Category: Food

Some pics from Greece: overordering vs. portion panic

Still not the lovely sea urchin ones (have to get those off Peter’s computer), but over on Fotaq, there’s a little indication of what we did all day, every day. (And if you squint at the background, you can kind of get an idea of what a nice place it is.)

The back story to all these goofy pictures is this: Around Day 4 of our sojourn in Skala Eressou, Peter’s dad started getting a little concerned about how much we were eating, and, specifically, how much we were ordering at dinner every night. In the grand scheme of things, half a grilled fish going uneaten is no great crime, but I could certainly empathize with Charlie as Peter would flag down the waiter for the fourth time and say, “Aaaaand we’ll have a plate of the…” (but in Greek).

When there are 17 people around a big long table, and everyone’s saying, “How ’bout some lamb chops? Some macaronia? More tzatziki!” it can get out of hand pretty easily, and it did always fill me with an abstract anxiety. People, we need a PLAN, I felt like saying, but by then it was already too late, and the random ordering had begun. In truth, we rarely ended up with way too much food, but there was a certain haphazardness to the meals that maybe could’ve been averted.

Part of the problem is that you never realize, until you’re in the middle of it, the flaw of ordering a variety of dishes to match the number of people at the table. Because then the dishes come, and really, there’s never going to be enough taramosalata on that plate to feed 20 people, and you realize this just as the taramosalata has started around the table in precisely the opposite direction from you. So, you give it up for lost and keep your eye on the next thing the waiter’s setting down.

And just like that, your dinner is ruined, because you’re having to strategize at the dinner table like the last-born in a Mormon family. “Portion panic,” as I believe Jessika dubbed it, sets in, and before you know it you’re hoarding and reaching, and sneaking the last bites of things, and slipping french fries under your plate for later (actually, I just thought of that now, but it’s kind of a good idea) and so on.

So, anyway, Charlie I guess saw this happening–plus the occasional unfinished fish–and tried to do something about it. But of course that backfired, because if you lean over to Peter and say, “Hey, don’t overorder,” of course Peter’s just going to roll his eyes and keep doing what he’s doing. It’s too late.

The overordering thing reached fever pitch the day of our wedding. After our super-express 40-minute speed-read ceremony, we all traipsed down the hill to the little meze joint we’d talked into opening in the afternoon just to feed us a little snicky-snack and a little ouzo.

But you can’t very well tell a Greek restaurateur, “We’ll be coming from a wedding,” and expect him to undercater, or even sensibly cater. And he didn’t grossly over-cater, but there was an almost comically endless stream of little plates arriving at the table–to the point where Charlie started saying, “Stop! Phot, make him stop!” And he did, briefly, stop the flow of skordalia, beets, deep-fried meatballs, super-funky bastirma, sausage bits, cold white beans, succulent little zucchini wedges…but then we realized, WHY would you want to go and do an idiotic thing like that? (It helped that we’d been drinking the raki, briefly mistaken for water by my mother, for a little bit.)

Yes, there was some tragic food waste that afternoon. You can’t save the soul of every little meatball–you just have to focus on the ones you have been able to help.

So, then, after Charlie went home, Peter and Andrew briefly tried to heed his cautionary words. And that’s how we got these photos.

Kroket Watch 2006

There I was in Amsterdam, and I have to admit, I failed to eat a Love Kroket, even though I was personally alerted to a sales point by Chef Thorwald Voss himself.

But, um, the weather was cold. Which is not really a good excuse in Amsterdam, but there it is. Also, the sales point’s location did not look reachable by boat, which is also a lame excuse, since it’s perfectly reachable by bike or metro.

But in case anyone else has an opportunity to seek out the ultimate kroket: “Thor’s liefde: Croquette d’Amour” is on the menu at the absolutely great-looking ‘beach’ lounge Together, on the Gaasperplas. Apparently the sand was brought directly from Saint-Tropez?

And, ouch, note that the price has gone up to 7.50 euros. But I’d still pay that, for a little bite of kroket passion.

(Next up: the sea urchins! I promise.)

Back to France: the andouillette and me

Working my way backward through meals eaten, I’ll mention our sojourn in France first. After stuffing ourselves with amazingly good raspberries and peaches, as well as cheese fondue, in Geneva, we departed for Lyon with our college friend Chris and her family.

Seeing how our first visit to France on this trip was accidental, yet still yielded tasty food at the buffet of the stranded-air-travelers hotel, and this time we were visiting the real gastronomic heart of France on purpose, I had high hopes. The trip was also on short notice, so I quickly culled restaurant recommendations and names of local must-try dishes from reputable Internet sources like eGullet, as well as from the slimmest of French acquaintances.

The first night we headed out to the nearest recommendation to our hotel, La Machonnerie. It was August 1, so that very morning, apparently, the Vacation Rapture had happened. Vieux Lyon was empty, and so was the restaurant, except for an older couple with their dog.

When I expressed interest in trying the most traditional items, the friendly chef/host began to sell me in French, and I gave up trying to translate, and just put my faith in him. Chris leaned over and murmured, “That’s brains, you know.” What the heck–I’ve got nothing against brains, and if I’m going to eat them, I may as well eat them in France, right? I nodded and smiled at the chef.

As we neared the main course, anticipation–and jokes–were mounting at the table. Juan had gotten the hard sell on the tablier de sapeur, some special preparation of tripe. Fellow eaters who’d ordered based on what sounded good, rather than Lyon reputation, got their duck breasts and sausages and lentils. Juan’s plate arrived, looking like an innocuous bit of, essentially, tripe schnitzel. Finally my dish came, last, with great fanfare, ladled like a big cauliflower out of a cast iron pot of steaming broth. A beady-eyed crawdad sat next to it, egging me on with its little claws.

I was grossly full from my previous course of fried pig foot (the fat goes great on bread!). But I dug into my dish, surprised by the texture, and slightly puzzled by the crayfish broth, which didn’t seem like the most logical companion for veal brains. I managed to eat about half of my weird white orb, and then sat back, sweating, while everyone else chowed down on succulent duck breast, sausages, and incredibly savory lentils.

The next day, when we were in Les Halles, which had also experienced the Vacation Rapture, the one food shop that was open was selling shrink-wrapped quenelles, which is what I’d had the night before. They looked nothing like brains, and in fact seemed to contain some sort of seafood. And then right next to it was a big tub of the local specialty cervelles de canut, which is some cheese thing that I knew meant, literally, “silk-weaver’s brains.”

Oh. Duh. Cervelles. Quenelles. I’d spent a whole dinner thinking I was eating some exotic bit of animal, and really I was just hacking away at a giant fish dumpling.

So the next night, we go to another neighborhood joint. I’d read somewhere that Chez Bobosse was a reputable local producer of a Lyonnaise specialty called andouillette, so when I saw that on the menu, the choice was clear. Some kind of artisanal sausage would be just the antidote for my brain/not-brain experience from the night before.

Again, my plate arrives last. It’s a sizzling cast-iron gratin dish, about one-quarter occupied by a stubby little sausage-like form bathed in a mustard sauce. And it smells exactly like the Metro station we just walked past to get to the restaurant. Which is to say: like pee.

I can’t remember the last time I was simply unable to eat something. Out of politeness and general optimism, I will try whatever is placed in front of me. And I gamely tried my andouillette, despite its toxic smell. Even swathed in huge lashings of mustard sauce, it tasted like pee–or what I would imagine pee to taste like.

And it was a rather odd sausage: its filling was not ground up, but more just long shreds of things loosely gathered together in a casing that was quite stretchy and gummy. It was a uniform grayish color. Even after I managed to choke down about half of it, its evil smell continued to waft up, and I had to gulp my wine to counteract it. I walked home feeling exceptionally nasty.

The next day I stuck to recognizable pastries and sandwiches, and the day after that, I looked andouillette up online. Turns out it’s all pig intestine: chitlins wrapped up in more chitlins.

I just had no idea the French could do me so wrong. I know the French eat a lot of odd parts of animals, and I respect that. But I just assumed they know what they’re doing, and actually make those odd parts delicious.

In fact, though, I now see that even French cuisine includes things that fall under the category of “acquired taste.” All those people on eGullet who were gushing about andouillette must either have been fed the stuff from birth, or are really just huge Francophile posers who lord their tolerance of obscure foods over those with allegedly more pedestrian tastes. What I can’t understand is why I would ever cultivate a taste for something that makes me think of a subway tunnel on a hot day.

I was just about to compare these hook-line-and-sinker Franco-freaks to those people who speak rapturously about how phenomenal sea urchin is. But then I remembered I had some really amazing sea urchins in Greece–and that’s a separate story.

American Nutella: the awful truth

Skipping over the gastronomic adventures of the past couple weeks, I’ll get right to the terrible bit of information I just discovered.

We got into Amsterdam day before last. Yesterday morning Karine popped out to the grocery store to pick up some breakfast provisions, including a small jar of Nutella. When I saw the Nutella, I sighed. “Delicious,” I thought, “but all that nasty hydrogenation!” I felt a bit wistful for the days before I knew how horrible hydrogenated fat was, before I could graphically envision every Jif sandwich I’ve ever eaten, all still stuck there on the walls of my arteries.

Later, when I was savoring my Nutella on a day-old baguette (what? you thought I wouldn’t actually eat it?), I looked at the ingredients: sugar, peanut oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skim milk powder, whey powder, soya lecithin, unspecified “aroma.” No word, in Dutch or French, remotely resembling “hydrogenated.”

About the same time, Karine said, “A friend of mine says European Nutella is better than the American version, but I can’t remember why.”

A flurry of Internet research ensued, and lo, American Nutella contains:

Sugar, Peanut Oil, Hazelnuts, Cocoa, Skim Milk, Reduced Minerals, Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Peanut Oil, Soy Lecithin; An Emulsifier, Vanillin; An Artificial Flavor.

So–what?! Americans are so squeamish that any possibility of visible liquid oil needs to be eradicated? Americans stock their bunkers at Sam’s Club, and require their Nutella have a shelf life of 10 years? Americans only have one mental category for bread-spread, so everything must behave exactly like Jif? Either one of these things, or the American food industry is actively trying to kill its customers, which is untenable from a business standpoint.

Now I feel it’s my duty to eat as much Euro Nutella as possible before I return to the US next Wednesday. Excuse me–it’s breakfast time.

Air Chance

Peter and I are in Greece. Finally. When I booked our tix on Air France, I blithely made the “Air Chance” joke, completely forgetting that I had gotten screwed by them before. Instead, all I remembered was really good coffee, wine and buttery biscuits.

But then I had plenty of time to recall my previous mishap, after a couple of hours into our “flight.” I use the quotes because in fact, around 9:30pm, we had not gone anywhere, not even pulled away from the gate at JFK. Due to alleged “congestion” and then a thunderstorm, we didn’t leave for another four hours, which more than doubled our time in our plane seat. Luckily, we had been given earplugs and eye shades (I carry them anyway, but it was a nice gesture), and we had back-of-seat movies. And there was none of that tedious turbulence one gets when one actually travels through the air. And the wine was OK. Also, the captain was almost comically dismayed every time he came on the PA, and would always heave a huge sigh after saying, “Je suis tres desole, mais….”

So we got to Paris, eventually, and AF had the decency to put us up in a hotel and give us meal vouchers. And being stuck in Paris is not the worst thing that could happen. Peter and I had great ambitions about zipping into the city for dinner, and sent a text message to Tamara asking for advice, but when she hadn’t replied, it was about time for the free hotel dinner, so we thought we’d at least check it out.

Three plates of terrine, camembert, shrimp, sea snails, white anchovies, curried pickled veggies, rare slabs of beef and artichoke hearts later, we guessed we weren’t really up to another dinner. As Peter said, “If we were in the States, our room would be bigger and our dinner would be a hell of a lot crappier.” He also said he’d be perfectly happy to eat cheese, surrender and act like a monkey, or something along those lines.

After accidentally gorging ourselves, Peter and I zipped into the city and had a few drinks at a bar recommended by our friend Rod, via text message from Amsterdam. Savvy. Peter and I sat in the grotto-y basement of Chez Georges marveling at how people (just pairs of people, in fact) were ordering whole bottles of wine in a bar. I didn’t realize until I saw it that nobody does this in the US. Is there some law against it?

And then the next day, Air France once again managed to brainwash me, just by feeding me well. As I ate my cold roast beef, vinegar-y lentils, and ratatouille, and swabbed fluffy white cheese on my bread, all my rage over the previous day’s flight just evaporated. And I wasn’t even drinking wine this time.

Everyone who cares about food seems to have had a revelatory experience in France, but it’s usually out in the countryside, at the market, or along the coast fishing oysters out of the water or some bucolic crap like that. I’m here to tell you that French food is remarkable even at the level of cheap-hotel-by-the-airport-buffet. I mean, I could easily come back and plan a Sunday night dinner inspired by what I ate at the Hotel Campanile in Roissy–which sounds glamorous but isn’t at all. Comparing it to the States, it really makes me want to cry. How have we set the bar for food so damn low?

Adorable Astoria; plus, my birthday

I’m usually pretty impervious to cute. Puppies–enh. Babies–hate ’em. But I stopped by Mimi’s Closet, a new boutique up by Ditmars and I was totally bowled over by its adorableness. I know these kinds of places, where the plucky owner sits in an easy chair sewing the very things that are for sale on the racks, are a dime a dozen in Nolita and Brooklyn. But they’re novel here in Astoria, where acid-wash denim is still in style.

Anyway, said plucky owner is a lovely Japanese woman, and her clothes are cute and functional, and she says she can also take your measurements and tailor her designs to fit. And she’s got a nice selection of locally made jewelry as well. Prices are not outrageous.

Despite my regular freelance employment at In Style, I am so not a fashion plate, so I can understand if you don’t trust my judgment on this recommendation. But with Mimi in the neighborhood, I might just be a clotheshound yet…

Foolishly, though, I forgot to wear my fetching new lace-trimmed, gathered-bodice tank top to Sunday Night Dinner (Now on Saturday!) last night, which was not officially my birthday dinner, but turned out to be quite a nice celebration nonetheless. So I’m wearing the shirt now (cool–the straps are elastic, so they don’t fall down!) while reminiscing about the army of beer-can chickens that crowded the grill, the slurpy-spicy boiled peanuts and the buttery braised vidalias, as well as the super-garlicky caesar salad, which was even better when pared down to just croutons and dressing. But man, that chicken was good. I ate about four wings, and then a big morsel of breast meat–Dapper was lookin’ out for me.

And even though I get lazier with every dinner, and barely move from the first seat I happen to plop down in, my heart is still so full when I look down the long line of haphazard tables and chairs. Everyone’s chatting and eating and drinking and smoking, all under the golden glow of the anti-bug lights, and it looks like some Italian film. (Here’s a photo, from the ribs event, two weeks ago.) I wish I had a time-lapse video of the seats filling up and then emptying over the course of the night.

I stayed till the wee hours, which is why I can’t write so well today. Words escape me. But trust me, it was a very tasty time.

My favorite kind of cooking

As I just mentioned, Peter and I are moving. To 30th Avenue, the beating heart of Greek Astoria, just a couple of blocks from the 24-hour produce store that made me swoon on my very first visit to the neighborhood. A sort of homecoming, if you will, or my finally achieving my dream of living by the largest pile of eggplants in all of New York City.

And when you’re getting ready for moving, you’re looking around and paring down your belongings, trying to minimize additional purchases (or you do if you’re not a complete packrat, like some people I could name). That attitude has crept into my food consumption as well, which is a little flawed, because we don’t move till Thursday, and I haven’t bought any groceries in many, many days.

But when you set strange limits, you have to get creative, and you surprise yourself. Like the other night, when it seemed the cupboard was utterly bare. And I actually did something I have never, ever done in New York: I ordered takeout.

I know, for most people, especially here in NYC, “my favorite kind of cooking”=”I ordered takeout.”

But it has been a point of pride for me never to cave to that urge to just give up and have some guy bring food to your door. So you know I must’ve been desperate when I called up Mundo.

Well, actually, I was really hankering for some manti, but I didn’t feel like I had time or energy to go out to the lovely and charming restaurant of Mundo itself–which, come to think of it, I suppose is the main reason why people order takeout. (Also because they are too disorganized or don’t know how to cook, but that’s a different problem–one you can solve.)

So I was talking to the guy on the phone, and I ordered the celery root veggie dish, and he said they were out. “How about the artichokes?” he asked. Normally I’d yell YES!, but actually that reminded me that Peter had bought some artichokes a couple of weeks ago, and they were probably still in the fridge. So I capped my order, and went into the kitchen to investigate.

(From here on in, I have to warn you, this becomes like those blogs I hate, the ones that go, “I made this lovely thing, and ate it, and mused on the loveliness of life.” But at least there are no photos.)

Indeed, there in the fridge were the artichokes. And a bowl full of lettuce that Tamara had washed the weekend previous. So I set the ‘chokes on to boil, and I made a salad dressing for the lettuce. Because it didn’t look like there was anything else in the way of veg, I thought I’d make the dressing extra lively, and stirred in a big glob of yogurt, which had also been languishing a while. And grated in some really hard Dutch cheese someone had brought us as a present a couple of months back. And did manage to find a cucumber. And lo, it was a magnificent salad, wrought from nothing. I melted some butter for the ‘chokes just as the doorbell rang.

Mundo treats: manti (Turkish dumplings), beef empanadas (all silky, sweet-and-savory ground meet), and red-lentil-and-bulgur patties. The humongous cheesy-yogurty green salad. The artichokes with butter. A half-drunk bottle of rose from the fridge (when has there ever been a half-drunk bottle of wine in our fridge?!). We had so much food that we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Loaves and fishes, fishes and loaves.

The added salad made me feel like not such a chump for ordering takeout (and if I hadn’t ordered, the artichokes probably would’ve continued to be forgotten). And the whole positive experience has made me quite cocky about grocery shopping in the next few days. All condiments, all the time!

Alex Witchel, unhappier than ever

And so am I. There’d been a breather in the New York Times Dining section, several Witchel-free weeks when relatively normal food-loving people were getting all the attention. There was that great story on global cold drinks, for instance, which gave props to frappes in Astoria. And all those Anna Sortun recipes, for things like Persian-spiced fried chicken.

And then, rats, Ms. Dismal Diner was back, with a bee in her bonnet about impolite behavior at charity dinners.

Yawn.

I mean, really. I’m supposed to feel bad for her? To give her a consoling squeeze on the shoulder (mentally) and say, “I’ve heard the life of a socialite is hard, but gah, you poor girl! To have to endure a whole formal dinner with a guy sitting next to you sending emails all night? And you only got a mis-cooked lamb chop out of it? I don’t know how you do it!”

I’m sorry, but complaining about someone’s socially inappropriate use of a BlackBerry is about as played out as Brokeback Mountain jokes (ahem). It adds nothing more to our cultural conversation.

And what’s the point of an elaborate blind item (the chronic emailer is a “Hollywood Big Shot”) if there’s no chance of my guessing the name? Oh, wait, I know: the point is to impress me with the fact that not only does she go to dinners with HBSs, but she’s so worldly that she’s bored to tears by said studio moguls.

Then it all ends with this last-paragraph veer into a random James Beard pasta recipe that she plans to cook when she escapes this social hell. Which I guess would be OK, but in the couple of sentences she’s got left, she can’t resist a comment on the dish’s apparent unhealthiness: “…I wouldn’t serve it to my cardiologist,” she admits.

How self-defeating and miserable-making is that? This woman (1) drags her sorry ass to a totally optional charity dinner, (2) doesn’t have the balls to “accidentally” spill her wine all over HBSs BlackBerry, and then (3) can’t even enjoy her consolation pasta dinner later without noting how it will surely kill her one day.

This is the whole reason I object to Witchel so much: her columns present no real choices. If you endure a crappy formal dinner, then you go home and have something you’re afraid might be artery-clogging. Or maybe you kind of enjoy a dinner, for once, but then discover it was all a catered hoax. Or you go out to one of the better restaurants in the city, but realize you’re not in the mood, but you can’t bring yourself to leave and go eat somewhere you’ll feel more comfortable. (That last was in a March column about enduring haughty treatment at Cafe Gray because she secretly wanted to eat lasagne or something.) At the very ends of her columns, she always seems to be retreating to her house to sulk.

The beauty of food, and dining, and cooking, is that you have a million choices (at least in middle-class-and-up America). With food, you have a chance to make yourself happy three times a day. And yet Alex Witchel doesn’t seem to have enough personal agency to wring a moment of joy out of a single meal–or not that we ever hear about. A tragic waste, both of her gastronomic life, and of prime column inches. I suppose reading about happy things is boring, but it’s like the Times Dining section was afraid of getting called out for bias, and so felt obliged to give space to the opposing view, that eating actually sucks.

Well, I’m a genius–solved all that. Now I’m going to eat a normal dinner, once again, with people I like and without place cards. A few weeks ago, a new person came to our Sunday dinner, and at the end of the night, she said, “Hey, I just realized no one ever asked me what kind of work I did! That’s so nice!” I take a certain pride in that. But does it mean I may have been eating dinner with a Hollywood Big Shot and not even known it? Talk about a blind item.

Pret a Manger, I wish I could quit you.

I know, Brokeback jokes are already totally over. But I do have a troubled relationship with PaM, which is the closest sandwich shop to my freelance magazine job. I swear it off, and then it lures me back. Last time it hooked me was with a hot, hot new manager and some good chocolate croissants. But then I had some more weird soggy sandwiches, and gave it up again. Until this week.

This week I failed to buy breakfast stuff for home, which is the perfect excuse for a chocolate croissant and a little rekindling of the flame with the manager. I waltz into PaM, and not only are they out of croissants, but my beloved is nowhere to be seen–he must’ve gone back to play acoustic guitar in the lefty student bar in whatever Latin American city he’s from.

Sulk. Sulk. Sulk. Fine. I’ll have some freakin’ oatmeal.

Which was awesome! They add granola and raisins and sesame seeds, and then ladle on some maple syrup. And by the time you get to your desk, it’s all congealed perfectly. And only $3. Oh, and the new manager is not bad-looking either, if you like a tall, sharp-dressed black man.

So then on top of it all, I’m sitting at my desk today thinking, Time for a sandwich. I wish PaM made half sandwiches. Guess I’ll have to choke a whole one down…

And then I wander downstairs and, you guessed it, they now have half sandwiches. I kind of resent the “Pret Slim” label and the side-of-box copy that suggests you’d only eat these if you’re dieting, but I guess they can’t really say you might want to eat them if you just plain get tired of a whole damn soggy Pret sandwich. Or if you don’t have all that much cash that day, or have already filled up on cupcakes that were sitting around the office.

Oh, and they have that nice credit-card system where you don’t have to sign anything.

I just don’t know what to think anymore. I might have to take PaM back.

World Cup (o’ Soup)

This World Cup thing… I’m not sporty, but I like the idea. It helps that pretty much all the teams that are winning so far have vocal representatives in my neighborhood. Sitting in my living room with the windows open, I can tell when a match has ended, and guess who won, just by the whooping, and whether it’s coming from the left (Mexicans at the bodega) or the right (Croatians next door). Alas, Ecuador was beat–I didn’t hear a peep out of them.

But still, I’m sitting in my living room. I haven’t gotten out to the Argentine bar, or to one of the many, many Brazilian joints here on 36th Ave. Last go-round, I really kind of intended to go to the playoffs and celebrate with local Brazilians, but then before I knew it, it was all over–I didn’t realize the World Cup doesn’t go into endless finals the way the NBA playoffs do.

Why can’t I catch the World Cup fever? I’m looking for a bit more of a hook, I guess.

Enter Rod Ben Zeev, boat captain and comedian of Amsterdam, who’s doing a blog for the International Herald-Tribune about the cup. Today’s entry puts soccer in terms I can understand: culinary terms. (Plus, it gives a little more context for the krokets mentioned a few entries back.)

The other thing that might hook me comes via another Amsterdam comedian friend, Brendan Hunt, who’s doing a daily video report for MSN called The Unlikely Fan. Brendan’s more of a burgers-and-fries guy, but his total mania and extreme goofiness are pretty compelling. Goofy sports I don’t mind–I only tune out when people start getting very serious.

OK, I’m almost ready to go to a bar somewhere and drink beer and sing silly songs. Please tell me I haven’t missed it all again.