Butternut Squash custard and failed sous vide-y pork tenderloin

I'm not sure what to call this other than a custard, but in any case it is great with pork tenderloin. Simply roast an entire butternut squash in a 350 degree oven for about an hour and a half. Scoop out the flesh, and mix with two eggs, grated cheese, salt, pepper and mascarpone cheese (or, full fat greek yogurt). Pour into a pan, preferably a springform, and bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool a little (I ate it warm) and cut into pie slices before topping with grated ricotta salatta.

I wrapped the pork tenderloin into a tight sausage in plastic wrap, and tried to poach gently in the plastic, as set forth in the Alinea cookbook. I loved the result of wrapping the pork in the plastic in terms of getting a manageable shape out of a difficult cut to cook evenly, but the poaching didn't work especially. Instead, I pan roasted in butter, basting with butter constantly. It tasted great.

Birbiglia

I've liked Mike Birbiglia ever since I saw him with Jeremy a couple of years ago,  and I liked very much his performance of Sleepwalk with Me.  I associate myself completely with Jeremy's review of an earlier version of the show, except that Birbiglia didn't lose us when he admitted the bad thing (I assume we're both thinking about the same semi-fast food related item), and I thought that the last joke would be that his dad also saw the jackal. 

Anyway, highly recommended.  Even for $30. 

What I'm dreaming about cooking tomorrow before I leave for dinner

Butternut squash custard sprinkled with pancetta and cheese

Small fishes, filleted,  fried in extra virgin olive oil sitting on a mild curry sauce.

Finding a resy

Going out in New York is sometimes a little nervewracking.  We're headed to a comedy show tonight in the West Village, so I needed somewhere to eat.  The obvious place is Otto.  Booked solid.  So is Lupa.  Macao Trading Co. is too.  Kampuchea and the various Momofuku's are likely to be busy and don't take reservations.  John Dory is crushed.  I didn't like the Double Crown review from Bruni (an Asian-British fusion? Flurgh).  Anissa is booked. Little Owl is booked (when is it not?).  

Finally.  Anita Lo's Bar Q, blessed/cursed with a fairly tepid reading two stars from Bruni, and with otherwise decent reviews (Platt) from (Cuozzo) the secondary reviewers (Robert Sietsema hated it).  

Oh crap -just remodeled! Maybe that's why there was space. 

Cooking for friends

I don't often cook for friends. As I get older, I hope to do so more and more. Indeed, I've been thinking recently how nice it would be to get a low-key supper club together. There are problems with cooking for friends when one is used to cooking for oneself, or oneself and a girlfriend or fiancee. Of course, you need to be sensitive to likes and dislikes, though my friends have broad palates generally. But also, there's the simple matter of portion size. I'm afraid, especially because my second course went awry, that I left my guests hungry. Alas.

In any case, we started with small cannolis out of fried wonton wrappers and stuffed them with crab salad (crab, sour cream, lemon). The fried wonton wrappers were a triumph in terms of shape - I wrapped them around a wooden dowel and fried them on the dowel until done - otherwise they puff up and close the cavity. However, I filled them too early and they sogged on me. I also made baby roasted fingerling potatoes topped with sour cream and lox.

My second course was meant to be Blue Hill's soft boiled, deep fried, egg. This failed utterly, as I broke all the soft boiled eggs when I peeled them. So I got rid of the dish.

Dinner was pork short rib braciole, as per this recipe from Carmellini. It is a delicious and really perfect recipe even for a larger dinner party, as it can sit in the oven with literally no ill effects basically indefinitely. The pork shredded, the sauce reduced, the cheese, egg and parsley topping gave an interesting texture and flavor.

Dessert was my (i.e., Jacques Pepin's) apple galette, made with higher fat European butter. The tart has a propensity to leak, but it is always tasty. This is a reliable, workhorse dessert, equally good with pears or peaches.

Wine was this 2007 Oregon Willamette Valley Belle Vallee Pinot Noir. I think this was universally liked by all four of us. Fruity, yet with pinot noir ink.

Erg.

I realized I was going to come to terms with mediocrity back when I understood everything Paul Gowder was talking about in these two posts and could have given him a long and boring lecture on various lines of the Najdorf, and still never got past a 1450 chess rating.

Diet Coke

I stopped drinking diet Coke (or any Coke or Pepsi, for that matter) during my vacation to France this summer. My theory was, with some encouragement from a special someone, that it couldn't possibly be good to be drinking quite that many chemicals in such quantity, and in any case the overwhelming taste of sweet was probably ruining my palate for other more interesting uses (I would have two 20-ounce bottles a day).

It's now been about three months, and all I can say is that from a tangible standpoint, the results of my little self experiment are decidedly mixed. I certainly feel a little less jittery, since my caffeine intake is down (I also have two coffees a day). I can't say that I feel better or any more vital in any substantive way, except that I had a diet soda at a movie the other day, and found it unbearably sweet. I do think my ability to taste wine is somehow better - I'm still not going to taste plums or cherries or what have you, but I feel like I can pick up a little more subtlety now than before.

The experiment continues. Hopefully, the next thing is to cut out the splenda from the morning coffee.

Obama as Glass bead player

In all the hundreds of descriptions of Obama I've ever read, none fits him so well as this description of someone else, from Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game (thanks to Amber's comments for the recommendation). So sayeth this lesser man, at least:

"A good many of Knecht's friends and later disciples envied him as remarkable men are always envied, not only for their greatness of soul and energy, but also for their seeming luck, their seeming preferment by destiny. The lesser man sees in the greater as much as he can see, and Joseph Knecht's career cannot help striking every observer as unusually brilliant, rapid, and seemingly effortless. . . . Nevertheless, there are outstanding men with whose lives "luck" is intimately bound up, even though that luck may consist merely in the fact that they and the task proper to their talents actually intersect on the plane of history and biography, and they are born neither too soon nor too late. Knecht seems to have been on of these. Thus his life, at least for a considerable part of the way, gives the impression that everything desirable simply fell into his lap."

Thanksgiving Dinner

A brief note on Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant 2941 in suburban Virginia, which my family enjoyed very much. The amuse bouche was a risotto asiago fritter, which was satisfyingly crunchy. I followed that with seared Hudson Valley foie gras (am I the only person who enjoys the slightly less unctuous North American product more than true French foie?) with an apple and espresso sauce (puzzling but good). The main course for me was pan roasted artic char - although the fish was good, I'd eat the crispy, salty, skin instead of potato chips any day. My butternut squash puree (in reality, a small butternut squash tart) was tasty and simple, while we all enjoyed the after coffee macarons, pate de fruit, and warm lemon beignets. I chose a South African Kanonkop Pinotage 2005 to drink ($65 on menu, $25.99 online), which did a great job bridging the gap between my fish, my dad's turkey, and my sister's and fiancee's prime steak. If I was being picky, I'd say my father's pecan square with chantilly was too small a dessert, and the soaring, spacious dining room lets in a little too much chill wind. While leaving, I noticed a well thought out and tasty seeming children's menu - a touch that must have been a blessing to parents.

EDIT: I find people who refer to foie gras as "foie" really annoying, though I did it above, and thus presumably find myself really annoying.

St. Andrews

The New York Times has a nice story on my alma mater, among others, describing a supposed trend of Americans heading overseas for college. Much of what they say is true, and I'll say more as I think about it, but I will say now that spending four years at St. Andrews was one of the best experiences of my life, for many reasons.

Sous Vide

A thought crossed my mind last night, but I need to develop it more. Isn't the current vogue for sous vide cooking (i.e., cooking at a very low, constant temperature for a long time in a vacuum pouch) really just a great way for restaurants to make food in advance? From what I've seen of major kitchens these days, much of the cooking on the line is now just assembly - remove artichokes from sous vide bag, remove pork belly from sous vide bag, warm the first in butter, deep fry the second, stack on top of each other with a sauce from a third bag. Is all this bagging really worth the supposed flavor we're getting?

Ruhlman has thoughts on sous vide in general.

Food Video

I love this food video from the Japanese equivalent of the FDA. I especially like when the good fish, soup, and rice are replaced with meat and pancakes on the CGI family's table. Plus, the whole thing has a hilarious Japanese sensibility. Even if the dialogue was in English, I'm pretty sure most people would recognize where this was from, and the message is pretty unmistakeable - "look, the Americans are our friends, but their food makes you fat".

Anatomy of a wine list

We are having Thanksgiving Dinner at 2941, an excellent restaurant in suburban Virginia. My mom can't cook, as she is in France visiting my grandmother, and though I could prepare food and take it down with me to finish, that seemed like a big hassle to feed my fiancee, me, my sister and dad.

In any case, I love restaurants that put their entire wine list online, first because it helps me learn about wine, and second because online wine lists give you rare transparency into the restaurant's cost structure.

Here, for example, are 2941's options for Oregon Pinot Noir (something I am trying to learn about in the context of Red Burgundy, which I like a lot), the price they are selling for in the restaurant, the price the wine sells for at retail, and the markup. Of course, this isn't necessarily the price the restaurant paid, but my assumption here (as opposed to when a restaurant buys meat, where a good chef might pay a premium to ensure timely delivery) is that the sommelier or wine director is paying below retail. On the other hand, they probably have good stemware, and I might never have found these wines on my own.

Domaine Serene, Jerusalem Hill Vineyard, Willamette Valley - $150 - $76.95 - 194%

Medici Vinyard - Estate East Block, Willamette Valley, 2002 - $85 - $27.00 - 314%

Rex Hill - Reserve, Willamette Valley, 2004 - $90 - $31.72 - 283%

Shea Wine Cellars - Shea Vineyard Estate, Willamette Valley, 2006 - $130 - $42.99 - 302%

Civic Literacy Test

I took the online test on civic affairs that elected officials are said to have failed. I would think that a lawyer, at least, should never get fewer than 30 of these correct, assuming they did the test with some care, though really, all the questions are entirely answerable.

Some experimentation

I spent the weekend working on some things I know how to do, but wanted to try with a slightly different twist, or to perfect.  

Poached, deep fried, eggs - Since my visit to Blue Hill at Stone Barns a few months ago, I've been intrigued by the prospect of deep frying a breaded egg.  How better to bring together two of the best things in the world?  It seemed to me, though, that frying a soft poached egg would be easier than a soft boiled one, as I've always struggled to get the shell off of an egg that was cooked softly enough to fry.  For this experiment, then,  I poached a good egg for three minutes, dunked in ice water to set, trimmed, and then dipped in more egg and cornmeal before frying briefly in olive oil.  

The results were delicious, but I note (a) that more seasoning in the crust would have made this tastier, and (b) that dried breadcrumbs or panko would probably have been better than cornmeal. 

The presentation of the soft boiled egg is superior, I think. 

Rustic fruit tart - I'm much taken with the rustic fruit tart I made a couple of weeks ago, and want to make it on my visit home during Thanksgiving.   Since my dad boasts a quartet of bypassed arteries, though, I wondered if (no trans-fat) butter substitutes might work.  I made this with some pears that were sitting around.  The flavor is not what I'd necessarily hoped, and it didn't brown as well as it might, but still, quite serviceable indeed.

Lebneh - I have no idea why this is called keffir cheese by some, nor why anyone at all thinks this is Israeli, but lebneh is one of my favorite breakfast foods.  It couldn't be easier to make: simply empty a container of yogurt into cheese cloth and tie, as shown, onto your faucet. The next morning, voila - lebneh. 

Making lebneh made me focus this afternoon on the passing whims of my breakfast appetite.  Sometimes, entire weeks pass by when all I want are bagels with smooth cream cheese or peanut butter.  Then, nothing but croissants with apricot jam will do.  Later, for months at a time, my inner Scot bubbles to the surface, and I spend long half hours stirring steel cut oats in the grim winter and searching Manhattan grocery stores for Lyle's Golden Syrup.  But in the end, put a gun to my head and I'll always pick a Middle Eastern breakfast.  Zatar with oil, lebneh, pita, olives, fava beans, and vegetables. 

Why not review Harlem?

Zubin Jelveh at Portfolio.com posts complaining about the lack of food reviews by Frank Bruni of the New York Times in Harlem. His point, in short, is that despite rating on Menupages for Harlem restaurants that equal the ratings on Menupages for restaurants in the East Village, Bruni rarely writes about Harlem.

To some extent, this regional problem is endemic to every restaurant reviewer. In Washington, Tom Sietsema of the Post was recently reported to the Ombudsman for neglecting the Maryland suburbs (if I recall correctly). The response of every reviewer I've seen when confronted by this variety of accusation is that they go where the restaurants are even while making sure they're not neglecting good restaurants in less trendy areas. The challenge of reviewing breadth is harder for Bruni in New York than for anyone else anywhere. He has the opportunity to review one restaurant a week, 52 a year. There are easily 52 significant openings a year of which the food community in New York demands a review, not to mention returns to old standbys (see here).

It is simply impossible, in that context, for Bruni to also hit, say, a home style southern restaurant in Harlem just as a matter of geographical breadth. Without some knowledeable buzz to justify his effort and time, there isn't any demand for his imprimatur on such a restaurant - he would be performing a disservice to his readers by wasting a column on it. To the extent, further, that there are innovative or especially good restaurants that aren't hyped and identified to Bruni immediately, these are dug out and brought to notice by the New York restaurant market's elaborately cascading sorting mechanism - first by the veritable blanket veritable blanket of amateur food review that Chowhound has thrown over the city and then by New York's subsidiary food reviewers (New York magazine, Gael Green, Eater, Grub Street, Restaurant Girl, etc, etc, etc). I would argue, contra Jelveh, that New York's restaurant market is frighteningly efficient. Good places are dug out, identified, tested by knowledgeable pioneers, and then mobbed, and places that don't hit the mark are slaughtered with brutal rapidity.

I would argue in a little more depth about the differences between Menupages and the high food press, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Spherical olive

I watched last night's Top Chef episode to learn that the show's token Italian won the "challenge" (make lunch at Craft) with a beef carpaccio with a fancy schmancy "spherical olive" - that is, olive puree molecularized back into the shape of an olive. But, of course, putting aside the fact that the carpaccio was not very original and easy, the much vaunted olive was just a bald faced copy of Adria's signature garnish. New American, as the judges kept saying? Not quite.

Romanette

There's quite a fun discussion of the word "romanette" going on over at Volokh's, a word meaning a lower case roman numeral in the context of legal documentation (as in, "now let's turn to Section 5.1(b), romanette 3"). As Volokh explains, Chief Justice Roberts recently stopped a lawyer who used the term for an explanation, as he'd never heard of it, and the comments at Volokh indicate that those of us who've practiced transactional law think romanette a common-place term, while our litigating brethren don't.

To go on the record, I don't like romanette, though the alternative "3 in the hole" to mean the same thing as the above is even less pleasing. As I mention in the comments over there, some way of distinguishing little "i" from "1" is important, so I guess we just made up a term.

I love the discussion of law firm terms that ensues in the comments, though. As I note, for example, I'm constantly doing the bidding of people who want to "bottom out" problems, as in "let's bottom that out ASAP". And we too at my firm use "it is what it is" all the time, both in our personal and professional lives. But my favorite phrase on the thread, which I had never heard, is to "open the kimono", as in "we need to open the kimono at this point". Apparently this means that the time's come to disclose everything or not keep anything hidden.

I can't wait to see the first caterer's face when I use that later this year, when working on my wedding. "Now listen here, we just need to open the kimonos now." Or maybe, "I can't live with the kimono half open, you know". Or, "I'll open the kimono if you do the same".

Hmm.

Achatz again

Gael Greene says some things I suspect I'd agree with about Grant Achatz's food:

Chestnut-baked potato, quince and smoke come next, just before Keller’s luscious foie gras galette. I want to like Grant Achatz’s food. Truly I do. I don’t want to seem uptight or an incurable old fogey. But perhaps I am. Making something edible out of unlikely components or something inedible out of a classic – like Achatz’s lamb with fennel and Pernod alongside a hot rock covered with coffee grounds, dried citrus peel and spices, three of them in three bowls on the table – “coffee-scented air” – is no guarantee of pleasure. A giggle isn’t enough. I want to be surprised by adventure in texture and flavor. I want to be bowled over by an explosion of flavor, transported by scents and savor beyond imagining. When Keller says “oysters and pearls” and sends out pearls of caviar, I smile and bask in that delicious notion. And I’d embrace the notion of coffee air with a smile if only the lamb tasted wonderful.

On the other hand, a super blog friend who has actually tasted Achatz's food said the below to me a while back. As I keep saying, I will have to taste this damned food in the end.

I share your general attitude about the chemicalization of food in a time when people are finally learning to do the opposite. But my one 12-course meal at Alinea really was incredible, with lots of combinations of flavors and textures that I had never before encountered, or even contemplated. I'm not saying that I'd want to eat food like that every day, or even every year, but at the same time some of the techniques were sufficiently interesting and inspiring that I hope and expect they will trickle down to the home cook (like the creative uses of freezing cold). The analogy that struck me was to high fashion: models strut down the runway half-naked in weird concoctions of feather and silk-- many of these things are not attractive, and certainly unthinkable for day-to-day wear, but some of the artistic developments (a line, a cut, a color) find themselves in very stylish pieces available in clothing boutiques 6 months later, and in the Gap 3 years after that.

Little Bits

UPDATE: I should add that I've thought more about nibbles and appetizers because they are so often the best part of a meal out. While I don't necessarily hold with the tapas/small plates trend that has overrun New York and much of the rest of the culinary world (though is it now receding in the face of hamburgers? I think so) it is a fact that I often remember what I ate when I arrived at the restaurant, and less what I ate later. I think part of it is that these small bites are short and punchy - they deliver their flavor in pitter-pat jabs, rather than in the dull thud of a roast - and are less cabined by convention. In size too, they tease without satisfying. One can never get tired of an amuse bouche, while no matter how good, repetitively sawing a prime steak can become tiresome. But I can't put aside the theory that I enjoy them better because they're at the start of the meal, when my anticipation is at its height and my hunger too. In any case, it is no surprise that many of the trademarks of the best restaurants (Oysters & Pearls, anyone) are starters, and not main courses.

I've been thinking more and more about little bits recently - hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, snacks, amuses. I feel as though I can produce a fairly creditable meal, most times, but don't know much beyond crostini to give to guests (assuming I had any) when they arrive. I notice the idea of using fingerling potatoes as an appetizer receptacle recently, and thought of sour cream and pancetta as nice accompaniments. I simply boiled the potatoes until cooked, rendered the pancetta, and then cooked the potatoes in the pancetta fat until browned. Topped with some greek yogurt rather than sour cream, the cooked pancetta, and chives, and these were delicious.

Dinner was a spatch-cocked chicken rubbed with salt, paper, and spanish paprika. We drank Cloudline's 2006 Pinot Noir, which was, to me, a sort of deceptive Pinot Noir - much more fruity than I would have expected.

Momofuku cakes

Some pictures from the brand new Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar, sure to be mobbed very soon. The "crack" pie, halfway down the page, is a version of a traditional British tart which I can't remember the name of, but which I distinctly remember looking at for a long time on the last page of Tesco's monthly recipe magazine about ten years ago in a section where people looking for recipes their grandmothers made were encouraged to send in obscure questions.

UPDATE: I remembered! Crack pie is gypsy tart, but with corn flour.

Taverna Kyklades

Taverna Kyklades has been a very low grade stress on my relationship with my fiancee for about a year. Every time we walk by (and we walk by often), I point at the giant lines outside and say something like "you know, we should try it". Plus, Kyklades sounds to me in my head like Cyclops, even though that's not how it's pronounced, and the idea of dining at Taverna Cyclops appeals for a variety of juvenile reasons. My fiancee always answers with something like "but I've heard it isn't very clean, and by the way, it smells".

So, we visited last night. And Kyklades really does smell - a sort of constant musk of fish and coals. The open kitchen reassures me about cleanliness, and the fish was quite good. I especially liked my dark, full of flavor sardines, which stand up well to the traditional Greek fish cooking technique (Char until dead on coals). My fiancee's red mullets were less good, though still fine, and full of the inevitable pin bones (for which Kyklades cannot really be blamed, but which speaks well of traditional fussy french technique, in which bones would have been removed and the fish rendered easy to eat). I was delighted by the galaktabouriko dessert, which is a free add on, and was fresh and just sweet enough.

Though this all did made me think of an interesting question - Would you rather have a free dessert, or be able to choose your own dessert for an extra price? The answer says much about your personality, I've decided.

Career changes

I'm in the middle of a fairly major career change I've been working on for three months. Tingly anticipation abounds. Wine will be needed tonight.

Big mouths

By the way, I've noticed that people in food ads geared to young men conduct the physical act of eating in a way that suggests they'd engulf the whole spoon or fry or burger if only you weren't watching, a sort of big mouthed super enthusiasm that, I suppose, is supposed to convey that the food is really delicious, and the person eating it is the kind of extreme, viril, hungry, potentially violent guy that you are too.

Here's Ladainian Tomlinson half swallowing his spoon while eating Campbell's Soup, just as an example, but the Guitar Hero ads are equally glaring.

1630

1630. Is it the year some important city fell to the Ottomans? No. Actually, the number of calories in the "Guitar Hero Fully Loaded Box Meal" from KFC, according to KFC's nutrition calculator. Why do I know about this? Because I love football, and the GHFLBM is promoted heavily during football games to people in the demographic I'm just leaving, which means that I see the ad about 40 times as I flip through my 10 channels of football each Sunday.

* for the record, that's with a full calorie Pepsi, potato wedges, mac and cheese, an extra crispy drumstick, and a normal snacker. This webpage comes to a different number.

Twitter

As you'll see on the left, I've finally adopted Twitter. The idea is to post what I've been eating, a concept I just now stole from Ozersky's "Last Meal" feature.

A talk with Ripert and Carmellini

I went last night to a talk with Eric Ripert (of Le Bernardin), Andrew Carmellini and Josh Ozersky (of the new blog, the Feedbag), obstensibly about Carmellini's recently released book, Urban Italian. There was some interesting discussion of cookbooks and the cooking life in general, and it was a rare delight to see Ripert in person after having eaten his food a couple of times, but the fun I had was a little obscured by moderator Lee Ann Wong, who talked too much. Not to be unkind, but it was as if I was moderating a panel of two of the partners of my firm, and a law professor, but decided to interject an equal amount of my own musings.

Hierarchies exist for a reason, you know.

You killed [Ghandi]?

Justice Stevens emphasizes today "no member of the [California Supreme] court suggested" that the showing of a video of a murdered victim's light set to music" shed any light on the character of the offense, the character of the offender, or the defendant's moral culpability". His point was that such emotive evidence problematically interfered with the murderer's sentencing, possibly inclining the jury towards death.

I am basically unread in this field, and am sure this has all been discussed ad naseaum, but it seems at least arguable to me that the defendant's moral culpability is somewhat wrapped up in who he killed. Of course, I appreciate the prejudice laden implications of considering the nature of the victim when deciding how society is to punish criminals, but when meting out a punishment that is meant in large part to be retributive, I'm not sure it makes sense that the way the victim was killed is relevant, but the character of the victim him or herself isn't. Why isn't the video relevant because it shows an innocent's life was nipped in the bud?

Zahav

I don't mean to be petty, but my hackles were kind of raised by a blurb on the Philadelphia restaurant Zahav in Food & Wine this month. The relevant passages follow:

Other than stellar hummus, I didn't know what to expect from a restaurant calling its food modern Israeli. . . . My favorite was the cauliflower florets, fried until sweet and caramelized. Crisp enough to pick up with your fingers, they're a terrific bar snack, served over a pool of tangy, dill-flecked, lebneh for dipping. . . . I was a bit squeamish about trying the kibbe naye, made with raw ground lamb, but after tasting the allspice seasoned meat scooped into crunchy romaine lettuce hearts, I changed my mind. I left Zahav more informed about Israeli food - and delighted with what I'd learned.

In case what is wrong with this passage isn't obvious, let's give a hypothetical French restaurant the same treatment.

Other than stellar pasta, I didn't know what to expect from a restaurant calling its food modern French . . . My favorite was the veal meatballs, fried until caramelized, crisp enough to pick up with your fingers, they're a terrific bar snack, served over a pool of tangy, thyme flecked, gorgonzola. . . I was a bit squeamish about trying the proscuitto crudo, but after tasting delicate flavor of the pork arranged with melon, I changed my mind. I left the restaurant more informed about French food - and delighted with that I'd learned.

Apple Galette

I can't get enough of rustic apple pies, a condition which hasn't stopped me from ignoring rustic apple pies so far this season. I finally fixed that problem this weekend with this simple galette. All this involves is a rich dough (3 oz. flour, 3 tb butter, and ice water) rolled out to a thin circle between plastic wrap, and some halved and cored apples filled with apricot jam* in the center. The remaining dough is just sloppily pulled up and some granulated sugar applied everywhere. It cooks in about 45 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

* I'm not normally much of a homer for Armenian products, but Harvest Song Apricot jam is terrific. The apricot flavor is so much more pronounced here than in the kind one gets in the supermarket that I almost wonder whether they're doing something nefarious.

** A clever observer will notice the burned sugar to the back and deduce that I kind of screwed this up. Obviously, my galette leaked, and it shouldn't.

Ecrevisses, girolle, jeunes pousses de salade, jus de tete perle. Ok, so not quite

One of the truly great dishes we had at Hostellerie Berard this summer was the dish described in the title - effectively, a crayfish salad with mushrooms and a sauce based in part on crayfish stock. While I couldn't quite get all the ingredients for that, the idea is easily adaptable to the kind of shrimp salad I normally make. Here, I simply made a shrimp stock with white wine, and used it as a sort of court bouillon to cook the cleaned, deveined, shrimp. I then cooked the potatoes in the same stock, by which time the liquid was reduced almost to a syrup. I added some further white wine to pick up some tasty looking residue in the pan, and then reserved. I tossed the baby greens with lemon, olive oil, and salt, tried to arrange into a decorous pile with some avocada and parmesan cheese, and then dressed further with the shrimp stock sauce. Delicious.

I recently saw this recipe on Lidia Bastianich's television program, which on occasion is very instructive.  Apparently, this pizza like pie is a speciality of Gaeta, a town in between Rome and Italy and can contain either escarole (or kale, as here) or octopus (or other things, but these are the main variations).  The dough is just normal bread dough with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (in other words, water, flour, olive oil, and yeast, kneaded until smooth).  For the filling, I boiled kale for ten minutes, then slowly cooked it in olive oil with chopped olives and garlic until tender.  The pan is brushed with olive oil before the bottom layer is stretched out, and then a top layer is added before decorating.  Cook at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, and don't forget to add slits to let the steam escape.  I found the individual slices best eaten by hand. 

Grass fed beef with marinated squash

This was dinner last Saturday, along with a beet and orange salad. Of course, there's nothing to the beef at all. I simply salted and peppered heavily, and then seared for a couple of minutes on each side before allowing to rest. The marinated squash is more interesting. I fried the peeled, sliced, squash until browned in olive oil. At the same time, I brought a bit of cider vinegar and French chestnut honey to a boil, poured it all over the squash in a shallow crock, and allowed to marinate for about four hours before serving at room temperature. The flavor is of delicate squash with a bit of sour, but the touch of powerful chestnut honey gives it an interesting sweet edge.

Photos from Maine - A Friar's Bakehouse Loaf

Photos from Maine

Some food notes on my trip to Maine

Gendron's - a small gas station that also has terrific soft shell lobster. As one native Mainer told me, "they're so sweet, like candy".

Gosselin's Bakery - Excellent donuts, fresh in the morning. The perfect way to start off election day.

The Friar's Bakehouse - Ten years ago now, I bought a book called Country Bread in a bookstore in Scotland. It mentioned a small bakery in Maine run by friars that made real, honest, bread. Unbelievably, I ran directly into it in Bangor, and, remembering my much leafed through book, rushed in like a kid on Christmas. The bread, which we'll mostly devour on Saturday morning for breakfast, is rustic and excellent.

Bagel Central - much ballyhooed online, but the poppy bagel I had was super-stale.

Simpson's Oceanfresh Seafood - Another small seafood purveyor like Gendron's. Two 1 pound lobsters, cooked, cost me $10. I ate them furtively on the side of Route 1, the meandering road along the Maine Coast that eventually cuts back towards Portland.

Gay Marriage

Just to be entirely clear, though I thought the California Supreme Court's opinion legalizing gay marriage was an outrage from a legal standpoint, I would certainly have voted against proposition 8.  Some theoretical displeasure with how gay marriage appeared on the scene would not have justified taking away people's rights.

I guess the best result for me would have been a constitutional amendment at once overturning the California court's opinion and establishing gay marriage, but obviously, that wasn't on the table. 

Some more sober thoughts on this day

Of course, many of us who voted for John McCain are disappointed this morning. I certainly don't welcome Barack Obama's election, and will need a couple of days to salve my wounds. But my emotions and thoughts are more complicated than just a visceral revulsion at the prospect of a jubilant Hollywood, and hopefully I can describe them a little here, for my future reference if for nothing else.

For one thing, I cannot see how anyone could be unmoved by the scenes of African-American jubilation and pride we saw last night. I hope we can start the process of burying our racial wounds, and if that is the legacy of Obama, his election will have been worth it.

And on January 20, when he takes the oath of office, he will become for me the legitimate successor and heir to Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and all the rest. I see him as the physical manifestation of our people, our history, and our laws, and my loyalty to his office will be as fierce as my opposition to his likely policies. Congratulations to Obama and his supporters. I hope you'll understand that I can't join in your celebrations, and yet I wish Obama well (though well means different things than what you mean)

I hope that those who insisted that courts should undemocratically decide gay marriage are happy now. They wrought this.

I have been up in Maine trying to help McCain take at least one electoral vote in this state. While that effort failed, I have been tremendously impressed by the friendliness of this state, and especially of the Democratic legal observers I ran into while doing my rounds. Part of it was genuine bemusement at running into someone from my law firm, which they appear to view as a collection of bizarre aliens doing things better left undone in a city they'd rather not visit. But I also left the day clutching literally a dozen cards and far more lobster recommendations. I swear to you that I am not joking when I say that Gendron's Seafood sells Maine lobsters for $3.49 a pound. I was also left with the impression of what legal practice must once have been in New York, and also a deep sense of despair that the towns I visited, which once housed the American shoe industry and provided the lawyers I met with solid, lifelong clients, are now empty of mills and factories.

I found Bates College to be quite beautiful, in a New England kind of way.

I am getting in a car soon to drive back to Portland, and then get on a plane to New York. More contemplation to follow.

Well, ugh. More balanced thoughts later.

Ironman

Just by the by, my little sister (a Ph.D student at the university of Chicago, and little both by age and her five foot frame) is, at this moment, almost finished with the Florida Ironman.  As I've said to her repeatedly, even one part of the race (a crazy combination of a 2.4 mile ocean swim, 112 mile bike ride, and a marathon at the end) would leave me floored. 

Go Steph go!

(Also, my family competitive much?  My dad called me recently to complain about an A- he got in the MA program he started after retirement). 

UPDATE: She finished very well in 12 hours and 19 minutes, in 6th place in her age/sex division and 1153rd overall (including all men, women, professionals, etc), out of 2270.  

Out of character

Somewhat out of character for me, I found myself at a Black Crowes concert last night with my fiancee.   We left early because I started coughing because of all the ambient smoke (you figure out what was causing the smoke), but the funny thing is that since I was completely hyped for a late meal of Korean barbecue at madangsui, I ended up ordered a beef taco back in Astoria when we discovered that madangsui had closed while we were debating whether to leave.  Psychology, I guess. 

Things I'd be cooking right now if I could muster up the energy

- Cold beet soup with sour cream (from the new chanterelle cookbook) 

- savoury cannoli filled with lobster salad (ditto) 

- Aran's amazing looking pistachio and chocolate cake (someone should induce Aran to work for them immediately.  As far as I can tell, just the things on her site are an upgrade to most dessert menus I've seen in even the best restaurants). 

- boned chicken filled with three meats and egg (Batali, I think)

- Wholewheat pasta with duck livers and onions

- a roast of prime rib in the french style

- "pickled" butternut squash (fried slices of squash marinated in cider vinegar and sugar) 

- beef bourgignon. 

- pain au levain 

Mr. Jefferson's Conveyance

One of the things I enjoy about law, especially about the more escoteric non-corporate law world, is the opportunity to spend a little time chasing down trivia. Just such an opportunity seemed to arise as I was reading the transcript of oral argument in Arizona v. Gant, a case before the Supreme Court this term. Complaining that the parties had spent little time on the historical background of searches incident to arrest, the matter at issue in the case, Justice Scalia asked:

“What was the situation when the Fourth Amendment was adopted? Do you know? If you stopped Thomas Jefferson’s carriage to arrest Thomas Jefferson and you pulled him off to the side of the road, could you -- could you then go and search his carriage?”

I might spend a little time on what I think about the case later. But I was more immediately interested in Justice Scalia’s question, and spent some time flipping through a couple of online resources I’ve always found helpful. The most enlightening thus far has been Old Bailey Online, a database consisting of 197,745 criminal trials held in London’s central criminal court. While that database has necessarily given me no clues as to American practice, I do have a couple of thoughts about English practice (on which American practice is largely based, in one way or another).

First, it seems pretty clear that, just as in current US practice, the English police in the 18th and 19th centuries felt pretty comfortable searching the vehicles of people they arrested when they felt that there was evidence of a crime in the vehicle. Though of course they didn’t think about it this way back then, and certainly no in England, the modern US explanation of this phenomenon is that since people have somewhat reduced expectations of privacy in their cars, the police can search a car without a warrant if they have probable cause that there’s evidence of a crime inside. So, for example, when a robber ran off with a saddle, bridge, and martingale, the police found him and searched his chaise for evidence. Similarly, a baker’s assistant was arrested and his cart (though it is unclear whether this was a handheld wagon or a cart with a horse) was searched for missing flour.

The more interesting question is whether there’s any evidence of the police searching a cart or a carriage when the police didn’t, prior to searching, have any reason to believe that there was evidence of a crime inside. I’ve only found one example of what I think is such a situation. In March 1795, a twenty year old man named Robert Charles was found guilty (and transported, presumably to Australia, for seven years) for stealing “two live cock fowls, eight live hen fowls and an iron hand saw” from a “victualler” named George Toomer. As Charles was leaving the scene of the crime in a cart, a watchman named John Humhpry saw him, and “perceived [that Charles] was the same person that put me in bodily fear, about three weeks before”. The watchman followed Charles around, and being reinforced by some colleagues, made the arrest, apparently without knowledge of the thievery of the fowls and saw. But he searched the cart anyway, and found the items that had been stolen from the unfortunate Toomer, for which Charles was eventually convicted. There’s no mention or discussion of whether the policeman had done anything wrong, but, of course, there’s no real mention of legal argument either.

Obviously, none of this is dispositive, and doesn’t even really answer Justice Scalia’s question. I think part of the problem, though, is that the fact pattern is so abberational - how often did the authorities arrest someone in a conveyance in the 18th century without a warrant and without some idea that there might be evidence in their conveyance? I’d bet that the incidence of that can probably be counted on one hand in any particular jurisdiction. I’ve consulted a number of classic treatises on criminal law as well, and none so much as mention what is to be done incident to arrest, and certainly not incident to an arrest in a conveyance. So this may be one of those historically unanswerable questions. But it remains fun to try.

Ethnic Food

I've been posting increasingly on Sietsema's Table, the web discussion board led by Tom Sietsema, the Washington Post food critic. The current topic is whether the presence of people from the ethnicity of the food in the restaurant means anything. Here were my preliminary thoughts:

I think this is all really a disagreement about what "best" means.

If best means "most authentic", then clearly a higher percentage of native diners is a good proxy for quality. Native diners may not be great judges of food, but they know whether what they're eating tastes like what their grandmother made.

If best has a broader meaning that includes quality of ingredients, innovation, inventiveness, etc, then I think native diners don't help you much. I'm of middle eastern descent, and I can guarantee you that if you give my relatives lamb kebabs dusted with zataar, say, they'd leave that restaurant and go to the place that keeps the zataar for breakfast. But I like zataar on lamb - it's an interesting flavor, albeit one we don't traditionally use. So a restaurant that has zataar dusted lamb may well be very good, but also have not a single olive skinned family sitting inside.

I think the interesting point is that the same person can want both these things on different occasions. Sometimes I want to learn about what people in such and so country eat, so I find myself nibbling on cold, spicy, pork ears in some authentic chinese restaurant. Sometimes I want to see what a really talented person is doing with new traditionalist farming and traditional ideas, so I go to the zataar kebab place. They're both good, but at different things.

I guess the real answer is that if a restaurant claims to be a traditional ethnic restaurant AND there aren't any natives sitting inside, I'd give it a miss.

The democratic pledge of allegiance

I think it is time to recycle the pledge that I recite to myself, in one form or another, around every election. It is the basis of my political posture, and as I say below, I am glad that Obama appears to have a similar inclination. If everyone truly believed the below, I think we'd have more fun debating politics, because people wouldn't assume their adversary was bad, or stupid, or evil, but rather simply disagreed, with good faith and full information, vehemently.

My political opponents are smart, thoughtful, well informed people who are disagreeing with me in good faith, and want the best for America. They are equal partners in our democratic experiment.

* Is this mantra sometimes untrue? Sure. Should the socialists in Weimar have recited to themselves, as the National Socialists advanced? No. But we are not Weimar. Our political system is built on two centuries of representative democracy, and I believe that all serious players in the system are covered by the above.

Why I am (still) voting for John McCain

Why I am (still) voting for John McCain

This is a deeply odd year in American politics. The economy is in the single strangest funk in anyone's living memory, the depth of which is basically unknown and unknowable. The incumbent is more dead than lame, and in any case he has ceded his powers over everything but foreign policy to a sort of council of technocrats (long may they live, I guess). Two counter-insurgency wars rage. And over all of this hangs the dark spectre of terrorism.

But none of this is as odd as the spectacle of me being tempted to vote for the Democratic candidate for president. I can make no secret of the fact that, like almost everyone else on my side of the aisle, on everything other than the war on terror, and to some great extent even on that, George W. Bush has been a disappointment. A deep disappointment. His legacy does not inspire confidence in the Republican party's chosen successor. And at the same time, the Democratic challenger is a breath of bracing air who has swept up in the intoxicating winds of his personal charisma a great many right thinking conservatives and libertarians. The great Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan's solicitor general, is only the latest, but what matters more to me are staunch friends whose judgment I trust implictily. It is not a good time to be a Republican, and especially to be a constituent of the Republican party's wavering libertarianish wing.

Despite all this, I have decided that I cannot vote for Barack Obama. In the face of all the countervailing forces I have listed above, in the face of George W. Bush's failures, his abandonment of conservative values, and in the face of the strong attraction of Obama, who, after all, is precisely my kind of guy, a lawyer, a Harvard lawyer, a calm unangry presence, a man who comes like me from overseas, and who appears to understand the life changing power of America to set free the talents of a larger portion of its people than anywhere else, I still judge John McCain to be the better choice for President.

Why? I admit that it is mostly a negative case against Obama, but still persuasive to me.

1. On what I believe to be the transcendant issue of the century, on what to do about international terrorism, John McCain is more likely to bravely take the unpopular but necessary path. He has stood against his own party on torture, and on the conduct of the war in Iraq. He is no stranger to being disliked, and I judge that the President will need to be disliked in the next eight years, especially by foreigners.

- But, despite Obama's strong dovish tendencies, will his advisors and world events push him to the middle? If so, I am less apprehensive about him, but should we risk it?

2. Obama is obviously a brilliant and thoughtful man, but if his brilliance and thoughtfulness add up to efficacy, he will be effectively pursuing an agenda with which I disagree. I do not agree with his health care proposals, his tax agenda, his protectionist inclinations on trade, his support for farm subsidies, his apparently overwhelming desire to regulate ourselves out of our economic troubles. I don't agree with his pro-union positions, on his positions on education or on energy. I don't agree with Barack Obama on almost anything. That he might be good at governing with that agenda does not make me feel better.

- But, he's advised by Volker and Buffett! How bad could he be? See number 5 below.

- But, how do my views match up with McCain? Not so well, but a little better.

3. I don't believe that Obama's brilliance and thoughtfulness will add up to efficacy. I agree basically that we need competence in the next administration, but I am not convinced that Obama is particularly good at running anything other than a presidential campaign. In fact, my innate skepticism of lawyers running things suggests that he will be bad at leadership, whatever his prodigous gifts of charisma.

- But, McCain hasn't run anything either. No, I don't really buy the "largest squadron in the navy" claim as being relevant to the Presidency.

4. On issues on which I should agree with the Democrats, Obama has been cowardly. The best example is gay marriage, which I think that the Democrats at least should support explicitly, with the caveat that it be adopted by states democratically. Obama, for what seem to me to be obviously political reasons, has adopted a cheap cop-out - full legal rights of marriage without the name. As Obama obviously recognizes (see this video), this formulation would have been unjust had it been tried with mixed-race couples, such as his own parents, and it is unjust now. I take his point that perhaps the name of marriage is a lower level priority than the legal benefits of the institution, but it is a real count against him that he hasn't spoken out on this matter. Ditto for drug legalization - although I am a conservative, nothing seems particularly conservative about the state imprisoning millions of people because they like ingesting bad substances. As I always say in these cases, I've not even smoked a cigarette, but if people want to smoke huge bundles of marijuana, why should I care?

5. I do not believe that Obama will heed his centrist advisors. We have been told again and again not to fear Obama's leftist tendencies (did he really say he would renegotiate NAFTA? Yes) because he is advised by such centrist luminaries as Warren Buffet and Paul Volker. But I tend to agree with Richard Epstein. Obama's record does not suggest to me a careful centrist, but rather a very thoughtful, inclusive, respectful, leftist. It is very good that Obama can disagree vehemently while respecting his opponent. But this does not help me particularly with my policy objections.

6. I will not abandon a team I've been playing for since I wrote desperate op-eds in my high school paper for Bob Dole just because it is going to lose. They'll need me, and the kinds of people people like me support, in the years of wilderness.

7. Joe Biden is a windbag.

- But, Sarah Palin. Enough said.

Obika

I finally had a chance to have lunch at the new mozzarella bar, Obika, yesterday. The good news first. My cheese was marvelous, the thin skin like exterior giving way to a ball of mild but flavorful cream within. The accompanying Italian meats were equally good. While my speck and proscuitto were excellent, I was especially taken by the mortadella. It's almost worth dragging everyone who thinks mortadella is supermarket baloney with pistachios stuck in to Obika to change that impression alone.

Alas, the service is terrible, fumbling and slow. There's no reason at all for this to be a bar the way a sushi bar is a bar. After all, there's no real action, and you can't talk to the chef or buy him Japanese beers. The don't have wine, bizarrely. I had to drink a good, but expensive, grape-fruit juice. Bread costs extra, unless you berate the waiter, at which point he might deign to put a couple of slices on a plate and bring it over. And, most annoying to me but a little petty, the servers spend all their time loudly slamming the little door that leads into the interior of the bar. It's especially annoying because they obviously know its an issue. The manager type person prowling around in a suit took almost ridiculous pains to close the door slowly, but his employees were paying no attention.

Nonetheless, this was delicious food. I'd return.

UPDATE: I found Paul Goyette's post on this restaurant, but in Italy. 

Craftmanship

I've long had a thing for craftsmen, and have mentioned it on this blog. Tailors, shirtmakers, shoemakers, weavers, cabinet makers - it is a sad thing that many of these honorable, ancient, professions are slowly fading from the world under pressure from industrial process.

In any case, this is all by way of saying that I had my first visit with a proper suit maker this morning. I realize that some might think it is all a bit of a waste, to pay so much money for a suit. Why, when you can get some suit with a big name label for less from Saks, and impress people when you let the label poke out from inside at some fancy meeting?*

Even putting aside the fact that the bespoke suit will fit properly, and the suit off the rack won't, I'm spending my money with the craftsman rather than the big store because, fundamentally, I'm a conservative person. I want to know that in a couple of weeks, the particular man that I met this morning is going to stand over a bolt of cloth that I chose, and he's going to think about my slightly sloping shoulders, and the fact that I'd like the suit for my wedding, and what I told him about how I'd like it to fit. And thinking about me, he's going to pick up a pair of shears and cut my suit out of that fabric, and then hand one part of it to a coat maker, and another part to a trouser maker. In doing all that, they're going to be replicating what they were taught during their own long years of apprenticeship, and what their teachers were taught before them by other masters. In turn, this fellow will teach someone to follow him, and proper tailoring will be conserved, and novelties ignored until they are no longer novelties but well-tested traditions themselves. Just as I might buy traditional farm raised pork because I value the existence of people who bother to traditionally raise pork, so I'll buy a traditional bespoke suit because I value the existence of people who take the trouble to make traditional bespoke suits. All the issues I care about with respect to food are part of the choices I've decided to make about my clothes, when possible.

And, of course, buying clothes from an actual living person is a lot of fun. As my tailor said today, describing the solid, dependable heavy English cloth I chose, "it's a safe as a house, this. Well, safe as houses used to be, leastways." I don't think you'll get that kind of color from the industrial made to measure at your local men's emporium, and you won't even save much money, to boot.

UPDATE: Why not do neither, and save all your money with a normal suit? That's fine, of course - formal clothes are just the indulgence I chose, rather than a big TV or a car, say, and if I am going to indulge, I feel strongly about indulging in a proper way.

Higher percentage?

One of the big New York city specific issues in the newspapers is Mayor Bloomberg's bid to get re-elected to a third term as New York mayor. Putting aside what I think, I wonder if people have considered a sort of modified term limit structure, allowing candidates to continue running but against higher thresholds? For example, why shouldn't Bloomberg have to get 55% of the vote this time to stay in office? That way, really popular incumbents can stay in power in tough times, but only by virtue of a very difficult to secure super majority.

EDIT: I found a letter to the editor on point.

One way tax calculator

I notice that the Obama-Biden tax calculator that Althouse links never actually says "your taxes are likely go up under the Obama-Biden plan", but only gives information if you're getting a tax cut. Not, to be clear, that I believe anyone's going to get a tax cut under either Obama or McCain in the final analysis, not in the midst of our dreadful fiscal condition, but I did find it amusing.

Chanterelle cookbook

I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon flipping through the newly released Chanterelle cookbook (I have never dined at Chanterelle, but am told it is very good). The book is exceptionally well conceived, especially from the perspective of a home cook planning a fancy dinner party, and the recipes provided are both accessible and seem delicious. This is nothing like the Alinea cookbook, which both makes it a more useful resource, and also, paradoxically, a less compelling buy.

What if firefighters ran the world?

Am I alone in thinking that this commercial, entitled "What if firefighters ran the world?" is disturbingly totalitarian?

Weekend eating (pumpkin risotto, greek style kebabs)

I roasted one of the two halloween pumpkins we brought back from lake George last weekend, and make a simple risotto of pumpkin and greek yogurt (so much better than the fat laden risotto we had at the Sagamore). I also boiled and roasted the seeds, coating some in ras al hanout and salt for snacking, and using others in a low fat pumpkin bread with some more of the pumpkin puree.

On Saturday, I continued working on my version of a greek classic - ground lamb kebabs with yogurt sauce, as we always enjoy at the excellent Agnanti. My experiments have led to the following recipe - add one measure of lamb to a third measure of fresh bread crumbs, and season heavily. Add one egg, and form into football shapes. Broil under the highest heat possible until well charred (a barbecue is better). While broiling, fill the center of a plate with greek yogurt, and top with any kind of spicy tomato sauce (even salsa, believe it or not, works fine). Line the kebabs in a pinwheel around the yogurt, dust the plate with a hot pepper (I use a ground pepper mix my mom has friends send us from Syria), and serve with pita. The result is a very light meatball, with good accompanying flavors that make even those a little wary of lamb dig right in. With less ambitious meals like this one, we have been drinking pinotage, which satisfies both some of my burgundy craving while being cheap and undemanding.

* Grind your own lamb, or have the butcher do it for you. It's so much better.

** I suppose its helpful to note that my previous attempts involved soaking the bread crumbs in milk (the kebabs become too light and hard to handle), using pita bread (no real difference) and using a higher percentage of breadcrumbs (too light). This really is not a complicated recipe, and I was trying to do too much.

Food dilemmas

Is it better to have ordered the insipid black bass and root vegetables everyone else ordered, or was I right to order the amazing langoustine pasta, even though I cannot even imagine how much flavor sat mocking me in the plate as I realized that grinding the shells in my mouth and sucking the roe from what was left over might give the potential summer associate I was interviewing the wrong idea?

Eh, I still think I did the right thing.

Every man a king

The problem with various people's anger about Obama's "spread the wealth" theory is that our putatively right wing government has spent the last month betraying capitalism. I find myself a lot more sanguine about Obama's leftism when we've got worse already.

Amish pork and apples

I also cooked while up in Lake George. Given that apples and apple ciders were everywhere, I made a dish I remember from an excellent amish cookbook - pork chops with apples and cider. The technique is easy enough, befitting its amish roots. All you need to do is cook the pork chops in a pan with a little oil until well browned, remove from the pan, remove and drain, and then cook cored, thick, apple slices in the same pan until about as brown as the pork. You deglaze with apple cider, add the pork back into the pan, and cook for about 20 minutes until the cider has reduced to a sauce and the pork is ready. You can always thicken the cider with cream, but I think that makes it swing a little too far towards dessert.

Lake George - The Sagamore

We visited the charming resort town of Lake George over the long weekend. It's a favorite of my fiancee - a sort of old-timey vacation spot in a beautiful setting. On Saturday night, we stopped by the one fancy hotel in the area for a drink, and let ourselves get talked into the Risotto of Braised Veal Cheeks and Mascarpone. The dish hit the spot with our wine (I was quite taken with the Willamette Pinot Noir I was drinking), but only in an appetizer portion, and only shared. The idea of eating an entire portion of something so over-the-top fatty as that risotto would make me ill.

* They also messed up my bill, and I missed it when paying. That will have to be fixed.

Matsugen

We had a delightful meal at Matsugen in Tribeca last night, which is owned in part by Jean-Georges Vongrerichten, but run in fact by others.

Complaints first - overmuch staffing, little coordinated. We were left menu-less for 10 minutes. A little expensive, if you venture outside the soba. A slightly "too cool for you" feel.

But none of that distracts too much from the food, which for us included some freshly made tofu (like night and day, in terms of texture, when compared to store-bought stuff) topped with a soy and dashi sauce, and soba soup with fried tofu and scallions. The broth was both sweet and complex, and the noodles we had (the flour for which is ground in the back) have a satisfying bite and flavor. Altogether delicious - I could have eaten at least another bowl.

Alinea Cookbook

This is a tale of shattered expectations. Well, perhaps not that dramatic, but shattered somethings, at least.

I got the Alinea cookbook at the end of September, and spent the next few days leafing through it with anticipation. It is full of fascinating looking food products. Caramel mixed with some chemical in order to look like rubble. Kumquat jelly. Parrafin wax bowls filled with cold potato veloute and topped with skewers of potato somethings. The problem is that most of the cookbook requires ingredients so exotic that I wouldn't know where to get them, much less how to use them. Not exotic as in truffle, just to be clear, but exotic like Ultra-Tex 3.

After much leafing, I finally found a recipe that seemed achievable. Poached pork tenderloin served with fennel, sage pudding, corn bread puree, grapefruit, honey, and sous vide pork shoulder shredded into strands as if for pulled pork, and then fried in a disk shape until "puffed" (all this as a garnish). The only exotic ingredient was agar agar, which I both have and happen to know how to use.

I embarked on the recipe with the most enigmatic ingredient first, the sage pudding. I boiled water, sugar and salt with sage leaves, and let the mixture steep for 20 minutes, yielding a pale green infusion. I strained the mixture through a chinois, and then brought it to a boil for exactly a minute and a half with 10 g of agar agar. The now weirdly gummy mixture went through a chinois again to strain out any unmelted agar agar, and then sat to cool until solid. Once that happened, I ran the mixture through my food processor on "blend" until I had exactly the smooth pudding I was supposed to get.

At which point I tasted my much slaved over concoction.


I leave open entirely the possibility that I did this all wrong. That my mixture of sugar and salt was off, or that I put too much sage or something. But to my palate, the verdict on this pudding was unmistakeable. There was just no reason that I would choose to eat this thing on my own. None. It was oddly sweet, and salty in all the wrong places. The sage was overwhelming. The mouth-feel a gloppy, thin, slime, like what I imagine astronaut food to be like. I couldn't imagine how it could complement pork.

But putting all that aside, I soldiered on with the corn bread puree. I made the extremely fatty corn bread required by the cookbook (honestly, the best corn bread, for me, has very little sugar and fat, but this was corn cake), and then enriched it further with even more cream and butter as I was processing it into a puree. The result wasn't as disappointing as the sage pudding, which was wretched, but still wasn't something that I thought accomplished anything more than some plain corn bread with honied butter would have.

By this point, I was tired. And not enthused about eating the meal, so I gave up and we went out for some pizza instead. Over pizza, I sat thinking about the larger implications of my failure.

Of course, I'm going to keep working away at the Alinea cookbook when I have the time. It's a gorgeous volume, filled with intriguing things. The larger question, however, is about the entire Alinea project. As I've said before, we're living in a moment now of almost unprecedented advances in local, organic, free-range, traditional farming (add whatever adjectives you will). Micro-farms are turning out the best food we've had in America since before people invented chemicals. Restaurants that feast on that amazing diversity of production are not only flourishing, but multiplying. But at the same time, the most talked about restaurants in the world are restaurants like Alinea, and El Bulli, restaurants at which the quality of the natural ingredients appears to be almost of no consequence, and the benefits of local, organic, free-range, traditional farming entirely undercut by the intentional adulteration of perfectly good food with a chemistry lab worth of industrially produced molecules with nature defying properties. The closest analague to the food these restaurants serve isn't Per Se, but the Taco Bell in the futuristic filmDemolition Man.

It is no good to say in response that salt is a chemical too, like some defenders of this new "cookery" do. It is a chemical, true, and it has seemingly miraculous properties. But you can go to the sea and get salt, by getting some water and letting it evaporate. It is a fruit of the earth. Ultra-Tex 3 is the fruit of the lab. It is exactly the sort of thing that people who love food have been trying to banish for the past two decades, and yet here it is, in beloved restaurants.

I fear, honestly, that our food is going to look more and more like ultra-tex than like the farm, and the best farmed products become more expensive, and chemicals are even better understood by chefs. In that context, I'm going to keep grappling with this new food to see if I can discover some sympathy for it. Obviously, a part of it will be to eat some of this stuff made by people who love cooking this way. But at this point, I feel like the new gastronomy is a frankenstein-ian step backwards along a path we'd been hiking positively for more than two decades, and I wish it would go away.

Beet Salad

I had a marvelous beet salad at Insieme today, an understated Italian restaurant with a big reputation among food people in New York. The combination of yellow beets with oranges and salted, baked, hazelnuts was perfect, well matched with the slices of ricota salata on top. I will have to pair this with some pork, maybe, this weekend.

Alinea

The new Alinea cookbook was waiting for me at work today. I'm normally not one for these big coffee table cookbooks (more food po$n than food thought), but Alinea is so interesting that I felt I had to have it. Plus, at $31.50 from Amazon, it's a good deal for so many great photographs.

I've started to flip through it now. The first thing that struck me was Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, talking about El Bulli, in Spain (where Achatz spent a three day stage, or internship):

"It was almost as if I was on a different planet. There's nobody butchering meat, there's no veal stock simmering, there are no saute pans."

And this was a good thing?

Best grass-fed beef ever

We had the best grass-fed beef I've had in this country last night - an organic, grass fed filet from Citarella. So let's go over the caveats. Yes, it's from very far away. And yes, it's tenderloin, which I usually dislike. Oh, and it's expensive ($29.98 a pound).

But grass feeding and finishing lends the usually insipid tenderloin some new flavors, while the tenderloin gives you the latitude to cook the steak extremely rare, which helps the tenderloin. As for expensive, you only really need 12 ounces for two people - that is, about $20 bucks. Sure, that's a lot of money for a steak. But any entree in any restaurant we'd go to is more. So I poured the extra money into some excellent 2005 bordeaux instead.

* A quick note on cooking technique for steaks. I don't have any secrets. Just get a properly conductive pan really screaming hot with a little oil, open the windows and the fans, and let 'er rip. Turn the meat rarely, and let a proper crust develop. And make sure to let the meat rest when it comes out of the pan - the difference in the internal color (grey and flabby, without resting, and a consistent pink, with resting) and flavor is worth the five minutes of extra time.

Pimenton Redux

Pimenton with Halibut (or rather, halibut with pimenton, though the mistake is meaningful) turns out to be incredibly delicious. Not only does the deep red, smoky, spice give the fish an unexpected flavor, but the visuals of a pimenton laced halibut steak are terrific. We had the halibut, which I cooked on my griddle (if a plancha is good enough for restaurants, its good enough for me) with my usual fishy potato salad - boiled potatoes, mustard vinaigrette, sliced green onions, and parsley.

Pimenton

I don't always agree with Mark Bittman's recommendations (I am a little bothered by his "I don't care if something is done this way or that so long as it tastes good" approach), but I have to say that I did not know about pimenton (aka, smoked paprika) before his various recommendations. What a cool flavor. I think I'll try it on halibut tonight, and report back.

Odd scandal in DC

No, not a political scandal, though there are some of those about. Eric Ripert, the mastermind behind Le Bernardin, has been sponsoring a new restaurant in Washington DC. As Grub Street and the WaPo report, the chefs at the DC restaurant have been booted for behavior problems. Putting aside the question of what could possibly be enough of a behavior problem to cause a firing in the restaurant industry (in which, I hear, behavior problems are kind of par for the course), I noticed this follow up on Tom Sietsema's (the WaPo restaurant reviewer) chat:

Washington, D.C.: Tom,
Before your chat begins, I just wanted to say that Leo, Ricky and I worked incredibly hard this past year to turn the Westend Bistro into a major success. We cared deeply about the restaurant and strove for perfect food under difficult circumstances. In the end, The Ritz had other ideas about food and what it took to run a great restaurant. Eric Ripert's name was on the sign but the Ritz always called the shots _ for better or worse. So we parted ways. All three of us. I think it was best for everyone.
Robert Berry Former executive sous chef, Westend Bistro by Eric Ripert.
Tom Sietsema: Thanks for taking the time to write, Robert. I'll be interested to know where everyone ends up.
Interesting, interesting.
_______________________

Delicatessen

What kind of people go to restaurants like Delicatessen, which Frank Bruni gave zero stars today? I'd wonder why he was reviewing it, except that restaurant reviewers have an obligation to review popular places, but deep fried "rueben" fritters? Cheeseburger spring rolls? Fried chicken in a metal pail? It sounds like deli food interpreted by a drunken Scotsman recently laid off from a failing chippy.

Geniuses

Amazingly, every single one of our esteemed Senators, according to their comments at the committee meetings on the bailout plans, foresaw all these problems, and each was individually ignored by all the others. We're so lucky to have such geniuses in power.

Weekend Meal

I finally had a chance to cook on Sunday, after a week of late night meals in the office (disgusting, all of them).

For lunch, I mixed lots of ras al hanout with greek yogurt and slathered it all over chicken thighs, and then let loose my broiler on them. Voila. Pseudo-tandoori - a bright yellow, spicy, delicious kebab.

Dinner was a little more ambitious. I braised beef short ribs in a covered dish for six hours with wine (an oddly fruity American merlot, more on which later), mushrooms, celeriac*, and pearl onions. The meat, as it should, eventually melted into the sauce. Delicious.

My fiancee bought me Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques DVD's this weekend (which I'd been collecting by tivo'ing the shows on PBS). To celebrate, I made a creme caramel, finally getting the caramel right (I usually burn it) by following Jacques's advice. A note to self - creme caramel really needs vanilla, otherwise it ends up tasty like sugary egg. Aside from that mild setback, all was delicious.

Anathem

I finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem over the weekend. I liked it, though the best review of it I've read is a negative one, from Michael Dirda of the Washington Post. The story captures the imagination. The philosophy that litters hundreds of its pages is a comforting layer of intellectualism if you just want a story that sounds smart, and yet lets you dig in and think if you'd rather.

One thing that occurs to me, though - the avout are so smart (and, I guess, Stephenson wants everyone to realize that he is so smart) that their brains verge on acting on the story as a deus ex machina. Maybe not quite, but it is rather like the complaint that some have about the Eagles in Tolkien.

The confusing reality

I've been thinking recently about what one can possibly eat in a typical restaurant that doesn't fall afoul of the newest conventional wisdom on food.

Beef: It's produced by feeding grass eaters corn. So, no.

Chicken: Most chickens are raised in horrific batteries and doused constantly in antibiotics.

Pork: Pigs raised in small pens, rife with disease, and tasteless anyway.

Milk: From those corn cows, and also rife with chemicals.

Shrimp: Raised in cesspools of chemicals in China.

Tuna, both fresh and canned: Mercury, mercury, mercury.

Cod: Your next fish stick might be the last cod there is.

Vegetables: Not local, so massive environmental damage, and also doused in chemicals, and also totally tasteless (see "not local").

Tofu: GMO.

So what are we supposed to eat? Short of using places like Blue Hill as a cafeteria, that is?

The silver lining

The upside of sleeping on a pillow made of your suit coat under your office desk: I've still got enough money on my subway card for tomorrow.

Take that, MTA!

Citizen

My mother (finally) became a US citizen yesterday.  In November, she'll vote in an election for the first time in her life (Syria is not especially big on contested elections).  As with most things in my family, her celebrations here revolved around food.  A little after the ceremony, her and my father found themselves nibbling through some ribs at Red, Hot and Blue.

Thinking back to when I became a citizen about ten years ago, I remember finding the entire process extremely moving, both the image of all people of all nationalities coming together in the conference room we'd been herded into united in their desire for citizenship, and the exercise of putting into words by way of the citizenship oath what it means to become an American.  I am so so lucky to have become a citizen that day, and I'm delighted my mom has joined our ranks.