Aug 8
Yay, blue food, and now it’s healthy. Well, at least blue corn tortillas are, according to a study from the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. For what it's worth, it seems that they’re higher protein and lower glycemic than white varieties. I’ve never been a voracious tortilla eater, but I’ll at least keep blue ones in mind since they're so handsome. I wonder if there’s any extra benefit to eating blue cornbread?
The last thing I wanted was to be a summertime loser. It’s already August and I haven’t eaten a single real tomato (at least not while sitting on my couch watching the increasingly opaque John From Cincinnati). I managed to drag myself up to the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket just shy of closing time, and then reminded myself why I’m lucky to live two blocks from Caputo’s.
I had browsed tomato recipes on Epicurious and actually chose three, two for later in the week, but it was the crispy pancetta, burrata and tomato sandwich that seemed low maintenance enough for a scalding Sunday night. I’ll admit that Bon Appetit isn’t on my regular reading list so I had no idea that I was making this month’s cover recipe until I saw the picture on another site’s banner ad. Maybe I’d been subliminally influenced all week?
Simple as they are, sandwiches and salads are two things I like to leave to professionals. My versions always end up as weak imitations or when made up by me, just plain weak. You only need to compare my version to the original for a glaringly disproportionate bread/filling ratio. I didn’t think it was a big deal if I substituted pane rustico for brioche but that was a bit of a mistake. The crust was hard on the mouth and the inner crumb kind of dominated.
The only blob of burrata left at Caputo’s was truffle-laced, so that subtly changed the flavor. Not for the worse, though. I will freely admit to being borderline ignorant with Italian food (I hate it when home cooks are all unabashedly clueless with cuisines that I love, though). I wasn’t familiar with panna and had no idea what type of leaf the wet cheese ball had been wrapped in (I think it’s a leek relative).
Once you got past the breadiness, the center was a cohesive blend of all ends of the flavor and texture spectrum: salty, gooey, fleshy, bitter, a little tart and not terribly sweet (using the prescribed egg bread would’ve taken care of that). I made a second small sandwich using the same bread sliced thin, crosswise and it was close to ideal.
Next mission is to find uses for ripe tomatoes that don’t involve cheese, olive oil and basil. I know that’s a classic combo but I’m keen on this rendition using fish sauce, white anchovies, cilantro and ginger. The strange thing is that I’m 85% certain that I made this dish before but I don’t remember getting the idea from Food & Wine.
Sidecar and Sunshine, dinner and a movie choices I made Saturday night, both left me with the same message: stick with your original mission. Sunshine I’ll leave nebulous and unspoiled. Sidecar, I’ll explain a bit.
Newly opened restaurants should be approached with caution and patience. But curiosity got the better of me with this South Slope oddity near the Blockbuster and Rent a Center (only the classiest neighborhoods have leather sectionals and plasma TVs on installment plans).
They didn’t have their liquor license yet, which was a minor disappointment because their list of cocktails sounded promising. But I wasn’t too crushed because a BYOB six-pack is a money-saver. We made our first mistake by turning down a weirdo small table in the window that practically had you sitting with the party next to you. We thought we’d wait at the (alcohol-free) bar until something opened up.
The space is high-ceilinged and handsome with de rigeur mid-‘00s hanging filament bulbs. More seating is allotted to drinking than dining which would be fine if there were drinks. And there were people who seemed to be just drinking, which was kind of baffling. Who would hang out a bar not serving drinks, drinking? I guess it’s better than imbibing in your own living room.
We skimmed the menus that were given to us, cracked open a couple Stellas obtained on the corner and figured we’d wait it out. The couple sitting next to us at the bar, who I swear walked in after us, approached the hostess and next thing I knew they were seated. Not cool.
There’s nothing as annoying as being in line at a grocery or drug store when a cashier yells “next” only to have a newcomer walk right up with no one in charge acknowledging who was actually next. I like a tight ship.
As long as we were waiting, we weren’t going to go hungry so we ordered crostini topped with a sweetish pate, served with a mixed salad and a few beet cubes. This is where the stay-the-course plan began falling apart. Our mission was to eat dinner sitting at a table and apparently, we had strayed the second we ordered food from the bar. The place started clearing out and every single person who’d come in after us was now sitting at booths.
Clearly, we’d been brushed off. I realize once you order food at the bar it’s kind of like your request for a table has been cancelled out (though the original couple next to us who were immediately seated had also ordered food at the bar first) but we still had entrees coming and no one else at the bar was eating full meals. At this point there were two empty tables, so we asked once again to be seated (I was either going to walk out or seat myself). You would’ve thought we were Al-Qaeda with the amount of reluctance received. We were given the eye for the remainder or our meal.
So, after about 45 minutes we got a booth and our entrees that I saw sitting on the metal shelf for at least ten minutes. They were looked at and touched numerous times, though no one seemed to have any idea where they were intended to go. It’s not that big of a restaurant for such confusion.
My creative grilled cibatta banh mi (called a banh de, which I am guessing is a play on DeCoursy, the surname of the brother-owners) with a shooter of cucumber juice was likeable. And James didn’t have complaints about his fried chicken, mashed root vegetables and succotash. But the food was all secondary at this point.
I hate service to overshadow a meal and I’m trying to temper knee-jerk harshness but there were glitches I couldn’t get past. It wasn’t Williamsburg-bad, there was a semblance of professionalism but I didn’t care for the way things played out. I wanted to like the place and the components were all there: tasty reasonably priced food, eclectic juke box (The Vaselines and Exploding Hearts were both pleasing) and potentially fun cocktails. Yet nothing gelled.
Sunshine, too, started off with promise before evolving into a horror flick. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into before it’s too late.
Sidecar * 560 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn, NY
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around farmers market fanaticism (though I did pay a brief visit to Grand Army Plaza’s on Saturday and picked up some tomatoes and opal basil). I get my entertainment from wide-aisled, fluorescent-lit mega markets. The Western Beef H.Q. will always be my favorite mainstream grocery store but Stop & Shop wows in other ways.
We really only go when we need to return bottles (though it’s often fruitless since I figured out they don’t take brands they don’t sell, so all our Trader Joe’s and various microbrew brands were rejected). I made a whopping 95 cents from plastic Vintage Seltzer. If anyone knows of any self-serve bottle returns in South Brooklyn, please do tell.
The two bright spots are the baked goods and metal shelves teeming with discontinued items. They used to hide the marked down rejects in the back near the bathrooms but it has been moved so it’s the first thing you see upon entering. You don’t often see price-slashed cast offs in NYC, probably because there isn’t enough room.
I picked up a can of oil-packed Genova Tonno (which I just discovered is owned by Chicken of the Sea) which isn’t half-bad tossed with white beans, red onions and arugula. But it was the Trivial Pursuit Pop Tarts that took top prize from the shelf of misfit food. I genuinely like Pop Tarts so I’m still debating whether I should eat them or save them along with my other just-for-looks snacks like Strawberry Fluff and KC Masterpiece ranch-flavored bbq sauce that I hoard on an Ikea Ivar shelf downstairs.
Ready to eat cheesecake filling was new to me. I thought those no-bake Jello “cheesecake” mixes were instant enough. There’s something about this plastic tub that implies the filling will never make its way into a crust and more likely alternate between spoon and mouth.
I couldn’t believe Stop & Shop didn’t have Lofthouse cookies, that’s their one reliable item. But single serve carrot cake and 7UP crème cake (we bought both) made up for the lack of soft cookes.
Do they still have Little Buckets at KFC? Ok, yes they do (I love answering my own question). S&S makes Boston cream, strawberry shortcake and said carrot cake in short stubby plastic containers that remind me of a fast food dessert.
A cheap jumble of raisin and nut studded cake, whipped cream and piped cream cheese frosting. For only $1.99, I got three snack occasions out of this.
I wondered how long it would take for micheladas to go mainstream. I wrote about them some time ago and I still wouldn’t say they’re wildly popular, especially not outside of Mexican restaurants.
I first saw Miller Chill a few weeks ago at a New Jersey Chevy’s. Of all the places I might’ve spotted the bottled beverage, a suburban Chevy’s makes the most sense. This beer cocktail is simply a chelada with salt and lime, no chile. I always thought the spice was the fun of a michelada.
I haven’t seen the Budweiser Chelada in person but I am aware of its creepy existence. Creepy because it contains Clamato. And I thought that addition was weird enough in chips.
What mildly unknown regional drink will get popularized in the U.S. next? Kvass? Chile beer sounds fine but the thought of rye bread beer makes me want to hurl. Cauim? I would like to see how Anheuser-Busch would handle the chewed manioc aspect. I’m sure it could be commercialized with synthetic enzymes. My vote is for lamanog and it looks like it’s actually being served at Cendrillon.
Ok, I didn’t make this dinner until Tuesday and it’s now Thursday, but it was intended for Sunday night. And isn’t Sunday night really just a state of mind anyway? This weekend I got waylaid by a late lunch/early dinner at Sripraphai and it seemed silly to cook Chinese food just a few hours later.
The goal was to use at least part of a boneless lamb roast that we bought on a whim from Costco. Having no desire for a traditional British preparation (it’s hard not to think of the U.K. or Australia), Indian food seemed logical. Then I thought of Northern Chinese dishes using chiles, cumin and cilantro. That was definitely it.
There was only one such recipe in The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, quick fried lamb but it didn’t contain cumin. Beef with cumin, did, however. Because I’m a rule follower, I essentially used the lamb recipe and just added the earthy spice in the middle. I didn’t have angelica root and I’m not sure how it tastes exactly. Well, I’m not totally a rule follower because I persist in reprinting copyrighted recipes. I swear, I’ll stop soon.
Because I never learn from past mistakes, I kind of mangled this dish by overcrowding the wok. I’d envisioned these perfectly seared, spicy, oil-coated slices of meat and I ended up with boiled mutton. Well, practically. Too much meat produced too much liquid and my version became soupy and a little tough. Next time I’ll be more careful and make it spicier.
Quick-Fried Lamb
Xiao Chao Yang Rou
Ingredients
10 ounces lean boneless lamb
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
¼ teaspoon salt, plus extra to taste
2 teaspoons cumin
2 fresh red chiles or ½ red pepper
2 ½ ounces cilantro or Chinese celery
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger
2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons dried chile flakes (optional)
1 tablespoon finely chopped Chinese angelica root (optional)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons peanut oil for cooking
1. Cut the lamb across the grain into thin slices. Place the slices in a bowl, add the Shaoxing wine, soy sauces, and salt and mix well; set aside.
2. Cut the red chiles into thin slices; if using bell pepper, cut into small squares. Cut the cilantro stems or celery into 2-inch pieces, reserve some leaves for a garnish and set aside the other leaves for other uses.
3. Heat the wok over a high flame until smoke rises, then add the peanut oil and swirl around. Add the ginger, garlic, fresh chile or bell pepper, chile flakes, cumin and angelica root, if using, and stir-fry briefly until fragrant.
4. Add the lamb and continue stir-frying, adding salt to taste, if necessary. When the lamb is almost cooked, add the cilantro or celery, and stir a few times until barely cooked. Turn off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and serve, with cilantro leaf garnish, if desired.
I scoured the same cookbook for a quick vegetable dish that didn’t contain any hard to find ingredients. Sadly, that meant no Chinese chives, black beans, lotus root, purple perilla, fava beans, duck eggs or bamboo shoots. I landed on a recipe that used eggplant, green pepper and soy sauce, simple as that. Eggplant does tend to require an unseemly amount of oil to get silky. I skimped a bit, but either way the dish was nowhere near greasy and nothing like you’d get from take-out joint. I was tempted to substitute red peppers because green ones are low on my list of favorites, but the dry wok cooking managed to sweeten them up.
Pounded Eggplants with Green Peppers
Qing Jiao Lei Qie Zi
Ingredients
1 pound eggplants (preferably Chinese)
salt
5 ounces green bell peppers, thin-skinned if possible
light soy sauce
4 tablespoons peanut oil for cooking
1. Peel the eggplants and slice thickly. Sprinkle with salt, toss to coat evenly, and then set aside for 30 minutes
2. Meanwhile, cut the pepper in half, discard the seeds and stem and thinly slice; set aside.
3. When the eggplants are ready, rinse them to get rid of excess salt, and shake dry; set aside.
4. Stir-fry the peppers in a dry wok over a medium flame until soft and fragrant, pressing them against the sides of the wok; set aside.
5. Heat the oil in a wok over a medium flame. Add the eggplants and stir-fry for a good 10 minutes or so, until they are very tender but not colored. As they soften, mash them up with a wok scoop, until you have a sludgy paste that is about half the volume of the original eggplant slices.
6. Add the bell peppers and stir-fry until both ingredients are fragrant and well-mixed, seasoning with a little soy sauce to taste. Serve.
Recipes from “The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook” by Fuchsia Dunlop. W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.
Of course I know better than to get sucked into hype, but part of me (a tiny sliver buried deep inside) was curious what the Wakiya fuss was about. I hate scenes so I hemmed and hawed over bowing out of my reservation (I didn’t realize that obtaining one was such a big deal. I called, I got one. And 8:45 seemed like a perfectly sane dining time to me). Do I really want to pay good money to get treated like an untouchable?
But aging naïf that I am, I was genuinely interested in the cuisine. I realize food is hardly the point of a place like this (I’m currently planning a fall trip to Shanghai and don’t anticipate encountering much Wakiya-style fare) but what little I’ve read so far has focused more on service and style issues. I didn’t encounter much attitude and I actually expected the prices to be crazier (though yes, the portions are petite). We spent about $120 with four dishes and three drinks. No bargain, but hardly outrageous either.
I was a little bummed to see nary a C-lister. Just common folks to my uneducated gaze. Gawker saw Dennis Quaid a few nights ago (I saw him last night in Day After Tomorrow on cable. I didn’t want to—I was waiting for Damages to start). I was hoping for at least Randy Quaid or a lesser Arquette or Baldwin.
Soup dumplings. No complaints and the vinegar with ginger shreds was a fitting acidic touch. They instruct you to eat them from a small bowl but you really kind of need a big spoon with these messy blobs of dough.
Bang bang chicken. This is a cold dish of shredded chicken dressed with a sweet-hot sesame, soy and vinegar mixture. I could imagine some people thinking this was spicy, though it easily could’ve been amped up threefold.
Tso tsao pork. That’s sweet and sour pork to you. Supposedly the black vinegar makes it more refined. I think it was the tiny serving size that shouted upscale.
Soft shell crab with golden sand. To remain poetic yet maintain accuracy, I would’ve called it scarlet sand, as it the grit was orange-red, and frankly, tasted like crushed Lays BBQ chips. In other words, the sand was quite tasty. But the crumbs were panko, black beans and a few different dried chiles that I can’t recall. I think Aleppo was one variety.
XO omelet fried rice. We really didn’t really need this, though James thought it was the best dish. The egg-wrapped rice came at the end and was duly filling. I might’ve forgone it for a dessert.
Urine-drenched toilet seats were the least surprising thing of the evening. As I’ve discovered with various NYC jobs, the “classier” the caliber of ladyfolk, the filthier shared bathrooms will be. This was a unisex bathroom, but I only saw groups of girls jamming into the cramped space. I am supposed to be talking about food here, so I’ll spare you further gruesome anecdotes.
Wakiya * 2 Lexington Ave., New York, NY
Radishes aren’t a loathe like melons or malta, but I could do without them in most circumstances. (Daikon is another story. A good story.) When they come with tacos I might take a nibble or two because I hate to waste. I kind of thought radishes were good for nothing until I heard about Noche de Rábanos a.k.a. Radish Night in Oaxaca. Not that I’ve witnessed it first hand, but it appears to be a freaktastic folk art blitz that takes place right before Christmas. I’ve always dug Chinese and Thai fruit and vegetable carving but these inedible sculptures are something else altogether.
Radish Night [Planeta]
La Noche de Rábanos [Aqui Oaxaca]
Radish Festival Photo Gallery [About.com]
Photo from Beverlita on Flickr
1/2 Convincing thirteen people to endure a lengthy B/Q ride (maybe the B line is the shit—Grub Street was all over it today) then walk a mile in high heat and humidity would seem like a tough sell, but I was lucky enough to coerce a crew out to Clemente’s Crabhouse in Sheepshead Bay on Saturday. I don’t normally do destination birthday parties or group dinners because trauma invariably ensues. Maybe the frozen margaritas, sea air and ‘90s jukebox hits (I thought I’d permanently blocked out the Spin Doctors) messed with my ability to judge, but I did feel better about hitting “the wrong side of my thirties” as one friend ominously remarked in a card.
Sure, Clemente’s can be a pain in the ass to get to, but the fun is being in completely non-Brooklyn feeling Brooklyn. The urge to buy a houseboat is not an unusual reaction after sitting on the pier for a few hours. Sprouting tan muscles, a moustache and donning a tank top and denim shorts might occur if you stay too long, though.
All-you-can-eat crabs were definitely in order since on my previous visit last year I chickened out and lobster rolled it. Minus the poor vegetarians forced to witness mass crustacean carnage, most diners opted for the same $29.95 deal. Massive metal bowls filled with both Old Bay and garlic and oil drenched crabs took over the paper-covered table. I’ll admit that I’m lame with meat extraction and it takes a lot of effort with little pay off. The crabs aren’t huge by any means. I doubt I went through more than ten, though I didn’t keep count.
After everyone seemed sated and dusk approached, there were still claws and bodies aplenty. It seemed like a waste but I couldn’t take anymore. That’s when James stepped up and went nuts. I swear, an hour after everyone else threw in the lobster bib, he was still cracking and picking like a machine. I started getting nervous that he might start turning red, sprouting claws and walking sideways. There’s no doubt that he got his money’s worth.
James's overflowing refuse bucket captured by Nao.
We really couldn’t call it an evening until the candle adorned, deep-fried Twinkie doused in ice cream made an appearance. I’m not one to indulge in party pics, in fact I keep humans out of the picture as much as possible, but lest you think my only friends are my laptop and TV, here you are. No, I’m not in any of them because I looked like a sweaty blob and my incessant rambling is more than enough.
Aquavit never would’ve occurred to me as a special occasion restaurant to choose but it was a welcome diversion from genres I’ve mildly bemoaned in the past. For a spell, it seemed like all surprises entailed manly/meaty or Latin American, all styles I enjoy, but not for every celebration.
Originally, I was tempted to say that the food wasn’t overwhelmingly Scandinavian. But I take that back. I probably shouldn’t be fit to judge anyway, considering my Swedish repertoire barely extends beyond Ikea meatballs and lingonberry sauce. As I started looking over my (overly dim and yellow) photos and tagging them in Flickr, it became apparent that Northern European components were definitely being employed, though the overall effect on a dish was frequently mitigated by a more familiar (avocado) or foreign (tandoori spicing) flavor.
The room was easily 80% full when we arrived, though you wouldn't guess it from this photo at meal's end. We eat slowly.
To generalize, the cuisine was very clean, sharp and in more than a few instances, bitter. That’s a profile I’m not naturally drawn to; it’s a cold shoulder. Bitter and sour are slow going while hot and sweet never fail to immediately win me over. It’s good to diversify.
Amuse of lettuce soup and something fishy.
I’d already downed a couple of gin and tonics at frozen-in-time Bill’s Gay Nineties, one block south, so not everyone would think a flight of three aquavits wise. I did, and chose saffron, cucumber and pear, vanilla and black pepper from a long list. I preferred the spice and fruit of the latter, cucumber was as you’d expect and saffron despite its golden color had little taste. These kept me occupied through the first few courses. At some point I switched over to a 2005 Weingut Meinhard Forstreiter Gruner Veltliner. Just a glass, though.
Another amuse. Clockwise from top right, pickled herring, tandoori salmon with what I swear was a dab of bbq sauce, oyster and something topped with roe that I can’t recall. This is when we noticed that they really love micro greens. Or green. Single miniscule leaves turned up throughout the meal.
I’ve never encountered a tasting menu presented in this manner. There were 14 dishes listed, which in hindsight sounds voluminous, even if they were only a few bites each. As it turned out, each diner gets seven, one all from the left column, the other from the right with no say in the matter. We were initially baffled when James was presented with a lobster roll (spring, not Maine style) with bacon and trout roe and I received yellowtail tuna, sea urchin, lime sauce and duck tongue.
Mine was like pure ocean. I felt a little guilty eating bird tongues like that’s the kind of callous opulence (though it’s not as if people are slaughtering ducks just for their tongues) that would cause PETA to threaten ripping out my own tongue. I have no idea what those black, slightly sweet wafers were made from but they tasted like candied seaweed.
Hot-smoked trout, salsify, apple-horseradish broth. This wasn’t mine. But all those flavors are way Scandinavian. I’m eating my words now.
Octopus, smoked avocado, lemon vinaigrette. As implied in the name, this was a smoky dish and the charred around the edges cephalopod added to that. The charcoal tastes were smoothed by the creamy avocado and tangy lemon.
Foie gras ganache, cured quail, raisin vinaigrette. This was the only dish where I was like, “that should’ve been mine.” Sweet, rich and meaty is my M.O. Luckily, it was too much for James and I got a few bites.
Beef tartar, mushrooms, salmon roe. Mine was the dead opposite. Literally cool, atop ice, raw and punctuated with grated horseradish. I would’ve loved this completely if there wasn’t quail and foie gras a few inches from me.
Short ribs and rib eye, asparagus, hop sauce (the unpictured companion was venison, green asparagus, bacon, horseradish dumplings). See what I mean about bitter? The slight bite from the hops did work, especially with the tender but compact brick of shredded short ribs.
Sorrel granite, rhubarb, yogurt foam. This was a palate cleanser all right. Triply sour but definitely sugared, as well. The yogurt gelled the ice and crunch. Vegetal granitas are the type of thing I would never make for myself but that I envision concocting for a dinner party.
Fourme d'ambert, apple, date bread.
Humboldt fog, blackcurrant, olive bread. Behold the microgreen. I was pleased that I got one of my favorite chevres instead of the blue (and I love blue cheese) and that it was ripe and runny. Cheese at my house rarely gets to that stage because I eat it too fast.
Floating island. This was complimentary and I’m not sure what all the ingredients were. The ice cream contained either cream cheese or yogurt and the sorbet seemed like raspberry. All three desserts came at once so there was a frenzy trying to sample everything before the chilled bits melted into nothingness.
Mint-chocolate mousse, orange sauce. Junior Mints and Peppermint Patties have always been my enemies. Sweet mint doesn’t do much for me. But the mint in the few bites of mousse I tried was very herbaceous and much better than similar things made with extract.
Chocolate cake, licorice, plum, chocolate stout sorbet. After the sweetness of the floating island, this mix came as a bit of a shock. The licorice and stout were anything but fluffy. I’m still not sure that I liked the dark, yes bitter, flavors. I can remember them vividly three days later, though. In fact, I’m getting the same sensation from a cup of strong black coffee as I type.
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