Mr. K's
Whenever I write about Chinese food, I always preface my remarks with the caveat that my knowledge of that food isn't quite the same as my knowledge of Italian, or especially French, food. All I can do, really, is make a sort of guess as to whether what I'm eating seems right - but other people with more familiarity should always trump what I say.
Anyway, Mr. K's is a visually beautiful restaurant, everything a light shade of a delicate pink. The chairs are comfortable, the room airy and light - the physical plant of the place is completely unimpeachable. The same is true of the elaborate service - silver bowls are brought out for the rice. Starts are sauced and served at table side. Peking duck is handled the same way. All these things, of course, are positive.
Alas. For the food is entirely uninteresting, except for the decent enough duck (with thankfully crispy skin). The stir fried beef with orange was too soggy, for some reason, as were the seasame crusted shrimp. The lo mein was oil logged, in a mockery of the worst suburban chinese. Eggplant and chicken dishes were hardly spiced - though the former did go well with rice. As always with Chinese restaurants, the desserts were largely uninteresting - the peanut (butter) ice cream I had was tasty, but it could have well been from Baskin Robbins. I don't see why Chinese restaurants don't serve their own, admittedly esoteric, desserts. Anyway, Phoenix Garden is clearly much better, and I'm sure restaurants in Chinatown are as well. For over $40 a person, I wasn't all that impressed.
6/30/2004
Better Burger
Better Burger promises to make exactly that. Air baked french fries, organic meat, wholewheat buns, fresh pesticide free lettuce. All, of course, for a healthy premium over McDonald's and its ilk. For example, the dinner of a sandwich, fries, and a drink I had last night as I sat around in my office cost $8.45 - but some of the more involved burgers, such as the tuna, go over $10 - rather too much for fast food, if you ask me.
In any case, the burger was perfectly adequate. It was juicy, well grilled, and obviously fresh. The bun hadn't gone stale, the various sauces available (no mayonnaise, unsurprisingly) were tasty, and there was enough of the 1/4 pound burger to satisfy. Of course, that isn't a surprise - their burgers are only "better" in the sense that they're made of organic meat. There's no claim of necessarily lower fat, and indeed at 17 grams bun inclusive, it's not the lowest fat meal available in New York. Additionally, if you want a top quality burger, this isn't the place - Better Burger isn't, say, a Bartley's Burger's Cottage in Cambridge - but it is decent enough.
The fries, however, do claim to be low fat, baked in what I understand to be high heat convection ovens (that is, fired by whirling hot air). A carton of them costs you just seven grams of fat, and as readers of this blog might know, I'm very interested in low fat french fries. That's for several reasons - first, I have a terrible weakness for fries slathered in mayo and ketchup, which means that I can't maintain the low quantity strategy that keeps me moderately healthy in their face. Second, making crispy potatoes without much oil is a fascinating challenge - the closest I've come is a recipe for baking potatoes cut into thirds that I wrote about a while ago. In any case, Better Burgers fails miserably on this score. Though the fries do taste like potato, which is a mark in their favor, they also have all the earmarks of baked fries -most distressingly, they're chewy rather then crispy - like mashed potato wrapped in edible leather. Back to the drawing board for Better Burgers, I'm afraid.
Ultimately, the dichotomy between the fries and the burger make me wonder exactly what Better Burger is after. If they want the high end gourmet crowd, as evidenced by the burger, they should change their fries. I'd add some organic potatoes double fried in high quality olive oil to the menu. If they're looking for the health nuts, the burger is far too fatty - and it's no good to say that lower fat burgers, such as the ostrich, are available. The beef burger has to be particularly healthy as well. I'd change the menu to include a burger made of, say, 96% fat free beef enlivened by generous helpings of mustard and other flavorings. At the moment, though, Better Burger just seems confused to me, and it's just too bad. The idea is sound.
Better Burger promises to make exactly that. Air baked french fries, organic meat, wholewheat buns, fresh pesticide free lettuce. All, of course, for a healthy premium over McDonald's and its ilk. For example, the dinner of a sandwich, fries, and a drink I had last night as I sat around in my office cost $8.45 - but some of the more involved burgers, such as the tuna, go over $10 - rather too much for fast food, if you ask me.
In any case, the burger was perfectly adequate. It was juicy, well grilled, and obviously fresh. The bun hadn't gone stale, the various sauces available (no mayonnaise, unsurprisingly) were tasty, and there was enough of the 1/4 pound burger to satisfy. Of course, that isn't a surprise - their burgers are only "better" in the sense that they're made of organic meat. There's no claim of necessarily lower fat, and indeed at 17 grams bun inclusive, it's not the lowest fat meal available in New York. Additionally, if you want a top quality burger, this isn't the place - Better Burger isn't, say, a Bartley's Burger's Cottage in Cambridge - but it is decent enough.
The fries, however, do claim to be low fat, baked in what I understand to be high heat convection ovens (that is, fired by whirling hot air). A carton of them costs you just seven grams of fat, and as readers of this blog might know, I'm very interested in low fat french fries. That's for several reasons - first, I have a terrible weakness for fries slathered in mayo and ketchup, which means that I can't maintain the low quantity strategy that keeps me moderately healthy in their face. Second, making crispy potatoes without much oil is a fascinating challenge - the closest I've come is a recipe for baking potatoes cut into thirds that I wrote about a while ago. In any case, Better Burgers fails miserably on this score. Though the fries do taste like potato, which is a mark in their favor, they also have all the earmarks of baked fries -most distressingly, they're chewy rather then crispy - like mashed potato wrapped in edible leather. Back to the drawing board for Better Burgers, I'm afraid.
Ultimately, the dichotomy between the fries and the burger make me wonder exactly what Better Burger is after. If they want the high end gourmet crowd, as evidenced by the burger, they should change their fries. I'd add some organic potatoes double fried in high quality olive oil to the menu. If they're looking for the health nuts, the burger is far too fatty - and it's no good to say that lower fat burgers, such as the ostrich, are available. The beef burger has to be particularly healthy as well. I'd change the menu to include a burger made of, say, 96% fat free beef enlivened by generous helpings of mustard and other flavorings. At the moment, though, Better Burger just seems confused to me, and it's just too bad. The idea is sound.
6/27/2004
Linguine with meatballs
I was so horrified by the Il Mulino debacle that my mind turned yesterday to Italian food. Not to real italian food, but to the Americanized version - even that, I thought, could be done much better than what I had seen at that unfortunate restaurant. Strolling around the Union Square Greenmarket on early Saturday morning, I found some fresh, young garlic, complete with bulb, some wonderful onions, bright red fragrant tomatoes, and good basil. Stopping later at Grand Central Station's in-house butcher, Cierello, I picked up some hot Italian sausage, and went home. The agenda for today would be the stodgiest of America-Italian comfort food; linguine with meatballs (yea, yea, so I prefer wider noodles to spaghetti- so sue me).
The first order of business in any kind of sauce like this is to prepare the meat. In this case, I tore the sausages out of their casings, and mixed them with basil chopped chiffonade, finely diced summer garlic, and freshly ground black pepper. You don't need to add too many more flavorings, I think, to sausage meatballs - the butcher has already done much of the the work. The other thing to remember, which of course I momentarily forgot, is that you need to be careful about the proportion of meat to other ingredients. Since you're going to be frying the meatballs, adding too much basil and garlic will cause those ingredients to burn in the hot fire of the pan - you can withstand some of that, but not too much. In any case, roll the mixture into small uneven balls - to me, too much perfection in shaping this kind of thing takes away the home-made rusticity of the dish- and fry them in extremely hot oil until crusty and brown on the outside. The way I make meatballs, they won't be done yet. That's fine - just pull them out of the frying pan, and dry them on generous swathes of kitchen paper on a plate. They'll come back into the game later.
Using the same oil, and hopefully some melted fat from the sausages, very slowly sweat some finely minced onions and garlic. It's key to sweat, that is to sautee at low heat, rather than fry - you don't want any coloring of the onions and garlic, and you want them to go soft. As far as I'm concerned, there's not supposed to be any crisp onion texture in the finished sauce. While that's happening, and it should take a good ten minutes, chop the tomatoes. As you can see from the picture on Waddling Thunder, the tomatoes should be reduced to a pulp - they way I do it is to chop them into squares, and then rake them back and forth with two large chef's knives, occasionally grinding them into the cutting board like one does garlic. By the time you finish the tomatoes (that bowl represents four carefully mashed fruits)the pseudo-sofrito (the traditional italian trio includes celery) should be ready. Add the tomatoes to the pan, water or red wine, and the meatballs. Let the mixture bubble away happily for some twenty minutes, adding some red chili flakes if you happen to like the sauce spicier than it would be from just leaching the sausage's heat. At some point before it finishes, remember to boil some salted water, and add the pasta - there's no reason to wait to cook the pasta later.
When you're ready to finish the dish, be sure to undercook the pasta slightly - as it's described in so many cookbooks, the pasta should still haev some "bite". Tip some of the sauce, without meatballs, into another pan on medium heat, add a ladlefull of pasta water, and then add the al dente noodles to the mix. Toss the contents of the pan aggressively, making sure to dress the pasta lightly rather than drowning it. The extra water will let the noodles cook to done in the pan. Remove the pasta to a bowl, add three meatballs per person, and sprinkle parmesan and more chiffonade basil over the whole creation. Eat quickly - preferably with some red wine, and if you're feeling decadent, with a bageutte stuffed horribly with butter and more garlic.
I was so horrified by the Il Mulino debacle that my mind turned yesterday to Italian food. Not to real italian food, but to the Americanized version - even that, I thought, could be done much better than what I had seen at that unfortunate restaurant. Strolling around the Union Square Greenmarket on early Saturday morning, I found some fresh, young garlic, complete with bulb, some wonderful onions, bright red fragrant tomatoes, and good basil. Stopping later at Grand Central Station's in-house butcher, Cierello, I picked up some hot Italian sausage, and went home. The agenda for today would be the stodgiest of America-Italian comfort food; linguine with meatballs (yea, yea, so I prefer wider noodles to spaghetti- so sue me).
The first order of business in any kind of sauce like this is to prepare the meat. In this case, I tore the sausages out of their casings, and mixed them with basil chopped chiffonade, finely diced summer garlic, and freshly ground black pepper. You don't need to add too many more flavorings, I think, to sausage meatballs - the butcher has already done much of the the work. The other thing to remember, which of course I momentarily forgot, is that you need to be careful about the proportion of meat to other ingredients. Since you're going to be frying the meatballs, adding too much basil and garlic will cause those ingredients to burn in the hot fire of the pan - you can withstand some of that, but not too much. In any case, roll the mixture into small uneven balls - to me, too much perfection in shaping this kind of thing takes away the home-made rusticity of the dish- and fry them in extremely hot oil until crusty and brown on the outside. The way I make meatballs, they won't be done yet. That's fine - just pull them out of the frying pan, and dry them on generous swathes of kitchen paper on a plate. They'll come back into the game later.
Using the same oil, and hopefully some melted fat from the sausages, very slowly sweat some finely minced onions and garlic. It's key to sweat, that is to sautee at low heat, rather than fry - you don't want any coloring of the onions and garlic, and you want them to go soft. As far as I'm concerned, there's not supposed to be any crisp onion texture in the finished sauce. While that's happening, and it should take a good ten minutes, chop the tomatoes. As you can see from the picture on Waddling Thunder, the tomatoes should be reduced to a pulp - they way I do it is to chop them into squares, and then rake them back and forth with two large chef's knives, occasionally grinding them into the cutting board like one does garlic. By the time you finish the tomatoes (that bowl represents four carefully mashed fruits)the pseudo-sofrito (the traditional italian trio includes celery) should be ready. Add the tomatoes to the pan, water or red wine, and the meatballs. Let the mixture bubble away happily for some twenty minutes, adding some red chili flakes if you happen to like the sauce spicier than it would be from just leaching the sausage's heat. At some point before it finishes, remember to boil some salted water, and add the pasta - there's no reason to wait to cook the pasta later.
When you're ready to finish the dish, be sure to undercook the pasta slightly - as it's described in so many cookbooks, the pasta should still haev some "bite". Tip some of the sauce, without meatballs, into another pan on medium heat, add a ladlefull of pasta water, and then add the al dente noodles to the mix. Toss the contents of the pan aggressively, making sure to dress the pasta lightly rather than drowning it. The extra water will let the noodles cook to done in the pan. Remove the pasta to a bowl, add three meatballs per person, and sprinkle parmesan and more chiffonade basil over the whole creation. Eat quickly - preferably with some red wine, and if you're feeling decadent, with a bageutte stuffed horribly with butter and more garlic.
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