Get in my belly

I pickled ramps yesterday morning. To be opened and enjoyed in January 2009, or whenever winter desperation sets in.

Dear Pope,

Why would you come all the way to New York City and eat Italian food?

I guess it must be a catholic thing.

Next time you’re in town, I recommend hitting up Momofuku. You might not be able to get into Ko, but Ssam Bar on a Monday or Tuesday night isn’t bad.

Sincerely,
Winnie

PS. Nice ride you got there.

Sunday morning (okay, okay: afternoon), WKCR’s bluegrass followed by country, and breakfast sandwiches of pan-fried Benton’s country ham steak, eggs (fried in ham drippings, naturally), and Bittman’s yogurt biscuits. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Having the C/Karls around has done wonders for my cooking. I do more of it. And it’s more inspired. And I think nothing of having an impromptu Wednesday-(or Monday, or any) night dinner party these days.

It’s also done wonders for my eating: Carl makes no-knead bread twice a week. And his granola is not only orders of magnitude tastier and costs a quarter the price of the store-bought kind, it also makes the apartment smell like a coconut paradise (personal horn-tooting: I try to contribute to the ambient coconut fragrance by making toasted coconut ice cream every other week). Karl has made it his mission to conquer cookies of all kinds, starting with the molasses cookie:

Three trials later, the Cook’s Illustrated orange zest-sugar topped specimen has emerged the winner. (Alice Waters’s version was a total baking soda-saturated disappointment.)

And cooking with Carl has pleasantly surprised me in many little ways; I’ve learned a lot from him. Mostly about being openminded about solving problems. (I’ve forgotten how to be an engineer.) For example: I’m pretty religious about getting good salted, high-butterfat-content butter for my bread (unsalted for cooking and baking), and what with all the bread in the house these days, we go through butter like you wouldn’t believe. And of course, one day we were out of all the salted kind, and Carl just picked up the Maldon and shook it all over the butter — which, of course, worked like a charm. Totally obvious, perhaps, but though I know all about compound butters, I, for whatever reason, felt constrained to only letting the buttermaker put the salt in my butter. And I’m pretty sure a lot of other food people are the same (corroborate or refute, please?). Also, though Carl maintains that he’s a pretty strict recipe guy, he’s come up with some pretty brilliant things recently. Tonight, for instance:

Chickpeas with sautéed sliced garlic, cilantro, black olives, anchovy paste, lemon juice, and mustard seeds. So, so tasty.

Living with the C/Karls means there is no going hungry. Not that I ever had that problem.

who gets the heebie-jeebies from fractals in cruciferous form. Everything’s better as a cookie, right? And I thought I had too much time on my hands. [via CHOW]

I was about to write the following sentence: If you get the chance, catch the Eels on their current tour. But then I checked their tour dates and it turns out they’ve already hit the east coast. Joyce, you can still go see it this week.

They played at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theatre, which I’ve never been to before. I knew vaguely where it was, but I didn’t realize it was the same building as the Exploratorium. The ticket people let us take our burritos into the lobby and we bought cold beer and life was good. The venue itself is pretty drab but full of cushy seats, and as soon as I sat down, I said, “This would be a great spot to watch a movie.”

And then the lights went down and the movie started. Really. (My friend leaned over and whispered, “Next time you should wish winning the lottery.”) The opener was a movie about E’s father who, as a graduate student, invented/discovered (the different between these two concepts is not clear to me when it comes to theoretical physics or math) the concept of parallel universes. Seriously. I looked it up on Wikipedia so it must be real. The film, Parallel Lives, Parallel Universes, was made for the BBC, and it’s worth seeing if you get the chance. The show was great too, a sweet-and-sad rock show with a dose of melodramatic rock opera. We were sitting in the center, six rows back, and it felt incredibly intimate even though 1,000 people were sitting behind us. Storytime with a crazy guy, his friend, and a circle of musical instruments.

The sizzling sisig at Grill 21 (in Manhattan!). The meal I had at Karihan Ni Tata Bino (RIP — it has since become a pretty good Burmese restaurant, and may even have morphed into something else at this point; I’m behind on my Jackson Heights eating) more than three years ago apparently lives so vividly in my memory that I knew right away that we should get this dish, an unctuous combination of chopped up pig ears and belly. With a raw egg mixed in. Because hey, what the hell. The pleasingly mouth-coating, saucy consistency most likely comes from the egg mixed with the belly as it renders on the scorchingly hot plate.

I also remembered to get the lovely, lovely laing, which is taro leaves cooked down in coconut milk. Both dishes make great leftovers. In fact, I went to bed dreaming about having them over rice for breakfast.

Strangely bland: the kare kare, an oxtail stew. Which we left mostly untouched.

Strangely good: halo halo. With purple yam ice cream and all sorts of funny little jujubes, chickpeas, and gummy treats buried inside.

Can’t wait to go again. Can’t believe Marisa and Vero live a BLOCK from this joint. I would go once a week. And also order takeout ALL THE TIME. And I would get real fat, because they do pork belly at least eight different ways.

Dear Rabbit,

I totally thought I was going to fall in like with you. Not only did you play a little hard to get, resulting in a special trip to Victors Meat & Deli that was unexpectedly charming, but you came well recommended, in Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Tarts With Tops On and well-appointed: in a pie. Although to be honest, what caught my eye wasn’t “rabbit pie” as much as “then stuff the prunes with rabbit liver and kidneys.” I’ve always wanted to stuff a prune. On top of that, a very informative 76th issue of Art of Eating piqued my interest. I was sold on your potential awesomeness.

And yet, I’m not sure we really hit it off. We had some good times—what’s not to like about some morbid bunny humor and a makeshift lesson over the pot in small animal anatomy?—and my friends liked you, but I found you kind of… boring. You had an initial taste of the sweetly gamy and enough of an interesting texture, but after a while I found myself more interested by your accoutrements than in the gustatory conversation I could have with you. And here’s the worst part.

You kind of taste like chicken.

There, I said it. I’m a total philistine. Maybe it was the recipe and not you, and maybe we just didn’t really click this time. But I think if I don’t fall for you in a pie, chances are I probably won’t entertain thoughts of you in my kitchen any time soon. Maybe at a restaurant though with expert preparation. So check me undecided. I’m not giving up hope though. Until next time.

best,

joyce.

p.s. rest assured, you’re still the most bizarre thing (alive) that i’ve seen in a nyc subway car though.

The Italians have panini, the Australians have jaffles, in England we have toasties, and now it turns out there is an American equivalent: the hobo pie.

It’s a simple idea. Take a sandwich and toast it. Nothing so very remarkable about that. But if, instead of a crappy Hamilton Beach toaster oven you utilize a cast iron sandwich clamp, and instead of an HB electric filament the sandwich is toasted on the hot coals of an open campfire, what initially may seem like an exercise in culinary banality becomes transformed into a small slice of food heaven (assuming, of course, that heaven is sliceable — as it assuredly must be given the propensity of pie to transport the human soul to a condition of celestial rapture).

Getting the correct raw materials is, as always, essential. You will need a pie iron. This is an inexpensive cast iron sandwich clamp on the end of two long sticks that bears more than a passing resemblance to certain medieval Spanish torture devices. Next you will need some bread. It is absolutely paramount that the bread is of the bleached and tasteless variety. Don’t get all fancy and start using stuff that has been baked. You need the white stretchy kind that has been steamed free of all nutrients. Finally you will need some sort of filling, and this is where it gets fun.

I’m told that the canned apple pie filling will create a hobo pie that is similar in texture and taste to those apple pies you get in McDonald’s. I can neither confirm nor deny the validity of this claim. I can, however, report that a filling of pasta sauce and Mozzarella will produce the finest calzone you have ever set your lips around. Add some sausage and basil and instantaneous ecstasy is unavoidable. For the morning hobo I recommend a filling of prefried bacon, scrambled eggs, and some slices of American cheese, served with a pool of ketchup on the side. For the dessert hobo, how about a filling of broken crumbs of Graham Crackers, marshmallows and chocolate? Or banana slices interleaved with white chocolate? The truth of the matter is that more or less anything will be good in these delectable parcels of gooey splendor; the challenge is to find the filling that most adequately satisfies your palate at a given moment.

The real genius of the hobo pie, however, is in the wonderful alchemy that converts the base metal of the bread into wonderful nuggets of pure gold. The word “toast” here is wildly misleading, nor does the “pie” of hobo pie adequately signify this particular crust. Quite what happens when the metal of the pie iron meets the hot coals of the campfire I could not possibly conjecture, but it is an extraordinary, magical change of state that transforms the insipid bread into a crispy pocket of divine manna. It is the sort of conversion that encourages a reevaluation of the existence of the Infinite. Perhaps that whole water-into-wine myth has something to it after all.

Dear Microwave,

I’m sorry about all the mean things I’ve said about you over the years. To your face, even. They were nasty, uncalled for, and only somewhat true.

I really did, for the longest time, think I didn’t need you, that you just took up a lot of needless space, that you would lure me into your nefarious, cheating ways and away from my true love, Good Honest Cooking Over a Stove.

I realize now, and I have McGee and Bittman to thank for it, that I was underestimating you all this time. You’re good for so much more than just reheating rice. You make some amazing eggplant curry. And with a minimum of fuss!

Just like every other appliance in the kitchen, you too have your own special talents that you bring to my table. And instead of turning up my nose, I really should have welcomed you into my home. And I am sorry for that. For all the wasted time we’ve been apart.

I hope you’ll forgive me, Microwave. I’ll always leave room on the shelf for you. Bygones?

Yours,
Winnie

P.S. I will never again make fun of Joyce for relying so heavily on you.