Another Simple Way with Goat Cheese

I've been on something of a goat cheese kick recently, and last night the urge struck again. This time, a full garlicky goat cheese wrapped in a horn of puff pastry with sauteed vine tomatoes. Mmm.

Brown busted

Non-Food!

Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, has been given a big thumping in the local elections held yesterday. I don't care much, except to say that "I told you so". Writing three years ago, I noted, given the likelihood that Brown would succeed the then reviled Tony Blair, that laborites who thought that Brown was some sort of electoral panacea were likely to be disappointed. As I argued, not only was Brown unlikely to be the true labor leftist a certain type of activist was pining for, but he was probably a pretty inferior politican too:

The problem, of course, is that the moment Blair leaves, the tories will revive. The labour left's assumption, that there's something about tory policies that the country has foresaken forever, is flatly wrong - they've thought this before, and they got themselves Thatcher. Rather, the problem is the now reviled Mr. Blair - he's got the tories so totally flummoxed that they've resorted to the hoary chestnut of immigration, along with bizarre posters that say things like "Are you thinking what we're thinking?". With Blair sitting solidly on the precise center of British politics, I doubt very much that the Tories would ever win.

But Brown cannot equal Blair's achievement. If he does live up to the advertising, and goes left, then the tories will simply re-take the center. No one in Britain wants a return to the 70s, when what is now a vibrant economic power asked for help from the IMF. And if a man known as the Iron Chancellor does what seems more likely,and tries to remain where Blair has been successful, I think it very unlikely that he will be as good as Blair. Does anyone believe Gore had even a twentieth of the political skills of his master? If he did, he would have been president, and not Bill.

In the interim, Brown has become Prime Minister, got himself into a variety of preposterous muddles (including the latest, which involves pushing five million people currently paying a 10% tax rate into the 20% bracket) and has not assuaged any of the leftists' complaints. Whoops.

* Now, to go find all those examples where my predictions were really really wrong, to balance this out.

Baba

So, this is yet another example of when a better camera would have been helpful. Alas. The other night, I got a hankering for Baba au rhum, after seeing Lidia Bastianich's aged mother devour one happily on Lidia's Italy, a somewhat underrated program usually seen on public television. I didn't have rum, though, or limoncello (as Lidia recommends), so I just used some wonderful scotch whiskey I had cadging around. The recipe is basically a simplified, yeasty brioche, to my untrained eye - buttery, eggy, and most importantly, spongy, in order to soak in the spiked sugar syrup the breads are immersed into at the end. The babas themselves emerged perfectly out of the oven, rising above the ramekins I had put them in to give me the classic bulbed shape. I could feel the perfect texture inside. And they greedily slurped up vast amounts of syrup, growing almost once over again.

But questions abound - would it be better if they had slow risen, like I do with bread, overnight in the fridge? Should both syrup and baba be cool before baptising the babas, or just the syrup, or just the baba (I did hot syrup and cool baba, to good effect)? Should it taste of liquor or sugar?

Dissonance

A few days ago, I heard someone near my office building say to her friends, in an exasperated tone, "I don't understand how people can pour carbs into their body. It's so unhealthy."

Fine, I thought, as I walked off to Bella Napoli on 49th street* to pour carbs into my body. A little preachy, but her prerogative.

Coming back after having gobbled two slices of pizza, I found the same woman outside. Smoking. As in cigarettes.

* Bella Napoli is the most acceptable pizza I know of in the area between 8th Avenue and 6th Avenue, 55th to 45th streets, which is about reasonable walking range during a light to medium work day. The superior Naples 45 takeaway is too far. Sullivan Street Bakery is on 10th Avenue and 48th, within walking distance, but also not hot (it is served at room temperature), and in any case sometime one wants margherita, which SSB does not serve. Two Boots, which recently (and inexplicably) won a poll at Midtown lunch, is also slightly outside my radius, and also awful. The fairly good pizza trucks on Park Avenue are also slightly outside range. The 99 cent pizza is unacceptable, as is Amish Market, as are all the "Ray's" and "Ray's" derivatives.

Pizza nut

My former classmate, Amber, points to this extraordinary site, detailing one man's obsession with achieving the perfect home pizza. I had seen it previously linked on Stuart Buck's website, but I can't find my post about it, and the author's efforts are so startling that it's worth another look. And no, New York pizza isn't good because of the water, just like French bread isn't good because of the water.

UPDATE: I found my old post!

The Burger King Kobe Burger

Via Loccusolus, I see that Burger King is going to serve up an 85 pound ($170) Kobe beef hamburger. It's obviously a marketing ploy, like the various $1000 sushi rolls and $500 pizzas floating around, but what struck me was the price. 85 pounds? How does ground kobe with foie gras add up to that much? Even at Craftsteak, true Japanese Wagyu steak costs only $30 an ounce ($120). One has got to figure that Craftsteak has just the tiniest bit higher overhead than Burger King. Fine, so this is all nit-picking of a project designed to make a splash, but I'd still like it to make sense.

By the way, to be au courant with the current trend in New York, my back of the envelope calculation is that even if the Wagyu was a relatively lean 50% fat (some Wagyu is much more), the resulting quarter pounder would have 56 grams of fat, excluding the foie gras, sauce, bread, etc. How's that for healthy?

So, what think you now?

Ezra Klein has a post today being sad about the effect of the rising cost of food on people's diets (from a story in the New York Times). That's all well and good and all, but perhaps Ezra might reconsider his post about how great it would be if food was more expensive, from a month ago (and which I made fun of back then)? Or did he just mean it would be nice if food was more expensive and humane, and yet through some kind of magic, people would be unaffected?

Leftover Rosa del Rosa and Scrambled Eggs

I had about a glass of Rosa del Rosa leftover from Saturday night, and I was alone for Sunday lunch, so I decided to have a sort of light brunch. What better than scrambled eggs (in the French soft curdy style, rather than the chewy mess it often is over here). I tried Gordon Ramsay's technique (linked by E. Klein), but found it no better than my usual (in short, he starts both the butter and eggs cold, whereas I usually melt the butter before adding the eggs. Eh.) With a couple of smoked salmon trimmings from my local supermarket (the ends of large planks of smoked salmon are often sold for two or three dollars by the supermarket in little plastic tubs - they are a great value for scrambled eggs, pastas, smoked salmon sandwiches, creme fraiche pizzas, etc, etc) and some toast, I settled down in front of my computer for some writing.

Wine Note: Properieta Sperino, Rosa del Rosa

I'm no Professor Bainbridge when it comes to wine, but I enjoy buying and drinking the stuff, especially from the wonderful Moore Brothers. I was introduced to Moore Brothers when I was living in Delaware (one of them was sommelier at Philadelphia's well known Le Bec Fin) and was delighted when they opened their New York location. It is a pleasure to drink wine chosen by people who know what it is supposed to taste like. I have never had a bad bottle from them.

In any case, yesterday we had a terrific rose from Italy, Proprieta Sperino, Rosa del Rosa. The wine has a immensely powerful aroma, which my girlfriend thought was apple and I couldn't identify. Flopping around the internet, I found a tasting note by someone else that gave me a clue as to what I was smelling - which is to say, extremely pungent raspberries. In any case, I agree with the commentator at The Tasting Note. "This is a ****ing good rose."

(Dinner, incidentally, was chicken breast taken off the bone and sauteed skin side down on my gas griddle for fantastically crispy skin [fried chicken without the guilt, I said] with a simple red potato salad [boiled potatoes, spring onions, dijon vinaigrette but made by replacing half the red wine vinegar with lemon]).