An Effing Foodie

Merry Christmas Mashup: Eating with Momma Foodie!

Hi folks!

Sorry the posts have been spotty--Momma Foodie is in town, and Priority #1 is to keep her and the Brothers Foodie fed and feeling festive.

I'll be back soon, I swear...in the meantime, I'll try to toss up a breadcrumb trail of our copious familial eating exploits.

Happy holidays, and big non-denominational kisses for visiting!

XOXO,
An Effing Foodie

P.S. Don't judge! Hell YES, we're knee-jerk gluts, but this be holiday-reunion-type eating, dammit!

 

Eating with the EF Family, Day #1 (Top row, L to R): Fancypants Sake; sashimi platter; buta kakuni (braised pork belly) at Sakagura, NYC.

Day #2 (Middle row, L to R): Cacio e pepe (pasta with pecorino and black pepper); pork chop w/ sweet potato mash and red wine reduction; saffron poached pear with red wine sorbet at Cacio E Pepe, NYC.

Day #3 (Bottom row, L to R): Smoked duck sweet potato hash with eggs; chive grits with pepper bacon, roasted tomato sauce, and poached eggs; biscuits with sausage gravy at Home, NYC.

Uni for Me, Uni for You...

My stomach is not a complex animal (actually not animal at all, but you get the idea). Most of the time (particularly mid-week) I'm not really particular about what I shove in my craw.  But every now and again, I'll have an irrational, insatiable, oddball craving that just eclipses all other foods.

September 2007 - November 2007 = The Autumn of Uni.

There aren't many folks who are on the fence about uni--either you lust after it, or it's the wrongest, most wretched seafood representation of baby poo that ever tube-footed its way around the earth.  I'm of the former camp. 

When I'm trying to win over uni virgins, the easiest way I can describe the sensation and taste is that it's the Stinky Cheese of the Sea: Runny, creamy and rich (the way the best oysters are!), with undertones of sweet, fatty funk, and more than a whiff of seawater.

So I searched high and low, and with the help of a few patient, steadfast eating partners, we had a few dishes that definitely scratched my Cheese of the Sea itch. Here are my favorites:

Cold Uni Ikura Soba at Soba-Koh
(November, 2007; East Village, NYC)
Tasty, but maybe a better choice when it's not friggen frigid out. 
Remember to wave to the soba-maker in his glass box!

Bringin' 'Em Back: Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Pine Nuts

Generally, if you're a weirdo, you have to be told, and my peers have always provided me that service.  But it was only after watching hours of "You Can't Do That on Television" in 4th grade that I finally understood that kids are supposed to hate vegetables--brussels sprouts, lima beans, and broccoli in particular.

And here I was, a juvenile mega-weirdo, asking for seconds of lima beans and broccoli at the school cafeteria.  Brussels sprouts were few and far between in Hawaii, but I loved 'em, and thought of them as custom cabbages for little people.

I get where the dislike comes from: institution-style, freezer-burned, gray-cooked veggies made by ladies with hairnets and well-meaning biddies.  But friend, when you're pushin' thirty and STILL making faces at your veggies, take a seat...WEIRDO.  Your colon will thank me.

Brussels Sprouts FAQs:

• When choosing fresh ones in the market, look for bright green, tight little heads. (Don't buy the friggen frozen ones, they won't improve your opinion of 'em.)
• Brussels Sprouts season is from August to March.
• These little guys grow on big 'ol stalks, with dozens of sprouts per stalk.
• The sprout of yesteryear was probably more bitter; these days, farmers tend to deliberately cultivate sweeter varieties.
• No really, they're good for you: lots of folic acid, fiber, and Vitamins A, C, and K.

Gravy, Baby, Gravy: Pork Ragu Rigatoni with Ricotta

My favorite kitchen game?

There's-a-half-inch-of-snow-on-the-ground-so-the-whole-free-
world-will-be-at-Stop-and-Shop-buying-bread-and-milk-let's-see-
what we-can-make-from-the-pantry-and-freezer.

(Let's-cram-two-week's-worth-of-groceries-into-my-condiment-
choked-fridge is a close second. Like Tetris, but with mustard and jam jars!)

This be gravy weather, in all its various, multiculti forms; an amalgam of meat juice and thickened fat, gravy is true sustenance for the masses, and among the most economical and tasty ways to stretch the use of meat.

I love hearing people talk about "Sunday Gravy"--it's the stuff of legend, and a relatively new culinary concept to a gal who grew up in Hawaii.  Here is an abbreviated chronology of my understanding of gravy:

• Age 8: The almighty beige glue cloaking eerily symmetrical ice-cream-scooped mashed potatoes.
• Age 12: The lifeblood of Loco Mocos.
• Age 18: First honest-to-God gravy, made from our tiny family turkey drippings.
• Age 21: First intro to sausage gravy and biscuits. (Thank you, Alton Brown!)
• Age 22: First intro to disco fries. (Thank you, Odessa!)

Tomato-based "gravy" never entered my consciousness until:

A) I watched "The Sopranos" and saw a beehived Livia wielding a two-pronged fork over a stock pot.

B) I moved to the East Coast and made friends with true-blue, Feast of the Seven Fishes Italians, who had frozen red pints of the precious stuff stashed in their freezers.

A Very Queso Christmas, Part 3: The Cowgirl Creamery

If the concentration patterns of food blogs indicates anything, it's that the Bay Area generates as many (or more!) verbose, opinionated eaters as NYC...and for good reason!  Wine, olive oil, and endless vegetal bounty pops up out of the very ground; Kumamoto and Hama Hama oysters KILL Blue Points and Malpeques (I'm sorry! I heart NY, but the Pacific Ocean just plain TASTES BETTER)...and then there's the cheese.

This Effing Foodie was trying to keep things relatively local (or at least on the Eastern seaboard), but:

A) Readers from the sunnier coast need cheese, too!
B) Surely it wouldn't be a Very Queso Christmas without a Cowgirl (or two).

Enter Sue Conley and Peggy Smith: founders of the Cowgirl Creamery, both of these ladies did serious time as successful chefs in the Bay Area restaurant circuit before zooming in on their mutual distraction with the magic of curd.  In the last ten years, they've won multiple awards with their babies: the buttery MT. TAM (alas, currently sold out!); the intriguing, washed-rind funk of superstar Red Hawk; and their wintertime specialty, Pierce Pt., adorned in spices and bathed in muscat wine.

All of the above are made with local, organic, pasteurized cow's milk--score another one for the impregnated, immune-suppressed or otherwise squeamish who refuse to skimp on taste.

There's oodles of other regional AND international cheeses, goodies and baskets to choose from; a cheese club with varying degrees of commitment and global-queso-coverage; and a handy-dandy online cheesecylopedia for all of your quick-click reference needs.

If you're lucky enough to be in the area, take a tour of the glassed-in creamery at Point Reyes before loading down with cheese--the Cowgirls like nothing better than to educate the curious.

As for poky, desk-bound, East Coast quesophiles? Take a virtual tour, and allow yourself to get giddy about the mailman coming.

What Do You MEAN, "Feels Like 29°F"???

AUGHGHGHUGH!!!!!!

Sorry. I know this is a very Grinchy, Un-Noel-ish attitude to have about snow...but...

I MUST...
...HAVE...
...COLOR...

***squeezing eyes shut, clicking heels together 3 times***

POOF!

Left to right, from top left corner: BarFry Arugula, Watermelon and Avocado salad (NYC); Yoshitsune Hamachi Sushi (Honolulu, HI); Eggplant and Bittermelon (Flushing, NYC); Haggis Springrolls with Roasted Tomato Puree (Edinburgh, UK);  Whiggam's Raspberry Tiramisu (Edinburgh, UK); Spaghetti Carbonara at home; Flowering Chives (Flushing, NY); Franny's Margherita Pie (Brooklyn, NY); Patrick's Hawaiian Cafe's Ahi Poke (Portland, OR)

...ahhh...MUCH better...

(What? YOU don't retreat into food memories when faced with ice falling from the sky?)

Bouncing Blue Baby! (Stichelton!)

I enjoy my Wednesday food section fix as much as the next food nerd, but today I snapped that sucker open, scanned, and squealed with the kind of unrestrained glee that women generally reserve for babies and diamonds.

To be fair, it IS a baby of sorts...a spanking new blue cheese!!!  Food nerd extraordinaire Harold McGee introduces us to an old cheese with a fresh name: Stichelton.

The brainchild of cheesemaker Joe Schneider and Neal's Yard Dairy's Randolph Hodgson, Stichelton is basically a raw-milk Stilton, in many ways more traditionally made than what is legally recognized as Stilton.

A Very Queso Christmas, Part Two: Old Chatham Sheepherding Co.

Every family's got one...the one that stands out from the pack, who gets whispered about over plates of turkey.  Plain 'ol cow's milk cheese is a little too passe for them.

Luckily, the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company (Hudson Valley, NY) had these black sheep in mind. 

What's the difference between sheep's milk cheese and cow's milk cheese?  Not to beat hyperbole to death, but sheep are livestock that do well off the beaten path--they can subsist on less, in much harsher terrain and climate conditions than cows can.  Ergo, when it comes time for lambing, a milk with optimized fat, sugar, and protein content is essential for 'lil sheep to put on weight and wean quickly, to better survive a more challenging environ than, say, a flat, fenced-in pasture.

This is good news for sheep's milk cheesemakers; because sheep's milk is so much richer and more nutritionally dense than cow's milk, it takes comparatively little sheep's milk to make a high yield of great quality cheese.

Is your black sheep vegetarian, preggers, or an irrational germaphobe? No worries--Old Chatham's cheeses are a blend of pasteurized sheep's milk and hormone-free cow's milk. They use vegetable rennets, and their yogurts are nuthin' but sheep's milk and active cultures.

The ever-popular Camembert Square is lush, creamy, and non-threatening to the squeamish--a fab stand-in for any situation that usually calls for 'round-the bend supermarket brie.

(Can't get enough camembert? It comes in a 2 lb. wheel, too!)

For pro-penicillin finger foods, shove a little Ewe's Blue into the backdoors of Medjool dates, wrap those puppies in bacon, and broil.

Design your own gift basket at BlackSheepCheese.com, or toss a Camembert Square into your Murray's cart. 

(Unfortunately, the Old Chatham site only offers the sheep's milk yogurt by the case, and Murray's carries it in their retail stores, but not online...however, super-lucky Fresh Direct NYC customers can have it brought right to their fifth-floor walkups.)

Next on-deck for a Very Queso Christmas: the lovely ladies of the Cowgirl Creamery.

Feats of Food Marketing: "Canadian Bacon"

One of the joys of New York: Finding deliciously marbled, frankly labeled cured flesh at your local Polish-Korean-Latin Market.

Exhibit 1: "Canadian Bacon"

...AKA...

A Very Queso Christmas, Part 1: Jasper Hill Farm

ACK...December 1!  Those of us who've been in denial about the holidays since Halloween are officially without recourse or respite.

No need to panic or rush out to buy electronics...let cheese be your salvation! Beautiful, artisan cheeses made in the U-S-of-A, of all different shapes, colors, pungencies, and price ranges, shipped right to the doors of your loved ones!

Jasper Hill Farm is run by a small band of Vermonters totally preoccupied with maintaining the quality of their milk, and keen to present a sustainable, easily duplicable business model to revive local dairy economies. 

Their babies, Constant Bliss and Bayley Hazen Blue, are both made with whole, unpasteurized cow's milk.  Smooth, bloomy-rich Bliss will keep the uninitiated and the dairy-jaded happy; Bayley's crumbly, dense paste has all the vein-shot spunkiness blue-lovers want, without being overly salty. Drizzled in honey, both are a welcome wake-up for any cheese plate.   

(They don't have their own online store, but Bliss and Bayley are available at Murray's Online Store.  For those who've been VERY good this year, there's a super-splurgy Jasper Hill Farm Collection Box, with a rotating roster of seasonal Vermonter cheeses.)