Is it better to have ordered the insipid black bass and root vegetables everyone else ordered, or was I right to order the amazing langoustine pasta, even though I cannot even imagine how much flavor sat mocking me in the plate as I realized that grinding the shells in my mouth and sucking the roe from what was left over might give the potential summer associate I was interviewing the wrong idea?
Eh, I still think I did the right thing.
10/19/2008
10/18/2008
Every man a king
The problem with various people's anger about Obama's "spread the wealth" theory is that our putatively right wing government has spent the last month betraying capitalism. I find myself a lot more sanguine about Obama's leftism when we've got worse already.
10/14/2008
Amish pork and apples
I also cooked while up in Lake George. Given that apples and apple ciders were everywhere, I made a dish I remember from an excellent amish cookbook - pork chops with apples and cider. The technique is easy enough, befitting its amish roots. All you need to do is cook the pork chops in a pan with a little oil until well browned, remove from the pan, remove and drain, and then cook cored, thick, apple slices in the same pan until about as brown as the pork. You deglaze with apple cider, add the pork back into the pan, and cook for about 20 minutes until the cider has reduced to a sauce and the pork is ready. You can always thicken the cider with cream, but I think that makes it swing a little too far towards dessert.
Lake George - The Sagamore
We visited the charming resort town of Lake George over the long weekend. It's a favorite of my fiancee - a sort of old-timey vacation spot in a beautiful setting. On Saturday night, we stopped by the one fancy hotel in the area for a drink, and let ourselves get talked into the Risotto of Braised Veal Cheeks and Mascarpone. The dish hit the spot with our wine (I was quite taken with the Willamette Pinot Noir I was drinking), but only in an appetizer portion, and only shared. The idea of eating an entire portion of something so over-the-top fatty as that risotto would make me ill.
* They also messed up my bill, and I missed it when paying. That will have to be fixed.
* They also messed up my bill, and I missed it when paying. That will have to be fixed.
10/09/2008
Matsugen
We had a delightful meal at Matsugen in Tribeca last night, which is owned in part by Jean-Georges Vongrerichten, but run in fact by others.
Complaints first - overmuch staffing, little coordinated. We were left menu-less for 10 minutes. A little expensive, if you venture outside the soba. A slightly "too cool for you" feel.
But none of that distracts too much from the food, which for us included some freshly made tofu (like night and day, in terms of texture, when compared to store-bought stuff) topped with a soy and dashi sauce, and soba soup with fried tofu and scallions. The broth was both sweet and complex, and the noodles we had (the flour for which is ground in the back) have a satisfying bite and flavor. Altogether delicious - I could have eaten at least another bowl.
Complaints first - overmuch staffing, little coordinated. We were left menu-less for 10 minutes. A little expensive, if you venture outside the soba. A slightly "too cool for you" feel.
But none of that distracts too much from the food, which for us included some freshly made tofu (like night and day, in terms of texture, when compared to store-bought stuff) topped with a soy and dashi sauce, and soba soup with fried tofu and scallions. The broth was both sweet and complex, and the noodles we had (the flour for which is ground in the back) have a satisfying bite and flavor. Altogether delicious - I could have eaten at least another bowl.
10/06/2008
Alinea Cookbook
This is a tale of shattered expectations. Well, perhaps not that dramatic, but shattered somethings, at least.
I got the Alinea cookbook at the end of September, and spent the next few days leafing through it with anticipation. It is full of fascinating looking food products. Caramel mixed with some chemical in order to look like rubble. Kumquat jelly. Parrafin wax bowls filled with cold potato veloute and topped with skewers of potato somethings. The problem is that most of the cookbook requires ingredients so exotic that I wouldn't know where to get them, much less how to use them. Not exotic as in truffle, just to be clear, but exotic like Ultra-Tex 3.
After much leafing, I finally found a recipe that seemed achievable. Poached pork tenderloin served with fennel, sage pudding, corn bread puree, grapefruit, honey, and sous vide pork shoulder shredded into strands as if for pulled pork, and then fried in a disk shape until "puffed" (all this as a garnish). The only exotic ingredient was agar agar, which I both have and happen to know how to use.
I embarked on the recipe with the most enigmatic ingredient first, the sage pudding. I boiled water, sugar and salt with sage leaves, and let the mixture steep for 20 minutes, yielding a pale green infusion. I strained the mixture through a chinois, and then brought it to a boil for exactly a minute and a half with 10 g of agar agar. The now weirdly gummy mixture went through a chinois again to strain out any unmelted agar agar, and then sat to cool until solid. Once that happened, I ran the mixture through my food processor on "blend" until I had exactly the smooth pudding I was supposed to get.
At which point I tasted my much slaved over concoction.
I leave open entirely the possibility that I did this all wrong. That my mixture of sugar and salt was off, or that I put too much sage or something. But to my palate, the verdict on this pudding was unmistakeable. There was just no reason that I would choose to eat this thing on my own. None. It was oddly sweet, and salty in all the wrong places. The sage was overwhelming. The mouth-feel a gloppy, thin, slime, like what I imagine astronaut food to be like. I couldn't imagine how it could complement pork.
But putting all that aside, I soldiered on with the corn bread puree. I made the extremely fatty corn bread required by the cookbook (honestly, the best corn bread, for me, has very little sugar and fat, but this was corn cake), and then enriched it further with even more cream and butter as I was processing it into a puree. The result wasn't as disappointing as the sage pudding, which was wretched, but still wasn't something that I thought accomplished anything more than some plain corn bread with honied butter would have.
By this point, I was tired. And not enthused about eating the meal, so I gave up and we went out for some pizza instead. Over pizza, I sat thinking about the larger implications of my failure.
Of course, I'm going to keep working away at the Alinea cookbook when I have the time. It's a gorgeous volume, filled with intriguing things. The larger question, however, is about the entire Alinea project. As I've said before, we're living in a moment now of almost unprecedented advances in local, organic, free-range, traditional farming (add whatever adjectives you will). Micro-farms are turning out the best food we've had in America since before people invented chemicals. Restaurants that feast on that amazing diversity of production are not only flourishing, but multiplying. But at the same time, the most talked about restaurants in the world are restaurants like Alinea, and El Bulli, restaurants at which the quality of the natural ingredients appears to be almost of no consequence, and the benefits of local, organic, free-range, traditional farming entirely undercut by the intentional adulteration of perfectly good food with a chemistry lab worth of industrially produced molecules with nature defying properties. The closest analague to the food these restaurants serve isn't Per Se, but the Taco Bell in the futuristic filmDemolition Man.
It is no good to say in response that salt is a chemical too, like some defenders of this new "cookery" do. It is a chemical, true, and it has seemingly miraculous properties. But you can go to the sea and get salt, by getting some water and letting it evaporate. It is a fruit of the earth. Ultra-Tex 3 is the fruit of the lab. It is exactly the sort of thing that people who love food have been trying to banish for the past two decades, and yet here it is, in beloved restaurants.
I fear, honestly, that our food is going to look more and more like ultra-tex than like the farm, and the best farmed products become more expensive, and chemicals are even better understood by chefs. In that context, I'm going to keep grappling with this new food to see if I can discover some sympathy for it. Obviously, a part of it will be to eat some of this stuff made by people who love cooking this way. But at this point, I feel like the new gastronomy is a frankenstein-ian step backwards along a path we'd been hiking positively for more than two decades, and I wish it would go away.
I got the Alinea cookbook at the end of September, and spent the next few days leafing through it with anticipation. It is full of fascinating looking food products. Caramel mixed with some chemical in order to look like rubble. Kumquat jelly. Parrafin wax bowls filled with cold potato veloute and topped with skewers of potato somethings. The problem is that most of the cookbook requires ingredients so exotic that I wouldn't know where to get them, much less how to use them. Not exotic as in truffle, just to be clear, but exotic like Ultra-Tex 3.
After much leafing, I finally found a recipe that seemed achievable. Poached pork tenderloin served with fennel, sage pudding, corn bread puree, grapefruit, honey, and sous vide pork shoulder shredded into strands as if for pulled pork, and then fried in a disk shape until "puffed" (all this as a garnish). The only exotic ingredient was agar agar, which I both have and happen to know how to use.
I embarked on the recipe with the most enigmatic ingredient first, the sage pudding. I boiled water, sugar and salt with sage leaves, and let the mixture steep for 20 minutes, yielding a pale green infusion. I strained the mixture through a chinois, and then brought it to a boil for exactly a minute and a half with 10 g of agar agar. The now weirdly gummy mixture went through a chinois again to strain out any unmelted agar agar, and then sat to cool until solid. Once that happened, I ran the mixture through my food processor on "blend" until I had exactly the smooth pudding I was supposed to get.
At which point I tasted my much slaved over concoction.
I leave open entirely the possibility that I did this all wrong. That my mixture of sugar and salt was off, or that I put too much sage or something. But to my palate, the verdict on this pudding was unmistakeable. There was just no reason that I would choose to eat this thing on my own. None. It was oddly sweet, and salty in all the wrong places. The sage was overwhelming. The mouth-feel a gloppy, thin, slime, like what I imagine astronaut food to be like. I couldn't imagine how it could complement pork.
But putting all that aside, I soldiered on with the corn bread puree. I made the extremely fatty corn bread required by the cookbook (honestly, the best corn bread, for me, has very little sugar and fat, but this was corn cake), and then enriched it further with even more cream and butter as I was processing it into a puree. The result wasn't as disappointing as the sage pudding, which was wretched, but still wasn't something that I thought accomplished anything more than some plain corn bread with honied butter would have.
By this point, I was tired. And not enthused about eating the meal, so I gave up and we went out for some pizza instead. Over pizza, I sat thinking about the larger implications of my failure.
Of course, I'm going to keep working away at the Alinea cookbook when I have the time. It's a gorgeous volume, filled with intriguing things. The larger question, however, is about the entire Alinea project. As I've said before, we're living in a moment now of almost unprecedented advances in local, organic, free-range, traditional farming (add whatever adjectives you will). Micro-farms are turning out the best food we've had in America since before people invented chemicals. Restaurants that feast on that amazing diversity of production are not only flourishing, but multiplying. But at the same time, the most talked about restaurants in the world are restaurants like Alinea, and El Bulli, restaurants at which the quality of the natural ingredients appears to be almost of no consequence, and the benefits of local, organic, free-range, traditional farming entirely undercut by the intentional adulteration of perfectly good food with a chemistry lab worth of industrially produced molecules with nature defying properties. The closest analague to the food these restaurants serve isn't Per Se, but the Taco Bell in the futuristic filmDemolition Man.
It is no good to say in response that salt is a chemical too, like some defenders of this new "cookery" do. It is a chemical, true, and it has seemingly miraculous properties. But you can go to the sea and get salt, by getting some water and letting it evaporate. It is a fruit of the earth. Ultra-Tex 3 is the fruit of the lab. It is exactly the sort of thing that people who love food have been trying to banish for the past two decades, and yet here it is, in beloved restaurants.
I fear, honestly, that our food is going to look more and more like ultra-tex than like the farm, and the best farmed products become more expensive, and chemicals are even better understood by chefs. In that context, I'm going to keep grappling with this new food to see if I can discover some sympathy for it. Obviously, a part of it will be to eat some of this stuff made by people who love cooking this way. But at this point, I feel like the new gastronomy is a frankenstein-ian step backwards along a path we'd been hiking positively for more than two decades, and I wish it would go away.
9/30/2008
Beet Salad
I had a marvelous beet salad at Insieme today, an understated Italian restaurant with a big reputation among food people in New York. The combination of yellow beets with oranges and salted, baked, hazelnuts was perfect, well matched with the slices of ricota salata on top. I will have to pair this with some pork, maybe, this weekend.
Alinea
The new Alinea cookbook was waiting for me at work today. I'm normally not one for these big coffee table cookbooks (more food po$n than food thought), but Alinea is so interesting that I felt I had to have it. Plus, at $31.50 from Amazon, it's a good deal for so many great photographs.
I've started to flip through it now. The first thing that struck me was Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, talking about El Bulli, in Spain (where Achatz spent a three day stage, or internship):
"It was almost as if I was on a different planet. There's nobody butchering meat, there's no veal stock simmering, there are no saute pans."
And this was a good thing?
I've started to flip through it now. The first thing that struck me was Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, talking about El Bulli, in Spain (where Achatz spent a three day stage, or internship):
"It was almost as if I was on a different planet. There's nobody butchering meat, there's no veal stock simmering, there are no saute pans."
And this was a good thing?
9/28/2008
Best grass-fed beef ever
We had the best grass-fed beef I've had in this country last night - an organic, grass fed filet from Citarella. So let's go over the caveats. Yes, it's from very far away. And yes, it's tenderloin, which I usually dislike. Oh, and it's expensive ($29.98 a pound).
But grass feeding and finishing lends the usually insipid tenderloin some new flavors, while the tenderloin gives you the latitude to cook the steak extremely rare, which helps the tenderloin. As for expensive, you only really need 12 ounces for two people - that is, about $20 bucks. Sure, that's a lot of money for a steak. But any entree in any restaurant we'd go to is more. So I poured the extra money into some excellent 2005 bordeaux instead.
* A quick note on cooking technique for steaks. I don't have any secrets. Just get a properly conductive pan really screaming hot with a little oil, open the windows and the fans, and let 'er rip. Turn the meat rarely, and let a proper crust develop. And make sure to let the meat rest when it comes out of the pan - the difference in the internal color (grey and flabby, without resting, and a consistent pink, with resting) and flavor is worth the five minutes of extra time.
But grass feeding and finishing lends the usually insipid tenderloin some new flavors, while the tenderloin gives you the latitude to cook the steak extremely rare, which helps the tenderloin. As for expensive, you only really need 12 ounces for two people - that is, about $20 bucks. Sure, that's a lot of money for a steak. But any entree in any restaurant we'd go to is more. So I poured the extra money into some excellent 2005 bordeaux instead.
* A quick note on cooking technique for steaks. I don't have any secrets. Just get a properly conductive pan really screaming hot with a little oil, open the windows and the fans, and let 'er rip. Turn the meat rarely, and let a proper crust develop. And make sure to let the meat rest when it comes out of the pan - the difference in the internal color (grey and flabby, without resting, and a consistent pink, with resting) and flavor is worth the five minutes of extra time.
Pimenton Redux
Pimenton with Halibut (or rather, halibut with pimenton, though the mistake is meaningful) turns out to be incredibly delicious. Not only does the deep red, smoky, spice give the fish an unexpected flavor, but the visuals of a pimenton laced halibut steak are terrific. We had the halibut, which I cooked on my griddle (if a plancha is good enough for restaurants, its good enough for me) with my usual fishy potato salad - boiled potatoes, mustard vinaigrette, sliced green onions, and parsley.
9/26/2008
Pimenton
I don't always agree with Mark Bittman's recommendations (I am a little bothered by his "I don't care if something is done this way or that so long as it tastes good" approach), but I have to say that I did not know about pimenton (aka, smoked paprika) before his various recommendations. What a cool flavor. I think I'll try it on halibut tonight, and report back.
9/24/2008
Odd scandal in DC
No, not a political scandal, though there are some of those about. Eric Ripert, the mastermind behind Le Bernardin, has been sponsoring a new restaurant in Washington DC. As Grub Street and the WaPo report, the chefs at the DC restaurant have been booted for behavior problems. Putting aside the question of what could possibly be enough of a behavior problem to cause a firing in the restaurant industry (in which, I hear, behavior problems are kind of par for the course), I noticed this follow up on Tom Sietsema's (the WaPo restaurant reviewer) chat:
Washington, D.C.: Tom,
Before your chat begins, I just wanted to say that Leo, Ricky and I worked incredibly hard this past year to turn the Westend Bistro into a major success. We cared deeply about the restaurant and strove for perfect food under difficult circumstances. In the end, The Ritz had other ideas about food and what it took to run a great restaurant. Eric Ripert's name was on the sign but the Ritz always called the shots _ for better or worse. So we parted ways. All three of us. I think it was best for everyone.
Robert Berry Former executive sous chef, Westend Bistro by Eric Ripert.
Tom Sietsema: Thanks for taking the time to write, Robert. I'll be interested to know where everyone ends up.
Interesting, interesting.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: Tom,
Before your chat begins, I just wanted to say that Leo, Ricky and I worked incredibly hard this past year to turn the Westend Bistro into a major success. We cared deeply about the restaurant and strove for perfect food under difficult circumstances. In the end, The Ritz had other ideas about food and what it took to run a great restaurant. Eric Ripert's name was on the sign but the Ritz always called the shots _ for better or worse. So we parted ways. All three of us. I think it was best for everyone.
Robert Berry Former executive sous chef, Westend Bistro by Eric Ripert.
Tom Sietsema: Thanks for taking the time to write, Robert. I'll be interested to know where everyone ends up.
Interesting, interesting.
_______________________
Delicatessen
What kind of people go to restaurants like Delicatessen, which Frank Bruni gave zero stars today? I'd wonder why he was reviewing it, except that restaurant reviewers have an obligation to review popular places, but deep fried "rueben" fritters? Cheeseburger spring rolls? Fried chicken in a metal pail? It sounds like deli food interpreted by a drunken Scotsman recently laid off from a failing chippy.
9/23/2008
Geniuses
Amazingly, every single one of our esteemed Senators, according to their comments at the committee meetings on the bailout plans, foresaw all these problems, and each was individually ignored by all the others. We're so lucky to have such geniuses in power.
9/22/2008
Weekend Meal
I finally had a chance to cook on Sunday, after a week of late night meals in the office (disgusting, all of them).
For lunch, I mixed lots of ras al hanout with greek yogurt and slathered it all over chicken thighs, and then let loose my broiler on them. Voila. Pseudo-tandoori - a bright yellow, spicy, delicious kebab.
Dinner was a little more ambitious. I braised beef short ribs in a covered dish for six hours with wine (an oddly fruity American merlot, more on which later), mushrooms, celeriac*, and pearl onions. The meat, as it should, eventually melted into the sauce. Delicious.
My fiancee bought me Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques DVD's this weekend (which I'd been collecting by tivo'ing the shows on PBS). To celebrate, I made a creme caramel, finally getting the caramel right (I usually burn it) by following Jacques's advice. A note to self - creme caramel really needs vanilla, otherwise it ends up tasty like sugary egg. Aside from that mild setback, all was delicious.
For lunch, I mixed lots of ras al hanout with greek yogurt and slathered it all over chicken thighs, and then let loose my broiler on them. Voila. Pseudo-tandoori - a bright yellow, spicy, delicious kebab.
Dinner was a little more ambitious. I braised beef short ribs in a covered dish for six hours with wine (an oddly fruity American merlot, more on which later), mushrooms, celeriac*, and pearl onions. The meat, as it should, eventually melted into the sauce. Delicious.
My fiancee bought me Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques DVD's this weekend (which I'd been collecting by tivo'ing the shows on PBS). To celebrate, I made a creme caramel, finally getting the caramel right (I usually burn it) by following Jacques's advice. A note to self - creme caramel really needs vanilla, otherwise it ends up tasty like sugary egg. Aside from that mild setback, all was delicious.
Anathem
I finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem over the weekend. I liked it, though the best review of it I've read is a negative one, from Michael Dirda of the Washington Post. The story captures the imagination. The philosophy that litters hundreds of its pages is a comforting layer of intellectualism if you just want a story that sounds smart, and yet lets you dig in and think if you'd rather.
One thing that occurs to me, though - the avout are so smart (and, I guess, Stephenson wants everyone to realize that he is so smart) that their brains verge on acting on the story as a deus ex machina. Maybe not quite, but it is rather like the complaint that some have about the Eagles in Tolkien.
One thing that occurs to me, though - the avout are so smart (and, I guess, Stephenson wants everyone to realize that he is so smart) that their brains verge on acting on the story as a deus ex machina. Maybe not quite, but it is rather like the complaint that some have about the Eagles in Tolkien.
9/18/2008
The confusing reality
I've been thinking recently about what one can possibly eat in a typical restaurant that doesn't fall afoul of the newest conventional wisdom on food.
Beef: It's produced by feeding grass eaters corn. So, no.
Chicken: Most chickens are raised in horrific batteries and doused constantly in antibiotics.
Pork: Pigs raised in small pens, rife with disease, and tasteless anyway.
Milk: From those corn cows, and also rife with chemicals.
Shrimp: Raised in cesspools of chemicals in China.
Tuna, both fresh and canned: Mercury, mercury, mercury.
Cod: Your next fish stick might be the last cod there is.
Vegetables: Not local, so massive environmental damage, and also doused in chemicals, and also totally tasteless (see "not local").
Tofu: GMO.
So what are we supposed to eat? Short of using places like Blue Hill as a cafeteria, that is?
Beef: It's produced by feeding grass eaters corn. So, no.
Chicken: Most chickens are raised in horrific batteries and doused constantly in antibiotics.
Pork: Pigs raised in small pens, rife with disease, and tasteless anyway.
Milk: From those corn cows, and also rife with chemicals.
Shrimp: Raised in cesspools of chemicals in China.
Tuna, both fresh and canned: Mercury, mercury, mercury.
Cod: Your next fish stick might be the last cod there is.
Vegetables: Not local, so massive environmental damage, and also doused in chemicals, and also totally tasteless (see "not local").
Tofu: GMO.
So what are we supposed to eat? Short of using places like Blue Hill as a cafeteria, that is?
9/16/2008
The silver lining
The upside of sleeping on a pillow made of your suit coat under your office desk: I've still got enough money on my subway card for tomorrow.
Take that, MTA!
Take that, MTA!
9/14/2008
Citizen
My mother (finally) became a US citizen yesterday. In November, she'll vote in an election for the first time in her life (Syria is not especially big on contested elections). As with most things in my family, her celebrations here revolved around food. A little after the ceremony, her and my father found themselves nibbling through some ribs at Red, Hot and Blue.
Thinking back to when I became a citizen about ten years ago, I remember finding the entire process extremely moving, both the image of all people of all nationalities coming together in the conference room we'd been herded into united in their desire for citizenship, and the exercise of putting into words by way of the citizenship oath what it means to become an American. I am so so lucky to have become a citizen that day, and I'm delighted my mom has joined our ranks.
9/11/2008
Burrata
I had lunch at La Masseria today (a consistently decent italian restaurant near my office). Apart from my excellent sea bass (with an astonishing wild prawn on top), I had burrata, which I'd never had before. If you want to make eating a large round of mozzarella any less healthy, you'd add cream to the middle of it when it's still cooling - and that, of course, is what burrata is.
EDIT: Also, it was $32, which I only realized when I looked at the bill a second ago. Ah, expense accounts.
EDIT: Also, it was $32, which I only realized when I looked at the bill a second ago. Ah, expense accounts.
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