Get in my belly

Here’s where I’ve been the past week:

I would like to declare that I intensely dislike justification. Is that even the right word? “Left/right justification” might be more accurate. I’m editing someone’s writing, and the justification causes the spacing to be all over the map. It interrupts my reading rhythm from one line to the next. The same action that provides a pleasant rectangular format from afar interferes with my reading enjoyment from up close.

Also, can we bring back those email alerts when new posts are uh, posted?

A little pita bread, pizza sauce, cheese and pepperoni.. seems like something I would have put together on an evening when I didn’t want to make anything. It was delicious. I think I’ll make little ghetto pizzas again soon.

Yesterday was farm day at Terra Firma. We picnicked under the pistachio trees, picked strawberries (not too many left in the fields), tomatoes (the cherries you see in the photo), and peppers. I saw the two rows of green beans that produced the beans you also see in the photo.

A few weeks ago, my sister and I drove down from St. Louis to a wedding in Knoxville — a 9-hour trip if you do it all in one go. But we stopped along the way for some local specialties. That is, specialties local to the hinterlands of Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee (we didn’t manage to pull over for anything in southern Indiana). This ultimately meant that the whole trip took 3 days, but I definitely recommend our route. I’ll have to break the recap into several unchronologically ordered posts, so bear with me.

Home for the chicken, away for me

Day 1 lunch/dinner: strong recommendations on Roadfood led us to Bon-Ton Mini Mart (after missing it several times just off the exit from the interstate) in Henderson, Kentucky:

As the sign says, this place serves fried chicken. And fried chicken is why we came.

(Well, also for the beautifully-appointed interior

Anyway, this fried chicken is THE BEST FRIED CHICKEN EVER.

And i mean EVER. (Foo would probably call this crack chicken.) Wanna see it again? Here’s the money shot:

Cooked to order (it takes about 20 minutes), with a thin, supremely crackly crispety and peppery crust, this is one juicy, well-seasoned bird. I’m guessing she probably brines the parts and then bathes them in buttermilk the day before or morning of frying. One key thing is that she uses small chickens — chicken that tastes, well, chickeny. The other key thing is she undoubtedly fries the chicken in lard or butter or both.

And of course, no fried chicken meal is complete without biscuits, fresh from the oven:

That’s steam rising from the biscuits. (Oh, and there was cornbread too. You can see it in the background of the first chicken shot. It’s southern-style, flat and unsweetened, but sweet all on its own from the corn. I think I’ve become a convert. Yankee-style cornbread just doesn’t do the stuff justice.)

And for dessert, some very fine banana pudding (and you get to choose hot or cold — Connie and I got both):

Away for the chicken, home for me

Tuesday night, we assembled at Carla’s house for fried chicken (this time Georgia/Virginia-style, courtesy of Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis):

Fried, yes, in lard and butter (flavored with rendered pancetta), these are from a small bird (or many, i should say, as what bird has 4 thighs?). I tried to make cornbread using artisanal polenta -again-, and -again-, it was, if not a disappointment, not exactly anything Bon-Ton worthy. Even if it resembles a rather impressive lunarscape:

But Carla’s coleslaw was excellent:

And my (or Mark Bittman’s, rather) no-fail biscuits did not, in fact, fail me.

And the gang all together:

Carla’s chicken is just as tantalizingly juicy and tasty as the Kentucky bird and had just as thin and crackly a crust, but there’s something about sitting in a place that looks straight out of a rec room, circa 1978, with mismatched chairs and everything, that just makes the whole fried chicken experience perfect.

Home vs. Away: The winner? Me. Or my fried chicken-filled belly.

So I’m on a hunt for a shop in SF that will sell me a bahn mi laced with crack like the one near A.’s apartment in Chinatown does. I swear, I could spend years living off nothing but that stuff. I haven’t yet made it to Saigon Sandwich shop, which everyone swears by, but the other day I went to the mission to Yucatasian, which as the name would imply, sells Yucatan food along with Vietnamese sandwiches. Interesting combination. I had a pork sandwich for $3 and while it was good, they forgot to add the crack. Also it was probably only 80% of the size. I’ll go back to try the combo sandwich, but I don’t think it will feed the addiction.

[Or, back to our regularly scheduled programming.]

I’ve just gotten back from a whirlwind trip back to the States. It was a much-needed respite from the all kinds of madness going down over here (you’ll see soon enough what I’m referring to). I managed to cover a handful of states and eat all the ethnic food I could stomach (pretty literally, too).

First stop, New York (natch):

Unfortunately, I was still minus a camera (thanks to thieving Italians in the forgettable town of Calliano, who made off with not only the camera a little more than a month ago, but also my passport and many beloved items I’d picked up here and there over the years). Luckily, the bastards took my Canon S110, which might as well have been like taking photographs with twigs and a mirror. Or something. No, I’m joking: it was a great camera and I’ll miss it very much, but six years actually yields some pretty significant leaps in technology, according to Moore’s law (or what we like construe from it), not to mention significant reductions in size. I’m still working out how to get the best results from the new guy, so bear with me.

Anyway, to get to the original point, I wasn’t able to get any photo coverage of my first 10 meals back in the States, which included arepas at the ever-reliable Caracas Arepa Bar; northern Thai, Jakartan, and southwestern Chinese all different storefronts on the same block on Whitney Ave./Broadway (Elmhurst, Queens) and all for the same lunch; dinner at Blue Hill Stone Barns (lovely surroundings, overly intellectual food); Afghani (again, Elmhurst); an omakase throwdown at Sushi of Gari; and I don’t even remember what else at this point. Here’s what I do have:

The menu and view at Pegu Club, one of my favorite new hang-outs in Manhattan. I am totally into this cocktail renaissance that going on (also loved Little Branch), with an obsessive focus (on the part of the bartenders/mixologists) on ingredient sourcing according to season, home-brewed tinctures, infusions and the like, and the perfectly crafted, perfectly refreshing libation. What’s great about Pegu is its lack of pretension — that is, given its location and aesthetic aspirations, the place could be a whole lot snobbier, much less chill, much less comfortable and way too scene-y. But it’s not. It’s old school in the best sense of the phrase. And I’ll be back for sure. They also make some ridiculously beautiful ice cubes.

Two of the many reasons to go: in the foreground we’ve got the Jasmine-Peach Fizz. I forget what’s in the background, but it was even better than my I also got the Gin-Gin Mule.

While in town, I also hit up Xiao La Jiao (Little Pepper) in Flushing, per Sietsema’s recommendation with Our Fearless Critic and a slew of friends. The place was totally empty on Sunday at lunch, there is little to no English spoken here, and the middle-aged waitresses tried to steer us towards dishes they thought the white folks would be more comfortable with. Little did they realize who they were dealing with here.

Fried radish and boiled peanuts with chile peppers.

Dan dan mian: wonderfully textured noodles, firm with just the right little amount of resistance to the bite.

Clockwise, from 12 o’clock: tea-smoked duck, radish and peanuts, boiled peanuts. I’m missing at least five other dishes from this meal, including some delectably spicy intestines, stewed tripe and bean thread noodles. But this was the one we ordered seconds of after polishing off just about everything else on the table:

i’m ridiculously far behind on everything. but to cross off at least one thing from my list, here’s the recap of what andy and i sampled last time we were in new york (in august!):

and a quick link to end: winnie’s prob. already seen this, but i randomly came across a whole page with patterns for food to knit. knock yourself out!