That you Mom?

I’ll admit, when Fred told me to meet him at the Greater Boston Buddhist Cultural Center in Cambridge, I was skeptical. I don’t try to force my pighead-eating ways on vegetarians, as much as it saddens me to know that they’re missing out on the sweet pleasures of dining on the animal kingdom, and I tend not to cook much flesh at home these days, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you about any vegetarian restaurants I particularly like. But the little homespun canteen inside the Buddhist Center was a total surprise.

It’s the only place I’ve ever eaten food that tastes like my mom’s cooking. Not remotely like it — JUST like it. With a forkful of those turnip cakes in my mouth, or some of those mustard greens or pressed tofu, and my eyes closed, I can almost hear her asking whether I’ve practiced violin yet or why I didn’t get the highest score on the calculus test.

Which is to say: it’s really, really good. I could eat an entire childhood’s worth of meals here.

(It’s kind of ironic that I would find my mom’s cooking at this vegetarian restaurant. She never shies away from adding bacon to anything. And in fact, her turnip cakes almost always have bacon in them. But there must be some other magic Mom-ingredient that I’ve never found in the cupboard. And that’s probably why I never try to cook any of her food at home; it just never tastes the same.)

BTJs and bugs: or, Tosci lives on with a few surprises

For whatever reason, Toscanini’s brunch still flies under the radar in Beantown. I don’t know why, since everyone should be queuing up for the

BTJ: Bacon, tomato jam, and scallion oil sandwich. It’s a genius combination. In fact, I’m kicking myself for not making any tomato jam last summer, because I would otherwise be making myself one of these sammies right now.

And while Tosci’s made the local paper again with its ice cream-for-entomophages, I have to say I’m not going to be lining up for the waterbug ice cream.

Which actually tastes just like strawberry, since that’s the base. I’ll eat it, happily, but strawberry’s never really been a favorite flavor of mine either. The chapulines, however, I can do without completely. Chocolate covered or not, grasshoppers taste weirdly, funkily — I would almost say stomach-turningly — sour.

Refrigerator raid: Mark (Special Cookbook Edition)

Not bad for a postdoc.

Name: Mark
Age: 31
Location: Cambridge, MA
Occupation: Scientist
Grocery shops: once every three weeks
Cooks: once every two weeks
Eats out: every meal
Favorite condiment: ketchup, Inner Beauty hot sauce (other habanero sauces close behind)
Favorite beer: anything cask conditioned or Harpoon IPA
Favorite takeout: pad thai
Grossest thing in there: when the potatoes soupify inside and become a loose bag filled with nasty smelling liquid and then you pick them up and the bottom sticks and the skin tears and the nasty liquid pours out. I have smelled nothing worse in my whole life. Not in there now, but once upon a time…

There’s Bolognese sauce he made in there. Cheeses on the top shelf: “Some good gruyère, 2-year-old yummy Manchego from Cardullo’s in Harvard Square, and some other random things but all good steady mild/dry/salty/sharp stuff. I don’t really do blue cheese.”

Not pictured: A LOT of chocolate all around Mark’s apartment.

My favorite part of Mark’s apartment is his cookbook shelf:

Two shiksas walk into 2nd Ave Deli…

(That has some potential doesn’t it? Any takers?)

Steven is right; going to 2nd Ave Deli twice in one week is a formidable undertaking, but I made out alright. My first and last visit to their old location was unremarkable, and I remember thinking that I much preferred Katz’s. I still prefer Katz’s pastrami (though 2nd Ave slices better, Jeremy points out), but there’s something special about 2nd Ave, even if it’s now closer to the Garment District than to Shmatte Central. I think it’s the Jewish-grandmother service: if you’re waiting for a table or just hanging around and not yet seated, someone is bound to come by and offer you some chopped liver spread on rye. Or on your way out they might make sure you put some rugelach in your pocket. It’s this instinct to feed that I love.

Also, the matzo ball soup is solid. I love that the pour-soup-at-the-table service was always standard practice here, long before it became such a ritualized flourish at haute places all over. Lovely, light matzo balls.

The one food I’ve always claimed to dislike is nervetti, an Italian dish of boiled calf’s foot that’s served as a cold, stiff, onion-flavored jelly with meat bits, but I think I’ll have to take that back; ptcha is the Jewish equivalent, and I couldn’t stop eating it. Especially with the red horseradish.

I also had kreplach for the first time. And I don’t think I’ll be having it again here any time soon.

But the chopped liver? Their chopped liver is the best. I’ll eat it any time.

hodgepodge of goodness

I’ve recently had a flurry of food-related activities that I wanted to share with you all—a slice of the LA good life, if you will. In celebration of Kate’s birthday, Kristin and Debbie (of Evil Wives Productions) threw her a German-themed party, aka Katefest. Which included: four different kinds of tasty sausage including some spectacular weisswurst; red cabbage that transcended the category vegetable; imported sauerkraut; candied bacon (!); a Mar Vista caucus to determine whether Debbie’s German chocolate cake or Kristin’s Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte was better; and rousing beer stein-holding competitions to see which graduate students could withstand the pain to achieve eternal fame and glory (i failed ignominiously). Good times, good people. I’m considering asking the Evil Wives for a North Korean party of my own.

Other good times with good people: my first trip to Din Tai Fung where I discovered that the soup dumplings I’ve had before were supersized; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s community weekend opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum where we felt like we were at Ikea (sorry Renzo) but were again moved by Richard Serra’s Band; and the return of porkday, this time featuring a tourtière wherein ground pork, beef, onions, various spices, and some leftover portobellos were browned, shoved into a pie-crust with some creative porcine venting, then shoved into an oven, and then shoved into our greedy mouths. Plans for a Melton Mowbray pork pie showdown are in the works.

p.s. Trader Joes has had a plethora of awesome packaged fruit, including freeze-dried mangosteen!

Tasty salted pig parts

Exhibit A.

Salt-roasted pork loin I made for Carl and Karl. It’s The Week‘s reprint of Russ Parsons’s recipe in the LA Times (whose site isn’t pulling up the recipe). I don’t know why I’ve never used this method before; it is easy. The hardest part is making sure you have about a pound of salt lying around to make the paste you’ll need to cover the loin. All you have to do is thoroughly brown the pork on all sides, mix the salt with some rosemary and enough water to make a paste (which isn’t all that much water, it turns out; better less than too much, I discovered, since it won’t stick if too wet). Roast for 20 minutes at 400F. (Wednesday Chef actually has the recipe. I did my potatoes separately, which was fine.)

Exhibit B.

Another reason to live in the Bay Area. As if you didn’t already have the Berkeley Bowl, June Taylor Jams, Rancho Gordo, and Cowgirl Creamery.

Cosentino is a man after my own heart.

Gong xi fa cai

I’m celebrating Chinese New Year over on the WNYC blog series (Welcome, by the way, if you made it over here from there).

The latest: They’ll make you rich, and they’re tasty too

I was fortunate enough yesterday to get to celebrate CNY with Ed Schoenfeld, noted authority on food (and Chinese food in particular). He suggested Chinatown Brasserie, where he’s a consultant and where he installed Joe Ng, genius dim sum master, formerly of World Tong in Bensonhurst.

Ed is a font of anecdotes, restaurant lore, and dining advice. I learned that you should go to dim sum early — not, as I had always mistakenly assumed, because of the lines that form later on, but because the food starts to get old, tired, and stale. Go at 11.30am, and you’re sure to get the fresh stuff. (The chef’s been there since 5am.) I also learned that the optimal way to get a lock on those tricky little xiao long bao without puncturing them and losing that precious soup is to dip your chopsticks in the vinegar sauce, then pick one up. Also, the best way to achieve a nice firm texture and added flavor when you fry enormous Puget Sound oysters is to blanch them first in salty water.

Ed believes that Joe belongs right up there in the chef firmament with Keller, Boulud, Vongerichten, and the rest. That Joe is three-star Michelin material. And I don’t know that I disagree. This is pretty amazing dim sum.

This could be like the New Yorker cartoon caption contest

Only, you know, no cartoon.

We had aft; this is fore.

Caption, anyone?

How to make chicken stock, step 1

Roast your chicken.

(Should this be considered NSFW?)

Uni, East Coast

I don’t know if Masato-san reads the blog or what (chances are, no), but maybe he just knows I have a weakness for the creamy, briny, ambrosial custard that is sea urchin. When I was at 15 east last week, he set this in front of me and said: “Japanese sea urchin on the right, California on the left.” And this is one of the many reasons why I think 15 east is among the best sushi restaurants in NYC right now. This is another.