Flavors 518

This past spring I went to Germany for the first time on a work trip. It felt good to see some world, the arts people we were working with were incredibly hospitable, and I left with a warm impression of the German people in general (despite pretty much constant reminders of certain grim parts of their history in the forms of monuments and memorials all around the city, which I wasn't sure how to deal with). I also don't know a lick of German, which was fine because the German people often know English, but the Turkish people only know German so at some Turkish restaurants and second hand shops I had to resort to awkward gestures, which was all in all makes one appreciate what it is to be a foreigner in any land - a foreigner in this country for instance. It's certainly not easy. Anyways, on the way back I unexpectedly got stuck in Paris for a night. It's hard to explain what a natural and easy connection I have with French culture/food/language. Part of it might be t...

Ms. Garlic and I never go out for Valentine's Day, which even if you can get into your restaurant of choice tends to involve prix fixe specials that are inferior but substantially more expensive than the restaurant's typical menu.  And a restaurant meal budget can get you some very fancy ingredients for a home meal, so we prefer that. Back in February, I made rack of lamb for the anniversary.  I use Thomas Keller's recipe , which reminds me of our honeymoon (we spent part of it in Northern California, and while Keller's most famous restaurant is far beyond our means we did eat at the much more affordable and still excellent bistro Bouchon .)    I pretty much follow the recipe as is, although as with most restaurant recipes about half the butter in the rub works fine.  You combine anchovy, garlic and butter with a mortar and pestle (or food processor -- we did the former, thanks Ms. Garlic for the mortaring and pestling!), add bread crumbs and herbs.  S...

A couple years ago I read Rules of Civility by Amor Towles over the holidays and somehow got this idea that New Year's Eve meant trolling through a Jazz Bar in a seedy corner of 1930s Manhattan about to make so many different choices that will profoundly effect one's life for all the years to come, preferably wearing pearls and silk and drinking champagne. Well, there times in life when your choices are made gradually and flow like a river into other choices, and sometimes there are no choices to be made at all, except always the choice to continue on one's set path or to alter it ever so slightly in ways you don't even notice yourself until much later. Also, what is actually wrong with pajama pants New Year's Eve? To which I bring you to old and married New Year's Eve. Old and Married New Year's Eve includes the delicious Love Boat dish pictured above.  We went to Tomo in Slingerlands. Its a great place in general, and the staff is always efficie...

Our Thanksgiving festivities really started on Tuesday night when I drove up to Oscar's Adirondack Smokehouse in Warrensburg to pick up our boneless half ham. It easily fed five adults and two kids with plenty leftover. It was an easy drive from Saratoga where I am now working, and the shop was very cool to visit. They have all kinds of cured meats, cheeses, and sauces. I also picked up some summer sausage that we added to our charcuterie plate (filled with other goodies from The Cheese Traveler ). My new coworkers seemed to find my ham errand very funny and referred to me as a courier (as one is to valuable paintings that travel from an art museum). They also asked me if I put a seat belt around the ham, which wouldn't have been that crazy considering how great their products are. It was a really delicious ham, and totally worth the trip up there (you can also purchase Oscar's products at Roma Foods and Cardona's ). Rounding out our Thanksgiving table ( what no tu...

 The week before last week, we went to the Magnetic Fields show at Club Helsinki in Hudson. I hadn't really been to Hudson before outside of an Amtrak car, and I'd always heard great things about it. You can just get tickets to see the music, but it is way classier to get a table and eat dinner while you watch the show. Also, the menu is great . It is Southern inspired and makes use of local, seasonal ingredients. I got their first and ordered a glass of Pinor Noir which was very tasty, and some of the fried okra with a Cajun remoulade to start. I happen to love okra done right, and this dish had a nice corn meal crust which wasn't greasy at all. I took in the surroundings, like what I imagine the Copacabana to have been like in some far off past decade. Scott showed up and we got some of the delicious beers from nearby Chatham Brewing . For dinner, I got the Helsinki burger, which was really juicy and "topped with applewood smoked bacon,  roasted portobel...

Where does summer go? When you are a kid, it stretches on with no end in sight.  Below is a photo from my teenage lifeguarding days. Is that Sun-in ? You mean like the disgusting comb-in hair lightener/fryer? Why, yes it is! Just awful! But as an adult with brunches, BBQs, business trips, and countless hours spent working in an office in front of a computer screen (not sunbathing while reading a book), it seems like you eat a few amazing tomatoes and it is gone. Its hot. It can be sticky. You can forget why you are doing what you are doing, and why you were so enthusiastic about it in the first place. (As a side note - if you lose your faith in food blogging , this post alone can restore it almost completely .) A day can end with a coworker calling you, you both recalling something so frustrating that you both just end up laughing until you are almost crying out of crazy satire. Then, when you think of it later while walking down the street, you crack up laughing again becau...

I was told John Roberts would force me to do this: Fortunately, broccoli stir-frys are terrific.   Adam Gopnik has more tips to deal with our scary new constitutional era.

 What a nice weekend! There was beautiful weather. There's Wachusett Summer , and the crazies are on Bridezillas. Also - "Mad Men" finale (What?!).  First off, I decided to take advantage of the skills I learned at my ravioli class . I sauteed some shallots and added mushrooms. Then, I mixed in some salt and pepper, chives, ricotta, a little bit Adams Reserve cheddar and a couple of eggs.  I spotted some Hodgson Mill pasta flour on Friday afternoon, and when I made that into ravioli it really created a different texture than just using regular flour. I think half semolina and half regular flour might give the best texture though. I'll have to do some experimenting. The pasta was great. It felt like a very fancy dinner. Problem was, I totally overestimated the amount of filling I would need, and ended up with a whole big bowl of mushroom filling. I woke up the next day not wanting it to go to waste. I tried my hand at making crepes from the Silver Spoon...

Chicken Kiev -- butter filled fried breasts of chicken -- deserved its fashionable status in mid-century America based on taste.   But in another sense it deserves its contemporary degraded status as food for hospitals and bad dorm cafeterias.   Tasty the classic recipe may be, but unhealthy is also is.       Fortunately, Jacques Pepin has a solution.   The lovely and gifted Ms. Garlic purchased his new Essential Pepin for my birthday, and the title ain't lyin'.   Among the book's many virtues is that Pepin has a good instinct for knowing when tweaks to classic dishes can eliminate fat and calories without major sacrifices of flavor.   His updated Chicken Kiev -- baked, not fried, and with a filling from which butter can be reduced to taste -- is a perfect example. Nor is it difficult.    Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.    Melt a little butter in a skillet over medium heat, and add one large...

We went over to Colonie Center for me to look for an outfit to wear for a presentation I am giving at a conference in Washington, D.C. next week. I don't know what to wear. It is going to be 81 degrees, and I always remember D.C. being humid in the spring when I was younger. But, to complicate things they may have air conditioning on inside the conference. Part of me just thinks I should wear my usual "job interview outfit", like this: But then I think, I definitely don't want to be wear heels while running around a city and a conference, and I don't want to be hot. Perhaps just black pants and a loose fitting top? Perhaps a comfortable dress and a blazer? I just don't know. I tried on half of New York and Co. and they just seemed to have a lot of what I already have. Any advice? I have pretty much always struggled with the "how to be professional and stay cool in the summer?" question. Anyways, so our friend was talking about the cheddar bisc...

It has been a long running joke between Scott and me that we have too much pasta. He ate pasta a lot more as a bachelor, and I have always felt like we had pasta coming out of our ears, pasta falling out of every cabinet, pasta taking over our lives. So I put it all in airtight containers and mason jars, and then he said he didn't know how long to cook all of it because they weren't in their boxes anymore, so now we just have tons of pasta we don't use. He used to love Raffetto's in NYC , and never stopped talking about how he could not find a place to buy fresh pasta in Albany. So partially as a pasta joke, and partially for practically reasons, I bought him a class at Different Drummer's Kitchen for Christmas to learn how to make fresh pasta . Then, we had a coupon to Different Drummer's that we got from having our wedding registry there, and with that we purchased a pasta making machine . Pasta making turns out to be the most fun ever. I used Mario Battali...

I am generally not a fan of "restaurant weeks,"  which are theoretically a good deal but in my experience tend to offer 1)a prix fixe of the least interesting items on the menu at only a marginal discount (and if, like me, you generally are indifferent about and skip dessert, no discount at all) or 2)reduced portions of the least interesting items on the menu.   But our friend Jessica R. was organizing a Restaurant Week outing and there were a couple good options (although I agree having it at a tavern sort of defeats the purpose.)   So we decided to try the Brown Derby , which we had wanted to visit for a while but hadn't yet. The meal was very good, and epitomized what Restaurant Week can be at its best.   It was, first of all, a genuine bargain, a three-course meal that certainly didn't skimp on portion sizes for less than the usual price of the entrees alone.    Even for those of us who can almost always take or leave the dessert, that's a...

We wanted to do something nice for Easter dinner, so we decided to visit one of our favorites. It's always nice to be back to the Grand Street landmark , and while perhaps because of the holiday most of the familiar faces weren't around our server Charity was excellent. There was an Easter prix-fixe that was tempting, particularly since one of the entree choices was lamb with artichoke and fennel. But we both decided to order a la carte. For the appetizers, we went with Italian classics. We split the greens and beans Passannante, which we had never had here before although it's one of my favorites. It was divided into two portions for us: A very nice balance between firm white beans and butter greens, with a tasty broth. We also split an even more banal appetizer, a caprese salad: This is all about the ingredients, and given how rare it is to get tasty, juicy tomatoes at this time of year it was a godsend. The homemade mozzarella is also terrific. For the main...