Reading through Ezra Klein's morning discussion on health-care raises what to me is the fundamental problem with the left-wing health-care argument. (See, I'm fair to Klein. He might know less than nothing about food, but health care he seems to understand something about, and I do not).
So Klein says that the goal is to reduce national health care expenditures - what I understand as the aggregate spending on health care in the entire country, public and private. And the way to do this, I understand him to believe, is to use so-called "public option" to reduce costs. Fine.
As others have observed, I assume that Klein does not think it is a good idea to organize other parts of our economy in this way. After all, you can make exactly the same arguments about car production, and yet no one would say that we should reduce our national expenditure on cars by having government produce standardized cars with lower, negotiated prices. I recognize that smart people have constructed arguments about why the health care market is different, but I confess I do not completely understand them. But the left argument is dependent on the truth of this proposition.
Even granting the proposition, the bottom line really is that I do not believe there is an appreciable surplus of real waste in private sector healthcare as opposed to the public sector. I suspect, though cannot prove, that the reason national health care expenditures are lower in other countries are a combination of much lower compensation for health care professionals, lower drug costs, much less extraordinary care, and lower creature comforts in hospitals. I would assume an honest liberal would say all those things are true and are the proper cost for ensuring health care for all. Beware anyone who does not grant the truth of those propositions.
I think the left has to face up to the fact that getting universality of coverage and lower aggregate costs means persuading people who already have insurance to accept worse service or higher costs for their current level of service. I don't think they have done this forthrightly.
7/21/2009
7/20/2009
Still busy
The topic of the U.S. Senate and its undemocratic nature (and more specifically, whether that undemocratic nature is a problem) is usually the bailiwich of Professor Levinson at Balkinization, but I wanted to flag a recent decision by the highest German court effectively delaying German ratification of the Lisbon treaty, a much maligned bit of legislation designed to further bind Europe together.
I haven't had the time to read the document entirely, and it is in a stilted translation of assuredly already stilted legal German. Nonetheless, I found the the following of some interest. The German court held that the Lisbon treaty as it was currently constituted violated the Basic Law. Why? Because a single German representative in the European parliament represented far more people than his or her colleague in Malta or Sweden or any smaller country:
"According to the Draft decision, a Member of the European Parliament elected in France would represent approximately 857,000 citizens of the Union and thus as many as a Member elected in Germany, who represents approximately 857,000 as well. In contrast, a Member of the European Parliament elected in Luxembourg would, however, only represent approximately 83,000 Luxembourg citizens of the Union, i.e. a tenth of them, in the case of Malta, it would be approximately 67,000, or only roughly a twelfth of them."
But is this always a violation of general democratic principles? No, said the German court. Just in a representative chamber of government:
"In federal states, such marked imbalances are, as a general rule, only tolerated for the second chamber existing beside Parliament; in Germany and Austria, the second chamber is the Bundesrat, in Australia, Belgium and the United States of America, it is the Senate".
The Court's decision implies all kinds of interesting things, but, alas, I must run. Perhaps later.
I haven't had the time to read the document entirely, and it is in a stilted translation of assuredly already stilted legal German. Nonetheless, I found the the following of some interest. The German court held that the Lisbon treaty as it was currently constituted violated the Basic Law. Why? Because a single German representative in the European parliament represented far more people than his or her colleague in Malta or Sweden or any smaller country:
"According to the Draft decision, a Member of the European Parliament elected in France would represent approximately 857,000 citizens of the Union and thus as many as a Member elected in Germany, who represents approximately 857,000 as well. In contrast, a Member of the European Parliament elected in Luxembourg would, however, only represent approximately 83,000 Luxembourg citizens of the Union, i.e. a tenth of them, in the case of Malta, it would be approximately 67,000, or only roughly a twelfth of them."
But is this always a violation of general democratic principles? No, said the German court. Just in a representative chamber of government:
"In federal states, such marked imbalances are, as a general rule, only tolerated for the second chamber existing beside Parliament; in Germany and Austria, the second chamber is the Bundesrat, in Australia, Belgium and the United States of America, it is the Senate".
The Court's decision implies all kinds of interesting things, but, alas, I must run. Perhaps later.
7/15/2009
Taxes
Do people really think the proposed 45% tax rate on the wealthy will be the last tax increase? Hey, "middle" class (i.e., everyone else) - your turn is coming.
7/14/2009
I am delaying things
In an effort to delay my weekend's food blogging (I made my version of Jean-George's caviar egg and turbot with Chateau Chalon sauce) I note today this article about the plight of adjunct professors at universities.
I note it because the situation perfectly illustrates my point about European social democracy, below. It is very pleasant, in some ways, for the winners of the system, to be either a tenured professor or an employed European. Both people are almost impossible to fire, have many benefits, etc.
But woe to those who aspire to one of those two classes.
I note it because the situation perfectly illustrates my point about European social democracy, below. It is very pleasant, in some ways, for the winners of the system, to be either a tenured professor or an employed European. Both people are almost impossible to fire, have many benefits, etc.
But woe to those who aspire to one of those two classes.
7/09/2009
Ok, you win
I am reading David Kessler's, The End of Overeating, which describes how the food industry exploits biological reality by relying on fat, salt and sugar to encourage overeating (or, at least, that is the message so far).
The odd thing is that I find the book impossible to read, because Kessler's descriptions of the fat, salt and sugar, even though his descriptions touch on things I don't eat (like mass produced snack cakes) cause my mouth to water so much that I find myself distracted and searching for a mass produced snack cake. This is a little startling. So, point taken, Mr. Kessler.
The odd thing is that I find the book impossible to read, because Kessler's descriptions of the fat, salt and sugar, even though his descriptions touch on things I don't eat (like mass produced snack cakes) cause my mouth to water so much that I find myself distracted and searching for a mass produced snack cake. This is a little startling. So, point taken, Mr. Kessler.
7/07/2009
A note on social democracy
For some reason, my republican cohorts have decided that the way to oppose President Obama is to describe various parades of horribles that will occur if he gets his way, many of which have something to do with Europe. See this overwrought example.
The problem with these is that they are false. In fact, life in Europe is very pleasant. For many people, far more pleasant than here. You are taken care of in sickness. Holidays are long and leisour-ous. Children are valued by the state. Jobs, if you have them, are secure. Retirements are less plagued by worry. Obama clearly intends to import some of these ideas, and people are going to like them.
Not recognizing that second point is going to land us conservatives in trouble. People like the welfare state. They are wrong to do so, maybe, and I think America has the balance between individual autonomy and the state's leviathan more right than does Europe. But the idea that our people will revolt when given Obama's welfare state is just wrong. They are going to like it and ask for more, to our detriment. Our counterattack has to recognize the superficial attractions of that model.
The problem with these is that they are false. In fact, life in Europe is very pleasant. For many people, far more pleasant than here. You are taken care of in sickness. Holidays are long and leisour-ous. Children are valued by the state. Jobs, if you have them, are secure. Retirements are less plagued by worry. Obama clearly intends to import some of these ideas, and people are going to like them.
Not recognizing that second point is going to land us conservatives in trouble. People like the welfare state. They are wrong to do so, maybe, and I think America has the balance between individual autonomy and the state's leviathan more right than does Europe. But the idea that our people will revolt when given Obama's welfare state is just wrong. They are going to like it and ask for more, to our detriment. Our counterattack has to recognize the superficial attractions of that model.
A new book
I received a new book in the mail today (ironically at the same time as I start thinking about what to do with my hundreds of books prior to moving in the near future): Au Revoir to all That: Food, Wine and the End of France. It begins positively, and the writing is very good. I suspect I might conclude that the book is overly alarmist about the collapse of the French gourmet culture, but I am open to being convinced.
7/06/2009
A thought
If my explanation to myself of why I am buying some thing or service is any longer than a few words, I'm going to make a mistake by buying that thing or service.
7/01/2009
A late night boozy snack
My fiancee was out on her own last Sunday night, so I took the opportunity to prepare a snack for her return. The base for my effort was the bottle of blue Sapphire gin I had bought earlier in the day. But gin is the most versatile of liquors, and the range of cocktails one can make with gin is almost limitless. Still, I settled quickly on the Singapore Sling, which has been a sort of inside joke in my family for a long time. (The joke is that my father, who doesn't really drink cocktails, always orders it when it seems like one ought to order a cocktail, and the bartender invariably either doesn't know what it is or doesn't have one of the ingredients or, if he or she is of a certain age, does know what it is but makes a comment about no one having ordered a singapore sling unironically since the mid '60s).
Unfortunately, I didn't have Benedictine, one of the components of the traditional drink, but I decided to substitute cognac. Otherwise, the alcoholic ingredients were these (from left to right, Remy Martin VSOP cognac, Cointreau, grenadine (fake - boo!), Bombay Sapphire gin, and Heerings Cherry Liqueur.
Unfortunately, Singapore Slings also include at least 4 oz. of pineapple juice, and after all the effort to secure a small bottle of Heerings, I thought it was a shame to just pop open the usual tin. However, I also don't own a juicer, so I did the only thing I could think of - whizz up a pineapple in a food processor and pass it through a sieve. This worked fine, though it is a hassle.
Singapore Slings need to be poured into a collins glass full of crushed ice. I had neither, but approximated the crushed ice by putting my normal ice into two ziplocs as an impromptu Lewis Bag and smashing it with my heavy mortar. Voila - Singapore Slings.
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This left the snack. But luckily, my cream puff pastry has gotten better over the past year, so I immediately thought of gougeres - roughly speaking, cream puffs with cheese in. I slightly undercooked these due to the hurry I was in, but I thought they were delicious.
In fact, I proudly claimed they were at least as good as the $8 appetizers at Death & Co. My fiancee scrunched up her nose and said, "Aren't they more like the $5 pretzel nuggets?".
6/26/2009
Places I want to eat
So my list of places I want to eat is growing, and yet I am economizing to save my waistline and budget. After all (as to the latter) we have a wedding and then a moving-in together to fund in October!
So instead of actually dining, let me make lists of places I want to go:
Corton - Paul Liebrandt does some exciting cuisine.
The bar at Adour Alain Ducasse - Ducasse dishes for under $15 at the four person holographic wine bar in the St. Regis.
Eleven Madison Park - People keep talking about it.
Daniel - We have idiosyncratic reasons for wanting to go back to Daniel.
Tailor - Modern food with good drinks.
Wd-50 - even more modern food, also with good drinks.
So instead of actually dining, let me make lists of places I want to go:
Corton - Paul Liebrandt does some exciting cuisine.
The bar at Adour Alain Ducasse - Ducasse dishes for under $15 at the four person holographic wine bar in the St. Regis.
Eleven Madison Park - People keep talking about it.
Daniel - We have idiosyncratic reasons for wanting to go back to Daniel.
Tailor - Modern food with good drinks.
Wd-50 - even more modern food, also with good drinks.
Paris is know for its falafels
Amber points out that Ezra Klein has, unaccountably, been given a food column in the Washington Post. My views about Klein's food writing have been abundantly well aired on this blog, so I'll leave my reaction at this: ?!?!!. Also, ?!.
It had escaped my attention, though, that Klein's diabolically bad food blog, the Internet Food Association, also includes blogging by Matt Yglesias. In this post, he makes a reasonable point about a Slate column (i.e., the column is pointless and doesn't match its title) and then adds the equally reasonable observation that France is blessed by an "extremely high level of pedestrian food". Yes, certainly true. Pate, bread, cheese, hams, vegetables of very high quality, milk, butter, cheap bistros, surely. But no! Yglesias was actually referring to "Vietnamese restaurants and falafel shops that would be huge sensations in the United States".
What is Yglesias even talking about? First, the falafel and Vietnamese in Paris are fine, but pretty plain. This is what you eat in Paris when, after the sixth round of epoisse in three days washed down with pork rilettes, you realize that if you eat any more French food you might die. But in fact the great weakness of Paris as a food city, if a weakness it has, it that its ethnic offerings are far more narrow than some of its competitors, and mostly not as good. (See, New York, London). Putting aside the two supposed examples Yglesias gives, the Chinese food is execrable. There is little Indian. Little Thai. Little really good sushi, and the median of sushi is lower. I could probably write dozens of pages on this topic and not exhaust the point. But the real point is that all this is irrelevant. Paris is one of the greatest food cities in the world because of French food. As you might imagine.
Moreover, sensations in the United States? Yglesias, as far as I know, lives about half an hour from what is arguably the locus of Vietnamese cooking in America. Paris's Vietnamese restaurants would be sensations in that area in the sense that they would be flops, made sensational by the fact that they were flopped French vietnamese restaurants. And the idea that one gets exceptional falafel in Paris, so exceptional that those are the things you would mention as examples of good food in Paris - it's not really clear to me how to respond to that. He's wrong. It's as if I said one goes to DC for falafels. Put another way, wrong.
EDIT: Also, as to the substantive point of the Slate article, it is true that French food has declined in quality in the past decade. This has nothing, in my view, to do with Michelin, which after all could only concievably cause a decline in the highest of the high (the Michelin-is-hamstringing-France argument goes something like this - France can't have its own Momofuku because of the Michelin Guide's requirement that a 3-star restaurant be opulent, and therefore its higher end cuisine is staid and falling behind America and Spain) but with a decline in French taste.
Having said that, I do think now is not the time to be serving 130 euro main courses.
EDIT 2: I meant 198 euro main courses. In other words, a main course that costs more than an entire meal at Per Se.
It had escaped my attention, though, that Klein's diabolically bad food blog, the Internet Food Association, also includes blogging by Matt Yglesias. In this post, he makes a reasonable point about a Slate column (i.e., the column is pointless and doesn't match its title) and then adds the equally reasonable observation that France is blessed by an "extremely high level of pedestrian food". Yes, certainly true. Pate, bread, cheese, hams, vegetables of very high quality, milk, butter, cheap bistros, surely. But no! Yglesias was actually referring to "Vietnamese restaurants and falafel shops that would be huge sensations in the United States".
What is Yglesias even talking about? First, the falafel and Vietnamese in Paris are fine, but pretty plain. This is what you eat in Paris when, after the sixth round of epoisse in three days washed down with pork rilettes, you realize that if you eat any more French food you might die. But in fact the great weakness of Paris as a food city, if a weakness it has, it that its ethnic offerings are far more narrow than some of its competitors, and mostly not as good. (See, New York, London). Putting aside the two supposed examples Yglesias gives, the Chinese food is execrable. There is little Indian. Little Thai. Little really good sushi, and the median of sushi is lower. I could probably write dozens of pages on this topic and not exhaust the point. But the real point is that all this is irrelevant. Paris is one of the greatest food cities in the world because of French food. As you might imagine.
Moreover, sensations in the United States? Yglesias, as far as I know, lives about half an hour from what is arguably the locus of Vietnamese cooking in America. Paris's Vietnamese restaurants would be sensations in that area in the sense that they would be flops, made sensational by the fact that they were flopped French vietnamese restaurants. And the idea that one gets exceptional falafel in Paris, so exceptional that those are the things you would mention as examples of good food in Paris - it's not really clear to me how to respond to that. He's wrong. It's as if I said one goes to DC for falafels. Put another way, wrong.
EDIT: Also, as to the substantive point of the Slate article, it is true that French food has declined in quality in the past decade. This has nothing, in my view, to do with Michelin, which after all could only concievably cause a decline in the highest of the high (the Michelin-is-hamstringing-France argument goes something like this - France can't have its own Momofuku because of the Michelin Guide's requirement that a 3-star restaurant be opulent, and therefore its higher end cuisine is staid and falling behind America and Spain) but with a decline in French taste.
Having said that, I do think now is not the time to be serving 130 euro main courses.
EDIT 2: I meant 198 euro main courses. In other words, a main course that costs more than an entire meal at Per Se.
6/25/2009
Green Chartreuse
We had a midweek escapade at Death & Co. tonight. The drinks were as usual terrific, and we got face to face with Green Chartreuse, a deeply herbal French liqueur.
As our bartender noted, doing shots of chartreuse is known as being run over by the chartremoose. It is a startling drink, like sipping on a tree infused in greek fire.
As our bartender noted, doing shots of chartreuse is known as being run over by the chartremoose. It is a startling drink, like sipping on a tree infused in greek fire.
Busy, busy
I haven't blogged because I am quite busy with about 5 different things, but I did want to note our visit last night to Company, Jim Lahey's pizza house (my previous visit is here). The pizzas are still good, and still inferior to Motorino's, though I have to say the meatball was extraordinarily flavorful. And I do not quite understand how Lahey gets away with charging $3 for literally one piece of toast with a spread as an appetizer.
Above all, this really is more a bakery than a pizzeria. Lahey's bread is masterful, without question. I wonder whether the right answer here might not be a pizza bianca, without toppings, and a salad. Our simple caprese was, unexpectedly given the season, magnificent.
Above all, this really is more a bakery than a pizzeria. Lahey's bread is masterful, without question. I wonder whether the right answer here might not be a pizza bianca, without toppings, and a salad. Our simple caprese was, unexpectedly given the season, magnificent.
6/18/2009
The Passionate Epicure
I am in the middle of The Passionate Epicure, a 1924 food novel by Marcel Rouf concerning a gourmet by the name of Mr. Dodin-Bouffant.
The novel raises an interesting, cross-genre question for me. I don't have The Lord of the Rings in front of me, but I remember that Bilbo is renowned for having a particularly good table. Dodin-Bouffant, in the book, is thought to be one of the foremost gourmands in France, and that reputation is not for writing or speaking about food, but for the food at home, and his discerning taste in wine and produce.
But in neither case does the gourmand in question actually cook any food. Far from it - most of The Passionate Epicure is about the process of replacing Dodin-Bouffant's deceased chef, a process that goes so poorly that Dodin-Bouffant is almost left with what Rouf paints as a terrible choice between the great gourmand donning the whites and cooking himself, or going to the mediocre restaurant in town. So from what precisely does Dodin-Bouffant's culinary reputation emanate? Picking really good cooks? Making exorbitant criticisms of others chefs? Menu design? (as to this last, the only really famous chapter of The Passionate Epicure is an account of a meal served by Dodin-Bouffant to a travelling European prince).
Why am I writing about this? Because, of course, I would like to have a culinary reputation of Dodin-Bouffant's kind, in my own small way. But the modern model of that is of a highly skilled home cook - read, Richard Olney. It intrigues me that for a man, at least, that model is of fairly recent vintage, and it has replaced an odd form of food mastery.
The novel raises an interesting, cross-genre question for me. I don't have The Lord of the Rings in front of me, but I remember that Bilbo is renowned for having a particularly good table. Dodin-Bouffant, in the book, is thought to be one of the foremost gourmands in France, and that reputation is not for writing or speaking about food, but for the food at home, and his discerning taste in wine and produce.
But in neither case does the gourmand in question actually cook any food. Far from it - most of The Passionate Epicure is about the process of replacing Dodin-Bouffant's deceased chef, a process that goes so poorly that Dodin-Bouffant is almost left with what Rouf paints as a terrible choice between the great gourmand donning the whites and cooking himself, or going to the mediocre restaurant in town. So from what precisely does Dodin-Bouffant's culinary reputation emanate? Picking really good cooks? Making exorbitant criticisms of others chefs? Menu design? (as to this last, the only really famous chapter of The Passionate Epicure is an account of a meal served by Dodin-Bouffant to a travelling European prince).
Why am I writing about this? Because, of course, I would like to have a culinary reputation of Dodin-Bouffant's kind, in my own small way. But the modern model of that is of a highly skilled home cook - read, Richard Olney. It intrigues me that for a man, at least, that model is of fairly recent vintage, and it has replaced an odd form of food mastery.
6/15/2009
Thoughts
The most interesting thing I read today was the offering memorandum from Milk Thistle Farms, LLC. Food savy New Yorkers will know Milk Thistle as the producer of that excellent but super expensive milk in glass jars at Whole Foods and the Union Square Market. Unable to get traditional bank financing, they are apparently trying to get bond financing from the general public. They have their own counsel, and of course I offer no opinion as to their documents, but I do think they need to be quite careful. When you hold yourself out to the public in this way, danger abounds, and bondholders are not powerless.
Weekend Eats
We had some excellent food at home over the weekend. Some details briefly follow:
- I made french fries with the traditional double frying technique, at 350 F followed by a full drying on a sheet pan followed by a second fry at 375. I think the results were terrific, and I found that the peanut oil I used gave them a great flavor.
- I made a quick hamburger bun for the accompanying burger, though I wish I had actually had eggs. On the other hand, cooking is not always about having all the right ingredients, so I substituted some whole fat milk.
- I tried Bittman's tofu chocolate pudding. It was good, but did not make me forget cream.
- We made margaritas on both Saturday and Sunday at home, with Patron Silver, cointreau* and fresh lime juice. We also played around with increasing and decreasing the lime and cointreau, to see how those changes unbalanced the drink. It was very interesting.
* Yes, margaritas are usually made with triple sec. Cointreau, which I suppose is a kind of triple sec, is better.
- Saturday night I decided to do a little "Chipotle/upscale pseudo-Mexican burrito joint" at home. I cooked pinto beans in water until soft and creamy, and brown rice. I brined chicken thighs for extra juiciness, and then marinated in a dry adobo rub. I made guacamole of good avocadoes, and a fresh salsa supplemented with tinned san marazanos to make up for the poor quality of the tomatoes. The last two items got jalepeno too.
The point to make about this meal is that it could be scaled up very easily for a party. It's no more effort to make half a pound of beans than it is to make five pounds of beans, I think.
- I made french fries with the traditional double frying technique, at 350 F followed by a full drying on a sheet pan followed by a second fry at 375. I think the results were terrific, and I found that the peanut oil I used gave them a great flavor.
- I made a quick hamburger bun for the accompanying burger, though I wish I had actually had eggs. On the other hand, cooking is not always about having all the right ingredients, so I substituted some whole fat milk.
- I tried Bittman's tofu chocolate pudding. It was good, but did not make me forget cream.
- We made margaritas on both Saturday and Sunday at home, with Patron Silver, cointreau* and fresh lime juice. We also played around with increasing and decreasing the lime and cointreau, to see how those changes unbalanced the drink. It was very interesting.
* Yes, margaritas are usually made with triple sec. Cointreau, which I suppose is a kind of triple sec, is better.
- Saturday night I decided to do a little "Chipotle/upscale pseudo-Mexican burrito joint" at home. I cooked pinto beans in water until soft and creamy, and brown rice. I brined chicken thighs for extra juiciness, and then marinated in a dry adobo rub. I made guacamole of good avocadoes, and a fresh salsa supplemented with tinned san marazanos to make up for the poor quality of the tomatoes. The last two items got jalepeno too.
The point to make about this meal is that it could be scaled up very easily for a party. It's no more effort to make half a pound of beans than it is to make five pounds of beans, I think.
6/12/2009
Top Chef: Masters
A quick note to laud Top Chef: Masters - judging from the first episode only, won by Hubert Keller, it's a very pleasant, light hearted show. The challenge posed, to cook a three course meal off a hot plate, microwave and toaster oven in a Pomona College dorm room, put these top chefs (and they are top chefs, rather than pseudo top chefs - Christopher Lee especially, who finished in 2nd place, is a New York star) in interesting situations. Keller even ran for the bathroom to refresh his pasta.
All in all, a good laugh.
All in all, a good laugh.
Weekday dinner - pasta with tuna and capers
I had the opportunity to rush out of my job a little earlier than usual last night, and was so delighted to be able to cook during the week for once. Still, even getting home "early" (i.e., 7 pm) doesn't leave much time too cook before it gets too late to eat a lot. So I opted for one of the fastest meals I know - pasta with tuna, onions and capers.
There's literally nothing to this. Slice onions and sautee on medium heat until golden brown. Add garlic. Add half a can of San Marzano tomatoes. Add good italian tuna (the kind in the jar packed in olive oil). Add good, salted capers. Cook your pasta, add to the sauce and cook until the pasta is done, and serve.
Can you make the same dish with normal stewed tomatoes, normal supermarket tuna, and the capers packed in that odd vinegar brine? Obviously. And it will taste really pretty good. I happen to live in Astoria, and there is an excellent Italian deli at the foot of the train station. So I go there rather than the supermarket when I can. But all of those premium ingredients are just the cherry on top of a dish that's always good.
Having said that, the premium italian tuna I'm talking about is exceptional. Dressed with a little lemon and quality olive oil, it's dinner for two with perhaps a tomato salad on the side.
There's literally nothing to this. Slice onions and sautee on medium heat until golden brown. Add garlic. Add half a can of San Marzano tomatoes. Add good italian tuna (the kind in the jar packed in olive oil). Add good, salted capers. Cook your pasta, add to the sauce and cook until the pasta is done, and serve.
Can you make the same dish with normal stewed tomatoes, normal supermarket tuna, and the capers packed in that odd vinegar brine? Obviously. And it will taste really pretty good. I happen to live in Astoria, and there is an excellent Italian deli at the foot of the train station. So I go there rather than the supermarket when I can. But all of those premium ingredients are just the cherry on top of a dish that's always good.
Having said that, the premium italian tuna I'm talking about is exceptional. Dressed with a little lemon and quality olive oil, it's dinner for two with perhaps a tomato salad on the side.
6/10/2009
A puzzle
Here's something I don't understand at all. Why does commercial peanut butter have the same nutritional values (calories and fat, primarily), as peanut butter made of only peanuts?)
I suppose the answer is that the commercial peanut butter producers add oil to equal the fat content of pure peanuts, but it still puzzles me.
I suppose the answer is that the commercial peanut butter producers add oil to equal the fat content of pure peanuts, but it still puzzles me.
6/07/2009
Vegetable Stew
This is my version of Jacques Pepin's grandmother's vegetable stew, normally served as a side dish with roast chicken (as I served it) or fish, or with anything else. There really is no technique here whatever - cut up all the vegetables that are the freshest available, drop them into a pot with some olive oil, and cook for a minute. Add flour to make a sort of roux, cook the roux for a minute, and add water. As it cooks, the stew will thicken.
Pan roasted skate with Salad
There's really nothing difficult here. Extremely fresh skate, roasted briefly in a pan on medium heat. It is served with some very peppery watercress that I tamed with fingerling potatoes and olive oil vinaigrette.
6/04/2009
Birthday 2009
So, yesterday was my 30th birthday - the sort of a milestone best treated with food and drink.
Accordingly, we had lunch at Jean-Georges, not far from my firm at Columbus Circle, followed later by drinks at Death & Co.
Well versed through my reading of various boards in the mysteries of the $28 lunch menu (as everyone says, the best deal in New York), we each ordered a prix fixe, supplemented with a shared foie gras course and a shared dessert. I paired "tastes" (aka 3 oz. pours) of wine with each savoury course.
Before recapitulating the meal, though, I have a sort of mea culpa to make. The last time I visited Jean-Georges was five years ago. While my original post seems to have vanished into the ether, somehow, there is a link to it from another blog. The bottom line is that I didn't like Jean-Georges, and proceeded to badmouth it for the next five years.
It's unclear whether my tastes have changed or matured, or whether JG is somehow better, or what, but my experience yesterday was quite different. As someone at eGullet explained, it's the difference between an awkward summer associate lunch and lunch with your significant other on your birthday. The point, however, is that we thought our lunch was quite wonderful, and at a (for a 3 michelin star restaurant) gentle price.
Some notes follow:
Amuse Bouche: Fresh mozzarella topped with dehydrated pineapple (tasted almost like candy, that), a fritter of peekytoe crab, and a light soup of herbs. This last was refreshing and especially delicious, all fragrant aroma and light flavor.
1st course:
My soup of young garlic with frog's legs is the kind of thing I could eat every day and never tire of. It reeked, if one could possibly use that word of something so civilized, of garlic made elegant, dotted with micro greens. The frog's legs were perfect drumsticks, with the delicate flesh that characterizes frog entirely unobscured. Of course, one could just as easily eat this soup with snails, on a kebab perhaps (dip snail. Eat).
There's not quite as much to say about my fiancee's ribbons of tuna. This was thick ribbons of extremely fresh, raw, tuna, dressed with a cold, spicy, ginger sauce atop avocado puree. Preferable by far to some very expensive sushi we have had in New York in freshness and stridency of flavor. The ginger sauce was magnificent.
Wine: Trimbach Riesling. A dependable, affordable riesling I've had many times before (perhaps $15 a bottle at retail?), and it was as good as ever.
Second Course: We shared the famed foie gras brulee, as I was not in a mood to ingest a full foie gras course, and yet was still unwilling to forgoe it because the foie gras was the main source of my ire five years ago. It is a classic torchon of foie gras, whipped, forced into a cylinder, and poached, but then given sweetness with a crispy creme brulee top, and served with a sharp pineapple meyer lemon jam. On my previous visit, I had been overwhelmed by sweet and fat. This time, we were delighted, and whether it was the exceptional 2003 1er cru Chassagne-Montrachet white bordeaux we drank with it ($12.50 for the 3 oz. pour), which paired exceptionally well with the liver, or the fact that I was in a better mood, or whether simply because I only ate half, my impression of the course was completely different.
Third Course:
I like skate, the fish, very much, and indeed had cooked it at home just a day or two ago (pictures to come, eventually), and so I jumped on the opportunity to order skate with Jean-Georges justly famous chateau chalon sauce, a classic wine reduction lightened in the usual JG style to be almost refreshing. This is a great dish.
My fiancee had veal, cooked just au point, with a veal jus reduction. Nothing surprising here, but still extremely well executed and delicious.
Wine: I have forgotten the wine, other than the fact that it was from Bergerac. A strongly tannic red which softened under the dual sauces to soft deliciousness.
Dessert: We shared "chocolate", which paired a perfectly decent molten chocolate cake with exceptionally good vanilla ice cream and a peppermint broth, which was by far the most interesting part of the dessert. I would eat the broth alone, dotted perhaps with chocolate nibs, in far greater quantity than the other two components of the dessert. It tasted of mint ice cream, somehow, yet uncluttered with the flavors of cream and eggs.
We took a brief pit stop in my office at work, to digest and jabber, and then went off to our second stop for the evening, the ever fantastic Death & Co. on east 6th street. There, after suffering in between two tables of screaming banshees (the one talking in the loudest possible voices about a topic I could not understand, and the others comparing their experiences smoking hashish), we escaped to the bar for our second drinks. There, we met Greg Boehm of Mud Puddle Books, which certainly appears to be the premier republisher of old cocktilian books in America, whose dedication to cocktails is inspiring in the way that a devotee of anything is inspiring. Talking to Greg is like talking to a great baker or cobbler or someone of that sort, all combined with an adventuresome businessman. We also took the opportunity to jabber to the bartender as he made me an Oxacaca Old Fashioned, all peat and smoke, and my fiancee her new favorite drink, a City of Gold Sling. This all led to a discussion of my father's standby cocktail, the Singapore Sling, and how recipes for that drink have shifted and modulated over the years, with changes in taste and even changes in the recipes for gins.
Two terrific tips for ordering in a cocktail bar I gathered last night:
You ought to be able to order something interesting in any bar by specifying either "dark or light" and "shaken or stirred". The first indicates to the bartender whether you want rye or whiskey or light rum or dark, or whatever. The second indicates whether you want citrus or not, as citrus based drinks are shaken. I think I am usually a dark stirred person, though I love orange in my drinks (whether as bitters or as a twist or whatever).
Second, you can always ask a bar tender to make you something from the menu for which he is responsible. As it was explained to me, if the bartender's own drink is on the menu, you're likely to get his or her best effort.
Accordingly, we had lunch at Jean-Georges, not far from my firm at Columbus Circle, followed later by drinks at Death & Co.
Well versed through my reading of various boards in the mysteries of the $28 lunch menu (as everyone says, the best deal in New York), we each ordered a prix fixe, supplemented with a shared foie gras course and a shared dessert. I paired "tastes" (aka 3 oz. pours) of wine with each savoury course.
Before recapitulating the meal, though, I have a sort of mea culpa to make. The last time I visited Jean-Georges was five years ago. While my original post seems to have vanished into the ether, somehow, there is a link to it from another blog. The bottom line is that I didn't like Jean-Georges, and proceeded to badmouth it for the next five years.
It's unclear whether my tastes have changed or matured, or whether JG is somehow better, or what, but my experience yesterday was quite different. As someone at eGullet explained, it's the difference between an awkward summer associate lunch and lunch with your significant other on your birthday. The point, however, is that we thought our lunch was quite wonderful, and at a (for a 3 michelin star restaurant) gentle price.
Some notes follow:
Amuse Bouche: Fresh mozzarella topped with dehydrated pineapple (tasted almost like candy, that), a fritter of peekytoe crab, and a light soup of herbs. This last was refreshing and especially delicious, all fragrant aroma and light flavor.
1st course:
My soup of young garlic with frog's legs is the kind of thing I could eat every day and never tire of. It reeked, if one could possibly use that word of something so civilized, of garlic made elegant, dotted with micro greens. The frog's legs were perfect drumsticks, with the delicate flesh that characterizes frog entirely unobscured. Of course, one could just as easily eat this soup with snails, on a kebab perhaps (dip snail. Eat).
There's not quite as much to say about my fiancee's ribbons of tuna. This was thick ribbons of extremely fresh, raw, tuna, dressed with a cold, spicy, ginger sauce atop avocado puree. Preferable by far to some very expensive sushi we have had in New York in freshness and stridency of flavor. The ginger sauce was magnificent.
Wine: Trimbach Riesling. A dependable, affordable riesling I've had many times before (perhaps $15 a bottle at retail?), and it was as good as ever.
Second Course: We shared the famed foie gras brulee, as I was not in a mood to ingest a full foie gras course, and yet was still unwilling to forgoe it because the foie gras was the main source of my ire five years ago. It is a classic torchon of foie gras, whipped, forced into a cylinder, and poached, but then given sweetness with a crispy creme brulee top, and served with a sharp pineapple meyer lemon jam. On my previous visit, I had been overwhelmed by sweet and fat. This time, we were delighted, and whether it was the exceptional 2003 1er cru Chassagne-Montrachet white bordeaux we drank with it ($12.50 for the 3 oz. pour), which paired exceptionally well with the liver, or the fact that I was in a better mood, or whether simply because I only ate half, my impression of the course was completely different.
Third Course:
I like skate, the fish, very much, and indeed had cooked it at home just a day or two ago (pictures to come, eventually), and so I jumped on the opportunity to order skate with Jean-Georges justly famous chateau chalon sauce, a classic wine reduction lightened in the usual JG style to be almost refreshing. This is a great dish.
My fiancee had veal, cooked just au point, with a veal jus reduction. Nothing surprising here, but still extremely well executed and delicious.
Wine: I have forgotten the wine, other than the fact that it was from Bergerac. A strongly tannic red which softened under the dual sauces to soft deliciousness.
Dessert: We shared "chocolate", which paired a perfectly decent molten chocolate cake with exceptionally good vanilla ice cream and a peppermint broth, which was by far the most interesting part of the dessert. I would eat the broth alone, dotted perhaps with chocolate nibs, in far greater quantity than the other two components of the dessert. It tasted of mint ice cream, somehow, yet uncluttered with the flavors of cream and eggs.
We took a brief pit stop in my office at work, to digest and jabber, and then went off to our second stop for the evening, the ever fantastic Death & Co. on east 6th street. There, after suffering in between two tables of screaming banshees (the one talking in the loudest possible voices about a topic I could not understand, and the others comparing their experiences smoking hashish), we escaped to the bar for our second drinks. There, we met Greg Boehm of Mud Puddle Books, which certainly appears to be the premier republisher of old cocktilian books in America, whose dedication to cocktails is inspiring in the way that a devotee of anything is inspiring. Talking to Greg is like talking to a great baker or cobbler or someone of that sort, all combined with an adventuresome businessman. We also took the opportunity to jabber to the bartender as he made me an Oxacaca Old Fashioned, all peat and smoke, and my fiancee her new favorite drink, a City of Gold Sling. This all led to a discussion of my father's standby cocktail, the Singapore Sling, and how recipes for that drink have shifted and modulated over the years, with changes in taste and even changes in the recipes for gins.
Two terrific tips for ordering in a cocktail bar I gathered last night:
You ought to be able to order something interesting in any bar by specifying either "dark or light" and "shaken or stirred". The first indicates to the bartender whether you want rye or whiskey or light rum or dark, or whatever. The second indicates whether you want citrus or not, as citrus based drinks are shaken. I think I am usually a dark stirred person, though I love orange in my drinks (whether as bitters or as a twist or whatever).
Second, you can always ask a bar tender to make you something from the menu for which he is responsible. As it was explained to me, if the bartender's own drink is on the menu, you're likely to get his or her best effort.
6/01/2009
Steak
"It smells a little like a dog"?
{Sniff}
"Yes, but a tasty dog".
That was our conversation on Sunday, as my meat-splurge of the week, a 24 ounce dry aged rib eye from Christos Steakhouse, came off my grill at home. It's true that real dry aging gives meat a bit of a funk, and if you do nothing but inhale, the aroma can be a little heady (like blue cheese or a mushroom, I'd say). But cooked, the flavor is absolutely worth it.
In fact, I'm now more and more convinced that eating a steak in a restaurant is a waste of time, if what you are after is food rather than simply a convivial place to sit. As long as you have a good butcher, or some availability of really good beef (or lamb, or whatever), there is literally nothing more to cooking it than putting it in a pan or a grill on medium heat*, leaving it there for some period, and then flipping for another period of cooking. Sure, if you want, you can get fancy and baste it with butter or whatever else. But when you're dealing with a prime dry aged rib eye, that seems like a waste of time to me. And I'll take my sides over a steakhouse's anyday.
We enjoyed our steak with a $7 bottle of Three Knights merlot from Trader Joe Wine Shop. A very pleasant, drinkable, wine.
* I have given up entirely on the "get the pan/grill piping hot and sear the steak to a crisp" school of cookery (as I foreshadowed here). First, juices do not "seal", no matter how much you char the exterior. The maillard reaction flavors you want, and the thick, crunchy, crust, can be achieved without all the smoke and to-do of a piping hot pan. A medium sizzle does just as well. Second, I can get perfect medium, medium-rare with this technique, with even cooking on both sides of the meat. That's a challenge with the flamethrower technique others recommend. Third, this gives me lots of time to make a salad, while the steak is pan roasting.
** Caveat: I suppose with a thin steak, you'd still want to apply a slightly higher heat, as it might cook before you get it crusty.
{Sniff}
"Yes, but a tasty dog".
That was our conversation on Sunday, as my meat-splurge of the week, a 24 ounce dry aged rib eye from Christos Steakhouse, came off my grill at home. It's true that real dry aging gives meat a bit of a funk, and if you do nothing but inhale, the aroma can be a little heady (like blue cheese or a mushroom, I'd say). But cooked, the flavor is absolutely worth it.
In fact, I'm now more and more convinced that eating a steak in a restaurant is a waste of time, if what you are after is food rather than simply a convivial place to sit. As long as you have a good butcher, or some availability of really good beef (or lamb, or whatever), there is literally nothing more to cooking it than putting it in a pan or a grill on medium heat*, leaving it there for some period, and then flipping for another period of cooking. Sure, if you want, you can get fancy and baste it with butter or whatever else. But when you're dealing with a prime dry aged rib eye, that seems like a waste of time to me. And I'll take my sides over a steakhouse's anyday.
We enjoyed our steak with a $7 bottle of Three Knights merlot from Trader Joe Wine Shop. A very pleasant, drinkable, wine.
* I have given up entirely on the "get the pan/grill piping hot and sear the steak to a crisp" school of cookery (as I foreshadowed here). First, juices do not "seal", no matter how much you char the exterior. The maillard reaction flavors you want, and the thick, crunchy, crust, can be achieved without all the smoke and to-do of a piping hot pan. A medium sizzle does just as well. Second, I can get perfect medium, medium-rare with this technique, with even cooking on both sides of the meat. That's a challenge with the flamethrower technique others recommend. Third, this gives me lots of time to make a salad, while the steak is pan roasting.
** Caveat: I suppose with a thin steak, you'd still want to apply a slightly higher heat, as it might cook before you get it crusty.
5/28/2009
Excess
I think Michael White of new hype machine restaurant Marea ought to be a little embarrased to be selling four morels stuffed with shrimp for $21 as an antipasto. Come on.
Hamburgers
We were invited to a family barbecue this past weekend, and I knew that all the Armenian holiday food bases would be covered (i.e., kebabs). But given the nature of the holiday, I decided to take some burgers and a berry tart along as well.
I'll have pictures of both eventually. For now, I'll say that I ground the meat for the burger myself from a mix of choice chuck and hangar steak. I love hangar, and it gave the resulting burgers a deeper less purely fatty taste than chuck alone. They were cooked, obviously, over coals.
The tart was just as simple. I made a quick cookie dough (3 oz flour, 3 oz butter, 2 tB ice water) rolled it out in a square and baked until golden. While it was baking, I made a simple pastry cream, or creme patissiere (any recipe will do, except that I think whole milk is essential). Once everything had cooled, I spread the cookie crust with cream, and covered the whole with semi-tart blackberries. The perfect light dessert.
I'll have pictures of both eventually. For now, I'll say that I ground the meat for the burger myself from a mix of choice chuck and hangar steak. I love hangar, and it gave the resulting burgers a deeper less purely fatty taste than chuck alone. They were cooked, obviously, over coals.
The tart was just as simple. I made a quick cookie dough (3 oz flour, 3 oz butter, 2 tB ice water) rolled it out in a square and baked until golden. While it was baking, I made a simple pastry cream, or creme patissiere (any recipe will do, except that I think whole milk is essential). Once everything had cooled, I spread the cookie crust with cream, and covered the whole with semi-tart blackberries. The perfect light dessert.
5/23/2009
Pizza
There's little I enjoy more in the world of cookery than making either bread or neapolitan pizza at home. On Thursday, I started some pizza dough following Jim Lahey's no knead recipe,which is here.
To be honest, the only difference between his recipe and the one I've commonly used is the long, warm, rising time and the proportion (or ratio, if we're channeling Michael Ruhlman) of water to flour. Of course, aside from that, how's the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Those are the building blocks of true breads and doughs (i.e., ones that aren't littered with seeds and grains and nuts and raisins).
The resulting dough is extremely difficult to handle (as Lahey himself says). It is wet, and shaggy, like a ciabatta left to soak in a light mist. But it produces some amazing flavor - really amazing flavor. And yes, as the menu as Co., Lahey's pizzeria, says, "our pies are not always round."
Now if I could only get my oven and stone above 550.
UPDATE: Yes, the picture stinks. Blackberry, and it's rotated. I'll fix it later.
UPDATE 2: Cheese is buffalo mozzarella. Sauce is canned italian cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil. None of it cooked.
Cooking method - on a baking stone in an oven cranked up to the max for an hour prior to baking. You are trying to duplicate a 900 degree Italian pizza oven, or at least get as close as possible.
5/22/2009
The debate
Beyond all the anti-Cheney fear mongering, the debate between the President and former Vice President Cheney is actually very good substantively. One wishes, perhaps, that it had happened earlier.
5/21/2009
Per Se
I have a one sided feud with Ezra Klein as it relates to food (see here and here and here and here) which can be summed up with the observation that I think he understands nothing about food or cooking or agriculture or anything at all related to eating. Underneath it all, I suspect it is my jealousy that his (I'm sure deserved) platform in political writing lets him babble nonsensically about food.
Anyway, the latest episode is here, wherein I comment on Klein's ridiculous "review" of Per Se.
-----------
I think people’s problem with this review is not that Per Se can’t be criticized or that it can’t have an off night or whatever. Of course, a $275 meal is to be held to the highest standards, and you are free to dislike a Per Se meal.
The problem with this review is that its criticisms aren’t particularly credible. Sentences like the following, for example, do not build confidence: “My cheese course came with cold potatoes and haricot verts that tasted like something you pick up at Whole Foods and bring to a picnic”.
Well, no. There may well have been something to criticize about that dish, but that the garnishes tasted like something from Whole Foods is probably not it. It is no good to say in response that that’s how it tasted *to you*. If so, then you are either wrong, or someone had snuck me into Per Se to cook that night.
Or how about this sentence: “One of my tablemates complained that my dessert tasted like a car air freshener (I didn’t think it quite that bad — but I thought it bad)”. Again – really? That’s just not a plausible description of a Per Se dessert. It’s like someone writing that cutting taxing (sic) always produces more tax revenue and then being puzzled when people disagree.
Anyway, the latest episode is here, wherein I comment on Klein's ridiculous "review" of Per Se.
-----------
I think people’s problem with this review is not that Per Se can’t be criticized or that it can’t have an off night or whatever. Of course, a $275 meal is to be held to the highest standards, and you are free to dislike a Per Se meal.
The problem with this review is that its criticisms aren’t particularly credible. Sentences like the following, for example, do not build confidence: “My cheese course came with cold potatoes and haricot verts that tasted like something you pick up at Whole Foods and bring to a picnic”.
Well, no. There may well have been something to criticize about that dish, but that the garnishes tasted like something from Whole Foods is probably not it. It is no good to say in response that that’s how it tasted *to you*. If so, then you are either wrong, or someone had snuck me into Per Se to cook that night.
Or how about this sentence: “One of my tablemates complained that my dessert tasted like a car air freshener (I didn’t think it quite that bad — but I thought it bad)”. Again – really? That’s just not a plausible description of a Per Se dessert. It’s like someone writing that cutting taxing (sic) always produces more tax revenue and then being puzzled when people disagree.
5/20/2009
Sietsema about Frank Bruni
I asked Tom Sietsema about Frank Bruni in a web chat. I think he's said this before, but here's the exchange in any case:
NYC: As we New Yorkers quiver gelatinously in anticipation of the new New York Times critic, do you have any valedictory words for or about Frank Bruni?
Tom Sietsema: I'm friends with Frank. He's just as funny/clever/smart in person as he is in print, and I'll miss reading his food prose. On the other hand, I can't wait to see what he has in store for us in the Times' Sunday Magazine.
NYC: As we New Yorkers quiver gelatinously in anticipation of the new New York Times critic, do you have any valedictory words for or about Frank Bruni?
Tom Sietsema: I'm friends with Frank. He's just as funny/clever/smart in person as he is in print, and I'll miss reading his food prose. On the other hand, I can't wait to see what he has in store for us in the Times' Sunday Magazine.
Credit Card Woes
I noticed this article explaining that credit card companies may start squeezing good customers (good, meaning customers who don't use a lot of credit and who pay their bills) in order to recoup profits they're losing by being more fair to everyone else.
I understand the impulse, but this is an extremely stupid idea. Note to credit card company people - those good customers, who have cash for all their purchases but just use credit cards because it is in fact a good deal? Umm, they'll pay with a debit card.
I understand the impulse, but this is an extremely stupid idea. Note to credit card company people - those good customers, who have cash for all their purchases but just use credit cards because it is in fact a good deal? Umm, they'll pay with a debit card.
5/19/2009
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 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.
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.
5/15/2009
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.
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.
5/13/2009
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.
5/12/2009
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.
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.
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.
5/11/2009
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}
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}
5/07/2009
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.
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.
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.
5/05/2009
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.
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.
5/02/2009
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.
-----------------------------
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.
4/29/2009
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.
4/27/2009
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.
(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.
4/22/2009
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 . . .
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 . . .
4/21/2009
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.
"Last Meal: Corned beef sandwiches on onion rolls. Home cooking is boring."
My answer - yes, if you don't bother to cook.
4/20/2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
4/13/2009
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".
* 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!
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!
4/08/2009
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.
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.
4/07/2009
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.
4/06/2009
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).
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.
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.
4/03/2009
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.
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.
4/01/2009
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.
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.
3/30/2009
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.
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.
3/29/2009
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.
* 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.
3/27/2009
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?
3/24/2009
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.
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.
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.
Important note: Escolar is said to have Olestra like effects on your, well, intestines. Keep consumption under 3 or 4 ounces to be safe.
3/19/2009
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.
In the reading queue now is Peter Singer's The Life You can Save, and Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance.
3/18/2009
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.
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.
3/17/2009
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.
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.
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.
3/16/2009
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.
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