Co.

I took a quick lunchtime trip to Company, Jim Lahey's (of Sullivan Street Bakery) pizza restaurant. I sat at the bar and had a sad little cup of water, as I am busy at work and could not afford to impair myself, and ordered the classic Margarita - tomatoes, basil, buffalo mozzarella.

The pizza is terrific, and like most people I liked the restaurant (Bruni, for example). Most important, the dough is fantastic. But if put to the question, I'd say that Motorino in Brooklyn is better, or at least I enjoyed the pizza more. What I can't tell is whether that's because Motorino has a more generous spirit (Co.'s pizzas are so small as to be a little off-putting) or because I prefered the puffier Williamsburg product, but that's my initial impression.

One pizza is not enough for lunch, although that is what I had. $14 with tax pushes the limits of acceptability.

The essential problem

This video bloggingheads discussion (between, I should note, a clear leftist and a center rightist) essentially sums up the distinction between Europe and the United States economically.

In short, in the position I am in now, I'd rather live in Europe and enjoy my leisure. But only in America would I have been given the opportunity to get where I am now.

I know that some parts of the left try to take issue with the second part of that equation by arguing that social mobility is better in Europe. I'm sure you can engineer some metric that shows what you want on social mobility. But whatever that metric shows is of little practical relevance to me. The question is simple - would a middle eastern immigrant of my skills rather compete to get into Harvard Law School or ENA, in France? Where would you rather open a jewelry store? Where would you rather be the first in your family to go to college? The answer is America, without doubt.

Yes, there is a group of people for whom France or Europe is always the answer. People in what I guess we can call the lower middle class, who have no ambition or ability or desire to do more. I'd rather be a middle manager in a French bureaucracy than a middle manager in an American corporation. But that doesn't a good society make.

Bruni leaves

The big news in the New York restaurant scene is that Frank Bruni, the current critic, is leaving soon.

Interestingly, the norm of anonymity has become so entrenched that most of the well established critics who could take his place are disqualified, because they are well known. It's almost like the Supreme Court nomination process - if a candidate is too notorious, they're passed over.

It will be interesting to see where this goes. Of course, I am available for the job. Heh.

Changing norms

It occurred to me yesterday as someone was raving in the subway that I was far more struck and offended when he used a slur for gays than when he used the f-word. I promise you that ten years ago, my reaction would have been completely differet.

This is a sort of pseudo-baguette I made the other day. I knew it wouldn't come out perfectly, because the dough was really too dry to give me a proper crumb, but it still tasted delicious.

This was made with some leftover (uncooked) dough from a pizza a week ago to add flavor, a mix of bread and all purpose flour (not a scientific mix at all), and lots of fermentation time. I did not knead.

Asparagus and Morels with Pommes Maxime

I realize that this doesn't look like much, but we enjoyed this last Saturday. It's an asparagus puree (asparagus with lemon and cream) with sauteed morels and pommes maxime.

Yogurt recipe

Part of the reason I've posted less recently is that I'm overwhelmed by the number of other food sites I read to keep up with the scene. One of my favorites is Tom Sietsema's "Table", since it's the closest I can get to a daily chat with a major food critic.

Anyway, I note that he recently mentioned my favorite comfort food, pasta with yogurt and garlic, on his discussion board. I, posting as my email address "imrit", had suggested it as a favorite solo meal.

Dinner last night

Dinner last night was a simple meal inspired by Jacques Pepin - poached salmon (poached in nothing more than water and lemon) with a sour cream and chive sauce.

Poaching truly is the simplest of all cooking - simply bring the water and slices of lemon to a boil, drop in the fish, and wait till it boils again. Keep at a simmer until it's cooked (there's no magic here - just pull apart the flesh and check if it's cooked).

The sauce is sour cream mixed with chopped chives. That's it.

Busy, busy

I've been busy with a number of projects recently, which has eaten up my blogging time. An example of one of these projects is illustrated by the following discussion with a mortgage broker (yes, yes, we're considering becoming home-owners):

Mortgage Broker: So, I have two options for you. $X payment per month, or $Y per months ($800 less than X).

Me: wow. Y sounds good. Why is it less?

MB: Oh, it's just broken out into two different loans, a jumbo, and another one.

Me: Neat. So what's this other one?

MB: It's just another loan. It lets me put together a package cheaper.

Me: Well, money doesn't magically cost less if you just package it in some other loan, right? How exactly does it work?

MB: Well, it's all pretty technical, but it's an interest only loan, basically.

Me: An interest only adjustable rate loan for a substantial sum, adjustable off the lowest rates in the history of man (almost?). Sounds stupid, no?

MB: No, no, it works fine.

Me: Let's see an amortization table.

Mb: (Reluctantly) ok.

Me: (15 minutes later). Soo. It turns out that this number next to "balance" keeps getting bigger on this supposedly innocuous second loan. Doesn't that sound like a massively bad plan to you?

MB: Well, it gets paid off eventually.

Me: {click}

Oprah and grilled chicken

I see that some people are complaining that Oprah's grilled chicken promotion (as I understand it, it involves getting free "Kentucky Grilled Chicken") is somehow hypcritical or wrong more generally because KFC feeds people industrially raised chickens.

Let's just get something totally clear here - whatever one thinks about eating KFC's chicken themselves, our agriculatural system will simply not work if, as the complainer says, KFC starts selling free range chickens (and by free range I mean actually free range, rather than industrial free range, whereby the chickens theoretically could go outside if only they knew how to get there through the small hole in their coop). Real free range chickens cost at least $12, and more like $20 a bird. As tasty and delicious as they are, as amazing the difference is between them and an industrial chicken, the existence of the industrially raised product is the only thing between us and a two tier world where the wealthy eat meat, and everyone else dreams about their once a week or month roast.

Maybe that's a good world, in a lot of ways. But it ain't going to fly today.

Beacon

We had a disappointing experience at Beacon yesterday, a normally very good American chophouse which both of us have enjoyed before. Yesterday, though, although the food was quite good (I had a well made tuna nicouse salad, with quail eggs and seared tuna), our service was very slow and badly paced. It really put us off.

Further, I am less happy about the value proposition the more I think about it. Beacon is doing 20% off everything on its menu, and yet main dishes are still more than $25. In fact, even my nicoise, just a plain old salad, was $23. That's a hefty toll when other very good restaurants indeed, with a little more ambition, are about the same price.

I think Beacon is a real value in its set meals, whether we're talking about the mammoth Sunday dinner for its prix fixe. I'm less sure now about just ordering a plate.

Pommes Maxime

I've been trying to figure out pommes maxime since my visit to per se in January. They're not that complicated, honestly - just thinly sliced, layered potatoes crisped perfectly. (here's a picture of pommes maximes made by per se). I loved them then, and I especially loved that they're a sneaky way of smuggling potato chips into haute cuisine.

I started by trying to bake the thin slices of potato just as is, but I quickly realized they needed to be weighted down to get the flat effect per se manages. So I baked the potatoes, after tossing in olive oil, with another sheet pan on top. That worked somewhat, but wasn't reproducing even close to the even browning I was hoping for. The oven is sort of the sledgehammer of cookery - not exactly the most delicate instrument, and what it yielded was unevenly cooked potatoes, blackened here, still soft there.

My latest attempt was over the fire. I sliced the potatoes thinly and layered them as usual, tossed them in oil, and added them to a non-stick pan. Then I covered them with a layer of oiled aluminium foil, and squashed them as hard as I could with a glass milk bottle, leaving them to cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes on each side.

They flattened and browned!

I drained them on towels, and then just before serving, gave them a last crisp in the pan. They got served in an asparagus puree with sauteed morels, and they were pretty darned good.

A picture will follow tomorrow.

Mayahuel - A Spanish speakeasy on E. 6th Street

These are some notes I just posted on e-gullet about Mayahuel, a terrific new bar opened on E. 6th Street by the former head bartender at Death & Co. 

-----------------------------

We visited Mayahuel last night. Didn't have too much trouble getting in - the fellow at the door led us to a small standing alcove near the umbrella depository first, but quickly got us over to the bar.

I'm probably the least knowledgeable person about cocktails in this thread, but I loved the drinks. The Italian Inquisition was fantastic - to be honest, it tasted a little like my favorite standard cocktail, the martinez. Laugh at me all you like. But I have to give my prize for the night to the Whoopsy Daisy, which is outrageously good, and the Division Bell(sp?), which I got when I asked the bartender for something with more pronounced mezcal. The DB reminds me of the Laphroiag based drinks I order sometimes at D&co - almost peaty. 

We were starving, so dug into a quesadilla - although small, it was darned tasty. A nice combination of spicy and sweet (it's topped with mango,I think, though by that time I was getting a little shaky). Makes me excited to consider a more full menu. 

So, one little complaint - if you could catch swine flu from air conditioning, I swear we would have caught it sitting at the bar right under the look through to the top floor. I think the seats at the bar nearest the door don't have this problem. 

8 shots?

If I'm reading this right, the Washington Post's food critic (Tom Sietsema) drinks eight shots of expresso a day. Yikes.

Sulking Salad

I was sulking about something or other this weekend when my fiancee suggested that we have a nice, light, salad and sit outside on my porch. A quick shopping trip and some half-hearted rooting around in my fridge yielded this salad - a sort of pseudo greek take on panzanella.

There's no reason whatever for there to be a recipe, since you can just put anything you want in such a salad, but for the record, I seared some Murray's chicken breasts dressed with smoked paprika, fried cubes of stale pain au levain and soaked them in a vinaigrette briefly, tossed some asparagus and zucchini in oil, and added some dodonis feta and giant kalamata olives from Astoria (the best feta we can get easily). Toss together and munch.

Pegu Club

Saturday night, we found ourselves in a bit of a yuppie conumdrum. We wanted nice cocktails. But it is flatly impossible to walk into our favorite cocktail bar/speakeasy, Death & Co., on Saturday night. So we went, for the first time, to Pegu Club, another in the 5 or 6 strong pantheon of bars that can plausibly claim the title of best cocktails in New York City.

(I think the consensus list of the top 4 is Pegu Club, Milk & Honey, Death, and Please Don't Tell. I haven't been to all of these).

Anyway, the vibe at Pegu Club is completely different than at Death & Co. Younger, I think. Less solely cocktail focused. The place is a lounge rather than a sort of pseudo speakeasy. But the drinks are indeed terrific and worthy of their comparison to the best cocktails I ever had. And, even better, Pegu Club is easier to get into, and in a better location than Death.

My martinez was delicious, but I have to say I was very impressed by the Pegu Club Cocktail, apparently revised from a 1930's drinks manual. It was extraordinarily potent, but tasty, balanced, and a pleasure to drink.

Money, money

I've been trying to figure out a place to park a fairly substantial sum of money that I can't risk but also don't like the sub-2% interest rates I'm getting on. By the by, I remembered Premium Bonds, a UK government bond I used to invest in when I was a college kid (invest in = put 20 pounds I had saved over the week into). I called National Savings & Investments, who administer the Premium Bonds program, and was told that Americans living in America were not really eligible. Why not? Because the US Post Office won't deliver mail sent about Premium Bonds due to US law.

A little puzzled, I emailed the Post Office about it, not really expecting an answer. Yet, this morning, here it is:

"Thank you for contacting us about investing in "premium bonds" run by the United Kingdom government.Lottery and raffle tickets are not permitted mailings within our Postal Service. This prohibition is based on a Federal law (Title 18, United States Code, Section 1302) passed by Congress and signed by the President of the United States. "Lottery or raffle is a scheme or promotion, whether lawful under the laws of any state, which, on paying a consideration, offers a prize dependent in whole or in part on lot or chance."We have no authority to grant exemptions to this law, and are specifically mandated by Congress to enforce it.If I can be of assistance to you in the future, please don't hesitate to contact me.Thank you for choosing the United States Postal Service®."

A bond run by a foreign sovereign in which the person investing can't lose any money is a violation of US gambling laws? Really? And what of free speech?

* UPDATE: A big thumbs up to USPS service, by the way. I'm very surprised they had something cogent to say.

UPDATE 2: The relevant case turns out to be Horner v. United States, 147 U.S. 449 (1893), in which a very similar bond issued by the imperial government of Austria was ruled to be a lottery within the statute's remit. As for what I think is one of the main reasons why a premium bond is not a lottery, the Supreme Court had this to say, citing an earlier case with yet another premium or bonus bond:


The court further remarked that it had been vigorously argued, that because the money ventured must all come back, with interest, so that there could be no final loss,
it could not be a lottery, and added: "At some uncertain period determined by the revolution of a wheel of fortune, the purchaser of a bond does get his money repaid; but we do not think this
deprives the thing of its evil tendency, or robs it of its lottery semblance and features. The inducement for investing in such bonds is offered of getting some `bonus,' large and small,
in the future, soon or late, according to the chances of the wheel's disclosures. The investment may run one year or it may run thirty years, according to the decision of the wheel. It
cannot be said this is not a species of gambling, and that it does not tend in any degree to promote a gambling spirit and a love of making gain through the chance of dice, cards, wheel or
other method of settling a contingency . . .

Home cooking

Ozersky's current twitter post:

"Last Meal: Corned beef sandwiches on onion rolls. Home cooking is boring."

My answer - yes, if you don't bother to cook.

Simple weekend dinner

I can hardly claim credit for most of this weekend's dinner, given that the chicken dish is a Colicchio recipe, but I still think I did a bang up job cooking.

For the chicken, simply brown the chicken, and reserve. Add mushrooms (it's supposed to be morels, but I didn't have them), asparagus, and some sort of oniony thing (again, it's supposed to be ramps, but I didn't have them either). Cook until soft, add the chicken back, and then add a couple of tablespoons of chicken stock at a time until you have a nice glaze.

The game is to add the chicken stock slowly, in part to keep the chicken skins nice and crisp.

I served this with a simple salad of thinly sliced cucumbers and watercress, dressed with a classic vinaigrette.

For dessert, I had two slabs of wedding cake/duncan hines doctored with sour cream sitting in my freezer. I sliced two rounds into thirds, and made some layers with cooked rhubarb. I added a few streudel crumbles and confectioner's sugar. Actually pretty darned tasty, though it could have done with a topping of greek yogurt for some extra tang.

Taverna Kyklades

I note that Frank Bruni raves about Astoria's Taverna Kyklades on his blog today. Given the other choices in the area (and most notably, Agnanti) I think he's just wrong.

Also, Kyklades smells, as I have mentioned on this blog before, and mention again in Bruni's comments.

Restaurants of the month

I thought it would be nice to list the restaurants I visited this month, as I work on my end of credit-card cycle budget process:

Christos Steakhouse - We just bought a steak to cook at home, but from that experience, think it's probably a solid restaurant.

Mojave - Sister restaurant to Agave in Manhattan, this is our stand-by place for a quick meal with a nice tequila.

Xai Xai Wine Bar - Neat wine. Too expensive.

Daniel - The weakest of the four great New York City French restaurants, but still a very great restaurant with high ambitions.

Sushi of Gari - Not as good as Yasuda if one is after purity, but Gari's amazing twists on traditional sushi are exceptional (and the plain old sushi is pretty good too).

Porter House New York - Do you want Per Se's view onto Central Park for a fraction of the price, and to get a fantastic burger to boot? Porter House at lunch is the answer.

Motorino New York - excellent artisanal pizza.

Sripraphai - The best thai restaurant in New York, though the menu is hit or miss.

Motorino Neapolitan Pizza

We were in Williamsburg, Brooklyn over the weekend to meet some friends at Duff's Bar, and we were hungry. Luckily, I realized we weren't too far from Motorino Neapolitan Pizza, one of the new breed of artisanal, Italian style pizzerias sweeping through the city.

Without waxing too lyrical, Motorino is excellent. A light, charred, crust, with a perfect chew. Good sauce, and excellent mozzarella (including di bufalo, if you'd like). If I had any complaint at all, it was that the pizza's dusting of pecorino was a little too strong, but that's not really a serious gripe.

I haven't been to the grand-daddy of all the artisanal pie shops, Una Pizza Napoletana, but I don't see how it could be too much superior. And at $10 for a margherita, this is good value.*

*Please spare me the whining about how $10 for a small pizza is too much, and back in 1998 you could get a slice for a buck. This is good pizza, made with good ingredients, baked in an amazing custom oven. It's not $1 a slice pizza.

A quick question

Does "work product"* mean anything different than "work"?

* Compare, "I'm trying to make my work product top notch" and "I'm trying to make my work top notch".

Toys!

I didn't get to cook this weekend, due to various bits of hubub, but I did raid Bed, Bath & Beyond for various toys (oh, the excitements that made up my life, let me tell you).

Included in the haul was a new pizza stone, a candy thermometer (goodbye, hairy episodes of plunging my fingers into syrup to determine whether we had reached the hard-ball stage) , a new salad spinner (ever since I broke my old one, I've been eating wet salads), and two new hard anodized pans. Woohoo!

Restaurant Daniel

Restaurant Daniel's position in the New York restaurant stratosphere is somewhat like its chocolate coulant's position in the world of desserts.  A most delicious thing, but in the end, just a molten chocolate cake. 

I'll explain.  We ended up dining at Daniel tonight for nuptial related reasons.  It was the last of the four great French or New American 4-star restaurants in New York I hadn't visited in the last few years.  Each of Per Se, Le Bernardin, and Jean Georges had endured my presence fairly recently, actually, and I've listed them in order of their excellence (the fifth 4 star restaurant is Masa - the greatest sushi restaurant in North America, which is beyond even my tolerance for spending money on food).  

Daniel  cannot match Le Bernardin's pristine magnificence, the surgical beauty of fish stripped of artifice.  Nor is Daniel really a peer of Per Se.  Thomas Keller's east coast flagship serves better food, with better service.  As one egulleter put it, at Per Se it feels like the waiters think they're lucky to serve you.   And Jean-Georges? Well, I don't really like Jean-Georges, but everyone else does, and I accept that Vongerichten has a certain genius about him, whatever I think of his signature and yet god-forsaken foie gras brulee.   Daniel, to me, is perched in an uncomfortable place between the aspirant three star restaurants (the new Corton, and Eleven Madison Park, and perhaps Momofuku Ko, though the last will never have the service to justify a place among all these big boys) and its three 4-star colleagues.  

I realize this is all angels on the heads of pins level granularity, especially in our economic end times.  But what else can I say, for example, of our loup de mer?  A fantastically flavorful dish, anointed with a sauce of the greatest subtlety (a reduced Syrah and BUTTER jus, emphasis on the butter), but topped with a chewy, puzzling, fish skin the servers insisted was meant to be eaten. I get the impression that Le Bernardin's Eric Ripert would rather have worn the skin as a hat than serve such a thing.  Or raviolis with a little too much salt, a too crunchy roll, a truly delicious potato croquette that nonetheless appeared to have emerged from one of the used Time-Life "Frou-Frou Cookery and other methods to lord it over your friends " volumes from the 1970's that I have somewhere on my shelves.  Those dishes which truly were flawless, like Daniel's signature duo of aged beef, (a combination of the most unctuous short rib possible and seared sirloin) and the chocolate coulant I mentioned above (imagine the best molten chocolate cake possible, filled with a sort of caramel) or the poached pineapple (Hawaii on a plate) are from the past.  We live in a world where Chili's serves molten chocolate cake.  As unfair as it is, because molten chocolate cakes are tasty indeed, Daniel just has to move on. 

Am I unhappy?  No, to some extent because I didn't pay tonight (for long and boring reasons).  But also because most of the food really is very good, and one can sort of sink into a happy complacency at Daniel, surrounded by people who look and sound like Henry Kissinger nibbling happily at white asparagus brought up in some sort of silver trivet, awash oneself in wine, chomping through extraordinary madeleines with coffee later, and helped out in a sozzled stagger into the Park Avenue dimness of a cold New York April night.  But in the end, one can't help but feel that Boulud could push his kitchen more. 

And he doesn't.

Balsamic Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been playing around with chocolate chip coookies recently (I like them, and they freeze so well before baking for a warm, impromptu late night treat). The last recipe I tried was the "chewy" cookie recipe from the magisterial King Arthur Flour Cookbook (really - if you don't have this cookbook in your library, purchase it now). I realized in the middle of whipping the butter and sugar, however, that I didn't have corn syrup. I'm not really sure what corn syrup is meant to do anyway (I suppose I should look), but I rooted through my pantry and found this crema di balsamico. Even if it didn't replace the corn syrup's function, I thought, it might heighten the molasses flavor that to me stands at the center of chocolate chip cookie perfect-hood (this after several experiments where I used white sugar instead of the canonical brown sugar - it's not as good).

I think it gave the cookies a certain something, but maybe that's bias.

The King Arthur cookbook recommends baking a test cookie to see how it spread. What a great idea - I was able to add a little flour to save this cookies, after the test cookie spread like an oil slick in the Pacific.

How to make that awful wedding cake at home

A great thread on Egullet about making wedding cake at home.

I'm on record as not liking traditional wedding cake (although I had one recently that was almost acceptable). But the crazy dedication in threads like this is so interesting that I'm sucked in regardless. I now need to at least try the wedding cake base that's recommended (which, of course, is half cake mix).

The rogue cobbler of Balmoral Boots

Sometimes I think I forget how amazing our age really is. Before, a retired shoemaker from Northampton (the center of British shoemaking) would, presumably, have lived out the rest of his life on his company pension, if he had one.

Now, he sells custom made Balmoral boots through Ebay to the extremely small number of men who love Balmoral boots, most of whom live nowhere near Northampton.

Bizarre.

Is good food a constant?

My fiancee and I were having a debate recently after having been served some truly wretched food of a cuisine with which we were familiar, but the preparer was not (and had obviously stretched to accomodate us).

My view is that while one cannot expect authenticity in such a circumstance, taste is a universal attribute, and thus if the chef who made the food were talented, he would have known that the food was not good, even if he did not know what it was supposed to taste like. In other words - I have some confidence in my palate, if not my cooking skill. If asked to produce, say, Ethiopian food, I suspect I would produce inauthentic but tasty food, and if I erred and produced inauthentic and unappealing food, I would have noticed.

My fiancee is somewhat more inclined to the view that the badness of food made by people unpracticed in a cuisine is excusable. I don't want to put words in her mouth (and I'm sure I will be chastised if I am mischaracterizing her views), but I think her bottom line is - "maybe that chef's normal food is actually good, and his efforts to accomodate us hamstrung the man".

All this, of course, circles delicately around the cultural relativist question of whether food can be poorly done or can only be differently done. Obviously, I cling to the former position. And, of course, I once got myself in hot water with apparently the entire readership of another blog when I declared that I didn't understand people who claimed they didn't like foods.

Xai Xai

We visited the South African wine bar Xai Xai last night, after meeting with yet another wedding vendor (as a side note, New York is an amazing place - South African wine bar?). I had wanted us to visit for a while now, as we both like pinotage, however much real wine afficianados might snicker, and I was interested to see what kind of food emerged from their kitchen.

We shared a 250 ml pour of Bellevue Tumara 2004 Pinotage from the Stellenbosch valley, which had all the fruity heft of the typical pinotage, and which we enjoyed very much. We weren't all that hungry, so we went light on the very expensive food, but did enjoy our plate of puff pastries (curried vegetables, chicken, sausage and spinach, with a tasty mango chutney) and smoked salmon with polenta. Service was a little bit clunky, but the room was pleasantly lit and well decorated. And, most importantly, Xai Xai is about a block from my office.

Bottom line: Excellent wine. Pleasant space. But everything should be 25% cheaper.

Grandma Pizza

I love the purity of real Italian pizza. Nothing but flour, yeast, salt and water, slid into a flaming hot oven, off a peel slick with cornmeal, onto a pizza stone to sizzle to perfection in just a couple of minutes. Buffalo mozzarella, if possible. A basil leaf or two, simple tomato sauce, and nothing else.
But that's not pizza here in Queens. In Queens, the kings of the pizza scene (is anything better than Gino's of Howard Beach?) make a different pie, a rustic pie, a pie known around here as the "Grandma". An olive oil, flour, yeast and salt dough, square, baked in a pan with more olive oil, with cheese layed out to be cut into hearty squares. It appeals to me because my grandma also made rustic versions of things in pans. Souh bourek, or cheese pie in a pan rather than in individual packages. Seene kofte - layers of bourghoul and lamb crust sandwiching fried ground meat rather than individual kofte.

I suppose this is called a sicilian elsewhere, but a Grandma is a thinnish pie, very unlike the thick wedges that are sicilians elsewhere. The tomato sauce is always extremely garlicky. The cheese is usually polly-o. And when you want this pizza, only this pizza will do.



Here are some pictures at my effort last night. I used fresh mozzarella because I prefer it, but otherwise this is a very simple olive oil heavy dough, spread in a sheet pan and baked. The sauce is just crushed san marzana tomatoes with lots of garlic.

Leftover choux

What to do with leftover choux pastry?  Obviously, best funnel cake* ever. 

 * Where I grew up, at least, funnel cake is a fried dough poured through a funnel into hot oil.  I figured that pate a choux piped into oil would be just as good.  It was.

UPDATE: Do I really need to note that home-made funnel cake should only be eaten piping hot, off a kitchen towel, with another funnel cake still sizzling in oil?  Consider that noted. 

Baking blogging

I've been abandoned for some womanly get-togethers today.  My only response is eclairs.  Here they are cooling right this minute on a rack, to be filled with creme anglaise and dipped in bittersweet lindt chocolate later.

A michelangelo on 5th

I was recently lucky enough to see this Michelangelo in a stately home here in New York. It was a truly rare treat, though someone else with me raised an interesting question - do modern sculptors have the ability to make such a thing, or has that particular knowledge been lost?

A half success

So I'm not going to claim that these lemon-chocolate macarons (adapted from Aran's recipe) were the biggest success on the planet. Long story short, the meringue mixture was initially too stiff, I mixed it more, and then it got too loose, and the macarons spread on me when I piped them. Result? Oblong, clumsy looking macarons.

However, the flavor and texture of the things was excellent, and I love the combination of lemon and chocolate. I will try these again and improve.

n.b., the chocolate filling was just lindt bittersweet chocolate mixed with heavy cream - i.e., ganache.

Adventures in Meat cookery

I try not to eat too much meat during the week so that I can splurge over the weekend. This week's such splurge was a cut of dry-aged, prime, beef that I bought from Astoria's own Christos Steakhouse. Rather than cook the steak the way most people recommend (screaming hot pan, massive sear), which creates so much smoke as to be unappetizing at home, I've begun experimenting with the egullet, Alain Ducasse home method demonstrated here.

I still think I did not rest the steak quite enough to fully redistribute the juices around the meat (you're supposed to rest it for 15 minutes, but I got impatient), and did not use the recommended butter. Still, the method produces a delicious, crusty, steak.

UPDATE: We enjoyed a bottle of Nederburg Shiraz with this steak. It is a simple, pleasing, South African wine with some good flavors, and has the great advantage of costing $9.

Olive-oil poached escolar with wine sauce

Observant readers will recognize this recipe from Top Chef, when Carla was asked to replicate Eric Ripert's recipe. My effort is not quite as beautiful (my potato chips need work!) but the escolar was extraordinarily good. My technique was simply to warm a pot of olive oil to about 130, add the fish, and let it poach without even simmering for about 8 minutes.

Important note: Escolar is said to have Olestra like effects on your, well, intestines. Keep consumption under 3 or 4 ounces to be safe.

Kindle

I've been skeptical of the Amazon Kindle, and so haven't bought one, but did download the Kindle application for my iphone. While I'm not totally convinced about the grey screen of the real Kindle, being able to have entire books show up on your phone instantaneously for $9.99 is totally revolutionary. Just unbelievable.

In the reading queue now is Peter Singer's The Life You can Save, and Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance.

Make your own butter

Cool - how to make your own butter.

What I understand that caterers haven't

The New York restaurant scene is the product of an unsustainable bubble. I am working to educate them.

Mesa Grill revisited

Last night we returned to Mesa Grill for my fiancee's birthday, which happens to be where we had our first, halting, brunch date a little more than two years ago. I blogged the meal, then, but not the date, though the latter had the more profound effect on my life to be sure.

The tuna tartare is still good. The margaritas are good. My pork loin, a perfect medium, was delicious with a sharp tang of spice in its bourbon and ancho chile sauce, and her red snapper was almost as good. Simply, Mesa Grill is a successful, long lasting restaurant that executes properly. As the New York Times observes, though, it's hard for a restaurant to maintain a spirit of inventiveness when its paradigm has been appropriated by Chili's (Bobby Flay is thought to be one of the main progenitors of the chipotle as it relates to modern American food). But I don't see why that's such a big problem. The food is good. The place has a good vibe. The drinks are strong.

We enjoyed our meal and basked in the funny, awkward memories of two people getting to know each other for the first time.

North Korean Pizza

Courtesy of Marginal Revolution, I see that North Korea is importing "high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese" to make their first pizzas.

As someone over at MR pointed out, I would like to know what exactly they are planning to do with the butter.

Salad dressing

I would obviously be missing a great story if I neglected to comment on United States v. Farinella. (opinion here), a recent case out of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reversing the conviction of a salad dressing dealer. Apparently, Mr. Farinella had been prosecuted for buying leftover salad dressing from a middleman, changing the "best by" date, and then selling the dressing to so-called "dollar stores". The problem for the government was that there is no regulation, no statute, no law, not even an interpretation, a web page, or informal advice from the FDA, to suggest that either establishing or changing a "best by" date was either illegal or required. The 7th Circuit panel, per Judge Posner, was not amused. "Since we are directing an acquittal on all counts", said the court, "the sentencing issues are academic, and we do not address them, beyond expressing our surprise that the government would complain about the leniency of a sentence for a crime it had failed to prove".

I listened to the oral argument this morning. Judge Posner was, if anything, more disparaging of the government's case at argument than in his written opinion. My favorite excerpt (I am transcribing, so this may not be accurate) follows:

Posner: What if this thing came with a label that said "delicious salad dressing. And suppose Farinella covered it over with a label that said "the most delicious salad dressing in history". Is that misbranding?

Government: No, I don't think so.

Posner: Why not? . . . What if in fact you get a bunch of witnesses who say, "most delicious? This is mediocre". "This is not delicious. . . . Did you go out and taste all the salad dressings before you put this label on?"

EDIT: The second interesting issue in this case is that the federal prosecutor was reprimanded for making various improper statements to the jury, including insinuating that there was something physically wrong with the salad dressing (it was shelf stable dressing with no expiration date). Indeed, the prosecutor told that jury that if what the defendant did was "business as usual for the food industry, I suggest we stop going to the store right now and start growing our own food". Posner is obviously right about the various legal issues, and I have nothing to add to them, but I find the prosecutor's cod-locavorism very funny.

Lamb and okra

Over the weekend I had a hankering for lamb and okra, independently.  While we'd normally make okra with chunks of fatty lamb simmering inside the tomato sauce, I decided that I'd rather have chops, so I marinated the meat in lemon and oil, dipped the edges in zataar, and broiled.  The okra are turkish baby okras, from a jar (the best kind), washed to remove much of the slime.

Financiers Again

I made financiers again from Aran's recipe, this time to take to some friends as a gift for inviting us over.  I made them smaller this time and cooked them more, which definitely helped give me some of the extra flavor I thought was missing last time, but I'm still a little puzzled that I'm not getting the almost marizpan like mouth feel I'd expect.  Some of them tasted almost as if they were little, intensely almondy,  muffins, which isn't quite right. I'll have to compare other recipes and see if perhaps there's some element I'm missing.  

Cabinet Secretary

I just noticed this article about staffing problems at our Department of Treasury, which includes a complaint from a somewhat vaguely described British official, Gus O'Donnell:

"Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary for the British government, was quoted this week in British news reports saying it has been "unbelievably difficult" to talk to people at the U.S. Treasury: 'There is nobody there.' "

It bothers me when newspapers quote people without bothering to explain why they're important enough to listen to. In this case, we might as well be told that Gus O'Donnell is the grand olephaunt for the British government, for all the indication the article gives us that O'Donnell is in fact the head of the extremely powerful British civil service. If he's complaining, it's very unlikely to be nonsense.

Thoughts elsewhere

I'm linking to a post of mine on egullet, which summarizes my current thinking on midtown "coffee and a doughnut" style breakfasts (my favorite breakfast, just beating out egg and potato).

Text of the post is below:

A few of my favorite coffee and something sweet breakfasts: An espresso and an apricot filled cornetto at Zibetto (italian espresso) on 56th and 6th (no seats) (or, even, get your croissant or pastry at Bouchon in Time Warner and run it over to Zibetto for the coffee). Pain au chocolat and cafe au lait at La Bergamote (19th and 9th, and 52nd and 10th). The "country breakfast" at Amy's Bread (I'm not a huge Amy's fan, but I love the combination of biscuits and jam) (multiple locations). Cream (not raspberry) bomboloni at Sullivan Street Bakery.

I'm sure someone will eventually mention Artichoke for a slice of pizza. As for other lunches, you can make a bit of a study of the burger renaissance, if that's your thing. In midtown, there's Burger Joint, Beacon, 5 Napkin Burger, City Burger.

What I want to cook

This blog is (now) mostly for my own amusement and thoughts, though I appreciate every page view. I use it to remember where and what I've eaten, and what I'm thinking about on any particular day. It unites the last five or six years for me, along with Crescat Sententia and my original Waddling Thunder.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how to make it more useful. My twitter feed is part of that. I love having a flowing record of my restaurant visits. And recently, I tried to create a record of what popped into my head to cook over in the left margin, to fix the problem of forgetting about some neat ideas I have over my working day. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to consistently update the list in the way I can twitter. From now on, therefore, I'm just going to post what I want to cook in my twitter feed under the title "Stuff I want to cook" or SIWTC. Let's see hwo that works.

Halfsteak

It has been fascinating to watch how the New York restaurant scene has reacted to the economic cataclysm. Some restaurants have closed. Others are offering discounted menus, discounted wine, new bar menus, or off-hours discounts. Among the most aggressive restaurateurs in this regard has been Tom Colicchio, Top Chef master and head of the Craft family. The flagship Craft itself has pioneered Frugal Fridays, a $10 a plate occasional restaurant in Craft's private dining room. And Craftsteak, Colicchio's extortionately expensive steak restaurant, has started Halfsteak, which we visited last night.

The concept is straightforward. Half portions of Craftsteak food for half price. The headliner? A half portion (6 oz) of Craftsteak's signature dry aged bone-in steak with fries for $14.50, supplemented by half pints of local beer ($3.50) and some funky appetizers (fried tripe?). We tried the fried oysters with smoked coleslaw, a couple of drinks (an excellent dark wheat beer and a half cocktail with lime) and a dessert cupcake, along with two steaks. Good news first - the steak and drinks are worth the trip to the dark recesses of 10th avenue. It's terrific meat, properly cooked, with excellent fries. Not to mention that someone is finally serving me the perfect portion of steak - I don't want a 16 oz he-man cut.

The service and the appetizers and dessert? Well, one was bad, and the others didn't add anything to our experience (I don't like cupcakes). But my qualms about the waiters, at least, were mollified a little by being handed a slice of coffee cake "for breakfast" on the way out, which I've gobbled this morning.

The halfsteak is a great, great, value. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Notes from today

Caterer: And of course, our price includes a tasting at our [legitimately good] restaurant!

Me: Of course, if I just picked a cheaper caterer, I could come to your restaurant and bathe myself, my fiancee, and any number of laid off New Yorkers in truffes and caviar with the savings, no?

Rank hypocrisy watch

I should note that I realize I am susceptible to claims of hypocrisy, given that I keep extolling the virtue of saving all the while being in the middle of negotiating an extremely expensive wedding that I think both of us wish didn't need to be so. I really have no answer whatever to this.

Also, let me put forward a hypothetical conversation I intend to have with a bidding caterer today:

Me: I notice that you are charging me [X obscene fee] for service.

Them: Yes. We have the best service.

Me: Indeed. And I also notice this delightful 15% "service and administration fee" over here. What's that?

Them: The tip.

Me: Aha. But let's play a little intellectual game. Why has America adopted the tip (i.e., the voluntary gratuity) as a model of waiter compensation, you think? As opposed to the service included European regime?

Them: Oh, because American restaurateurs don't pay their wait staff anything resembling a reasonable wage, instead hoping that tips will compensate them fairly.

Me: Right. So it's fair to say that the tip is in lieu of some percentage of wages paid out by the restaurateur?

Them: Yes.

Me: Then why the f&@# are you charging me both $35 an hour for these waiters, from which you can pay them whatever the hell wage you'd like, *and* expecting me to pay them a tip, calculated on a base figure that somehow includes the $35 an hour fee?

Them: Because we're trying to rob you.

Me: I figured.

Stimulus again

Some very interesting discussion from Russ Roberts and Arnold Kling on Blogging Heads about the economic crisis. As I've mentioned before, I agree with them that (1) the government is trying to put the leverage-bubble humpty-dumpty back together again (2) their efforts aren't going to work. We are just going to have get used to a world of much lower leverage both at the corporate and personal finance levels, and yet our government officials appear to be trying to just ressucitate the model that just broke down. As Ricky Gervais might have said, why are we sending horses to perform medical procedures? (watch the clip).

By the way, all we normal people are pretty irrelevant to the great economic debate going on. But how should we all act in view of what's going on? To me, the only rational response is to batten down the hatches. 30% of gross income is no longer an acceptable debt burden. De-lever to 30% of net income. Carry no credit card debt month to month. Push savings to over 10% of personal income, if possible. Amass 6 months to a year of living expenses in liquid savings. Oh, and ignore politicians that tell you it's time to spend.

EDIT: of course, I'm guilty of inexact language above. I meant to say that the cost of carrying your debt (the payments) should be no more on an annual basis than 30% of your net income, not that your entire debt should be no more than 30% of your net income.

Dehydrated Olive Tapenade

I got my hands on some extremely fresh wild salmon over the weekend, and though I knew how I would cook it (on my flat griddle, skin down, 10 minutes, until skin is potato chip crisp) I was groping a little for a sauce until I remembered a neat idea from the Alinea cookbook - an olive oil jam made of dehydrated olives.

I don't own a dehydrator.  But I've done well dehydrating tomatoes in the oven at 170, so I put some shriveled, oil-cured, thasos olives in the oven on a low burn and forgot about them for about 7 hours.  They emerged further shriveled, tough jerky like pellets of concentrated olive flavor.  I pitted them, and then set to with my mortar, pestle, and good Cretan olive oil until I got a smooth paste.  The resultant sauce was a fantastic, salty, counterpoint to the salmon with a texture that differed markedly from standard issue tapenade or olive paste (i.e., tapenade sans anchovies).   This is a highly recommended building block, and it's going to make further appearances all summer (this seems an obvious element of an updated greek salad, or a great sauce for baby lamb chops or rack of lamb).  It is salty, however, and care should be taken  when pairing with cheese or other intensely savory ingredients.

Things I was wrong about

I've been thinking about errors that have been exposed by this crisis.  The one that I think I'm most embarrassed about is the 401(k) as a retirement vehicle.  I suppose it seems obvious now, but it turns out to be entirely unacceptable (as others, I admit, said) to base people's retirements on a mechanism that might decline in value 40% (or more) almost at random due to circumstances beyond any normal person's control.  Of course, investing conventional wisdom tells you to shift slowly out of equities over time, but I've never seen any investment advice recommend *no* equities, and that is the only expedient that would have saved a retirement aged  person in this crisis.  Now to find out what kind of employer might offer a traditional pension. 

Err?

Sometimes, you have to wonder whether people really have no imagination, or whether there's something more nefarious at work.  Look, for example, at these two articles - one from the Post, and one from the New York Times.  

They have the same premise - America's blue chip stocks are crumbling.  Reasonable enough that two major newspapers would have a story on that issue given the calamitous state of the stock market, you think.  But the similarities stretch far beyond general theme. They both start by comparing the price of a share of Citigroup to something else - an ATM fee for the Post, and an item at the dollar store for the Times.  Both describe Citigroup's falling below $1.00 as having "broke the buck".  Both refer back to Citigroup's price of $55 two years ago. Both mention that a share of GM isn't enough to buy a gallon of gasoline.  Both compare the price of a share of GE to something else.  Remarkably enough, to precisely the same something else, "compact fluorescent lightbulbs".    Thankfully, they disagree on just how many lightbulbs one gets to buy with that share.

I'm sure, if I had the time or inclination to compare them further, I'd discover even more to list here.  In any case, though, it seems likely that both authors cribbed substantial portions of their articles from some common source. Is there a journalistic practice I'm unaware of that legitimizes this kind of half-plagiarism? 

UPDATE: I was mistaken.  The Post refers to compact fluorescent flood lightbulbs.  There's some good reporting for ya.  Also, in case anyone thinks that "breaking the buck" is a common way to refer to a stock going below a dollar, it's not.  Finance people typically talk about "breaking a buck" when the NAV of a money market fund falls below a dollar - which incidentally is a shocking, world-changing catastrophe that has happened recently. Not when a stock falls below a dollar.

Death & Company

We sampled a number of drinks I haven't had before at our favorite bar in New York last night - Death & Company.  Particularly amazing was the Fancy Free  (mostly bourbon and maraschino liqueur) and the Martinez (potentially a precursor to the Martini - gin, sweet vermouth, more maraschino liqueur, and angostura bitters).  We also liked their Hyde Park Swizzle.  

Organic means safer?

I'm completely, completely baffled by this New York Times article, exposing the amazing secret that the USDA organic classification has nothing to do with food safety. Why would rodents and pests be any less inclined to raid organic grains and other produce than conventional food? And in any case, "food safety" in the traditional sense is often the most gruesome enemy of the organic and localist and taste interest groups. For the food safety advocate, after all, the ideal world is where everything is irradiated to a sterile crisp.

I especially liked the nurse practioner's lament at the beginning of the article, which reminds me of a different misunderstanding:

“Why is organic peanut butter better than Jif?” said Ms. Devlin-Sample, a nurse practitioner from Pelham, N.Y. “I have no idea. If we’re getting salmonella from peanut butter, all bets are off

Catering Follies

The caterer in question in this post today proposed a literally absurd menu. I excerpt my response below - to be clear, I am being as kind as possible in my note:

"However, to be quite blunt, I have not reviewed the food and wine selections you have proposed, nor anything else for that matter, because the price estimate you have provided is utterly unacceptable. Honestly, I am bewildered that you would have taken my clearly expressed preference that we proceed on a budget (I was quite explicit on this point during our meeting, even mentioning the range of other proposals, which I was not inclined to do) and produced a proposal well in excess of $300 per person (even excluding a gratuity, as I read it) without any prior warning. Of course, you are entirely at liberty to set your own prices, and I am sure others are happy to pay for your services at these rates. But on the basis of your proposal, I am disappointed to tell you that we have nothing further to discuss."

* I have not asked the person in question for permission, because I am just republishing my own message. If they don't like it, they can complain to me.

Will touches on "food and sex"

Even if the premise of the op-ed is true (that people invest more care in what they eat than in who they have sexual relations with - I would dispute that most people today care at all about what they eat, outside an elite cadre), I am puzzled to find that George Will is puzzled by that result. People necessarily care about their physical aspect, and part of the taboo against sexual relations outside of marriage was precisely that. Fear of disease, and above all, pregnancy for women and unplanned fatherhood for men.

Technology has rendered moot most of that concern - the careful, prudent elite that Will (and Eberstadt's underlying article) describes can prevent pregnancy (or, more troublingly, terminate it), and disease can be both prevented and cured.

There is yet no answer to the twin physical dangers presented by food, which I will broadly term fat and cancer. There is no "pill" that governs weight the way the birth control pill governs fertility. Every day, it becomes more evident that bad food (though which bad food precisely, we don't know) causes or exacerbates the dread diseases that end so many of our lives. It is entirely rational when presented with this situation that the elite neurotic will expend his or her energy on food safety rather than sexual safety. Sex outside marriage was the corn finished beef of times past.

Instead, we get this prudish morality play from Will and Eberstadt. Odd.

EDIT: Eberstadt's article is more nuanced than Will's, I now think, and acknowledges some of the above.

Corruption

I'm becoming more convinced that Obama's real job, putting aside our fiscal mess, is to root out corruption, both public and private. Of course, some ambient level of corruption is normal - it is the grist of the political mill and of the world outside. But the fetid stink of now is overwhelming. The latest manifestation is Roland Burris, but the moral corruption in the upper echelons of society is deep (when I say moral, I am implying nothing about religion, by the way, in case anyone thinks my problem is that people have left their churches). Of course, my own exposure to the upper echelons has bruised me psychologically for reasons I'm not going to explain here, so I might well be overreacting to personal experiences that have no broader meaning, but I think I am not.

Also, I am in the middle of reading Obama's Dreams from my Father. Obviously, this will become a part of the modern canon - the actual fairly pure thoughts of a future president when he was 33? It's an incredible historical document that will only become more important as journalism passes into history, like reading Teddy Roosevelt's early works, but better. But what strikes me most is the almost preternatural unity of Obama's vision. His writing then sounds so much like his speeches now that I'm almost convinced he re-edited the book in the 2004 release to insert the current rhetoric. More likely, he is so clever that he understands the compelling power of a consistent, lifelong vision, and so he hews intentionally to what he said earlier. I laugh at the Obama groupies who convince themselves that even his mistakes are part of some sort of deeply subtle underplan, certainly, but those exaggerations shouldn't hide the fact that for those of us on the broad right, he is a subtle and powerful opponent.

Fleeting thought of the day

Why do I become extremely ravenous at random intervals during the day? When I say ravenous, I mean as if I could eat a turkey if it was here. I wish I could ignore it.

Two meals becometh one

"Oh God", said the voice to my left suddenly. "I must have eaten, like, 200 calories of these things". The owner of the voice was a deathly thin man, hair all akimbo, a pastel silk scarf wrapped delicately around his neck, attempting to stop his fingers from going towards the lavender sugar encrusted Marcona Almonds at the iconoclastic Ubuntu restaurant and yoga studio in the city of Napa. Turning back to my own little tray of the nuts, it occurred to me how compelling delicious food is, no matter how thin we are, or controlled, or used to masochistic diets negotiated under the constant frown of calorie counts and fat percentages. Like a mother who sneaks some spinach into her child's morning smoothie, Ubuntu draws in its northern california crowd with the promise of ascetic, macrobiotic, veggie bliss, but what it delivers is something far more primal - big, uncompromising, flavor.


It wasn't just the almonds. Joining them as a convenient pre-meal snack are chickpea fries, no longer the stodgy cubes of custom, but thin, long, McDonald's like strands of chickpea, crispy with a pleasing interior. But it is in the tapas style main courses that Ubuntu hits its stride. Even in the midst of winter, the artichoke salad with leaves, miso (that is, as opposed to the traditional anchovy) "bagna cauda" and olive marmalade was astonishing, the slight shavings of parmesan a deft salty accent to the sweet sauces and the perfect vegetables. But I save my loudest accolades for the next two dishes we tried - the first, a composition of radishes, grapefruit, the best beet "tartare" I've ever had and "fork-crushed" avocado, (the last especially a subtle surprise rather than just its usual jolt of healthy, natural fat) and then a deeply satisfying bowl of carrot gnochetti, with what the menu called "carrot pulp crumble" adding a little more of what I take to be Ubuntu's sweet signature. Not to mention that I'm usually disappointed by dessert, so much so that I normally don't order it, but Ubuntu's vanilla bean "cheesecake in a jar" with sour cherries (which are nostalgic for my fiancee, as the flavors of her mother's childhood Tehran) was terrific. To the extent I had a complaint, it was about our second dessert, which turned out to be so forgettable that I have forgotten it entirely.

That meal I contrast with our less impressive visit to Zuni Cafe, about which I was more excited. I don't mean to say that Zuni was bad, in any way. My rabbit salad was marvelous, if small. And the famed roasted chicken for two, which takes an hour from ordering to arrive, was extremely good. Really very good, a great chicken only enhanced by its treatment in the wood fire, sitting atop pungent mustard greens and peasant bread half-croutons soaked in oil and lemon, both crunchy and chewy and then tart. But did it change my thoughts about chicken? Should it be thought to be the kind of chicken that makes a career? Not really.

I've grouped together these two meals in these notes because they inspired our first meal back in New York. As I sat at Zuni, it occurred to me that my own much plainer roast chicken, even when I use a mere $9 "all natural" Murray's rather than some ultra-premium breeds, is nearly as good as Zuni Cafe's landmark dish. And it occurred to me that what would go perfectly with it was Ubuntu's artichoke salad, albeit without the still quivering with freshness greens, and jarred artichokes holding the place of those just out of the ground. So I roasted my chicken in the usual way, with a lemon and herbs inside, legs tied together, and plenty of fleur de sel, and made a simple vinaigrette to dress the baby spinach and artichoke. The results are pictured below, and we ate with happy memories of our trip out west.

Cav Wine Bar and "tastes"

We arrived at Zuni Cafe too early for dinner, so we went looking for somewhere to have a drink until the appointed time. We ended up at Cav Wine Bar, just down Market Street, where owner Pamela S. Busch was patrolling the front room with reassuring confidence. One innovation that I saw universally in California, and see more and more here, is the "taste" of wine - a half glass, 2.5 oz. pour for half price. It lets you drink variety without breaking the budget, and at Cav, it let me do most of a Pinot Noir tasting "flight" for under $20. We both loved the Dubakella Pinot Noir, and were astounded by a French Pinot that tasted so much of barnyard that it was almost unpleasant. The atmosphere was welcoming and friendly, and we had a great time.

What the heck happened?

I was sitting in a beautiful backyard in Los Angeles with (soon to be) family when they asked me, as a lawyer in the far-away province of New York, what the heck has happened to our economy. Of course I said I don't know, and if I did, I would be working for Treasury. But I've got a guess, and it has nothing to do with regulation, or credit default swaps, or whatever else, at least directly. Here is the story I told.

Imagine you were invited to a casino to play poker. And let's say that you're pretty good at poker - you can grind out some nice cash by beating up on the casual players, the weekend warriors. But when you get there, instead of being allowed to go to your usual table, the pit boss takes you to a special room. In the room, he explains the deal he's been offering to a few special people. "All you have to do is roll this die, which has 100 sides, every five minutes or so. If you get through an hour without rolling a '1', you win $20 million". That's a lot of money, you think. You never need to work again if you win. "But what happens if you roll a '1'"? "Oh!", says the pit boss. "Then you lose $1 billion. We have to get paid somehow. But here's the good part. Someone else loses that money - not you".

A lot of people in finance took that deal. They knew the risk of rolling a "1". Of course they did. Or at least their bosses did. But they took the deal because almost anyone would take the deal, when put to the test. The upside (and I can't emphasize this enough) was generational, lasting, wealth - complete freedom to do almost anything forever. The downside was inchoate. Some really bad stuff would happen, possibly, but not to you.

Would you have played the game?

We're back from San Francisco and Los Angeles.  We had a great time in both places, and I'll lead off with a few observations. 

1.  LA is not my kind of city.  Too many cars combined with too many malls.  It's like the suburban Virginia of my youth, but much bigger and more vacuous, somehow. 

2. I made a couple of mistakes in this post.  The obvious one, as was explained to my back then, is that San Francisco is not tied with Chicago for second best food city in the country, but is a clear #2 under the rubric I was thinking about then.  The second thing is that the whole rubric is wrong.  Yes, New York is the best restaurant city in the country.   But best food city?  The californian supermarkets, in February, are still packed with extraordinary local produce, even if it is somewhat limited.  Here, we have tubers.  If anything, I suspect the gap in the summer is even bigger, as our farms start working, but theirs explode.  I'm not sure what to make of this.

3. Food (still) tastes better outside.

4. Visiting a city occupied by Armenians is pretty disturbing, especially because you can't use Armenian as your super secret language anymore.  On the other hand, it is somewhat amusing to be somewhere where every second person looks like either your uncle or great uncle.

5. Why does anyone live in New York, again, when things routinely look like the below over there?  I need to work on my rationalizations for this seemingly unwise decision again.

Valentine's Financiers

We're about to leave for the airport, but for Valentine's Day, in between finishing some late night work and packing, I made a few financiers from Aran's recipe (but sans kumquats).  I prefer mine chewier than they came out (I think I made them too thick) but the beurre noisette makes 100% difference in terms of depth of flavor.  Wow. 

California

I should say that I'm flying to California (first Los Angeles, then San Francisco) tomorrow for a week of vacation. In LA, we intend to see family and eat Mexican food. The lineup for San Francisco includes the well reviewed vegetarian yoga-studio/restaurant Ubuntu (Bruni's review here) and Zuni Cafe (the roasted chicken is supposed to be revelatory). We'll also try to get to ad hoc (though I think we'll fail) and possibly Chez Panisse or more likely its informal cafe.

Zibetto

After months of frustration about bad coffee in midtown, I've recently discovered Zibetto Espresso Bar on 56th and 6th. No sofas and couches here. No, this is the way they do fast coffee (and breakfast especially) in Europe - belly up to the bar and slap your folded newspaper next to a warmed cornetto and strong espresso. Of course, part of this is pure nostalgia for me - I've had countless breakfasts like this flipping through a Le Monde when I worked with my uncles at their carpet store in Paris. But nostalgia aside, the coffee is very very good.

Jacques Torres

So, what kind of person goes blocks out of his way to pick up a free $2 Jacques Torres bonbon because he heard about it on some blog?



Yeah, me. How'd you guess?

EDIT: I especially liked my effort to sidle up to people handing out the chocolates as if I was surprised to find them there.

A note

Just a random public service announcement - caterers have not understood that the (economic) world has ended between the last time they were busy and today. Maybe none of us has. But really, people, you are not in the driver's seat anymore. Sorry.

EDIT: Also, I realize that you way you used to shame people into loosening the purse-strings was to pronounce the phrase "I realize you are on a budget" with a slight sneer encircling the last word. Soo, that never would have worked on me anyway, as I am not on a quest to produce the puurfect day and I think budgets are very good things indeed, but it really is out of place now. Just so you know.

An agreement?

From an article in yesterday's New York Times about fertility clinics that produce too many children:

"One woman, a nurse who could afford only one try at in vitro, pressured Dr. Chiu to transfer eight embryos. 'I said under one condition,' Dr. Chiu remembered. 'I made her sign an agreement that she would do selective reduction.' That agreement, to remove some of the embryos if they lived, was very likely unenforceable."

You think? A personal service contract requiring abortion?

Having said that, I am generally interested in the idea of restraints that are not necessarily enforceable, though my thoughts range to bylaws passed by the shareholders restricting the the board of a Delaware corporation rather than to fertility policy. Still, what was the doctor thinking? Even if one were okay with the idea of such a contract, can you imagine trying to enforce it?

EDIT: I wonder if such a contract has ever made it to court.

Profligacy

Just flagging that the President discussed the question about whether it makes sense to encourage consumers to spend when they should be saving (maybe) in his press conference:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. In your opening remarks, you talked about that if your plan works the way you want it to work, it's going to increase consumer spending. But isn't consumer spending, or over-spending, how we got into this mess? And if people get money back into their pockets, do you not want them saving it or paying down debt first, before they start spending money into the economy?

MR. OBAMA: Well, first of all, I don't think it's accurate to say that consumer spending got us into this mess. What got us into this mess initially were banks taking exorbitant, wild risks with other people's monies, based on shaky assets. And because of the enormous leverage, where they had $1 worth of assets and they were betting $30 on that $1, what we had was a crisis in the financial system.

That led to a contraction of credit, which in turn meant businesses couldn't make payroll or make inventories, which meant that everybody became uncertain about the future of the economy.
So people started making decisions accordingly, reducing investments, initiating layoffs, which in turn made things worse.

Now, you are making a legitimate point, Chuck, about the fact that our savings rate has declined. And this economy has been driven by consumer spending for a very long time. And that's not going to be sustainable. You know, if all we're doing is spending and we're not making things, then over time, other countries are going to get tired of lending us money. And eventually the party's going to be over.

Well, in fact, the party now is over. And so the sequence of how we're approaching this is as follows. Our immediate job is to stop the downward spiral. And that means putting money into consumers' pockets. It means loosening up credit.

It means putting forward investments that not only employ people immediately but also lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth. And that by the way is important, even if you're a fiscal conservative, because the biggest problem we're going to have, with our federal budget, is if we continue a situation in which there are no tax revenues, because economic growth is plummeting at the same time as we've got more demands for unemployment insurance; we've got more demands for people who've lost their health care, more demand for food stamps. That will put enormous strains on the federal budget as well as the state budget.

So the most important thing we can do for our budget crisis right now is to make sure that the economy doesn't continue to tank. And that's why passing the Economic Recovery Plan is the right thing to do, even though I recognize that it's expensive.

Look, I would love not to have to spend money right now. I'd -- you know, this notion that somehow I came in here just ginned up to spend $800 billion, you know, that -- that wasn't -- that wasn't how I envisioned my presidency beginning. But we have to adapt to existing circumstances.

Now, what we are going to also have to do is to make sure that as soon as the economy stabilizes, investment begins again; we're no longer contracting, but we're growing; that our midterm and long-term budget is dealt with. And I think the same is true for individual consumers. Right now, they're just -- they're just trying to figure out how do I make sure that if I lose my job, you know, I'm still going to be able to make my mortgage payments.

Or they're worried about, how am I going to pay next month's bills? So they're not engaging in a lot of long-term financial planning.

Once the economy stabilizes and people are less fearful, then I do think that we're going to have to start thinking about how do we operate more prudently, because there's no such thing as a free lunch. So if -- if you want to get -- if you want to buy a house, then putting zero down and buying a house that is probably not affordable for you in case something goes wrong, that's something that has to be reconsidered.

So we're going to have to change our -- our bad habits. But right now, the key is making sure that we pull ourselves out of the economic slump that we're in.

A bit of consumerism

What with all the talk of profligacy below, let me offer a shopping tip. Yes, the most beautiful men's watch in the world is the IWC portugueser (so I say). I will not, however, spend even the $4000 one needs to spend on Timezone to get one (much less the $6,800 new, or $10,000 + for the rose gold Automatic).

Lots of research for things that look like the IWC (I wanted something in the 38mm plus range in terms of diamater, and a main face and two smaller faces, whatever they're technically called), and offer some craft and originality lead me to an unexpected place - Poljot, a Soviet era manufacturer which makes wonderful watches with an interesting Russian made movement for less than $500, and specifically Poljot's Strela (mine is much plainer, but the picture I found online on a dealer's site isn't great). On ebay, where I found mine, the price drops much lower than that.

The chief downside at this point is that the Strela is a mechanical watch, meaning it needs to be wound. I have not figured out how much, as yet. Also, you can really only buy it from a German dealer for a fair price, so there is some execution risk to the deal.

Gino's

We were in Howard Beach, Queens, the other day for things unrelated to food, but I had heard of a local pizza joint with a big reputation, so we made our way there for a quick snack. So, quick is likely never the result of visiting Gino's of Howard Beach, since the line appears to be perpetually out the door, but the "grandma" pizza is truly excellent - thin, crisp, dotted with fresh cheese, and thick chunks of garlic throughout.

Also, they serve a $13 seafood salad which would cost $25 in the city. If, for some reason, one is in Howard Beach, I wouldn't miss this place.