If you really love me …

… you’ll get me an emu egg from Whole Foods. So much more fun than Hallmark.

When the boardwalk was vapors-inducingly crowded one blazing day last summer, we ducked into Astroland and bought cold beers and hot Italian sausage. Lulled, I guess, by the premature Coney Island obituaries of the year before, I didn’t take this photo thinking of souvenirs. I was just revelling in how good the sausage and beer tasted, and appreciating how relaxed and smooth the cook was on his grill despite the mayhem and cotton candy around him. (And seriously, shades? That’s soignee.)

But now that’s that, for real this time. For the last couple of weeks pictures have been popping up of the demolition of Astroland - rocket ship, Dante’s devil’s head and all. Well, not quite all: they’re leaving the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel, and Thor Equities say they will be bringing in new rides. I relish a little tradition with my hot dogs, however, and the fact that Astroland is getting the Extreme Makeover treatment doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t want to buy my sunstruck snacks from just another plastic franchise. I like the idea of that grill grate being slowly seasoned with carbonized sausage particles since the park first opened in 1962. I like the idea that for four decades a sausage and a cold beer were the flavor of surviving a ride on the Top Spin, or of my first grown-up birthday party in New York, or of a cheap date or a family day out, and they were enough - delicious, in fact - just the way they were. Overly romantic nonsense? Maybe. But why are we so afraid to let anything get old any more?

frangipane tart with blueberries, cherries, raspberries and a heady dash of optimism

The grand launch of t&t’s pickles (with bloody marys) had to be postponed. The mother of one of the t’s started trying to leave Portland, Oregon on the Monday before Christmas, and finally arrived four days later. However, a rescheduling has been promised once everyone has recovered from holiday travel trauma, so watch this space. There Will Be Pickles.

For those of you (like my friend GiGi - did you get any feeling back in your tongue yet, dear?) who are not familiar with the sinus-blasting power of Colman’s Original English Mustard, a primer. This is industrial grade stuff: it is medal-winning, 195 years old, the essential ingredient of Dickensian cold cures, and the reason why Victorian mustard pots are so damn small. Mix it with water to reconstitute, do NOT inhale carelessly while the tin is open, or rub your eyes until you have put the lid back on and washed your hands. And most importantly, do not assume that just because it looks like standard American deli mustard, you can slather it around with the same abandon. Proceed with caution and measure in microns. Now that the dire warnings are issued, let me say that it is the best imaginable condimentary dab for really good sausage or cold roast beef. It also makes an amazing crust for a roast when mixed with flour, salt and pepper, and a pinch or two in a plain vinaigrette gives a lovely zing and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar. Colman’s was standard issue in our house, as was the gag “screaming snake in a Colman’s jar” that lurked in the pantry and adrenalized the mustard quests of me and my sister for years. Maybe the theory was that making a seven year old jump out of her skin before she sat down to eat her bangers would help her develop the constitutional fortitude needed to eat the stuff (once she stopped hyperventilating and found the real jar) without a fire extinguisher handy.

best stocking stuffer this year: thanks, Santa!

It’s cold out there, it’s a little mad everywhere, and the holidays are upon us. I hope everyone is taking a break from the wide world to relax over food, with conversation. Emphasis on the relax part: holiday feasts are much more fun if they are not solo performances, so set aside your inner prima donna and delegate to the nearest and dearest. Early and often.

Coming soon from the particulars: the bloody-mary-buoyed grand launch of t&t’s pickles, and adventures in unearthing several generations of family kitchenware as I move into a new apartment. Yee-haw, 2009.

anarchist parsnip wins right to self-expression

The European Union’s Agriculture Commissioner has finally repealed Common Agricultural Policy standardization requirements for 26 fruits and vegetables, opening grocery shelves to free-spirited carrots and nonconformist cucumbers. The rationale behind the regulations in the first place was that existing trading standards across all the member countries had to be brought in line with each other when the EU was first formed. In retrospect it seems clear that the price has been a shocking level of food waste, and space-maximizing convenience for the shippers and supermarkets at the expense of choice and education for consumers.

The Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, says on her own blog “It makes no sense to throw perfectly good products away, just because they are the ‘wrong’ shape.” Ms Boel is a farmer herself and makes it clear that taste comes first, especially in the face of soaring food costs. I can only assume that this shift will also clear another obstacle for small, less mechanized farms and organic farmers who have had to watch their knobbly veg be discarded or sold for “processing” at a lower price.

Of course, the USDA has its own fantastic reams of rules and regulations, including a 14 page pdf (downloadable, for a little light reading) on the appropriate curvature for American Greenhouse Cucumbers and instant outlaw status for our wee friend on the right in the photo up there. But worms are turning, heirloom tomatoes are leading the charge, and we’ll see what our shiny new President-Elect has to say about all this. I wonder if he’s heard Michael Pollan’s clarion call for common sense (see below)?

In the meantime, in the interests of all our sanity, and of maintaining our appreciation of the wonky, go and visit Uli Westphal’s gallery of beauties, all rescued from the scarlet letter shame of being “non-standard” and transformed into luscious glowing pin-ups.

Everyone should have friends who are constantly on the hunt for the perfect pickle. They take aim at the pick of the Union Square farmers’ market, armed with ridiculous quantities of vinegar, a crate of mason jars, and an ever-evolving family recipe. I was allowed to assist last weekend, and thus become an initiate into the Way of the Pickle. I could tell you the secret, but then I wouldn’t get invited over for the tasting ceremony in three months’ time and, well, there will be bloody marys. Priorities.

baby carrots, persian cucumbers and a peck of peppers

*and yes, if you get this, then you are showing your age.

… let it be this one. Michael Pollan lays out the case for a paradigm shift in our production of food. His arguments for the critical need to reestablish local abattoirs deserve particular attention. Meat processing is still all too shielded by our careful ignorance of “how the sausage is made”, but in my book, livestock deserve at least the same respect as those heirloom tomatoes we’ll talk about at the drop of a reusable grocery bag.

Fair enough. Always delighted to oblige. Now if you’ll just hold still while I put you outside….

very large hawk moth taking a momentary break from its attempts at self immolation to indicate its menu preferences

before…

Florence’s father came back from the Camargue with the most beautiful cherry tomatoes grown by one of his hunting buddies, a very muddy and happy bird dog, and four gorgeous wild ducks, which he insisted on giving to me. He removed the guts for me, and offered to clean them further, but I was due back in St Tropez and so breezily said that I would pluck them and finish the job. My experience of plucking game birds prior to this consisted of plenty of quail (which are so tiny they don’t really count) in Louisiana and Texas, and a few pheasant in Scotland - but I figured that now was as good a time to figure it out as any, and I certainly wasn’t going to say no to such a generous offer of fresh duck.

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above: a mussel farm in Normandy at low tide, below: Jez’s Famous Saffron Moules

Speaking of things washed over by the tide, moules de bouchot were another new discovery for me this summer. They’re on the smaller side, with boldly orange meat, a firm texture, and a distinctively strong sweet flavor. These mussels are grown on tall wooden pilings, or bouchots: it’s a method of aquaculture that was discovered by accident and is (bewilderingly) only seen in northern France, where an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) has been granted for those grown in the bay of Mont-St-Michel. These posts don’t just act as bivalve corrals, they also allow the thick ropes of shells to be exposed to the air and the sun at low tide; this gives moules de bouchot their particular flavor and slightly thicker shell. Délicieux!

la belle Florence serving soupe au pistou for dinner in Le-Revest-les-Eaux.

And so we return to a familiar theme: authenticity and provenance, this time with soupe au pistou, which I ate three times while I was in Provence. In terms of pedigree, I suppose only two of those occasions counted, since the third was made by me (not French) following the recipe of an American (ditto, see after the jump). In any case, all three were distinct and different and I’m sticking to my usual rationale: make it any way you like, make it delicious, and remember why it exists in the first place - to make the most of what you have around you. (And to allow you to accommodate unexpected extra guests with ease. Thank you, Françoise!)

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If I tell you that this was the third course of five, and that it’s a plate of seared foie gras with butter-drenched pommes anna, and that we’re eating seated on plastic lawn chairs at a converted gas station where the menu hasn’t really changed (and with damn good reason) in two generations……

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salt air, sunshine, and blue skies in Hyères: local mustard

The French place great importance on the concept of terroir: how the geography of an area affects the personality of the wines and foods it produces. This is more than just a stricture in the interests of AOC authenticity, and here in the US, the locavore gospel, albeit expounded from a differently oriented soapbox, is building an awareness of the damage we have done by allowing ourselves to ignore the origins of the food we eat. If we accept that the flavor of what we put in our mouths is directly affected by where it comes from then we must maintain our respect for the land, for the crops and livestock raised on it, for the producers and their generations of experience, and for ourselves as consumers. If we accept it, we are encouraged to remember, for example, that many of the things we eat have seasons, and that many others don’t travel well.

As a flipside to all this, I often think about how the setting of our consumption also directly affects the flavor of our foods. Mulled wine by a bonfire, fish and chips wrapped in newspaper while walking down the street, cucumber and cream cheese baps sitting on the hill in Scotland (yes, even in the rain), coconut water in the shade on a hot day - there are locations that add another dimension to the meals we eat in them. It’s what makes this a truly great toasted ham and cheese sandwich: not just the fresh bread, the plain slices of ham and the French gruyere, not just the terroir, but the locale. It’s why picnics are special. It’s why we put candles and silver on the table for a special occasion. It’s the topographical equivalent of umami, and it’s why even the simplest meal can be an event.

Samphire, that spiky green stuff that used to be strewn all over the marble slabs at the fishmonger’s and be given away with your nice bit of haddock, was apparently the it vegetable of summer 2008. No longer “the poor man’s asparagus”, it sells in New York for around $9 per pound. You can still pick it for free along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in the US; as with all potentially dangerous coastal exploration (fast tides, rocks, quicksand, and all that), I don’t recommend it unless you know what you’re doing. If you do, then of course you will make sure to leave the plant’s woody stems in place so it can regrow, won’t you? And avoid sewage outflows.

samphire: plate and bowl

After seeing it in the upper west side Fairway labeled “sea beans”, I experimented with samphire a couple of times in May and June before I left for France, but I never felt that I had really gotten to grips with it. So when I saw it for sale in the St Tropez fish market, I jumped at the chance for another tête-à-tête.

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Yes, thank you, I had a wonderful summer working in France. Well, OK. It wasn’t all work.

from left to right, top to bottom: café liégeois at Sénéquier, Françoise Ferry’s fabulous quince and vanilla confit, fruit and flowers in the Place des Lices market, roasted cherry tomatoes, ‘far breton’ made with fresh cherries, Mont Caume from Le-Revest-les-Eaux, fraises des bois also in the market, beet and pink grapefruit appetizer.

What do you get when you cross a stoop sale, a leaving party, and a prize-winning cocktail recipe?

the stoop set

As a long-standing fan of the gin and tonic, I am both amused and delighted that apparently this hails the resurgence of gin over vodka as the ‘it’ cocktail ingredient. I am also happy to see that James Scarito, the BLT cocktail maestro who created the Wild Blossom, uses Plymouth Gin. Plymouth’s PR/sales elves are doing a great job with them in New York recently (as did St Germain’s last year), and I’m all for it: the higher their profile in the US, the more likely I am to be able to buy their sloe gin to cook venison in. But that’s a secondary benefit; I’m also all for anything that distracts the bartenders always trying to push Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire, which make frankly hideous G&Ts. In my opinionated…um…opinion.

Back to the matter at hand: take various friends, a surfeit of old clothes, a brownstone stoop, and a vague sense that to have gin cocktails early on a Sunday morning requires at least the semblance of a justification. I bastardized Mr Scarito’s highly lauded pretender to the Cosmo’s crown, because I felt like it, and I hope he will accept my assurance that no disrespect was intended. And the quantities are very approximate, precisely because it was early on a Sunday morning. Experiment with the original, and the remix, and enjoy a little sidewalk society of your own.

The Blooming Lovely
2 ounces gin
2 ounces seltzer water
1 ounce Belvoir elderflower cordial (available here)
1 ounce pink grapefruit juice
Lots of thin slices of lime, green apple and cucumber

Oh, and I made $5.50 from the stoop sale, thereby nicely maintaining the semblance of the justification.

When you are lucky enough to have a friend who went deep water fishing way out in the Atlantic yesterday and calls you up today and offers you fresh fish tacos for supper when the fridge is empty (or even when it’s not), what do you do?

ridiculously fresh bluefish tacos with guacamole, tomato, red onion, sour cream and cilantro

One thing you categorically don’t do is argue over the composition of an authentic fish taco. For those in doubt, cf pizza.

It’s fresh. It’s delicious. We happily followed the only authentic course of action: shut up and eat.

Shado beni (Trinidad), chadron benee (Dominica), herbe à fer (Martinique and Guadeloupe), fitweed (Guyana), koulante (Haiti), recao (Puerto Rico), ketumbar java (Malaysia), pak chi farang (Thailand), ngo gai (Vietnam), culantro, racao or recao (Central America), bhandhanya (India), long leaf or spiny or sawtooth coriander (North America)….. no wait, there’s more….

the Lamont Cranston of herbage

So one of my very favorite things about living in this city is that conversations with strangers tend to unfold like this:
stranger: Your accent is weird. Where are you from?
me: London/Scotland via Texas and Louisiana. You?
stranger: Oh! I’m (insert appropriate ethnic/geographic denomination). What are you doing here?
me: Well, I’m a cook….

…and at this point, with great glee, they share with me a special recipe, or a tip on where to buy some unusual ingredient, or the address of the ONLY place in the tri-state area that will make, just like mama used to, the-thing-with-the-name-I-have-to-ask-them-to-spell. You get the idea - it’s a universal language. Food equals home, and food equals identity, and with each of these encounters, I learn a little more about what makes the world go round.

I had never heard of “shadow benny” until the A train got stuck one day and the only other person in the car with me was a lady from Trinidad. After we got the formalities out of the way, she described her favorite sauce for grilled meat, and I grabbed my notebook. She even gave me her phone number in case I had trouble finding the herb, and I promised her if I ever wrote a cookbook, it would go in there as “Lana’s A-Train Sauce”.

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