A quick question

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

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

Toys!

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

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

Restaurant Daniel

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

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

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

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

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

And he doesn't.

Balsamic Chocolate Chip Cookies

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

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

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

How to make that awful wedding cake at home

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

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

The rogue cobbler of Balmoral Boots

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

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

Bizarre.

Is good food a constant?

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

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

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

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

Xai Xai

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

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

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

Grandma Pizza

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

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



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

Leftover choux

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

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

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

Baking blogging

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

A michelangelo on 5th

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

A half success

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

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

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

Adventures in Meat cookery

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

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

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

Olive-oil poached escolar with wine sauce

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

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

Kindle

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

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

Make your own butter

Cool - how to make your own butter.

What I understand that caterers haven't

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

Mesa Grill revisited

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

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

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

North Korean Pizza

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

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