Sunday in Southern Manhattan

It was an eventful weekend (as in, the weekend was full of large organized events with websites). There was the Fancy Food Show at the Javits and the Unfancy Food Show in Brooklyn. There was the opening of Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls, (see one in the photo above) and there was the New Amsterdam Market, held outside of the Old Fulton Fish Market by the Brooklyn Bridge. (To see what goes on at the new one, click here).

I loved looking at all the bread, but especially these stenciled and slashed ones from B.R. Guest.

This is a luminous sample of fancy-tasting pomegranate chardonnay jelly from long island.

The market has occurred twice before, with the goal of becoming a permanent fixture for local producers. As it stands now, it is reminiscent of the Greenmarket but more like an expo with booths and samples and information, with a limited amount of products for purchase.

Also on display were foraged wild foods (loosely and quickly packaged), cheese from farms and companies like Saxelby Cheesemonger, honey, bread, a pizza maker, magazines and pickle producers. There were two ice cream flavors from the excellent Marlow & Sons: Cherry Chip and Anise Hyssop, both were intelligent and dreamy.

Even with the lovely samples of pink peppercorn goat cheese and beet soup, a more satisfying lunch was still necessary, as was escaping another dramatic thunderstorm. Luckily the special occasion Market was located very close to the old standby Joe's Shanghai, where soup dumplings were cheap and sublime, like always.

Orzo or Orzo

I am fascinated with the shapes of pasta right now. I have thought plenty of times (oh, texture-focused child that I was) about tortellini, and how to eat each piece by methodically maneuvering it around in my mouth so that the pinched together arms were directed towards my throat, and the folded over seam holding in the filling was placed exactly over my lower front teeth. This was the best way possible for a small mouth to experience the pleasantly ergonomic dissection of the storebought tortellini.

Imagine the tired parents who are just trying to get the kid to finish her dinner and not be distracted by it. Oh well! The way of a savoring life!

I also loved the feeling of eating Kraft macaroni and cheese, partly because we didn't have it at my house. The other reason was the liquid orange sauce, surrounding and dispensed by delicate inch long lengths of pasta and was mild and swimming with a lightness of being.

For me, spaghetti, fettuccine, and angel hair are perfect on occasion, especially at restaurants when I am spontaneously charmed by something I wouldn't probably make at home. The current intrigue lies in bite sized sculptural forms, and finding and imagining the qualities of the shapes, and the best usage. I have been frequenting an Italian market which has a huge selection of excellent pasta, in usual and unusual forms. I like Orecciette (shaped like "ears" or little bowls), and some wavy almost free-form ones. I have yet to try the tennis racket shaped ones although those tiny cross-hatches look appealing. Mouthfeel can be entertaining, or just contribute an interesting sensory aspect to food. Each shape delivers sauces and other ingredients to your tongue in different ways.

One night I used orzo, a pasta often used in soups. It is shaped like rice but larger and flatter. I used it in two unsoup related ways, just because.



orzo
sauteed red onions in olive oil with Indian spices (black pepper, cumin, corriander, cinnamon, chili, turmeric, and additional garam masala mixtures.)
fresh thin sliced scallions
fleur de sel
zest of a lime
a drizzle of honey

This one is best hot. It turned out with a good balance of spicy, salty and sweet.



orzo
red onion
scallion
tuna fish
kalamata olives
tomatoes, 10 cherry tomatoes
feta, crumbled
basil, chopped

I like this one cold. It is fresh and each bite offers a different combination of flavors.

All-American Summer Camp

I did not grow up in a family of campers. I am a camping novice, but completely sold on this activity that requires constant attention towards the fire and the next meal and can be communal or solitary and filled with freedom. 

A stick of butter with the impression of corn.

I have a feeling these sample cones acquired a muted palette after sitting out in the sun and a few thunderstorms.

 

Man, it was so pastoral and pretty it was like being in the label of some Hidden Valley Ranch dressing.  For expanded discussion of this imagery in American food culture, read up in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

Ew. Here was one option I spotted at a local grocery. Click on the picture to check out the ingredients and the disturbing hot pink color.  There is a red seal on it that says "Inspected for Wholesomeness by the U.S. Department of Agriculture".  The Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer suggests that boosting productivity at home and abroad is a solution to rising food costs.  Apparently things are pretty simple for the Department and the Secretary. 

And yes, we went with these, and they were delicious. 

Pig Roast 2008

These are the highlights from the 2008 Pig Roast. This particular 24+ hour backyard barbecue occurred in southeastern industrial Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The subject was an eighty-three pound Heritage Tamworth Pig (raised and butchered locally), which I assume means not closer than Queens, but I didn't ask. Money was raised for America's Second Harvest. There were additional ribs cooked inside it. and onions. There were sauces, baby banh mi sandwiches, black eyed peas, collards, iceberg salad (with bacon in it) pulled pork two ways, ribs and more ribs, cornbread, beans, succotash, etc.

Moose Mike (Pig Roast Honcho) is a believer in pure and real ingredients, and lots of them. These are either in action or in your belly, and hopefully you can still remember where you live when its over. (Overwhelm factors can run high at his affairs).

Love Badge

Pecans and Ambrosia

This week my grandmother Elizabeth celebrated her ninety-sixth birthday. She is a tiny bird, and though she was never the cook of the family I recall some influential food situations that surely shape the genepool. She is a Texan, and always had a major interest in plants and flowers and trees, like the pecan tree. My dad also has a deep respect and love for plants and trees of the region and pecan trees and nuts in general seem to be in the the family taste. Every Christmas without fail my grandmother cracks and packages pecans (we say pe-CAHN) in Tupperware (nothing cutesy) and mails them, and my dad makes pecan pie. I think the family members like pecans, but I am pretty sure that honoring the tree and distributing its fruit is taken as seriously as any praline.

I don't remember too much candy available at my grandparents house, but there were always jordan almonds around. I always thought these seemed promising but their hard, chalky, not-very-sweet breakup would disappoint every time. It is possible that the jar of opaque pastel almonds was present for the aesthetic quality. After all, they were placed on the countertop where my grandfather arranged sliced fruit in a geometric mosaic on top of their cereal every morning.

At holidays and family reunions, Kaypah would make ambrosia. She made it in a large stemmed cake glass, mostly while seated. It involved layer after layer of colors and shapes and I remember I loved how it looked but hated the metallic-y taste of the canned mandarin oranges and the dry coconut dyed pink from the maraschino cherries. My dad instructed me to choke it down, and pointed out that no one liked it but we all had to eat it.

Driving to see the folks we would stop in Czech towns to pick up kolaches for them, a pastry with cheese or fruit like apricot or prune. We would also stop to get Elgin sausages and barbecue. My grandmother can certainly eat barbecue, which seems pretty bad-ass to me.

At her ninetieth birthday party, I remember we had a selection of appetizers including warm brie with almonds on it. For her entree she ordered the warm brie. There was some fussing about this from her offspring, but after all the 80 pound woman was ninety and she could do whatever she wanted. She had a pink napoleon for desert and a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream. I am floored by my grandmother's longevity, which I am convinced is a product of her stubbornness. The secret couldn't possibly be the Velveeta "cheese puddle" or the Coca-Cola she drinks every day with a mouthful of original teeth.

Though she might not taste much these days or hear, or see, I salute all the faculties of my complicated Kaypah with love.

Ruby Wednesday

Satiny fiber optic stalks of rhubarb are here, and I am going to figure out what they really taste like. Back in the day, I only knew rhubarb as a word that went between "strawberry" and "pie", and I can only remember the strawberries. So rhubarb and I have a midweek date.

I just got all this fresh corn, basil, rhubarb, and yellow and red tomatoes, and I am SO happy that it is spring. I made a pasta salad with eleven ingredients. I also want to point out that this spring has been taking its time and actually acting like spring, instead of switching suddenly from winter to august.

I cut up the 'barb and made half of it into a beautiful pink simple syrup for cocktails and lemonade, and I'll make the other half into a compote tomorrow. (Just less water). Maybe I'll even do some with hardly any sugar, for application in some savory endeavor. The goal here is to teach myself the flavor of rhubarb itself (in the edible cooked form and without the poisonous leaves).

I made a cocktail with rhubarb simple syrup, soda, ice and Hendrick's Gin. It was sweet and tart and floral and interesting. Rhubarb looks like a structured straw of green tinted water coursing through a red taffeta-paper slip. It tastes like fruit, like the definition of fruit. What meets the mouth is juicy, tart, sweet and subtle, able to color syrup a bold pink, or dissolve into a soft, bashful pulp.

Still Hot

Hey, I couldn't resist...

A Cherry Clafouti I made. This was a thrilling little thing to make; sort of a puffy baked pancake with an eggy outlook and cherries that stay fresh tasting. (As opposed to that sickly strange thing I think they often do in cherry pie).

Cast Iron

I am just now discovering cast iron. I have had a cast iron pan since I my initial collection of cookware materialized suddenly on my eighteenth birthday, when I was thoughtfully given tools to accompany my somewhat awkward lurch toward adulthood. I wasn’t exactly a blossoming chef at that point with all signs pointing to food, so it must have been the adulthood thing. Either way, everyone is supposed to have one. They are icons of the kitchen and of kitchenware, appearing on greeting cards with cartoon fried eggs.



It’s odd that these objects have remained so mysterious to me for so long. I don’t remember using any heavy black pans before recently. It’s even odder that I have been collecting pieces for a few years and stacking them up, blankly staring at the heavy, unseasoned pile and quietly lugging them along when I move apartments. I like to think that I just wasn’t ready, and subconsciously knew that somewhere down the line I would be. Cast iron seems to have had some recognizable value to me, maybe because of its weight, maybe because of its myth. It seemed like even if I didn’t use it, it was still sitting in safe storage earning interest unless it became entirely rust and returned to the earth and didn’t matter anyway.

Besides that first pan, any other pieces of cast iron I have came from garage sales or from the street for free. Apparently some people can’t wait to get rid of them. I snapped them up.



So now I have seasoned. I have rubbed. I have fried and baked and I even gave one away all ready to go. They are shiny and smooth and dark. Food doesn’t stick to them, and they get as hot as I want. Some pieces are strange and exotic like the one that is squareish and has two perpendicular ridges I’m not sure about. Others are classic and deep, with symmetrical pour spouts on either side. My new favorite is shallow, slender and elegant. I’m thrilled, and I hear it gets better.

O'er The Ramp-arts I Go

The pale green blush of spring is here and it is well into ramp season. I spent Saturday traipsing (sneaking) around in the woods on the prowl for those tender but not shy wild onion relations. The finding was a little difficult at first, with alien-size skunk cabbage beginning to cover everything. I admit my heart was pounding as I hoped I wouldn't be seen and because those things are tricky to pull up. The bulbs are just deep enough and the pink throats so slender that you really have to dig so as not to snap off just the leaves.

A clump of ramps visible in the central foreground

They say this rabbit-eared wild vegetable tastes like garlic and onion, but it has its own flavor, very green in the beginning with a spicy garlic burn in the back. And they are not messing around, either.

Ramp Pesto

About 50 ramps
Small handful of piñon (pine) nuts
a generous pile of Parmesan
a few long pours of olive oil
kosher salt
black pepper

Clean ramps well (since they-and you- are covered in dirt, roots and slimy stuff) and chop roughly. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until a paste forms. Yeilds about 3 cups. Toss into pasta, make bruschetta or freeze. You can also use ramps in quiches, to flavor oil, vodka, or anywhere you would use garlic, onions, or herbs.

Fridge Trophies

I like to think that I am aware of eating locally. I even think that I buy many local products. And beyond that, I tend to consider whole, organic foods as being important to me for a host of reasons. I DO go to the farmers market sometimes. And I shop in small, frequent, neighborhood trips, so my food is fresh and supports my neighborhood stores.

But when I look in the fridge, and stand there to pick items from my thoughtfully chosen collection of groceries, I realize that I don’t have tons of local stuff, and if I try to see myself through the labels of the cold storage products I keep around, really who AM I ANYWAY? I am clearly fascinated with eating a WIDE variety of items from very far away, and have no intention of avoiding or slowing this pattern.

I think that perhaps I collect them as prizes. Each one is a gem, a score, a novelty or a cherished standby. Here is a current portrait of my fridge, not including regular stuff like ketchup, mayo, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, relish, O.J., soy milk, leftovers of take out and stuff I cook. Note- this isn’t really a proper portrait of my diet, just my fridge trophies.

Cherry kefir
French sheep’s milk feta
Marmite
Gold’s horseradish
Pickled ginger
Mole paste from Oaxaca, Mexico
Kalamata olives
Fig and sesame jam
Pink grapefruit marmalade
Chardonnay jelly
Tamarind chutney
Fig Greek yogurt
Organic brown, free-range, Omega-3 eggs
Happy chicken breasts
Nitrite-free uncured bacon
Nitrite-free smoked salmon
Herb polenta
5 kinds of unsalted butter
Organic Carrots
Lemons
Basil
Black sesame butter
New Mexican green chile sauce (which may be the MOST local product since it runs in my veins)

Should I go on about the cupboards too? There are dried jackfruit chips, Heritage Bites cereal, three kinds of vanilla extract, blue cornmeal, coconut milk, chestnut cream, packets of borsht, active dry yeast, brown rice, almonds, agave nectar.

I adore ethnic grocery stores and grocery stores in general, and I blame my Dad for this. I will continue to pursue a local, seasonal, sustainable value system regarding my food, and y'know, try and do the right thing. But I'm no milquetoast, just check out my fridge.

Banh Mi Party

The crazy cats that threw the pizza party in December recently threw a Vietnamese sandwich shindig. It was a simpler affair, the only variations were the options of Nayonaise versus the real thing, and tofu, pork, or chicken. The meats had been marinated in a gorgeous place filled with star anise, ginger, coriander and other lovelies.

The recipe is roughly:

Meat marinade
1 knob of ginger, about 1.5" x 1.5", peeled and chopped fine
4-6 star anise, ground
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 cayenne
1 teaspoon coriander
2 tablespoons brown sugar
*optional 1 tbsp honey

Four chicken breasts or equivalent pork, cut into thin strips. Baked tofu works well too.

Slaw:
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar, or enough to cover
1/2 cup julienned carrot (i think 3" lengths work best)
1/2 cup julienned daikon radish
5 green onions, sliced into 3" strips

For Sandwiches
Cilantro, leaves only, washed
Mayonnaise
French baguette

Combine the first 9 ingredients in a gallon ziploc bag or large bowl. Mush around with your hand to mix well. Add the chicken/pork and allow this to marinate for 30 minutes - 2 hours.

Make the slaw: Grate the daikon and carrots first and put them in a small bowl and cover them with rice vinegar. This will give it a pickle like flavor. Prepare the other veggies.

Cook meat in a pan and let cool before building sandwiches.


This recipe was contributed by Zach, who has just started a garden on his fire escape, sure to be a hotbed (heh heh) of beautiful urban produce.

Homemade Chickens

Here is more maple syrup in action. My maple adventure was great, but truthfully, the maple was only part of the sweetness of that trip. People can tell me about their food politics, and I can read books and articles, and watch movies, and shop consciously, and its important; but going out of town and kicking it with a family that has a good idea about where their food comes from makes it actually register. My brain and body and memory heard it. See Amelia, there are these chickens and they run around over there, eat bugs, and get looked after. Then they make all this noise and lay eggs. Why don't you go collect them?

And then you get to eat them!!!

I am obviously very used to buying eggs, and even though I get the brown ones with "Omega-3" on the package and not the Styrofoam-packed ones with laser printed ads on the shells, I am so removed from chickens that it felt like a wild, jewel-like gift to pick up a warm egg. Which is what it is I guess. So now I know.

A beautiful view from the nearby town of Hudson, although not as dramatic as egg-laying.



On the way up to the maple trees, wild garlic grows.



Another stellar breakfast with homemade bread and bacon from a former resident pig.

I love cooking and eating homemade things, and eating locally if possible, but this was a new level for me. It was the edge of winter, so there weren't so many things from a garden, but there was homemade jam, pesto, sausage, bacon, bread, and eggs of course. I also had tea (PG Tips) steeped in half boiled maple sap (oh MAN). Spring creeps ever closer and so does the promise of fresh food, foraging, and more adventures...

March Maple

Spring is coming. I went to upstate New York for a couple days for a visit and to see what maple trees do this time of year. Up there, the day is getting warmer, snow is melting and the trees are thinking about forming buds. Actually they are doing far more than that. The inner core of the tree is dead, just a memory of the rest of the tree's life, a structure for the living part to hold onto. When the temperature consistently rises enough, the living outside aggressively pulls water up from the ground to nourish the buds it wants to produce. This is when the sap is collected and processed into syrup. When the buds are ready to go, the sap changes and slows down, and the syrup season is over.

There were 6 tapped trees, and while I was there, the sap flowed and each tree gave about a gallon and a half of sap per day. The sap dripped like a leaky faucet into buckets that had to be dumped into a larger bucket, then carried down a little hill and stored in a huge trash barrel on the front porch until it could be boiled down into syrup in small batches. The ratio is about 44 units of sap to one of maple syrup.

I loved collecting the sap, (illustrated above by a young friend of mine). I guess I expected it to look thicker. It looks like water, though I think it catches light a little softer, but that could be how I want to see it. The sap varies by day and weather and tree size, but usually has about a 2% sugar content. To drink it from the tree is just drinking cold and clean water with the faintest sweet taste and the knowledge that you are drinking out of the side of the tree you are leaning on. I didn't expect to feel the way I did about the trees sharing water with me. Sharing their blood. I liked that water moved underground and roots gathered it up and it filtered through the stable body of the trunk. Standing in between the tapped trees, soft dings and thwaps of drops fall evenly into buckets. It was moving.













Here is syrup boiling on the woodstove. Below is a large version, an evaporator in the garage of a neighboring syrupman. It also has a fire underneath which must be stoked. The sap is poured in the top and the liquid travels through a series of channels. The heavier sugar saturated sap stays towards the bottom and is eventually released from a spigot. The more watery sap has more surface area above to release steam, so processing more volume goes a little faster. It is still pretty slow, especially if you are up to your ears in sap.

Some of the syrup I jarred. This is grade B, or at least not Grade A, which is the lighter colored first batch. These jars hadn't settled yet, so they are a little murky looking.



I made this maple fudge candy, something you can't really get wrong. There will be smiling no matter what!

Superbowl 2008 Chili Cook-Off

(1st photo by Andrei)

Here is the proof I attended and helped judge the 2008 Superbowl Chili Cookoff in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last month. There were three enthusiastic teams, and three cooking areas (assigned by lottery): the stovetop, the firepit, and the...elevated fire pit. The TV was moved to the backyard and it was cold enough to keep the beer outside.

The first team entered with an ambitious "surf and turf" concept. The corn was nice, but the heat was too much and the LOBSTER flavor was startling and detracted from this chili. I also considered the meat served alongside as distracting and a little brown-nosy. The cornbread muffin was good, but there was too much going on altogether in this entry.

The second team had a nice presentation with a simple and tidy fried ball of masa as the starch, which was unfortunately bland. The pork chili was married to a mole, which was a fabulous idea. There was a nice burn and it would have been really complex but it ended up getting bogged down in sweetness from the chocolate.

The third chili was also pork and was spicy and smoky. It reminded me of barbeque and was the most classic of the three. It was nice enough looking with a puff pastry and a drizzle of a cooling herbed something. I was excited about the new approaches to chili, but in this case the winner was the traditional one done just right.