Pulinio's Bar and Pizzeria

I've been sort of infatuated with San Francisco since my visit a little more than a year ago, and so when I heard that the city's famed young farm to table "rock star" Nate Appleman was opening a restaurant here in New York, I was excited to visit.  And Pulino's is good - we had a truly marvelous shoulder pork chop with some of the most flavorful salsa verde I've ever had, and an excellent (though far below a Motorino) pizza with pungent chili oil on the side.  Like the New York Times, I loved the $18 carafes of decent wine - if the seats weren't so uncomfortable, one could get very happy here on a couple orders of the pork and 3 or 4 carafes of the soft, fruity, primitivo. 

On the other hand, the appetizers were disappointing - the nduja (supposedly a soft, spreadable, sicilian sausage) was a little bland and (somehow) not fatty enough, while my own preparation of white beans with tomato sauce is actually better than the one I had there.  Most annoying, though, is the fact that Pulino's is still the kind of place where people come to flaunt their new body augmentations (like our neighbors) rather than eat - I'm confident all will be better once those people filter out and a few more less chiseled specimens belly into the cramped but refreshing restaurant.  

Fake curry

I desperately wanted some Indian flavors the other night, but the gaping hole in the Astoria, Queens restaurant scene is precisely the cuisine of the great subcontinent. So I decided to wing it, picking up some yogurt, ginger, scotch bonnet pepper, plum tomatoes, onion and garlic*, and processed them in my new $20 "Ninja" in roughly the following proportions

6 tomatoes

2 cloves garlic

cumin seeds (1 second of pouring)

1/2 scotch bonnet, no seeds

thumb sized knob of ginger

1 small onion

1 tablespoon of curry powder

It occurred to me that this fake masala needed to be cooked out a little, so I fried it in a little oil until it became fairly aromatic, and then added tomato sauce and big chunks of cod. I simmered for 15 minutes until the cod was cooked and served it with rice. I added the yogurt to calm the fairly fierce heat after it came off the fire.

The result was not Indian, as such, but it was good, and I'd make it again. All hail experimentation, I guess.

*I chose these ingredients on the highly scientific basis of my last two indian meals, a pathetic tikka masala and a rather more decent vindaloo curry.

I've taken to using condiments like this Muscatel must rather than more childish things like ketchup (which, obviously, I still love).  They impart a most subtle viney sweetness to things like, say, veal chops and cabbage, eggs in the morning, and even, as the label suggests, good vanilla ice cream.  

Plus (and this perhaps is a more esoteric point) its slow, sticky, drip lets me imagine I'm using 100  year old balsamic vinegar when I can't afford it. 

Veal chops with cabbage

We were in an eastern European mood last night with these veal chops (locally grown here in New York) and braised savoy cabbage.  I love the cabbage treated this way - blanched for 2  minutes, then iced to preserve color, then caramelized in canola oil and then cooked in a butter and water emulsion. 

The chops were cooked in the way of all meat chops - seared then ovened. 

We drank an excellent italian wine - a "Pra" soave.  Giant minerality, and smelled like lemon oil but without the citrus.  Is that even possible?  Great stuff. 

Roast chickens debate

There's a bit of debate over on the Guardian website about the proper roast chicken recipe. (ht/Marginal Revolution). As I say in the comments over in MT, the only trick that actually works is to use a tiny bird : 2-3 pounds, maybe 4 at the most. At that size, you can roast at a very high Keller-ian temperature, get fantastically crisp skin, and moist meat. I also use air through a straw to separate the skin from the breast, but that's just extraneous "faf".

Stumptown

I think I've written before about my slow conversion to Stumptown coffee as the place for espresso indulgence. I've now been there about 10 times, and whatever it is that they're doing* is the right way to make coffee.

* I mean, I know roughly what they're doing. The right amount of tamping of the beans, good machines, good grinders, lots of practice pulling shots. But the consistency is remarkable.

Weekend cookery

A few notes from my weekend cookery.

I tried the ginger scallion sauce from the Momofuku cookbook, a deceptively simple combination of oil, ginger, scallion, and other flavorings. Although it was good, and probably would have been very good with enough ginger (I used about 2 tablespoons instead of half a cup, as suggested), I think the interesting contrast here is with Mark Bittman's pad thai recipe, published this weekend in the Times. The dishes are cousins - both served as a default with noodles, both a combination of sweet and sour, both involving a liberal amount of scallions. But Bittman's is less oily and yet, to my mind, much more satisfying -the sweetness of the tamarind set off by the veritable shower of lime juice I loosed on the noodles I made on Sunday. What's more, Bittman's recipe is just as adaptable as Chang's - I made my pad thai with shrimp and egg and bean sprouts, but it could just as easily have been seitan or tofu or chicken breast or dried squid or pressed thai shrimps or anything else.

The pineapple upside down cake in the ad hoc cookbook (picture to come) is extremely forgiving and good. It's even good with fake oil-based "butter" - a real mark of distinction.

Chilean sea bass (bad banquet hall - the poor fish is near extinct) is completely impossible to overcook.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that the pad thai recipe - without noodles - would be great as a sort of "larb" (aka, protein salad), piled in small lettuce leaves. I'll try this and report back.

The Double Down

I see that I've been beaten to the observation, but the fact is that there's nothing actually all that awful about the much execrated "Double Down" sandwich from KFC (other than, perhaps, the taste).   If KFC had wrapped it in a lettuce leaf instead of pretending the meat patties were the "bread", everyone would have recognized it as a low carb meal circa 2003 (well, maybe the unbattered grilled version, at least).  It's just a double chicken burger without a bun, no more or less disgusting than anything else KFC or McDonald's or Burger King put out routinely.  What's the fuss?

The momofuku eggs

A commenter urges me to report on the eggs, below. I found it easy to keep the temperature near 140 for the 45 minutes, by periodically adding cold water from the fridge to my pot. When I cracked the eggs, mostly because I hadn't read the entire recipe carefully - and especially not the part where Chang says that the egg white will be thin and not set - I saw a thin, see-through ablumen and panicked, tossing the eggs into a hot pan with oil for a couple of seconds. Which I then discovered Chang had already thought of via his note about fried slow poached eggs directly following the recipe.

In any case, the effect when you crack the egg and a poached eggs plops out is remarkable, and I do think that the result is a more custardy texture than a traditional poached egg. I'm going to continue to work on the technique in preparation for a brunch I plan on throwing in the next couple of weeks, and will document with pictures.

Momofuku cook book

I'm a recent purchaser of David Chang's Momofuku cookbook.  My initial impression is an odd one, given that Chang is known, externally at least, for simple "delicious" (i.e., high fat, high salt) food - the book is really inaccessible to the home cook.  That's because so many of the recipes either rely on somewhat obscure ingredients, but more often, on sous vide cookery, which is a fine thing but difficult to replicate "ghetto" style at home, as Chang puts it.  

Nonetheless, two Changian-slow poached eggs are currently in a hot water bath on my stove, not even simmering at 140 degrees F for 45 minutes.  Let's see if this works. 

Pure Bred Lamb

I'll have more on this later, but a quick rave here for the lamb produced by Pure Bred Farms, of which I purchased half a leg for easter dinner. It's wonderful - unafraid of being lamby, but gentle too. Plus, I'm not sure there is a better cut of meat than leg of lamb, at least for a large group.

EDIT: Here's the more.  The cooking method here is simple.  I made incisions in the 

leg and added sharpened slivers of garlic.  Per Thomas Keller (ad hoc) I m

ade a couple of larger incisions and slipped in full branches of rosemary, and then sprinkled the entire leg with yet more of the herb.  The entire leg was rubbed with oil, and then heavily salted and peppered before being roasted at 350 for about an hour, and rested for almost as long (yes, really - it makes a big difference).   It could easily have been roasted for an

other 25 minutes to a nice, even, medium. 

The Nose v. Partenope

I suppose if one wants to know what kind of person I am, one might judge me by the fact that I found "The Nose" utterly repulsive, and thought the ultra-formal Partenope a work of the most lavish genius imaginable.

Of course the judgment you might make is that whichever of those I liked, I'm a pompous jerk anyway, but if that's true then I've no hope with you.

The feeling in my fingers is returning

The remarkable thing about the last few weeks for me has been the palpable sense that I'm remembering how to cook. I don't mean that I had forgotten taste or flavor or how to make a tomato sauce in the years now where regular cooking has been a thing of memory. Rather, there's a certain economy of movement, a sense of being attuned to small things (Ah, I hear that the chicken in the pan is sizzling differently, better turn it down now), even the routine of washing the dishes after cooking, that one loses when out of the kitchen. It is reassuring to feel it coming back, to realize that as I move towards my next great life transition at the beginning of the summer I'll be able to nestle down again amid my pots with some familiarity. Above all, the feeling is one of comfort, and I am delighted to be returning to it.

Chicken Schnitzel

Pasta with mussels and tomato sauce

I sometimes get ideas for meals from meals I have out in restaurants.  Last night's dinner was a good example:  recently, I've been ordering the squid ink cappellini from midtown's Thalia restaurant at work.  It's tart from the tomatoes, packed full of interesting and quite fresh seafood, and satisfyingly tactile - the mussels and the clams come with shells, and the sauce inevitably nestles itself next to the shellfish to make the whole process of fishing out the delicious meat all the more interesting. 

So last night I made an easier home version.  I just cooked two tomatoes (chopped, natch) with plenty of garlic, cracked red pepper and olive oil, and added a splash of white wine.  At the same time, I boiled squid ink taglietelle until al dente, adding the mussels to the tomato sauce halfway through the pasta's cooking time.  I transfered the pasta to the sauce with plenty of the starch rich water, and cooked together until the sauce clung desperately to the long, midnight black strands of taglietelle.   A squeeze of lemon at the end brightened the finish, and I suspect, had I had any, that some italian parsley would have been nice too. 

Quinoa milk pudding

In an effort to assuage my annoyance at the higher taxes I'll soon be paying, I made Aran's marvelous quinoa rice pudding (using the same recipe, but omitting the heavy cream and using a 2% milk rather than whole). I don't know if I necessary love the taste of quinoa, though I don't mind it, but on the plus side it makes the process of eating dessert seem virtuous when it is not.

In other news, I have to confess to being a little put out by celery root, which I tried to roast this weekend with our Thomas Keller style* prime beef. Roasted, it developed a tough, unappetizing skin, although the softer insides were delicious - a little like mild ouzo scented horseradish injected into a potato.

* Keller's roast beef recipe has the virtue of being ludicrously easy. Toast the fat until slightly brown with a torch (or, like me, just pan fry only the fat side until brown) and then roast in the oven at 275 F until the meat is rare. Rest and slice.

Pasticcio

We were in a blue and white Greek mood this weekend, dining at our local Greek greasy spoon on Friday night (Zorba's, I love your taramsalata and fries) and finishing the weekend with some pasticcio yesterday evening. There's really nothing much to the dish, which is best described to the non-Astorian as the staple Greek lasagne of the neighborhood, but it is fairly work intensive in the sense that you need to make the bechamel, and the tomato sauce. The result of all this work, though, is a satisfying meal with plenty of leftovers. Honestly, is it that far from your mom's cream of mushroom soup casserole? No. But the bechamel and the good tomato sauce elevate it beyond the worst of 70's humdrum.

Tomato Sauce - fry onions and garlic, add lots of meat (we used 99% fat free ground turkey - yes, shame on me for not grinding my own, but it matters less when you cook as throughly as you do in a casserole) add good tomatoes, and simmer with cinammon and nutmeg for an hour.

Bechamel - Basic bechamel. Make a roux with equal parts butter and flour, add cold milk, and cook for half an hour until thick.

Assembly - cook pasta (I don't think the shape matters) and pour half of it into a greased dish. Add the tomato sauce and some parmesan cheese. Add the rest of the pasta, and then pour over bechamel. Add parmesan on top for extra flavor and color, and cook uncovered for about an hour.

Serve with greek salad.

Pictures of NYC at night

I found this interesting collection of pictures of New York city at night. Let us just say that I am extremely familiar with what Worldwide Plaza, the first photo, looks like at night, although usually from inside.

Sullivan Street Bakery

I was stopped on the corner of 10th avenue and 47th street yesterday afternoon with a bag full of quails (for a April Bloomfield-esque salad of pan fried quail, rocket and young pecorino romano, drizzled with the must of muscadel grapes instead of the aged balsamic my wallet resisted) when I noticed an older couple looking at me intently. At least, I assumed they were looking at me, since the only thing behind me was, I think, a bodega. In any case, the staring continued until the wife (presumably) exhaled sharply and walked over. "We saw you with the Citarella bag and thought you might know about food in the area - Do you know where Sullivan Street Bakery is?".

In fact, I was at that moment on my way to Sullivan Street for a round of Jim Lahey's wonderful Pan Integrale to pair with my salad, and I took them past the couple of garages that mark the somewhat dubious looking path towards the far west side bread palace, bought my own loaf, and left them with a stern order not to leave without bombolonis (a yeasty, briochey donut that may be the best fried thing in New York). I thought about giving them a few other recommendations in the area, playing over in my head what I would say - "Do you like fish? Esca is nearby. Or odd sandwiches? Xie Xie! Or maybe you should just go to Burger Joint and then continue along the road to Zibetto. Or maybe you can head down to the flatiron and sneak into the Breslin".

But then I looked at them crunching on their first bites of bread and left them to it.

Yet more non-blogging

I realize I've been engaging yet again in non-blogging. This time I have a good reason. My wife and I were in Puerto Rico, enjoying a little sun. The main determination I was able to make based on the trip is that I enjoy being outside.

We loved Puerto Rico, and enjoyed most of the food. Still, there were a few surprises about the food.

1. Boy, is it heavy. Or, at least, can it be heavy - I assumed that given that the place is an island, people would prefer fishes, grilled simply, sprinkled liberally with some of the truly astonishing local limes. In reality, for some reason, the locals appear to enjoy frying everything, and obscuring some of the most wonderful fish I've ever eaten in strangely clunky sauces. Still, if one gets the opportunity to eat fish in Joyuda, clunky sauces or not, one should take it immediately.

1a. Why on earth would you not drown an otherwise incredible conch salad in glorious citrus? I am deeply puzzled.

2. Traditional Puerto Rican cooks have apparently never met a vegetable they don't want to overcook. Unless they fry it (see, plantains).

3. Mofongo, the fried plantain dish that is a staple of Puerto Rico and (apparently) the Dominican, is really heavy. And yet still delicious.

4. There are a surprising number of stews for such a warm country (including a fantastic one involving rice and lobsters).

5. Puerto Rican food is either not spicy, or Puerto Ricans are terrified of over-spicing the food for the silly Americans. If the latter, please stop.

6. Puerto Ricans, judging from the entire aisle in the Econo supermarket filled with various iterations of frozen fried chicken, and the fact that Church's fried chicken appeared to outnumber McDonald's, really, really love fried chicken. Again, not at all what I expected.

7. I love tostones.

8. Puerto Rican pineapple is only ok (as opposed to Hawaiian pineapple, which tastes like another fruit entirely). But Puerto Rican coconuts and canteloupes? Another story entirely. Wow.