Category: Food

Bachelor Nights at Winslow Place

Using up all the odd bits of food in the fridge is one of the kitchen challenges I really like. It’s like a card game where the goal is to get rid of all your cards. (And not go out in the freezing cold and buy groceries.)

Due to the high winds advisory and my looming deadlines, leaving the house is the last thing I want to do…which has led to me shouting “Rummy!” triumphantly (uh, and figuratively) in the kitchen the last couple of nights.

Sunday, we were cheating a little, with leftovers from Kabab Cafe, plus a handful of green beans. I got into the kitchen just in time to deter Peter from mixing the green beans with a can of black beans he’d found in the pantry. My rule with leftovers and slim pickings is to make as many discrete dishes as possible–loaves ‘n’ fishes, fishes ‘n’ loaves.

So instead, Peter sauteed the green beans, while I mashed the black beans up with garlic and some chicken stock. (What, no lard? I told you, it’s slim pickings…)

There was some fresh mozzarella in the fridge, left over from an over-ambitious purchase the previous week. I melted a bunch of that on top of the beans, and threw the last of a bag of poor, frost-bitten corn tortillas from the freezer in the oven to warm up. Then, in a great “Rummy!” moment, I fished out about a quarter-cup of green tomatillo salsa from the fridge, the leftover bit of a Herdez can. In my mental fridge inventory, it had been sitting back there, nagging at me for months. Ha–gotcha!

So we had melty, cheesy black beans, some fresh, crispy green beans (with a few more even left over from that) and reheated assorted rice and squab tastiness from Ali. Something about the black beans and the garlic and the cheese and salsa just struck me as super-bachelor food–the kind you cook in college, or just after. In a good way.

The next night…obviously the kitchen situation was even bleaker, but the weather was even nastier. Windows were getting blown out of Manhattan high rises.

There was a chicken carcass in the fridge, stuck there post-stock-making, hoping I would pick the last bits of meat off of it. Since I was desperate, I did – while I was reheating my six last green beans for lunch, with an egg. The chicken was in such miserable little bits that it wasn’t even appetizing to put in a soup. While I picked, I thought…

And I remembered AV saying how she’d just whipped up some croquettes, casually, one day, as you do. To me, croquettes are a weird thing you get in an automat in Amsterdam, and I’m not entirely sure I like them. But there’s something appealing about molten deep-fried goo on a severely miserable day, which I guess is why the Dutch like them so much.

So, I figured: chicken croquettes, and, uh, frozen peas. I looked in the pantry: one potato, and some marinated artichoke hearts. (And while I was looking, I saw a big, unopened bag of panko.) OK, so chicken croquettes, potato croquettes and artichoke croquettes, with super-crispy panko breading. And frozen peas. I could use the frozen last stems of dill out on the porch for the chicken…

Dinnertime rolled around and I was actually excited to start this deep-frying adventure. Until I realized we didn’t have any milk to make a bechamel–the goo that binds croquettes together and sears the roof of your mouth.

This led to a dilemma–should Peter go to the store for milk and all the other millions of groceries we needed? In that case, why would we have something gross like croquettes for dinner?

Then I saw the container of heavy cream. NO. I put my foot down: no grocery shopping–I’d use cream thinned out with chicken stock, dammit, and we would triumph!

So I did all the croquette-making. I was tempted to do a Thor’s Love Kroket treatment, but since I’d never made even simple croquettes before, I didn’t quite trust myself with the complex architecture required. Also, having multiple kinds of croquette, rather than one big, potentially gross one, was more in keeping with my leftover-cooking rule.

Oh, and–ultimate “Rummy!”–I breaded the very last remaining slabs of mozzarella (that shit would not go away!), to fry those up too. Made a little tomato sauce on the side, with tomatoes from freezer and haggard bits of windowsill basil and long-forgotten olives.

Then I fried everything. Did you know mashed potato just disappears in hot oil? I did not. But after peering into a disturbingly light panko crust and contemplating the emptiness at the core of the universe, I do now.

So we lit our Delft-pattern blue-and-white candles (very gezellig) and ate our remaining three types of fried food. And frozen peas (I put mint in at the last minute–one more herb salvage). The mozz sticks Peter dubbed better than Hooters’ because there were no distracting boobs around. The chicken ones tasted just like real Dutch kroketten, for better or worse–the dill gave them that someone-tried-to-season-this-but-with-what-exactly? mystery flavor.

Sadly, we did not have any beer left in the fridge with which to consume our fried snacks. If we’d been proper bachelor diners, we would’ve.

But at least there’s still a pot of frying oil sitting on the stove. Rummy, dude.

It’s Snowing!

The last few winters have been so creepily warm, then just gray and dreary, and then when it finally gets around to snowing, in February, all you can think is, Well, thank _God_, because the apocalypse isn’t coming quite yet.

But snow in December! After it’d actually been cold for a few days! I am genuinely excited.

Last night we had great pre-snow-it’s-effing-freezing food at Kabab Cafe: Ali is doing this lamb cheek appetizer now that is so amazingly good, spiced almost Christmas-y…I don’t know what’s in it. And the poached egg on top doesn’t hurt either.

Oh, and he has a _real_ waiter. Not that Peter and Tamara and Katie aren’t also real waiters, who helped Ali in time of need, but now there’s one guy, who shows up every night and treats it like it’s his job, because it is. His name’s Freddy (Alfredo), and he made me remember what it’s like to even _have_ a waiter: like, he asks if you want water, and he brings you a fork without you having to ask for one. It’s amazing!

Now…what to eat on the day of the snow? I’m going to nip downstairs and make an apple pancake, and maybe even some hot chocolate. (Alas, I have no marshmallows…of any size.)

Media Watch

The Good (and I can’t believe I’m saying this): Alex Witchel’s column in the New York Times yesterday (“To the Things That Remain”). A lovely ode to the vanishing lifestyle of smoking-with-dinner, via a time-warp steakhouse in Chicago. The accompanying recipe, however, made me not want to eat there: iceberg lettuce with salami and shrimp? I can feel the nasty texture in my mouth right now.

The Bad (c’mon, really, this is why I bothered to write this post): the new issue of Cook’s Illustrated, in which the reader’s tips reach a new low. I can no longer be shocked by any tip involving profligate use of Saran wrap, but I was appalled to read a suggestion from Ari Wolfe of Princeton, NJ. When he found himself without mini marshmallows (an “important garnish” for hot chocolate), he got out his kitchen shears and spray-can of PAM and got to work on normal-size marshmallows.

Let’s just pause while we contemplate the complete idiocy of this, shall we? I hope also that during this pause, Ari Wolfe is googling himself and discovering that at least one person in the world is giving him a reality check.

Not only did he see a lack of mini marshmallows as a problem and then concoct an overly complicated solution to that problem, but then he felt compelled to write to Cook’s Illustrated and tell them about it.

Dude. I hope, I pray you are also doing something good with your time, like adopting profoundly deaf orphan children with leprosy and speech impediments.

Now I’d better get back to constructive, world-saving work. But maybe I need a mug of hot chocolate to get in the mood…

Heritage Turkey and Schindler’s Pie

Thanksgiving in Savannah was lovely. I splurged on a heritage turkey from Heritage Foods, even though I didn’t have a chance to spy on the bird via webcam in the days leading up to his demise, which is one of the brilliant selling points of these birds. We at least savored the heartwarming stories of all the various farms–the assembled at Casa Bonaventura decided our turkey must’ve come from the gay one.

With the bird came a little information sheet listing the various heritage breeds and the characteristics of each. Figuring out which one ours might be would’ve required an LSAT-level logic grid, so I just turned the project over to Bob, who stuffed the 15-pound baby and popped him in the oven.

A few hours later, I came in and finished him up. After a lot of nervous poking, I decided this called for slicing off the legs, which were still oozing red, and leaving them in the oven while we put the rest of the completely done bird on the counter to wait. The result was perfectly done breast and leg. Duh. I don’t know why I haven’t done this before–maybe because the gap between done and not-done hasn’t ever been quite this drastic, and maybe because it seems like admitting failure. (Last night Peter and I were imagining a situation in which we would super-chill the breast meat with little ice packs, as a sort of handicap, before popping the bird in the oven. Less practical, but maybe more fun than the leg-severing strategy. And it would only work if you didn’t drink too many whiskey sours and forget to take the ice packs off.)

Anyway, the turkey was delicious. Although still not quite as delicious as turkey I’ve eaten in the Yucatan…but then everything tastes better when eaten in another country.

I also made some pies. Note to self: Make pie dough more than once a year, so I remember how to do it. Back in New Mexico, I was the Pie Queen. Seventeen years later, I still haven’t adapted to sea-level baking, and my crusts are hit or miss. I tried a new pie recipe, from the November issue of Saveur: buttermilk pie with cardamom. It was not like the delectable “Buttermilk Sky Pie” of Barton’s from Terrace Club, but more like a very light cheesecake. The cardamom made me think I should’ve waited till Christmas to make it (cardamom is linked to stollen in my mind), and the texture made me think I should’ve made a crumb crust. Actually, maybe next time I’ll just follow the recipe for the standard pie crust–that would be a wise move. Still, good to try something new.

My pie gut, I mean glut (oh, I didn’t mention–I made three: apple and mince also), plus the existing three pies (pumpkin, sweet potato, pecan), meant I spent all weekend eating not leftover turkey but extra pie: big slabs of mincemeat with whipped cream for breakfast, apple for lunch-dessert, buttermilk as an afternoon snack. As Peter and I were packing our snacks for the train, I was looking sadly at the remaining pies, which almost certainly would get tossed after we left. Bloated and sugar-saturated, I was still thinking, I could’ve saved one more slice…

Thanks to all who helped the noble cause!

Truth in Advertising: El Taco Loco

I just ate the heftiest lunch ever, at this taco place in Playa del Carmen called El Fogon. About three years ago, I dragged a hapless guy I met in a bar over to the other El Fogon branch, off in the then-wilds of Av 30 and C 28–I remembered it being very tasty, and the random guy being a little out of his depth. So I was looking forward to lunch, by myself, without the responsibility of a co-eater (hey, that’s what you get for striking up a conversation with me in a bar, dude).

Except I couldn’t find the place. But I could smell it. I wandered around two square blocks, navigating purely by the smell of grilled meat. When I got there, I was ravenous, and promptly ordered the “Taco Loco,” which looked giant and had a lot of meats and cheese in it.

It arrived, a hulking thing in a flour tortilla. Improbably, it was garnished with a bit of pork chop and a wiggly, chewy piece of barely grilled bacon. When I saw the all-meat garnish, I actually thought, “Ha, that’s crazy!” And only then remembered precisely what I’d ordered. I guess they warned me, right?

After that, I stopped in to look at a hotel. I explained what I was doing, and asked to see a room. The guy just could not get his head around it. I wasn’t selling anything. He didn’t have to pay anything. Somehow I made enough money to do this job… He’d never heard of Rough Guides, or Lonely Planet, or Frommer’s or Fodor’s or any of the other names I pulled out. It just didn’t make any sense to him. Every time I thought we were making a breakthrough, he’d end up saying something like, “So it’s like the Yellow Pages?”

Finally, he kind of gave up, and we talked about my job a little more, how I got paid, and so on. Then he said, “Your job…it’s kind of like making a movie.”

I laughed, and said, “Oh yeah–I wish my life were that glamorous!”

No, he explained–he meant, really making a movie. He’d lived in California for a long time, and he’d seen up close just how boring and awful the process of making a movie can be, all the waiting around and redoing things, all for a tiny bit of film. My job, it sounded like, was a lot like that.

He got it.

Food Observations

Separately, a few comments on dining:

I cannot stop myself from ordering wine when I’m eating food (such as lasagne) that calls for it. But I know the wine is going to be terrible (due to the heat), and expensive (due to weird tariffs). I think tonight’s ‘mer-LOT’ (with a final ‘t’) may have trained me, finally. Or maybe the lasagne was to blame. I wound up kvetching about it to a nice Chinese-American guy who runs a Chinese-Filipino-Thai restaurant here. He told me where I should’ve eaten lasagne, and also that his restaurant has all Hong Kong chefs, plus a Filipino guy. So two places I could’ve eaten instead. (The Filipino angle is due to the huge number of Filipinos on the cruise-ship crews, incidentally.)

Before that, I happened to meet a man (whose name was Marco Polo, incidentally) who deals in fish (he was wearing a shirt covered in a fish pattern, which is more relevant). He’s based in Merida, and sells frozen fish from Progreso, on the north Gulf coast, to Cozumel. This is interesting, because I’m sure most diners here imagine they’re eating fish fresh-plucked from the sea out front. I never put much thought into it, but I guess I thought something at least halfway like that. Not frozen, at least. Right now, said Marco Polo, the seas are bad and no one on the Caribbean is doing any fishing–so all the fish happens to be frozen. I left him starting to read a National Geographic all-fish issue from 1995. And I didn’t order fish for dinner…but that’s how I wound up with nasty lasagne.

On a nicer note, I have noticed that people passing by my table on their way out of restaurants say “Buen provecho” to me. Is this because they feel sorry for me, eating alone (like, someone has to say it to her, the poor thing)? I haven’t really noticed it happening to other people. In any case, it’s a gallant gesture, to wish a good meal upon a stranger.

(This post was brought to you by the parenthesis.)

Jesus Is Tasty

Sorry for radio silence. What I’d envisioned as three days of lounging around the lovely garden of Genesis in the village of Ek-Balam while tapping into the Web through the miracle of wi-fi turned out to be a hell of a lot of driving and zero Internetting, thanks to my cranky computer, which I think has a piece of lint stuck in the part connecting the wireless antenna to the rest of it.

On one of my long-driving days, I stopped in at the wonderful Tres Reyes restaurant in Tizimin (where I had the Best. Avocado. Ever. last year). This time it was the Best. Beans. Ever. and the Best. Tortillas. Ever. and the Best. Owner. Ever.

Beans: inky black, exuding lard, incredibly rich. Tortillas: now I see why people might see Jesus or the Virgin Mary on a tortilla. These were small, thick, chewy and flecked with ash from the wood fire they were cooked over. Halfway through my meal, a waiter whisked away the half-full basket and replaced it with a batch of new, hot ones.

Owner: the estimable Willy Canto, whom I’ve never met before, but I know his name from his giant business cards stuck on all the tables. I usually just gush about how great everything was to my waiter, a groovy man with a wire-rim glasses and a little gray ponytail. But I guess my gushing was loud enough this time that Don Willy overheard me. Clad in a dapper white guayabera, he waltzed over to my table to hold my hand, stare deep into my eyes and lay on the charm like only a Mexican man in his 70s can. He looked suitably crushed, but then dismissive, when I mentioned my husband. He believes in our love. Sorry, Peter. Willy also won my heart with a souvenir hand fan, on which the name and phone number of the restaurant have been painstakingly printed in felt-tip pen.

What else? At the Ek-Balam garden paradise, I met a couple who had arrived there after reading the review in the Rough Guide. Ridiculously gratifying! And they were just like what I always imagine Rough Guide readers to be–that is, just like me, conveniently. I tend to just ignore the Rough Guides readers who aren’t like me–the early-20s British blondes giggling in the Tulum Internet cafe, for instance. I suppose I should be swooping in and saying, “Ladies! You’re in the presence of a minor celebrity here–how can I help?” But I found my own email more interesting than their querulous readings-aloud of hotel reviews in Palenque. I didn’t write that section anyway–I really wouldn’t have been any help.

Last night I took a minor break from the guidebook work–did a super-quick drop-in in Merida, which isn’t really on my schedule for this trip, so I could drive down the street without hyperventilating about all the changes. I also had the pleasure again of dining with the brains behind Yucatan Living (on a giant Segovia-style pork leg, no less), as well as touring their house-in-progress, then lounging around someone else’s (finished) living room after. It was great just to be in a real, live house, instead of a hotel.

Then first thing this morning, I turned right around and drove all the way back to Cancun. It would’ve been super-boring, except I spent the first 100km worried that I’d run out of gas before I got to the first station on the toll highway. With Pemex stations now popping up in even tiny towns, it took me by surprise that there aren’t stations at the ends of the toll road. Near the end of the drive, I whizzed right by some guy trying to flag me down. They had a big jug of gasoline, and looked tired. About 10km later, I came across what must’ve been their abandoned colectivo van, with some also-tired-looking passengers hanging around it. I can feel the bad karma piling up because I didn’t stop to give them a ride.

Oh, I just remembered that I seem to have gotten fleeced for about M$100 (US$10) worth of gas when I finally did stop. Allegedly my tank had been filled–and I’d paid about what a full tank would’ve cost–but my gauge registered only three-quarters of a tank. The Yucatan is so un-scammy, and I’m so baffled by this scam (it happened to me once before, on my first trip), that I just can’t wrap my brain around arguing with the guy. I guess he was distracting me while he filled some other container up with gas for a bit? But why? Later, I realized: that’s probably how all the random bootleg gas operations–the little roadside shacks with scrawled ‘Se Vende Gasolina’ signs–get their gas. And good thing, too–as it helped those tired dudes with the gas can that I blew past on the highway. So maybe my karmic debt was prepaid.

Tomorrow I head to Cozumel–back to the land of sun and fun. I’ve already covered so much ground, I feel like the trip should be over.

Tacos and more

First: I picked up two hitchhikers today, and they were both massage therapists. I’m glad the hippies are keepin’ it real in Tulum, because the whole place is going nuts around them. The tales of development I heard today would make your toes curl… But I have to remember that this kind of behind-the-scenes economic gossip isn’t really what guidebook users need to hear.

More practically: Holy crap, I think I had some shrimp tacos that were even better than La Floresta’s in Playa! Since I ate La F’s just two days ago, they’re still fresh in my mind. They’ve made the mistake of putting the mayo in squeeze bottles on the tables, so you can just apply as you like. Dangerous for someone like me. I was so enamored of my mayo-smothered, batter-dipped delectations that I swallowed them without even remembering to the put the hot sauce on. I knew something was wrong…

So, the ones in Tulum, from Urge Taquitos, just north of the San Francisco de Asis intersection: First, the signage is genius. I’ll post a photo later, but in the meantime, imagine this: A cartoon desert island, on which a cartoon tortilla is chasing a cartoon shrimp and cartoon fish around. All have buggy eyes: the tortilla’s bulge with hunger (and his tongue hangs out), and the shrimp and fish’s bulge with fear.

How could I not stop?

Just for variety I ordered one shrimp, one fish. When they arrived, nekkid, on flaccid tortillas on a plastic-baggie-wrapped plate, I was a little bewildered. So clinical. But then the waiter pointed to a) the condiment bar and b) the salsa bar. Qué oportunidad!

On the condiment bar, I had the choice of two kinds of mayo (normal and extra-runny), as well as thousand-island dressing (mil islas sounds so much more exotic!), Maggi sauce, Worcestershire and several kinds of habanero. I don’t do condiments for condiments’ sake at all, but I appreciate some options. Mayo went on the shrimp, mil islas on the fish.

Then, at the salsa bar, some pico de gallo with habanero on the fish, some not-hot p de g on the shrimp, plus a drizzle of avocado-with-habanero. Mix it up, ya know? Oh, and some shreded cabbage.

But none of that matters if the shrimp and fish don’t measure up. But they did, they did! They were just baaaarely cooked–still a little slippery, and super-succulent. And the batter on the fish had cilantro (I think) mixed in. But not the shrimp. Subtle distinctions I appreciate.

Anyhoo. Phew. If you didn’t ever think much about shrimp tacos before, then maybe that was a little overwhelming. I’m personally loading up because I head inland tomorrow a.m., into what the Maya call ¨the land of the pheasant and the deer¨–which is to say, the land where pheasants and deer run around with eyes bugged out in fear. Looking forward…