An Effing Foodie

Holiday Gift Guide Realness, 2009: Boozehounds and Bookworms

For the Boozer-in-the-Know:

I've always been partial to bourbon and Scotch as prezzies and balm, but this year Saveur did a couple of great articles on up-and-coming artisan spirits, namely single-malt Irish whiskeys, and small-batch Reposado mezcals.  Bring their meticulous tasting notes (here for the whiskeys, and here for mezcals) to your local upscale purveyor of booze, and help your friends warm their bones with spirits they're unlikely to have tried before.

For the Hungry New Yawka:

Some folks aren't partial to narrative cookbooks.  Or cussing.  Or pancake profanity.  You shouldn't give these people Kenny Shopsin's memoir/cookbook, aptly titled Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin (Hardcover, $16.47).  It's a priceless read, with quirky photos, rants, recipes and anecdotes from arguably NY's most feared and respected king of the flat-top. 

Not only does Kenny get into the strategy behind running a 900-item menu with a tiny kitchen, he is ruthlessly personal, sharing all about how his family grew up with Shopin's General Store, allowing us a peek into an insider's Village.  What works about the book is Kenny's conflicted narrative: He loves, loves his life's work, the food he's made, the people he's met--he wants to tell you all about it.  But he's not telling you to come-on-down.  The man is the abrasive (but loving) curator for a 12-seat fiefdom, and he'll cook for who he pleases, when he pleases, thank you.

Not everyone has the guff to face Shopsin and his vetting, but fortunately, all are welcome at Veselka, day or night.  I could go on and on about the justly famous bloody burger, pierogi, stuffed cabbage and borscht--but that would lead me away from shilling their newly released Veselka Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Landmark Restaurant in New York's East Village (Hardcover, $18.47 on Amazon). 

Besides teaching us how to make hearty Ukrainian staples for ourselves, it sheds a light on a diner that most drunken Village-rompers take for granted, a 50-year-old venture of an immigrant family that started as a candy store and blossomed into a cultural touchstone.  The cookbook can't replicate the experience of eating blintzes next to off-duty drag queens, but what can, really?

Enter the Durian...Wafer Cookie

As I get older and crankier, I'm finding that I'm definitely tilting toward the salty/bitter end of the food universe (insert snarky quips accordingly). 

Point is...things change, tastes change, palettes evolve.  Though my list of food dislikes is pretty short, I make it a point to revisit anything I've deemed heinous periodically, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

Durian's a tough one.  Like many food obstacles, this one's rooted in childhood--an unforgettably wretched afternoon in Bangkok involving a long van ride with no air conditioning and a spiky rank-a** backseat companion. 

You don't get to cry about the smell until you've faced down a fresh specimen--and if you aren't somewhere in or near Southeast Asia, you're not going to get to (the ones in markets stateside are previously frozen and thawed).

Momma Foodie loves the stuff (as did our gracious Thai hostess, to whom we were ferreting the fetid thing in the first place).

Roadkill perfume aside, the fruit itself is intimidating; once you crack open this heavy, barbed bomb, the innards are creamy, yellow, stringy--much more evocative of something animal or alien than plant.

Fresh or frozen, I wasn't feeling that ambitious...my latest encounter with this foul nemesis was in cookie-form.

I've been a fan of Garden Wafers since I was a kid--styrofoamy, trans-fatty and sweet, what's not to love?  They came in tons of flavors--vanilla, coconut, lemon, peanut, taro--but I preferred the Pepto-pink Strawberry variety. 

The Man and I were happy rooting around in Kam Sen, a Chinese supermarket in White Plains, when I passed the mass of Garden Wafers in the sweets aisle.  I have eyed the olive-green package of the durian-flavored wafers over the years, but only to crinkle my nose and move on. 

I am older! Tougher! The time had come for me to approach the king of fruits, if only in bantamweight wafer form.

Flipping the package over..."artificial flavor".  Faux-funk!  How bad could it be?

Back at the lair, I cut the package open a took a sniff. 

And squalled.  And almost dropped the package.  FAUGH!!!! 

It was nowhere near as intense as the real deal, but impressively nasty and pervasive.  How could something so denatured be so appallingly authentic? 

Don't be such a puss, you weak American crybaby! It's just FN cookies!! 

The Man watched from a safe distance, goggle-eyed, covering his nose as I bit into the crispy wafer and chewed.

Tastes like...(taking another bite, just to be sure)...

...yep.  Festering garbage.  Like banana and stinky runny cheese blended together and left to ferment in the blistering bloody sun.  In sweetened wafer form. 

I went for a third bite, but it didn't take.  I sealed the rest of the wafers in a baggie, tossed said baggie in the trash, and brushed my teeth.  I had some chocolate.  I had some scotch.  The taste of rotting eggs wouldn't go away, and I could smell the cookies wrapped in the depths of my trash can.

Total defeat.  Durian/Durian Duplicated Products: 1, EF: 0.

Word of the Day: Spatchcocked!!

Leave it to a Fergus Henderson menu to teach you a nifty new word:

"A spatchcock is a poussin or game bird [prepared by] removing the backbone and sternum of the bird and flattening it out before cooking." [via Wikipedia]

So, Spatchcocking = Butterflying.

(But way more fun to say and use in Scrabble.)

Spatchcocking in action (1:30 to 4:15):

Sounds mean and laborious, but it's a good way to ensure faster, more even cooking of a critter that was never gonna fly again anyway.

Those interested in eating ox hearts and other rare Brit delicacies, enter the sweepstakes for FerguStock via TONY's The Feed.

What the World Eats: The Nonburger of Samtaeseong Diner (Pyongyang), Indoor Rain at Mercado San Miguel (Madrid), Spam Fries at Wild Oats (Singapore)

It's a red-letter day at Samtaeseong Diner, Pyongyang, where North Koreans have been granted the privilege to blow half a day's salary on an All-American Hamburger.

So long as you don't use the word "American".

Or "Hamburger".

Instead, patrons of the Samtaeseong diner, which opened in Pyongyang last month, have to order a suspiciously similar "minced beef with bread".

The isolated Communist state has long banned what it calls Western or US "imperialist influences" on its people. But there was only so long it could hold out against the temptations of fast food. (Telegraph)

Hold out against the evils of imperialist fast food?  We understand.  It lacks the cleansing totalitarian virtue of tree bark and grass.

Silver lining: All the unbranded fascist minced meatpucks come draped in complimentary kimchee!  Woohoo!

                                    *        *        *

Half a world and happier circumstances away sits Mercado San Miguel, the gorgeous, newly remodeled marketplace in Madrid.  Originally built in 1916, this wrought-iron palace to food boasts the spoils you'd expect of Spain: Technicolor produce, barely-dead meats and seafood, cheese aplenty, bakeries, tapas counters.

From Druidabruxux on Flickr

This gustatory sensory overload is trimmed with urban twists and comforts--a kitchy cookbook store, an oyster and champagne bar, and even 2 AM closing times on Fridays and Saturdays. 

There's even a vegetable mister for people: "In a nod to living green, instead of air-conditioning, the air is infused with water droplets; every few minutes shoppers are bathed in a blast of micro-rain." (NYT Travel)

                                    *        *        *

And last, but not least...a topic close to my Hawaiian Ex-Pat heart...Spam.

Not just Spam...but Spam FRIES.

Yup, luncheon meat chopped up into long skinny fries, fried until they’re crispy on the outside, and served with one or more dips. Disgustingly, sinfully, ridiculously good. I had these with some friends one night over drinks at Wild Oats, the bar owned and run by Willin Low, and I just about fell off my chair. (Chubby Hubby)

<Wiping the corners of my eyes, speechless.>

Hats off to Willin Low, luncheon meat visionary!

Hot Trends: Hospitality and Culinary Skills! (GASP!)

Recession-Proof: $6.50 @ Pam Real Thai

After weeding through the predictably a*sinine pile of beginning-of-year food trend predictions, the EF hath birthed up a few of her own!  Ready?

Restaurants and restaurant staff, desperate not to get sh*t-canned, will start treating guests with attentive respect.  They will smile, become efficient and courteous with seating and reservations, take a genuine interest in the enjoyment of your now-more-reasonably-priced meal, and will overall behave in a way that will encourage you to come back.

Novel, right? 

La Bruni and Epicurious beat me to it, sans irony.  Which scares the poop out of me.  Those who categorize basic courtesy and value as trends can go f*ck themselves for lowering the bar for the rest of us.

EF goes on to predict that the "trend" will trickle into the back-of-house, where spoiled, whiny cheflings who used to have budgets for hydroponic microherbs, sous-vide Jacuzzis and chickens fed only with grains pooped by the pope will be forced to do what their less-appointed grannies have been doing all their lives.   Cook. 

I Heart Food Idioms: Okoge!

What's got two thumbs,
hangs out with mostly gays,
and makes Japanese people think of crusty rice?

That's right!

<--- C'est MOI!

John Youngsun Park, a designer of video games in the San Francisco Bay Area, blasts the heat on his Sanyo [rice cooker] to make noo roong ji, the toasted crust of rice that forms at the bottom of the traditional Korean stone rice pot...

“People love that toasted-rice taste,” he said. “It’s even a flavor of ice cream in Seoul.” (Japanese cooks, however, consider toasted rice overcooked and highly undesirable. The unwanted crust left stuck to the bottom of the rice cooker is called okoge — the same word used as slang for a single woman who spends a lot of time with gay men.)
-JULIA MOSKIN, NYT

Yep. One country's Häagen-Dazs® is another country's fruit fly.

Breast Restaurant EVER: Human Milk Menu in Zurich!

You read right, folks: The Times UK reports that Hans Locher of Zurich, Switzerland, is attempting to open a restaurant that includes human milk in every dish.

Isn't this just the way?  Ya tell a bad joke, and some whackadoo has already thought of it, sans irony.

Where is he harvesting this bounty of Hepatitis Hazard?  Why, from willing young mothers in his village, plus all who answer his sordid classifieds (which is how authorities caught onto him in the first place).  The going rate for unscreened breast milk?  $16 USD per liter.  Cheap bastard.

And of course, Hans doesn't see anything wrong with any of this...like the cuckoo high-fructose corn syrup peeps, he takes the "What? It's all natural!" road:

"I don’t understand all the controversy. The mother’s milk is the most natural thing in the world – how can anyone be against it? It is, after all, the first thing we taste and I see no reason why I should not include it in my menu,” Mr Locher, who trained as a cook in several countries, said.
  --Bojan Pancevski, Times Online

Christmas Came Early! Murray's Bourbon and Cheese Pairing Class, West Village, NYC

When I saw "Bourbon and Cheese" on Murray's Cheese Class Schedule, I couldn't click fast enough. 

If my loved ones were forced to stage an intervention on my behalf, it would probably have less to do with sweet, sweet booze, and more to do with stinky, stinky cheese.

As much as I enjoy gnawing and cataloging my way through Murray's Everest o' Queso on my own, nothing lights me up quite like Murray's classes.

Yes, there is booze AND cheese.  But more importantly, most of us aren't born with an intrinsic knowledge of which boozes and cheeses were meant to be together, and Murray's classes have stepped in to reduce the guesswork of pairing.

The fantabu-rrific cheese empath, Nora Singley (formerly of Murray's and currently cooking in Martha Stewart's test kitchens), and overall-clad LeNell Smothers (Brooklyn/'Bama's own bourbon expert and spunky purveyor of spirits), presided over the merry marriage of congealed curd and brown booze with wit, ease, expertise, and bawdy tales.

Stuck on the idea of bourbon and cheese together?  To be fair, it is a matter of taste; if you favor, say, white wine spritzers and mild cheeses, these pairings may be a hard sell.  For me, I tend to heart the rankest of the rank, cheeses that are tough to pair with wines, ports and sherries--so bourbon and scotch pairings seem like the next logical step.

Humane Crustacean Handling (AKA How to Avoid Bandito Lobsters)

This is what immediately comes to mind as I read studies on the most humane method of cooking lobsters:

When you're talking about preparing a live animal for consumption, what's considered "humane" is tricky at best.  Precautions/procedures to minimize stress on the person cooking is most important, as you're more likely to be more mercifully expedient if you're confident, rather than dragging along in wincing lobster empathy:

When I asked Robert Bayer, a professor of animal and veterinary science and the director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine...he told me that “there are a couple of ways to minimize trauma to the person that is doing the cooking.” Wait! I said the lobster, not the cook. But that was exactly his point: the cook is the one most affected by cooking lobster...They concluded that chilling lobsters in the freezer or in salted ice water...will adequately numb them so that when they hit the hot pot they will move very little. He also suggested that you could put them in fresh rather than salted water. The change of environment will not slowly suffocate the lobsters, as some would believe, but will instead put them to sleep...

--Jill Santopietro, NYT

To review: Dunk critters into iced fresh water until sluggish, then head-first into boiling lobster pot, to therefore avoid possible Lobster Bandito Retaliation.

What the "R" Rule Means to You and Oyster Stew

I was recently perched at Lelabar for a friend's birthday (great place, by the way, with a fun selection of chocolates and cheese) when I spied their raw bar, brimming with ice and oysters.  I steepled my fingertips in anticipation...

...and then remembered it was June.

Cartoons aren't the best place to pick up a basic understanding of physics, but they're not bad for occasional gustatory guidelines. (Those in a hurry, skip to 2:05.)

I don't subscribe to all oldsy-timesy rules about food, and many have argued that the "R-in-the-month" rule is a bogus holdover from European oyster eaters. 

Unfortunately, through rigorous trial, error, and expense on my part, the old "R" rule has been proven true enough--a May/June/July/August oyster won't kill you, but they just plain taste better when the water is cold. 

Which SUCKS, since cold seafood seems more appropo in the summer, and it's not like those suboptimal oysters get cheaper when it's warm out.

Why, you ask?  Well, summertime is lovin' time for oysters, and the energy that would generally go into building fat reserves goes into spawning instead.  So what you're left with is a skinnier, waterier oyster that's basically in heat. Yum.

And if it's Gulf Oysters you're eating, it's recommended that you cook them from April to October, tacking an extra 3 months to the "R" rule.

Bivalve devotees need not fret--raw June oysters may leave a gal wanting, but they're perfectly suited to Oyster Stew.

Check out this particularly bacon-studded specimen at Seymour Burton:

Since this one's got potatoes and the aforementioned swine in it, it's technically an Oyster Chowder.  But it was very old-school oyster-stewish in spirit; not thickened at all, with cream-based broth more warm than hot, so's not to assault the gently-cooked oysters.