Eat (long posts only)

Dinner at Brooklyn Fare

Leland — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:38:00 GMT

When the grocery store Brooklyn Fare opened a few months ago, I was unreasonably excited, and I was one of the first people through the door at 8:30 a.m. This neighborhood is somewhat lacking in the grocery department, and at the time we were relying heavily on the Fairway in Red Hook and occasionally on FreshDirect. I thought Brooklyn Fare would be the perfect solution. Sadly, it was little more than an overgrown deli in those early days. Plenty of convenience foods, a sad selection of fish and meat, and precious little produce. I could have better luck at Trader Joe’s.

A few months later, the store has improved remarkably, and I believe this is thanks to the work and influence of Chef César Ramirez, who is running the kitchen adjacent to the store along with a small, hard-working staff. César and his team oversee the production of the store’s excellent prepared foods, and they run the three-nights-per-week restaurant in that kitchen. I went in a group of ten friends and colleagues for an eight-course tasting menu last night. At $70, and with a BYOB policy, it’s one of the city’s great dining values. Chef César (a former executive chef of Bouley) and his assistant Juan prepared and served us course after course of four-star dishes. It was somewhat bizarre to enjoy this level of cuisine on an otherwise ugly block of Schermerhorn Street (my street!), but in such an intimate and even elegant setting. César told us that he gets the best of everything for these dinners, from the food to the plates and Riedel glassware.

Here are the boys at work, and did they ever work!

And here, in order is most of what we ate. (I have dozens more pictures in this photo album.) After doing a shot of of hibiscus juice, we were served a bite of creamy, fried calf’s brains with sauce gribiche:

Up next was my favorite course of the night, César’s beautiful interpretation of a caprese salad, consisting of tomato mousse, mozzarella mousse, and a slow-cooked candied tomato over there on the right:

Kona kampachi with ponzu sauce:

Roasted scallop with bacon and chervil mousse:

I’m not a big fan of foie gras, but this little bite of it with tofu in dashi sauce was more than tolerable. César had us use a spoon to get as much sauce as we could with the liver. Good advice.

The Maine lobster with beets was one of the prettiest dishes of the night:

Even after all of the courses and dessert, I didn’t feel stuffed. Each course was pretty light, and the pace was relaxed. The set-up of the dinner is highly conducive to socializing and conversation. They set up a drink station for you but you serve yourself, giving you a chance to get up and walk around.

There’s plenty of time between courses (since the guys are cooking most of it to order), so you can visit the other side of the table, or stand up and chat with the chefs while they work, or just explore the immaculate kitchen, admiring the organization and fancy equipment. It feels like an elaborate, well-branded dinner party.

There was general confusion in our group about how this deal can continue. No way are they making enough money at $70 a head to pay for this exquisite food and skilled labor. Maybe it’s just an introductory price that will go up substantially if the dinners catch on. Right now, César says, most of the customers are industry people, other chefs, and former customers of his from Bouley and Danube. I’m convinced that you will not find better food and a more enjoyable experience at this price in New York, and I urge you to make a reservation now before it gets overrun by foodie types or becomes more expensive.

Mom makes cucumber salad

Mom — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:16:00 GMT

I have always been fond of pickled, sour, and sweet & sour foods. My mother used to make all sorts of piccalillis, chow-chows, relishes, and pickles. My favorite pie was, and still is, sour cherry, and my favorite candy was the sublime Regal Crown Sour Lemon , unfortunately no longer available. My kids used to eat Lemonheads but they were a poor substitute for Regal Crown Sours, as they were basically sweet drops of hard candy dusted with ascorbic acid. Once you licked the sour coating off they didn’t even taste lemony.

Sweet and sour cucumber salad is an easy and refreshing summer side dish which gives you an opportunity to use your mandoline . You don’t really need a recipe but I’ll give you one anyway.

Sweet and Sour Cucumbers

2 or 3 cucumbers (I used 1 1/2 long English cucumbers; 3 or 4 pickling cukes would also work)
1 teaspoon or so kosher salt
1 cup vinegar (I like Spanish sherry vinegar, cider vinegar is also good; don’t use balsamic)
1/2 cup sugar
freshly ground black pepper
chopped fresh parsley

Thinly slice cucumbers using sharp knife or a mandoline. Layer in a colander, sprinkling lightly with kosher salt. Don’t use too much salt or the salad will be salty. If you don’t have a lot of time you can skip this step but it’s helpful when using homegrown cucumbers which can be bitter. Put a weight on top and leave to drain for about an hour. I used a salad plate topped with a filled teakettle to weigh them down, and after yoga class they had exuded about a half cup of liquid. Spread the cucumbers out on a clean kitchen towel or paper towels and blot them off.

Meanwhile, in bowl large enough to hold all ingredients, mix vinegar, sugar, and pepper and whisk until sugar is dissolved. Add cucumbers and gently fold with rubber spatula until all slices are moistened. Place in refrigerator for at least an hour before serving, folding once or twice to blend flavors. Add chopped parsley and pour some of the dressing off before placing in serving bowl. Serve with slotted spoon or fork. If you have any left over these are good piled onto a sandwich or burger.

Whoopie pies

Leland — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:53:00 GMT

I’m about six weeks from the end of culinary school, and I’m in the part of the program now where I cook in the school’s restaurant. I wasn’t prepared for how different class would be in the professional kitchen compared to the classroom kitchens of earlier levels, and at the beginning of this portion I seriously considered withdrawing. Of course I’ve since become accustomed to the pace and the pressure, but I felt a little waylaid at the beginning, as the service hour approached and I was a dozen tasks away from being ready and set up.

But I survived entremetier, garde manger, poissonnier, and the hardest, saucier, before finally arriving in what’s generally considered (somewhat misleadingly) to be the easiest station, pâtissier. People only think it’s the easiest because it’s not hot back there and because you get an extra hour to set up, since no one orders dessert until after their meal ends. But the pastry station has its challenges, especially for a salt-oriented cook such as myself. I don’t have a delicate hand—-I’m lousy at plating and making things beautiful. My own idea of beauty is quite a bit less refined than a French chef’s, and the learning curve is steep. A perfect quenelle of ice cream, which seems to flow naturally off the ends of other students’ spoons, takes me five or six tries to get right. I guess all things take practice. Witness my attempt at piping my name, with the chef’s version below. She can write in chocolate better than I can write in pencil. I never even learned cursive!

Last Thursday, the chef let our group devise a dessert special, which we were to prepare in addition to the rhubarb consommé and white chocolate parfaits that were on the menu. My friend Kim had once made some delicious peanut butter whoopie pies from a Martha Stewart recipe at one of her legendary brunches, and I thought it would be hilarious to serve them in a French restaurant.

The recipe is as easy as can be, especially if you have a stand mixer and use piping bags for the cookies and the filling. We teamed our whoopie pies with a quenelle of vanilla ice cream (which we also made) sitting on sliced strawberries (I didn’t want these but I had no choice), garnished with a mint sprig.

Only six or seven people ordered them, which surprised me, since who doesn’t want a peanut butter whoopie pie? But we sent out a bunch of extras, and the chefs and students milling around cleaned off the trays pretty quickly.

Rendering leaf lard

Leland — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:55:00 GMT

I’ve been hearing for years about leaf lard, the sheet of creamy fat that protects the kidneys of a hog. I was curious to use it in pastry but never motivated enough to special order it or arrive early to the Greenmarket. Yesterday, during my first visit to Marlow & Daughters in Williamsburg, I was greeted by pounds and pounds of it, both raw and rendered, in the freezer case.

Marlow & Daughters is kind of a dream come true. It’s the sort of store I’d open if I had an entrepreneurial spirit. It had all the stuff I like, from Rancho Gordo beans to Bay’s English Muffins, house-made sausage to beautiful, luscious roast beef. They had a small pile of perfect lemons for 50 cents each. The service was friendly and knowledgeable, and I felt good spending money there.

Back to the lard. I asked one of the gentlemen behind the counter about grinding it for rendering, and instead of forcing the ice block of fat through the grinder, he found some fresh in the back. He weighed out two pounds and sold it to me for $10.

I came home, ready to make an onion tart, but first I engaged in some serious googling to figure out how to render the huge block of fat in my fridge. The most useful resource turned out to be Flying Pigs Farm. I didn’t want to screw it up, and they offered precise instructions with temperatures to watch for.

Start with the ground fat in a heavy roasting pan. Some directions tell you to add water to get the process started and keep the fat from scorching in the oven, but I don’t see why you’d need to do this. I feel the same way about caramel; adding water just makes it take longer.

Break it up with a wooden spoon, and stick it into a 300ºF oven for an hour or more, stirring frequently, until the fat registers 255ºF on an instant-read thermometer. You’ll know it’s done when the cracklings have sunk to the bottom. It will look something like this, and it will smell like a diner:

Let the fat cool for a few minutes, and then ladle it through a cheesecloth-lined strainer. Scoop out the cracklings and save them for your next salad or soup.

You’ll be left with a bowl of beautiful, clear fat.

I transferred mine to a medium loaf pan and cooled it over ice. You’ll want to do this rather quickly because it hardens as it cools, and it gets messy transferring it from one vessel to another. Put it where you intend to keep it, in other words. In less than 30 minutes it will become a hard block of snow-white fat, which will keep for a long time in the fridge and for years in the freezer.

I thought an Alice Waters onion tart would be a good trial run for the lard. I used my school proportions of flour and fat: 200 grams flour to 100 grams butter. I replaced 3/4 of the butter with lard, and this worked perfectly well. The crust took a while to brown, but even after an hour in the oven, it was flaky, tender, and flavorful. It didn’t smell or taste of pig.

If anyone has good uses for lard to suggest, please leave them in the comments. I intend to buy Jennifer McLagan’s book today; I’ll report back sometime in the next three months on any great successes.

Pollo alla cacciatora

Leland — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:02:00 GMT

On the rare nights that I’m home these days – often only one night per week – the last thing I want to do is prepare an elaborate dinner and mess up my small, windowless kitchen with a bunch of grease and dishes. I know I have a starving man to take care of, and I should make an effort to apply some of what I’m learning at home. Nevertheless, dinner at our house is usually dried pasta or pot beans or salad or scrambled eggs.

But the weather this weekend got us onto our bicycles and out to Fairway, and I decided I would take ten minutes to find a recipe and make it, come hell or high water. I found Jamie Oliver’s recipe for pollo alla cacciatora, and it looked pretty darn similar to a recipe we made in school. It also involved hardly any ingredients I didn’t have, and it would give me a chance to quarter a bird, so I went ahead and committed myself to the dish.

The key to this chicken is marinating. If you don’t organize yourself to marinate the chicken overnight, then don’t bother making it. Anyone can sear off chicken and braise it, but it won’t be this tender or taste this good. You hardly need a recipe:

1 4-pound chicken, quartered
8 bay leaves
rosemary sprigs
garlic cloves (2 crushed and 1 sliced)
1/2 bottle red wine
flour
olive oil
6 anchovy fillets (you really can’t detect them)
about 1 cup pitted olives
1 28-ounce can tomatoes

Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Place them in a bowl with the bay leaves, a few rosemary sprigs, and the crushed garlic cloves. Cover with the wine, adding more if you need to. (Jamie says to use chianti—-I hit the box!) Let marinate overnight in the fridge, rotating the chicken pieces at least once if you think of it.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Reserving the marinade, drain the chicken. Dry it on a towel, lightly dredge it flour, and brown it on all sides in olive oil in an ovenproof cooking vessel (such as a dutch oven). You’ll probably need to do this in two batches unless you have a huge pan. Don’t skimp on the browning. Set the chicken aside and throw off some fat if it looks ridiculous.

Back on the heat, add the sliced garlic, and fry till browned. Add the anchovies, olives, and tomatoes. Break up the tomatoes a bit with a wooden spoon. Return the chicken pieces to the pan with the marinade, and bring to a boil (this is necessary to make the marinade safe—-you can also boil it in another pan while the chicken is browning to speed up the process).

Cover the chicken with a tight-fitting lid and bake for 90 minutes. Skim off any fat that’s risen to the surface, season if necessary, and serve, preferably with a loaf of crusty bread and a big bowl of beans.

Pommes Anna

Leland — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:54:00 GMT

I’ve been trying and failing to make Pommes Anna since April 2007. Well, that’s misleading; I’ve only tried it a few times, and then I quit in frustration. I had two unsuccessful attempts under the watchful eye of a chef-instructor, and a few more abortive attempts at home.

I blamed the the pan, I blamed the potatoes, I blamed it on the rain. Mom would tell me to look at the common denominator, and she would be right. I was not committing to the full process of making this extremely simple and yet elusive side dish. I finally nailed it in the privacy of my own home last week.

It’s nothing but a fried cake of thin potato slices, but if you do anything wrong, it will fall apart. It will still taste good, but it won’t have an elegant presentation. To make pommes Anna, you only need four ingredients (butter, a potato, salt, and pepper) and two pieces of equipment (a knife and a skillet). If you follow these directions exactly, you’ll have no trouble at all.

First, you need to clarify some butter. I’ve tried it with whole butter, and the potatoes brown too quickly. Making clarified butter is easy, and you can make a good amount of it and store what’s left over in the fridge indefinitely. Heat butter over low heat until it’s melted completely. Skim off the foam that rises to the top, and ladle out the clear liquid that’s left in the pot, leaving behind any sediment on the bottom. You’re done.

Clean and peel one large Idaho potato. Slice it as thinly as you can manage by hand, or use a mandoline. Put the slices into a bowl and coat them well with some of the clarified butter. Heat a small stainless-steel skillet (you don’t need a nonstick pan for this). Once it’s quite hot, start layering the potatoes in the pan (they should sizzle immediately), starting from the center and working your way out, overlapping each other slightly, until you reach the edge of the pan. At this point, season the first layer well with salt and pepper. Make a second layer the same way, and season again. If you have more potato slices, continue to layer, or reserve them for a smaller second cake.

Let the cake cook for a few minutes until you see it browning on the edges. If the pan looks dry, drizzle in more butter. Give the pan a little shake; the cake should move freely. When it’s well browned on the bottom, flip it (with a flick of the wrist or a turner). Be careful of boiling butter splashing on your skin. Once the second side is browned, turn down the heat and let it cook through, or finish it in a 350ºF oven.

Drain the cake and serve it in thin wedges. It should be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, like all delicious things.

Gifts for cooks

Leland — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:48:44 GMT

I got two great early birthday presents last night (three, actually, if you include the long and luxurious dinner that we enjoyed at Brooklyn’s Restaurant Saul), and I thought I’d share them in case any readers are looking for a good gift for their kitchen-focused friends and lovers.

Here’s an awesome thing called Hold, which you can get at the MoMA Store, among other places. It’s basically a big piece of heavy metal meant to hold open a cookbook on the counter, like so:

I’ve been using my box of kosher salt for this purpose, so this is a big step up. Another gift, which I actually had already, but that doesn’t make it any less of a great gift (thanks Jeannie!), is Harold McGee’s famous book, On Food and Cooking. It’s a good read even if you don’t cook. McGee’s book is full of scientific and historical information about every food item imaginable. If I’m embarking on a new cooking method, I find it useful to read up on it in McGee in order to avoid any common pitfalls.

Pommes rissolées

Leland — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:32:00 GMT

I won’t make any excuses about the utter lack of posts on Eat except that: I’m in culinary school three nights a week for the next nine months, on top of my 45-hour work week, and this blog may or may not survive this period.

In the meantime, I’d like to share one of my favorite simple dishes that we’ve learned in class so far, a French classic: pommes rissolées. I made these for lunch today in a fit of tournage practice, and also because I had several potatoes languishing on the counter.

“Simple” may not be the best way to describe this method. You’re basically spending an hour and a half to make fancy home fries. But if you’re into the knife work aspect, I’d recommend these potatoes as a side to any roasted meat. They cook up with a crispy skin and a meltingly soft interior. They’re the french fry of your dreams. (As you can see, my turning needs work, but I’m getting there.)

To make four servings, take four good-size Idaho potatoes, and peel them. Depending on the size of the spud, you can get either four or six five-centimeter pieces from each potato. Save the ludicrous amount of trimmings for puréed potatoes, or discard them since potatoes are cheap. Make sure you keep everything—peeled potatoes, trimmings, and finished pieces—submerged in water.

Once the turned pieces are ready, place them in a saucepan, cover them with fresh cold water (unsalted), and bring them to a boil. Simmer until they are mostly done but not too soft. Drain and air dry the potatoes. (If you’re serving these at a dinner, you can stop and store the potatoes in the fridge at this point for as long as you need to, probably up to a couple days.) In the meantime, heat your oven to 375ºF. Once the potatoes are dry (they should feel tacky), brown them in a skillet with a high-smoke-point oil such as canola. You’ll need high heat and several minutes to make sure they pieces are browned on all sides. Roll them around frequently so they don’t burn.

When the potatoes are browned, add a knob of butter, toss it around to coat everything, and place the pan in the oven to roast. Check them after about five minutes. They should be crispy and glistening. Test one for doneness. If they’re very soft inside and crispy outside, drain them and add a heavy pinch of salt immediately while they’re still moist. Sprinkle on some black pepper if you like it, and serve hot.

Greenmarket tour of Brooklyn

Leland — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMT

I spent this Saturday biking around Brooklyn and seeing four of the borough’s biggest Greenmarkets. The tour was arranged by a small outfit called tastebuds, which hosts various happy hours and tours around the city. For the ridiculously low price of $15, a dozen or so motivated bikers had a great day full of food and education.

We started at the McCarren Park market with a nice breakfast of pastries and coffee. Here’s my friend Emily, who’s nervous about riding her bike through traffic but excited about the perfect weather.

From Greenpoint, we made our way back to where I started: the Borough Hall market, where we all got a chance to turn apples into cider. Here’s my friend Anna on the attack:

My favorite part of the tour was listening and talking to Farmer Wilklow of Wilklow Orchards. He runs a farm that’s been in his family since before the Civil War, and he’s got both of his kids stationed at other markets around Brooklyn. Mr. Wilklow has been at Borough Hall since the 80s, and he said that the higher prices he can charge at markets saved his farm. Here he is:

And here is his son (on the right), talking with Chef Nick Morgenstern of The General Greene outside the Fort Greene market.

We spent a good amount of time at this market talking with some of the farmers there, learning about the market’s robust composting program and the challenges faced by composters in cities, and eating delicious cheese from Cato Corner and Consider Bardwell. Here is what the market looks like:

Bellies full, we rolled through Prospect Heights to our final stop, Grand Army Plaza, where Brooklyn’s biggest market was bustling as usual. We settled into the grass for a long chat with Farmer Liz from Cato Corner and a delicious meal of squash soup and grilled hot dogs. I was barely hungry after all the cheese, but five hours of riding demanded a serious meal.

Heidi, who runs tastebuds, did a fantastic job of getting us where we needed to be on time, having people waiting at each stop to talk to us, and feeding us. It was a great way to enjoy what may have been the last warm Saturday of the year.

Mom likes plums

Mom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:55:00 GMT

Is there any fruit more elegant than the plum? Eaten out of hand, a
firm, ripe plum provides an exquisite contrast between the sweet,
juicy flesh and the tart, tangy skin. But at this time of year, when
one can find Italian prune
plums
in abundance, it is a sin not
to cook with them as often as possible. Plums lend a beautiful color
and a certain sophistication to chutneys, jams, fruit butters,
pierogie fillings, cakes, tarts, and coffee cakes.

If you drink alcohol you can find plum wine and the intense plum
liqueur, slivovits. The marketing
genius who renamed prunes
“dried plums” as a way of enhancing their appeal was truly inspired.
If he had been around in the 50s I’m sure my sister, brother, and I
wouldn’t have cried at the breakfast table on those grim mornings that
our mother forced us to eat stewed prunes instead of orange juice
( Us: “But Mommy, we’re thirsty!” Mom: “The prunes are your juice; eat
up!”), because let’s face it, “dried plums” sounds much more
appetizing than “prunes”!

When Jon and Leland were toddlers we lived on a street that had a
small plum tree whose owners held it in such disregard that the fruit
just fell on the ground and rotted. I felt like
Rapunzel’s
mother with her rampion craving as I looked at that tree from across
the street, salivating. I don’t know why I never plucked up my courage
enough to knock on their door and ask for permission to gather the
plums, since they weren’t using them, but I restricted myself to
grabbing a few while out with the boys in their stroller.

Last week our local Whole Foods had a
heap of Italian plums,
from a local farm, at a great price. I bought several pounds of them
and made Maman’s Apple
Tart. I tinkered
with the crust
proportions a bit because I wanted to make a 10-inch tart, and used
about 3 pounds of firm plums, the biggest ones I could find. Look how
beautiful it is!

Home Bar Basics at Astor Center

Leland — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:54:00 GMT

I recently spent a very enjoyable Friday evening at the Astor Center taking a two-hour class called Home Bar Basics. It was taught by two bartenders from PDT, a fancy and secretive cocktail bar somewhere downtown. The idea of the class was to teach people how to start making nice cocktails at home. According to them, it’s cheap and easy to make a drink that would cost $12, even if you use the very best ingredients. The class made six cocktails in total: three in each row, all of which we shared with the person sitting behind or in front of us. The class was $95; buying all six of those cocktails at the bar would probably cost about the same.

The room was gorgeous:

Everything was so well organized. Each station had its own sink and was decked out with an array of shiny bar tools and glasses. I was a little concerned when we got started 15 minutes late, but we finished late too and made up for the lost time. We began with a lecture about ingredients. Fresh is the ticket to good cocktails, said the teachers. We smelled and tasted two liquids to compare their flavors. One was sour mix, the other fresh lemon juice. Of course these guys hate sour mix, and I agree wholeheartedly that to call your liquor at a bar is a waste of money if the bartender will poison it with corn syrup and other chemicals. That’s one reason I usually get a simple drink with soda or just a beer.

The most neglected ingredient in bars around the world is ice. Most bars use what’s called shell ice, which is what I’m used to seeing. It’s those smallish cubes with big divots in the middle. They are cheaper to make but they melt so fast and shatter so easily that you can’t make a proper shaken cocktail with them. The ice we use at home is some of the best there is: it’s in big cubes that are frozen all the way through. So, you already have the most important ingredient! Another neglected but necessary component is bitters. At the very least, you should have a bottle of Angostura in your pantry. You can get it at any grocery store for about $7, and it lasts forever.

We made drinks from the three main families of cocktails: sours, martinis/Manhattans, and old-fashioneds. They explained to us that just about every cocktail is a variation on a basic formula. In the case of sours, you have the base liquor, the sweetener, and the sour part. Margaritas, daiquiris, cosmopolitans, sidecars: all sours. The first drink that my row made was the daiquiri: 2 ounces of rum, 3/4 ounce lime juice, 3/4 ounce simple syrup (a note on the syrup: there’s no need to boil it! Just put equal parts sugar and water in a jar and shake it vigorously, and there’s your syrup.). We made these drinks in Boston shakers, which are awesome. We spent a good deal of the evening learning how to use the shaker: getting the proper seal, breaking the seal, and how to shake safely and correctly.

I had never actually had a daiquiri before, because it seemed like such a cheeseball drink. But it’s fast and easy, and it’s going to be a regular in our house:

We went on to make Manhattans, martinis, and both varieties of old-fashioneds (with muddled sugar and muddled fruit). We learned to stir with a cocktail spoon (harder than it looks) and how to muddle (easier than it looks). The most surprising drink of the night for me was the martini. I had absolutely no idea how smooth and wonderful a well-made martini could be. It doesn’t have to burn!

If you have any interest at all in fancy cocktails, this class will be well worth your time and money. It will run again in December.

Rancho Gordo beans

Leland — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:25:00 GMT

I’ve been wanting to eat more beans at home ever since I took an Italian cooking class last year. Unfortunately the one time I tried preparing dried beans was a complete disaster and it scared me out of giving it another go. I bought what I thought were safe beans: cannellini from Balducci’s. Even after soaking them for a full 24 hours, though, they didn’t soften at all, and after three hours of simmering, they were still as hard as niçoise olives. And I had read the Alice Waters chapter on dried beans, so I basically knew what I was doing. I didn’t add salt or acid or any of the other bean no-nos. I managed to force them through the food mill, and they were somewhat edible as a purée, but I was determined not to relive the experience.

After the easy joy of preparing heirloom cannellini beans from Rancho Gordo the other night, I realized that the beans themselves must make all the difference.

Rancho Gordo is a small outfit run out of California by a guy who’s obsessed with high-quality New World ingredients. He sells a great variety of gorgeous beans in his online store, and I encourage you to place an order if you’re at all interested in cooking beans (tip: it’s a flat shipping rate, so go in with your friends on several pounds).

These cannellini were already softening after being soaked for ten hours. I followed Rancho Gordo’s basic cooking instructions: I sautéed a sliced onion in olive oil with garlic and rosemary, and then added the beans and their water. After about two hours they were completely soft and bursting out of their skins. With a few tablespoons of grated parmesan, it was a sweet and delicious little meal (with a nice green salad). If I get my way, we’ll be eating more beans and less meat this winter.

White fish in bacon with mayonnaise

Leland — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:30:00 GMT

After two years of stressing about my cholesterol reading, yesterday was a day of celebration: my good cholesterol went up 17 points in the last year, and my bad cholesterol went down 17 points. I attribute the improvement to my new bicycle, which has opened up the city to me in ways I never expected, and to generally better eating habits, including regular snacking on prunes and almonds!

On this special day, I wanted bacon. Jamie Oliver has a recipe in his new book for roasted white fish wrapped in bacon, served with lemon mayonnaise and asparagus.

I didn’t spend too much time with the recipe, and I won’t reprint it word for word. I actually had a bit of trouble with the preparation. I think Jamie’s bacon was thin and soft, whereas I had relatively good quality Schaller & Weber to contend with. This bacon takes a while to cook, and it doesn’t shrivel up and harden the way I wanted it to. In any case, you can hardly go wrong wrapping anything with bacon, but if you do make this dish, you can use cheap bacon.

Jamie had me chop up a bunch of fresh rosemary, mix it with lemon zest, and spread it over white fish (I used monkfish) fillets along with salt and pepper. Wrap the fillets in a few strips of bacon. Cook in a skillet in olive oil over high heat for a few minutes, and then finish it in a 400ºF oven. I had to turn on my broiler to get the bacon to brown, but if your bacon is thinner you probably won’t need to bother with that extra heat. It will need about ten minutes in the oven.

On the side, he has you serve simple steamed asparagus with lemon mayonnaise. This was the first time I used my microwave for a vegetable (I’ve only had this appliance for the last two months, since I moved into my Brooklyn apartment). I was positively thrilled with the results: I snapped off the hard ends, put the spears into a glass dish, seasoned with salt and pepper, added a bit of lemon juice and white wine, covered it, and cooked it for about five minutes. It came out soft and flavorful. The mayonnaise was also easy. He suggests whipping lemon juice and pepper into store-bought mayo, but you might as well make it yourself (especially if you’re like me and you’d rather die than eat store-bought mayo). Whisk an egg yolk with a bit of mustard, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Whisk in oil (I use olive oil exclusively, much to the horror of French chefs everywhere), drop by drop at first and increasing to a steady stream, until you have a nice sauce. Make sure it’s very lemony and peppery, and serve it forth.

Blueberry-peach pie

Leland — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:41:00 GMT

A visit from my little brother Calvin and his girlfriend, coinciding with a wonderful bounty of produce at the Borough Hall farmers’ market, prompted me to spend a few hours yesterday making a blueberry-peach pie. I used a recipe from a booked called Bubby’s Homemade Pies, which I’m not even sure how I got. The book seems to have a recipe for every sweet and savory pie you can imagine, and sure enough it had just what I was looking for. One of the authors, Ron Silver, claims that his Bubby’s Pie Company in New York is a “downtown institution,” although I’ve never heard of it. Either way, I give the thumbs-up to this recipe, the first I’ve tried from his book.

That’s kind of a messy slice, but it’s the best I could do out of my deep pie dish. The filling was excellent: jammy, tart, and substantial. The bottom crust would have benefited from five additional minutes in the oven, but I blame my pie dish for that. I served the pie with some softly whipped cream flecked with fresh vanilla.

Blueberry-peach pie

Pastry for a 9-inch double-crust pie
1.5 pounds peaches, peeled and cut in sixths
2 cups blueberries
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
Sugar

(Note: for the dough, I used Alice Waters’s proportions: 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 12 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup ice water.)

Roll out the dough, line the pie pan with the bottom layer, and chill it all in the refrigerator. In a large bowl, gently combine the peaches, blueberries, sugar, flour, lemon zest and juice, vanilla, and salt. Try not to crush the blueberries. Put the filling into the shell and scatter the butter cubes over it. Cover with the second sheet of dough, and chill for 10 minutes in the freezer. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450ºF.

Make a few slits in the crust, and sprinkle the top with sugar. Bake for 10 minutes, until the crust starts to color. Turn down the oven to 375ºF and bake for about 45 minutes more, until the filling is bubbly and the crust is well browned. Cool completely before serving.

TriBeCa Whole Foods

Leland — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Some notes on the TriBeCa Whole
Foods, which I just toured this afternoon: It’s huge, and set up to accommodate families in the area. (Square footage is 69,000, second only to the Bowery location’s 71,000.) It has 13 checkout lines with conveyor belts (the first belts in the city) and 28 express checkout lines set up like others around town. The store offers oyster shucking; the biggest fresh-cut cheese department in town; the most grocery aisles; and a big bulk food section with items like beans, rice, grains, cereal, salt, and pepper. There’s a genji station (for sushi), a pizza station with a Roman-style oven, a Shawarmi station, a big bakery with bread made from scratch on the premises, and a crêpe station on the second floor.

The emphasis here is on local products, of course, and on recycling. The wood on the tables in the café was salvaged from some river in the south where it had been underwater since the 1800s, or some crazy thing like that. They’re really pushing the recycled bags here, and as always you get 10 cents credit for each bag that you bring. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take pictures during the tour, but the main floor of this store is unbelievably big. It’s the most suburban grocery store in the city, and I’ll be there when it officially opens this Wednesday!

Less is more in Brooklyn

Leland — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:17:00 GMT

It’s been just over a week now since I left my vast Harlem kitchen for the comforts of Brooklyn. The allure of private outdoor space was irresistible, but fleeting. With a thousand mosquitoes constantly lying in wait at the backdoor for their meal, I found that I didn’t take advantage of the garden as I might have under other circumstances. That combined with the utter dearth of anything to do or anywhere to shop near where we lived was enough to send us packing after a depressingly short nine-month stint in the neighborhood.

But the irritation of moving twice in one year is overshadowed by the sense of peace and freedom that Nathan and I are finding in Brooklyn Heights. We’re not on the most beautiful or most historic stretch, but we are in a modern apartment in a grand old co-op building. It’s near the subway, Smith Street, and Sahadi’s, and we’ll be staying put for at least five years.

The big change for me is the size of the kitchen. It’s much smaller than the ridiculous space I had in Harlem, although I am in no way complaining. This is an excellent kitchen for New York, and the apartment is small in general. It will just take a bit of time to get used to having one drawer instead of twelve.

The problem really is that that the Harlem apartment’s kitchen was much too big. No rental apartment needs a dozen big drawers and even more cabinets. I had drawers in there with practically nothing in them. I ended up collecting a lot of junk that I had to get rid of upon moving. And then that ridiculous island, which had enough room for eight people to work. It made me disorganized. I found myself using up the entire surface when making a grilled cheese sandwich. There is such a thing as having too much space!

I’ve cooked several times in my little Brooklyn kitchen, and I genuinely enjoy the challenge. Having a bit less room to work forces me to organize myself and be tidy. My whole operation is cleaner and more streamlined. Having a dishwasher helps, and the Viking range makes the whole experience more enjoyable. (The Harlem place was fabulous except for the dinky, generic, piece of junk range that I fought with daily.)

The open storage is surprisingly handy. I’m keeping everything I use all the time there and tucking other items away in the few little cabinets I have. The lowboy fridge and freezer haven’t bothered me yet, although I’m pretty sure I’d rather have more fridge and less freezer. An ice maker wouldn’t be amiss, either.

Overall, this little kitchen is going to whip me into shape. No more collecting useless cooking utensils. No more hoarding pre-ground spices from the early 2000s. No more letting week-old leftovers use up precious fridge real estate. I intend to exit this apartment a more organized man than I was when I entered it.

New Amsterdam Market

Leland — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:38:00 GMT

The third meeting of the the New Amsterdam Market was held today at the South Street Seaport. Even on this scorching day, it was packed with people taking full advantage of the free samples and small bites.

The market had every (high-end) thing from pickles to bread, and from wine to soda. The stand in the picture below was selling small rhubarb popsicles for $4 each.

Even our well documented love of rhubarb couldn’t convince me to shell out $4, though. I did spend a small fortune on a huge loaf of excellent cranberry-pecan bread from Pain d’Avignon in Long Island City, which will make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich.

On a personal note, I’ve finally moved from Harlem to Brooklyn. We should have a post coming up on my new kitchen as soon as I’m unpacked. To everyone who has stuck with Eat through this tumultuous year of 2008: thank you!

Rhubarb pie

Leland — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:57:57 GMT

I made my very first double-crust pie today. Even though it was for Nathan’s 30th (!) birthday, I made my favorite pie: rhubarb.

I used an old Martha Stewart recipe called tartan rhubarb pie, which used a good bit of orange and cardamom. It’s called “tartan” because of the lattice top that it’s supposed to have, and which I chickened out of. I looked at the crust and thought, this is going pretty well so far, let’s not screw it up.

I had never had a straight-rhubarb pie before, without strawberries in it. And though this was totally delicious, I will probably use strawberries next time to tamp down the tartness a bit. Vanilla ice cream helped. Anyway, Nathan was extremely pleased with the entire package.

Chocolate ice cream with salted almonds

Leland — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:10:00 GMT

I use my Kitchen-Aid to make ice cream more than for anything else. The longer I live here the less I cook, and I certainly haven’t found much time for baking. But Nathan won’t let a week go by without begging for ice cream, and it is pretty sweet having a scoop or two of homemade ice cream at night. So I keep up my end of the domestic bargain by churning out a batch a few times a month.

Most of the time, I make Alice Waters’s vanilla-bean version. It’s easy and really good, especially with a tablespoon of bourbon in it. But I do like to mix it up every now and then. The Times recently ran a recipe for a chocolate-chocolate chunk ice cream with salted cashews, which sounded right up my alley. I finally got around to making it yesterday, and it is chewy, salty, and excellent.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I did cut it in half (we could never get through two quarts of ice cream!). I also swapped the cashews for toasted salted almonds, since that’s what I had on hand. I knew I would add a bit of heavy cream at the end to cool the custard quickly, and with that in mind I used five egg yolks instead of four. Finally, I added a tablespoon of bourbon as I always do, to keep ice crystals at bay. For the chocolate, I used a 65% Valrhona. You should get something that smells appealing to you. I prefer chocolate that smells like roasted coffee beans. I hate chocolate that smells or tastes like fruit. I won’t touch a chocolate dessert with fruit in it, and these days they’re always putting a damn raspberry or cherry in your chocolate cake or brownie. Blech!

You’ll want to use a thermometer when you’re preparing the custard. The recipe advises you to heat it until it coats the back of a spoon, but with all that chocolate in there, it coats it pretty well right away. Heat it until it approaches 170ºF, and then strain it quickly into a bowl set over an ice bath.

Onion custard pie

Leland — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:49:00 GMT

The longer you don’t post, the longer you don’t post. This seems to be true in all sorts of activities: getting your hair cut, going to the dentist, replying to an email, relacing your shoes. But I won’t make excuses. I’ve made an incredible onion tart, and I’m putting it on here even if no one reads about it.

If this blog hasn’t convinced you to purchase Alice Waters’s new cookbook, shame on you. It’s the only book in my kitchen right now. I don’t always follow the recipes exactly; sometimes, I open it and skim a few recipes and then I’m off and running. I’ve been making her rustic onion tart pretty regularly, but I wanted to try out the custardy version, Onion Custard Pie.

This takes a lot more time to make than the non-custard version. There’s lots of resting and blind baking of the dough. But it was worth the three hours total that I spent on it. We rejoiced in every salty, fluffy bite. My mouth waters at the thought, and I regret having sent all the leftovers to work with Nathan. Alas, I’ll just have to make it again this weekend.

First you’ll need 10 ounces of dough, the recipe for which you can find in my other post. Roll out the dough to a 12-inch circle. Line a 9-inch tart or pie pan with it, and fold the edges over for a double thickness. Prick the bottom with a fork, and refrigerate for one hour or more.

In the meantime, cook four thinly sliced onions in four tablespoons of butter for at least 30 minutes, until golden brown and soft. Season well, and don’t rush this. When they’re ready, spread them on a plate to cool.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line the dough with a sheet of parchment and fill it with beans or pie weights. Bake until golden at the edge, about 15 minutes. While that’s baking, whisk together 1.5 cups half-and-half, 2 eggs, 2 yolks, 1/2 cup grated gruyère (I had cheddar), salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.

Spread the cooked onions on the bottom of the baked shell, and pour in the custard. Bake at 375ºF for about 40 minutes, or until it’s lightly browned and puffy. Let cool somewhat before eating. Enjoy!

(A note about my life: in the next month, I am getting married, spending two weeks in France, entertaining a parade of house guests, and moving to Brooklyn. Eat activity will remain light. Thanks for your undying loyalty!)