An Effing Foodie

It's Fusion*! It's Metaphor! It's Toad in the Hole con Curry!

Like anyone else, I’m kinda given to cooking ruts.  My inclination is to slap steaks, chops, pasta, and variations of green beans and tomato salad in front of peeps, and nobody complains, so I rarely deviate.  But it makes for FN boring cooking (and FN boring reading about cooking, natch).

So when I blew up my router vacuuming (don’t ask), and a trusted friend of mine popped in remotely and fixed it lickety-split, I figured I owed the man some eats, and told him to name his dish.

We were chatting online, so I couldn’t see him, but I could practically hear the smile spread across his face.  “Toad in the Hole,” he said. “Con Curry.”

A little background on this guy--Japanese-style curry is his lube/eats-cornerstone of choice.  For Curry Fiend, there is no food that can’t be improved with a cloak of spicy brown, and there is no meal he’d prefer over a steaming plate of katsu curry.

His request was not as strangely fusion-disastrous as it sounds...Toad in the Hole is browned sausages enveloped in Yorkshire pudding, generally served with squishy peas, mashed potatoes and onion gravy.  Topping it with curry and pairing it with rice seemed a bare half-step from its Brit comfort food origins, and given the rapidly apparent fall chill, it felt totally seasonally appropo.

Per Se in Pictures, Columbus Circle, NYC

Nothing justifies splurging like entertaining out-of-towners; if you don't board the plane home hungover and in semi-diabetic shock, then I didn't do my job properly.

So when a dear foodie friend came in all the way from Honolulu, I thought I might as well angle for the mother of all foodie prizes: A table at Per Se.

(THANK YOU, lovely ladies at AmEx concierge and Brobro EF, for making dreams come true!)

Amuse Bouche: Smoked Salmon & Creme Fraiche in a Tuile Cone

Like ice cream! But fish fat!


Oysters and Pearls: Poached Oysters with Farmed Osetra Caviar over Tapioca and Beurre Blanc

Without question, my favorite dish of the evening.  It's not often you eat something lusty and delicate--briny bursts of caviar and oysters were highlighted by the rich sauce and the texture of mingling tapioca.

(EEEW.  I think i just fell into romance-novel-food writing...sorry about that!)


Foie Gras Torchon with Toasted Brioche and Marmalade

Impressive feats of service for this dish...you see that toasted brioche?  Naturally, you gob this dreamy puck of duck fat onto the still-warm slices of brioche for effective mouth delivery.

But just as you're about 3 bites into your first slice, a silent server swoops up, takes away the plate with the remaining triangle, and replaces it with a whole new piece, so that you're never without piping hot toast.  Seamlessly, like bottomless brioche was a birthright.  Uh...wow.  They don't play here.


Caramelized Endive Salad

There was a choice between the above salad and the torchon (if you can call that a choice).  In retrospect, I would have been hurting a little less by meal's end if I'd gone with the endives, which wisely moderate Effing BroBro really enjoyed.

Tall-Table Noshing: Vintage Irving, Union Square, NYC

Most of the time, I'm not an eater with a plan.  Given the choice, I'd much rather wander with a fellow intrepid noshmonkey and a craving than adhere to a predetermined gustatory destination.

Luckily, Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady (SSFL) shares this disposition, and demonstrates great patience as we comb through blocks of window-mounted menus for our next meal.

Even luckier are the days where we don't have to meander far at all!  Mere steps from being spit up from the subway, we stumbled on a spiffy-new yet unassuming space, offering much in the way of wine, thought-out cocktails and small plates: Vintage Irving.

I hadn't heard much about it, apart from the fact that they tout absinthe cocktails, but the cheese offerings, an uber-nerdy wine/beer list (that includes a glossary of terms for pairing), and super-sweet gentleman host pretty much sealed the deal.

SSFL and I planted ourselves at the tall-stooled communal tables, and contemplated booze.

"One of us should get an absinthe cocktail."

<Hesitation.> "Yeah...Do you like Pernod?"

"Nope."

"Neither do I."

So we dodged the Green Fairy, and settled with rose and a dirty martini instead--SSFL's martini came equipped with a "dirty" ice cube of olive brine.

(Um, I thought salted water doesn't freeze.  Did Mr. Wizard lead me astray???)

As I sipped my wine and worked my way through the descriptive, text-heavy menu, I noticed a chemical, burning smell.

And realized that I'd lit the back of the plastic-covered menu with a tea light.

Such are the hazards of short, klutzy folk breaking bread at tall tables.

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.