I'm a sucker for a good terrine, because in my heart of hearts, I know I'll never be the kind of gal who will take the time to press meaty off-bits into a sliceable miracle of natural gelatins and tender shreds.
So this item was a Quadruple Threat for me as I skimmed the menu at Franny's on a fine spring day: Pork Cheek? Beef Tongue? Terrine? AND a pun?
Yes, please!
And, dear readers, I had the same thought that you did upon spying this for the first time. This looks like...Spam. Fancypants Spam. Spam with spats and a pedigree.
Which is exactly what it tasted like. Being from the Spamtacular State of Hawaii, this is by no means a negative association. It was a luscious mosaic of faces, meaty and savory, the lean muscle of the beef tongue gelled together by the richness of the pork cheek.
[In a perfect world: Tongue and Cheek and Egg breakfast sandwiches. 'Twould be a heady glut of calories and sexy metaphors to face in the morning.]
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franny's 295 Flatbush Avenue Brooklyn NY 11217 718 230 0221
I like that they're so distinctively waxy, crisp and bitter--when an endive snaps in your teeth, it can be mistaken for little else. The separated curls of each leaf are sharp little gondolas for all manner of things runny and rich: Soft cheeses, fondue, crab or artichoke dip.
Think celery but more fay, and meaner. Or if bok choy had light-deprived, bitterly-ankle-biting midget cousins.
I tend to slice them into 1/2-inch cuticles and toss them with crumbled blue cheese (hullo, Cabrales!), chunks of green apple or pear, honey, and black pepper. Pungent, sweet, crunchy and spicy, there's nothing chaste or clerical about it.
Cooking endives is something I've never done, but am muy curious about; the French tend to make them into gratin, which sounds silky-sexy-comforting.
I think that even Thomas Lux may concede in this case: Nothing is so irritatingly twee that it can't be made delicious by covering it in rustic pig and cream. Some time ago, the effervescent Matt Armendariz posted a simple but gorgeous recipe for Braised Endive that has lingered in the recesses of must-try: Winter project? NodNODnod.
I try not to get FN icky and personal here, because...well, there are enough people feeling loudly on blogs. Blech. Suffice it to say, large momentous life changes have made sitting down and feeding the interwebs a little more challenging.
But rest assured, gentle and hungry readers, I still think too much about eating, and have lately been fixating mostly on eggs. And more eggs.
Pour Some Sugar On Me kidnapped me to her family's lakeside cabin in PA, where drunken bees were gorging themselves on flowering chives. I perry and dodged for my breakfast share; chive blossoms make scrambled eggs taste like they were kissed by garlic-y magic angel babies.
Clip and wash the poofy bloom clusters, pluck to separate the lil blossoms, and sprinkle at will for purple bursts of allium spunk. (Rosemary flowers are great with eggs, too!)
Elsewhere in eggland: For Effing BroBro's birthday, our family was lucky enough to sojourn to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where I had my very first encounter with unlaid eggs.
Being Blue Hill, these embryonic eggs came from prideful hens raised on the estate, and were cured in salt until they took on the consistency of hard cheese.
For double-your-unlaid-pleasure, said salty cured yolks were shaved atop pasta made from fresh unlaid yolks. Sunny and reeking of procreative richness, 'twas lucky indeed that Blue Hill provided me this particular first.
And in my much-less-fancy-farmless kitchen, I revisited recession recipes:
I'd heard fables of calçotada via Anthony Bourdain and similar globe-hopping eaters; much as foodies stateside go apesh*t over ramps, Catalans eagerly anticipate the arrival of calçots:
[C]alçotada, a party centered around eating piles of messy calçots,
or green onions, that are blackened over open fires and served with a
garlicky romesco sauce of toasted almonds, toasted bread, and smoky ñora
peppers.
Calçots are a Catalonian specialty grown in a unique way:
harvested in early summer, they're replanted and then repeatedly covered
with dirt so that the white part of the root elongates, producing a
sweet and tender vegetable. (Calçots take their name from the
Catalan calçar, which means to put shoes on, a reference to the
process of covering the roots. [Saveur]
It was on the castle-in-the-sky To Do List, as I've no earthly idea what spring I'd be able to trot around Spain.
Bless Peter Hoffman for cheerily provoking New Yorkers to eat with their
hands and cavort with strangers!
The elder of the 2 Effing BroBros joined me for this soiree of charred carousing; we knew we were in for a treat as we saw clouds of onion-and-lamb affected smoke wafting down Prince St.
Dinner included dangerously drinkable bottomless rosé, both in-glass and arced directly into mouths by a porron-wielding Peter Hoffman himself.
"It's all in the arms!" Hoffman happily demonstrated, the blush-colored wine catching light as it streamed neatly into his open mouth.
Family Effing threw down, but not nearly to as impressive effect. (My lips touched glass as I tapered off--FAIL!) Cheers to our table, where every single diner gave the porron a go.
After sliding off the onions' scorched outer layers, all present, from
children to grandmothers, dunk the calçots in romesco (see
Grilled
Green Onions with Romesco), tip back their heads, and lower the
long, white stalks into their mouths, leaving behind sooty fingers and a
mound of carbonized leaves. [Saveur]
Our green onions were not as hefty or sooty as the Catalonian ones described, so no stripping was necessary; the helpful grill-master's mate showed us how to coil the onions and scoop up romesco from the large shared bowl. Big, greasy smiles and blackened fingers followed.
The romesco was rich, coarse and thick, like a red-hued pesto, chunky with mortared almonds. The brazen garlicky-fattiness of it mingled beautifully with the sweet-n-bitter grilled green onions, flame-cripsed at the ends and tender within.
EF and Effing BroBro: HUMuhgwd. Eesh go good.
I wish I'd thought to scoop out a big blob of it to eat with my lamb, greens, sausage and beans...but I was too busy eating lamb, greens, sausage and beans.
Everything was that stripped-down stripe of satisfaction. The grilled lamb was a lovely medium-rare, with a good sprinkle of flaky sea salt; the kale with maybe a little lemon and olive oil; the botifarrasausages were plump, generous, and totally unadorned; and the beans tasted...like beans, not sugar or pork, tooth-tender and creamy.
Crispy-topped crema catalana capped off the bloat:
Catalans claim that their custard is primordial creme brulee, but when you've got a trap full of heavy cream and burnt brittled sugar, you're unlikely to quibble over chicken-or-the-egg.
Spoons plonked to pause down our long table of good-humored, rosé-glowy company, live flamenco tumbling the whole restaurant along. 'Twas a mighty fine way to spend a spring night.
Good 'ol EST jetlag made snapping up in bed at an ungodly wee hour relatively easy--not that it would have been hard anyway, since Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and I were about to embark on one of my long-coveted foodie dreams. We strapped on knee-high combat boots and wellies respectively, and padded out into a barely stirring Tokyo.
Some foodies dream of El Bulli and The French Laundry, of vintage wines and caviar, of green-chile cheeseburger trails, cross-country pie conquests, and sniffing out the most authentic Maine lobster roll. And while I'm game for any of the above, I wouldn't trade any of them for the 2 mornings that I had at the Tsukiji Fish Market.
Cremebruleed, a dearly trusted foodie who I'd not been in touch with for YEARS, had just moved back to Tokyo, and was all too happy to meet us for our first tryst into the edible aquatic wonderland. It was her birthday, after all--what better birthday breakfast than the freshest sushi in the world?
Even though it was early, cold and rainy, we 3 were in great spirits, and Cremebruleed laughed aloud as I danced in little circle of fishy anticipation. Without ado, she yanked us into the bustling, living hive of commerce.
As with much of Tokyo, my noggin was flatly unprepared for the intensity and scale of Tsukiji. The infamous international tuna auction has been closed to tourists, so we were making a beeline to the heart of the market (rows and rows of seafood and Japanese longshoremen), and working our way to the outer rings (produce markets, pickle stands, kitchen hardware stores, street foods, and minuscule restaurants favored by the longshoremen once they were done with work).
Basically, if you needed live cuttlefish, a sharkskin wasabi grater, a fresh root of wasabi to go with it, and a giant bowl of spaghetti with fresh Hokkaido crabs, this little city within a city is where you'd go to get it all.
BTW, some haters would scowl at the closing of certain areas of the markets to tourists, but let me tell ya: The market-proper is a full-powered, dangerous place, and if you don't have your wits about you, you'll probably be mowed down by one of a thousand forklifts pinging in a million directions at worst, or catch a face-full of fishy hosewater at best.
NYer walking/dodging/perrying skills definitely helped us from dying or stopping vital business, and even we got annoyed at the congestion-causing telephoto-lensed momos wandering haplessly into certain disaster.
Cremebruleed led our little duckling line through the damp, endless rows of piscine jewels and treasures--crabs of every imaginable size, shape and feistyness:
Bitty rock crabs, alien Hokkaido crabs, Alaskan King--every one alive and kickin'. If it can't poke your eye out, it ain't fresh.
But you're here for the food, and so were we. By 9 AM, we'd worked up a hearty appetite sidestepping splatter and gawking at swimmy critters, so Cremebruleed inched us toward the outer ring of the market. She strolled down a row of tiny sushi places, past all the tourists and nationals waiting in hour-long lines at Daiwa and Sushi Dai, and stopped at the last sliding glass door.
The sushi master greeted us warmly as we inched our way into the clean, lilliputian space; bags went in a rack directly over our heads, bottoms on stools, backs against the wall, knees under the sushi bar. Scale: Subway car, if that.
With a hot towel and a quick flip of the picture-oriented menu, the 3 of us each chose the 14-piece, 1 roll omakase (3,700 yen, I think...definitely under 4,000, or $40 USD), in which we would choose the last two pieces of nigiri. SSFL and I were grinning and bobbing like kids on Christmas, and Cremebruleed was smiling like...well, a lady in-the-know at a fab birthday breakfast.
First four pieces of nigiri--(L to R) maguro (lean tuna), toro (fatty tuna), hata (grouper) and tai (red snapper).
Each tuna cut was rich, fatty, and distinct; the grouper was meaty and almost creamy, and the snapper sparklingly saline; all were so clean and fresh that you could practically hear their offers for three wishes melting in the slightly warm rice.
I didn't fully realize where I was in the world until the moment that
1st piece--maguro--broke apart on my tongue. It was the reverse of Proust's madeleines,
the distillation of the immediate and fleeting, a pulse that slows and
gives one rare focus--this tuna, on this birthday morning, could not
have happened anywhere as it has happened here.
It was about now that the lovely man handed us bowls of the best miso soup I've ever had. Maybe it was just nice to be sipping something savory and steaming on a cold day. Or maybe it was because it was stare-back soup.
But seriously, the amaebi (deep sea shrimp) heads impart a subtle sweetness and tomalley oomph that ups the unami ante to near-infinity. Cremebruleed translated that we could have as much soup as we wanted, but we practiced restraint and saved room for the arriving feast.
Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady didn't bat an eye when I asked if she was interested in a little anniversary tripe. The fixed menu would help to clip our ordering pointers and prevent our utter destruction by overeating.
We were a little surprised that the place wasn't choked with
like-minded offal-eaters; people gradually trickled in, many of them
ordering whole bronzino and other treats from the regular menu.
(Pictured above: Pink and in the foreground = Italian Greyhound = grapefruit with vodka and rosemary; caramel in the background = Pimm's Cup = gin, ginger ale, cucumber and lime.)
SSFL and I clinked glasses and fell to the Calf's Brains Fritto Misto.
No, it's not all brains...just the rounded nubbin at 12 o'clock, golden and crusty on the outside, creamy within. Think fried oysters, or cream croquettes. The brain brought fried companions of apple slices and cippolini onions, plus browned butter and capers for dipping and zinging.
It may look small, but it was a pretty rich plate of food, and SSFL and I found ourselves wishing for a lemon wedge or some malt vinegar to help break things up a bit.
Continuing the welcome onslaught of offal, Trippa Milanese with Gremolata, otherwise known as tripe braised in wine and vinegar:
(Spooning up braised tripe and tender vegetables.)
EF: This is...(Making smacking sounds.)
SSFL: ...really light!
It's true...and we be fans of tripe, so it caught us off-guard. A lot of the time, tripe is treated with strong flavors, seemingly to mask any inherent stomach-y funk (see tripe parmigiana or menudo).
Gabrielle's tripe was meltingly soft, and infused the whole stew with a gelatinous roundness that was distinctly but not overbearingly meaty, without a lick of funk. It was like eating an unset bowl of aspic, in a good way--bright, rich, and clear.
The Bitter Greens salad it came with was a little spartan, but once mixed into the tripe, they rubbed up against the smooth unctuousness of the stew nicely.
Dessert? Spot-on. Anticipating diner fatigue, Prune wisely set before us ethereally light single-servings of Pavlova with Lemon Curd:
Meringue can be a sugary, styrofoam mess, but this baby was light-yet-chewy in the way that lightly caramelized sugar should be, and the portion size, lemon curd and fresh fruit helped to rein in any threat of oversweetness. Kiwis and Aussies would be proud of this one!
Prune-detractors tend to harp on how little the menu rotates, how small
the operation is, or how Hamilton has not chosen to expand her empire.
As I'm bathed in the well-being of well-made bovine naughty bits, good
dinner company, cocktail glow, and tea lights reflecting off of clean
white walls and polished antique mirrors, I say with perfect faith:
Those marketchasing phucktards can screw off. Don't fix what ain't
broken.
Food peeps are notoriously predictable in their calendar of coverage--Summer means lots of writing on barbecue, grilling and burgers. Not JUST burgers...retro burgers! Nuevo burgers! Retro-nuevo burgers, so that we may justify another year of reinventing burgers! GAHHH!
I like drippy burgers and BBQ. I can chase banh mi and prose-like cocktails with the best of them. But with blogs and pubs piping out fall trends (what shall we pickle and braise now???) it's hard to work up excitement over food and food coverage of late, and that includes my own.
And then it became obvious...who gives a sh*t?? Procrastination makes fools of us all (okay, ME) and I'm not going to let 'lil things like seasonal propriety keep me from telling you what you should've ate this summer...and can still eat, if you're not too busy trying to chase the newest stupid foodie craze.
Case in point: The Back Forty Crab Boil. Logic dictates that piles of steaming blue crabs on newspaper go the way of flipflops and white linen past Labor Day...but why?
The Decapod Destroyer (dear friend, employer, and all-round seafood enthusiast) and I had caught wind of the boiled crab bonanza last year, but sadly missed the cutoff date. This year, we were 2 crazed otters on a mission...which yielded 3 weeks of "sorry, seats are sold out" auto replies. Cruel,
cruel summer.
Thanks to coverage from NYMag and buzz from last year's crab boil series, it was more challenging to get 2 seats at a communal table of crab slurpers than it was to get a table at FN Babbo or Per Se.
But all was not lost! Back Forty (run by Peter Hoffman of Savoy) showed rare and admirable traits in the restaurant industry: Compassion, AND response to customer loyalty and demand.
Because I had played the online reservation lottery a few times, the restaurant had my email address; they took it upon themselves to contact me, announcing that in order to accommodate the overwhelming popularity of the crab dinners, they were setting aside 5 days of nothing but all crabs, all the time, with people who had been rejected as the key audience.
How AWESOME is that???
This restored my faith in humanity, in hospitality, and that's no overstatement. After years of building up a thick dining skin in NY, tolerating sub-par entitled service, price gouging, and impossible booking practices, Hoffman reversed the tide with something simple, distinct, and priceless: You want crab. We want to serve you crab. So come and let us serve you crab.
And serve crab they will, every Tuesday until the end of the month, September 29th. To book a table, please visit Back Forty's site for the rundown on the crab rezzy procedure.
Animal opened in June 2008 [in Montauk, NY] and has been packed since — one of the breed
of gleefully carnivorous restaurants to flourish in recent years. Its
giddy, sophisticated-stoner sensibility is best represented by the Foie
Gras Loco Moco, a riff on a Hawaiian surfer dish. It consists of a
hamburger, a slice of fried Spam, a wedge of seared foie gras and a
quail egg, all teetering on a bed of rice and topped with teriyaki
sauce, maple syrup, bordelaise and Sriracha.
Torn, I am. Teetering. I wouldn't kick it out of bed...but could I live with myself if I paid $35 for a loco moco? COULD I???
Props to Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo for shoving pig nethers into East Hamptonians and Los Angeleans, of all people!
They don't mess around: Pigs ears, belly and cheeks, sweetbreads, chicken liver, poutine, head cheese, kimchee, foie gras, Spam, and a chocolate/bacon dessert all commingle into one gutsy (harhar) weed-out-the-weak menu of rare depravity.
When it's a sunny-but-not-TOO-sunny day in New York, it's hard to imagine voluntarily drinking in a bar that's dark before sundown. But one late afternoon, Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and I found ourselves traversing the basement stairs to the subterranean gloom of Jimmy's No. 43 for two good reasons:
There was a ton of press about these seasonal piscine visitors from the E.U.; worthy of festivals in their native Holland, herring are a definitive cornerstone of the Dutch diet, as readily available a street food as hot dogs are in NY. New herring--the first catch of the spring--are especially cherished, eaten spanking-fresh and unadorned.
I'd just finished off a book about regional Dutch food and quirky herring eating procedures (AKA haringhappen), so I was eager to put all those diagrams of smiling, fish-gulping Dutch folk to good use.
C'mon. There's nothing more appealing than a couple of chicks tossing back herring and beer like so much drunken, back-talking sea lion.
We went with one order of the "traditional-style" New Holland Herring ($7):
...which quickly became two orders (and would have multiplied to 3 had good graces and budget not intervened). SSFL and I had no problem polishing ours off: Tilt your trap back, lower the fish into said trap by the tail, chew, order more.
Garnished minimally with chopped onion, these lightly cured fish were fatty, tender, and redolent of the sea--like giant, high-grade anchovies.
Dutch Delight mentions that the new herring aren't raw "in the strictest sense": On the herring ships, they are immediately gutted, salted, and frozen. So basically you've got curing and quick-freeze to buffer you against any narsty Baltic-borne parasites.
We also got the training-wheels version of the Holland Herring, perched atop ricotta and toast ($7):
Pretty, but we both felt the delivery mode sublimated the briny goodness of the herring. Go hard or go home.
Woman cannot (afford to) survive on herring alone, so we gave into an order of Fraegola with Sugar Snap Peas, Mint, and Pecorino ($12?):
Simple, verdant, and definitely replicable in a home kitchen--I'd add a poached egg, but I tend to think everything needs an egg on top. I wanted to think the mint helped us from walking out reeking entirely of fish and onions.
It may have still been light out when we emerged from Jimmy's, feeling happy and suitably appetized...but not full. So we went in pursuit of vaguely less seasonal, basement-based prey:
That's a Spicy Redneck ($4.75), with a small (???) side of tater tots ($2.50), a la Crif Dawgs.
Spicy Redneck = Deep-Fried Hot Dog (Wrapped in Bacon) + Chili + Chopped Jalapenos + Cole Slaw
We're
all creatures of habit. Try as I might to keep the ordering continuum
wide open for tasty new experiences, there are a few black holes that
I'll always succumb to: At Tabla Bread Bar, it's the Pulled Lamb and Mustard-Mash Naanini.
I'm
a big fan of the Bread Bar; this place ain't
cheap, but if you're a boozehound that hates crowds, loves
food, and has never understood why it's so hard to get Indian food and
a good cocktail together, it's an FN godsend.
Please DO get yourself a cocktail.
Or three or four, as budget and responsibilities allow. It doesn't
matter which one, they're all incredibly well-balanced, and they all pair with
the food like a charm.
Which brings us to the naanini; tender
lamb and spiced, smooth potatoes on a pressed piping-fresh naan
platform (and raita for dippin'), there's little more than a gal on an
incidental drinking binge could ask for. Gnaw, sip, hum to yourself: NAaaaaaaanknEEEEkneeee...
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