Apr 4
For the two or three readers interested in my
burgeoning side project, The Middle Ages, I've moved it to a standalone blog. I
have a lot to say on the matter and didn't want to distract from the
food-centricity here.
And while I'm promoting my own stuff, why not go take a look at my assessment of Yooglers (Spanish frozen yogurt) and Vivoli (Italian gelato) on Serious Eats.
Food 52 (which I always want to call Seasons 52) recently wrote about “10 Salts to Know.” It reminded me of the eight barely known to me salts I wrestled up from various shelves and cupboards a while ago to assess. The massive plastic shaker of Trader Joe’s sea salt is the only one I paid money for. Frankly, I don’t recall how most of these specimens found their way into my apartment at all.
Palates, palates, always something to be praised on Top Chef and even Hell’s Kitchen. I’m not convinced I have much of one. I know which flavors I enjoy and dislike (sweet, powerfully fiery, shrimpy nam priks vs. cloying, dirty, perfumey melons) but subtleties can be lost on me.
So, the best head-to-head taste test would have to pit the most haute with the lowest-brow of contenders. That would be Añananko Gatza from the Añana Salt Valley in the Basque county, a parting gift from Mugaritz, the third best restaurant in the world, and the $3.99 glass jar of Pepper Creek Farms Mayan sea salt from Marshalls, a Christmas gift from James’s mother (to him–she doesn’t buy me strip mall presents. I wonder if she’s aware of Home Goods, the offshoot devoted to all the balsamic vinegars, bath salts, and Keith Haring-themed cleaning supplies falling off the shelves at Marshalls?).
Originally, I thought I’d give the two salts a go on vegetables. I put together a haphazard salad using produce on its last legs: wrinkled grape tomatoes, browning mint, squishy cucumbers and half a jalapeno. Bad idea. (Also a bad idea: doing a salt taste test the night before going to see a specialist about my blood pressure that doesn’t respond to medication.) The chile dominated everything and rendered the salt practically unnoticeable. I added in a can of chickpeas try and temper the heat and gave up on distinguishing the sources of saline.
Meat seemed like a better vehicle, so on to the Wegmans flank steak. After all, the label on the Pepper Creek Farms’ bottle said it was good on the “finest beef tenderloin” (and margarita glass rims).
Though not that clear from my so-so photo, the textures are what set the two apart most obviously. The fine, snowball powdery Marshall’s salt (on the right) disappeared immediately. After the first few bites, which produced an initial salt blast, I was left with meat juices and salty water. The jagged Mugaritz salt crystals remained distinct, and added not just crunch but a savory quality that made the meat meatier.
It wasn’t exactly a contest to compare extremes. What I could barely tell apart was the Mugaritz salt and the La Paludier Fleur de Sel de Guerande (with a $8.75 price tag) that that I normally use to finish dishes that could use a boost. The two were more or less on par with the fleur de sel coming across slightly less salty.
I don’t know what the Añananko Gatza salt costs; obviously it wasn’t free when you account for airfare to San Sebastian and the cost of a meal at Mugaritz. I would say you could save a few hundred euros and no one would know the difference. I’ll keep the Basque salt as a souvenir until I know I can replace it easily, and stick with the widely available French sea salt I was already using. The Marshall’s salt? A perfect candidate for re-gifting.
"And there would be the Bronson Pinchot.
James Jermyn, Maloney’s chef for the last five years, wheeled a cart up to the table. There, armed with a beaker of Cognac and tender slabs of beef, he cooked up a distant cousin of steak au poivre that happens to be named (in that spontaneous fashion that seems to be a signature flourish for the Stillman family) after Mr. Pinchot, the star of the 1980s sitcom 'Perfect Strangers.'"
"Lately, Casey has been championing the theory that mediocre food is better than good, the equivalent of a jaded indie kid extolling the virtues of Barry Manilow."
The mediocre food theory, though, is what made me guffaw aloud alone (embarrassing) because counterintuitive posturing is funny. I do hope that despite the enjoyment I receive visiting Bahama Breeze or Red Lobster, no one thinks I'm trying to argue that standardized chain restaurant jerk chicken is better than its idiosyncratic counterpart on Flatbush Avenue or that Le Bernadin's tasting menu is a joke next to The Admiral's Feast. There is a case to made for mediocrity, perhaps, (I am the living embodiment) just not right now.
I am surprised by all the vitriol (and large number of comments, frankly) on the 10 Most Annoying Restaurant Trends post on the re-launched (and apparently no-longer-NYC-centric) Zagat blog, but more entertained by commenter #4's suggestion to "Jesus, go back to Shari's then."
Does anyone outside of Oregon even know what Shari's is? I would not be insulted, though, because I miss the 24-hour pie-touting chain.
Also, I do not like dogs in restaurants either, so there.
As I'm going on my fourteenth year in the city, it's easy to forget the things that stood out as a newcomer (and part of the reason why I fantasize about living somewhere new to start from unjaded scratch). Things that I've since discovered aren't even NYC-specific…like Boar's Head. I mean, it's just deli meat, right? The name sounded totally foreign and vaguely exotic when I first arrived in Brooklyn. Clearly the artisanal movement has made a lot of strides since 1998.
I've also always assumed (until this evening, as a matter of fact) that Magic Chef stoves were a deeply ingrained part of the rental fabric of the city. I'd never heard of the brand until I was haunted by it in my last "garden" i.e. illegal basement apartment for its inability to actually roast anything. The one Thanksgiving my mom visited, the turkey wouldn't get to serving temperature after practically an entire day in the oven. I just chalked it up to being one of many consequences of the cheapo shortcuts taken in this Sunset Park apartment. Sadly, it didn't occur to me to take a photo at the time since this was pre-digital camera-crazed days.
So, I was surprised to see the exact same Magic Chef (with the exact same heating problems) in the Carroll Gardens duplex I moved into in 2004 at 3.5 times the rent (it was at least 3.5 times better, so no complaints there). I've since come to accept that Magic Chefs are a part of NYC rental life, and I'll never be able to escape until I own, which will be like never.
That doesn't stop me from going to open houses, though. And it doesn't stop the Magic Chefs either. Last year, I saw a house that I still like and that's still for sale ah, it's in contract, but so far away in Ditmas Park. It's enormous, like five bedrooms and a driveway and a garage enormous. It was asking just shy of $1.5 million at the time. And it had a Magic Chef. Possibly the world's oldest Magic Chef. I would've dated it late '70s, maybe early '80s. You can sort of gauge it from the photo used in the ad.
Last weekend I encountered another $1.5 million Magic Chef in a Clinton Hill brownstone and the oven was even older! The house was such a dump for the price that it made me feel violent, then depressed, then try to mentally justify that Ditmas Park isn't that far, after all. (I'm not linking because I'm weird about not wanting to insult people even when they try selling things for insulting prices) This time I took a photo. I thought maybe this was a group home or half-way house so I didn't want to be too judgmental, but the note to visitors on the equally decrepit fridge made a reference to the bnb, so what?! Travelers from somewhere are willing paying to pay for the privilege of using this Magic Chef while on vacation.
While futiley searching for a possible Magic Chef Flickr pool, I discovered that the brand isn't NYC-centric in the least.
Magic Chef ad via The Atom Mom
Last year I embraced the ubiquitous year-end best of list without adding my own to the online clutter.
This year I present only a single micro-trend: fried, shredded beef tongue with flowers, a curiosity that I non-purposely encountered three times this year in three geographically diverse restaurants. It only leads me to believe that there must be many more renditions being executed around the globe.
Has anyone else had a run-in with flowery tongue?
April 2011, Mugaritz, San Sebastian, Spain. "Shhh…muerdete la lengua," is all the menu gives away. You are brought the tangle of mystery meat and asked to guess its origin after eating it. Despite the clue in the description , I would not have identified the crispy floss as tongue. This is the type of playfulness I would expect from an iconic Basque restaurant, and assumed it was a unique house creation.
July 2011, Castagna, Portland, Oregon. My hometown is a lot of things food-wise–it's hard to get more seasonal, local, handmade, food trucky–but cutting-edge, it's not. My visit coincided with Chef Matthew Lightner's final week at Castagna before decamping to NYC (Atera still hasn't opened) and I was charmed by the ambitious style of cooking. Then bafflement took over when Summer Squash with Beef Marrow, Tongue, Onion Blossom arrived with a cascade of beef tongue wisps adorned with leaves and flower petals cleaving to the side of the dish. A coincidence or homage?
September 2011, Town House, Chilhowie, Virginia. Experiencing acutely on-trend food–ashes, pine, hay, and weedy herbs galore–in the middle of nowhere was pleasantly jarring. The unexpected continued with Beef Cheek…Pastoral. The colorful tableau was graced with ruddy strands of fried beef tongue! Flowers were a given. Used more as complement than a focus, its presence was still hard to ignore.
Should I be waiting for the trickle down effect? As long as we're still scared of pesto (yes, I'm obsessed with that story) I don't see beef tongue and flowers showing up at Olive Garden any time soon. Maybe Brick House Tavern + Tap–they're extreme, right?
Cheap eats means different things to different people. Some might call a shared $25 pizza cheap while others would consider a $20+ pie outrageous, no matter the pedigree. (I know, because a semi-old-timer Carroll Gardens resident told me she couldn’t believe neighborhood restaurants were charging $25 when she can get a pizza for $12.) But it’s pretty fair to say that less than $10 per dish constitutes cheap.
The $10 rule was applied to the new Real Cheap Eats, an online guide spearheaded by James Boo of The Eaten Path and created by a group of NYC-based food bloggers (including myself) to promote truly affordable dishes, many in less publicized locales. Yes, there is food beyond Manhattan and the northwestern corner of Brooklyn (and room for more to be added to the guide in the future).
Which reminds me that I need to spend more time exploring Staten Island. I pass through the underdog borough on my way to New Jersey at least once a month. There’s Italian, obviously, but they also have German and Sri Lankan restaurants, as well as a growing Mexican community.
You would think that photos of the same dish, even from the same restaurant, would all blur together. Yet, I usually recognize mine when I see them (I easily spotted my bacon maple bar while scrolling through rss feeds). When poking around MyCityCuisine, a new wiki collecting dishes from all over the world, I immediately stumbled upon a familiar kaya toast pic. Of course, I went straight to Singapore first.
I’ve been on a big Filipino food kick lately so I went to the Manila page and learned about champorado, which I thought was only a Mexican thing.
It’s a useful site and should get better the more that people contribute. If anything, the US section could use some beefing up. There are only ten cities listed so far and Madison, Wisconsin is kicking the rest of the country’s ass with all sorts of regional oddities. Booyah? I would add something for Portland, Oregon, but all I can think of is jo jo potatoes.
Much like the now famous “Put a bird on it” Portlandiaism, for some time barnyardy chefs have been fond of putting fried eggs on just about everything. I am not opposed to this flourish in all its permutations.
And for no reason whatsoever, while entertaining Portlanders over the past eight days I consumed an unusual amount of eggs—from devilled eggs at Dinosaur BBQ where we were accidentally brought two servings to the monte cristo at Savoia, which was really an Italian eggs benedict.
Of course contemporary chefs don’t own eggs as garnish. At Bay Ridge’s Schnitzel Haus where entrees easily contain a full pound of meat, they serve a classic leberkäse, a veal and pork bologna loaf that is grilled and topped with fried eggs and surrounded by mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. With freshly cooked eggs, I made two breakfast servings this morning and there is still enough loaf remaining for multiple meals. Happy Easter, if I can stomach it.
After two visits to Little Italy’s Ferrara, I suggested my mom visit a non-touristy Italian bakery frequented by locals. Caputo’s brusque, “Who’s next? I said who’s next?!” chaos on their “busiest day of the year” according to one brassy counter woman, certainly provided that bit of Brooklyn charm lacking on Grand Street. No time for questions or leisurely skimming the glass case, my mom chose four of the sweet rolls baked around a hard boiled egg and topped with rainbow sprinkles.
I know I never encountered Italian Easter bread in Portland. And maybe it was new for the security at JFK, as well. Apparently, the holiday goods prompted a step-aside bag search when the visitors were heading back to the west coast. The damage on this particular roll was done by me, ripping apart wildly before photographing.
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