In all the blather about immigration (They're lepers! Drug addicts! Rapists!), no one has talked about the real reason we need immigrants: Food! Maybe this is too bourgeois for the mainstream, but where would NY be without fucking immigrants? For years, two things were true about NY food: No good barbecue, and no good Mexican. Recently, a slew of bbq places have opened, and suddenly, we see Mexican restaurants actually staffed with Mexicans! The bbq complaint should be amended: no good American bbq, sinde Asian bbq has been on offer here for years, some quite good. I was reminded of this when a delightful development happened on one of my commuting routes: the appearance of an authentic taco truck on 14h and 8th Avenue, and some taco stands appearing in Coney Island, one right by the sideshow that makes the best chorizo I've ever eaten, and I've eaten a lot of chorizo. On 14th Street, the truck disappeared for a few weeks, but it was back the other night, and I had a lengua (tongue) taco, that caused a fellow subway rider to look up from his book (Buford's book about being Batali's sous-chef) and ask me where I got that deliciously smelling item. And it was excellent, the tongue soft and tasty. A good taco is a thing of beauty. My taste for tongue of course formed in delis, where a good tongue sandwich is hard to come by. This tongue was not prepared like deli tongue, I suspect a long stewing process, but it was delicious! If you're ever on 14th & 8th, and need a late night food fix, I strongly recommend this truck.
Chinatown too benefits from immigraton. For years, Chinatown was in decline. I remember discussing with a friend how awful most Chinatown places had become, and then new immigrants arrived, bringing soup dumplings and revitalizing stale cuisines: Good Sezchuan! Tasty Cantonese! Anyway, without immigrants, none of this would be possible. And let's not forget my fave Viet fast food: the banh mi sandwich, a noble collision of East & West, yielding one tasty treat. My fave banh mi place is on Broome, but I haven't tried them all by any means.
Viva La immigracion, I say. Let the stampede of exotic food continue!!!!!
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
PS to Eastern Desserts
As much as I don't like Asian desserts, the Japanese are clever at making some Western treats. Currently, in NY, the best creampuffs to be had are at the oddly named Beard Papa chain, imported from Japan. These are delicious, with a nice light pasrty, and fresh cream, injected when you buy them. They are the best creampuffs I've eaten in a long time, especially since a good bakery is heard to find.
Bacon, My True Love
Everyone has their own personal food hierarchy, or pyramid. Mine features Pork at the apex, then ice cream, fish, and chicken at the next level, and beef at the bottom. I love pork in all its manifestations: sausages, chops, roast, shoulder. belly. I also seem to be the only person who likes bacon rare. In fact, as a child I'd sneak raw bacon and eat it uncooked, choosing culinary pleasure over commonsense (raw pork can give you parasites, although I'm told this is happens much less nowadays with all the antibiotics and such pumpled into our meat supply). I also like to buy my bacon at the butcher's, since I like it thick cut and fresh. The best bacon I ever ate was on a trip to the Northern Kingdom in Vermont. The little stores often carried bacon hand delivered by local farmers, and it was delicious! I've never met anyone else who likes bacon as little cooked as I do, and I rarely order it in restaurants, because they always cook it too much for my taste, and it's the thin bacon usually, and I do prefer a nice thick strip. But as much as I like my bacon rare, I need my steak and hamburgers more well done. As a kid, any hint of red in my meat freaked me out. I've come down to medium well now, don't need every hint of red to be banished, and I can eat steak tartare well enough, just don't like my hamburgers rare (good thing too, a friend of mine got violently ill eating a rare hamburger, and almost lost his voice). Who knows how these things develop? The tongue wants what it wants.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Childhood Foods
I was thinking of stuff I ate as a kid that I haven't eaten in decades, things like bologna, frank and beans casserole, and hole in the bread fried egg sandwiches. Bologna seems obvious to forego, as it is definitely on the lower rungs of the cold cut ladder. Even as a kid, I used to fry slices to eat it, and not to be a snob, but once you eat the good stuff (prosciutto, soppresatta, etc) why would you eat bologna? Franks and beans I'd probably still eat, but for whatever reason, just never make for myself. The fried egg sandwich I've thought a lot about. Seems every mom served their family some variation of this, which was basically a slice of bread with a hole cut in the center and an egg fried in it. I loved these as a kid, and never attempted to make one on my own. I keep thinking there must've been more to the recipe, but when I ask my mom, she tells me no, it was just bread with an egg. Yet everyone I've asked seemed to have been served this as a child. Don't know if there is an official name for this dish, you never see it offered in diners and such, but there must be some source for its origin. It's just one of those childhood mysteries.
I confess that one cold cut I miss is the chicken roll. It didn't look like chicken, it didn't really taste like chicken, and I fear to think how it was actually made, but I was quite fond of it. It no longer exists, because the company that made it (Weaver) is gone, and I guess nobody else picked up the slack.
Although I was raised on homemade breads and cakes, I would eat junk, and I remember being fond of Twinkies that had been frozen. I stopped eating Twinkies when I heard the filling was essentially lard, and I've never gone back. Don't really know if this is true, but I'm sure whatever the filling is, it's not of this earth.
I confess that one cold cut I miss is the chicken roll. It didn't look like chicken, it didn't really taste like chicken, and I fear to think how it was actually made, but I was quite fond of it. It no longer exists, because the company that made it (Weaver) is gone, and I guess nobody else picked up the slack.
Although I was raised on homemade breads and cakes, I would eat junk, and I remember being fond of Twinkies that had been frozen. I stopped eating Twinkies when I heard the filling was essentially lard, and I've never gone back. Don't really know if this is true, but I'm sure whatever the filling is, it's not of this earth.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Why It's Okay to Hate Vegans
I"m 50 plus some years old, and in I came of age in the 60's and70's, which means I've seen a lot of crazy food fads come and go. Does anyone remember the word "Macrobiotic"? This diet, popular back then among the insane, promised to balance your yin and yang if only you did things like avoid eating food with any flavor. Children of macrobiotic parents would often scarf down hamburgers and ice cream as soon as they were away from home, their bodies desperate for nourishment and the forbidden. And of course, like all diets that promise to balance you out, the practitioners were all drug addicts or the most neurotic screwballs you could ever hope to meet. There was a well-known macrobiotic East Village restaurant, The Cauldron, and the staff were all outpatients. I wll say, they did make the best soba noodles I ever ate, if that counts for anything. You don't hear much about macrobiotic these days, but many macrobiotic ideas are still around. Another popular nut diet involved a long chart of what foods shouldn't be mixed together. I don't know what this was called, but many painfully thin women in the 70s would tack this long list on their refrigerators. Again, another way to remove pleasure from the culinary experience.
Of course, everyone knows a vegetarian or too, many of whom eat fish or chicken. I have no quarrel if you wish to avoid meat, but vegetarians aren't vegetarians because of animal empathy, most do it to feel superior to us lowly meat eaters. Walk into a steakhouse, and the overwhelming mood is of joy, comradery, and happiness. Walk into a vegetarian place, and it's a funeral parlor, the eaters solemnly bent over their plate of bean sprouts, tofu, and whatever else has no taste (if this isn't true, why do vegetarians try to create dishes that mimic meat?). "I don't enjoy this," they probably mumble, "but I it makes me superior to everybody else." I recall eating at Angelica's in the East Village years ago, a high temple of these beliefs, and asking the waitress for some lemon. "We don't do lemon here," she replied haughtily. I apologized for daring to ask for something that might add some taste to my food..
Vegetarianism is also a cheap way to be noticed. You're throwing a party, and you think, "Oh, I'll make a chicken salad for everyone," then you realize, "Oh wait, X is a vegetarian." Vegans are even more annoying, some going so far to not eat honey. "Bee slavery" they call bee farms. Go fuck yourself. If there's any field that doesn't hurt the animals being cultivated, it's harvesting honey. It's in the interest of the harvester to hope his bees flourish. Taking honey doesn't hurt the bees, doesn't kill them, so what is the problem? Vegan women often have problems dating, because let's face it, a guy who says, "Oh, does that have gluten? I'm allergic" is probably not a guy you want to date.
The most extreme food cult is of course the raw foodists. A friend of mine converted to this religion years ago, and a more hapless sorry bunch of morons it'd be harder to find. First, the idea of raw food is ridiculous. Many foods require heat to make them edible, and even signal desireability through cooking. Broccoli is a pale green, but when cooked, turns a beautiful vivacious green, and the chemical that's good for you in tomatoes is only released through cooking. Also, there's no culture that doesn't cook. I can't think of any society based on raw food at all. Even the most primitive tribes have fire, and a way to cook. Also, like all food cults, they make idiotic claims for themselves. It cures cancer, it cures athlete's foot, you won't age, etc. etc. If somebody wants to eat raw food, go ahead, but don't make pumped up bullshit unproveable claims, or invent theories. I love pork, but I don't claim any mystical properties for it, I just like it.
For years, vegetarians used to justify their diet with the animal kingdom. "Chimps don't eat meat," they'd say, but then it turned out not only do chimps eat meat, they wage war on each other and cannibalize their neighbors. Okay, not such a good example. Then they used dolphins, but it turns out dolphins eat each other too. Here's a word to the wise: animals are pretty diverse, you can find a species to shore up any argument. Monogamous animals, sexually perverse animals, celibate, whatever. It doesn't prove anything about humans. In the 60's there was a famous study of rats & overcrowding. Apparently, they became neutotic, masturbated, etc. This was supposed to show something about humans in cities, but even as a kid, I said, "Well, now scientists know a lot about how rats behave if rats lived in crowded apartments, but they don't. And notice, rat brain, size of a pea. Human brain, a bit bigger.'
Another religious aspect to being a raw foodie is the cleanse, an idea that's a hallmark of most food nuts. Either through fasting or some elaborately unpleasant diet, you're supposed to get the toxins out of your body. Obviously, none of these people took elementary biology. People who do these claim years of crap gets flushed out of their systems. But the stomach digests food by breaking it down with hydrochloric acid. In mad scientist movies, the vat of acid with the huge skull and crossbones, is either sulfuric or hydrochloric, and this acid is what attacks your food. Unless you've been eating metal or glass, nothing stays in your body for years. The intestines use bacteria to further break down food, take out what the body needs, and what's left is pushed out as waste. Getting colonics, anothr food nut belief, is actually harmful, because they flush out the necessary flora the intestines need to do their job. If you want things to flush normally, drink lots of water.
But raw foodists are always cleansing, and falling off the wagon, because I think the body rebels against so boring a diet. And then it really is like Christian Science: if you die, it's not because disease doesn't give a fuck how you pray, and Christian Science is dead wrong, it's because you didn't believe enough. So my friend has been cleansing for years, constantly backtracking, and constantly starting again. She thinks it'll cure her asthma. That fact that she's been eating raw food for years, and it hasn't changed her breathing isn't a fault in the diet, it's because she's not rigorous enough in following the true path.
Americans seem to enjoy any cult that removes pleasure from simple human activities. Eating, sex, walking, whatever, there's some doctor or theory to drain the pleasure out of it. I recall a study saying you shouldn't drink cold liquid, it shocks the system. Maybe if you're a neurasthenic, but I love cold liquid. I store a glass in my freezer, permanently filled with ice cubes. Cold water is a genuine pleasure to me. Now I'm supposed to give this up too? Anything that causes pleasure for it's own sake seems to make Americans nervous. Perhaps that's why so many glom on to these rigorous diets, founded not on good culinary principles, but vague wackjob theories.
Quite frankly, even if you could prove that eating uncooked food makes you immortal, I'm not giving up the pleasures of a well grilled steak, a juicy hamburger, a porkchop, or a nice broiled piece of fish. If you can, more power to you, and have a nice life.
Of course, everyone knows a vegetarian or too, many of whom eat fish or chicken. I have no quarrel if you wish to avoid meat, but vegetarians aren't vegetarians because of animal empathy, most do it to feel superior to us lowly meat eaters. Walk into a steakhouse, and the overwhelming mood is of joy, comradery, and happiness. Walk into a vegetarian place, and it's a funeral parlor, the eaters solemnly bent over their plate of bean sprouts, tofu, and whatever else has no taste (if this isn't true, why do vegetarians try to create dishes that mimic meat?). "I don't enjoy this," they probably mumble, "but I it makes me superior to everybody else." I recall eating at Angelica's in the East Village years ago, a high temple of these beliefs, and asking the waitress for some lemon. "We don't do lemon here," she replied haughtily. I apologized for daring to ask for something that might add some taste to my food..
Vegetarianism is also a cheap way to be noticed. You're throwing a party, and you think, "Oh, I'll make a chicken salad for everyone," then you realize, "Oh wait, X is a vegetarian." Vegans are even more annoying, some going so far to not eat honey. "Bee slavery" they call bee farms. Go fuck yourself. If there's any field that doesn't hurt the animals being cultivated, it's harvesting honey. It's in the interest of the harvester to hope his bees flourish. Taking honey doesn't hurt the bees, doesn't kill them, so what is the problem? Vegan women often have problems dating, because let's face it, a guy who says, "Oh, does that have gluten? I'm allergic" is probably not a guy you want to date.
The most extreme food cult is of course the raw foodists. A friend of mine converted to this religion years ago, and a more hapless sorry bunch of morons it'd be harder to find. First, the idea of raw food is ridiculous. Many foods require heat to make them edible, and even signal desireability through cooking. Broccoli is a pale green, but when cooked, turns a beautiful vivacious green, and the chemical that's good for you in tomatoes is only released through cooking. Also, there's no culture that doesn't cook. I can't think of any society based on raw food at all. Even the most primitive tribes have fire, and a way to cook. Also, like all food cults, they make idiotic claims for themselves. It cures cancer, it cures athlete's foot, you won't age, etc. etc. If somebody wants to eat raw food, go ahead, but don't make pumped up bullshit unproveable claims, or invent theories. I love pork, but I don't claim any mystical properties for it, I just like it.
For years, vegetarians used to justify their diet with the animal kingdom. "Chimps don't eat meat," they'd say, but then it turned out not only do chimps eat meat, they wage war on each other and cannibalize their neighbors. Okay, not such a good example. Then they used dolphins, but it turns out dolphins eat each other too. Here's a word to the wise: animals are pretty diverse, you can find a species to shore up any argument. Monogamous animals, sexually perverse animals, celibate, whatever. It doesn't prove anything about humans. In the 60's there was a famous study of rats & overcrowding. Apparently, they became neutotic, masturbated, etc. This was supposed to show something about humans in cities, but even as a kid, I said, "Well, now scientists know a lot about how rats behave if rats lived in crowded apartments, but they don't. And notice, rat brain, size of a pea. Human brain, a bit bigger.'
Another religious aspect to being a raw foodie is the cleanse, an idea that's a hallmark of most food nuts. Either through fasting or some elaborately unpleasant diet, you're supposed to get the toxins out of your body. Obviously, none of these people took elementary biology. People who do these claim years of crap gets flushed out of their systems. But the stomach digests food by breaking it down with hydrochloric acid. In mad scientist movies, the vat of acid with the huge skull and crossbones, is either sulfuric or hydrochloric, and this acid is what attacks your food. Unless you've been eating metal or glass, nothing stays in your body for years. The intestines use bacteria to further break down food, take out what the body needs, and what's left is pushed out as waste. Getting colonics, anothr food nut belief, is actually harmful, because they flush out the necessary flora the intestines need to do their job. If you want things to flush normally, drink lots of water.
But raw foodists are always cleansing, and falling off the wagon, because I think the body rebels against so boring a diet. And then it really is like Christian Science: if you die, it's not because disease doesn't give a fuck how you pray, and Christian Science is dead wrong, it's because you didn't believe enough. So my friend has been cleansing for years, constantly backtracking, and constantly starting again. She thinks it'll cure her asthma. That fact that she's been eating raw food for years, and it hasn't changed her breathing isn't a fault in the diet, it's because she's not rigorous enough in following the true path.
Americans seem to enjoy any cult that removes pleasure from simple human activities. Eating, sex, walking, whatever, there's some doctor or theory to drain the pleasure out of it. I recall a study saying you shouldn't drink cold liquid, it shocks the system. Maybe if you're a neurasthenic, but I love cold liquid. I store a glass in my freezer, permanently filled with ice cubes. Cold water is a genuine pleasure to me. Now I'm supposed to give this up too? Anything that causes pleasure for it's own sake seems to make Americans nervous. Perhaps that's why so many glom on to these rigorous diets, founded not on good culinary principles, but vague wackjob theories.
Quite frankly, even if you could prove that eating uncooked food makes you immortal, I'm not giving up the pleasures of a well grilled steak, a juicy hamburger, a porkchop, or a nice broiled piece of fish. If you can, more power to you, and have a nice life.
Why Only Western Civilization Understands Desserts
I don't have many rules for food, but two of them, mostly true, are: 1) The national dishes of any culture are usually repulsive if you're not from that culture, and 2) Only the West gets desserts. Number one is mostly true, with small exceptions here and there. Number 2 is absolutely true. I love Asian food, but what passes for sweets is mostly incomprehensible. Thick dry bean pastes, sweets with meat centers, huh? The Japanese are sneakier, they make desserts that look European until you bite into them, and reveal their non Western designs. One Japanese sweet looks like a ball of sweetened snot. Delightful. And Indian desserts, forget about it. My joke on Indian sweets is you take a Twinkie, put it in bowl of milk, let it sit on a windowsill for 3 days, then cover it in honey. I love these cuisines, but they just don't get dessert. Everyonce in awhile, you get a westerner who pretends to like this stuff, but I think they're lying, just claiming to eat it to appear hip. Nobody from this part of the world can honestly tell me they'd rather have a ball of black bean paste than a cannoli or a creme brulee. To understand fully Eastern perversity in this field, check out the Asian Candy & Snack shops that have opened up in Chinatown. They sell things I can comprehend, like wasabi green peas, but they make candy out of squid and fish, and it's what the fuck? for a Westerner. Candied squid? The flavors often combine odd juxtapostions in unsavory taste combinations. Sweet with an undertone of rot, for example. Go ahead. Go to one of these places and taste some of the weirder things. I can't recall the name, but there's one on lower Mott Street. We Westerners might've gotten a lot wrong, but dessert is not one of them.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Gordon Ramsay (http://www.gordonramsay.com/)
Although alchemy is considered a fake science, I believe one area where alchemy as a practice thrives is in the culinary arts. The transformation of base items such as milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup into the sublime egg cream is truly alchemical, as is turning cream into whipped cream, cranberries into sauce, and almost any cooking process you can name is alchemy to me. But sometimes, a chef can take ingredients into another realm entirely, and such is the realm I entered the other day when a friend and I had a meal at Gordon Ramsay's NY outpost, the Maze (renamed from the London Bar). I've long been a fan of Gordon Ramsay's tv shows, so when I heard he was opening an outpost in NY, I was dying to sample his food. I was first made aware of Ramsay on Anthony Bourdain's old Food Network show, A Cook's Tour. When Bourdain did an episode on London, he showcased Ramsay as one of Britain's new breed of chef. Then BBC America ran a slew of his shows, including Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (slated for an American version), The F Word, and an earlier show about his attempts to open his first restaurant. Ramsay is a divisive figure in Britain, who has caused many a contretemps over his anger and opinionated ideas (he once claimed women can't be good cooks, a remark he regrets making, and he threw Joan Collins out of his restaurant once), but he has definite ideas on food and how it should be served. Like many food obsessives, he is a perfectionist, and can be cranky when standards don't meet his. This trait seems true of many of my favorite food people. The Israeli who runs Cafe Azuri on 51st St., between 9th and 10th, and who makes the best felafel in the city, is frequently cited for being cranky and rude, as was Alessandro of Melampo's on Thompson St., maker of the best sandwiches ever. Alessandro went back to Italy, and his shop is now in the hands of his much nicer assistant.
Many of Ramsay's ideas were apparent in his restaurant: the wait staff was excellent, attentive, and the head waiter answered our questions about the food clearly and without the condescension you sometimes get in high end establishments. The actual restaurant has a retro feel to it, I'd say 1963 moderne, with a lot of glass and steel, and vinyl banquets. Despite a slightly sterile quality, I found it very pleasant to sit in it. Very nice bathrooms, by the way, always a plus. Ramsay's food was amazing, possibly some of the best I've ever eaten. Ramsay is not a mad scientist, experimenting with chemical frippery like Willy Dufresne, but a chef who believes in serving perfect versions of whatever he's cooking. Among the standouts, hand dived scallops, with an astonishing garnish made from cauliflower, pork belly, a fall off the bone lamb shoulder, a delicious carpaccio of tuna, a stunning risotto made with wood mushrooms, and an incredible dessert of molten chocolate fondant, paired with an almost savory pecan ice cream. My one critique is some of the dishes were a touch over salted, but I'm very sensitive to salt as a spice, so it may just be my palate. One thing I especially enjoyed was the waiters kept refilling our water glasses without us having to ask, something I appreciate as I drink a lot of water with my meal.
I see that Ramsay has gotten mixed reviews in NY, but I think this has to do with the fact that Ramsay is not an innovator, but someone who just prepares food in an excellent manner. Ramsay is from an older tradition of chefs, and NY foodies tend to gravitate to innovators, which is why I think Dufresne gets so much press. I haven't eaten at this place, so maybe his chemical experimets yield tasty food, but it's not a direction that appeals to me.
The after glow of the meal stayed with me for several days, and I was loathe to eat anything that might spoil the memory of the experience. I highly recomend Ramsay's restaurant, and the prices are not as insane as you might expect from an establishment of such high culinary standards.
Many of Ramsay's ideas were apparent in his restaurant: the wait staff was excellent, attentive, and the head waiter answered our questions about the food clearly and without the condescension you sometimes get in high end establishments. The actual restaurant has a retro feel to it, I'd say 1963 moderne, with a lot of glass and steel, and vinyl banquets. Despite a slightly sterile quality, I found it very pleasant to sit in it. Very nice bathrooms, by the way, always a plus. Ramsay's food was amazing, possibly some of the best I've ever eaten. Ramsay is not a mad scientist, experimenting with chemical frippery like Willy Dufresne, but a chef who believes in serving perfect versions of whatever he's cooking. Among the standouts, hand dived scallops, with an astonishing garnish made from cauliflower, pork belly, a fall off the bone lamb shoulder, a delicious carpaccio of tuna, a stunning risotto made with wood mushrooms, and an incredible dessert of molten chocolate fondant, paired with an almost savory pecan ice cream. My one critique is some of the dishes were a touch over salted, but I'm very sensitive to salt as a spice, so it may just be my palate. One thing I especially enjoyed was the waiters kept refilling our water glasses without us having to ask, something I appreciate as I drink a lot of water with my meal.
I see that Ramsay has gotten mixed reviews in NY, but I think this has to do with the fact that Ramsay is not an innovator, but someone who just prepares food in an excellent manner. Ramsay is from an older tradition of chefs, and NY foodies tend to gravitate to innovators, which is why I think Dufresne gets so much press. I haven't eaten at this place, so maybe his chemical experimets yield tasty food, but it's not a direction that appeals to me.
The after glow of the meal stayed with me for several days, and I was loathe to eat anything that might spoil the memory of the experience. I highly recomend Ramsay's restaurant, and the prices are not as insane as you might expect from an establishment of such high culinary standards.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)