know it will be a delight for my tongue and an assault on my arteries. So I keep telling myself, Hey, I haven't been to Alta since last July. That's a long time ago!

Holy Cow

2009-03-01T22:02:00.003-05:00

On my recent trip to Bombay, I noticed this McDonald's menu was a little different than I'm used to seeing. It includes the McVeggie, the McChicken, the Chicken Maharaja Mac and the even the Paneer Salsa Wrap. But the one thing missing completely: beef.

A Way With Words

2009-02-24T15:10:00.010-05:00

Last November in China, I found myself standing in front of a fast food restaurant near the Beijing Silk Market. The various items on the menu were displayed in big lacquered posters mounted in the window. Everything glistened and looked pretty savory. But somehow the descriptions did not inspire me to walk in and order something. I assume something was lost in translation.Well, a duck blood cake is a duck blood cake. No way around that, really. But I never thought of pork hock as "tonic & beautifying." I think it would be hard to market that in high-end toiletries.
"Hey, Ma! Can we have chicken gristle tonight?" No, I don't see it.
I'm sure a "yellow croaker" is a lovely fish, but croaking just doesn't sound appetizing. And "coarse grains" probably means something healthful, but couldn't they have found a nicer way to phrase it?"Boiled pig's large intestines": it is what it is. And there's just no good way to phrase it."Rough fish"? What's that?
I tried a "squirrel fish" once. It was okay, actually. But please don't make me eat something called a squirrel.
At last, a dish with a charming name: "Pretty pepper fall in love with cockerel." Aww! Whatever it is, I'll have it!

Grapefruit Rosemary Sorbet

2009-02-19T15:47:00.019-05:00

I am the fortunate recipient of a hand-me-down Cuisinart ice cream/sorbet machine that friends of mine didn't want and had almost never used. So I decided to invite those friends to dinner and serve them the first sorbet ever made in the machine.The flavor I settled on is grapefruit & rosemary. This may sound strange at first, but it really works: original, fresh, palate-cleansing, intensely aromatic, bitter-sweet, herbaceous, and just plain taste-bud-exploding.
I've been told that grapefruit & rosemary sounds like a bar of soap, and it well may be the case that this newest obsession was subliminally inspired by such a soap spotted while waiting on line at WholeFoods, near the impulse purchase displays. But when I woke up on a recent morning trying to come up with a good flavor combination for a sorbet recipe, I already had grapefruit in mind, and then rosemary just popped into my head.

Here's how I did it:

Ingredients:
•1 1/2 cups sugar
•2 cups water
•1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice, strained (yellow is okay, too)
•juice of half a lime, strained
•zest of one grapefruit
•pinch of salt
•3 large sprigs fresh rosemary

As per the Cuisinart instructions, I put the freezer bowl in the freezer overnight. Then I boiled the sugar, salt and water in a small saucepan with the rosemary for about 5 minutes, until sugar and salt is dissolved. Let cool to room temperature. Make sure the rosemary is fresh and gorgeous. For best results, try bruising it first to release the flavors. The amount is really to taste; be warned, the flavor may be intense. Don't be afraid!Meanwhile, grate the zest of one grapefruit with a very fine grater, being careful not to get any pith. When the syrup is cool, strain it well and combine it with the grapefruit and lime juices and grapefruit zest. Pour mixture into the machine's freezer bowl and switch the machine on.

Let it run about half an hour, or until good and slushy and starting to be firm. Then transfer the firm slush into a closed plastic container and store in the freezer overnight. The next day, you will know what I'm talking about!
Best served in small scoops, either by itself or accompanied by a little shortbread cookie or anything salty and buttery like that. Actually, my friends have yet to try it. They come to dinner tomorrow. In a sort of Iron Chef way, I'm book-ending it with an appetizer of jicama-cilantro-pecan-grapefruit salad. I hope they like it!

Vada Pav

2009-02-15T20:26:00.006-05:00

An article in last week's New York Times brought to mind my recent two-month trip through India. On a train in Rajasthan, I was getting very hungry. The train was several hours late and there was still a long way to go from Jaipur to Jodhpur. A vendor working the train came down the aisle selling snacks, which I had been warned against eating. I didn't want to get "Delhi belly," but I figured a sandwich he called "vegetable cutlet" didn't sound so bad. Turned out it was quite bad. Just a cold, soggy lozenge of fried potato between two pieces of white bread. The risk/reward ratio was not in my favor.

But later, on the streets of Mumbai, I eventually shed my fear of getting sick from street food and learned what a "vegetable cutlet" was truly intended to be: vada pav. As the Times article mentions, chef Anthony Bourdain singled out this humble snack as his favorite food in India. As described in the article by Kavitha Rao:

The vada pav is a glorious carb-on-carb overload — a spicy potato patty encased in a gram-flour coating, then sandwiched in a buttered bun and bathed in tangy garlic chutney.

The specimen in this photo was hot, crisp, well-spiced and delicious. In fact, I went back to the vendor for seconds. I wish I could find a street stall like this in New York!

The Grateful Dead

2008-07-30T22:28:00.016-04:00

What could be creepier than a living creature, a sentient being, that wants to be eaten by you? It laughs at its own death. It welcomes you to stick the knife in. It even serves itself up! My neighborhood, Times Square, is full of such imagery.
I am lucky to live near Esposito's, one of the few remaining old school butcher shops in New York. It's still a family business that emphasizes house-made sausages and fine technique. But I can't say that I have ever found its storefront image particularly appetizing. I think it's the way the pig is drooling with anticipation to the point where the saliva is flying off its tongue. Why is he so happy to be eating his brethren? Or perhaps his own self?
The longstanding classic Rudy's Bar & Grill has a sculpture out front that appears to be a happy pig dressed as some kind of maitre d'. I suppose this is a tad less disturbing because he seems gainfully employed and therefore safe from slaughter for the time being. But he must know there's a hot dog in his future (or his future in a hot dog).
Spanky's Barbecue, just a few yards from my apartment, has a logo in which a self-satisfied hog goes the extra mile and brings you a beautiful bone-in smoked ham on a platter with one hoof, and a sausage on a grill fork with the other. It makes me wonder: is there something he knows that I don't know? Is he bringing me a Trojan ham full of esophagus-blocking gristle? Will he be wearing the same grin as he watches me choke on it? When marketing death, a sense of humor is always useful. Here's a shot of a butcher shop not in the Times Square area in which a pig chomps its own tail. It shows that a little whimsy goes a long way when the ax comes down.

X2O

2008-07-29T11:45:00.019-04:00

Some great New York restaurants slip under the radar because they are just outside the city limits. They don't appear in the Zagat guide or in Time Out New York's listings. Most Manhattanites won't even schlep to Brooklyn to try something new, so mention the word "Yonkers" and watch their faces melt.
I recently adventured to X2O (Xaviar's on the Hudson), which is, in fact, in Yonkers and very much worth the trip. Chef Peter X. Kelly has created a beautiful oasis of calm situated directly over the Hudson River and featuring delightfully creative cuisine. On the way in, past the attractive bar, I noticed someone had ordered some unusual bar food: a Kobe beef hot dog. I don't know which requires more chutzpah: putting that on a menu or ordering it. Once we sat down, we were fawned over by the staff and brought an amuse bouche that truly amused. First I tasted a sweet and creamy little cup of cold soup made with peaches and yogurt. And a slender slice of maguro tuna aligned over a slice of watermelon was a revelation. Just pairing the two almost-identical colors was a visual coup, but the combination of taste and texture was the very definition of amusing.
Next we were served one of the most festive plates of sushi/sashimi I have ever seen. The fish was not only fresh and tender but molded into heart-shaped maki rolls stuffed with mango and other surprises. For appetizers, we chose the little quail legs served with a square of fried polenta topped micro-greens. Next came the shaved fennel and arugula salad with Shropshire cheese. But nothing could compare with the ravioli stuffed with short ribs and foie gras in truffle butter with grated amoretti and broccoli rabe. Short ribs, foie gras and truffles are pretty much my three favorite foods but if I order them all in the same meal, I usually have to lie on the floor and groan for an hour. So having all these tastes in the same appetizer is something of a miracle. The main courses were no less satisfying. The crispy duck schnitzel was perfectly cooked to juicy pinkness. A nice touch was the side of simple and starchy spatzle that complemented the rich and sweet flavors elsewhere on the plate. The most dramatic dish of the evening was the mignon of Berkshire black hog and grilled bacon. I doff my cap not only to the chef, but to the brave pig who gave so generously. My favorite entrée, if I must choose, was the grilled breast of squab with sweet eggplant and tamarind glaze. The crisp panisses criss-crossing the wilted spinach was a nice touch, but the key to my heart was the bed of white corn and cheddar grits. I'm a sucker for well-turned fancy cookin' mixed with a touch of comfort food. The dots of sweet and tangy sauce really finished the dish nicely. I'm usually a no-dot-and-no-foam kind of guy, but in this case I made an exception. It was around this time in the meal that I realized I was staring out the window at the flowing Hudson and, in the distance, the George Washington Bridge. Nice! For dessert, we ordered the lemon Napoleon with curd and mousse. It arrived looking something like a poodle with a bad haircut. The menu description boasted of soft meringue and crisp phyllo, and it had all these things, but it didn't do much to add to the over all experience. Or maybe it was because by the time dessert arrived I was simply too full to appreciate anything. I've been known to make that mistake on occasion. As we left, we had the best digestif of all: a view of the restaurant glowing in the dark as the river burbled below.

Spice Cones

2008-07-21T14:12:00.010-04:00

In my recent post, "Butchering, Old School," I included a photo taken in a Moroccan spice shop. The spices in this photo are piled up into tall, perfectly cone-shaped mounds. Fooditude fan Riley posted a comment asking,

"Are those colorful cones really spices piled up, feet high? If so, how do they do anything with them without causing a spice avalanche?"

Good question, Riley. It's one I was asking myself. In fact, I even asked one of my guides in the market how this effect is created, but his answer was vague and evasive. Here is a photo, taken in a different Moroccan shop, of a somewhat less picturesque but more sensible spice scenario. As you can see, the spices are neat, but at feasible heights, with scoopers inserted and ready to scoop. Here is another example from another shop. Again, it's less flashy and eye-catching, but it's certainly more practical.I do remember one day spotting a vendor "repairing" one of his mile-high cones. From the looks of it, there was actually a cone-shaped plaster mold underneath, with the spices kind of caked on around it in a thin crust. When the vendor noticed me staring, he turned his back to block my view. Clearly, this is a big trade secret.Funny thing: when I turned the corner, I noticed some strange looking people - obviously shop assistants - shooting me a cagey glance. I never went back to that shop.

Greek To Me, Revisited

2008-07-18T17:01:00.010-04:00

Dear Readers,

Back in the halcyon days of November, 2007, I sent out a plea to you - dear readers. It was a post entitled "Greek to Me." I had in my hand then a jar of delicious honey from the Greek isles, with a label written in the language of said isles. I asked for someone to come forward and please enlighten us as to what this label actually said. And now some particularly dear reader has done just that. I present to you, in full, what monica_22015 has been kind enough to share:

Hi,

I love your column! I enjoy experimenting with various epicurean, gastronomic delights- you are such an inspiration to me!
Back to 'MELI" -the greek honey jar from Taigetos (a mountain range in Southern Peloponnesus-its highest peek-Mt. Profitis Ilias-elevation 7,900. ft.)The area is commonly known as Mani with its capital city, Sparti in the prefecture of Laconia.

Your jar's label describes its contents as the epitome of honeys comprised of various fauna and herbs from which the bees have gathered the pollen.
The description states that it is a delicate, rare and delightful blend of crystallized honey and bee pollen. Enjoy it! [(I wish I had a jar of it also! ;)]

Grasshopper Tacos

2008-07-14T13:08:00.008-04:00

You heard me right. There's an excellent Mexican restaurant called Toloache on 50th Street, near 8th Avenue. It's not your average taco joint. I made a special trip to try their grasshopper tacos, which is apparently a delicacy in parts of Mexico. Who could resist? I was trying to keep it real, but things got a little too real.
The grasshoppers arrived on my plate, as promised, sprinkled generously over corn taco shells and a dollop of lovely salsa verde. There's a head, a couple of legs, and oh - there's a THORAX! What was I thinking?What did they taste like, you may be wondering? Slightly bitter, fairly chewy with a little crunch, a little oily. In a word, they tasted just like fried grasshoppers. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I ate it. I'll try anything once. And in this case, once was enough.

Butchering, Old School

2008-06-28T19:45:00.027-04:00

Meat. The word used to be synonymous with food itself. In America, as we all know, we have lost touch with what meat is and where it comes from. But not in Morocco. The medieval medina, or walled cities, of Marrakech and Fes, are warrens of narrow pathways, crowded with passing donkeys, with sunlight leaking through the slatted roofing. Spices and herbs are for sale everywhere. And oh, the colors! And oh, the smells! Coriander and orange blossoms and blood and urine and of course, meat grilling over charcoal. Now I know what the middle ages smelled like. Goat and mutton carcasses hang from their feet, testicles intact. Heads and hooves fill the counter tops of the butcher stalls. Merguez and poultry sausage are sold in long links. Stray cats look on, not daring to blink for fear of missing out on a morsel of raw flesh that might accidentally drop to the floor.Blowfish are available both puffed up and unpuffed. Turkeys peck around the alleys, waiting for slaughter. Various meat mixtures, sausages and organ meats are available ready-made for sandwiches. But when I ordered a sandwich one afternoon in the Fes medina, I put it together from scratch, step by step. The old-fashioned way. First I went to a butcher, where slabs of beef were displayed with bouquets of fresh parsley and quartered onions. The butcher mixed these with generous heaps of cumin and passed it all through a grinder. Then I took it to the grill man who cooked the meat on a skewer. Then I went to the bread man who sliced a loaf for me so I could make a sandwich.
And here is the result. Then I bought a small bag of olives, which proved to be a delightfully simple accompaniment to my sandwich, and the perfect substitute for a shaker of salt. Finally I went upstairs to a little cafe, ordered a pot of sweet mint tea, and ate the sandwich, sitting across from this remarkable looking man. This wasn't just a sandwich, but a way of life...
The sandwich was delicious. But the odd fact is that within 24 hours of eating it, I found myself in a hospital outside the Ville Nouvelle, stricken with an intestinal infection. Here's a photo I took in the waiting room. I like the notion of a "reanimation" ward. Very Frankenstein. I hasten to add that I'm not sure the sandwich was what caused my illness. The evidence is not incontrovertible. But I'm awfully suspicious.

Back in the Saddle

2008-06-27T12:42:00.014-04:00

Dear Fooditude Faithful,

You have been patiently waiting for new postings and I am finally able to deliver once again. Please forgive the long absence. I have been traveling in search of new and greater fooditudinous adventures, and I am back at the helm with much to tell. In fact, I have just returned from Morocco, where, it turns out, they know something about good eating.
I have eaten quality dried fruit before, or so I thought. But in Marrakech, the central square was full of rolling carts groaning under the weight of sun-dried apricots, golden raisins, and dates of every description. As if these beautiful fruits don't look enough like jewels, the dried figs are strung into long strands like pearls on a necklace.

If it hadn't been for the prevalence of flies, I would have been tempted to walk around town wearing them around my neck.

Taralli

2008-03-07T22:09:00.006-05:00

Eat dinner with an Italian-American and you just might learn something. I was recently served a wonderful dinner at a friend's house that included an item I had never heard of: taralli. Some call them Italian pretzels. I call them yummy.

They are a great alternative to ordinary bread on the table, and are delightfully crunchy. They served as a perfect accompaniment to the antipasti.They also contrasted nicely with the tender pasta, in this case a steaming bowl of strozzapreti ("priest-stranglers") with sausage. Mangia!

Bumbu

2008-02-21T02:08:00.006-05:00

As the weather in New York City grows colder, my mind wanders back to Bali. This past summer, I lived in a house with my friend Glenn, who has a wonderful cook everyone calls Madé Geg (Madé means second-born and Geg, short for jegeg, meaning "pretty," signifies an unmarried woman). The soul of Madé's cooking is her spice paste, called bumbu. And like most Balinese cooks, the most imporant part of her pantry is a basket containing the ingredients to make bumbu, including an array of spices and aromatic rhizomes.

Most spice pastes start with red shallots, garlic, chili, candlenuts, fresh turmeric, ginger, fermented shrimp paste, and a redolent white root called kencur in Indonesian or cekuh in Balinese (“c” is always pronounced “ch”). Cekuh seems to be similar to lesser galangal, although I’ve also heard it referred to poetically as the "root of the resurrection lily." Occasionally, a bumbu will also include lemongrass, coriander, cumin, salam leaves, cloves and black pepper, as well as several things for which I have found no English equivalent. To crush the spices, Madé uses a large mortar and pestle, roughly hewn from black volcanic rock.

Here is a dish Madé made for me, called sayur urab, which is a stir fry featuring spinach and long beans mixed with shredded coconut and lots of bumbu.

Jaen pesan, Geg! ("Very tasty, Miss!")

Il Laboratorio del Gelato

2008-02-03T00:17:00.001-05:00

Did you ever notice that grabbing dessert at a local gelateria on the streets of Rome somehow tastes better than even the best gelato back home? Is it just the exotic locale? Something in the water? The different processing of dairy products? It's just not the same over here. The good news: it's still pretty darn good.

After having my mind blown by dessert at Market Table, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I inquired as to the provenance of the dense and intense gelato on my plate. Turns out the restaurant purchased it from Il Laboratorio del Gelato on Orchard Street. So today, 95 Orchard Street (between Broome and Delancey) was on my itinerary. I was not disappointed.

The Laboratorio in question is a tiny sliver of a space, serving up huge flavors. As the friendly scooper on duty informed me, the vast majority of the company's business is devoted to supplying product for restaurants and high-end grocery stores. Still, the walk-in experience was quite pleasant.The usual vanilla and chocolate flavors were on hand, as were cinnamon and the classic hazelnut gelato. A bit more unusual were the espresso (combined by hand with oreo crumbs) mascarpone (luxuriously creamy) and buttermilk (refreshingly tangy). For something truly unique, I tried the rose petal, as well as the utterly arresting lavender and honey flavor.

My favorite taste of the day was without doubt the pistachio. It was so rich and intensely nutty that I must acknowledge it to be the best pistachio gelato I have ever tasted. And that alone was worth the trip.

Everybody knows that when in Rome, it's best to do as the Romans do. But even when I'm back home, I still try to stick with the Romans.

Are those chopsticks in your pocket, or...?

2008-01-26T10:57:00.000-05:00

Do you ever drop your sushi in the soy sauce dish and make a mess of it all? Well, here's some good news.

In the what-will-they-think-of-next category, this little gizmo functions as chopsticks but also dispenses soy sauce, one drop at a time. These plastic pipettes sell for about $20 a pair and are guaranteed to shift the topic of dinner conversation away from the mercury content of tuna. In fact, each pipette can dispense a different liquid, so one can be designated for soba sauce or hoisin sauce, or even wasabi paste.

Just be careful if using them in a bowl of hot noodles. Above 90 degrees, they start to melt.

Absinthe Candy

2008-01-21T12:49:00.001-05:00

Absinthe, the mystical liqueur of the Belle Époque, has certainly been in the news lately. Several recent articles in the New York Times and a memorable feature in the New Yorker two years ago have been following the international trend bringing absinthe back to legal status after a century of being widely banned. I will blog more about this soon, including about how I acquired my own precious bottle.

In the meantime, let me share with you a wonderful gift friends brought back from Germany for me: absinthe chocolates! Who knew the Germans had this technology? Does the CIA know about this?

These bite-size bonbons contain a creamy green center with a wonderful boozy taste and that unmistakable anise flavor. The box has a beautiful illustration in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec with the words "Die Grüne Stunde," meaning the "The Green Hour." For some reason "Absinth 66%" also appears on the box, which is a bit confusing because absinthe is listed in the ingredients at 6%. Either way, it hits the spot (that absinthe candy spot I never knew needed to be hit).

Build a Better Pyramid

2008-01-20T01:21:00.001-05:00

I can't remember the last time I was so excited by salt. Salt comes in many forms and from many sources, and I will blog more on that soon. But let me just share with you one salt I have discovered that is a delight to eat and a wonder to behold.

This salt is made with painstaking care on the Indonesian island of Bali and is distributed by Big Tree Farms. I have seen it for sale in such stores as Whole Foods, Dean and Deluca and Kalustyan's. By harnessing sea breezes and tropical sunshine when conditions are just right, Balinese salt farmers create delicate crystals in the shape of hollow pyramids. To achieve this result, the salt must be dissolved and re-crystallized multiple times.

The crystals break crisply in your mouth when you bite down on them, and impart a delicious briny taste. As can be seen clearly in this close-up, geometry can be a thing of beauty. The ancient Egyptians were on to something.

Body Double?

2008-01-19T15:51:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I spotted famed food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, author of the excellent book, "The Man Who Ate Everything." I was wandering around the Union Square Farmer's Market and I came upon a vendor selling sausages. He was cooking up little samples of his product and giving them away on toothpicks. I couldn't help but notice the man standing behind him was Steingarten.

One of my favorite essays in "The Man Who Ate Everything" is the chapter called "Salad, The Silent Killer." It details how fruits ask to be eaten -- they advertise themselves with beautiful colors, sweet fragrances and sugary tastes. Plants use this method to spread their seeds. Leaves, on the other hand, are necessary for the plant's survival and are often designed to dissuade hungry passersby from eating them. They are in many cases even toxic, hence the essay's title.

I wanted Steingarten to know I was aware of his identity and was a fan. As I reached for a morsel of sausage, I said with a smile, "Sausage, the silent killer!" Both he and the vendor stared at me blankly. Trying to prop up my joke, I said, "Like salad..." They both looked annoyed.

I am left to wonder if:
1) My joke was just lame
2) Sausage really is a silent killer and therefore my joke was perceived as a criticism
3) This man was not in fact Steingarten but a look-alike with an uncanny knack of licking his lips in the same distinctive way as the real Steingarten.

I might have otherwise bought some sausage, but I just walked away as fast as I could.

Food in Film, Part 1

2008-01-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

Akanezora, translated as Beyond the Crimson Sky, is a beautiful film produced last year in Japan. I would never have even heard about it if I hadn't been on a Japan Airlines flight from Tokyo, during which the film was shown. Imagine, an epic period piece about tofu! How could I not love it? I am not ashamed to admit that I wept (and it wasn't just the jetlag).

The story takes place in mid-18th century Edo (what is now Tokyo). Only in Japan could such a story be told, a land where tofu is made fresh and consumed the same day, where tofu is not just an art, but a way of life.

The film concerns a young tofu-maker from Kyoto who settles in Edo and is befriended by a young woman whom he eventually marries. Oh, the trouble they get into! Local tofu-makers don't appreciate the competition! The palates of the clientele are both shocked and titillated by the arrival of Kyoto-style tofu (it's subtly different)! The eldest son of the shopkeeper does not want to follow in his father's footsteps! Intrigue ensues and even murder!

Having made soy milk and tofu myself, I enjoyed watching these being made in the traditional manner, using big kettles of hammered metal, and wooden barrels and bamboo tools. The best part was watching the customers taste the tofu - served plain in a carved bowl - and appreciate its delicate flavor. Not one customer uttered that old American trope: "Tofu has no taste and only absorbs the flavor of what it's cooked with."

If you can find this movie on DVD, you'll never think of tofu the same way again.

Not Your Mother's Buckwheat

2008-01-10T22:42:00.000-05:00

For a guy who loves to cook, I eat a lot of raw foods. Fruits, vegetables, uncooked seeds and grains, etc. I must confess, I have closely followed the raw food movement the last few years and to a certain degree I have drunk the Kool-Aid (or rather, the carrot juice).

Basically, raw foodists eat mostly or only foods that have not been exposed to high heat. The maximum acceptable temperature is usually around 120 degrees, because that's the point at which most enzymes are killed, not to mention many heat-sensitive vitamins. The rationale, in an untoasted nutshell, is that living foods nourish the body best. Denatured, processed, "dead" foods, including anything cooked, are thought to be inferior and even toxic.

One of the favored grains of many raw foodists is buckwheat. It is highly nutritious and gluten-free. Of course, it's not very tasty raw! But luckily, soaking buckwheat until it sprouts brings the dormant seed to life, increasing its nutritional profile and decreasing enzyme inhibitors.

I recently tried a product called Buckwheaties, which I found in a health food store, made by a company called Mom and Me. To buy this online, click here and scroll down a bit. Buckwheaties are simply raw, sprouted buckwheat that has been dehydrated at a low temperature. The good news: YUM!

Buckwheaties are crispy, light, nutty, and fun to eat. They go great on top of muesli, mixed into yogurt, or in all sorts of raw recipes. They are not to be confused with buckwheat groats, which are hulled, crushed and boiled. That sounds a lot more violent than "sprouted," doesn't it?

Cookie Taster Wanted: Apply Within

2008-01-08T00:41:00.004-05:00

I've dreamed about a lot of dream jobs in my life. For example, I always wanted to be a professional composer, but once I became one, I couldn't help but think it would be more impressive to be a captain of industry. I have also thought it would be fun to earn a living coming up with pleasant names for ugly-sounding new drugs, transforming something like clopidogrel into Plavix. Or better yet, to be the guy who comes up with those punny baseball headlines on the back pages of the New York Post or the Daily News: things like STRAY-ROD, or BERTH DAY, or MELK MONEY, or HENN LAYS EGG. Of course, I have long thought that nothing could be better than being a food writer. But I recently met someone who put all those crazy dreams in a new light.

I met a cookie taster.
I was at a Christmas party, chatting with a young woman who had immigrated from India a few years ago. She mentioned that she lives in Connecticut and works for the Pepperidge Farm company. "I'm in cookies," she said.
"Pepperidge Farm remembers," I said in that rich, nougaty voice from the old TV advertisements.
"Everyone says that when I tell them where I work," she replied, "but I don't even know that ad, because I didn't grow up here."Turns out that being "in cookies," means she actually tastes cookies for a living, testing their flavors, textures and other qualities. Could there possibly be a better job than that? She admits to gaining a few pounds since taking this position, although not too much because, as with wine, the protocol is to spit out the cookie once the taste presents itself.

"So the next time I bite into a Milano cookie," I said, "I will have you to thank for its subtle hint of vanilla and delicate chocolate center?"
"Milanos are my favorite!" she gushed.
Trying to be funny, I said, "I imagine there's a competitive divide between the cookie folks and the bread folks. It must be tense in the Pepperidge Farm lunchroom."
"As a matter of fact, there is a real split in the personnel. Bread people are another species altogether."
"Well, you know how elves can be. So much backbiting."
"No, that's Keebler," she said.

Even though she was right, of course, I still considered making another joke about living in a big tree, or about green felt. But frankly, her appearance happened to be quite elfin, so I didn't dare draw any more attention to the topic.

GRATE AMERICAN

2008-01-05T23:17:00.000-05:00

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
--Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill"

I need you babe,
To put through the shredder
In front of my friends
-- Pink Floyd, "Don't Leave Me Now"

Childhood is complicated. It's a time of unalloyed pleasures and cruel betrayals. This picture gives new meaning to the phrase "salad days."

The Love For Three Oranges

2008-01-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

"My father was a fisherman,
My mamma was a fisherman's friend,
And I was born in the boredom and the chowder."
--Paul Simon, "Duncan"

We never ate chowder in my family, but I did go fishing with my dad off the north shore of Long Island, where we'd catch flounder. I can't remember who actually cleaned the fish, but Mom would bread and fry the fillets, which I proceeded to drown in Heinz ketchup. Not exactly a fine education in the art of preparing seafood.

So the other night when I was asked to make a dish of striped bass, I had to improvise. My friend Amy Burton (yes, the famous soprano) had just bought a beautiful fillet of bass at a farmer's market, which the vendor promised was caught that morning. On the subway ride up to her apartment, I had a flash of inspiration: The Love For Three Oranges, Prokofiev's aburdist opera, came into my mind. Citrus would be the theme for this meal.

I bought three oranges, brought them to Amy's table and meditated upon them. I decided to grate the rinds using the roughest plane of a grater, usually used for grating hard cheese. I was careful not to penetrate the white pith, which would lend a bitter taste. I grated the orange rind so finely, it became a rich paste. I mixed this paste with a generous splash of olive oil and massaged it into both sides of the fillet. I added salt and pepper, a bit more olive oil, some white wine, and let the fish marinate, covered in plastic wrap, for an hour or two.

Meanwhile, continuing the citrus theme (ever the composer), I boiled some wild rice using 1/3 water, 1/3 broth and 1/3 orange juice, squeezed fresh from the three oranges.Amy also made her well-loved side dish, asparagus broiled for a long time in a toaster until they caramelize and almost melt. I added a new detail this time, cooking diced red onion in a frying pan with olive oil and herbes de Provence, and sprinkling it over the asparagus at the end.

When everything else was ready, I broiled the fish, just four minutes on each side under a very hot burner. Any more time in the heat would be a crime.

Using scissors, I roughly cut up plentiful amounts of fresh cilantro and scattered it over the fish. If I had one more orange, I would have used a few pretty slices as a garnish.

Et Voila!

2008-01-01T16:04:00.000-05:00

As the first of January dawned this morning and the new year was unveiled before my eyes, I thought of the one time I visited Lutèce.

Lutèce was, of course, the famous restaurant founded in New York by Alsatian super-chef André Soltner. It opened in 1961 and was in operation until Valentine's Day of 2004. The restaurant didn't so much go out of business as go extinct.

This was a quintessential old school French restaurant, staffed by knowledgeable and prickly French waiters with serious attitude, or perhaps one could say fooditude.

I will always remember when our waiter brought the food on a silver platter, under a silver dome called a cloche. Just like in the old movies. He was a short, compact man with impeccably white hair. He wore impeccably white gloves and an impeccably white jacket. He carefully placed the silver platter on our table and lifted the silver dome toward the ceiling, revealing a gorgeous, fragrant meal. With eagerness and perceptible pride, he said, "Et voila!" I had to stifle a chuckle.

He had even addressed us in French when asking for our order. If my dining companion and I hadn't happened to understand French, we would have been intimidated and probably humiliated, which I suppose was the point. That, in a nutshell, was why Lutèce went extinct.

But as the new year dawned this morning, I eased myself out of my dreaming and, for some reason, remembered that little waiter. It was as if he was presenting me with a delicious new year, lifting a silver cloche and whispering, "Et voila!"

Les Deux Gamins

2007-12-30T16:27:00.000-05:00

I was recently out with a couple of culinary gamins, wandering Greenwich Village looking for a good meal. It was Leanboy 2000's birthday, and we were out à trois with his sister, LeanGirl. At first we attempted to enter the longstanding Spanish joint Sevilla, that old stodgy stalwart, that paella purveyor. But the place was mobbed. We wandered down the street and came upon another Village fixture, the French bistro Les Deux Gamins. The decor is all quintessential bistro, with smoky mirrors, dim lighting, bentwood chairs and leather-lined booths. It was empty and the sagebrush was blowin', so rather than perform the extended, tortured ritual of looking for a "better" place, we grabbed a booth.

LeanGirl, a powerful and ruthless lawyer, insisted that she "just ate," and "wasn't hungry," yet proceeded to order numerous items from the menu, muttering something like "money is no object."First to arrive was the charcuterie plate, a classic French spread that includes paté de campagne, duck liver mousse and cured ham. In addition to the cornichons (de rigeur, mais oui), the pistachio-raisin bread was a nice touch.LeanGirl was also very keen on the roasted beet salad with mozzarella and frisée lettuce. The large wheels of beet were unusual and visually appealing.Little baguettes stuffed with roasted peppers and merguez (spicy lamb sausage) always bring me back to my days living in Paris. At that time, merguez frites was just about the cheapest sustenance available. Definitely beats Lo Mein, which is probably the New York equivalent.And what would a night at a French bistro be without a plate of ultra-garlicky escargots? Served without shells in a purpose-made plate, they were awfully fun to eat (although I'm one of those wimps who needs to constantly resist thoughts of "snail trail").
The mushrooms vol-au-vent were also a treat, slow-cooked with wine, topped with a dollop of goat cheese and nestled in light and crispy pastry.
The quality of the appetizers was consistently "not bad," and the main courses were no different, although the tuna was probably the most successful dish over all. The fish was cooked to pinpoint perfection and served with fluffy mashed potatoes, but the spinach side nearly stole the show. It was formed neatly with a ramekin and had a delightful mousse-like texture.The menu special, a generous portion of baby rack of lamb, arrived attractively plated and was juicy and tender. It was encrusted with ground coffee and cacao beans, lending a curious bitter note and a slight crunchiness to the sweet and slippery fat lining the meat.
The dessert, a chocolate mousse topped with what tasted like Cool Whip, was disappointingly workmanlike. And as you can see, through no fault of the photographer, the mousse was served slightly out of focus.

The only aspect of the meal that wasn't at least decent was the wine. We had ordered a bottle of white that turned out to be mediocre. When we polished that off, we tried to upgrade to a better red. The waiter was kind enough to bring us samples of two reds, but after Leanboy and I argued with LeanGirl over which was better, we could only agree on the fact that they were both pretty nasty. Then we tasted two more reds: even worse.

Finally, LeanGirl called the waiter over and, after repeating her "money is no object" trope, asked simply and sincerely, "Do you have any wine that's, um... good?"

"We get that question a lot," the waiter replied.

EAT THIS BLOG

2007-12-26T17:05:00.000-05:00

I came across an interview Terry Gross did with Maurice Sendak, author of many classic children's books including Where the Wild Things Are. It says a lot about that powerful, primal, intimate and soulful act we call eating.

Terry Gross: Can you share some of your favorite comments from readers that you've gotten over the years?

Maurice Sendak: Oh, there's so many. Can I give you just one that I really like? It was from a little boy. He sent me a charming card with a little drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children's letters -- sometimes very hastily -- but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, "Dear Jim, I loved your card." Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, "Jim loved your card so much he ate it." That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

A Goyishe Christmas

2007-12-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

Tonight was the 40th anniversary of the Waldman family Christmas Eve party. The fact that I have been attending for the last 17 years should sound like a lot, but compared to 40, it doesn't seem very long.

Growing up Jewish, I never much regretted not having a Christmas tree or not hanging stockings or any of those trappings. But missing out on singing carols, that's another story. "Good King Wenceslas," "The Holly and the Ivy," "The Little Drummer Boy," and the list goes on. Christmas music is some of the most beautiful I know and I always felt sorry to be excluded from that.

Until 1991, that is, when I first attended the party at Bob and Judy Waldman's house on the Upper West Side. It's like a clandestine gathering where New York Jews can indulge in the somehow guilty pleasure of Christmas carols and songs. No need to stay home and be silent! Sheet music is passed around and everyone sings (preferably in four-part harmony).

Bob, an accomplished composer of Broadway musicals such as "The Robber Bridegroom," leads the chorus from the piano, although in recent years, I have been lending a hand (or two). His son Price, a Broadway actor and a friend of mine for the last 23 years, lends his resonant bass-baritone voice, which one would normally need to pay $100 per person to hear.

And what would a Jewish Christmas party be without plenty of Jewish food? Fortunately, Judy and Stanley Zabar, of Zabar's gourmet emporium fame, happen to live in the building and bring the smoked salmon. It is beautifully plated in the shape of a fish.
There is also white fish salad, artfully covered in cucumber slices, also in the shape of a fish and presented between the head and tail of an actual fish.
There's the egg salad topped with caviar in the shape of -- just for variety -- a Christmas tree.

After singing through the entire songbook, everyone repairs to the library for a cup of hot soup. It's always the same recipe: a cream based broth with comforting chunks of potato and green pepper. And dessert: Gevalt! Besides a sinful assortment of lemon squares, and pecan cookies that taste like butter making love to sugar, there is the famous (infamous) chocolate yule log.

As Price puts it, it's like a giant Drake's Devil Dog, except with luscious whipped cream swirled inside instead of "creme filling."

And to make sure the tradition goes on for another 40 years and more, Price's son Jasper has begun to play the piano. Here he is looking like the 89th key at the bottom of the keyboard.

So let the yuletide ring and let the Jews of Upper-West-Side-istan gather. Music is for all the world to enjoy, and enjoy it we shall. Secretly. With just a touch of Jewish guilt.

NO VACANCY

2007-12-22T08:09:00.001-05:00

The other night I went on a double date with my old college buddy, who is now a movie director out in Hollywood. He had met a beautiful blond Swede named "Barbie" last time he was in town and wanted to see her again. Can't blame him. This time Barbie was traveling with her compatriot, Sabina, hence the double date. When my friend comes to town, he generally takes me to the toughest "doors" in town. In other words, we go to places famous for turning people away -- one of the perks of being a Hollywood director, I guess.

The four of us eventually ended up at Bungalow 8, a trendy club in the Meatpacking District with a heli-pad on the roof for celebrity drop-ins and a very large bouncer out front. In a recent interview with the New York Times, my friend described Bungalow as "like my living room." The club has a neon sign out front declaring NO VACANCY. Kind of says it all, doesn't it? I guess GO AWAY, YOU PIECE OF BRIDGE-AND-TUNNEL TRASH didn't fit in their window.Before we hit Bungalow, we stopped in at the Rose Bar in the chic, redeveloped Gramercy Park Hotel. Our Swedish friends seemed to know half the people in the place. Obviously, this is their regular scene.

But before any of that craziness, we began the night at 10 pm in a new Cuban restaurant/bar called Socialista. According to the Zagat guide, Socialista is "the latest challenger for the 'it' restaurant crown," and there is a "secret reservations phone number." Since it's so hard to get into, I was eager to find out if the food was worth all that fuss.

Two Americans and two Swedes eating Cuban food had the makings of an interesting experience, if we could hear ourselves think over the din of the rambunctious "in" crowd. Sabina requested the warm autumn vegetable salad, and it turned out to be a good choice. The hen-of-the-woods mushrooms arrived marinated and moist, accompanied by roasted beets and cauliflower, with tomatillo salsa and crispy nettles. The salad was plated on a bed of creamy dressing and topped with sage leaves and minced chives.

Next we had grilled squid stuffed with chopped seafood, presented with picturesque grill marks, served over a savory coconut milk broth. A nice touch was the addition of what appeared to be cape gooseberries.My favorite dish of the night was the duck breast, cooked just right and accompanied by rich and comforting butter-cooked cabbage. On the side was what I took to be a dollop of duck fois gras on toast -- a nice perk, considering it did not appear on the menu.

Barbie's choice was the not-particularly-Cuban New York strip steak with carrots and parsley and an herbed marrow emulsion. It was perfectly medium rare, although I wondered what happened to the potato croquettes listed on the menu. As you can see, the steak is served sans croquettes. That's okay; neither Barbie nor Sabina actually took a bite anyway. They were too busy with the wine, and with being glamorous and giddy.

By the time we were finished with the Rose Bar and then Bungalow 8, it was 4 in the morning, and the bouncer was kicking everyone out of the joint. But the girls were just getting started. There were a couple of private parties they wanted to check out. Oy! I'm getting too old for this!

I took this photo in Socialista at the beginning of the night, before they really let down their hair.

Free Rice

2007-12-22T06:21:00.000-05:00

'Tis the season for giving, so this is a good time to give food to the needy. In the vocabulary game known as "free rice," rice is donated to the Third World for each correct match of word and definition. The game is free on the internet and the rice is paid for by the banner ad. I can't stop playing this. It's got me hooked.

My foodie co-conspirator Leanboy 2000 E-mailed me the link one day and within hours I was hearing about it on the radio, on TV -- seemingly everywhere -- proving once again that Leanboy is one step behind the zeitgeist and two steps ahead of me!

He predicted I would be good at this multiple choice game, and he was right.

Arbalest means:
1 fluid
2 province
3 crossbow
4 low body temperature

Yes, indeed, it is a crossbow! As usual, the more useless the knowledge, the more sure my grasp of it.

Piccalilli means:
1 friendliness
2 lyric poem
3 relish
4 moral philosophy

You guessed it: relish. Equally useless. Had I never lived in England, I would never have known.

I know what you're thinking: this has nothing to do with food and doesn't belong on a food blog. That's what Colonel Mustard said about my grammarian rant on the commonly used non-word "restauranteur"! Well, a restaurant is certainly food-related, and now we've all learned about piccalilli, haven't we?

Play the game yourself and you'll also learn about lekvar, eructation and other food-related topics. I really can't stop playing this game. Thanks, Leanboy, for ruining my life!

Market Table

2007-12-15T21:29:00.000-05:00

Just like the old Shopsin's restaurant was part corner store, part diner, the new restaurant debuting at the same location is part high-end deli and part sit-down New American comfort-food emporium. Hence the name Market Table: part market, part table. In the photo below the dining area is in the foreground and the store shelves are in the distance beyond the door. Located at the corner of Carmine and Bedford Streets, the dining room features butcher block tables and tasteful lighting. There is definitely a rustic country house feel, but as one reviewer said, they don't hit you over the head with a rolling pin about it.

My adventurous dining partner Jamie and I managed to snag a reservation for last Friday night, but we had to resort to the 5:30 time slot. So the part market/part table became part lunch/part supper. Lupper.

We began with a winning medium-bodied white wine from the Cinque Terre region of Liguria, Italy. Jamie ordered the crispy calamari, which were moist and not at all rubbery. But there were surprises to be had! Tucked away in the pile were a few pieces of intense white anchovy. Eek! Fish bomb! And if you look very closely at the photo, you will notice that at the top of the pile are a few thin cross-section slices of lemon, breaded and fried. Now, that was a delightful surprise!I ordered the gnocchi with short ribs, escarole and parmesan, because short ribs are my weakness. Oh God, don't get me started. And these ribs didn't disappoint, although the gnocchi were a tad gummy.
Next Jamie went for the Maryland crab cake, singular in this case, and a lovely, rich specimen at that, presented atop a bed of savoy slaw and twinned with perfectly browned hand-cut fries. Talk about comfort food!
I couldn't resist the grilled Arctic char, a lean red fish akin to wild salmon. The last time I ate Arctic char was actually in the Arctic, but this was even better. The fish was perfectly cooked to buttery, melty medium-rare perfection. But the skin was the real surprise here. Although I usually eschew fish skin, this time I decided to chew it! The skin was crispy and light and provided the perfect contrast to the tender flesh. The blackening lent it a bitter undertone, but a few plump and sweet golden raisins resolved this nicely.
As good as the char was, the supporting character in this dish almost stole the show. Nestled beneath the fillet was a generous warm dollop of mushroom-radicchio risotto. A number of different types of mushrooms added interest, and the cream of the risotto was balanced nicely by the acid notes of balsamic vinegar drizzled around the perimeter.

Well, no meal is complete without a fine dessert, so Jamie ordered the pistachio muffin with a schmear of mascarpone cheese and an accompaniment of roasted pear. It's a playful touch to see a muffin on a menu like this. Nothing thrilling, but the pears were nice.
Did someone say "thrilling"? In moments like these, it's hard to beat chocolate. That's why I ordered the devil's food cake with chocolate-sour cream frosting and chocolate gelato. Oddly, the cake was a bit dry and almost tough, but all was forgiven (in fact, forgotten) upon tasting the gelato. I mean, I didn't just forget about the cake, or even the preceding meal; I forgot my name and address. This gelato was sick. My eyes rolled back in my head, and just as Jamie was about to dial 911, I managed to utter the phrase, "Try the gelato." She did so, and was "stirred."After a little research, I discovered that the gelato comes from an outside source, namely Il Laboratorio del Gelato of the Lower East Side. I sense a field trip coming on (and subsequent blog, of course). This photo is really quite telling because, as Jamie observed, "It looks like the cake is licking the ice cream (and who could blame the cake?)." Who, indeed.

The Scream

2007-12-04T21:56:00.001-05:00

Respect the chili. Always, always respect the chili. The habanero pepper is one of the hottest peppers in existence. (India's Naga Jolokia -- also called "Ghost Pepper" -- is tops, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.) How do they know? Because the substance that makes foods hot has been identified as capsaicin (8 - methyl - N - vanillyl - 6 - nonenamide), which is measured in something called Scoville Units. The habanero pepper, also known as the Scotch Bonnet, contains up to half a million Scoville Units. A jalapeño pepper, by contrast, has less than ten thousand. Pure capsaicin has 16 million. Don't mess with that stuff. Respect the chili.

I should know. I was once attacked with pepper spray in the Paris metro as I tried to be a hero by chasing after a thief who stole my friend's wallet. Big mistake. The thief turned the tables and got me good. I ran like a ninny into the Parisian streets and tried to wash my eyes out in a bistro bathroom. Oddly, it didn't hurt that much until I used the water on my eyes. That made me scream uncontrollably, which is considered in French culture to be a faux pas. So after being chased away by the bistro proprietor, my friends and I schlepped home on foot because we had missed the last metro. For several days, as the capsaicin worked its way painfully through my body, I took some consolation in the gaudy beauty of Paris.

I recently came across an unforgettable video of a kid who did not respect the chili. He tries to eat a habanero and is smacked down like the fool he is. He's quite nonchalant at first, munching away smugly, until the white light of pain suddenly strikes. His pathetic shrieks are haunting and ridiculous.

Remember: respect. Always, always, respect the chili. I bet this kid does now.

Only In Paradise

2007-12-04T13:48:00.000-05:00

Only in paradise does chocolate grow on trees. This past summer, I was in Bali, Indonesia, wandering around with my friend Weja on a patch of unused land behind his house. This land had been inherited by Weja's family through more generations than anyone can remember. The property juts out to form a precipice then plunges down into a breathtaking ravine.
Just a few scruffy trees grow on the land, including a semi-wild cacao tree. Most of the cacao pods were already past ripe when we came upon it, and had been hollowed out by birds and weevils. But one pristine fruit remained. Weja twisted it off its stem and offered it to me because he knew of my passion for all things chocolate (on which he blames all my dental problems, by the way).Chocolate as we know it comes from the bitter purple-black seeds inside the pod, but that day I enjoyed a rare treat: the sweet-tart ivory flesh of the fruit. The texture is creamy and slippery, and has to be sucked away from the seeds.
I also brought home some cacao seeds, or cocoa beans, grown in the misty hills of Bali. Traditionally, the fruit pods are split and the seeds fermented under shiny banana leaves, then sun-dried. As much as I would love to make my own home-made chocolate bar with these seeds, it is actually extremely difficult to do. To try it yourself, check out this site. Personally, I enjoy cacao raw, chopped and sprinkled over my morning cereal. Raw cacao can now be purchased in lots of health food stores and online. Unadulterated chocolate may be an acquired taste, and it won't replace a good bar of chocolate, but it has a unique flavor and it's supposedly great for you. To buy raw cacao and to learn more about about its healthful properties, click here.

UNKILLABLE

2007-12-02T16:22:00.000-05:00

Die-hard Fooditude fans may have been wondering where I have disappeared to lately and why my postings have been few and far between. Well, I can tell you that I have not been in the studio putting the finishing touches on my new rap CD.

However, if I had been doing that, I would call the CD "Unkillable," because, at least for now, that's what I appear to be. The fact is I have been convalescing after spending the better part of last week in the hospital. The cause of the illness is still a mystery. I personally favor a theory involving a radioactive spider, although my skeptical doctors insist such things are rare. But one thing that is very common, and pretty darn scary in its own right, is hospital food. If that didn't kill me, then maybe -- just maybe -- nothing can.

Here I am in a drafty gown with an IV in my arm, oxygen tubes up my nose, posing with a plastic cup of cubed pears in syrup. Since my heart came to a near standstill at one point, I was put in the cardiac ward and therefore I got fed the "cardiac diet." That meant low salt and low fat. Predictably, it turns out this food still contained more salt and fat (not to mention sugar) than I usually eat in normal life: I was left to gnaw on a boiled chicken thigh with skin or a gray turkey burger on a beige bun, and wash it down with vanilla pudding and cranberry juice cocktail. The food was certainly low on taste, but more importantly, it was mostly de-natured, processed, over-cooked and unlikely to nourish or rejuvenate an ill patient.

Eating healthful, living foods is never more important than when you are sick. Of course, a hospital is, in general, a terrible place to rest and recuperate. The atmosphere is impersonal and upsetting, patients' sleep is constantly interrupted so they can give blood or receive shots, and there is pain and disease pretty much everywhere. I concede that these may be unavoidable drawbacks, but lousy food is unnecessary and unhelpful.

So to all my secret operatives who smuggled fresh, whole foods into my hospital room, I offer my eternal gratitude. It is a far, far better rest that you go to than you have ever known.

De Minimis - Part 1

2007-11-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

I like Mark Bittman, I really do. He's the food guy who writes the New York Times column called "The Minimalist," and has written some cookbooks with severely "maximalist" titles, such as How to Cook Everything and The Best Recipes in the World. I like his curmudgeonly Jewish humor. I like his persona somewhere between no-nonsense and impatient. He always seems to be cutting out the clutter, but along the way he cuts out a few very important details, dismissing them as de minimis, if you will. That's where Fooditude comes to the rescue.

In this, the first installment of De Minimis, I am rebutting a point Bittman made last month in an interview on KCRW's Good Food program hosted by Evan Kleiman. He talks about how much better ground meat is when you grind your own. Unless you have a proper butcher to take care of your needs, which few Americans do these days, the only alternative is to buy the ground chuck or ground sirloin bought by supermarkets in huge tubes or slabs and then divvied up.

I agree with him wholeheartedly on this, but then he proceeds to say that he doesn't bother with a meat grinder and for fifteen years has ground his meat quite successfully in a food processor. This is bad advice, Mr. Minimalist. A food processor will certainly chop meat into smaller pieces, but it will render it into dense mush. A real meat grinder, which is not a big deal to use, pushes the meat through a die, like a spaghetti maker, creating the all-important grain of the ground meat.

I believe in a good hot grill. I believe in keeping spices and fancy additives to a minimum. But I believe that the single most important factor in making a good burger is not to over-handle the meat when making it into patties. Why? To preserve the grain, the space in between, the texture of the grinding! This yields a juicier burger, with an almost crumbly texture. And this is only possible, of course, when the meat has been fed through a grinder.

Years ago I bought an old cast iron grinder for five bucks at a flea market, which clamps to any counter or table top. You can buy a new one at Amazon.com for about fifteen.

As I am wont to do, I shall now close by quoting from the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd:

"Three times. That's the secret. Three times through for them to be tender and juicy. Three times through the grinder. Smoothly, smoothly."

Remembrance of Things Fried

2007-11-17T11:32:00.000-05:00

Some people's nostalgia has no limits. An article in this weekend's AM New York by David Freedlander entitled, "Is NYC trying to go sin-free?" bemoans the possibly imminent extinction of the city's OTB gambling parlors.

The article begins, "First it was your cigarettes. Then it was your cheeseburgers. Now they want your racing form."

Cheeseburgers? First of all, if billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg is having qualms about bilking the poor souls with too much time on their hands who frequent OTB, one can't really fault his motivation. But what irks me is that this writer is trying to draw a comparison with the landmark 2006 law that made New York the first city to ban artificial trans-fats from restaurants.

Let's get something straight. Nobody has banned cheeseburgers. As unhealthful as they may be in excess, they are still available everywhere. Second, a cheeseburger is a lousy example of a trans fat food anyway. There may be some hydrogenated oil in the bun, if it's crappy, or in the cheese, if it's a fake, processed "cheese food product," but that's it. Deep fried items like french fries and onion rings are the real target of this ban. Or donuts and pastries, etc. And those items are all still available, too, only now they are fried in less processed oil, which makes them somewhat less deadly.

One average local denizen is quoted as saying, "New York is less fun because we can't do anything anymore... we have no liberties." Gimme a break.

Freedlander even goes so far as to consider all this part of the trend that started with Giuliani and the "Disneyfication" of Times Square. But are trans fats really a lost relic of "old New York," poetic symbols of a simpler, lovelier time, a scruffier, more authentic era, a lost innocence?

No, they are a result of the agricultural-industrial complex that produces inert food with a long shelf life, thereby shortening the shelf lives of all who consume it. Good riddance.

The Forbidden Taste

2007-11-14T00:33:00.000-05:00

Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter. Since Democritus and Aristotle, these have been known as the four tastes a person is capable of experiencing. But a century ago in Japan, a theory emerged about a fifth taste, which has been either unknown or actively denied in the West. It's called umami, and it translates as "savoriness," or "meatiness" or sometimes just "deliciousness." It is written thus:

旨味

The Chinese know it as xiānwèi. The glutamates prevalent in protein-rich foods are thought to be the source of umami, which is why the addition of monosodium gluatamate, or ajinomoto, makes things taste more rounded and deeply savory.

In this illustration of the tongue, orange represents the place that senses bitterness, green sourness, blue saltiness and purple sweetness. At the center of it all is the yellow -- that's right, umami, that elusive, hard-to-define fifth taste. For more about the history of the discovery of umami, check out this recent Food program on NPR.

By the way, this raises all sorts of confusing questions about the art of French kissing. Which part of the tongue is capable of tasting another tongue? Perhaps there's a special French word for that.

The Sweetest Thing

2007-11-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

My old friend and partner-in-food-crime Leanboy 2000 has made some crazy claims in his day. But one sticks out in my memory. For some reason, he spent most of the early 90s (when "2000" still sounded futuristic) talking about Vidalia onions. He was fond of saying that these rare and pricey onions were so sweet, you could just bite into one and eat it "like an apple." I remember thinking, is he just rattling off the Vidalia ad slogan? Has he been drinking their marketing Kool-Aid, or has he really been eating these things like an apple?

Vidalia, like other "sweet" onions of the world, have less sulfur and more water than the average onion, emphasizing the sugar content. Some alchemy in the local soil down in Georgia makes this possible. They are one of the few onions to have what basically amounts to an appellation d'origine contrôlée. They even have their own official mascot, the Yumion.

Needless to say, curiosity eventually got the better of me and I forked over a fairly ridiculous amount of dollars per pound to buy some Vidalias. I felt pretty foolish as my teeth sank into the flesh and my mouth was filled was the taste of... an onion. A slightly mild onion, perhaps, but certainly not an apple, or an orange, or anything that I would describe as "sweet." In retrospect it seems obvious that Leanboy never even tried to eat a Vidalia "like an apple." He just like the way that sounded.

Persimmons. They're heeeeere.

2007-11-11T22:52:00.000-05:00

The persimmon is hard to put your finger on. It's one of those fruits that seems exotic and ordinary at the same time. It's popular in both Asia and Europe. I've seen them eaten both raw and cooked, dried and fresh.

I've noticed them at markets over the years, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. On one occasion I went as far as buying one and trying to eat it, but I lived to regret it. Instead of a sweet and tasty fruit, I was greeted with a sharp, almost toxic taste and the sensation that my tongue was covered in hair. That was enough to keep me away for years. But now that it's persimmon season again, I have done a little research, faced my fears and taken the leap. As I write this, I am face to face with a plate of these rather pretty but potentially evil fruits.

One thing that has long confused me is that the persimmon seems to be two fruits, not one. There is the acorn-shaped oblong version and the squat tomato-like version. Turns out there are indeed two distinct types. And to complicate things further, they not only look different, but taste quite different and need to be approached differently.

The oblong fruit are known as the astringent variety, which is obviously the kind I had tried that fateful day. They must be eaten only at the peak of ripeness, when they are nice and soft, or else the high levels of tannins in the flesh will make you sorry and possibly scar you emotionally. To quote John Lennon, "Children, don't do what I have done. I couldn't walk and I tried to run."
The rounder, flatter persimmons are the non-astringent variety and are much lower in tannins. They can be eaten when fully soft and squishy, or when still slightly crispy. I have just tried one, slicing it in half and cutting the flesh away from the rather tough skin. It's crisp but still juicy, fairly sweet and pleasant tasting.

I haven't yet tried one of the astringent fruits. They're probably ripe enough, but one can't be too careful. Fool me once... well, you know the rest.

The Stinking Rose

2007-11-10T00:39:00.000-05:00

Back in 1995 I was visiting Los Angeles and went with my friend Kirk to a restaurant called "The Stinking Rose." As you can guess, the featured ingredient on the menu was garlic, served every which way. I ordered a sandwich called "40-Clove Chicken" and it lived up to the hype. It was tasty, but so garlicky I couldn't finish it. After the meal, we went to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to watch a wonderful production of Porgy and Bess. About three hours later, with mist still in my eyes from the finale, "Oh Lawd, I'm On My Way," I returned with Kirk to his car and the tears welled up again. But this time it wasn't due to Gershwin's music. It was that leftover half a sandwich in the back seat! The car smelled like it was filled to bursting with toxic gas. Sorry, Kirk.

Garlic is supposed to be very healthful, but it does have this one drawback. There's no such thing as anti-oxidant breath, or anti-bacterial breath, or anti-viral breath, but there sure is garlic breath. So how can we get the flavor and health benefits without the stench?

I recently came across an interview with noted raw food guru, David Wolfe. I generally approach his advice with skepticism, but he comes up with some gems now and then. In the interview, Wolfe said that by chopping up cloves of garlic and soaking them in something acidic like vinegar or lemon juice, the smell will be greatly reduced. He suggested that heat/cooking damages the medicinal properties of garlic (what he calls the "immune system chemicals"), but this soaking does not. I have tested his theory and it really works.

So now when I make hummus, for example, I chop and soak a couple of cloves of garlic overnight in the juice of half a lemon, which is also part of the recipe anyway. The result is a hummus that is nicely garlicky but not stinky. Praise de Lawd!

Frogs in a Pond

2007-11-09T15:44:00.000-05:00

Did you ever have an outstanding meal in which one dish gone awry almost (I say, almost) spoils the whole experience? That happened to me earlier this year at, of all places, the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami.

It was a very special occasion, namely the wedding of two of my oldest friends. Actually, it was the night before the wedding, with just the groom and intimes (a "Last Supper" of sorts). First of all, I should have noticed the ominous sign of starting with a wine, Chateau des Tourrettes, named after a cursing disease.

I hasten to add that the wine was excellent, as was a parade of interesting dishes that came to the table.

There was seafood-mango salad,

and goat cheese in a bird's nest,

and truffled risotto,

and blackened duck,

and lamb with whipped potatoes,

and yellowtail snapper with tropical fruit relish.

But the dish I almost didn't recover from was called "Frogs in a Pond." I felt I had to order it because it was so original and so different from anything I'd ever seen: frog meat and marinated seaweed in a broth -- a playful reflection of the dish's name. It's the Four Seasons, right? I'm sure it will be superb! Well, I was very surprised that when the dish arrived, it tasted exactly like a frog.

In a pond.

The frog meat was fishy and the seaweed was stringy like genuine pond scum. The basil seeds were supposed to represent little frog eggs waiting to hatch into tadpoles. Not only is the very thought of this unappetizing, but the seeds were slimy. And the broth tasted precisely like pond water. The miniature lily pads were actually not bad, but I wondered if they were genuine lily pads from a puddle out back. It was all a bit too literal.

Fortunately, my entrée made up for it. It was called "Fisherman's Catch" and had a little of everything. Snapper. Crab. Lobster. It even had popcorn shrimp topped with actual popcorn. Brilliant touch. Trouble is, it kept reminding me of that merry song about cannibalism from the musical Sweeney Todd, called "A Little Priest," in which they sing of eating "shepherd's pie peppered with actual shepherd on top." But if I didn't let a spawning frog ruin my appetite, a little cannibalism certainly wasn't going to stand in my way.

The Original Pepper

2007-11-09T00:47:00.000-05:00

The pepper that sits on your table next to your salt shaker was not the first to be loved by the Western world. As I discovered on various trips to Indonesia, there is another type of pepper that was the first to bear the name. In Sanskrit it is called pippali, and its fame was widespread before those little peppercorns we now know managed to steal all the thunder as well as the name.

The original version is now referred to as "long pepper" and is unfortunately hard to find in these parts. The photo above includes specimens I found in local markets on the Indonesian islands of Sumbawa, Lombok and Bali. Each little rod-like catkin is technically made of up many tiny fruits embedded in a flower spike. The taste is much warmer than common peppercorns, with a complex sweet overtone.

The only people I know marketing long pepper in this country are my American friends who founded Big Tree Farms, based in Bali. They wildcraft these peppers, which they describe on their website as having "an earthy pungency, a sweet hint of cardamom and nutmeg and the spicy heat of chili." Sounds about right. If you're curious, click on their link to find out if a store near you might carry their products. I believe you can also order it online. It will save you a very long flight.

With Liberty And Mustard For All

2007-11-07T18:56:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid I used play the board game Clue. "Professor Plum in the conservatory with the candle stick," and all that. I never really liked board games much, but something about that photo of all the odd characters on the cover of the box captured my imagination. So I was awfully thrilled when it turned out that my next door neighbor's grandfather was actually the model for Colonel Mustard, the colonial blowhard with the monocle. One time he even rode the school bus with all us kids.

Now there's a new Colonel Mustard on the block. I have a friend who has become a collector of fine mustards, mostly French but also some English varieties and other miscellany. He refers to his collection as his cellar, or his mustard cave (French pronunciation de rigeur), and it is pretty impressive to see. On Saturday night, he was kind enough to open his beloved cave to Fooditude and offer a guided tasting. It was an education in just how many surprising varieties are available, although a number of them are not commonly sold in this country.

These jars represent a small sample from his groaning shelves, replete with such offerings as moutarde aux baies roses (with pink peppercorns), au piment d'espelette (Basque chili), au curry and aromatisée à l'orange. One of the prettiest was the bright pink moutarde au cassis de dijon (blackcurrant), although the taste was too sweet for me.

The stone-ground moutarde aromatisée à la noix (nut flavor) was a great accompaniment to the chicken sausages and oven-fried potatoes Colonel Mustard served up during the tour. I also had high hopes for the jar with girolles, echalotes et cerfeuil (chanterelles, shallots and chervil), but it had an unpleasant undertaste.

One of my favorites of the evening was the Moutarde aux algues (Saveur de l'Ocean) (with algae – flavor of the ocean). It contained bits of seaweed that complemented the mustard surprisingly well. It was also among the hottest mustards in the collection, which Colonel Mustard suggested might be due to the fact that it was the most recently acquired.

Turns out mustard loses its spiciness significantly over time, so for those of you currently shuttling back and forth to France in order to grow your own collection, take note. Don't let your jars languish at the back of the fridge. Eat up and restock regularly. And if you ever run out of room, have a mustard party!

Things Best Done Naked. Number 476.

2007-11-06T17:48:00.002-05:00

November is National Pomegranate Month, according to beverage manufacturer PomWonderful. That's just a marketer's way of saying they're in season. You may have noticed that these sensual scarlet fruits are suddenly prevalent at your local market. They have been appreciated for millenia, and for all these years one question has persisted: How best to open a pomegranate?

I have a friend who cuts it in half with a butcher knife, then uses an empty wine bottle to smash the seeds loose into a bowl of water. It works, I suppose, but his kitchen looks like a crime scene by the end. Another friend of mine forcefully massages the fruit until most of the seeds have burst, then tries to drink the juice through a small hole in the rind.

As for me, I'm a lover, not a fighter. I try not to break a single fragile, beautiful seed. I use a sharp knife to cut it into quadrants, but I cut only as far as the tough skin. Then I pry the fruit open and gently coax out the seeds. Some come tumbling out easily, others cling to bits of pith.

Inevitably, the translucent skin around some of the juicy seeds is bound to break. And when it does, the juice squirts high and far. I ruined several nice shirts and a pair of pants before I realized that the red stains can never (never!) be washed clean. The only thing I have noticed is not stained by pomegranates is human skin. So now I strip down completely before attempting this procedure. (Socks are allowed.)

It's practical, it's painless, it's fun. But unless you have a lock on your kitchen door, it's safest to take care of this before the dinner guests arrive.

Mizuna

2007-11-04T13:49:00.000-05:00

How often do you get to try a new vegetable for the first time? Not too often, so this was fun. It's called mizuna, which is, according to Whole Foods, a Japanese salad green. Worked for me. It's a little like dandelion greens, but not as bitter. Very light and a bit juicy. I recommend it. What's more, "mizuna" is a pretty word. Better than "chard," anyway.

Greek To Me

2007-11-04T13:05:00.001-05:00

Many times I have come across a product in a specialty store with labels written only in Chinese, or Arabic, or Russian, or some other language I can't read. Sometimes friends will bring me an exotic, edible souvenir from their world travels and, although I can pretty much figure things out by tasting, I always wonder what else the label has to tell me.

So in this first installment of "Greek To Me," I have an item from -- where else? -- Greece. It's some kind of honey or honey product and is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. It tastes almost like a cross between honey and caramel. I know the first word means "honey," but that's as far as my knowledge takes me.

I ask you, dear reader, for help in getting to the bottom of this. Here is the back label for your perusal. You can click on the image to enlarge it. If you can read it, we'd all like to hear about it.

A Fruitful Day

2007-11-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

Shopping in Chinatown is never dull. Today I picked up three fruits: a durian, a pomegranate and a dragon fruit. The durian, thorny on the outside and creamy on the inside, has long been an object of my desire (as I have mentioned before), and I feel fortunate to have it readily available, albeit frozen. The pomegranate, a favorite of the ancient world, is of course all the rage at the moment because of its high anti-oxidant content. The dragon fruit is less commonly seen and is particularly beautiful to behold.

Also known as the pitaya, the dragon fruit is actually the fruit of a cactus that is native to Central and South America, although I have encountered it frequently in South East Asia. Its appearance, like a hot pink egg with green scales, turns out to be the most exciting thing about it. The flesh is firm and juicy with a slight crispness. It's speckled with seeds, not unlike a kiwi, but the taste is very mild and not as exciting as the exterior promises. If it really were a dragon's egg, I probably wouldn't fight a dragon to purloin one, but it's nice to know I can get one for 5 bucks just south of Canal Street.

Alone. Together. Tomatoes.

2007-11-02T23:09:00.002-04:00

The other night I was making dinner with my friend Amy Burton (yes, the famous soprano). As we were debating the fine points of how exactly to "encrust" chicken thighs with black sesame seeds, I noticed that she had earlier begun to prepare an interesting salad. It was interesting because it contained no lettuce. No lettuce of any kind.

I wondered if she was planning to add some leafy greens, but she said she had the notion to make a salad consisting only of tomatoes. Together we proceeded to chop tomatoes of various sizes and colors, trying to keep the resulting pieces to a more or less uniform size. The result was a delightfully fresh, simple and juicy accompaniment to the chicken. Great idea, Amy.

Full disclosure: in the end, we did add just a touch of leafy greens. It wasn't lettuce, but some wonderfully complementary coriander leaves (or cilantro, as Amy calls it, but that's a debate for another day).

Halloween in Ethiopia

2007-11-01T01:18:00.000-04:00

Last night I went out to an Ethiopian restaurant named Meskel on East 3rd Street near Avenue B. There I met my faithful dining partner Felix Hunger, who was dressed up for Halloween as a persnickety, fastidious foodie. I just wore my normal clothes, although we looked oddly similar. We've both been meaning to go to Meskel ever since we read the glowing New York Times review about a year ago, and neither of us was disappointed.

As you can see by clicking on and enlarging the image to the right, the menu is straightforward, listing several meat dishes and several veggie dishes, each richly spiced and served by the dollop. For the sake of variety, Felix and I shared two combo platters, one with meat and the other vegetarian.

My main attraction to Ethiopian food, besides the interesting spices, is the opportunity to eat with my hands. And that's where injera comes in, the spongy, slightly sour rolled bread that serves perfectly to pick up the food and to soak up the buttery sauces. During our meal, Felix asked me, "What is this made of? Is it wheat? Whole wheat? Buckwheat?" Turns out it's not made of wheat at all, but an ancient grain called teff. Teff is actually the tiny seed of a grass called Eragrostis tef and is an important staple in northeastern Africa.

According to the Times review, the cook at Merkel makes the teff dough by hand, letting it sit for a time to ferment slightly, giving it that sour edge. The dough is then cooked like a pancake on a grill.

The meal was brought out very quickly and served on a single platter. We ate by the window as Halloween revelers passed by in groups, each more outlandish than the last. As you can see, there was a little of everything on the plate, but the stand-out favorite was the Tibs Wat, at the bottom right of the photo. Tibs Wat is prime beef pan-cooked with berbere, the essential Ethiopian spice paste consisting of things like chili, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, coriander, cloves, allspice, fenugreek, ajowan and God knows what else.

The other dishes weren't bad either, especially the lentil purée called Miser Alecha. The collard greens, called Gomen, were the weak link and far too salty.

It didn't look like much food when we started, but we were certainly stuffed by the end. Must be that injera bread, which we finished to the last morsel.

On the way home, I saw more Halloween costumes on the subway. I struck up a conversation with two kids who had gone to considerable trouble making their outfits. I asked them if they were meant to be dressed up as Banquo and Lucia di Lammermoor, but all I got were these blank expressions.

Athletic Salmon

2007-10-30T22:45:00.000-04:00

Saturday night I dined in Long Island with my partner-in-food-crime, Leanboy 2000. We schlepped to Whole Foods on Jericho Turnpike, where we got a wonderful lecture from the fishmonger about the differences between farmed salmon and wild-caught Sockeye salmon. Turns out the farmed kind (at Whole Foods, at least) isn't so bad. They don't add hormones and whatnot, but they do add color because nobody relishes eating gray salmon. Actually, the reason he gave was that they could have fed the salmon its natural shellfish diet that would turn its flesh red, but then people allergic to shellfish might have trouble eating it. Not sure I believe that one.

The main difference for eating purposes is that the farmed fish is bigger, so the fillets are thicker, it has never been frozen, and there is much more fat in between the muscle. This provides more healthful omega 3 fatty acids and makes the fish moister. But the wild kind is, after all, an all-natural product, colored a beautiful vivid red and lower in calories. According to the fishmonger, the wild kind is more athletic and fit. As you can see from this taxonomic drawing of a spawning Sockeye, it's an ugly bastard, at least during its spawning phase (I would have thought that would be exactly the right time to be good-looking).

I tried to take some photos in the store, but some paranoiacs in management have apparently made a rule against it. When an employee (a fearmonger, if you will) saw me whip out my camera, she asked rather forcefully, "Can I help you with something?" which everyone knows is code for "Stop doing what you're doing."

Thanks to a neat division of labor befitting two control freaks, Leanboy prepared the appetizer and I made the main course. Here he is with his famously long fingers shaving some parmesan cheese. We found a tasty variety called La Rinascente for sale at WholeFoods. Below is a photo I snapped when nobody was looking, at substantial risk to my person (I know, I'm incorrigible).

As you can see, this cheese has a lovely, romantic-sounding provenance. Tasted good, too.

Leanboy gingerly placed a cheese shaving on individual "endive boats," creating a unique salad that's fun to eat. The bitterness of the endive is well balanced with the sweetness of the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and the saltiness of the cheese.

For the main course, I glazed the salmon fillet with a drizzle of honey and olive oil. I might have preferred a more Asian blend of toasted sesame oil, molasses and soy sauce, but this worked better in combination with the rest of the menu.

I broiled this and served it on a bed of red swiss chard sautéed with shallots and shitake mushrooms, which was in turn placed on a bed of celeriac/Yukon Gold puree, generously flavored with thyme. In retrospect, I would have gone with more celeriac and less potato. At left, the lovely victim.

The final result was a winner. Although it was quite a bit trickier to get the salmon to cook just right than with the farmed variety. The fish was so lean, that by the time it stopped being raw and cold in the center, it was a bit more well-done than I like it. Still, the flavor of the Sockeye was richer and Leanboy cleaned his plate (a good sign, although, come to think of it, he always does).

Food of Devotion

2007-10-29T21:54:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year I traveled to San Francisco and had one of my favorite meals at a restaurant called Medicine, the "new shojin eatstation," which I had first heard about in the New York Times. The word "shojin" is short for shojin riyori, which in Japanese means "devotional cuisine." This makes sense because it was first developed by Buddhist monks living in Japanese monasteries, cooking wholesome vegan food that was both rustic and yet often delicate, based on seasonal vegetables, soy and whole grains. The restaurant is not strictly vegan, but my dining companion, Felix Hunger, persuaded me to order only vegan dishes.

One of the most attractive dishes was called the Medicine Roll, an inside-out maki roll filled with crisp raw vegetables.

Another interesting roll was filled with fried tofu and pickled mango. Very fresh, clean tastes.

Felix ordered Udon Curry, which had a rich spicy broth, thick noodles and shredded veggie fritters, dramatically plated.

For my main course, I ordered the artisanal tofu bowl, with steamed vegetables. I'm a sucker for the fresh, nutty taste of house-made tofu, much more interesting than the pre-packaged version.

Felix and I had a few well-made but more commonly available dishes, such as goma ae (spinach salad with sesame dressing) and nasu dengaku (eggplant broiled with miso). However these were soon followed by another unique dish featuring dried bean curd skin, called yuba, artfully rolled up. The yuba was paired with kind of seaweed called wakame, and a dollop of wasabi.
I washed this all down with a delicious glass of cold green tea flavored with soy milk and spirulina.

The dessert, a two-tone pair of treats, was truly a case of the best being saved for last. One was a kind of chocolate mousse. The other, made with coconut milk, was a delightfully odd kind of mushroom soup, of all things. Delicate, sponge-like "silver mushrooms" swam in the creamy liquid, topped off with toasted buckwheat groats. The groats provided a perfectly contrasting crunch, and stumped me for a while by reminding me of something I couldn't put my finger on. I finally figured out what I was associating it with: the familiar, unmistakable flavor of my Jewish childhood, kasha varnishkes (bow tie noodle casserole with buckwheat groats). I never particularly liked kasha varnishkes but I liked the special occasions it appeared at. Holidays like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, when the whole extended family would gather. High Holy Days. Like Proust's beloved madeleines, something about the taste brings a host of involuntary memories. And for me, coming full circle with the theme of the restaurant, it's the taste of devotion.

Mystery Flower

2007-10-27T11:38:00.001-04:00

Up in a secluded corner of Bali this summer, I was wandering the grounds of an abandoned, recently bankrupted hotel where I used to stay. I suddenly came upon one of the most interesting and strange looking flowers I've ever seen. Fortunately I had my camera with me, so I took a photo of it for later identification. I had assumed it was some kind of bizarre orchid because of the protruding stamen. Several friends told me I was wrong.

Today, after several months of guessing, I unexpectedly came across a photo of an almost identical flower while researching different varieties of passion fruit. Wikipedia had a picture of the passion fruit flower. Eureka! That's what I saw in Bali. Even the surrounding leaves are identical.

Here's a photo I took of the type of passion fruit available in Bali. It's not wrinkled and purple like the ones in American specialty markets. Its skin is orange, rather like a large kumquat. The Indonesians call it a markisa. The flesh is tart, slippery and refreshing.

Once again, my love of tropical fruits has led me to learn something new.

Tamarind From On High

2007-10-27T11:26:00.000-04:00

This summer I spent a few blissfully idle days on Gili Air, a tiny island off the coast of Lombok, Indonesia, east of Bali. With no paved roads, there are no cars or motorbikes, only miniature horses dragging little buggies called cidomo. The mountains on the mainland cast shadows on the clear blue water.

There's only one village on the island, and most of the food is brought over from the mainland every morning by boat. A notable exception is tamarind fruit, which the women of the village collect as it falls from trees throughout the island. In Indonesian, tamarind is called asam, meaning "sour."

The women collect the pods, peel them, and carefully pick through the sticky, tawny flesh to remove the seeds and the stringy fibers. The bits of flesh are then wadded together and collected in neat orbs about the size of baseballs. These are sold in the local market and also exported to the mainland. Tamarind is used sparingly in cooking, lending a wonderful tang to all sorts of dishes.

After a long day of collecting tamarind fruit in the hot sun and cleaning them by hand, what better consolation than an unparalleled Gili Air sunset?

Ultra Permium

2007-10-27T11:01:00.001-04:00

How much would you pay for a nice piece of meat? Last week I was at the big Japanese market in Edgewater, New Jersey called Mitsuwa, which has adopted the strangely arousing motto "Eat Joy Feel."

There among the seaweed, tofu, shiso leaves, daikon radish, rice crackers, sushi fish and mochi cakes, were selections of meat selling for up to $100 per pound. I know, I know, that's why I'm posting photographic proof. Run that bar code if you don't believe me!

Kagoshima beef is named for a place in Japan and is a type of Wagyu, commonly known as Kobe-style beef. The cows are coddled, massaged and carefully fed, at ridiculous expense, bringing animal husbandry to the level of fetish and beyond. The final result is meat extremely marbled, tender and, as the label clearly states: PERMIUM GRADE!

HOLD THE MAYO

2007-10-25T23:35:00.001-04:00

Somewhere along the line, coleslaw came to be defined as a soggy pile of white cabbage dripping with watery mayonnaise. I actually sort of like it on occasion, especially tucked into turkey sandwiches that might otherwise be dry.

But I have recently developed a tastier, healthier and much more colorful alternative. There are several variations to it, but my main idea is simple.

The basic ingredients are shredded red cabbage and carrot. My grater doesn't have a "coarse" plane, so I use a steak knife to shave off fine slices of cabbage, cutting against the grain. As for the carrot, I just use a peeler to make thin slices.

Instead of mayo, I add a generous splash of raw apple cider vinegar and a light drizzle of honey or agave syrup. A touch of olive oil is nice, but optional. A few raisins perfectly counter the vinegar, and I have also taken to adding a few goji berries, a slightly tart Himalayan berry available dried from most health food stores or in Chinatown (more postings on that soon).

It's important not to use white vinegar or balsamic vinegar, as they completely change the balance of flavors. If possible, look for Eden brand apple cider vinegar.
Another optional ingredient is a little diced red onion or a few fine slivers of red bell pepper for a bit of additional color and crunch. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Another variation to keep your tastebuds on their toes: grate in a little orange zest. Not too much, though, or it will dominate.

Store the coleslaw overnight before eating, preferably packed snugly in its container, so the vinegar has a chance to soften the vegetables and plump up the raisins and/or goji berries. It goes great on sandwiches, roll ups, as a side dish, or on its own. It's all raw, full of vitamins and enzymes and 100% free of mayonnaise!

Restauranteur?

2007-10-25T20:29:00.000-04:00

I've always wanted to be one of those persnickety, world-weary columnists who wears a bow tie and rails against a world going to the dogs (or to the cats). And here's my chance.

I just heard Barbara Smith, owner of B. Smith’s Restaurant on Restaurant Row, interviewed on Joan Hamburg’s WOR radio show. Smith identified herself as a “restauranteur.” For many years, this lowly word has been one of my biggest pet peeves in the realm of food and eating. There is, in my opinion, no such word. It is some kind of Franglish monstrosity that adds the French ending "eur" to the end of the French word "restaurant," presumably to mean "someone who restaurants." This is neither good French nor good English.

People who own or run restaurants should, of all people, know better. On a previous occasion I wrote in to Hamburg's web site correcting her own use of this "word" on the airwaves. I seek only to help, to edify, but I never received a response, not even a form letter from her staff, let alone any thanks. I know what they're thinking -- persnickety!

But a few moments of clear thinking should resolve the issue. A vendor vends and a server serves. But the word restaurant is a kind of gerund to begin with, meaning in practice "a place one goes to be restored." The root word is to restore, and therefore a person who does the restoring would be a "restorer," or a restaurateur -- no "n."

I don't mind recasting French words and phrases like "à la mode" to mean "served with ice cream" instead of literally "as per the fashion," or "entrée" to mean a main course instead of its obvious original meaning as an appetizer or "entrance." And of course “menu” has lost its original context of “menu de repas,” meaning the “details of the meal.” This is all a natural part of sharing and developing language. I would even make allowances for redundant phrases like "head chef" or nonsensical inheritances like "maître d'."

I certainly don't insist on using the feminine formulation "entrepreneuse" to describe a female entrepreneur, even though that would be technically correct in French. “Entrepreneur” has become a legitimate English word that need not be subject to the mechanics of French grammar. We have no more need of an "entrepreneuse" than we do a "murderess" or a "directrix."

“Restaurant” is a fully English word, and I have no problem considering many other words of French origin as true English words. For example, the word "poseur" is a terrifically useful word. The English form "poser" can be substituted, but to me, that means someone who sits and poses for a painter, or something like that. The word "poseur," just by virtue of its French origin, happens to sound a little pretentious and adds to the meaning of the word. And more importantly, it distinguishes itself from the true English form. The more shades of meaning the better! We all win.

But "restauranteur" adds a French ending to a French word incorrectly, in a way that renders the word ridiculous. It's not acceptable. It's not a "variant." It's wrong.

In the meantime, I'm off to a restaurant now, looking persnickety wearing my nœud papillon (butterfly knot), better known as a bow tie.

LOVE STINKS

2007-10-23T21:53:00.001-04:00

I came across this blurb today about Andrew Zimmern, the “full-figured foodie” who has his own Travel Channel show called “Bizarre Foods.”

"[Zimmern] has sampled a menu so hideous it makes the gross-out fare of "Fear Factor" look like a Happy Meal. He's nibbled on a beating frog's heart in Japan, slurped up cow's heel soup in Trinidad, sucked down mosquito eggs in Mexico, crunched some fried bees in Taiwan, and somehow gnawed through fermented whale blubber in Alaska. Not icky enough? How about the Malaysian durian fruit, its odor of rotten flesh so legendary that simply carrying one on Singapore's mass transit system is strictly prohibited? (Truth be told, Zimmern didn't quite get that one down, one of only three eats he couldn't swallow.)”

What a wimp! Prohibited in Singapore? So is chewing gum! (True.) The durian, which means in Malay simply "spiky" or "thorny," has been called the King of Fruits. I must admit, I did not like durian when I first encountered it in 1999, during my first year living in Bali (see the above photo I took on a recent trip to Bali -- although it was actually out of season at the time and I bought this imported from Thailand). But I took note of my Balinese friends who literally ran to feed on its luscious flesh pods when the opportunity presented itself.

And the opportunity certainly has a way of announcing itself, for the durian is one of the oddest smelling things in nature. I would characterize its texture and odor profile as somewhere between custard and feet. Let's call it "foot custard," if Baskin-Robbins were to inquire. And Zimmern, a "food daredevil," has apparently drawn a line in the sand at the foot of the mighty durian tree. Here's a photo of him eating a grub or something. (Note: Real daredevils don't wear plaid.)

Although I have already confessed that durian is an acquired taste, I hasten to add that I evntually followed my Balinese friends into being utterly obsessed with the unique funky, creamy sweetness of the durian. They claim it's also an aphrodisiac, but they say that about pretty much anything that tastes odd. Although I've heard there really is a Malaysian saying, "When the durians come down, the sarongs come off."

Now I make regular trips to Chinatown to buy one of these babies, expensive at over a dollar a pound, but worth every penny. Check out this wonderful site that sings the durian's praises, extols its high nutrition, and teaches how to choose and eat one (rather difficult tasks, actually).

What I can't understand is why this much-maligned and feared fruit is more repugnant to Zimmern than mosquito eggs and bat balls, or whatever else he is paid to consume.

Ah well, more for you and me!

IT STARTS

2007-01-21T18:13:00.000-05:00

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