Top Chef Gawker

Adventures in the Horn of Africa

2009-08-15T19:13:00.016-04:00

When I lace up my shoes for work, I'm not going for any kind of statement. So when I needed a replacement pair recently, I headed to the Silver Spring DSW - where the plain, cheap loafer is perfectly constructed for the government employee just looking to fit in.

Shoe-shopping works up an appetite. With a box of new and shiny yet unmistakably conventional shoes in hand, I left DSW in search of a meal more interesting than my footwear selection. It was my first time in downtown Silver Spring, but its reputation for ethnic foods preceded it.

Taste of Morocco on Colesville Rd was alluring, but I settled on Abol, an Ethiopian place a few blocks away. The cuisine of the Horn of Africa has had the attractive force of a magnetic field over me ever since, well, the Horn of Africa - a food cart in Portland where a red lentil stew left me like an alphabet letter longing for a refrigerator door.

Inside Abol, I noticed a City Paper review that rated the restaurant one of the top 50 joints in the DC area. Abol, it said, means "authentic" or "original." I checked my shoes at the door and grabbed a table.

But the waitress/co-owner, Birtukan, and I got off to a rocky start. I wanted to order the very last item on the menu, the kuanta firfir - dried beef sauteed in berbere sauce and mixed with pieces of injera. Birtukan was against it.

"You will not like it," she said. "Trust me!"

"Okay, okay," I said. "But why won't I like it?"

"You just won't!"

The more she resisted, the more curious I became. Her broken english was emphatic but less than cogent. I told her that if she didn't let me order the kuanta firfir, I would go to another restaurant. Defeated, she stomped sullenly back to the kitchen to relay my order to the cooks.

The kitchen produced the dish quickly, and Birtukan placed it on my table with one last look of disapproval.

I peeled back a covering layer of injera expecting the worst. At the same time, I was intent on proving my exotic palate to Birtukan no matter what. I would finish whatever atrocity of Ethiopian cuisine she had tried to protect me from.

But underneath the injera there was nothing festering or discolored or slithering. Just dried beef with pieces of injera soaked in spicy berbere.

Still, Birtukan watched me anxiously as I took my first bite, probably waiting for me to grimace or spit it out. But the dried beef was crispy like bacon. Actually, it was slightly chewier, which was fantastic because it gave me more time to enjoy the smoky, blended flavors of chili pepper, coriander, and ginger. There will be no justice as long as we as a society allow naive Westerners like the one who ordered this dish before me - and protested it enough to psychologically scar Birtukan - the privilege of continuing to dine at Ethiopian restaurants.

"Excellent," I said to Birtukan from across the dining room. I saw her smile for the first time, beamingly.

Her husband, Belete, visited my table and explained that Ethiopians consider kuanta firfir to be a light meal and typically have it for breakfast. I admitted that as a Westerner I wasn't crazy about the idea of eating dried meat for breakfast, but lunch and dinner were another story.

Belete was quick to reward my enthusiasm for his food. At no charge, he gave me an extra side of yefasolia - string beans and carrots cooked with vegetable oil, tomato, garlic, ginger, and green peppers.

As if my visit to Abol wasn't already rewarding enough, as I was leaving the restaurant, I realized the significance of discovering the City Paper's Top 50 list: my guide to DC dining for the foreseeable future. I have now marked my refrigerator door with a printed copy of this list. If Julie Powell can cook 524 Julia Child recipes in one year, Marcy and I can go to 50 DC restaurants by March. The standard's been set high for the other 49.

Galician Clams

2009-07-26T21:25:00.026-04:00

1. Alejandro Perez and his four younger sisters take the path through the pine and eucalyptus trees to la praia de Testal, the nearest beach to the town of Galicia, Spain. Scaling the small dunes, they look down on the wet sand that continues out to the sea. Before them in the sand they find three other children, crouching, digging into the dark wetness, red buckets at their sides. Alejandro throws a rock that skips off the tighly packed beach about a foot from the youngest child's foot, and the three young intruders yell insults over their shoulders as they scamper away, disappearing over the dunes. Alejandro watches them run, then turns back towards the sea. He knows that the water is shallow with no threatening undercurrents or surprise slopes. He finds irony in the beauty and calmness of the surrounding landscape. His clothes are sandy from yesterday's work.

Different parts of Testal have historic clam collecting rights bestowed on specific families, and it is an offense to remove even a single live clam from the beach if you don't have a license. Alejandro doesn't need his license, though. Everyone in these parts knows that the Perez family's terroritory extends from the tallest eucalyptus tree on the north side to the ice cream hut on the south side. The stretch of coastline belonging to the Perez family measures only 15 feet.

A car engine sputters behind him, and he turns to see Jorge rolling over the dunes in his 4x4, the barrell tip of a homemade mac-10 visible by his shoulder. The two echange nods. Alejandro spits as the 4x4 disappears out of view. Jorge and the rest of his "shell police" patrol the beach in uniform all year looking for thieves. They take a 10 percent cut of the Perez family's proceeds in exchange.

Alejandro sets his bucket down, crouches and begins a long day of digging his fingers through the soggy sand. His sisters follow suit. The clams are a couple inches under the surface. It is autumn, time for the seafood-loving world to turn its attention to Galicia's famous clam harvest.

2. Seven hours later, Alejandro picks up three full buckets, two in one hand, and starts back towards the dunes. His body jerks awkwardly with every step - his muscles might curse the bounty of his catch, but his mind barely registers the strain. His ripped shirt sleeves flutter with the wind like flags raised to celebrate the day's harvest. Soon, he hears his sisters' footsteps scraping the hot sand behind him. They walk quickly, showing the urgency of lawyers punching up a brief for a COB deadline. Somewhere inland someone is waiting for them.

They trek miles into the forest without speaking, vines and mosses cracking underfoot, through a clearing and back onto the path that leads eventually to a boiling-hot paved road. It's by the side this road that Kelvin Cochran has parked his minivan. Kelvin is the 23-year old former fraternity brother of Don Harris, Jr. Don Jr. is the grandson of Don Harris, Sr., who came to Spain as a U.S. Navy chaplain in 1965, and after retirement, started a mail-order company called La Tienda.

Alejandro and his sisters set six buckets on the ground, and, one-by-one, Kelvin inspects them and throws the good ones into an icebox in the back of his van. Twenty minutes later, Alejandro dumps about half the buckets - the discards - into his filthy backpack. Kelvin knows Spanish and Alejandro English, but the two 23-year-olds conduct business in silence as usual. Kelvin pays his supplier 1,000 pesos and then Kelvin's cell rings: it's La Tienda's pick-and-pack facility in Alicante, Spain, wondering where their delivery is. Behind Kelvin's back, Alejandro and his sisters take handfuls of the bigger clams back out of the ice box and slip them into the backpack.

3. Kelvin zooms his La Tienda minivan alongside the Duero River to the closest airport, 40 miles away in Santiago de Compestela. He drives right up to a bright blue midsize plane on the runway and unloads the icebox filled with Perez family clams, in addition to fourteen other iceboxes that look just like it, into the arms of the American pilot. Minutes later, Kelvin watches the plane bump along the runway and then wobble into the air and kiss the setting sun. He examines the interior of his thin wallet and heads towards the black volcano sand for a night of drinking at various shacks that dot the feet of the Cliffs of Los Gigantes. Beats studying for the LSATs back in the States.

4. The blue plane touches down on a runway a couple hundred yards behind the pick-and-pack plant in Alicante, where the clams are taken off the ice and quickly poached in sea water. They are cleaned by hand, placed one-by-one in small gold cans, and moved onto another, larger plane. Destination: Williamsburg, Virginia.

5. I sit on my couch in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I have already eaten two dinners this evening, but, perversely, I am still thinking about food. I leaf through Gourmet Magazine and find an article urging me to visit La Tienda's website for the opportunity to spend $64 on a 5.3 ounce can of 12 Galician clams. Almeja Blanca, or white clams, are one of the kings of European seafood, and 100% satisfaction is guaranteed. I go to the website and, twenty or so punched computer buttons later, I become one of the thousands of people who buy "Los Peperetes" clams from La Tienda each month. Los Peperetes is an example of a long Spanish tradition of canning gourmet seafood, the La Tienda website explains. Unlike in other parts of the world, Spaniards have just as much respect for canned seafood as for fresh, especially for the fish and shellfish of Galicia.

Don Harris has written a special note on his website about the quality of La Tienda's food. It's signed, "Tu Amigo, Don Harris."

6. Five days later, I pull into a driveway in Port Republic, Maryland. It leads to my friend Lolly's cabin, which sits in a thin forest and looks down on the Chesapeake Bay. I grab my beach bag, which contains the gold-color can, and I head down to the water. It's the end of the day and the sky and water share the same shades of pink and glaucous. Bald cypress trees with smooth gray bark cast great shadows over patches of wildflowers.

We get the can open, revealing a pungent sea salt smell that dominates the milder scent of the Chesapeake, with its mixture of Atlantic Ocean salt water and fresh water from various rivers and tributaries.

Our friend Sarah says she doesn't usually like clams, but she likes these. Lolly says they remind her of oysters. I like the texture combination: the gills on the surface are unusually tough, the fleshy organs on the inside unusually soft and creamy. Each clam is large and plump. Their taste is simple and appealing like the faraway sea they come from.

Mexican Hot Dogs and Popcorn Ceviche: An Evening at Las Peliculas

2009-07-25T12:06:00.010-04:00

I was recently inspired to recreate classic junk food as a fine dining dish. I wish I could say that the inspiration came from some ironic life experience like happening to walk past Gramercy Tavern while eating a Twinkie, but it was actually just a quickfire challenge on Top Chef Masters.

Lachlan Patterson from Boulder, CO, who won a James Beard Award and Best New Chef from Food & Wine, made a popcorn ceviche for his appearance as a contestant on Masters. I decided to steal his idea. And the other junk food I was craving? Hot dogs. Apparently it's been a while since I went to the movies.

But how do you turn hot dogs into a gourmet plate? Has anything remotely sophisticated ever been paired with dogs? If so, was that a wise decision? As inclined as I am towards innovation, I was not prepared to be the first person in culinary history to waste caviar or pate upon a wiener.

Mexican hot dogs would have to suffice. These francos double the guilty pleasure of the relatively tame American version. They're wrapped with bacon, stuffed with jalapenos, beans, tomatoes and onions, and caressed with mayonaisse, ketchup, and mustard. I used Smart Bacon and Smart Dog JUMBO Veggie Protein Links because the judge, Marcy the vegetarian, likes her hot dogs intelligent.

The menu was already pretty theateresque with my popcorn and hot dogs, and I decided to embrace the movie theme. A South American movie theme, at that.

I paid a visit to a movie theater in Chevy Chase to pick up a few accessories for the dinner table: Good & Plenty's and Raisinets. I also wanted some empty drink cups to serve the popcorn, but Jarrod, the pimply counter boy, was apparently angling for Mazza Gallerie employee of the week and refused to give me the cups free of charge. After a tense five minutes arguing that he was wasting his youth unless he rebelled against the corporate machine, I paid nine bucks for two empty soda cups.

Back home, I got to work on the ceviche. I'd already bought some black tiger shrimp from A&H Seafood Co in Bethesda and marinated it in orange and lime juice. I now mixed this marinade with a sauce of tomato juice, sriracha, cilantro, onions, and suprisingly good avocados. Surprising, because I found them at Giant. I ladled the finished product into a couple of martini glasses.

I tore open a bag of popcorn, drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled on some cayenne pepper. Some of the popcorn was applied as a garnish for the ceviche, the rest filled the exhorbitantly expensive soda cups.

At 8:30, just as I'd added the final touches - adorning the placemats with the movie candy - there was a knock at the door. I'd purposely scheduled a late dinner to ensure that Marcy would be hungry - typically guaranteeing a 1-2 point spike in my grade - and we wasted little time before diving in. The hot dogs were excellent considering that they were made out of soy, wheat gluten, and "evaporated cane juice." Marcy said the highlight of the ceviche was the avocado, although I noted that the sauce had turned it slightly soggy.

It was time for my grade. For all this creativity and attention to aesthetics, would you believe that I was rewarded with nothing more than a lowly 93? Marcy deducted points because she suspected a low degree of difficulty. Were my verbal fisticuffs with Jarrod not difficult? She agreed to raise the score to a 95, but I continued to sulk before reviving my spirits with multiple handfuls of Raisinets.

Ali Baba Gets Mainstream Props

2009-07-17T18:54:00.008-04:00

My friends Mohamed and Nordin of Ali Baba Falafel have become Wisconsin Avenue celebrities.

As Mohamed made my falafel – which, thanks to the most recent of Ali Baba’s many falafel evolutions, now includes red cabbage – he detailed the star treatment he has received over the past few days. Customers have asked him for his autograph, and they’ve taken photographs of themselves with Mohamed’s bright green parakeets, Sharazad and Shahryar.

All thanks to a good review by Catherine Cheney in Wednesday’s Washington Post. “The difference is amazing,” says Mohamed. He estimates that he usually gets about a hundred customers on a given week day. Since Wednesday, that number has doubled.

But Mohamed hasn’t let his new rock-star status go to his head. He’s as friendly and generous as always. I’m used to receiving Mohamed’s gifts of free beverages, side dishes, and deserts. But I saw some newcomers regarding Mohamed’s offers with suspicion. They took their free food and drink tentatively, seemingly checking for bear traps.

Mohamed is a nice guy, but he's also a shrewd self-promoter – he has already laminated the Post article and a series of other reviews for display by the side of the stand. He isn’t the only self-promoter, though. I’m currently printing out my first blog about Ali Baba so Mohamed can laminate my review, too.

Taiwanese Burgers at North China Restaurant

2009-06-16T20:39:00.003-04:00

I had a bad cough towards the end of last week. Neither of my parents’ doctoral degrees came in medicine, but that didn’t stop them from announcing that I probably had whooping cough. I decided to spend the weekend in the confines of my apartment to rest up, conquer my illness, and prove that, although my immune system might get caught napping once in a while, it gets up quick.

I tried to get friends to come over and watch movies, but telling them the whooping cough story wasn’t a wise choice.

Bored alone in my shadowy apartment, I contemptuously watched through my windows as people enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day. I took another swig of Tropicana and became consumed with self-pity. Figuring that comfort food would improve my mood, I cooked a big bowl of spaghetti for lunch, but all I could think about was how poorly my pomodoro compared to the version at Scarpetta (picture, below).

After reattaching myself to the couch, I sat through a heart-wrenching screening of Rachel Getting Married. It was now dinner time, and after vicariously living Anne Hathaway’s fractured relationship with her family, I craved comfort food more than ever.

It was time to call in the big guns: dirt-cheap, Americanized Chinese food. Is there anything more reassuring than the salty, greasy goop of your typical corner-store Chinese restaurant? You know, the thousands of hole-in-the-wall joints offering the same, time-tested menu perfectly designed for our unsophisticated American palates? If a swamp of starch and MSG thickened hoisin sauce can’t revive your spirits, you know you’re in some serious trouble.

I hadn’t tested out any Chinese restaurants in Bethesda, so I got on Google, and my first search result was a place called North China on Georgetown Ave. A quick scan of the menu triggered a Pavlovian rush of endorphins. Hunan shrimp, kung pao beef, moo shi pork – all the right classics to help a sad soul.

I picked up my phone, dialed the delivery-line, and was placed on hold. Then my evening took an unexpected turn.

Reading through the rest of North China’s website, I found a series of other menus, mysteriously labeled “menu 2, menu 3, menu 4.” At first, the scanned versions looked like every menu you’ve ever seen at a cheap Chinese restaurant: low prices printed in red font on thin paper, good for slipping into your to-go bag. But then I noticed that the generic categories were gone. “Healthy Diet” and “Chicken Dishes” were replaced by strange words like “Traditional Chinese” and “Taiwanese & Shanghai Style.”

“Hello?” came the voice at the other end of the line.

And the dishes in these categories totally defied Western expectations. My jaw dropped as I read down the long list of exotica: braised fish stomach, tomato shrimp with scrambled egg, smelt with peanuts, and so on. No kung-pao? Where was General Tso? Was the war over?

“Hello? Sir?” I realized that North China was about to hang up on me and stammered through my order as I admired the options.

“That’ll be 57 dollars and 23 cents,” the girl said. I snapped out of my trance and realized I’d ordered no less than six dishes! I don’t know if it was the need for comfort after fighting whooping cough all day and two hours of Ann Hathaway in tear-smeared make-up, or just the thrill of anticipating interesting food, but I felt like I would need every bite.

A little later, the delivery guy handed me two bags stuffed with smelt, jelly-fish, hamburger Taiwanese-style, crispy intestine, conch in red hot sauce, and cherries with beef.

I pried the to-go lids and sampled. All were interesting and generally good, but the third, the hamburger Taiwanese style, or gua bao, was fantastic. The burger consists of fatty, melt-in-your mouth, braised spare-rib. It’s like a shot in the arm especially when you’re expecting an average, dried-up beef paddy. And it’s topped with salty-sour pickled cabbage, relish, and cilantro. Not to mention the ingredient that really puts it over the top: they sprinkle it with that peanut-sugar powder that works so well in Pad Thai. The bun is fresh and steamed, and lightly touched with, I think, oyster sauce. I promptly added this dish to my list of 6,348 reasons to stay away from McDonald’s.

Next, I tried the crispy intestine, which was fine – I liked how they fill the hollow parts with white onion – but I kept thinking about that burger, which, sadly, was completely devoured. How had I never heard of these things before?

An internet search suggested a possible explanation: few people have. I only found two acknowledgements of their existence. One was a quick write-up in the Los Angeles Area Digest Weekly that called them a “madly wondrous thing.” The Digest shows good taste but doesn’t register a blip on the culinary radar screen.

The other was a chat room thread on Chowhound titled, “Where can I find Taiwanese burger in DC/Maryland.” Practically nowhere, according to the responses. “Good luck finding a place around DC,” said dwbengals. Bluejeans22 lamented, “I haven’t seen them on the menus anywhere in NoVa.” Strangely, no one brought up North China; I guess maybe this 2007 conversation predated their version. Chowhound reported only one Taiwanese burger sighting in the whole region: Bob’s Noodle 66.

I quickly saved Bob’s Rockville address as a note in my cell phone, grabbed my car keys, and charged the door, hoping that I’d get there before reason caught up with my feet and interfered with my stomach’s agenda. It didn’t work. I stopped in my tracks. A trip to Bob’s just didn’t make sense. Damn whooping cough. Plus I already had about four pounds of good Chinese food sitting on my dining room table.

I slumped back to my buffet and took care of business. The conch with “red hot sauce” had good texture, but I thought it was a little duplicitous to give American customers the expectation of Tobasco when the sauce was actually chili oil. The strips of jelly fish had just the right crunch and weren’t too salty. The smelt was your average dried fish but smartly paired with peanuts and the kick of sliced jalapeno. The cherry and beef dish was … well, I’ll have to tell you later. The five dishes that came before it had me pretty full.

When I hung up my chopsticks for the night, my cough was still there, but North China’s innovative Chinese comfort food had given my spirits a huge boost. When you’re sick and resting up, no matter how deprived you are of the sunny weather outside, know that you too can brighten your home by ordering a bag of Taiwanese burgers to your door.

Ali Baba Falafel Update

2009-06-16T20:08:00.004-04:00

On my most recent visit to Ali Baba, co-owner Mohamed dropped his spatula and ran over to ask me how I’d been. The guy all but hurdled the counter and offered to make out. Mohamed, and his business partner Nordin, are usually full of personality, but today Mohamed’s enthusiasm had reached new heights.

It didn’t take long to find out why. “I have been meeting many of your co-workers!” he beamed. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to him that I was recommending Ali Baba around the office at work as a good lunchtime excursion. Mohamed reported that he’s been reaping the benefits: my apparently falafel-crazy colleagues first came in curious strolls, then stampedes.

I’d like to think that my co-workers view me as some kind of culinary prophet. You can’t fire the guy in charge of discovering good lunchtime hangouts, right?

But I’m not as sure as Mohamed that I deserve credit for the recent lunchtime pilgrimages to Wisconsin Ave. I may have given him the impression that I was roaming the halls at my job with a megaphone and disrupting meetings with rogue powerpoint presentations about falafels, but I only remember praising Ali Baba to maybe three people. Afterwards, they never said anything about actually having gone there. A few of my agency’s 200,000 employees might have acted independently.

But if Mohamed wants to believe that I am to Ali Baba as William Shatner is to Priceline.com and reward me with even more complimentary tahini dogs and falafel fritters than usual, so be it.

In any case, I’m sure my colleagues haven’t been disappointed. Mohamed has tweaked his technique for frying up his fritters, with exceptional results. He divulged his secret new method to me on the condition that I wouldn’t spill the fava beans on this blog. I can say, however, that the revised approach allows him to fry the fritter more deeply while achieving an exterior that’s light and crispy, not tough and burnt like Moti’s Falafel in Rockville.

And another recent change that works well: they now fry the falafels in sesame seeds, giving them a fuller flavor.

So, by the virtues of charm and innovation, the future for Mohamed and Nordin looks bright. There’s just one possible rain-cloud on the horizon. Mohamed explained that Nordin was absent from the falafel stand so that he could watch the soccer team from his home country, Algeria, compete for a spot in the World Cup. The only thing standing in Algeria’s way? The squad from Mohamed’s home country, Egypt. Could a soccer match really come between these old friends and business partners?

Nordin threatened that if Algeria lost to Egypt, he could never show his face at Ali Baba again and would start his own falafel stand. Mohamed said he wasn’t completely sure that his buddy was kidding.

A few days ago, I read that Algeria lost. That’s okay with me – there’s a nice grassy patch across from my apartment just waiting for Ali Baba #2.

Guest Blog Your Foodie Adventure

2009-06-05T18:28:00.005-04:00

Are you by any chance traveling to California to hang out with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse?

Or did you just spend a week and a half in Sweden unwrapping delectable licorice?

These experiences were recently enjoyed by a few friends of mine, and I've been trying to convince them to blog their trips on this website. They acted like they needed invitations on a gold-plate. Well, I couldn't scare up any gold plates, but I expect points for using the classiest of the eight fonts that are available on Google blogger:

If you have any foodie adventures that you think I'd like to live vicariously, please feel free to write a guest blog. Keep in mind that I would like to vicariously live the vast majority of foodie adventures, so this shouldn't be too hard. Thanks!

Scarpetta Chef Scott Conant Diagnosed with Spaghetti Brain

2009-06-01T22:18:00.015-04:00

I think I’m just about ready to open up my own psychology practice. My credentials are impeccable. Not only did I minor in psychology while in college, but I’ve been dating a psychologist, and I used to watch the Dog Whisperer.

Believe it or not, there are some naysayers. To see if I’m really ready, lately I’ve been on the lookout for unusual people to analyze, and this past weekend in New York, I found a gem. His name is Scott Conant, and he is one of Food and Wine’s ten best new chefs in the country and winner of the prestigious James Beard Award. Conant currently runs the kitchen at Scarpetta in a Greek revival townhouse on the edge of the Meatpacking District. It was at Scarpetta this past weekend that I tried Conant’s spaghetti with tomato and basil, and, within the first few bites, I knew that he would be my Anna O.

The spaghetti dish is, as Chef Conant says, “simple.” The noodles, served in an elegant, molded heap, have rough-cut edges and coarse-textured surfaces, perhaps to prove that they’re made on the premises. They absorb Conant’s long-cooked tomato sauce to their cores. The sauce has the pale orange hue of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, and is piqued with thinly cut, fresh basil and crushed red pepper.

In other words, spaghetti and tomato sauce. The ingredients are as uncomplicated as the soil-tilling Italian peasants who came up with the dish hundreds of years ago. Uncomplicated, yet it’s considered one of the best plates in the City.

With innovators like Jose Andres running around saying things like, “Traditional cuisine that does not evolve will disappear,” how do you explain an old-school oddball like Scott Conant? Hasn’t this guy read the rave reviews for Mario Batali’s spaghetti on a stick and Japan’s spaghetti sandwich? Does Conant belong on a food farm or the funny farm?

To find out which, and to prove to the District of Columbia Board of Psychology that I’m ready for professional licensure, here’s my analysis of Scott C. Just to show I mean business, I’m basing my examination on the major schools of psychology.

Cognitive

Cognitive psychologists study mental processes, including how people remember.

Scott C. doesn’t need his scrap books. He remembers just by cooking. When he hand-mixes a heap of flour to make spaghetti, his mind plays movies from his childhood that star him and his grandmother cooking in a small town outside of Benevento, Italy. His fingers move in synch. “One of my first pasta memories is watching my grandmother make cavatelli and orecchiette from scratch on a big wooden board,” he says. He adds that his biggest influence wasn’t the Culinary Institute of America or his internship as a teenager at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. It was his nonna.

Is the frequency of these memories simply the inevitable imprint of Conant’s extraordinary food experiences growing up? Or are they actually part of an adaptive, cognitive strategy that he’s developed over the years? The psychologist in me says that Conant plays back these memories of tradition to remind himself how to cook well, even when he’s bombarded with all the flimsy trends around him like spaghetti on a stick. Frank Bruni certainly thinks the strategy paid off; he gave Scarpetta a three-star review last year. Who says psychology never helped anyone.

Humanist

Humanistic psychology focuses on individual free will, personal growth, and self-actualization.

Just because Scott C.’s grandma showed him the pasta ropes early on doesn’t mean he had it all figured out as an eight-year old. You don’t get to be a guest judge on Top Chef without losing a few personal quick-fire challenges first.

I like New York Magazine’s description of this growing process. They compare the development of world-class chefs to world-class prophets. “Like prophets, chefs sometimes disappear for periods of time to wander introspectively in the desert.” For Conant, that meant abruptly quitting gigs at midtown Italian restaurants Alto and L’Impero and wandering for a year in the wilderness. The prophet analogy breaks down a bit when you learn that he spent his year away from the restaurant business in the Hamptons. If Moses helped the Israelites to salvation by finding water in the desert, maybe Conant saved himself from the Hamptons by stumbling upon a wine tasting at Wolffer Estates.

And, like Moses in the desert, it seems Conant also saw a vision of God while he was at the Hamptons – Tom Colicchio, whose casual, inviting style he borrowed for his new restaurant, Scarpetta, when he came back from his cooking hiatus. Whereas L’Impero was stuffy and filled with tuxedoed waiters and opulent menus, the dining room at Scarpetta is spacious and colored in muted, earthy tones.

Maslow said that one of the final phases before self-actualization is the need for symmetry, order and beauty. With Conant’s improved sense of style and aesthetics at Scarpetta, he appears to be on his way.

Gestalt

Gestalt psychology is based on the idea that we experience things as unified wholes. Reality is organized in the simplest form possible.

When Conant reads this post and calls begging for more insights, I’ll provide a full battery of psychological tests, but one that I’ll skip is the inkblot. It would be pointless. Whereas more eccentric chefs like Batali would probably see a bunch of complex images (orange crocs with ponytails?), Scott C. strikes me as the type of guy who would only see the blot. Blots are blots, just like spaghetti is spaghetti.

“I love a simple spaghetti,” Conant explains. “It holds so much potential. Just let it be, and it’s already great. Less is more. Pasta is my favorite thing to cook.”

According to a 2007 article in the Times, the Italians who perfected spaghetti in the 18th century shared Conant’s instinct for simplicity. Their red sauces occasionally included meat, but they were often just tomato and basil. Today, Italian families in America add ingredients like oregano that would be alien to their ancestors. Kim Severson explains, “This is a cuisine of adaptation, of nostalgia, of comfort. By overemphasizing some of the seasonings Italian immigrants brought from home, they could more easily conjure it up.”

Behaviorism

To this point, I’ve described a stable guy with a healthy exuberance for making some of the finest spaghetti in the world. But now it's time for Conant’s dark side.

Behaviorists describe punishment as a consequence that causes a behavior to occur less frequently. And Conant’s most punishing experiences have come at the hands of Italian chefs. Conant is only half-Italian, and the pure-breeds judge his cuisine harshly. Asked to describe his most humbling moment, he said, “I’ve had so many. They usually involve an Italian standing over me saying ‘You stupid American.’”

As Pavlov would have predicted given this mistreatment, these days Conant isn't about to give Italian chefs any love. This was an unfortunate reality for Top Chef contestant Fabio Viviani, nicknamed the Italian Stallion, when Conant appeared as a guest judge. Conant’s anger was palpable as I watched him through the two-way mirror at my psychology lab / television screen, and I vigorously scribbled down the following exchange in my log book:

Conant: What matters is what is on the plate.
Fabio: I understand.
Conant, wagging his finger: Do you understand?
Fabio: I do.
Conant, still wagging his finger: I don’t know if you understand that. The greens you provided were wilted. The cheese that you put with those greens with no acid on them …
Fabio: Acid with cheese, chef? Please. You have an Italian restaurant.
Conant: Excuse me. Excuse me. [Puts his hand up.] Take it easy. I’m the judge here. Not you. Relax. It didn’t work. You failed at making a perfect dish. You failed. That’s not our fault. That’s your fault.

Conant said later, “I really think Fabio was capable of far more. That’s why I was a little tough on him.” Or was it because Fabio is Italian? Is there anything sweeter than punishing the punisher?

Psychoanalytic

This school of thought emphasizes the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior, and Freud would have a field day with Conant. Isn’t all of Conant’s dedication to traditional Italian cuisine really driven by his unconscious desire to convince Italian chefs that, despite his genetic limitations, he’s as Italian as they are? I also think Freud might have a theory to explain why Conant rejected the cuisine of his father’s American ancestry - not going there.

Self Psychology

William Kohut described human empathy as a therapeutic skill. When a patient acts in a certain way, “put yourself in his/her shoes,” and find out how it feels for the patient to act in this way.

Following Kohut’s guidance, I found some of Conant’s recipes on the internet. By imitating his approach to cooking tomato and basil spaghetti, I would better understand my troubled patient. Maybe there was a slight conflict of interest in choosing this course of treatment: the prospect of eating four servings of the tastiest pasta on the planet. Dr. Marcy had not participated in the other treatments described above, but she thought her guidance would be crucial for this one.

You have a better chance of getting a treasure map from a pirate than a chef’s award-winning techniques, and Marcy and I were a little skeptical about how honestly Conant had recorded his recipe. When we had this dish at Scarpetta, we both attributed the richness of the sauce to excess butter, but Conant claimed to only throw in one tablespoon.

The rest of the ingredients, though, looked about right: a pound of high-quality spaghetti, 20 ripe plum tomatoes, a pinch of crushed red pepper, a tablespoon of parmesan, and fresh basil leaves.

How could we mess up anything so straightforward?

Ed Levine of Serious Eats has some thoughts on the matter: “[Conant’s spaghetti with tomato and basil] is one of those dishes that you swear you should be able to make at home, and yet you know you won’t be able to. His food is deceptively simple. Each dish calls for many steps deftly executed.”

Our first misstep was forgetting to buy a potato masher to mince the tomatoes as they cooked in the saucepan. Through some extreme mistreatment of my University of Maryland coffee mug, I managed to finely chop them, but when Scott Conant says mince, you mince.

I did remember to mix the spaghetti, which was nearly al dente at this point, with the sauce after it had simmered for exactly 45 minutes. I then turned my attention to a process that Conant calls “aeration,” which seems more aerobic than gastronomic. You toss the pasta “high above the pot” with “a lot of exaggerated movement” and “a pan-jerking motion.”

The technique is supposed to coat the pasta with the sauce; introduce a little air so the dish feels lighter and brighter; and make the chef look cool. Whether I achieved the first two goals is debatable, but I definitely fell short of the third. My exaggerated movement mostly consisted of losing my balance while attempting to twirl the heavy pan about like a lacrosse stick. Spaghetti noodles sprung boldly from the pan and gracefully bathed in the air, only to crash-land all over the stovetop.

To the surviving strands we added fresh basil, cheese and butter. We saved these ingredients for the very end of the cooking process so they wouldn’t be diluted by any further heat, and plated. The result wasn’t unsatisfying, but Bruni probably wouldn’t call it “pure Mediterranean bliss,” the description he chose for Conant’s cooking.

So maybe self psychology is harder than I thought. But next time, when Marcy isn’t looking, I’m secretly adding more butter. That way she’ll think it’s authentic and tasty. Maybe I know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of Scott C., after all.

Cook Report

2009-05-21T22:15:00.022-04:00

It’s a sad day when you come face-to-face with the fact that your foodie teachings are provided almost entirely by Professor Travel Channel and Sensei Bravo. I recently took a hard look in the mirror, my eyes glazed over from a Bizzare Foods marathon, and I didn’t like what I saw. Nothing against the tutelage of Andrew Zimmern U., but it was time to consider some exchange programs.

But short of taking off for culinary school (my frequent fantasy), how exactly does the amateur foodie become an encyclopedic expert? When NBC and my agent finally work out the terms of my contract to host Foodie Jeopardy (frequent fantasy #2), will I have to make a pathetically bad, Trebekkian attempt to act like I know all the questions?

Well, a couple weeks ago, I was over at my Aunt Sue’s house for dinner when I wandered into her office. What I saw inspired the foodie in me to take action like a Stephen Covey book: about twelve different magazines, spread out on her desk, all dedicated to the art of acquiring foodie wisdom. Sue is well-recognized as my family’s go-to foodie for both cooking advice and restaurant recommendations, and if she’d attained that status by subscribing to every macuisine in circulation, then I was eager to do the same.

The only problem is that my pockets aren’t deep enough to subscribe to so many magazines. So I went to Borders to see which ones I like best. Back at my apartment, I dumped three bags of magazines (and a few books) on the floor and dove in like a kid swimming a pile of leaves.

Below, some fascinating info from the best reads so far. I’m hoping to place my subscriptions soon and blog similar cook reports every Thursday.

Food and Wine honors Tokyo as World’s Best Food City. “Japanese chefs are dictating the world’s dining trends with their fierce devotion to seasonality and respect for aesthetics.” Rounding out the rest of the top 5 were Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, and New York. In their write-up of New York’s “hot food zone,” F&W mentions Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack, which Marcy, Don and I checked out this past weekend.

Saveur notes that rapper Ludacris has opened a successful restaurant in Atlanta called Straits Atlanta. “Why Ludacris, who had little if any familiarity with Southeast Asian cooking, chose to open a Singaporean place is another question. ‘I just wanted to be versatile,’ he explains. There are, to be certain, rap-star touches at Straits Atlanta; the Billionaire’s Margarita goes for $50. But the real draw is the food.”

The Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) is waging a campaign to discredit historians who say that Hitler was a vegetarian. Nazi Party propagandists celebrated Hitler as a vegetarian and animal lover, but JVNA claims he enjoyed sausages, chicken, and “other fleshy delicacies.” JVNA is concerned that Hitler’s ostensible vegetarianism somehow discredits vegetarianism altogether. But Gastronomica says, “It seems relatively clear that the decision to eschew meat has nothing to do with the decision to kill Jews or invade Poland. Generations of men have grown mustaches despite the fact that Hitler sported one, and the Nazi penchant for calisthenics has not made anyone avoid yoga classes.”

“The idea of preparing an appetizer just by opening a can might sound hopelessly 1950s to many Americans (SPAM, anyone?), but in Spain the practice remains as common as arguing about politics.” Saveur says the best canned seafood comes from a Galician company called Los Peperetes. I found Los Peperetes on the internet, and, $64.50 later, I'd mail-ordered one 10 ounce tin of gooseneck barnacles.

According to Gastronomica, artist Jess Dobkin recently hosted a Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar at a gallery in Toronto. “The softly glowing bar that Dobkin placed at the

back of the room provided the ‘station’ from which the artist dispensed modest samples of breast milk donated by six women. More than three hundred people attended the event, with nearly one hundred sampling the breast milk.” Beer critic John Filson reports, “Breast milk has a silky mouthfeel, leaving a slight film – but much less even than the skimmest milk from a cow.” I do not plan to mail-order breast milk any time soon.

In his collection of essays It Must Have Been Something I Ate, Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten provides an interesting explanation for why Asian restaurants are terrible in Paris: “Paris did not benefit from the exodus of chefs and money from Hong Kong in the eighties. As Hong Kong Chinese with command of a second language speak English, they immigrated to Australia, Canada, and the United States, where they could be understood.” As of 2002, when Steingarten wrote this essay, only one Asian restaurant in France had ever received a Michelin star.

Meatpacking plants are increasingly cited for excessive cruelty to animals on the kill floor. Observing this trend, Jewish food activists have advised kosher consumers against purchasing meat that is “kosher” in the traditional understanding of the word, but fails to meet other Jewish ethical standards. Conservative and Reform movements are working together to create a kosher certification called Hekhsher Tzedek, which would indicate that food is traditionally kosher and ethically produced. Gastronomica

As a final note, I have to say that, as much as I enjoyed these magazines, their ubiquitous, excessively positive comments about food are a little annoying. It's like Dick Vitale calling every college basketball player over the past 20 years who could dribble between his legs "so special baby!" Everything is "delicious" - I'm going back through my old posts and erasing any trace of this word. And foie gras doesn’t just taste good, it’s “insanely indulgent.” Indulge me while I roll my eyes. But my personal favorite was one author’s description of her experience with pasta in Italy: “The dish brought tears of joy to my eyes.” Really? If my dinner companion found the food so good she began to weep, I’d hand her a Kleenex dabbed in pepper spray, pick up my food and move to another table.

Ali Baba: The One

2009-05-12T22:06:00.021-04:00

I’d resided in Chevy Chase for five months and had yet to fall in love with any of the local restaurants. And like Drew Barrymore’s character in Never Been Kissed, I was worried that I would have to kiss a whole lot of losers to find the right one.

As with so many great romances, I found Ali Baba, the new falafel stand on Wisconsin Avenue, in unlikely circumstances: driving home from dinner on a full stomach. But when you see a new falafel place a mile from your apartment, and you’re starved for love, you don’t make excuses. You slam on the brakes and pull over.

“All bias is a form of corruption,” writes food critic Trevor White in his book Kitchen Con. Still, I couldn’t help wanting to like Ali Baba from the start.

The ambiance is cute and comfortable like a well-worn pair of jeans. In front of the stand is a modest, wooden porch, where you have the choice of a few lawn chairs to relax while your food is prepared. Bright green, baby parakeets sunbathe in their cage and look at you thoughtfully as you order.

And what’s cozier than an elderly husband and wife management team? No, the two owners aren’t an old married couple, but they reminded me of one. As I waited for my falafel, they bickered to pass the time. One owner, Mohamed, repeatedly yelled in a thick Egyptian accent, “What is burning? Something is burning!” The other, Nordin, from Algeria, answered, “Nothing! What are you talking about?”

I can be no more objective about Ali Baba than I could be about a puppy licking my face.

But Ali Baba’s appeal goes beyond cuteness: it’s the classic underdog. For years before opening the falafel stand, Mohamed and Nordin ran a struggling antique shop. They had long dreamed of opening Ali Baba, but Montgomery County doesn’t like food stands. Mohamed had to argue in front of the County planning board before they finally approved the proposal.

Of course, Ali Baba must do much more than jump in the ring if they want to be crowned heavyweight falafel champion. The duo will have to endure a bruising bout against bigger opponents just to survive. Apollo Creed is five minutes away: Lebanese Taverna, whose falafel is popular throughout the region, recently won People’s Favorite Restaurant of the Year award. And, in Rockville, it’s Drago: an Israeli joint called Moti’s Falafel Stand has become increasingly popular since opening a couple years ago.

If that weren't enough, it’s been over a decade since Mohamed and Nordin managed their last falafel stand, and that was in Paris. The birds are nice and all, but I had to wonder, do they really remember how to fry their chickpeas?

I settled into a lawn chair and took a bite. Sparks flew.

Over the next two weeks, I went back for half-a-dozen trysts, and I was almost ready for a serious relationship. But I had to know if my love was real. So I decided to test out some other suitors. Here’s how Moti’s and Lebanese Taverna compared:

Ali Baba

Personality: A+. As the fava beans and chickpeas sizzle behind the counter, Mohamed and Nordin hold forth on topics ranging from the economy to Obama’s popularity in their home countries. But conversation isn’t all that they volunteer. As we talk, Nordin usually gives me a few falafel balls with tahini, and it’s not uncommon for him to pack my takeout bag with an Algerian side-dish, on the house. The one downside to all this hospitality? They make me feel so at ease that, twice, I forgot to pay.

Nordin also shows off a big pair of falafel balls when talking smack about Ali Baba’s formidable competition. He claims he doesn’t even remember the name of “the place around the corner,” Lebanese Taverna. And he’s equally brassy when I ask about Moti’s. “The Jew?” he asks, incredulously. Middle Eastern countries with a proud history of falafels look at Israel’s version like the movie remake of Planet of the Apes: the late-coming bastardization of a classic. To Nordin, Moti might as well be Helena Bonham Carter in a chimp suit.

Falafel: A-. Ask Ali Baba about their falafel, and they won’t just say it’s good. They’ll tell you it’s “right.” In other words, Mohamed tells me, they base it on the style found in Egypt.

To make the falafel balls, they mash fava beans and chickpeas with a special ingredient. “What is the one that looks like parsley?” Mohamed asks. He might forget the English word for cilantro, but this North African herb makes Ali Baba’s fritter one to remember, giving it a green hew and a unique, citrusy kick.

The next step is apparently a difficult one to remember. Mohamed's mom calls from Egypt once a week just to remind her son to add eggs and carbonation, which make the balls moist and fluffy. Then they're then fried and thrown into a pita along with tahini, chopped tomatoes, and finely sliced banana peppers and cucumbers. Nordin usually gives me a side of pickled vegetables – the salty burst pairs well with the slightly bitter tahini.

When I was enjoying Ali Baba’s falafel for the first time, I closed my eyes and imagined my lawn chair perched on a sparsely inhabited river bank along the Nile some 1,000 years ago. That’s when historians say the Egyptians invented it. The only problem is that everything I’ve read suggests that the Egyptian fritter is made with 100 percent fava beans. No chickpeas. So, painful as it is, I have to deduct some authenticity points from Ali Baba. Even puppies get yelled at when they pee on the carpet.

Eatability: A. Ali Baba creates a neat package by stuffing their pitas with a mixture of falafel balls and toppings. By contrast, other falafel places let you pick from a bunch of toppings and then crown your pita with Israeli salad, chopped onions, peppers, and even eggplant. It’s fun to play dress-up with my falafel like this, but the more ornaments you hang on your Christmas tree, the harder it is to take down. Ali Baba’s pita is wrapped securely so loose toppings don’t cascade from the falafel with every bite.

Supporting Cast: A. When I first approached his stand, I asked Mohamed to recommend something to go with my falafel. His answer almost sent me scurrying away like fingernails on a chalkboard: “How about the hamburger?”

If you can work around the owners’ perception that Americans crave Fuddruckers in every eating experience, you’ll discover some classic Egyptian street food. Ask Mohamed to make you his tahini dog: tomatoes, fava beans, chickpeas, and lettuce tossed in tahini and cayenne pepper and served in a hot dog bun.

Moti’s Falafel Stand

Personality: B-. I came to Moti’s with more questions than a star trek geek in a sex ed class. Did Israel steal the falafel from Lebanon and Egypt? If so, should they really call it “Isreal’s National Snack”? Is it true that Israelis stuff their falafels with French fries?

The teenager behind the counter was swarthy, spoke broken English, and cranked out a falafel like most people tie their shoes. I identified him as Moti’s son and peppered him with falafel queries. He provided some interesting answers, which I won’t include in this post because after a ten-minute conversation he admitted that he is Salvadorian, his closest tie to Israel is that he thinks Natalie Portman is hot, and all his thoughts about falafels are creative guesses. Moti, he said, is never there.

Falafel: B. Marcy only spent one semester in Israel during college, but with the Salvadorian kid disqualified, I resorted to her as my Israeli falafel expert. We both thought that the taste of the falafel fritter was fine, but the fried surface was oddly tough and perhaps a little burnt.

Eatability: C+. Moti’s gives you a wide selection of toppings. This is Israel’s most notable contribution to the evolution of the falafel: they cram novel accompaniments, from shredded beets to jalapenos, into their pitas. But because you place all the toppings at the mouth of the pita, they aren’t evenly distributed. So your first few bites are all topping, and the rest of the sandwich is plain fritter and tahini. The next time I go to Papa Johns, I’m bringing an Israeli with me to see if he downs all the pepperonis before turning to the pizza.

Supporting Cast: C. The first time I went to Moti’s, I was excited to see that they offer a Jerusalem Mix with chicken liver. But my Salvadorian friend always shrugs when I order it. Like Moti himself, it’s never available.

Lebanese Taverna

Personality: B-. At Lebanese Taverna, all the elements of a restaurant with great personality are in place: the Abi-Najm family that started Lebanese Taverna fled civil war in Lebanon in 1976 with their five small children and found themselves without support in a foreign land. They had so little money when they took over an Arlington pizzeria that they could only afford to alter half the sign that hung outside. Fast-forward three decades, and Taverna has become a mini-empire with 10 locations across Virginia, D.C. and Maryland.

When I went to the D.C. location, I imagined that the wizened matriarch of the Abj-Najm family would greet me at the door with riveting tales of escape from a war-ravaged land. During her arduous journey to America, she would tell me, all she had to keep herself alive were four falafel balls – made with the same exact recipe that Taverna uses to this day.

Instead, I didn’t see a single member of the Abj-Najm clan. I guess if your restaurant is successful, you earn the luxury of never having to go there.

Falafel: C. The mezze dish consisted of four small falafel balls, served with one tiny cup of tahini and about a pound of pita bread. This ratio of balls to pita to sauce worked well as long as I used half a falafel ball and three drops of tahini for each pita.

As for the falafel, I give Taverna credit for following the traditional Lebanese approach of using a combination of fava beans and chickpeas. Unfortunately, spices were undetectable. And the fava beans gave the fritter a dry, sticky consistency. What will it take for Taverna to add egg or baking soda to lighten the fritter? Does Mohamed's mother need to provide weekly reminders?

Eatability: N/A. With a falafel this dry and plain, who cares?

Supporting Cast: B-. A side dish of tomato, chickpea, and pilaf reminded me of Ali Baba’s tahini dog, but it wasn’t as good.

My route to both Lebanese Taverna and Moti’s took me right past Ali Baba, and it was painful to have to drive by without stopping, especially when there were no customers. But I’m happy to report that my falafel philandering ways are over. Ali Baba is the one. Now I just need a little help from you to keep her alive:

Ali Baba
Open every day for lunch and dinner
Corner of Wisconsin Ave & Willow Lane
Bethesda, MD

Pork Belly: It's Worth the H1N1

2009-04-30T22:04:00.034-04:00

Times are bleak for our slobbery friend, the pig. He just wanted to roll around in some mud, eat a little hay, and, if Babe was accurate, herd a few sheep. He had no intentions of scaring us with a global flu pandemic. But he stands accused of just that.

Revenge against the pig has been swift. Wall Street analysts predict a sharp decline in pork sales. And that would be tame compared to the response in Egypt, where the government ordered every pig in the country slaughtered and burned.

If pigs could do more than oink, I think they would make some sound arguments in their own defense. They’d note that people can’t get swine flu from eating properly cooked pork. In fact, there’s no evidence that people who’ve become sick had any contact with pigs at all.

I would add that I’ve eaten a lot of pork belly over the past month. My strong sense is that I don’t have acute febrile respiratory illness.

If you’re still thinking about swearing off pork, you should consider just how delicious the last month has been.

1. David Chang’s Tonkotsu Soup

About a month ago, I discovered pork belly by accident at David Chang’s Ippudo. I’d read an interview in which Chang, apparently suffering from some self-esteem issues, said that his restaurant serves “crappy pan-Asian ramen made for round-eyes.” As luck would have it, I’m in his target audience, so I figured Ippudo’s popular tonkotsu soup was perfect for me. And I was right, but not because of the noodles, which were average, or even the ramen broth, an excellent emulsion of pure pork and pork fat. What hogged my attention was the pork belly.

I’d never had pork belly before, and my inexperience showed. From the menu, I knew that the soup was supposed to include pork belly. But when I searched with my chopsticks, all I saw were noodles, a few vegetables, and some brownish slabs that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t until after I demanded a complementary side of pork belly that I identified the slabs: pork belly. I could almost see David Chang in the kitchen, rolling his slanted eyes at my round-eyed ignorance.

So my mistake didn’t earn me any cool points with Chang, but once I tasted the pork belly, I didn’t care. It comes from the pig’s underside, but unlike bacon, they don't cure or smoke it. Instead, it’s usually chopped into thick, square bites and braised in a liquid that ranges from a seasoned stock to soy sauce. Chang’s preparation was precise: slow-cooked to render out just enough fat, so each piece was meaty, but also slightly buttery. At the beginning of the heating process, he’d blasted it to give the surface a crispy, bacon-like crunch. Finally, his braising stock was sweet and smoky. And because of the extra side, multiply all of the above times two.

Egypt, go ahead and slaughter your pigs if you want, but do New York a favor and send them to David Chang.

2. Zac Palaccio’s Pork Belly Sandwiches

It should come as no surprise that when I woke up the next day with my stomach growling, my first thoughts were of pork belly.

I only had to wait until the following weekend for my next taste, but it wasn’t as good. I was in the Meatpacking District at Zac Palaccio’s Malaysian restaurant, Fatty Crab. Vogue calls Zac’s pork belly sandwich a “witty nod to British colonialism.” In other words, they’re tea sandwiches.

But Vogue also says that this dish features an “unctuous chunk of pork belly.” Maybe I took a wrong turn and end up at Skinny Crab? The layers of pork weren’t just thin, they were barely visible, a light streak of white between the grains. I get angry when restaurants try to make the strange textures of novelty foods more palatable to customers by hiding them in bread. And I’m talking to you, Bromberg brothers.

3. Red Cooking with Cheong Liew

I was on the bus back from New York to DC, wondering how I could pursue my passion for Chang’s pork belly with his restaurant over 400 miles away. Like so often when life throws a problem my way, I received guidance and inspiration from OK Magazine. One article offered evidence that Oprah smokes crack to get ready for her show. Her ex-boyfriend says that he used to cook it for her, but when he wasn’t around to provide culinary guidance, she had to learn how to do it on her own.

I found strength in her story and decided I would find a way to reproduce Chang’s pork belly myself. If I could pull it off, my high would be just as exhilarating as Oprah’s.

Like all great chefs, Chang only uses the best ingredients, so my first objective was to get a high-quality cut of pork. I thought about Berkshire, an heirloom breed that offers a cleaner flavor than the typical supermarket pork. But when I asked for Berkshire at Wagshal’s Market, the manager, Pam, examined me with contempt.

“Everyone wants Berkshire,” she growled. “Well, let me tell you something: we’ve tried out pigs from all over the world, from as far away as Spain, including Berkshire.” After years of sampling different suppliers, Wagshal’s eventually concluded that the best-tasting pork came from a small, private farm in Iowa. “The breed doesn’t matter,” Pam said. “It’s all about how you treat the animal.”

The result? Wagshal’s moves 300 pounds of pork belly per month.

Back home with some freshly purchased Sioux City Swine, I wondered about Chang’s cooking methods. I searched pork belly recipes online for hours, but none of them seemed capable of replicating Chang’s masterpiece. Then, I was flipping through my copy of Fat, Jennifer McLagan’s book about “a misunderstood ingredient,” when my eyes fixed on a picture of glistening, reddish-brown, spice-flecked pieces of pork. My pulse quickened. 400 miles felt like four feet. I was back at Ippudo.

I learned with some disappointment that McLagan had borrowed the recipe from Cheong Liew (in foreground, below), not Chang. But then I read that Food & Wine Magazine had chosen Liew one of the “ten hottest chefs alive” – a list Chang probably wasn’t even considered for.

Per Liew’s directions, I marinated the pork with tangerine zest, cinnamon sticks, sliced ginger, and star anise. I browned the meat in lard and then started to braise. Liew’s technique is called “red cooking” because the braising liquid is soy sauce, which gives the meat a dark, red-brown color.

I took my first bite and thought about Christmas in the 1980s. Being a Jew, when I was a kid my family would always go out for Chinese food on Christmas day. Being a bad Jew, I would always order the spare ribs.

That this dish reminded me of the inexpensive cut of breastbone used by a mediocre Chinese restaurant in Nashville doesn’t say much about Wagshal’s Iowa connection. I don’t suggest changing the state slogan to “We Do Amazing Things with Pigs.” And it tasted nothing like Chang’s version: the zest gave the pork belly a distinct, tangy quality. Next time, Pam’s getting me some Berkshire. But Liew’s braising process did make the fatty streaks rich and succulent, and I thank the pig farmers of Iowa for the childhood memories.

4. Korean Pork Belly

After taking down three pounds of Wagshal’s pork belly, I thought it was a good idea to have a week off before pigging out on Berkshire.

But this past weekend I was at Nam Kang, a Korean restaurant in Baltimore, and my friend Erin and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get their grilled pork belly. Erin is a grill master, but I was still happy that the waitress hung around our table to helm the portable stove as the pork sizzled. The last time I worked the grill at a Korean restaurant, I received an angry lecture in Korean when a short rib caught on fire.

Koreans like their pork belly sliced thin, so it looked a lot like bacon as the waitress finished the cooking process and scraped the crackling meat from the grill. But the pieces weren’t cured or smoked, and my eating companions found them to be too bland. I was the exception; Korea’s perspective on pork belly worked for me. Following the Korean custom, I happily piled the meat onto lettuce leaves along with chopped garlic and jalapeno pepper, over which I drizzled bean paste (daenjang) and a salty sesame oil sauce. It was interesting to think that the first time David Chang, who is Korean, had pork belly, it probably looked just like this – and yet, the version that he now serves in his restaurant bears almost no resemblance.

As a side note, I enjoyed watching my friend Dave attack Korean comfort food with the same aggression he used to show during college. Living in Manhattan, he’s had many fine dining experiences since his undergrad years, and I wondered whether bim bim bap would still meet his standards for excellence. The action shot below answers that question. His head is blurry from attacking the plate with such force.

Hopefully you won’t let a little thing like the onset of a global pandemic get in between you and the delicious pork belly experiences I’ve described above.

And hopefully, health officials won't tell us to stop eating pork. Then again, if grocery stores suddently go hogless, other belly options still exist. At just $42 per pound, tuna belly might be the next big thing.

Dining with Real Estate Moguls: New American / Indian Cuisine at Eletarria

2009-04-22T21:20:00.017-04:00

We humans don’t like our food to surprise us. Deciding to put something in your mouth is a big commitment, and we want to know just what we’re getting ourselves into.

This idea was recently supported by scientists in the Netherlands. They told research subjects that they were about to feed them one type of food, and then surprised them with another. The subjects reported feelings of fear, anger, and even depression (the Netherlanders, apparently, are a fragile people).

But an evening at Elettaria in Greenwich Village this past weekend proved that culinary surprises don’t have to be sour. The evening was full of the unexpected:

No Robo Waiter

Elettaria had been recommended to us by one of my dad’s old fraternity brothers - currently a commercial real estate mogul in New York. We were interested to see what type of restaurant satisfies a mogul’s appetite for excess. I pictured ornate mosaic marble floors, Versace tableware, and baby grand pianos. Maybe my own cyborg waiter named Jose.

Instead, Elettaria was furtively located behind a red painted door among a jumble of knickknack shops and seedy shoe stores. The interior was more grunge than grandiose, with a big bar towards the entrance, a mysterious staircase that ended abruptly at the ceiling, and a softly glowing, lounge-style eating area. The space used to be a nightclub, and the kitchen is reputedly located at the same spot where Jimi Hendrix played his guitar.

And the prices were actually reasonable. Was this the mogul's favorite place before or after the economy crashed?

Bombay Meets the Bible Belt

Elettaria describes its cuisine as New American, but most of their dishes use at least one element taken from Indian cooking. For example, the pork ribs are dressed with garam massala and drizzled with pureed lychee, and they sprinkle cardamom on the duck. Makes sense, then, that chef/co-owner Akhtar Nawab (below) is of Indian descent.

The surprise came as we were waiting for our table, when the hostess overheard me talking about my childhood and chimed in that Nawab also grew up southern, in Louisville. Nawab would probably be just as surprised to hear about me, the Jew from Nashville. In any case, I wonder how much he cherishes his dixieland heritage, considering that his menu is free of southern accents. I recently read an interview in which Nawab said that, when he was a kid, his mom cooked only Indian. For Thanksgiving, they made Tandoori-style Cornish game hens.

But to be fair, he does have a drink at the bar called “Kentucky Firing Squad.”

The Foodie Gives the M.D. an Anatomy Lesson

Compared to the entrées, the non-trées/appetizers looked more adventurous to me. I ordered sea urchin and curried rabbit, but the non-trée that sparked the most interest at our table was my sweetbreads. By interest, I don’t mean that anyone was actually willing to try it. I mean morbid fascination that I would eat something as weird as that.

The question soon came up: what exactly are sweetbreads? Mark and I sang out a duet that sounded something like “brart,” – he said brain, and I said heart.

Cue that whistle-y music from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” The foodie and the doctor were about to go pistols at 40 paces over who knew more about anatomy (of a cow, admittedly). His credentials: med school, residency, and over twenty years of medical practice. Mine: I hang out at butcher shops. The rest of the table sized us up and put their money on the doctor.

Well, foodies, put those hands together, because I took it home. Instead of settling the dispute with a gunfight, we asked Mark’s wife, Wendy, to research the question on her blackberry. Neither of us was exactly right, but I was closer. There are two kinds of sweetbreads: stomach sweetbreads – also known as heart sweetbreads – which are an animal’s pancreas, and neck sweetbreads, an animal’s thymus gland. The heart sweetbreads are favored for their delicate flavor and texture.

Everyone was impressed by my sort of accurate answer. I felt smart for about ten seconds before receiving a flood of questions about every other unfamiliar term on the menu. I was shrugging like Atlas. Tatin? Kalonji? Didn’t see any of those at the butcher shop.

No Bone to Pick

The menu had described the sweetbreads (picture, below) dish as “risotto, bone marrow, and szechuan pepper.” I’m new to bone marrow and still in my honeymoon phase, so you can imagine how excited I was to tickle the ivories with an Indian twist.

But the dish arrived bare bones – just the risotto, sweetbreads, and pepper. I realized that this was a Milanese risotto. To make it, a chef scoops out the marrow and chucks the bone. He adds the marrow to butter and then uses this mixture to coat the rice before covering with wine and saffron. I’ve had this kind of risotto with osso bucco and enjoy it, but I’d been looking forward to scooping the marrow from the bone and savoring its oozy fattiness straight-up.

I was depressed like a research subject in the Netherlands. But the surprise turned sweet when I noticed how well the sweetbreads paired with the risotto. In one sense, it was enjoyable because of the flavor contrast: the tang of the risotto was a good complement to the unctuous sweetbreads. What’s more, the sweetbreads actually reminded me a lot of bone marrow – both are rich and creamy, reminiscent of butter. So I drew a parallel between this dish and osso bucco, which, afterall, is bone marrow with Milanese risotto. Did these very similar Italian classics develop independently, or did one inspire the other?

Authentically Ignoring Indian Food

Mark, the doctor, is from Nashville, where opportunities for authentic Indian food are few and far between, if not fewer. We misunderstood Elettaria to be an Indian place, and so on the way to the restaurant we got Mark’s hopes up. After he read the American-influenced menu, he looked upset, like he’d just lost an anatomy quiz to a foodie.

He found some solace that there was at least one authentic Indian dish on the menu: saag paneer, which he ordered. The paneer was spinach, and the saag was sheep’s milk ricotta.

But Mark was in for another surprise. Initially resentful of Wendy's non-Indian halibut with Israeli couscous and squid ink, by the end of the meal his napkin was black and he was leaning away from the saag, hovering over his wife’s plate.

Interview with Jose Andres and Wylie Dufresne, Part 1

2009-04-14T20:08:00.018-04:00

Are Americans too conservative to appreciate innovative cooking?

If so, the line waiting to see avant-garde chefs Jose Andres and Wylie Dufresne was no indication. It spilled out the back of the National Museum of Natural History and spanned forty people.

I joined the tail and scanned the crowd. The Embassy of Spain was sponsoring the event, so were these people Spanish nationalists or food celebrity stalkers like me? Their bellies didn’t seem big enough to be foodies. On the other hand, they enthusiastically spread rumors that the event would include a cooking demonstration and tastings.

As I was ushered into a crowded auditorium, the evening’s main attractions brushed past me on their way to the stage. Wylie looked about as pretentious as a school bus driver, with long, flat hair and outfit by Eddie Bauer. Stocky Jose wore a bright red scarf and spoke loud Spanish into his cell phone.

The two chefs were there to talk about vanguard cuisine. Depending on who you speak to, the vanguard movement is either the art of creatively challenging the culinary status quo, or, in the words of Jeremy Bentham, “merely nonsense upon stilts.” Jose is a native of Spain and is credited with introducing Americans to both avant-garde Spanish food and traditional tapas. Wylie’s WD-50 specializes in avant-garde cuisine and ranks fourth on New York Magazine’s list of the City’s best restaurants.

The lights dimmed, and the crowd rolled their eyes when the President of the Embassy mispronounced Wylie’s name “Dufrez” during the introduction. But the dialogue that followed was fascinating. Here are some highlights:

The Ghost of Salvador Dali

Both chefs, and moderator Coleman Andrews of Saveur Magazine, talked passionately about recent food innovations in Spain, but they admitted that the food there hasn’t always been so dynamic. Andrews recalled that in the early 1980s he set out to write a book about Spanish cuisine. After spending a year working his way from Barcelona to Sevilla and finding nothing but paellas and French food, he wrote a travel guide about the Riviera instead.

But in 1984, at the age of 22, a skinny kid named Ferran Adria got his start as line cook at El Bulli in northern Spain. 18 months later, he was head chef, and soon his innovations were rapidly replacing the three hundred year-old paella recipes, not to mention le diner.

Pictured above, Adria started a style of cooking based on the imagination, studying all the creative possibilities of traditional ingredients and playing with form and mouthfeel. Each year, he closes El Bulli and devotes six months to laboratory research in Barcelona to come up with new ideas. As the eccentric pioneer of the vanguard movement, he's has been called many things: genius of El Bulli, mad culinary scientist, and on stage, Jose inexplicably referred to him as the Devil.

Despite suggesting that Adria was pure evil, Jose also gushed about him. He noted that the legendary chef was born in the same Catalonian village as Salvador Dali, and Catalonians believe that artist was reincarnated as Adria.

Throwing Out the Blueprint

Adria’s approach took root all over Spain and in the United States, and although Jose was too proud to say it, he implied that his innovative and playful style was inspired by Adria.

Wylie was a little more forthright about having used both Adria and Jose as models. Only months after Wylie arrived in Manhattan, Jose took an interest in him and arranged a series of trips for his sloppy-looking American protégé to study vanguard cuisine in Spain. During one of these trips, Wylie picked up a recipe book in Catalan with photographs of food so beautiful that to this day he still flips through the book for inspiration, even though he can’t read a word.

“Don’t worry,” said Jose in his thick Spanish accent, “the same thing happens to me with English books.”

But Jose’s influence on Wylie extended beyond a few TripTiks. “For me and many others, Jose legitimized throwing out the blueprint,” Wylie explained. “It’s not that I’m copying Jose. It’s that I’m willing to throw out the blueprint because Jose had the courage to do so first.”

For the second half of this blog, go to Interview with Jose Andres and Wylie Dufresne, Part 2.

Interview with Jose Andres and Wylie Dufresne, Part 2

2009-04-14T19:39:00.018-04:00

For the first part of this blog, go to Interview with Jose Andres and Wylie Dufresne, part 1.

Pacojets and Thermomixes

If you want to be a vanguard chef, you might as well get a PhD in chemistry.

The movement has actually been labeled molecular gastronomy because, to truly think outside the lunchbox and use food like no one has before, you have to know how to manipulate the cellular structure of your ingredients. So practitioners end up learning many of the same theories and tools that are used by biochemists when they’re splitting stem cells. Maybe that’s why Adria’s famous cookbook, “El Bulli 1998-2002,” is over 500 pages long.

And just like chemists, the best vanguard chefs build laboratories and fill them with high-tech equipment. Gadgets include the Pacojet, a Swiss-made, 2,000 r.p.m. frozen-food processor. And for $945, you can have your very own Thermomix, a German all-in-one kitchen aid that grinds hazelnuts to a powder in 5 seconds.

Even if you’re willing to hand over thousands to get this gear, the panelists all agreed that the techniques of molecular gastronomy aren’t for your average Joe Gourmet. Wylie gave the crowd that old, “Don’t try using your CO2 dispenser to convert liquid into an ethereal froth at home,” cliché. And when someone in the crowd asked the panel to recommend the best brand of sous-vide machine for preventing toxins, Jose suggested that the guy just stick with the microwave. It’s not that cool, but neither is botulism.

Death by News Cycle

Winner for most awkward moment of the night was Wylie’s attack on American food writers for not supporting this country’s avant-garde movement. “Spanish journalists have done a lot more to encourage avant-garde,” Wylie said. Just when it looked like Coleman Andrews was about to get his skull cracked with a Pacojet food processor, Wylie caught himself. “Look, I’m not going to criticize American journalists, especially with one sitting right here.”

Despite the effort at diplomacy, it seems like Wylie’s got a point. American vanguard cuisine has been criticized in a number of articles, including one in which the New York Times called it “shallowly theatrical.” Slate writer Lisa Abend counted five signs that vanguard cuisine was no longer haute, including Death By News Cycle. Abend explained, “Food writers have to write about something, and if we can’t write about a new trend, we might as well tear down an old one.”

Wylie’s on-stage rant reminded me that I recently saw him on Bickering Foodies getting huffy with cookbook author Barbara Kafka when she claimed that vanguard food is half-baked.

“Where does one cross the line between experiment, and searching, and the final result in terms of pleasure?” Kafka asked.

Wylie said he thought his cooking was more than just experimental. It tasted good, too. “I wouldn’t put my good name on it if I thought it was disgusting.”

“Oh, let’s not get bitchy,” said Kafka.

Even Jose, whose ego is bigger than Adria’s 500-page cookbook, acknowledged that the backlash hurts. “You’ve got to cook first to please yourself,” he said. “But, sure, I get upset when people tell me my food is too out there. It’s like, in this museum, you wouldn’t say, ‘let’s change that Matisse.’”

But is it possible that bad press actually helps vanguard chefs? In an interview for the Slate article, Aponiente chef Angel Leon suggested so: “There are people who say, ‘this is over, let’s put it behind us,’ but that’s just marketing.” If the mainstream ever really celebrated avant-garde, would the movement lose meaning and disappear like the vapors from Jose’s mojito mists?

Jose Andres’ Green Card and Foie Gras Cereal

Throughout the evening, a projector showed photographs of the chefs’ best dishes, while Jose and Wylie explained the creative processes behind each. Every time they showed a new picture, my friend Rupa’s stomach growled.

One photo was Jose’s deconstructed New England clam chowder (picture below), which he serves at Minibar in D.C. “Now, what is wrong with the traditional New England clam chowder?” Jose rhetorically asked the crowd.

“Nothing!” said Wylie, who happens to be a native of New England. This comment got the biggest laughs of the night. Wylie might be a freedom fighter for avant-garde cuisine, but don’t mess with his hometown’s clam chowder. That’s not cool.

Jose disagreed, saying that the clams in the traditional version are “so overcooked.” Jose breaks the classic dish down into its component parts: cream, potatoes, clam, clam broth, onion, bacon and chives. From each of these elements, he creates a puree, or sauce, thickening them to a slightly unexpected viscosity: the onion, for example, is a thick jam. He adds a raw clam and a sprinkling of potato chips to the surface for textural contrast. The diner’s spoon gives the final stir that blends the ingredients and sets the “chowder” in motion.

The avant-garde community raved about the dish almost as much as New Englanders hated it. “I almost lost my green card with that dish,” Jose said.

Another celebrated vanguard dish is foie gras cereal: corn flakes are combined with little balls of foie gras, which provide a liquid burst that mimics the textural experience of milk.

“American food is an excuse to get involved in creative cooking,” Jose told the crowd. To him, our cuisine is just a black and white movie in need of Technicolor.

But the purpose isn’t just to improvise and shatter tradition. The main criticism of vanguard chefs in the U.S. is that they get caught up in flamboyance and irony. In so doing, they overlook a key tenet of Adria’s philosophy: innovation, in addition to being playful, should also enhance flavor. Mr. Adria once told Frank Bruni that, “what he was always after was ‘the pure taste of things,’ and that his manipulations were paradoxically in the service of that.” And Bruni reports that, “Most of the meals lived up to his motto.”

Spain’s Snobby Embassy

As the dialogue wrapped up, Rupa and I were disappointed to note the absence of any food carts in the back of the room. Not only was it dinner time, but for the past hour we’d been looking at pictures of some of the best food in the world. Maybe it was a bit much to hope that Jose would serve everyone his famous cotton candy foie gras, but no edible swag at all?

I staved off hunger and focused on the business of autographs. Wylie was an easy mark. He was lingering by the stage and his entourage of groupies was sparse, possibly due to his bad haircut. Still, he was in a good mood – he’d found out a few hours before that his wife was pregnant with his first – and when I told him how much I enjoyed the evening’s dialogue, he seemed to genuinely appreciate my input. If he ever gets in another fight with Barbara Kafka, I’ve got his back.

Jose, on the other hand, was enjoying the admiration of his chef groupies way too much to be bothered by me. At least one tightly clothed female groupie (a Tom Colicchi-ho?) eyed him like he was a deconstructed clam chowder as he talked about his PBS show. I finally got him to sign, but, as you can see from the action shot below, he wasn’t interested in a photograph with me. Thanks to Rupa for taking one anyway.

As we made our way from the auditorium to the lobby, I noticed a roped off section of the room that was only being penetrated by the Spanish Embassy crowd. Dressed up in black ties and evening gowns and walking with a purpose, they appeared to be headed for food.

I was still wearing my suit from work, so I figured I had shot of fitting in. I maneuvered so I was right behind Jose as we neared the roped dividers, and when he made what appeared be a joke in Spanish, I cracked up. I did everything but roll my r’s and wave a red cape, but when I told the swarthy Spaniard who was standing guard at the ropes that I’d left my Embassy id at home, he turned up his nose and pointed me back to the commoners.

If only all embassies were like Korus House.

Curry Monster Certificate

2009-04-07T21:38:00.002-04:00

PROOF!

Bone Marrow, Man's Best Friend

2009-04-06T20:35:00.020-04:00

At the counter of Wagshal’s Market in Tenleytown, I notice a picture of a dog slobbering all over his bone. According to the advertisement, all this can be mine for seven dollars per pound. Warily, I point at the bone in the picture and ask, “Is that what I just ordered?”

The butcher looks up from his meat saw and grunts, “People eat ‘em, too.” Then he’s back to business, filling the market with the high-pitched sound of saw on bone.

Yes, in addition to playing Frisbee and shaking hands, humans and canines also share a love of bone marrow.

I was turned on to marrow by Jennifer McLagan, the thin food journalist who wrote a book called “Fat.” In this ode to blubber, McLagan gives the skinny on the many benefits of eating animal fats. For one thing, fat tastes good – scientists now believe that we may have a taste receptor for fat, and some even speculate that fat is the sixth taste. But McLagan also argues that animal fat, with its balance of essential fatty-acids, is actually healthy for us.

I was especially intrigued by one of her favorite fatty dishes, roasted bone marrow, which registers eight grams of fat per tablespoon. I guess that makes me a health nut.

And so I found myself leaving Wagshal’s with a bloody bag of bones, feeling a little like Jigsaw after a really messy execution.

Back home, I followed McLagan’s simple recipe: let the bones soak in water for 24 hours to get rid of any impurities, then blast them with high heat for 25 minutes.

Soon, I was scooping the soft, warm marrow straight from the ivory. The textural experience was like slightly melted butter. The earthy smell triggered archetypal memories of scavenging the carcasses of water buffalo thousands of years ago.

“Wow, that is so good,” Marcy cried out. I was relieved to hear it – I had been concerned that my vegetarian girlfriend wouldn’t bone up to this experience. Then I realized that she was raving about the side-salad she’d made, not the marrow. But eventually she grew curious about this creamy, sensual delight. And by the end of the meal, I was wrestling her for the last unctuous pieces.

When the marrow was gone, the only thing left standing was a circle of upright bones that resembled a model of Stonehenge. I wanted to know more about this mysterious new treat, and so began an obsession that lasted two weeks. I read about marrow bones at work, chose restaurants only if they offered marrow, and made a series of return trips to Wagshal’s for more bones to play with.

Here’s what I learned:

What it is

Typically, veal or beef. Compared to the marrow of sheep, veal and beef are more popular in the kitchen because their leg bones have more marrow. My first purchase at Wagshal’s was beef marrow, but the second and third times I opted for the veal, the marrow of which I found to be smoother and creamier.

History

According to McLagan, in the nineteenth century, bone marrow was regarded as a health food and given to invalids and sickly kids to improve their strength. Queen Victoria, who died at the ripe old age of eighty-one, loved bone marrow so much that she had some every day.

How to get your marrow out of the bone

This all depends on how civilized you are. For the most part, I used a butter knife, but in my most debased moments, when I was starving and pieces of marrow were stubbornly clinging to bone, I’ll admit that I resorted to digging away with my fingers. I thought this worked really well, but apparently gourmets from Milan see things differently: they use a special long-handled spoon called an essatore.

Like me, Anthony Bourdain would be booted from a Milanese dinner party and banned for life. He treats his marrow bone like a Slurpee. During the Singapore episode of No Reservations, Bourdain tried bone soup and sucked down the marrow with a straw.

Where to find marrow

New York restaurants are lousy with it. Ever since Frank Bruni of the Times came out in favor of marrow, it’s been showing up on menus all over town. New York Magazine argues that we can also attribute this trend to the recession. The dish is cheap to make and can be sold at inflated prices because it’s considered a novelty.

As usual, D.C. is a step behind. I was disappointed to only find marrow at a small handful of restaurants here. Tom Sietsma of the Post, when are you going to pick up your pen and let us know that it’s okay to eat this stuff.

What goes with it

If you like the idea of eating bone marrow just because it’s trendy, but secretly you think it’s weird, then you put the marrow on a big piece of bread, and you top it with a sweet, shallot-based marmalade just to make sure there’s a fat chance you’ll actually have to taste the fat.

I’m guessing that the majority of people who go to restaurants for bone marrow do so in an effort to build their foodie credentials, not really for the taste.

I got to this conclusion after watching Felippe Newlin of devour.tv pay a visit to Blue Ribbon, one of the City’s most popular places for marrow. I was disappointed to see chef and co-owner Eric Bromberg put a tiny piece of marrow onto a huge slice of bread covered in marmalade. Predictably, after a few bites, Felipe’s first comments were about the quality of the bread. Eventually, he remembered that he was supposed to be tasting marrow and noted it almost as an afterthought. By playing hide and seek with what should be the main element of the dish, chefs let their customers have their marrow and eat it, too.

If, on the other hand, your taste buds are working and you genuinely appreciate marrow, I have the following advice:

Do nothing to mask the flavor of the marrow. Don’t coat it in salt. Don’t douse it in marmalade. Don’t hide it in your couch and gnaw through your sofa cushions. Keep it simple. Enjoy a large spoonful of marrow straight-up.

Complement the taste of the bone marrow with good sides that have the right flavor profiles. The marrow is rich and luscious, so its supporting cast should be salty: caviar, or an oxtail stew with kosher salt. A side of something sour like gremolata also works well.

As McLagan writes, fatty foods are digested slowly, so it doesn’t take much bone marrow to fill you up. But if you find that your hunger isn’t satisfied, include an egg-based bread to munch on in between spoonings, or fingerings, of the marrow.

Is it really nutritious

Some people swear that monounsaturated fats like the ones found in marrow are important to a healthy diet. That might be true, but after two weeks of preparing nothing but marrow and other recipes from Ms. McLagan’s Fatty Opus, I was feeling bloated and moody. Last night, I proved no match for a big serving of duck rillettes, which contains 14 grams of fat per tablespoon. I put aside the rillettes, staggered to the supermarket clutching my chest, and bought a bag of fruit.

Inside the Bubble with Iron Chef Morimoto

2009-03-28T13:52:00.011-04:00

We were in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan at Morimoto Restaurant, and we were inside the bubble.

“Beautiful people,” as Jack Donaghy explained in a recent episode of 30 Rock, “are treated differently than moderately pleasant looking people. They live in a bubble. A bubble filled with kindness and free drinks.”

My friends and I have always felt that we should be treated as if we were inside the bubble. To my knowledge, though, none of us believes that we actually have the looks to access this magic globule – with the possible exception of Dave, who once spent an entire double-decker bus tour of London admiring his own reflection in the windows of the buildings we passed. Overall, though, we think that we get only what we deserve.

But at Morimoto, you feel that you have access to the very best of everything, and that you can get away with anything. You are surrounded by wealthy, beautiful people, and by the power of suggestion, you begin to believe that you, too, are one of the City’s modelesque big hitters. The wait staff fawns over you like a mother looking after the needs of a sick child. And when you go to the bathroom and step into the stall, an automated toilet lid rises to greet you. People outside the bubble don’t get this kind of treatment.
Not only were we seemingly in the bubble, but it was Saturday night and we hadn’t seen each other for a while. In celebration, we were drinking straight Vodka as we waited for the food to come. Dave said he had started watching Top Chef and thought he was ready to join Colicchio’s team of judges. This led to a loud argument over whether Dave knew enough about food to be on national television. Even though the conversation reached an inappropriate volume, no one gave us nasty looks. Maybe it was that the tables have plenty of space between them. Maybe it was that the noise is reduced by translucent partitions and wavy white sheets of canvas and fiberglass on the ceiling and along the walls. Or, just maybe, we were inside the bubble.

The food came, and first up was the lamb carpaccio. My last experience with raw meat was in D.C. at the Ethiopian restaurant Etete, where they served kitfo as a thick mound of beef lumped at the center of the injera. Morimoto’s carpaccio was a welcome contrast: light, silky slices of lamb, presented simply with green onions, grated ginger, and olive oil.

The braised black cod with a ginger-soy reduction and the sea bass in sweet sake kasu were unremarkable, but the sashimi received unanimous praise from our group. Terrine-like cubes made from layers of hamachi, smoked salmon, barbecued eel and seared toro were luscious and hugely flavorful.

Then, Ed, red-faced and mouth full of sea bass, pointed and yelled: “Morimoto!”

I was pessimistic and debated whether it was worth turning around. Ed was on his fifth or sixth glass of vodka. On the other hand, Morimoto is pretty recognizeable. Maybe it was some other Japanese guy sporting all-black clothes, goatee, pony-tail, and black-rimmed glasses?

Reluctantly, I turned, and sure enough, Masaharu Morimoto was relaxing in the back of the dining room, drinking a beer with the hostess.

Seconds later, menu and pen were in hand as I made my way to the legendary Iron Chef, who boasts 16 wins on the program. Despite my inebriation and my experience with getting autographs from Top Chefs, I was nervous. This guy makes Bravo's show look like Slop Chef.

I noted that Morimoto was drinking a Rogue Ale – his specialty line of beers. I also noticed that the hostess was doing most of the talking; Morimoto is known for having a soft-spoken manner and heavy accent. The guy came to Manhattan in 1985, so I’m not sure why after 24 years he still hasn’t found time to learn English. His speaking is so bad that during the judgment phase of Iron Chef his voice is usually dubbed or subtitled.

Distracted from her monologue, the hostess rolled her eyes when I tapped Morimoto on the shoulder, but the chef didn’t seem to mind the adulation. He might have had a few too many Rogue Ales, though, because he missed the front of the menu, accidentally signing the back. He nodded cordially when I thanked him, but he didn’t say a word.

I returned victoriously to our table. We regarded our satisfied stomachs and Iron Chef memorabilia with a sense of accomplishment. Life inside the bubble was good: we had clearly been treated with kindness.

Then the bill came. Our eyes widened in terror, and the pop was almost audible. No free drinks or discounts of any other kind. It’s a good thing we didn’t get the certified “saga” Japanese beef. That runs $30 per ounce.

As Liz Lemon’s good-looking boyfriend said when she stopped letting him win at tennis, I don’t like it outside the bubble.

Letting the Crab Out of the Bag

2009-03-26T22:55:00.007-04:00

The phrase “crabs in a bag” always meant one of two things to me:

1. A hot brown paper bag that fills your car with the smell of old bay while driving back from the crab house.

2. A bad joke about venereal diseases.

Then Marcy introduced me to meaning # 3. While checking out a food market in Chinatown in Las Vegas, she found a Doritos-sized bag stuffed with crabs. These things aren’t made by Keebler elves in a hollow tree – they’re real, baby crabs, each about an inch wide. Their shells, claws, and innards are all intact.

It was a no-brainer for Marcy to buy these things for me. They combine two of my favorite things: crabs and weird Asian food.

And I wanted to like them. The Japanese manufacturer, Shokuhin Company, markets them as a snack for Tokyo businessmen to eat while getting drunk after work. The bright yellow bag reads, “Let’s Party,” and, in Japanese, “A time spent with fun companions – come on now, all together!”

I was riled up and ready to party, but then I took a bite. Have you ever eaten crabs and been reminded of crackerjacks stuffed with dried fish? Me neither. These “crabs” – processed in food coloring, MSG, corn syrup, and sugar – tasted nothing like crabs. The smell was like a fish market at closing time Sunday night, or a horseshoe crab washed up on the beach. And at the bottom of the bag, no owl whistle or 3-D picture of a deep sea treasure.

Shokuhin calls them “Roasted Crab Meisaku.” According to my crack research team (Google), meisaku can either mean masterpiece, or interesting. I’m going with interesting.

The only upside of this snack food was that it motivated me to go out and get the real thing. Even though the commercial crab season doesn’t start until April 1, I needed a salt-of-the-earth crab house. I needed it immediately.

I rocketed my Civic through the sedate streets of suburban Maryland and found myself at Bethesda Crab House, the self-proclaimed second-oldest restaurant in Bethesda. Perfect. The restaurant was completely empty, and I sincerely hoped that all their customers weren’t at home getting wasted and eating crackerjack crabs. I grabbed a mallet and it wasn’t long before my back ached from leaning so enthusiastically over a pile of fresh crustaceans. Slathered in tomale, I told Frank, the weathered guy at the bar who looked more Dundalk than Bethesda, about my roasted crabs “party” earlier that day. “Sounds disgusting,” he said.

It was hard to imagine that these delicately textured, increasingly rare creatures belonged to the same species as their processed, maltose-soaked kin. Then it hit me: Shokuhin is taking perfectly healthy baby crabs, and instead of letting them flourish to their tasty adult potential, turning them into the Japanese equivalent of beer nuts.

So, shouldn’t this be a felony?

Crab-loving Marylanders would say yes. Since 1990, the Chesapeake Bay’s crab population decreased from 791 million to 260. And U.S. environmental groups have long said that overfishing of crabs is a major factor in the blue crab’s decline.

I don’t know where Shokuhin gets their crabs, but I did some research into Japan’s record on overfishing, and it reads like Saddam Hussein’s record on killing countrymen. Their legacy of exploiting fish populations goes at least as far back as the 1930s, when the Japanese all but annihilated the red king crabs of the eastern Bering Sea. In 1964, the U.S. had to arrange a bilateral fishing agreement with Japan, and the agreement notes the “historical fact that nationals and vessels of Japan have over a long period of years exploited the king crab resource.”

Although that agreement provided some protection for king crabs, other subspecies weren’t as lucky. In the mid-1990s, snow crabs got popular in Japan, and the country’s fisheries were willing to pay top dollar and go anywhere in the world to get them. They settled on the North Pacific coast, casting their nets from Washington to Alaska. Predictably, they overfished, and the snow crab disappeared.

All just so the Japanese can get their crabs and beer out of the same vending machine?

Where to Find Your Luxury Canned Food

2009-03-24T21:51:00.007-04:00

Is there such a thing as luxury canned food? Is it an oxymoron that can only be eaten while wearing natural make-up in a room filled with deafening silence?

A&H Gourmet and Seafood Market of Bethesda believes that you can still be posh while working the pop-top.

In fact, on their “March Specials” placard, right next to the fresh Siberian caviar, they have a picture of Conservas Ortiz Ventresca de Bonito del Norte. AKA, canned tuna.

But this isn’t your grandpa’s chicken of the sea. Imported from northern Spain, Conservas Ortiz uses the most tender part of the white tuna: the belly, or ventresca. Each tuna is line-caught by hand, which preserves the texture and flavor that are often missing from tuna that are subjected to the stressful process of net harvesting. The albacore is freshly cleaned and dressed, then hand-packed to ensure that the fillet stays in one piece.

Labor + parts + cool northern Spain cachet = $8.99 per can.

Of course, I had to try one. I also bought a can of Starkist tuna for a side-by-side comparison, and it wasn’t even close. As advertised, the most impressive trait of the Conservas Ortiz was its texture. Whereas the Starkist was predictably chalky and stuck to the mouth, the ventresca was delicate and light. The taste was slightly smoky. Usually I have to throw the Starkist in a sandwich or salad just to tolerate it, but the Conservas Ortiz satisfies by itself. I also noticed that the Starkist had a much fishier odor than the luxury model.

Two more items at A&H caught my fancy for fancy cans. One was Cofimar cockles in brine. Cofimar is a dry cargo company that is relatively unknown, and based on their cockles, I completely understand why. Imagine tiny tasteless bivalves sitting in water mixed with about four tablespoons of salt and a dash of sand. Now imagine throwing most of it away, as I did.

My third purchase was Goya’s Eelbroods of Surimi, the best of my buys at A&H. Yes, even better than the Conservas Ortiz tuna. In taste and texture, if not in appearance, the silver eelbroods reminded me of the glass noodles in chap chae bap – sweet and slightly chewy. And Goya packs them with enough garlic and cayenne for just the right amount of kick.

But when I looked at the ingredients, I realized that Goya had tricked me. These baby eels are born on a Goya assembly line. Which is to say, they aren’t eels at all. They are “surimi,” a mix of fish meat, water, white egg, vegetable flour, and, last but not least, “natural aroma of eel and ink.” Goya didn’t think the actual eel was important, but the genuine aroma of the eel – that was indispensable.

But what do you expect? It’s sold in a can.

A Brand New P'haal Curry Monster

2009-03-07T16:26:00.024-05:00

Through the tears, I looked up to see my mother’s face, wrenched with concern for the welfare of her only son. “My child is suffering,” she cried.

I didn’t have a life-threatening disease. I wasn’t stretched out on a sidewalk bleeding from a gunshot wound. But the pain was about the same. I was eating a plate of p’haal at the Brick Lane Curry House in the East Village.

Originally a Bangladeshi curry, p’haal has always been spicy. But in early twentieth century England, Indian restaurant owners upped the ante. British revelers would stumble into Indian restaurants after the pubs closed to harass the staff while eating a nice curry. The owners got revenge by dumping ten to twelve ground chilis into each bowl of p'haal.

The kinds of peppers that they chose to feed these rude Brits tell you just how much Indians resented colonization. One pepper was naga jolokia, which translates to “cobra snake” and is used by Indian farmers as the main ingredient in smoke bombs to keep wild elephants away from their crops.

But the Brits were so drunk they didn’t seem to mind the spiciness - not to mention the stomach aches, passing out, and nosebleeds. Eating this unbelievably hot curry soon became a ritual for late-night male bonding.

I hoped to participate in this bonding ritual at Brick Lane. While waiting to be seated, I got off to a good start when I met a guy from Texas at the bar. Was the rumor true that he’d tried the p’haal? “Naw, I didn’t try it,” he said. Then he smiled. “I didn’t try it. I tamed it.” With that, he whipped out the Brick Lane certificate that proclaimed him a P’haal Curry Monster. His attitude was exactly the kind of bravado that I needed to inspire me. How else could I conquer a dish that defeats 90 percent of want-to-be Monsters?

But the Texan took off, and my bonding for the night was over. No one at my table was masochistic enough to join me in ordering the fiery curry. They thought the other menu options looked especially good after the owner, Sati Sharma, said we could only get the p’haal if we gave verbal disclaimers not to hold the restaurant liable for physical or emotional damage.

I gave the disclaimer, and when I took my first bite, it stung my palate like chards of glass. My table mates looked at me like I was a circus freak getting paid peanuts to lie down on a bed of nails. The spectators seemed to be divided into two camps: those like my parents who worried that my brain would melt; and another group, mostly the Indian wait staff, that clearly enjoy the site of yet another customer panting and wildly fanning himself with his napkin. Our friend, Don, had a foot in both camps: he showed some sympathy, but he also cackled with amusement when I told him that the spiciness was making me so congested that I thought I was losing my hearing.

About this time, I got a text from my Indian friend Dave, a well-known asbestos mouth who pumps bottles of hot sauce like most people squeeze the lap bar during a roller coaster ride. “You’re crazy,” it read. “I would never try that stuff.”

I felt alone and misunderstood, and my tongue was killing me. I kept waiting for the high that’s talked about by lovers of painfully hot curries. Supposedly, the body defends itself against the heat by releasing endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers. Indonesians on the Spice Islands who eat bird’s eye chilies as snacks throughout the day are said to be addicted to these endorphins. But my only addiction was to a cool glass of lassi, the Punjabi yogurt blend, that the waiter gave me to help quiet the screaming pain fibers in my mouth. But even this was an exercise in futility. There’s nothing you can do for the chili burn. Once the capsaicin penetrates the tissues in your mouth, only time allows the compound to break down. Cold beverages temporarily help because they numb the nerves, but as soon as you swallow, the bonfire lights up again.

My dad studied the p'haal and said that the smell suggested law enforcement grade pepper spray. “You don’t have to finish it,” he reminded me. Defiantly, I took my biggest bite yet and immediately regretted it.

Mercifully, I heard my spoon scrape the bottom of the plate. Sati, the owner, had been watching me closely, perhaps to make sure I didn’t try to hide any of the p’haal in my pockets like the mutton trick on Seinfeld. Sensing my progress, he came running over. I had done it. I had finished the p’haal.

“You are not done yet!” Sati said, shaking his fist. “This,” he said, pointing to the huge chili pepper that came as a garnish, “you must eat this, too.” I stared at him in dejection until Sati laughed and I realized he was kidding. Then his smile went away and he cleared his throat. “You do have to continue, though,” he said, pointing at the curry-covered clumps of rice that were left on my plate. My parents eyed him venomously, but I just wanted to live up to Sati’s expectations. He was like my sergeant in the eating marines.

I regrouped and polished off the last traces of p’haal. I was happy to accept my Curry Monster certificate from Sati, but my stomach was like a furnace. With every breath, the flames would shoot back up into my throat. I said I needed some fresh air. Outside, I crossed the street to a shadowy area of the sidewalk, waited for a couple to pass by, and threw up.

I was a little embarrassed that the p’haal had reduced me to sidewalk decorating. But I think later that night I earned back some tough points. After we left the restaurant, I ignored my stomach's protests and went out with Dave for quail eggs. The Texan would have been proud of me.

New York Snobs Meet Michel Richard

2009-02-28T14:55:00.003-05:00

Henry Ford called New York a different country. “Maybe it ought to have a separate government,” he said. “Everybody thinks differently, acts differently – they just don’t know what the hell the rest of the United States is.”

I don’t disagree. I just didn’t think that the observation applied to my parents. They only moved to the City from Nashville two months ago.

But the silence said it all. My parents were visiting me in D.C. I’d taken them to Central, and soon after sitting down, I had asked them to name the two best chefs in D.C. My dad went into a vegetative state. “I’ll give you a hint,” I said. “One of them owns this restaurant.” My mom looked down at the bread basket, maybe hoping that the grains would miraculously form a D.C. chef’s face like the Jesus Pan that puts the face of the Anointed One on your pancake.

Yes, my parents can rattle off the names of all the important chefs of New York, but I could have told them that Michel Richard, owner of Central, was the doorman of the French Embassy. As for the second great D.C. chef, I spotted them the “Jose,” and they still couldn’t come up with Andres.

I thought that an evening at Central, winner of the 2008 James Beard Award for best new restaurant, might show them that good food does exist south of the Battery – strong medicine for anyone suffering from a touch of New York chauvinism.

They were impressed by the variety of the menu at Central, but they ordered their appetizers conservatively, starting with the house salad. Could a restaurant outside of the City really be trusted with anything else? Expressing a little more confidence in Michel, I got the foie gras and duck rillettes. The former was a “faux” foie gras – the real thing is made with duck, but executive chef Cedric Maupillier purees chicken liver with butter to make it smoother and richer. There was so much of it that I wondered if I was the one being gavaged.

I found that the rillettes had a rustic texture – larger pieces of duck than the soft, smooth version that the French lovingly refer to as brown jam. In the Anjou region of France, rillettes are proudly displayed to the guest of honor, but when the waiter explained to my guests that the wax-like mystery topping was actually lard, they quickly passed.

But my dad did approve of the foie gras, which led him to be a little more adventurous with his entrée: braised rabbit with herbed spaetzle. The Washington Post called this dish – which features rabbit loin, leg, and sliced coins of kidney – a “stellar combination,” and my parents both agreed. My mom’s only experience with rabbit was as a kid when her summer camp used to serve something called Welsh rabbit. All the campers called it “shit on bricks.” Since then, she had avoided rabbit, but now she was learning to love our furry little friend – in a restaurant outside of New York, of all places.

My entrée was the pied de cochon. Leave it to the French to figure out a fancy way to say pig’s feet. But unlike the trotters you get with Southern soul food, the meat was pulled off the bone and braised, then mixed with mushrooms and deep-fried in a puff pastry that resembled an egg roll. The braising process had softened the muscular hoofs just enough. And the meat had a pleasing mineral taste at the finish that suggested grassfed pork.

My parents were revolted by the idea of trying feet, but I took that more as a criticism of my habit of ordering strange entrees than the restaurant.

My mom thought her shrimp burger lacked flavor, but really, what do you expect when you order a shrimp burger? And overall, Central had clearly impressed this duo of New York foodies. I’m not a doctor, but I took their fever and examined them with tongue depressors - they seemed perfectly healthy, no symptoms of New York snobbery.

But my hopes that I had cured them were dashed on the subway ride back. They complained that the metro map didn’t make sense; the people in the cars were working too hard and overly serious; and, when my dad’s card didn’t work, he tried to hurdle the turnstile. He had suavely achieved this maneuver on the way to the restaurant, but this time, with the braised rabbit weighing him down, he tripped on the wheel. The transit worker looked up from her US Weekly and glared. She was too lazy to actually say anything, but I know what she was thinking: Must be a New Yorker.

Keeping up with the Steins: How to Throw a Jewish Food Party

2009-02-26T21:04:00.003-05:00

Have you heard the one about the Nigerian, the WASP, the Indian girls, the southerner, and the Chinese guy who walked into the Jewish deli?

To figure out the punch line, I decided to host a diverse set of friends for a Jewish food party. But this wasn't just a bad joke. And it wasn't just a great excuse for me to devour salty gefilte fish, the fresh vegetables and lemon juice dressing of an Israeli salad, and other Jewish treats. The party was also a chance to reaffirm my Jewish heritage and atone for over four years of avoiding temple. What better way of keeping up with the Steins and getting back in the good graces of Yahweh than to introduce a bunch of non-believers to matzah ball soup?

In planning the party, I started with the basics: I asked for help from another Jew who hasn't been to temple for an even longer time than me. In the Jewish hierarchy of needs, being able to share your guilt with someone else comes right after securing food and shelter. Enter my girlfriend, Marcy.

The menu came together easily enough – we picked the tastiest dishes from our favorite Jewish holidays. Among other recipes, an apple noodle kugel sprinkled with raisins and cinnamon; fried, oily pancakes, or latkes, made of sweet potato and egg, and topped with apple sauce; and poached fish patties called gefilte fish, made from a mixture of ground deboned white fish and carp.

And, of course, we also chose a few of the delicacies that no Jew can survive more than a few days without, holy day or not: lox and bagels, challah, and sour pickles – mainly thought of as New York icons, but Jewish in origin, as well.

Setting the ambiance was more challenging. It being the month after Hanukkah, the World Market and Party City were sold out of Jewish-themed decorations. I even gave Elli Chai's One-Stop Judaica Shop a try, but I forgot they would be closed on Friday evenings (did I mention I'm a bad Jew?). I felt like I needed a private investigator just to track down some Jewish paraphernalia, but Marcy reminded me that Peter Falk of Detective Columbo was probably busy observing the sabbath. We regrouped and located dreidels and gelt in Pikesville.

As we finished cooking the food, the guests started to arrive and their inquisitive nature took over almost immediately. First came the easy questions, like, "Why do you guys celebrate Hanukkah again?" but then they graduated to some real stumpers. For example, my Chinese friend, Dan, said he knew someone who celebrated Rosh Hashana by eating the head of a fish, and wanted to know why. We had prepared for just this moment. I smoothly reached for Marcy's copy of The Jewish Book of Why and quoted the Code of Jewish Law, which says: "May the coming year help us to achieve leadership; may we be the head and not the tail." Safe to say, we had thought of everything.

Secure that our friends didn't think we were completely ignorant about Judaism, we focused on the food. As it turned out, our diners hadn't been exposed before to many of our Jewciest dishes, and it was pretty entertaining to watch them take their first tastes:

1. Our bubbes would have been proud of us for our sweet potato latkes. Oily and just crispy enough, and studded with salty scallions, their excellence was unanimous. My friend Keith said he'd choose potato casserole over potato latkas any day, but he's from South Carolina, so I discounted his grits-centric view of the world. And for anyone who agrees with Keith that country cooking beats Jewish soul food, last time I checked we don't eat fried pig intestines.

2. Regardless of the continent they or their families originally came from, our guests loved Manischewitz. Historically, the Jews had to sweeten this Kosher wine just to make it palatable because of the limited grape selection in the areas where they settled. The nectar struck a chord with our group; over the course of the night, we guzzled two 48-ounce bottles. The biggest fan was my friend from Nigeria, who was so drunk that he openly admitted that he couldn't think of any alcoholic drink from his home country that was as good.

3. When we said we were making gefilte fish, my friend Rupa's eyes grew wide with fear, as if we had proposed to beat her about the head with the Torah. She grew up in an Indian household, so her only exposure to gefilte was working in a law firm where one of her many Jewish co-workers used the office refrigerator to store a jar of pale gefilte balls, suspended in a slimy broth for months on-end. Traumatized, she thought we were about to serve her something out of an anatomy display at the Natural Museum of History, or maybe Christian Bale's freezer in American Psycho. But, like the stereotype of the Jewish mother relentlessly shoving food in front of her child's face, we insisted she try it - "Have you lost weight? Eat something, bubelleh!" And when she saw other people enjoying the fish, sitting so appetizingly in a bed of lettuce, horseradish sauce and a slice of tomato, she threw off the shackles of her post-traumatic gefilte fish disorder. Soon she was raving about how good it was. That success was short-lived, though. Maybe the Manischewitz had impaired our friends' short-term memories, but we had to explain what gefilte was at least three times. When we thought that we had thoroughly explained the concept of mixing together two or three different types of fish, Dan asked, "So it's like spam?" Not the kind of reaction that earns you an honorary membership in the Tribe.

4. They were also a little confused by kugel. A sweet dessert made with noodles and topped with cornflakes? How much Manischewitz did the Jews have to drink before they came up with this crazy idea? It was so unique that they couldn't think of any analogy to kugel from their own ethnic cuisines – which was a point of pride for the two Ashkenazis in the room. Overall, the kugel got good marks, but not before my caucasian friend Lolly said that Jewish food has way too many carbs.

But when the dust cleared and the dreidels stopped spinning, we'd won a lot of converts. Our sauced guests snatched up the last mini-bagels with lox, and, despite the comment about spam, I celebrated our interfaith friendship by officially welcoming them to the Tribe. Maybe next weekend I'll take them all to temple.

Prediction for the Top Chef Finale

2009-02-21T13:40:00.008-05:00

Nostradamus predicted the Kennedy assassinations. Daniel predicted the birth of Jesus. Ali predicted victory in Manila.

And now, I will predict the winner of next week’s Top Chef. In honor of Ali, I will do so in rhyme: When all the other chefs are gone/You’ll be left with a cocky European named Stefan.

The wind whispered this piece of information in my ear, I looked out the window at work yesterday and the clouds spelled Stefan’s name, and last night I had a dream where Stefan was a powerful cyborg sent from the future to protect John Connor.

Still not convinced? I also have a theory that there is a pattern that can be used to predict which chefs will carry the fillet. Every other week, the outcome of the show is a big surprise. The producers don’t want one of the best chefs to fall every single week because then the show would become too predictable. They only shock us with an underdog every other week. That’s how they try to keep us guessing.

The evidence:

- January 21 – After weeks of making the same Indian dishes, Radhika was finally told to pack her khandas.
- February 4 – Surprise! Everyone thought that Leah or Carla would be axed, but the judges gave Jamie a shot heard round the foodie world when they kicked her off for a braised celery that was “toxic.” Carla celebrated by saying “Hootie-hoo!” even more than usual.
- February 11 – I resented Leah because she was annoying; Wylie Dufresne resented her for eggs benedict that were undercooked. No surprise here. Even with a broken finger, Fabio still beat her.
- February 18 – Surprise! Everything suggested that the judges would be crazy to kick off Fabio: he had an Italian accent that made his comments about monkey asses sound charming, and his poor mama was sick in the hospital and sure to die without Top Chef prize money. Plus, he was the one who most needed to win the elimination challenge prize of a new car to replace his current “piece of … poo.” And yet, it was surprise week. Arrivederci, Fabio, I’ll remember you most for calling Leah a Top Pussy.

Which means that the final episode will occur during an “Of course!” week. Stefan is clearly the favorite; he’s already won eight challenges, including an unprecedented five quickfires in a row. Fans of the show are expecting another surprise after last week, but as much as I’d like for Carla’s tortoise to sneak up on Stefan, the judges are going to try to surprise us by not surprising us. Stefan wins.

Skeptical about my ability to experience odd flashes of prophetic insight? Not buying my theories? I guess we’ll just have to see what happens next week. As Ali said, they all fall/in the round I call.

Free Buffet at the Korean Embassy = Heaven

2009-02-14T16:21:00.004-05:00

The crowd anxiously shifted around in their seats. My friend Dan was on the verge of causing an international dispute.

We were at the Korus House, a venue for cultural outreach at the Korean Embassy, to hear a lecture on a seemingly uncontroversial subject: archaeological excavations of pre-modern Korea. But Dan, who is Chinese, had disagreed with the view of the lecturer, Dr. Sung-rak, that the excavations proved that pre-historic Korean culture had influenced China. “Isn’t a lot of this politically motivated?” Dan asked. As the color drained from the moderator’s face, Dan suggested that Dr. Sung-rak was biased due to his Korean roots and that the opposite conclusion was more likely: it was actually Chinese culture that had influenced Korea.

Dr. Sung-rak rummaged through his notes, buying time while trying to think of a tactful answer that wouldn’t invite Hu Jintao to invade Seoul. I leaned over to Dan and whispered, “No more questions.”

Before this night, Dan had caused many controversies, but only by telling jokes about racial stereotypes at dinner parties. I could take the punch-lines about Jews having small penises, but now his habit of starting fires was about to get us physically escorted from the room. And a boot from the Embassy would ruin my two goals for the night: (1) make it through the lecture without snoring or drooling on anyone, and (2) stuff myself on the free feast of Korean food that Korus House had promised afterwards.

Luckily, we weren't approached by any Korean bouncers. Dr. Sung-rak avoided Dan’s question by temporarily seeming to forget how to speak English.

Mercifully, the lecture ended. The crowd, a strange mix of archaeology professors and lovers of Korean cuisine, flooded into the next room, lured by the nutty scent of sesame oil. We discovered a generously big buffet.

Korus House had recruited the renowned Korean chef Jae-ok Chang, author of three Korean cookbooks, to prepare the food. This was not the first time that I had enjoyed Korean culture with Ms. Chang. For the holiday of Chuseok, during which Koreans give thanks for the abundance of the fall season, she and I collaborated for a celebration at the Korus House. She participated by cooking traditional food in the style of the ancient royal palace: bulgogi (marinated beef), jeon (savory pancake), kimchi (pickled spicy vegetables), and bibimbap (seasoned rice and vegetables). I helped out by shamelessly ravaging it, free of charge.

I expected that she would again go the traditional route, if for no other reason than to cater to the archaeologists in the crowd by serving up some culinary artifacts. Surprisingly, though, a few of the dishes were more modern, particularly a thick garlic dip to go with braised chicken and a terrine of calamari in a starchy plum sauce. I noticed that Dan looked a little smug. Given the lecturer’s theories about how Paleozoic Koreans had so much influence over their Chinese neighbors, it was pretty ironic that the Korean food was bathed in Chinese sauces.

That said, I think Ms. Chang might have made the right choice in going with a couple of Asian fusion recipes. The archaeologists, who were mostly Caucasian, didn’t really know what to make of some of the other dishes that were more genuinely Korean. When I went back to the buffet for a second round, I noticed an older couple hovering over the serving bowl of kimchi. They were so fascinated you would have thought they had just discovered the fossils of a previously unknown species of dinosaur. I think they were about to break out their trowels when they saw me. “Is this onions?” they asked. “No, bok choy,” I said. They thought that it was too spicy, but check out the spring issue of the Journal of Archaeological Research for their groundbreaking study on Tyrannosaurus Kimchi.

Dan and I eventually found a group of Koreans to have a better conversation about the food. An archaeology professor from Catholic and a recent graduate of American University agreed with me that the kimchi tasted really fresh – homemade, not the stuff shipped from California to D.C. supermarkets. We also enjoyed a variety of panchan and Korean spring rolls – which were good enough that my new friends had the occasion to teach me the Korean word mashitha. It means delicious.

We left Embassy row with world peace secure and our appetites more than satisfied. But I’ll be back to Korus House next week when they offer introductory Korean language classes. And, of course, light Korean snacks.

High Heat is Not My Friend: Advice from the Pros on How to Cook Your Bass

2009-01-24T12:32:00.004-05:00

So many Top Chefs call New York home, Tom Colicchio might as well be mayor. And yet, after two trips to the City and a decent amount of Top Chef stalking, Marcy and I hadn’t met any of them. My mom has no ambitions of befriending the rising stars of the culinary world, and even she randomly walked right past season 4 Andrew outside his private dining club. Jealousy gave way to discouragement. We threw down the autograph pads and concentrated on our plan to cook sea bass that night.

We got off to a good start when we walked over to Chelsea Market for the fish. Occupying an entire city block in the meat-packing district, the Market dates back to 1898, when the original Nabisco Bakery produced the first Oreo cookie. Today, the Market consists of the Food Network, restaurants, and 12 specialty food shops, including the Lobster Place, the largest purveyor of live lobster in the City. When we walked in, the smell of fish was so sweet that my dad said he’d like to engineer an open-air vent from the market to his living room. We put that project on hold, settling for a fillet of Chilean sea bass caught just three hours before, like all of the store’s fish.

Following a recipe from Colicchio’s book, Think Like a Chef, we needed a few other ingredients, and we headed to a small grocery across from the fish market. Then it happened – an angel appeared. A squat spiky-haired Indonesian angel. It was season 4 Dale. Marcy walked right past him, even though he was wearing his trademark taupe-rimmed glasses (not to mention a Buddakan chef jacket with his name on the breast). Amazingly, despite being focused on the bass, my Dale-dar was still working.

I will concede that Buddakan is located inside the Chelsea Market, so it only makes sense that the sous chef would be shopping for ingredients there. But after many frustrating attempts to meet Top Chef contestants, randomly seeing Dale felt as miraculous as Forrest Gump meeting JFK at the White House. Instead of telling Dale “I gotta pee,” though, we used the opportunity to get some advice about our sea bass. The recipe called for us to stuff the fish with roasted tomatoes, using a string to tie them in between two fillets – the idea being to infuse the tomato flavor into the fish. Given our inexperience with hog-tying fish, and my parents’ high expectations, we seemed to be courting disaster.

At first, Dale seemed a little reticent about string theory. Dale's most memorable moment from the show came after an argument with a fellow contestant, when he declared, “I try not to be a dickhead in the kitchen.” Considering Dale's aloof attitude towards us, though, it seemed that he was more open to being a dickhead in the supermarket.

But our charm won him over. We resisted the temptation to make any annoying “pack your knives” jokes, and after we told him about our dinner at Buddakan, he flashed a rare smile, leading to a quick tutorial on the bass. The gist of his advice was to give the fish high heat, or in his words, “blast it.” I realized that this approach contradicts Colicchio’s instruction in the book, highlighted in no less than 24-point font, “high heat is not your friend.” When you treat the ingredients gently, Colicchio explains, you get the best results in terms of flavor and texture. Dale was ladled off Top Chef for making bad butterscotch scallops. Maybe he blasted the scallops, too.

Ultimately, our excitement over meeting Dale didn’t stop us from ignoring his advice. I like Dale, but he is only a B-list cheflebrity, afterall. On the other hand, when Tom Colicchio says low sizzle, you low sizzle. So, even as my dad wafted about the kitchen, hungrily suggesting that the fish looked done, I kept adjusting the heat to make sure that the sugars in the food didn’t caramelize too quickly.

Maybe too proud of our fish tying, we forgot to cut the string before serving, but other than that, my parents gave the bass high marks. Despite the fairly complicated technique necessary to tie the bundle, the taste was winning for its simplicity – fresh fish and roasted tomato over a basic sauce of tomato juice, garlic and butter.

Top Chile

2009-01-11T16:57:00.002-05:00

Marcy recently bought me the Top Chef Cookbook. So far, this gift has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it has pushed me to grapple with recipes that are more lengthy and complex than the recipes listed on what I call houselor websites – those that are targeted at housewives and bachelors, two demographics whose only overlap is their desire to crank out food quickly and without any headache. Momswhothink.com and barrythebachelor.com will get you dinner on the table faster than you can say microwaveable.

Although I’m a bachelor, I like to think of myself as an overachieving one. Top Chef recipes are a pretty good way to test that. In fact, when I tackled my first recipe, I think I got a little taste of what it’s like to be on Top Chef. Did I mention that the new cookbook has also been a curse?

A list of the ways that my preparation of Chiles Rellenos, the dish served by Sara during season 3, made me feel like a Top Chef:

1. Like the chefs on the show, I was operating under severe time constraints. Admittedly, one small difference is that the contestants on the show are trying to finish cooking before Tom Colicchio tells them it’s time for the judges table, whereas I was trying to finish in time to eat dinner before going to bed. I got off work late, which, if I was making Barry’s 27 word long Bachelor Chow recipe, wouldn’t be a problem. But given Sara’s flair for complicating things, I found myself about halfway through the recipe at 10:45 pm. Worried that this was going to turn into an all-nighter, I began to scramble for the finish line, running around the kitchen like a Top Cheffer fearing Padma’s icy stare.

2. The recipe called for a higher level of skill than, for example, your average momwhothinks must demonstrate when making “happy apples.” This highlights another small difference between the Top Chefs and me: they actually possess that higher level of skill. The recipe required that I roast the chiles over a gas flame, turning with tongs until blackened. I quickly found that if you don’t burn long enough, the skin can be hard to peel. And if you burn too much, the flesh turns blackish – also hard to peel. After stumbling through the burning process, I found the task of peeling the skin of the peppers to be delicate as well; I didn’t want to remove all the blackened skin because I liked the char flavor. I began to appreciate why chiles rellenos are so expensive at restaurants. You’re paying for the labor. And such attention to detail, when you need to be doing something else, like going before Top Chef judges or lying in bed unconscious, is tough.

3. I enjoy artistically arranging food on a plate, but I find that your typical online recipe doesn’t provide much advice about how to Picasso-up your dish. The Cookbook recipe included a fairly long “To Serve” section, and the photograph was also instructive. The bell pepper sauce laid a foundation, and then I spooned some beans on the other side of the plate, forming concentric red and brown circles, an earthy backdrop for the big green poblano pepper, which is placed in the middle. An avocado slice goes aside the green butter to provide a clue about the butter’s main ingredient. And a sprig of cilantro gives you a hint of spicy pleasures awaiting you inside the pepper.

4. Just like the Top Chefs, I too toiled away in an effort to satisfy an audience that does not spare the rod when evaluating my performance. The Top Chef Cookbook required a two-page spread to cover all the put-downs Anthony Bourdain has used to denigrate chefs. And although Marcy has never accused my food of falling into “cat food territory,” she can be tough. Her criticism usually takes a more passive form, though, like getting up from the table and returning with a salt shaker. But I strategically arrived late in the evening to ensure that she would be hungry to increase the receptivity of her tastebuds. Then, as she took her first few bites, I aggressively fished for compliments – “Isn’t the squash a nice contrast in texture to the avocado butter?” – to coax her into compliments that would create a binding record, forcing her to give the meal a good score. When I told her how long the chiles took, I tacked on an hour to embellish the degree of difficulty, which, in our scoring system, accounts for one/fifth of the points. These tactics seemed to work as she initially called the food “great.” But then she grew quieter, and when she got up from the table, I knew the salt shaker was about to make an appearance. Ultimately, she gave me a good point total, but not the 100 that I hoped for. I gnashed my teeth at the injustice, like a Top Chef contestant who wasn’t quite good enough to win the Quickfire Challenge, holding back a range of angry comebacks so as not to damage my relationship with the judge.

The Recipe:

My Two Dales

2009-01-11T13:24:00.000-05:00

It had been a while since I’d gone out to eat in the City, and it felt like it.

Everything about our destination, Buddakan, was a bit mystifying. First of all, was this a nice restaurant, or a Las Vegas sex club? When we walked in we were greeted with loud music, paintings aglow with amorous shades of red, and a black-lit bar area crammed with boisterous twenty-somethings. My parents wondered if they were over the age limit.

The wait was too long, and, tired of standing, my mom sat down pretty defiantly on the narrow stairs, blocking the path of the twenty-somethings. Noticing the obstacle to his customers’ mating dances, a manager approached and ushered us past the bar scene and into a huge eating area.

Confusion persisted as Marcy and I schemed about how to hit our bull’s eye, former Top Chef contestant Dale. We’d read online that Dale worked the kitchen, and our mission for the night was to get him to autograph a Buddakan menu for us. Having bought Top Chef merchandise and arranged meetings with other Cheftestants in the past, we're definitely Top Chef groupies. By traveling over 300 miles from DC to meet Dale, we're also probably stalkers, but it's not like I want to get Padma's used napkin for my kitchen drawer or anything (I would frame it and put it up on my wall). Dale's got a mohawk, so we figured he’d be easy enough to spot, but the restaurant was the size of, well, a Las Vegas sex club. We realized he could be anywhere in this cavernous eatery.

Another confusing aspect to the evening was the Buddakan menu. Online, the prices seemed reasonable, but what I didn’t realize, as our waiter smugly pointed out, was that each item was amuse-bouche – just a few bites. He rattled off a dissertation on the proper ratio of cold appetizers; hot appetizers; noodle dishes; rice dishes; and beef, poultry, and vegetables. Eventually, he concluded that we would have to order about ten dishes. As I watched the color drain out of my parents’ faces, I realized that I had recommended that they take us to one of the most expensive restaurants in New York.

Hoping that the massacre of my dad’s wallet would at least finance an opportunity to brush up against Top Chef greatness, I asked the waiter if he could help us meet Dale. He looked at me as if I had just asked him to douse his grandmother with gas and light a match, then recovered and said he would check.

He returned a little later with our dishes. The food was very tasty, although I was looking for something a little farther off the eaten path. The only thing on the menu that made me curious was the ginger glazed veal cheeks with pickled apple salad. Everyone at the table rolled their eyes when I suggested ordering cheeks, suggesting that it was an overly eccentric choice, but I just took that as extra incentive to order them; I could enjoy the cow dimples all to myself. Because everyone had gone on record as anti-cheek, I carelessly positioned the bowl in close proximity to my dad – who ended up eating about three quarters of it. Even Marcy tried some and smiled, adding fuel to the debate over whether I’m turning her into a carnivore, or she’s turning me into a vegetarian. I do have to admit that I enjoyed the bed of apple salad almost as much as the cheeks.

Other highlights were the tuna tartare spring rolls and steamed sea bass rolls. The sea bass came in a sizzling scallion oil, which I liked so much that when I got back home I unsuccessfully tried to recreate it. Buddakan’s version was a little more tart than mine, so I added in some ginger, which drowned out the sesame oil. A work in progress.

Our waiter never got back to us about Dale, so we didn’t get our menus autographed. He just handed us the bill, and I resolved to buy my parents really nice birthday presents to make amends. To add insult to injury, after we left Buddakan we realized that we were thinking of the wrong Dale. Buddakan’s Dale is actually the diminutive, acerbic Indonesian Dale from season five, not the mohwaked, self-proclaimed “sleazy” Dale from season four. Back home, I fruitlessly scanned my memory for any recollection of seeing a sneering Asian guy in a double-breasted jacket. Next time, we’re storming the kitchen with our pens drawn.

Straying from the Recipe: Southeast Asian Squash Curry

2009-01-01T17:38:00.002-05:00

I hung out over the weekend with this guy from North Carolina. His southern manners were ingratiating, but I also attributed to him some stereotypes about southern people: wedded to tradition, unimaginative, and, well, kind of boring. Then we got to talking about cooking. His eyes lit up with a glint of adventurousness, and he put me to shame. His tales of experimenting with ingredients and straying far from recipes made me question my own cooking nature: specifically, how conservative I am in the kitchen. If this hick gets all freaky with his spice rack, why I am such a recipe-clinger?

So the other night, I found myself in a pickle: an interesting recipe for southeast Asian squash curry – and very few of the ingredients in the fridge. Inspired by my laid-back yet daring friend, I threw recipe to the wind.

But even the part of the recipe that I planned on following seemed a bit of a stretch. Squash with fish sauce? Do people from Thailand really eat squash? Despite misgivings, I prepared the ingredients. Then, my substitutions began: I went with leeks in the absence of onions; traded bok choy for spinach, and just to completely fly my foodie freak flag, I threw in turnips. And I put carrots in there too!

I felt alive and free, but then I dumped in too much cinnamon. Not the first time – I think I subconsciously make this blunder sometimes because years ago an ex-girlfriend accused me of having a whole bunch of completely full spice bottles – suggesting that I was spending more time buying my powders than shaking them. Scarred, I now shake vigorously to empty those babies out.

As the food cooked, I took a taste and what stood out was the variety of texture. Many good contrasts between soft and crunchy, particularly enhanced by the bok choy. But, as expected, my enthusiasm with the cinnamon had been a mistake – it gave the dish a sweet earthy taste that reminded of a middle eastern tagine, which detracted from the delicate southeast Asian feel that was already jeopardized by the squash. Thankfully I still had the chili paste and coconut milk, which pushed the taste of the food forcefully in the direction of Bangkok. Still, I tried to compensate for the cinnamon by tripling the amount of fish sauce that the recipe called for, but the cinnamon refused to be quieted. Sweet won over pungent, although the next day when I ate leftovers at work, the burning smell of the fish sauce overwhelmed the guy at the cubicle next to me, forcing him outside for a smoke. You know your dish is smelly when people choose cancer over it.

The highlight of the evening was that the squash worked with fish sauce. And I was also pleased that I refused my last-second impulse to run to the supermarket for cashews. Just before plating my fiery curry, I craved the nuts and wondered how they would even further enhance the mixed textures – but I remembered my southern friend’s rebellious influences and stayed true to my goal of departing from the recipe, which included cashews. That, and plus after I taste-tested the squash in fish sauce, my hunger spiked to a level that it couldn’t be delayed by even the shortest cashew run.

Southeast Asian Squash Curry (from Epicurious.com)

Serves4
Active time:20 min
Start to finish:35 min
October 2008
We love the many textures and flavors of this spicy coconut curry with butternut squash, spinach, and cashews. Bottled red curry paste keeps it supermarket-friendly.

1 tablespoon plus 2 tsp vegetable oil, divided
1 1/2 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 (14-oz) can unsweetened coconut milk (do not stir), divided
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons Thai Kitchen red curry paste
1/3 cup water
1 (2- to 3-inch) cinnamon stick
3 whole cloves
5 oz baby spinach (5 cups packed)
1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce, or to taste
1/4 cup salted roasted cashews, chopped
·
Accompaniment:
lime wedges

· Heat 1 Tbsp oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Sauté squash with cumin and 1/4 tsp salt until beginning to brown, about 6 minutes. Transfer to a plate.
· Add remaining 2 tsp oil to skillet and cook onion over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add 1/4 cup coconut milk from top of can and cook, stirring, until fat starts to separate and look glossy, about 2 minutes. Add curry paste and cook, stirring, 2 minutes.
· Add squash, water, cinnamon, cloves, and remaining coconut milk and simmer, covered, until squash is tender, about 8 minutes. Stir in spinach and cook, covered, until just wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in fish sauce. Sprinkle with cashews.
Serve with: jasmine riceCooks’ note: We’ve also got a web-exclusive recipe using the leftover red curry paste.
Recipe by Maggie Ruggiero
Photography by Romulo Yanes
Keywords
quick kitchen,
asian,
curry,
maggie ruggiero
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In Search of Gruyere Wine Coolers

2008-12-27T18:50:00.001-05:00

The Giant supermarket across the street from my apartment is convenient, I’ll give them that. But for some reason, whenever I ask the Quality Food People if they have an ingredient that I’m looking for, they point me to the peanut aisles. Guess that’s their default answer when they don’t know, and apparently, they frequently don’t.

So I considered myself blessed when I asked the good people of Giant for a casserole dish, and they not only spared me the peanut aisles, but actually directed me to a couple shelves with tinfoil cooking instruments. I was off to an auspicious start for my first casserole.

When I think casserole, I think of an unimaginative housewife from the 1950s. It’s just not the image I’m going for. A spicy stir-fry or risotto always sounds more interesting. But after starting my winter “community-supported agriculture” program, I have pounds of turnips and celeria clogging up my refrigerator. So until I hear about an exciting recipe for celeria stir-fry, I’ve got to explore some other options.

Enter Turnip and Bleu Cheese Gratin, a recipe I found on old reliable allrecipes.com. I thought his recipe had a provocative mix of spices: rosemary, thyme, garlic, bay leaf. I was particularly interested in the Gruyere cheese. Unfortunately, Giant didn’t have any; their employee was sure that Gruyere was a type of wine cooler. I ended up substituting feta (bad guess, by the way; the online food thesauruses say I should have gone with swiss).

Then I got down to business in my kitchen. One thing about this recipe: great mix of vegetables. My mouth watered as I stirred the chopped leeks, turnips, squash, mushrooms, and carrots as they crackled on the stove. The sauce looked nice, too, with the cream taking on a pleasant light green hue from the thyme. Just as I got done rubbing the tin foil with a pungent clove of garlic, the preheat light went off and the oven was ready. I was on quite a cassa-role.

Then things fell apart. My casserole dish was too big! The vegetables only filled up about half the dish, and if I spaced them to cover the dish, they spread out too thinly. When I tried to space them, the cheese top crumbled. Damn you Giant for only having 12 lbs casserole dishes! Why didn’t you just point me to the peanuts aisles and spare me all this pain!

I took some deep breaths and, through some artistry, reformed the cheese top. But I still had a real problem because when I poured in the sauce, it clung to the vegetables as long as it could, but then spilled out into the empty remaining half of the dish, pooling pathetically by itself.

MacGyver Chef came to the rescue. I inserted a smaller plate underneath the right side of the casserole dish to prop it up – thereby tilting the sauce towards the half of the dish with the casserole. I was expecting the plate to explode in the oven, but this actually worked. Is this an old housewife’s trick, I wonder? Or are the housewives just smart enough to actually have the right sized casserole dish.

Upon plating, I was excited. The bleu and feta cheese had browned nicely and as I forked my first bite, I enjoyed the sight of the flakes of thyme mingled with the bits of garlic. I could smell the faintly bitter scent of the leeks.

The vegetables complemented each other well. The sweet carrots and squash balanced the bitterness of the leeks and turnips. Even without the gruyere, the cheese mixture was excellent. I only regret not adding more rosemary than the recipe called for because whenever that bleu cheese and garlic touched my palette, the rosemary got muffled like a kid laughing in church.

Next time the CSA gives me some turnips, I’m making this recipe again, if for no other reason than to figure out how to better space my casserole dish. Til then, I’ll have to check out some of those tasty Gruyere wine coolers.

RECIPE (from allrecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)
2 cloves garlic, smashed
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup half-and-half cream
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 large leek - cleaned, and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds
2 large turnips, peeled and sliced
1 cup cubed butternut squash
4 large mushrooms, sliced
2 large carrots, sliced
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/4 cup shredded Gruyere cheese
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DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Butter a 2 quart casserole dish, rub with one of the garlic cloves, and sprinkle with a little salt. Set aside.
2. Heat the half-and-half in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the thyme, bay leaf and both garlic cloves. Remove from the heat just before it boils.
3. Place the leek, turnip, squash, mushrooms and carrots into a large saucepan and fill with about 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil, cover and steam over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Drain and layer vegetables into the prepared casserole dish. Sprinkle rosemary in between the layers. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle blue cheese and Gruyere cheese over the top. Strain the half-and-half and pour into the casserole.
4. Bake, uncovered, in the preheated oven until vegetables are tender and sauce is thick, about 40 minutes. Uncover for the last 20 minutes to allow the top to brown.