Favorite thread anywhere

Even with all the food related boards and blogs I read, my favorite long-time comment thread anywhere on the internet is this - Balmoral Boot P&rn. I offer it up this morning as some friday morning light-heartedness.

In a better world, this would be the only type of dress shoe a man would wear.

Take it light

I've been pretty confused by a New York subway sign encouraging you to take your trash with you for a while now. It goes as follows:

"Take care. Take it light. Take the subway. Take responsibility. Please take your trash with you when you leave the train or station."

I had never seen the phrase "take it light" before, nor ever heard it said, nor could I really figure out what it meant in the context of the rest of the sentence. Apparently, though, according to the Urban Dictionary, "take it light" means something like "take it easy".

Why did MTA use this phrase? Is whatever group that unironically says "take it light" (assuming there is such a group) somehow responsible for trash on the subway? I am puzzled.

Plus, second prize for bad language goes to this Will Wilkinson bloggingheads, for grotesque overuse of the word "epistemic".

Bar Breton

We visited Bar Breton the other night to try their galettes - crepes, but with a toothsome, somewhat acid buckwheat. I'll say that I enjoyed mine - the first ham and cheese with egg, and the second nutella - but will note that I found it unnecessarily expensive ($16 for a crepe?). My fiancee had a salmon dish on the menu, as she didn't want crepes. It was competent, but entirely a throwaway. My pear cider was excellent.

What do I recommend? Get a savory crepe at Bar Breton, and then visit the amazing Crepes Lady in midtown for your sweets. She makes an amazing crepe, crunchy and tender and blistered with butter, and you get to talk to a treasure of a woman while you're at it.

EDIT: My last visit to the crepes lady, Madeleine messed up the first crepe she tried for me, made another, and folded the first into the second before applying the nutella, saying that when she was a child, this is how it was done in Brittany anyway. I have no idea whether that's true or not, but I don't care, as it was doubly delicious.

LLC

What is this supposed to mean? Are normal people understanding LLC as some sort of special protection for them as investors?


"The offices were beautiful, and I was told it was a limited liability corporation,” said Reggie Roseme, a deliveryman in Wellington, Fla., who lost his entire savings of $35,000 and now faces foreclosure on his home."

(This is from an article on Madoff-like ponzis in the New York Times).

Squid with Feta

Bittman's recipe for squid stew caught my eye recently, but my influences here in Astoria are more greek than anything else, so I converted the idea into a tomato stew with olives, feta and herbs. For textural interest, I added fried calamari - there's nothing like mixing the rustic (homey) with the rustic (junky).

The rising costs of food

I have a long running entirely one sided (in the sense that he is unaware of it) argument with Ezra Klein about his "locavorist" policy prescriptions (which, in short, amount to changing government policy to raise the cost of meat). His theory is that if you raise the cost of meat, people will eat less of it, and the environment will be better off. The issue has come back again because of Anthony Bourdain's recent tart comments about Alice Waters, the high priestess of American market driven cuisine. Waters's occasional high-handedness reminds me a lot of Klein's, and it is equally annoying. But in any case, we are in the middle of a great natural experiment in seeing what happens when the price of meat rises in relation to the average person's income (through the unfortunate mechanism of dropping incomes). I am confident that no less meat is being consumed. I realize I don't have the empirics to back me up, but I can at least start my analysis with the observation that the reaction of burger chains (some of the keenest observers of food trends anywhere) has been to provide cheaper rather than less meat. Mcdonald's has surveyed the landscape, and the McDouble is their inimitable answer.

Underlying all this, though, is that the fact that the good food lobby is riven with contradictory and competing interest groups. While they all think they're allied, in reality they are not, and tensions caused by people like Waters are a sympton of the fact that there are many things one may mean by "good food". Consider the below preliminary taxonomy - if pushed, I would put myself in between the taste and localist groups, but with an intense historical sympathy for the advocates of the poor. In terms of practicality, though, the only answer is a humble, incrementalist approach, somewhat akin to Mark Bittman's "less meat-ism". The food situation in so many places in our country is so bad that almost any improvement, whether providing vegetables to those who don't have them, or providing somewhat dubious "naturally raised" meat, is a measurable, valuable improvement to the lives of real people. I disdain the zealots who refuse to consider these modest steps.

1. The environmentalist crowd - The focus here is to limit the harm caused by food production on the global environment. This means less meat and less fishing. To be clear, this doesn't mean "better/natural practices in raising livestock". Indeed, raising chickens or pigs or cows in a humane manner would only exacerbate the environmental impact of meat, because organic, healthy, animals need land and resources. What these people want, ideally, is vat grown, artificial meat.

2. The taste crowd - Their goal is to bring back flavors that have been lost due to the growth of the food industry, from vegetables to meat to fish. They might care about organics because they taste better, but they do not necessarily care about environmentalism. Indeed, if one thinks about it, better tasting meat might mean that more meat is consumed, eventually.

3. The localist crowd - Local food might or might not taste better, but the point is to live within your area, to experience New York, or Virginia, or Lyon, as New York or Virginia or Lyon. Of course, while this is all well and good, true localism condemns millions to wretched food for much of the year (unless, I suppose, one really loves tubers) and rolls back gains made over centuries of economic development (forsooth, our medieval ancestors stabbed localism in the back when they started importing sugar). As such, localism is highly susceptible to hypocrisy (e.g., a "localist" food event staffed by chefs and food flown in from around the country). Local for thee, but not for me.

4. The cruelty crowd - The puritanical allies of the localist and taste groups, the anti-cruelty advocates care not so much about how the meat tastes or where it comes from, but whether it was raised in a way that respects the animal's life. They may think it a nice side effect that humanely raised meat tastes better, but the point is emphatically not flavor. The fissure between these lobbies is illustrated by foie gras, which scandalizes the cruelty crowd, but is positively encouraged by the taste/localist groups.

5. The improving the food of the lower middle class and poor crowd - Another interest group with less glamor under the broad umbrella of the good food movement are those advocates interesting in raising the eating standard of the poor and lower middle class, of persuading people whose food is so often based in restaurant junk food (bad) or on very bad food made at home (a little better) to try something new. The problems here are the lack of availability of decent food in many of the places these people live, and money. Of course, these problems would be made much, much worse by the success of any of the lobbies above. While we, the affluent, might do well to put aside our industrially raised vegetables, the problem for these people is the lack of exactly those things which we're so happy to sneer at.

No knead pizza bianca this morning

2666, again

I finally finished 2666.  The last book is masterful, as Archimboldi floats back and forth before the reader, slipping out of our vision while offering no satisfaction.  The first three books are mostly masterful.   Book 4 is, simply, a pornographic nightmare of death and terror, and I would never read a word of it again.    How would I react were a beautiful meal to include one course of rotten meat? Of course, I would be disgusted by everything.  Should not the same be true here?

Gout

I too am surprised that people still get gout. I hope that Mr. Ozersky isn't serious about the below:

I just want you, Feedbag readers, to know that I won’t be altering my lifestyle at all, and that you can continue to expect the up-to-the-minute coverage of the city’s dining scene that only total bodily dedication can bring.

EDIT: I should note that one of my heroes, Pitt the Elder/Lord Chatham, was afflicted with gout, and I was always touched reading about his efforts to govern despite it. 

Swirling thoughts

Best wishes to Obama. Wow.  But the press coverage is so irritatingly fawning.  He's got a lot of problems to fix - hope he does that.  But a lot of them are problems he has nothing to do with. Well, he can regulate, can't he? But some of the problems were the government's fault.  Not the worst things, surely, those were business's fault.  But stimulus is really not going to work.  Krugman is mocking economists who think stimulus isn't going to work - it's simple math.  But it'll end in tears.  Yeah, probably.

Thought I never tire of working around in my head until I start grinding my teeth

I could take all our wedding guests to some place like Corton and drown them in tasting menus and wine until the cows came home for the same price as some of the "estimates" I'm getting from caterers. 

More to the point, for half of these "estimates" I could drown all those guests plus all sorts of other people in kebabs and falafels, if only there were proper arabic caterers around.

BONUS: Phrases I am tired of repeating to said wedding caterers after looking at yet another inappropriate menu they can't possibly execute:

"You know, if I really wanted to take everyone to Per Se, I'd, like, do that".

A couple of quick notes

Some quick notes while I work on some longer writing projects: 

Candle 79: We visited this vegan restaurant (recipient of 1 star from Bruni) last week.  I very much enjoyed my seitan with butternut squash and pomegranate seeds, while our shared dessert of key lime pie was quite good (the crust held together without butter somehow grew on us, as did the various incarnations of cashew milk/cream).  Above all, it is an extremely comfortable restaurant, and I would return. 

Sweet Leaf Coffee: I visited this new coffee shop on a tip that they brew the apparently iconic Stumptown Coffee.   The coffee was good, the people friendly, and my apple pie comforting (though I do not believe they make it themselves, despite what the signage in the store says about baking on premises.  I could be wrong).  I brought home some ethiopian wondo at the same price as on Stumptown's website, which is quite generous of Sweet Leaf.   They're clearly still working out kinks, though, because I overheard someone who seemed to be in charge explaining things to people who weren't in charge, and also I got the last dregs of drip coffee from the pot (which I should have said something about).   The main downside?  The store is *very* small.  Not really the kind of place people can snuggle up for a while.

Roquefort-wars

The United States has placed a punitive tariff on Roquefort (english article here) in retaliation for French refusal to eat American hormone laced beef.

My understanding from people who know about these matters is that we're right on the law (i.e., we are permitted under WTO rules to impose these sanctions). But on the substance? I'm with France.* In fact, I think France is right substantively on most of these matters (GMO, the marketing of geographically protected wines in the US, etc, etc), but we keep winning the legal wars.

*(though would French people eat hormone-d beef if labelled correctly? Probably not, so the government is likely overreacting by forbidding the beef when it would simply die anyway).

** enthusiasts of American cheese will simply say, "Good riddance, as we make perfectly good blue cheese here". Yes, we do, but they don't taste like Roquefort.

New York, the center of the world (well, America) Part 1

I've been in a number of arguments recently involving the proper ranking of cities for food in the United States.  I suppose one might have some trouble with the idea of ranking cities at all, but I think that once one accepts the idea that it is preferable to dine in New York than to dine in Wilmington, more granular determinations necessarily follow.   What the use of ranking cities might be when most people have a limited range of experience and can't or wouldn't move to the higher ranked city for any number of non-food related reasons in any case probably remains unclear, but that is the nature of most ranking parlor games. 

Having determined to rank cities, the conversation in my experience tends to revolve around three endlessly repeated arguments.  In any group of food people discussing this matter, for example, there is invariably one who plays the great New Orleans gambit, which, for the uninitiated,  holds that the Big Easy is the best dining destination in the country, both before and after Katrina, and those who disagree are doing nothing better than sniffing down their foie gras infected noses at real cuisine.   Much outraged banter about Alan Richman ensues, with eventual agreement from everyone other than the gambiteer that New Orleans is, at best, Number 4. 

This resolution leaves the door open for everyone else to proceed with the two remaining set pieces, which look approximately like the following: 

1) Everyone agrees that New York is Number 1, but there is mortal combat between Chicago and San Francisco for a strong second fiddle, and the discussion collapses into a weighing of how important precisely Alinea is, whether The French Laundry is in San Francisco, and the excellence of this or that hot dog/deep dish pizza. 

2) Someone from Chicago or San Francisco says, frustration bubbling over, that New York is an overrated cesspool and that in fact their city is Number 1.  Usually this is supported by some reference to the fact that New York smells (bad) most of the time. 

For the record, I believe that set piece #1 is the correct discussion to be having, and further that the correct ranking of the top 5 is as follows, with the caveat that I rank New Orleans by reputation only. 

1. New York City

2. Chicago

2. San Francisco

4. New Orleans

5. Washington D.C.(?)

Why? The answers for me have to do with this weekend's juxtaposition of Per Se and Sripraphai.  But that post will have to wait for the morning. 

  

Air Blade

Not that it has anything to do with food, though it does have to do with the menu I posted below, but the Dyson AirBlade hand dryer is a miraculous invention. Paper towels begone!

More on this later

2666

I had one of the best meals of my life tonight (more later), but for the moment am thinking about 2666, the much lauded book by Roberto Bolano.  Can anyone out there explain to me in what sense precisely Book 4 of the five book oeuvre is not one of the most gruesome slogs in the history of writing?  

To be clear, "gruesome" refers to the dozens of rapes described without narrative, and "slogs" refers to the dozens of rapes described without narrative.

What is the purpose of this 300 pages? Why does anyone believe it to be worthy of merit? I am very confused.

 

Spending on what you need

A television commentator just now, in a shocked tone, bemoaning the economy - "The numbers right now show that people are only spending on what they need. That is not a recipe for prosperity."

Yes, of course. Much better to have people spending borrowed money on frivolous luxuries. Excellent.

There's a lot of bias against recipes (for cooking) among food people - "I don't need a recipe", they say.  "I just cook what seems good".  Sometimes this comes off as a little self righteous.  Or actually a lot self righteous. 

All that it may be, but I agree with the anti-recipe sentiment anyway.  But sometimes recipes are so tempting that I make them anyway, and such is the case for the below, Tom Colicchio's eggplant napeoleon, from Think Like a Chef.  There's nothing s

pecial here - just fried eggplant sandwiching eggplant "caviar" (i.e., baked eggplant, roasted red pepper, lemon, parsley, roasted garlic), topped with a little avocado and a lemon vinaigrette dressing, but it is very very good.

The eggplant can be fried in advance and warmed in a 350 F oven, I found.  

Menti

I've found that no matter how much one pines for certain foods, some things are too much of a pain to almost ever make.  Mente, or Menti, are one of those things - eraser sized dumplings made of a yeastless dough of flour, olive oil and water, and tiny balls of cayenne spiced lamb, all squeezed into a Star Wars-y canoe shape.  That is, imagine making ravioli, but instead of six per person, having to make thirty.  But it also turns out that it's easier to make Mente while watching football, and with Wild Card Weekend upon us, I decided to give it a go.  Iphone pics are below.  

In case you have the inclination, instructions follows:

1. Make dough with some flour, a little olive oil, some salt, and enough water to make a pliable mass.  It doesn't need much kneading - just until all mixed.  Let rest for 1 hour. 

2. While resting, mix some cayenne (to taste) and salt (again, to taste) into ground lamb.  Roll between your fingers into little balls - as I note above, about the size of erasers on a pencil.  Allow 30 per person. 

3. Roll out the dough paper thin.  It is very important that the dough is extremely, extremely thin.  You should be able to read a newspaper through it with little difficulty.

4. Cut the dough into small squares, about an inch long and half an inch wide.

5. Place a meat ball in the middle of each dough, and push the sides together to form the shape in the pictures.  The meat should stick out of the middle, as if the meat were a middle-aged vacationer sitting in a dough-canoe.

6. Place a small piece of butter/solid lipid of your choice on top of each dumpling. 

7. Bake at 375 F until the dough is quite crisp, like a cracker.

8. Add hot chicken broth to pan in which dumplings were made.  The crispy dumplings will soak up the broth and partially soften. 

9. Serve (finally!) with garlicky yogurt and mint and Syrian dried peppers (fine, fine, paprika will do) and sumac.