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Farm Friday: Local 111

Danielle — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:08:28 +0000

Every year my good friend Stevie plans an extravaganza around his birthday. He makes it clear that he doesn’t want gifts or cards, only the participation of his wide group of wonderful friends. Years ago, we rented out part of a club and danced till dawn. Last year it was karaoke and bowling. Two years ago, we had a simple, cheap dinner in Chinatown which ended around 11pm. But the party didn’t really begin until we were escorted to a plumber’s van which drove us to a roller rink on the southern tip of Staten Island.

This year, Stevie rented a house near Hudson, New York for a week of reading, swimming, singing, throwing the ball around the yard, hammock sleeping, star-gazing, and of course, eating. I love Stevie. He cultivates pleasure and then shares it generously.
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Neighbourhood Guide: Broadway Market, East London

Good. Food. Stories. Contributor — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:22:27 +0000

Today’s Neighbourhood Guide (yes, that extra U is important here) takes us to London’s East End, where American transplant Meredith Brown walks us through a bustling Saturday market that’s been providing the Brits with global delicacies and some veddy, veddy traditional (but tasty) foods for the past century. Jellied eel, anyone?

Oh, the East End of London—home to the original Cockney, successive waves of immigrant communities, the YBAs (Damian Hirst and his ilk), that scandalous soap East Enders, the Museum of Childhood, the 2012 Olympics, and yours truly.

Since the 17th century, when the French Hugeunots set up camp just to the east of the medieval City of London, the East End has served as London’s working-class, immigrant community. In the 18th century, the Irish weavers moved in, followed by Ashkenazi Jews in the 19th century; the Bangladeshi community arrived in the 20th century and more recently, drawn by the cheap rents and bicycle-friendly streets, artists and their hipster cousins have joined the ‘hood. Each of these groups brought their own vibrant customs and cuisines, and the resulting mix offers anyone willing to venture outside the comforts of Central London a plethora of interesting things to do, see, buy, and eat.

Brick Lane, home to more curry houses than you can shake a stick at, is probably the best-known culinary street in the East End, but there are plenty of other avenues for the dedicated foodie to explore. Take, for example, the cornucopia that is Broadway Market. (If the street looks familiar, especially the barbershop, it may be because it was featured in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises.)

Running between London Fields park and Regent’s Canal, Broadway Market (along with my flat) sits at the northernmost bit of the East End. The pedestrian-filled thoroughfare has hosted a weekly food market since the 1890s, and today’s version has more than 80 stalls of fresh produce, organic meat, locally grown flowers, ethically sourced coffee, artisanal food, vintage clothing, handmade crafts, etc.

The stalls officially open each Saturday at 9:00 am, and by noon the street is thronging with local residents buying their weekly groceries, hipsters nursing hangovers with Thai green curry or Caribbean rice cooked on the spot, little kids weaving through the crowds as their parents sample Stilton, Comté, and Emmenthaler from one of several cheesemongers, and tourists snapping pictures of the accordionist busker and his tap-dancing ladyfriend.
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Bayard’s Ale House, New York

Casey — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:50:16 +0000

As a nation of drunks, we tend to overromanticize and idealize the neighborhood bar. You should never have to fight for a barstool. The beer should flow freely and you should be able to indulge in fried delicacies at all hours. It’s not a special destination, there’s not a dress code (on the contrary, walking into this mystical place should be as comfortable as putting on a pair of old sweats), and it’s hard to find one bar that will pack all these qualities into four booze-soaked walls.

The object of my undying affection? I found it four years ago at Bayard’s Ale House, a bar as it should be.

In 2006, Bayard’s replaced the former Sazerac House, which had a steady following (including John Belushi and Norman Mailer, according to The Villager) for 41 years. It still retains some the Sazerac’s old Village clientele—upon my first visit, I shared the long wooden banquette with an aging transvestite—and looks like it’s been around much longer than the past four years, which makes sense, considering the building in which Bayard’s resides was built in 1826.

The interior is suitably dim with exposed brick, a wooden bar with brass accents, and a tin ceiling festooned with hanging white Christmas lights. But the banks of windows curving around the facade of its corner perch at Hudson and Charles keep Bayard’s from veering off into dive-ville (see Crow, Stoned and Whiskey Pub, Nancy for stellar examples of this genre), with light streaming in for people-watching on sunny afternoons or summer happy hours.
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Announcement! cooking classes and book reviews

Casey — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:14:29 +0000

Apologies in advance to all the non-New Jersey readers out there, as I don’t mean to make you jealous with today’s post. However, for those of you living in/around north Jersey, get excited: Starting next month, I’ll be teaching classes regularly at Chef’s Lab, a new cooking school and culinary resource center in Montclair, NJ.

July’s schedule is live and ready for sign-ups—I’m teaching a summer brunch menu (including my favorite lemon-ricotta pancakes and famous spicy-sweet bacon) on Sunday, July 18 at 1:30 pm, but there are a host of classes from using rubs and marinades for flavor and introductory knife skills to pie-baking, artisan bread-making, and Indian, Greek, Cajun, and Italian-themed sessions.

New Yorkers, it’s an easy ride on the Montclair-Boonton NJ Transit line, so don’t be afraid of our commuter rail system. Let me know if you need specific directions.

And while we’re at it, and because it’s summertime (oh really, Summer Solstice? you’ve been throwing 80-degree temps and 80 percent humidity at me for a week now, so I think you’re a little late to the party), my reviews of She-Smoke: A Backyard Barbecue Book by Julie Reinhardt and Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter by Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein are currently up on The Good Taste Review.

I’ll be contributing to this smart new repository of cookbook reviews and recipe critiques sporadically—as in whenever Editor Stephanie sees a book she thinks I’d like to review and sends it my way. For now, however, feast your eyes on my thoughts on those two books, which are useful tomes if you’re planning a summer cookout/cocktail party, contemplating your first (or second) grill purchase, or just in the mood for some meat-based light reading.

And I hope to do some one-on-one meeting with my GFS faithful at Chef’s Lab in the coming months, so please don’t be shy. You want to learn, I want to teach, and we all win!

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The Bar Cart: Brinley Gold Rum

Casey — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:50:07 +0000

I was never really a rum drinker. I hate too-sweet drinks, so frozen red daiquiris were not part of my repertoire, and Malibu always smelled too much like Banana Boat suntan lotion to be considered an actual beverage. After a particularly rough summer house party in my early 20′s (yes, one of those experiences), it was rum—not SoCo, not tequila—that I swore off forevermore.

Then I met Zach Brinley and my rum worldview changed considerably.

Zach’s family business, Brinley Gold Rum, started in 2002 with his dad Robert, a scientific product developer who had been working in St. Kitts for two decades and saw an opportunity to reinvigorate the tiny country’s rum industry by taking over a former Rothschild rum factory on the island. Zach, fresh out of college, saw the opportunity to be more than the low guy on the trading rung in New York City and the father-son team jumped right in.

Though maybe not on the magnitude of the 1976 Judgment of Paris, where a Cabernet from California’s brand-new Stag’s Leap Winery shocked the world by defeating venerable French wines in a blind tasting, it was still a coup for the fledgling Brinley Gold Rum brand to win multiple gold medals at the International Rum Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada in its first year of production.

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The Brewer’s Art, Baltimore

Casey — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:33:22 +0000

Now that Baltimore’s ESPN Zone is closing—the original location, no less, which has served Buds to backwards baseball-capped brahs for more than a decade—where is a sports-and-beer fan to go for a filling meal before an Orioles game?

Here’s a thought. Forego the big-screen TVs and take a stroll up the hill away from the tourist-laden Inner Harbor, through the historic neighborhood of Mount Vernon—maybe stopping to admire the Colonial architecture and massive monument to George Washington, or just hightailing it past the historic Belvedere Hotel to The Brewer’s Art.

Upon the enthusiastic recommendation from Good. Food. Stories. Guy Correspondent Max Rudy, Dan and I snuck in a quick but satisfying trip to this Baltimore gastropub before Friday’s baseball game.

Under the original cornice mouldings and imposing mantelpiece making up the bar back in the front parlor room, we chose wisely from the multiple offerings on the bar menu: the country ham flatbread, a heavenly pillow topped with 18-month Benton Smoky Mountain ham and herb-flecked mascarpone cheese, liberally studded with bourbon-soaked cherries and flecked with black pepper honey and pickled mustard seeds.
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The How-To Kitchen: Seasoning a molcajete (for smoky tomato salsa)

Casey — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:46:58 +0000

How many of you have been out at a Mexican restaurant and ordered the guacamole made tableside? That rock bowl in which the guac is pulverized is known as a molcajete y tejalote, Spanish for “mortar and pestle.” This carved-basalt tool is traditionally used in Mexico, passed down through generations in many families (kind of like how I inherited my cast iron skillet!), and develops a gorgeous patina and texture over time.

Even though I’ve got a small ceramic mortar and pestle, I just couldn’t resist getting my hands on one when I was down in Mexico for Food Blogger Camp, and am pretty pleased with my impulsive decision. It’s a load, but Dan says my salsa tastes “just like in a restaurant!” and I’m psyched to have a bigger bowl for crushing roasted spices. If you decide to spring for this heavy piece of equipment, here’s how to break it in.
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Ask Casey: the skinny on strainers

Casey — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:07:18 +0000

Do you have any tips on effective straining? I’m trying to make my own baby food, which requires straining pureed peas to get out the skins. The recipe calls for cheesecloth, but I’ve been rubbing the peas into a fine-mesh strainer with a spatula, and it gets the job done. However, I’d love to hear any tips on straining food better, faster, and with less mess and drama (if that’s even possible), advice on using cheesecloth without going insane, and when you’d pick cheesecloth over a fine-mesh strainer.

Oh god, straining. It is awful, and also a good question to answer. (Tip: never read the Thomas Keller cookbooks if you have a fear of this kitchen technique.) There are a number of tools that you can use with varying degrees of splatter potential, but let’s tackle your cheesecloth query first.

Which is to say, don’t bother with it for your baby food recipes! Cheesecloth is a big pain for anything except making cheese or other related endeavors where you’re separating something extremely liquidy from something extremely solid. For thicker, more homogenous purees like the vegetable mixture you’re working with, the fine-mesh strainer method you’ve been using is a far better option. Through a lot of squeezing and squishing, you’ll eventually push the strained food sans skins through the cheesecloth, but with a lot of unnecessary effort.

making smooth sauce is a much easier task with a food mill

The first alternative option to the strainer, which can potentially get just as messy but allows you to do more in quantity, is a food mill. With three discs for fine, medium, and coarse puree, the mill fits over a large bowl and uses a hand crank instead of a spatula to push the puree through while keeping seeds, skins, and other unsavory bits out. Though I curse the food mill every time I bring it down from its not-very-convenient corner cupboard location, I do appreciate the way I can tear through eight cups of tomato sauce or a huge pot of applesauce in no time flat.
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Neighborhood Guide: The Mission District, San Francisco

Good. Food. Stories. Contributor — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:08:42 +0000

Next up in the Good. Food. Stories. Neighborhood Guide series is one of many unbelievably jam-packed culinary communities in San Francisco: the Mission District. We’ve enlisted the incomparable food writer Stephanie Stiavetti of Wasabimon! and The Good Taste Review to share her most beloved hangouts.

There’s no arguing that San Francisco is a city of food. With a nine-month-long growing season, some of world’s freshest seafood and an international community rivaling that of almost any other American city, SF is a veritable gourmet paradise. There’s a reason that San Franciscans are notorious for never leaving the 7×7 borders of their town. They don’t need to.

gorgeous Mexican pastries in the Mission

My favorite San Francisco neighborhood is the Mission District. With its dizzying array of restaurants, you could easily spend a month in this part of town and never eat in the same place twice. Hell, you might be able to stay for an entire year and still find a great new dining establishment every day. Another big plus of the Mission is that BART—the Bay Area’s lightrail system—runs right through the middle of it, so you can easily get there from suburban lands as far away as Fremont, Richmond or San Jose.

It was exceptionally difficult to whittle down my favorite restaurants to a manageable number for this post, but I’ve managed to come up with a list that should treat you right, whether you’re a local or just visiting. While these places are great to sit down and eat, most will let you take your dish to go so that you can enjoy it on the palatial lawns of Dolores Park, something I highly recommend on a sunny day.

Lounging in Dolores Park

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Beyond Shake Shack—Citi Field’s new culinary clubhouse

Casey — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:55:38 +0000

As no baseball fan needs to be reminded, today is Opening Day 2010, and I’m ready to get on the 7 train with the orange-and-blue masses to make the hunger-inducing trip out to Citi Field.

Although I’ve never memorized ERAs or correctly identified a player on the Texas Rangers beyond A-Rod, I’ve always been drawn to the tradition and pace of baseball. All the cities I’ve lived in have been baseball towns to an extent with endearing underdog teams, so it’s a good thing I married a Mets fan.

Due to Dan’s patient and all-consuming obsession, over the past decade, the Mets have come to feel like my team, and Shea Stadium (and slowly but surely, the new park that Danielle calls Debits Field) have come to feel like home in New York. The wholesome goofiness of having a man whose head is an oversized baseball helps a lot too.

But you know me. I’d be lying if I said the food at Citi Field had nothing to do with my affection for the new stadium. Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, the Belgian fries stand Box Frites, El Verano Taqueria (cheffed by Tabla’s Floyd Cardoz), Dave Pasternack’s fish shack Catch of the Day, Daruma sushi and Mama’s of Corona sandwiches at World’s Fare Market…. If you were at all familiar with the prison-cafeteria options at Shea, you would know that even beyond my minor hero worship of Union Square Hospitality Group, Citi Field is a step up.

Shackburgers at Citi Field are the real deal

I ate my fill of all of the above a few weeks ago at the Mets All-Star preview lunch at Citi Field’s Caesars Club, one of the many eating areas that were formerly available only to high-paying ticket holders but are now opening up to fans with cheaper seats—a recession-appropriate concession on the part of the management for the disappointing ticket sales in the latter part of last season, no doubt.
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