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Apr 12

Butcher Bay

Non-shocker: Butcher Bay calls it quits. Looks like I'll be getting dragged to Choptank on a Lent Friday this year. (2/1/2010)

I was a little hesitant to try Butcher Bay after so many lukewarm-to-negative reviews, but generally when someone suggests trying a restaurant I’m open (as long as it’s not middling Thai). I’m not a controller of all things edible. James liked what he'd read in The Village Voice and thought it would be a good candidate for the fish on Friday tradition that I'm surprised he's still adhering to.

It turned out to be very much as I'd expected: affable, better than adequate but probably not a destination if you're not in the East Village. I'd go back if it were in my neighborhood. And the staff was unusually friendly. It’s nice to be reminded that not all servers are of the surly/spacey variety I often encounter.

There's something about the East Village that doesn't bother me as much as Carroll Gardens even though the vibe at the ungodly dining hour of 6:30 was much like ours: family time in a big way, but the breastfeeding I witnessed managed to be less self-righteous and dour and more natural and cute. Did I just say that? I don't care how un-feminist, anti-woman it makes me, I’m not crazy about public breastfeeding, there's already precious lack of privacy in the city as it is.

Hush puppies are always bready blobs that taste more of flour and cornmeal than whatever they might be flavored with. These contained shrimp and their presence was subtle.

The clam strips were meaty and chewy and the remoulade was more likeable than tartar sauce. A friend who joined James and I for dinner made a statement about bellies along the lines of them being a bit too animal-like, you know you're eating a creature (I’m extrapolating a bit here). This comes from a non-fish, non-meat-with bones eating person but I'm not going to make fun of that because she is convinced that I will always call her out for something. Not this, though. We'll get to her later…

Fish and chips. I didn't taste these but James thought they were fine and not soggy or doughy as reported somewhere I can't recall. Obviously, that criticism struck a chord with the owner because he brought it up after asking about my picture-taking. No one ever asks me why I’m snapping photos, oddly enough, and I’m not complaining. I guess it's like not staring a celebrities in public, ignore the food bloggers; they're a dime a dozen.

I'm more thrifty out of principle than pure necessity. I don't like paying over $20 for casual food for the same reason I hate buying single items of clothing over $40: because I’m cheap. So, the $24 lobster roll wasn't really my style, but I cut loose anyway. An unorthodox specimen in its seeming absence of mayonnaise but I'm not complaining since I do not love the stuff. It does work to keep the jumble of meat together, though, while this one kept losing its filling. Chopped parsley and celery rounded out the rest of the ingredients.

Ok, the friend's food. The potato salad was standard issue, fine, but the pork was on the dry side. Here's the rub: should one order pork in a restaurant that's styled itself as a seafood shack? We all have different criteria and expectations. I try not to deviate wildly from what I perceive to be an eatery's strengths unless I'm swayed by something so off and bizarre that it needs exploring. Yesterday, I resisted ordering nachos at Sukhadia’s, a vegetarian Indian chain. I’ll never know if I was wise in playing it safe or if I missed out on a rare delicacy.

I was glad to see that Sophie's, a few storefronts down, was still thriving. I will always remember it as the venue for my non-date with Henry Thomas over a decade ago and he later mentioned in a phone call, "Oh, I'm meeting some friends at Sohpie's" as if it were his spot despite the fact that he'd never heard of it until a week prior. E-List celebrities have a way of getting under your skin with their insensitivity.

It reminds me of a story I've told before about a friend who went to high school with John Stamos and in the mid-‘80s ran into him in the audience of some California production of Grease starring Belinda Carlisle. Stamos told my friend he was having a party and would call him. He. Never. Did. That, my friends, is called being Stamosed. We've all been there.

Butcher Bay * 511 E. Fifth Ave., New York, NY

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Apr 10

Sunday Night Special: Fish Head Curry

Who says Twitter is good for nothing? Every time I get back from Singapore (ok, I've only been three times—I'm not trying to make it sound like it's a regular part of my life) I intend to try making a fish head curry only to instantly forget after quickly getting caught up in NYC again.

Thankfully, I was re-reminded by a tweet from The New York Times' Pete Wells, about the glory of fish heads. Who knows what he ended up doing with his piscine score? I knew exactly what I would do after getting my hands on a nice meaty specimen.

Where he picked up a $15 tilefish, I was limited to what the Chinese market I happened to stop by had on offer: a 99-cent-per-pound mystery breed. I have next to zero capability for discerning fish species by sight so I asked what kind of fish these came from only to hear, "fish head!" in response like I was the dumbest person on earth. (I felt the need to mention I'd recently made a fish head curry while doing a phone interview with Zak Pelaccio and when he asked what kind of fish I'd used, I lied and said snapper because I didn't want to admit my fish ignorance. He then said I should've used something oily like salmon. I'd agree with the oily, though I've never had a salmon fish head curry. Then this morning I read about the kerfuffle involving Mark Bittman using overfished red snapper and realized that I’m not only incapable of identifying fish by sight, but the imaginary me also cooks endangered species) No need to press the matter and I'd only be out a couple bucks (plus lots of prep time) if the fish sucked.

Its face seemed a little slim and long with a little fleshy appendage that mimicked a goatee. Fish heads I usually see curried are fuller, broader. The dreaded red snapper is often recommended in recipes and I’ve also seen a call for threadfin, which I don’t think are common here.

One of these days I'll learn that no matter how many cookbooks I possess or experience I have with eating the cuisine, Malaysian-Singaporean food will never taste the same in my hands. Seriously never. I'm stymied as to what causes my food to always turn out flat and dull. I can't attribute it to lack of fresh ingredients because my Thai and Chinese food usually turns out pretty good. I'm clearly doing something wrong.

The first issue was deciding on a recipe. Every one I found was slightly different so I adapted a few based on what sounded right. Fish head curry uses dry spices, not a fresh paste or rempah, since it's a Singaporean specialty of Indian origin. Ok, there's also a Nyonya version but the curry everyone associates with Singapore is served at Indian restaurants and not so much at hawker centers.

Therefore, you need curry powder and lots of it. One thing I've discovered is that Malaysian recipes often specify the type of curry powder you need, none of that generic madras business. They seem to have two distinct blends: fish and meat. I picked up packets of each on a visit to Kuala Lumpur but that was a few years ago (perhaps the first step on my route to dull food was using old spices). It seems that main difference is that fish curry powder doesn’t contain clove, star anise, cinnamon and cardamom like the meat version.

The recipe I was following called for five tablespoons and unfortunately, my little packet only contained around four. So, I spent a bit of time grinding and making my own supplementary powder based on the recipe below, which I've left as is. Even cutting down those numbers by a third, I ended up with two whopping cups of the stuff, used an entire bottle of coriander seeds and still came up short. Grams to ounces confuse me. I had no idea what an insane quantity I was concocting until it was too late. I filled up the spice grinder with dried chiles three times and still didn't have the 50 grams per my digital scale!

You also might want to know about "curry seeds," which are called for in many recipes. From what I understand this is a blend of whole fennel seeds, cumin seeds, brown mustard seeds, fenugreek and black dhal in proportions that I’m not sure about. I didn't have the dhal.

Once you have your blends ready to go and your vegetables and aromatics prepped, the rest is easy. There aren't really any shortcuts since we don't have brands like Prima Taste here that sell ready-to-use mixes that aren't half-bad (I've tried a few of them). I'm loving this fish head curry "party pack." Now, that's my kind of party. James is trying to finagle a way to get his company's Singapore office to send us a bunch of these packets. I'd be curious how the fish head curry blend tastes because…well, my rendition didn't end up impressing anyone.

My pot of fish was wrong, even by looks (and I don't just mean that it's ugly anti-food porn). The consistency of the liquid should be thinner, oilier and ruddy. Mine was creamy even though I thinned it down with water. James insists the versions we had in Asia didn't contain coconut milk. I agree that they seemed sharper and soupier but every recipe I found included at least a little coconut milk. I would go easy on it.

The fish, itself was mild and inoffensive. I'm sure it could've been fresher but it was amazingly cheap. This whole dish probably cost under $8 (if you only count the portion of the $2.89 bottle of decimated coriander seeds that were actually used for this). Even at such a bargain, I'm going to lay off the Singaporean experimenting for a while because it's too much effort for lackluster pay off. But I feel compelled to write out a recipe, anyway, because I don't think that was the problem.

Ingredients
1 whole fish head, about 3 pounds
1 tablespoon mixed curry seeds for fish curry (optional)
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, chopped
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 onions thinly sliced
5 tablespoon fish curry powder made into a paste with 1 /4 to 1 /2 cup water
10 okra pods
3 tomatoes, quartered
10 chiles slit into half lengthwise
20 curry leaves
1 /2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon tamarind mixed with 1 cup water
1 cup coconut milk
5 tablespoon sunflower oil

Fish Curry Powder
250g coriander powder
60g cumin powder
150g chilli powder
30g turmeric powder
20g black pepper powder
10g fenugreek powder

Rub fish head with salt, then wash and pat dry. (I’m just repeating what I’ve read everywhere. Rather than seasoning with salt, this step seems intended to remove “fishiness.”)

Heat oil in a wok or saucepan, add the curry seeds and stir fry over high heat for two to three minutes till the seeds pop. Add garlic, ginger, onions and stir fry till fragrant. Add the fish curry paste and brown over low heat, till oil raises to the surface. Sprinkle water if the paste begins to burn.

Add the coconut milk, tamarind juice, salt, sugar and curry leaves. Bring to a boil, stirring. Add the fish head, along with okra, tomatoes and chiles.

Simmer for 15 minutes or until fish is cooked.

Adapted from Sylvia Tan's Singapore Heritage Food and the Singapore Tourism Board

Maybe it's impossible to perfectly replicate Singaporean fish head curry in Brooklyn. I've suspected as much and Laura Shapiro's recent Gourmet.com post, "Food Doesn't Travel" reinforces this notion.

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Apr 8

The More Tuscan The Better

Living in a bloggy vacuum, I find it hard to believe that internet reviews
and being "the latest 'in' place" scored 1% and 0%, respectively, in
a global Nielsen survey of criteria diners consider when choosing a restaurant.
Are we the only victims of Yelp and Minetta Tavern?

The number one factor was type of cuisine at 33%, and that's sensible. What
I was kind of surprised by is that after the "cuisine of my own
country/local area," the top two were Italian and Chinese tied at 14%. I
figured those were just American favorites. I guess one takeaway is that the
world loves noodles whether sauced with marinara or as the basis of lo mein.

Showing how slowly trends spread across the globe, Spanish cuisine, heralded for the last decade in foodie circles, scores dead last.
Seeing how most Americans (and I do feel it's an American phenomena) think
Spanish and Mexican food is the same thing (as opposed to New Yorkers who call
anything Caribbean Spanish—ain't no mofongo in Madrid…um, at least I don't
think, I'll check next week when I'm there and could be eating my words) I'm
not shocked that Iberian fare has an image problem.

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Apr 8

Jerky Even a Vegetarian Could Love

When I first heard about pineapple jerky, I assumed that it was fruit flavored dried meat like the Fruit Juice Roasted Pork strip in the photo at the right. Strangely, Aji Ichiban in NYC (at least last time I checked) only sell candy while in Hong Kong there are entire bins of plastic-wrapped jerky squares sold by weight. Chinese are kind of nuts for jerky; there's a whole dried meat chain called Bee Cheng Hiang.

So, when I was offered free samples of pineapple jerky from Jerky.com, I'll admit that I was expecting pliable sheets or beef or pork. As it turned out, pineapple jerky is fancy fruit leather, duh. I don't mind those sugary gelatinized dried pineapple rings you usually find in stores, but these dehydrated slices sweetened only with honey do taste more like real fruit.

Thin and a little chewy and tough, the texture is well, jerky-like. In the best way. Because I have a strange aversion to fresh fruit (ok, mostly to the boring apple/orange/banana triumvirate—cherries and berries aren't so bad) I could see these working as an afternoon snack when I get tired of the usual almonds, yogurt or wedge of Laughing Cow cheese. In the mean time, I need to work my way through that bag of Chinese jerky I bought in December. Jerky is preserved to last, right?

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Apr 7

Char No. 4

1/2 The tickly smell of smoke did hit me when I entered Char No. 4 but it wasn't an assault. I'm afraid that I've become desensitized to the strong fragrance due to periodic household experiments with a mini smoker. Venting the fumes towards an open door helps but keeping the apartment from smelling like a piece of jerky is nearly impossible.

I chose to use my experience with smoked food as fodder for my Spanish class response to "What did you do last week?" a question I stumble through every Thursday. But it only caused my teacher to ask if it was normal to keep a smoker in one's apartment and if that didn't bother the neighbors (he lives directly above Caputo's and says that smoke wafts into his apartment–what do they smoke in house, I wonder?). Well, as long as those neighbors continue to use the tiny foyer, a.k.a. the ten feet in front of my door as a stroller parking lot, I don’t care if the entire building reeks like a giant campfire. But I couldn't say this in Spanish because I didn't know the word for stroller or foyer and besides, it's tough to convey humor coupled with disdain in my painfully slow, dimwitted second language style.

So, post-11pm is a good bet if you insist on weekend dining since that's when the ratio of bar drinkers to back room sit-downers begins to shift. The restaurant may look mobbed from the street but it's just whisky sippers crowding the space in the front.

With 100+ choices ranging from one ounce of Fighting Cock for $3 to a $100 portion of Old Grommes 121 Proof, there’s something at all price points (none of that $120 per glass MacCutcheon Scotch). If I were feeling more flush I would experiment a bit more. As it stood, I tried a two-ounce pour of Woodford Reserve. Not so adventurous.

I was most interested in the fried pork nuggets and they weren’t disappointing. The soft centers contrasted with the crispy surface of the cubes like a meaty petit four. What they refer to as Char No. 4 hot sauce seemed like Sriracha to me, not that I mind since it’s my condiment of choice for nearly all fried food. Something about the heat cuts the fattiness.

While I expected greatness from the above pork, I actually preferred the fried cheddar cheese curds (once the fried food floodgates have opened there's no stopping). The firm chewiness worked even better with the crusty exterior. I assumed the creamy (bucking that hot with fatty trend) lightly spiced dipping sauce was remoulade but it’s described as pimento sauce. That’s a lot of orange on one plate.

The city is rife with pulled pork sandwiches, so many that I’m not always sure I should bother. They can't all be special. I do think this one was above average because of the whole package. The meat was moist, more chunky than shredded, and mixed with a barbecue sauce that tasted vaguely creamy and mustardy. The bun was toasted, which is very important to me, and the pickled onions and peppers added just enough heat and tartness. The baked beans weren’t bad either.

I shied away from the proper entrees because after a few ounces of whiskey priced in the double digits, the bill adds up. James wanted to try the smoked chicken, though, since it’s a meat we haven’t attempted in our smoker yet. Wanting to learn more about the preparation, he piped up, “I had a question?” to which our waitress responded a bit defensively, “The pink?” Clearly she was tired of explaining the poultry's doneness despite the deceptively rosy color. Uh no, just the details on how they keep their chicken juicy and not overly smoked. The answer, as it turned out, was using a pickle brine, and smoking at 225 for one hour. We’ll test it out.

Char No. 4 * 196 Smith St., Brooklyn, NY

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Apr 3

Fastest Growing Guts

What could possibly be the fastest growing chain restaurant in America? It must certainly be a question on everyone's mind. Ok, no one's but mine. But thank you, Technomic, for such meaningful-to-me data.

Once again, I'm reminded how out of the loop NYC is as we only have two eateries on the list. Five Guys is definitely a growing presence. In no time it went from big deal opening in the hinterlands a.k.a. College Point, to quietly popping up around the city with no one caring. I think the well done patty thing puts off the burger intelligentsia while I'm more weirded out by the hysteria-driven signs warning customers to not remove the gratis shell-on peanuts from the premises lest a flurry of deadly allergens become unleashed on the neighborhood.

I can appreciate the charms of number eight, Chipotle, and only work a block from one (that has a perpetually huge line) but I hate rice in my burritos and even without the extra starch those hefty tortilla cylinders are still too caloric for my sad world.

Speaking of trying to reduce girthiness, how could you eat at a place with potbelly in the name?

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Butcher Bay

Sunday Night Special: Fish Head Curry

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Jerky Even a Vegetarian Could Love

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