I love HANCO'S!

Call me quick to judge, but I've assumed from the start of New York's Banh Mi Craze, which kicked off around 2007, that I just wouldn't be into it. Truth be told, it's because when I hear "Vietnamese Sandwich" I think vermicelli, unsauced, shoved into a stale French Baguette. And someone told me that they put mayo and butter on them, so add that, too: Stale Baguette, Mayo, Butter, Vermicelli.

Sounds terrible, right?

Turns out I had it all wrong, and suddenly I feel embarrassed about calling myself a person who keeps an open mind about food, not to mention, way behind the times. I went to Hanco's on 7th Ave & 10th St three weeks ago and I've gone 7 times since. Sick. I've ordered the pork sandwich every time (not spicy)*.

The Banh Mi Thit Nuong (known at Hanco's as "Pork Sandwich") starts with:

A Crunchy, Toasted French Baguette with a little butter spread on both sides.

Then is stuffed with:

Long, shredded, lightly pickled, very fresh carrot and daikon.
Sliced Cucumber
Cilantro &
The tastiest, sweetest, juiciest, sliced pork.

Then a dollop of mayonnaises.

All for $6.50

I've been going crazy and ordering a 160z Almond Bubble tea, too, which I recommend you do.





*If you can handle spicy foods then I'd save your self the embarrassment from onlookers and eavesdroppers and answer "Yes!" when the ladies behind the counter ask you, "Spicy?". I'll believe that it's better that way, and I'd do it if I could, but I can't. Don't give me flak - I'm allergic to oleoresin capsicum and there's nothing I can do about it.

XTra Fancy VIP Family Dinner

Big News! I'm going back to California in 1 month. I'll have to change the name of my blog! I figured before I left should have some dinner parties (for me and my four friends. Where'd you all go?) Last week, I picked up $91.70 in paychecks from Perle, racking up a grand total of $156 in my bank account. What a load of money! So I called the friends, went to the co-op and spent $75. I felt a little more like myself, lugged my new foodstuffs home and started whipping some shit up.

Recall that Sara and I had an adventure preparing Ram's Testicles last week. Our intention was to prepare a similar feast for our friends and let them in on the secret ingredient only after they had licked their plates clean. But this week at the co-op there were no balls!

But there were livers and tongue.

So, on the menu goes:

Lamb's Liver Pate

Pate is really easy to make at home. Everyone should do it! To make a really simple pate, get yourself:

1 lb of chicken livers (or pig livers, or lamb livers, or beef liver, but beef is kinda gross)
2 anchovy filets
1 tbsp of capers
1 shallot (chopped up, of course)
like, uhh...a cup of Marsala or Sherry or other sweetish fermented beverage
some butter or olive oil - whichever YOU like better
salt

Then just sautée the shallot, anchovy, capers, in the butter (or olive oil) and when the anchovy is dissolved, crank up the heat tops and throw in your livers (which should be rinsed and dried). Cook the livers til they're just browned a little, just for a minute, and then pour in the alcohol and simmer until the alcohol's reduced by half. It should look pretty soupy. Let this cool down and shplop it in your Cuisinart or blender, blend til smooth, and there you go!

Spread it on a nice crusty baguette with some Dijon mustard and you've just knocked up your fancy level, like, 12 points.

The lamb's liver I got was super strong (see photo, smelled bad), so I ended up tempering it out with a few chicken livers, which make a smoother, sweeter, less funky pate. I sliced up some red onions, dried figs, and prunes and simmered them down with balsamic vinegar to throw on top.

After some debate, Sara and I decided that the tongue was a little too fancy for our guests, so we put it in the All-Purpose Pickling Jar that Sara had used weeks back to pickle herring to save it for ourselves later.
On the side we had roasted beets with goat cheese and Vosgienne salads with frisee, poached eggs, bacon, and warm vinaigrette. By the time I got around to poaching the eggs, I'd had a bottle of wine and couldn't swirl my water right. They were breaking all over the place, but no one seemed to care.

For our main course, I found these little Guinea Fowl at the Co-op for 6$ each! They even came with gizzards, fingers and toes. I brined these in some salt water, pepper and bay leaves for about an hour, then tied up their little feets, shoved butter patties under their skin, sprinkled them in salt, pepper, and orange peel (simmer your orange peel in some water for 2 minutes to get the scenty oils flowing) and roasted them in the oven for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, we made a knockout sauce with orange juice, stock, a little leftover ball sauce (for the fat and the flavor), some orange marmalade, apple cider vinegar, a little red wine, and the plentiful pan drippings. They were divine! Super tender and juicy, crispy skin, and the sauce was savory, sweet, and rich. After we each got our turn to suck the remnants off the carcasses, dunked our bread in the leftover sauce, poured
more wine, and wished for more.

Serious Business

Please Note:

From this day forward, I will be occasionally posting things that might take on an uncharacteristically serious-ish tone. It's not that I'm never a serious person. Historically, though, this blog has been a decidedly anti-serious place. But if the world is going to take me as seriously as I take myself, which is really, really seriously, I'm gonna have to start acting like a grown-up. And grown-ups are always serious.

Today I'm going to dinner with some people my mom and I met at a Peerless Platters function. They graduated high school in 1995 - which makes them like 32 years old - and work at places like Morgan Stanely. I think they invited me because I seem "interesting". Maybe I can be their new, youthful, "crazy" friend. Anyway, I'm getting ready to act like a grownup. Wish me luck.

Hardship Hits, I'm Put to the Testes

Hello Devoted Blog Followers (fake it til you make it, no?),

As you mostly certainly recall, I have more experience than most 23 year old women you and I know with eating testicles by choice. Recall also that some time back, I had the good fortune of discovering that I didn't have to go lurking round Upstate during castration season to get my hands on the goods - the Park Slope Food Co-op was practically giving them away every Thursday when they received their Miscellaneous Lamb Parts delivery.

What you don't recall, because you're hearing it for the first time now, was that March/April '09 has punched me in the face big time. Like, I woke up and was being teabagged by the big, badluck balls of March and April every fucking morning. Dumped by my boyfriend and the workforce. Permanent layoffs in relationship world and environmental education world. Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment went under and took all 40+ employees with it so suddenly, I was not only TOTALLY boyfriendless but also broke, broke broke, broke, broke.

So - no money for groceries. Negative monies in the bank. Last week I'm walking around the neighborhood with Sara Curtin and I'm crying about having to eat raw flour and spoonfuls of balsamic vinegar for dinner when she reminds me: We have balls in the freezer. Now this is big. Yeah, I'd eaten the balls in Lyon, where it was only customary and polite to do so. And I'd purchased them. But, hey, I'll admit it, it was mostly for novelty's sake - they were $3! I'm just gonna go ahead and say it - actually defrosting them and touching them and cooking them and eating them wasn't something I hadn't been dying to make time to do.

But, desperate times call for rifling through your freezer for anything that can satiate your hunger and make for some low-budget Friday night entertainment.

When we got home, we figured out what sort of ingredients we had to work with and made a menu:

Tater Tots
Frozen Peas & Corn
Braised Thighs of Chicken aux Marsala & Ball Sauce

We defrosted the balls. We gave each other pep talks and hearty, "YOU'RE the MAN" type slaps on the back. We poked them with a wooden spoon before we poked them with our index finger.

Raising our dullish knives, we went in for the slice. The knives bounced off. The two veiny testes, twice the size of any balls that either of us had ever in our lives been involved with, wiggled and leered at us from the cutting board, their outer skin an impenetrable, pink fortress of flesh, little rivers of blood running from each of their nippleish tips.

Since it's not my general practice to do much preliminary research prior to treading new kitchen waters, I didn't know that most of the Rocky Mountain Oyster eating community in Colorado suggest you peel off the tough outer skin while the balls are still frozen to make your task less stressful. Ten minutes and a lot of girlish squealing later, we finally finished sawing off the XXTRa sinewy outside flesh encasing each ball and reached, with glee, their pillowy, peachy insides. Two glistening treasures.

The rest was easy. Sara was insistent that she got to taste at least a little of the ball in its purist form, so we sliced the part of 1 ball into 1/2 inch discs, gave them a toss of s&p and seared them like scallops (which they resembled exactly, save the color) with butter and a little garlic. Delicious.

Maybe it's the pussy way out, but we'd decided to incorporate the rest into a "Ballsala" sauce, cutting them into smaller pieces to disguise their form, browning them and cooking them for a long time in a stew of caramelized onions, stock and Marsala which we poured over crispy, roasted chicken thighs (our favorite!).

Though I'd been the ringleader of the project to start, Sara turned out to be the clear choice for "Most Enthusiastic Ball Eater". She loved them. Couldn't get enough! She was stealing the balls out of MY sauce, even! And it's true that once you get over yourself there's little not to like about them: they're super tender, low in fat, a little gamey, pair well with many flavors, and are dirt cheap.

Could Ram's Testicles be the Recession Era Filet Mignon?

Corned Beef & Cabbage, Just like Mom Made

Though you'd never guess it (you wouldn't have to though, I'd tell you) my parents are mad into being Catholics. They love it. They also love gays and divorce and abortion and women being priests, so sometimes I'm not really sure what their deal is. When I ask them what they like about being Catholic, they don't like to answer. Now, my parents are incredibly rational, intelligent, progressive people, so I think they're just caught in the spell of the Virgin and her Good Son and all their miracle-doing/pyrotechnics. Almost more than they love Jesus, though, they hate prostelitizing. Growing up, we went to Catholic school but didn't go to church, we didn't wear crosses. We got confirmed, but all of us were vocal about wanting to be bat mitzvahed. The only place Catholic rituals managed to sneak into our home lives in a way that wasn't totally subversive and unseeable, really, was during the Lenten season, when all 6 of us would imagine ourselves as Jesus and Moses, alone in the desert talking to a snake or out at sea with a boatload of animals, both without food or drink, a one-on-one-on-one battle between themselves and the G_d man and themselves and themselves. Resistance. Strength. In Catholicism those words mean: Denial of Earthly Pleasure. So, I've been giving shit up for Lent since I figured out I was a candy fiend at age 5. Growing up, it was usually that or soda. At 14 I gave up lying to my mom, which didn't work out well. Senior year of college I tried giving up being sober, because I figured that it would at least be difficult for me since I wasn't an alcoholic, but I couldn't follow through. My dad on the other hand, because he is actually into this whole thing in a real way, gave up booze and meat Saturday-Thursday and full on fasted on Friday every single year. I think maybe that's why my family started taking St. Patrick's Day so seriously.

The Church folk in Ireland say that on St. Pat's day it's a-okay to get bloody wasted, covet your neighbors wife, smack around your own, dance, be merry, and gorge yourself with all the cabbage and corned beef (or Irish bacon) you can get your hands on. Every March 17th or thereabouts, my Mexican mom makes the best corned beef in the world for, like, 150 people. She stalks the Supermarkets for weeks, cutting Vons Buy 2 Get 1 Frees (valid 1 per customer) and sending in me and my sisters one after the other to redeem our coupons, too. She borrows the neighbors stoves and ovens, she fills the bathtubs with cabbages and potatoes and carrots, she makes 6 types of soda bread, fresh fruit trifles with vanilla pudding and shortbread (mmm!), she sets out cheese platters and nuts and all sorts of treats.

My dad goes to BevMo and comes back with 24 cases of Guinness, 6 handles of Jameson & Tullamore Dew, and some Baileys.

This year was the very first in my whole life I wasn't able to get back to Northridge for the fete so I decided to recreate it in Park Slope with 100 less people and 30 less corned beefs. Dad taught me to run the party bar when I was 12 and I've been making the beef glaze with Mom since I was wee, but I'd never done it without their help.


First off, despite the abundance of specialty grocery stores and access to weird foods that doesn't exist in other cities, shopping in New York is mostly a pain in the ass. 15 lbs of corned beef is heavy. 6 heads of cabbage is heavy. 2 8-packs of Guiness, a 6-pack of Brooklyn Winter Ale, 3 jars of marmelade is heavy. I would have given away my stamp collection for a car.

10 hours and 7 stores later, I was in business and the cooking went without a hitch. I simmered my beefs for 3 hours (!), dropped in the vegetables (cabbage last, obvi) slapped the glaze on the meat and tossed it in the oven. Meanwhile, I helped Jeff make a soda bread, set up the living room, finished the dishes, and let myself, for I think the first time, enjoy a party that I was hosting.

People loved it. They came back for seconds and thirds and fourths, latecomers who weren't invited for dinner ate it cold. It was a success!

I was able to enjoy the communal vodka Jell-o bowl in peace, confident that my corned beef was the best my guests had ever had and happy that I had eaten food I cooked with my guests while it was still hot and they were eating too! Success!

Thanks, Mom :)

Burying Sheep

I wrote this piece to get the attention of some big whigs at The New Yorker who I've been ballsy enough to approach about a job. I like it. It's a mostly true story about having to do some icky jobs on the farm in France.

Burying Sheep

At 5:45 am on the farm it is pitch black and you fumble down the stairs and grope in the foyer for your boots that are always as cold as you hope they won’t be. You milk the sheep with the stripes on their backs, your eyes mostly closed, and you take the milk to be made into cheese. At 7:30 you call for Nina, your sheep dog, and she helps you take the herd five miles up the mountain where it eats and sleeps, and at 1:30 it follows you back down and allows you to put it in cages. There are six pigs and thirty-four chickens and four dogs, and you feed them. You feed the other farmers, you put the roof back on the pig hutch, and you fix other things that are broken. You milk the sheep again. Twenty-two of the sheep are pregnant but only nine of them have their babies and one is stillborn. Six of the babies won’t eat so you force a plastic tube to the backs of their small throats and a syringe of their mother’s milk. They gag because they don’t know how to swallow. Their little bodies convulse on your crossed legs and they start to shit and vomit and both of your bodies, yours and the lambs’, are sloshy and hot with its mother’s milk and the yellow-green shit-vomit spurting out of its ass and mouth. Both of you are covered in flies. In the end, three survive.

In the fall, I was working as a shepherd in the southern French Alps after a long summer in New York City. In the summer, I had been making massacres from minor violences I saw on the subway. Every stranger's face was droopy with hate and heavy with human badness. At night, I dreamt of my little sisters with snarled faces hunting small animals, other times of my own body becoming stiff and cold. Often, I dreamt of being buried alive.

On the farm, I think my days were too full of new challenges to expend energy on self-injury at night. I was responsible for the health and safety of the sheep. In return, the sheep were patient listeners and a good distraction. It didn’t matter to them that I didn’t speak French. I gave them names and sang songs for them in English and put on dance recitals for their benefit and mine. Sometimes, I wanted nothing to do with them or their mountain and cursed at them for running into thorny bushes or chewing my hair; but this never made me feel good. When the herd was napping, I took dreamless, midday naps in the sun, too, and used Nina’s warm body as a pillow. In return, I protected her from Rocky, the bumbling Great Pyrenean Mountain Dog whose job was to guard the sheep from the wolves. Rocky spent his time trying to rape Nina, who protested hotly. Most of the time, she would outsmart him or I came to her aide, so Rocky would try the sheep, who were less able to refuse him. When the sheep’s babies were born and had trouble eating, I sat cross-legged on the barn floor with their little bodies in my lap and held their chins and fed them little drops of milk from my fingertips. When they died, I tried to mimic the matter-of-fact responses of the other farmers.

Then the mother of the only lamb that I had nursed back to health died, too. At lunch, I offered to bury her before anyone asked. When lunch had ended, I set to work unthinking. I collected my boots from the foyer and a pair of leather gloves from the tool shed. I collected a shovel, a pickaxe and a sharp pair of pruning shears and carried these tools to the big tree where the dead were buried. I called it Skull Valley. I had watched another farmer dig six other holes that week. Now, those holes were filled with dirt and babies and there were little piles of rocks like headstones where the holes had been. As I set up my station, I imagined myself looking as she had: strong and graceful and tremendously capable. But the only hole I had dug was for a bunny on Easter. It had come in my Easter basket and our grandmother’s cat killed the bunny before I had even named her. We found her left in a pile of clean laundry with her broad pink ribbon still tied around her half-neck. Our grandmother helped us bury her under a rosemary bush and because she felt so sorry, bought us a frog that died, too, and we buried him next to the bunny.

I didn’t pause to think of the strangeness of my task. My focus instead was on mimicking the other farmer’s motions. But I could hardly lift the axe off the ground. When I finally hoisted the axe above my head, my arms were so limp and the axe was moving so slowly that when it came down, the tip hardly cracked the dirt’s surface. The second time, I dropped it mid-swing and the falling blade dug into the back of my leg and there was a little blood. I took a spade from the tool shed and went to work on my knees, pulling up a cup of dirt at a time until I had made the shape of a hole. I jabbed and pried at the dirt pell-mell with my boot and the spade, and in four hours I had a four-foot hole.

The dogs watched from the garden as I gathered the sheep, who was waiting in a wheelbarrow outside the barn with a blue tarp covering her body. Her body was folded into a gunnysack, like the gunnysacks my grandmother used to wrap a skinned goat tightly when someone in my family was baptized. She dug a hole in her backyard and put the goat in the hole. She covered the goat with charcoal and sticks and we started a fire. She kept the goat in the hole wrapped in the gunnysacks until its meat was soft and peeling off its bones, then we dug it back up and shredded the meat to serve to our guests. I thought of the goat as I wheeled the sheep to the hole. She was very heavy. When we reached the hole, I took off the tarp and the gunnysack, folded them neatly, and placed them next to the hole. Her collar and bell were still around her neck. Her neck was bloated and the jagged edge of her metal bell cut deep into the underside of her throat. The bell made a noise, even though she was dead. Using the shears, I cut off the corner of her ear to remove her plastic tag and blood oozed slowly from her ear and neck.

My hands were sweating hard, now, so I took off the gloves. When we were both ready, I took the handles of the wheelbarrow and dumped her into the hole. She landed all wrong. Her hind legs were poking out of the hole and her back was against the wall of the hole, like she was sitting in a chair upside down. When her head hit the bottom, her mouth opened stupidly and her useless tongue fell out.

I lowered myself into the hole to fix her. I wrapped my fingers around her fore legs and felt dizzy because she felt like my grandmother. Nothing else in the world feels the way a dead thing feels. Both are cold and a little squishy, like a reusable Freezee gel pack. When you feel a dead thing, many of the things you wonder are the same whether the dead thing is the sheep or your grandmother. You wonder if its tongue is hard and dry. You wonder if its eyeballs will shrivel up quickly. Of course, you wonder if it knew it was going to die and you allow yourself to wonder these things because of course you can’t help it. You think about rearranging its face into winks or frowns. When your grandmother dies you put pink lipstick on her and jewelry and you dress her in her favorite dress with gold and sequins. You don’t do this to the sheep but you could and the sheep wouldn’t notice and neither did your grandmother. I held on to her cold limbs for a long for a long time and found it hard to let her go. Then I pulled her until she was flat on her back and could fit in the hole, and I hoisted myself out of her grave.

Her belly was bloated and stretched out like a drum and the clods of dirt made a sound like sad music when I began to shovel her in. Now, it was mostly over. Soon, the hole was filled more with dirt and grass than it was with the sheep and it became possible to lose track of my task. Soon, the hole was gone and I rolled the heaviest rocks I could onto where it had been. I put the blue tarp and the gunnysack in the empty wheelbarrow. When you bury a dead thing, the dead thing is gone. Your grandmother or the sheep. But at night both make you dream of bloody waves carrying dying horses, or of bad men cutting the limbs off your brother and sisters with a butter knife, or of your own body becoming stiff and cold.

Two weeks later, you are picking tomatoes in the greenhouse with your shirt off and singing when you hear Rocky panting loudly. You turn around to shoo him away and you see that his face and his paws are covered in blood and there is something bloody and yellowing in his mouth. The scent is unbearable. Before you can move, the dog drops a pile of rotting organs in your lap. You start to gag and you stand up quickly with your eyes shut tight and your teeth pressing impossibly hard against each other. You brush the organs off your body and you start to vomit and cry. You rinse yourself with the hose in the garden. You gather yourself and the shovel from the tool shed and the wheelbarrow from the barn and you start slowly toward the hole to rebury your dead.


Connie Coady
January 12, 2009

Cupcakes Etc.

This week I made cupcakes. I forgot for a bit that I used to make cupcakes practically every day of my life for money and that I'm pretty good at it. I made buttermilk cupcakes with sea salt and butter cream frosting made pink with a couple Maraschino cherries and some beet juice. They were delicious.

Steak as Medicine

It has happened again. Working 60+ hours a week in a restaurant does a pretty good job of kicking you out of your home kitchen. When you're working FOH, your diet inevitably degrades to pan from the bread baskets, cappuccinos, and half-eaten chicken legs left on the plates of small stomached Financial District lady guests or fussy children. Delicious. Since starting at a new, downtown French bistro I've come home full of cheap carbs and caffeine and so dead tired that opening the refrigerator seems a painful task. And pointless, too, since little time is left for grocery shopping. I'm behind on my work shifts at the Co-op again, but I think I've lost 7 pounds.

Sometimes when you're a waitress you make a fat chunk of tip money that you can spend on semi-fancy to fancy dinners on the days you don't have to hustle the dining room. Especially in a city like New York and double especially if you're as charming and attractive a waitress as I am. Sometimes. Other times, like the past three months, you work 6 hours and walk out of your restaurant with $10 in your pocket. I haven't had a less lucrative job since I was 14 and wasn't paying $950 a month for rent.

Things get worse when your fellow staff members make you so sick to your stomach that you can hardly finish the 1 free dessert your restaurant has ever given you. Now, ask anyone I know: I'm as nice as nice gets. But when the person in "charge" of you, who gets paid more than you do, who's 2 years younger than you are and not college educated, and who spells "Quiche", "Keesh" and "Asparagus", "Espairigus" you've gotta be allowed to get a little in your face, no? Things are bad.

How do you solve these waitress woes? 48 oz Medium Rare Rib Eye for You & Your Honey. Bam. Sure - it wasn't really in my budget, but it was New Year's Eve and all and it had been since Italy that Jeff and I had shared a sexy meal. We had walked by Convivium Osteria on 5th and St. Mark's about 57 times and had made loads of promises about one day going in an ordering the restaurant's semi-famed steak and nothing else. We've been talking a lot recently about how other couples manage to go into a restaurant, order an entree a piece, and leave in an hour with money left in their pocket. Jeff and I take a different approach - get there at 6pm, have a few beers, cocktails, split some appetizers, 2 entrees, a bottle of wine in between, neither of us pass on dessert, I usually go for a Sauternes or the like, he's been deep into limoncello and of course espresso for him and American coffee for me. We leave at 11:30 or so, go home (in a $25 taxi, because getting on the Subway after a good meal ruins everything), get into bed, and spend a mandatory 1/2 hour decompressing and, because we are shaken with the guilt of having spent all the money we made in two weeks AND the money our moms gave us to help out with our gas bills, consoling each other.

But this time we had a plan:

On New Year's Eve, I was working at the restaurant from 7am-4:30 then hostessing at a Russian stranger's cocktail party in Chelsea from 9pm-2am. We were going to get to the restaurant at 5pm, order the steak and two glasses of champagne, eat, leave. We sat down, took a look at the menu, and agree promptly that we should go for the $26 seafood platter for two. Everything sounded so good!

Jeff and I had had a pretty knockout seafood platter at Gambero Rosso in Cinque Tere for my birthday in October and had concluded that anchovies were new on the list of things to love. We got anchovies this time, too, two ways! And juicy/sweet crabcakes, and red peppers stuffed with lobster and garlicky, for once NOT over cooked grilled prawns.

Two glasses of champagne, bah. After that we ordered a bottle of Barbera D'Alba (another newbie on the favorites list) and awaited our rib-eye with dripping fangs and forks in our hands...

HOLY MOLY this baby was massive! Easily bigger than my head. Our server started cutting into it and he thought (and we agreed) that it was still a little too red (believe me, I like my meat bloody as hell, but Jeff, bless his heart, has alerted me to the truth that cooking steak medium rare gives the fat more time to render and seep into the meat, resulting in way more intense flavor). But before the server put the baby back on the burner we had him slice of the end pieces that would have ended up on a one-way train to Mediumwellsville.

The steak was one of the best I've ever had. It was salt-pepper-garlic rubbed, basted in butter, and fragrant with rosemary. The cow that became our meal was grass-fed, so her meat had a beautiful, almost purple-ish color and a deep, woody, sweet-ish taste. Every bite tasted different and every bite tasted good. We got through the whole thing, gnawed on the bones, and still had room for dessert.

That night, between me, Jeff, and Rib-eye, juicy, bright-red, tasty love was in the air, and ready for a New Year of delicious eating.

We'll Start With Lunch

Jeff, who had just finished his very first shopping session as a new member at the Park Slope Food Co-op (congratulations, Jeff!), walked into my smoky kitchen, lifted the top off my resting sauté pan, and asked "What are you doing with these little cabbages?"

"You mean my Brussels sprouts?" I shouted from the other room.

When I came back into the kitchen, Jeff was staring at his shoes. "Connie?" His head was still down. "Can I tell you something?" He stared at my shoes. "I always thought Brussels sprouts were those little clearish white things in Pad Thai". His voice was smaller than it had ever been.

But this is not his fault! Brussels sprouts, like anchovies and prunes and countless other misunderstood foodstuffs, have fallen tragically victim to an unshakable bad reputation started by the unknowing and whining children of helpless 50's housewives who didn't know any better than to boil the sprouts in water until they were limp and brown and mushy and stinky and then drench them with salt, put them on a plate with ground beef and ketchup and call it dinner.

Now, the cruciferous vegetable only show up on the dinner table when the whole extended family gets together for Thanksgiving and your middle-aged, polyester-wearing uncle Stan throws a tizzy-fit if the Brussels sprout casserole baked with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, like Momma used to make, is no where to be found. Yuck.

It's true that when cooked too long, the sulfur compounds in the Brussels sprouts are released and leave your kitchen smelling quite unpleasant.

What a shame. When cooked correctly, Brussels sprouts have an incredible nutty flavor and a satisfying initial crunch that makes way for an almost creamy, tender inside that make them one of my absolute favorite winter vegetables.

I enjoyed them so much for dinner last night that I made them exactly the same way for lunch today!

Here's how to make Caramelized Brussels Sprouts with Shallots and Apple


Ingredients (2 servings):

2 double handfuls of fresh and local Brussels sprouts, stems removed, cut in half
1 Shallot
1/2 Apple, peeled and cubed
2 Tbsp Pork Lard*
1 Tbsp Butter

Salt
Pepper


1. Prepare an ice bath for your Brussels sprouts and set aside. Bring a heavy stock pot of water to a rolling boil. Once boiling, blanch the Brussels sprouts for 1-2 minutes, or until very bright green. Transfer to ice bath and strain.

2. In a large saute pan, melt the lard and butter on medium heat. Add the shallot and apple & sautee until both are soft and caramel colored (about 10 minutes). Turn heat up to high for about 45 seconds to allow shallots to get a little crispy and the apples to get brown on the edges.

3. Turn heat off and transfer apples and shallots from the pan to a plate or bowl. Leave the lard and butter in the pan. Return pan the high heat and place the Brussels sprouts flat side down in the pan. Using tongs to check, sear until they are caramel colored and even a little charred. Flip them over and do the same for the rounded side.

4. Turn off heat and return apples & shallots to the pan. Toss together. Salt & pepper to taste. Serve immediately. Allow all blindly accepted preconceptions to melt away.



*A note about Pork Lard: It's really a shame that the health food industry and agro-moguls like Monstanto and ConAngra did such a stellar job of scaring Americans into thinking that cancer and diabetes causing partially hydrogenated oils, like soy bean oil and margarine, were "better for you" than real, non-factory made foods (Plenty more on this later).

Pork Lard only sounds scary. In real life, Prometheus lost his freaking LIVER so that humans could begin cooking with pork lard. It's terrific! Its high burning point (about 390 degrees) and sweet, meaty flavor make it ideal for sauteeing. And for those of you counting about calories, 1 tbsp has 120 calories, exactly the same amount as Olive Oil.

I buy my lard already rendered from Flying Pigs Farm at the Prospect Park Farmer's Market on Saturdays.

Back At The (American) Table

I left the country for a long time. At last I have returned, and in full force. In the upcoming weeks I intend to recount some of the more noteworthy meals I've eaten lately and make linear sense of the conclusions I've come to and the new questions I've asked about America's very fatal and multifaceted eating disorder. One step at a time.

Back - For (a few) seconds?

All I do is eat. And think about eating and think about buying groceries and think about trying harder to not eat so much and not to spend so much money on groceries. Sometimes my obsession with eating is healthy and interesting and other times it's the same-old, hum-drum, lifted straight from an Oprah magazine sob-story piece about fat women who spoon White Chocolate Macademia Nut Raspberry Haagen-Dazs straight from the tub when they're feeling sad.

My biggest trouble with food these days seems to be my simultaneous obsession with claiming that I want to be a food writer and my extreme refusal to sit down, focus, and write any coherent thoughts on the matter. Now that I'm down to my very last day of unemployment and am feeling tremendously guilty for not having spent my free-time winning a James Beard award, I figured I'd give it yet again another shot.

I have this new boyfriend who has done everything to distract me from my flimsy efforts to move food away from the center of my existence. The first night we spent together, I, half blurred by booze and half in post-coital disarray, told him about the time I slaughtered a goat. He was impressed, we talked about steaks, we made out a little more, and we went to sleep, unaware of the high-calorie meals that awaited us in the future. Since then, we've been ransacking the folks at Elk Trails at the Union Square Greenmarket for grass-fed bison steaks and marrow bones, getting Niman Ranch pork cheek and belly delivered by the box-full, talking about, dreaming about, planning, cooking, and spending money on meat.

I've had some pretty impressive meals lately and it'd be a shame to go on without sharing them. This week, then, I'll make hard efforts to recount my favorites.

Peter Luger's

Being a studious and thorough diner, I made sure I did my share of research before showing up to my 10:45 pm Saturday reservation at Peter Luger's. I knew before, of course, that it was established in 1887, had been voted New York's best steak house for 24 years running, and took only Peter Luger's Official Credit Cards, cash, and gift certificate. I knew also not to ask for a menu, to order the porterhouse with the potato and spinach sides, and that brining in your own wine was strictly prohibited. I also knew that thousands of past diners consider the Peter Luger porterhouse to be one of the best steaks in the entire world.

What I didn't know was:

THEY WERE WRONG.

I'm going to make this short and sweet, since I've been prolonging posting this for decades now. It's a real good thing that my company was so good because the steak just wasn't. Porterhouse is pretty tough to begin with because it has so many different density/textures of meat on the same cut. Unless someone is being very careful to hold the tenderloin off the grill while the strip keeps cooking, I find the tenderloin gets the hell cooked out of it before the strip loin gets cooked enough for the fat to render. Our steak was all sorts of chewy, well-done in some places and too bloody in others, and kinda bland. That's that.

Moving on, people fucking rave about these side dishes. Here's what they taste like:

Hospital food.

The spinach was overcooked, mushy and tasted acidic, which in spinach world means rotten. The potatoes were underseasoned, diner home fries at best. And their famous sauce brought high-fructose corn syrup and ketchup to mind.

I was happy to hear that my date and I were on the same page re: tastiness. We agreed that a good ol' fashion ice cream sundae would at least leave a good taste in our mouths before we took off. Alas, our waiter was pretty angry we were keeping him at work, and his tossing our sundae onto our table with a snarl and growl (what Peter Luger's calls "character) made the ice cream less sweet and more tummy-ache inducing.

Oh well.

Cooking with Vermin

Hi Friends,

Being a good, progressive and earth-minded eater (and being stuck in this hell-hole on a sunny morning) requires actively questioning the categorization of the animal kingdom into animals to be eaten (chickens, cows, pigs etc), animals to put rhinestone collars on (dogs, cats, ferrets), and animals to reference when making crude and insensitive jokes about the diets of Appalachian Mountain People (woodchucks, beavers, kangaroo rats, squirrels) etc, etc.

This week, the folks at Gourmet gave a nod to Americana and embraced, kitsch-ily, the small game-o-centric recipes that they once loved:

http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/menus/2008/01/varmints

But, what's with this? They admit to not re-testing the recipes before presenting them in this article? I know what a beaver looks like, dudes...But what does "Roast Beaver Michigan" looks like! Shame on them.

My favorite is the creamed woodchuck. This time of year, I like to substitute the roasted yams for parsnips- to add an unexpected layer of bite that contrasts the sweetness of the cream and the stank of the 'chuck.
Gourmet reminds us: be careful to remove the kernels under the forelegs and in the small of the back. What Gourmet doesn't tell you is that those kernels under the forelegs are scent glands that if cooked with the rest of the animal will leave the whole thing tasting like mayo, egg-yolk, and lobster-gut soup leftover from a hot Phoenix picnic.

But if you're really wondering what to do with the raccoon carcasses falling from your trees into your kiddie pool (Kyra- this might only apply to you) then Ruth Reichel and her staff of tongue-in-cheek phonies can't help you much. Go to the professionals:

http://www.wildliferecipes.net/Game_recipes/Small_game_recipes/Woodchuck_recipes/index.asp

http://www.backwoodsbound.com/zracoon.html


The woodchuck patties in tomato sauce is a year-round favorite. Can't find decent tomatoes in March? You don't need to! The "tomato" flavor of the recipe comes from catsup and Worcestershire, American kitchen staples that transcend seasons.

Really, though...so my Trio of Rabbit (Loin, Rack and Braised Leg) with Baby Vegetables,
Roasted Garlic, Natural Jus at La Folie (dry and bland, last time I had it) makes it onto a $90 Passot tasting menu but men won't make-out with me at bars when I admit to having once eaten squirrel that I killed and roasted myself! Come on Keller, Boulud! If ya'll are gonna buy into this whole seasonal and local thing: we're in America- where's the woodchuck?

Oh, and FYI re: SnAKS

The restaurant at Saks Fifth Ave. is the like a new, 20th century version of HELL!

Alright, Alright

So I get that I'm not very good at doing this whole blog thing cuz I start telling stories and then get really distracted and end up not really finishing them at all and instead just kinda trailing off...but right now my excuse is totally legit as there is a thunderstorm outside that just BLEW MY SCREEN WINDOW OUT OF THE FRAME AND INTO MY ROOM! So I had to avert a crisis and once it was averted didn't really feel like crafting a pretty conclusion about my stomach full of sea scallops and yada yada yada. And it's 2:47 am! How do people do this? I hope no one reads this. Are you reading this? If you're my mom or Kyra I think it's okay...

Los Angeles, I'm Yours: The Little Door

On the way to Burbank last Thursday I was sick and tired and achey in a dirty, white, long-sleeved gym shirt and dirty underwear. On the plane I had drooled on the older woman next to me but when I finally woke up, after almost 4 1/2 hours of uninterrupted mile high slumber, she hardly seemed to mind. Not at all. Instead she thought it was just the cutest thing how I managed to sleep so soundly and made sure to recreate the honkish noise I had apparently given the stewardess when she wouldn't stop shoving the snack tray into my shoulder. She didn't even care that during my snooze I had flailed my arm and knocked her Diet Coke onto both of our laps. I could have been embarrassed when I woke up but when I looked out the window and down onto the backside of a smoggy, electric skyline, I turned to my fly partner and instead of sorries, smiled sleepily and said "We've made it".


Taking my grandma to the grocery store and getting bean dip at Los Toros with Bridget would have been plenty to erase the memory of my Thursday morning appointment at the oral surgeon's, but apparently I lead a blessed life. Soaking the backs of my milky white calves in sand and sun after a bike ride on the beach with Mom I got a text message from a far away friend who had been jonesing so seriously for some top-notch Los Angeles glitz, glam, and fine dining that he bought a ticket on a whim and would touch down by 6pm.

10 minutes later I was high-tailing my cut-off and bikini top clad self South on the Venice Boardwalk. By 5:30 I had scored a sexy, steel grey number at TJ Maxx for $15 bucks (!!). By 6:15 I was gliding Grandma's Buick Le Sabre into Terminal 1's passenger loading zone.

By 9pm we were standing in front of the castle style entrance of The Little Door, busy 3rd St making beautiful machine noises behind us. Seconds later we were taking small steps into an atrium dripping with pink roses, ivy, thousands of sulky candles, and a sea of tan, happy, and attractive LA diners.

Our hostess was very sloshed and not so much paying attention to her job, but because she was also very French and had a cute little gap between her two front top teeth, and because having a glass of Champagne at the bar didn't sound all that miserable we didn't complain much. Instead we toasted with Louis de Sacy Grand Cru Brut and eyed the room flirtatiously, knowing that we looked at least 12x more attractive than usual with the aide of pale candlelight and a marine layer of angel's portion painting the air.

The table we were lead to by our beaming, balding (prematurely), and bow-tied waiter was cramped but cozy in the corner of the "Winter Garden" room. We started the meal with a goat cheese tart which was tasty but quickly forgotten when my seared foie gras in a maple demi-glaze served with a thick cut brioche French toast was served. The foie was seared perfectly- the edges crispy and still very hot, salted with quality sea salt. The intense maple flavor of the sauce sunk into the liver just softly enough that the first sweet taste of syrup slowly gave way to the subtler, gamey sweetness of the duck. Even my vegetarian dining partner couldn't help himself.

I didn't try the vegetarian's massive pile of four cheese, homemade pasta (which seemed painfully uninspired and collegiate, though undoubtedly delicious...) but my seared day boat scallops with saffron sauce were good enough. I don't remember seeing or eating the braised leeks the menu told me about but the little, pastry-bag squeezed dollops of beet puree were a surprising compliment to the scallop, both rendered unexpected creaminess with distinct, pleasant tastes of earth and ocean.

We drank our very soft, very round, very enjoyable 2004 Trefethen Merlot (Napa) too quickly and by the time we left the restaurant we were happily buzzed, in love with Los Angeles, and ready for the perfect margarita and El Carmen, next-door.

Tight Skinned, Well-Oiled Insides

My mom has a bad habit of repeating stories she’s told a hundred times before. She retells them with excitement, as if her tongue were making each word, "and"s and "the"s included, for the first time. If the story is short and I let her get through the whole thing, she awaits my response with a toothy, open mouth. After June 1999, eating hot dogs with my mom ensured a well-practiced diatribe. The first bite barely hits the back of her throat before she opens her chilli-filled mouth to sputter “Nothing will ever come close to those hot dogs in Vail”.

Vail, Colorado- June, 1999:

I was thirteen on a family road trip to South Dakota, between and back again, packed tightly in a white '96 Suburban (my parents feel guilty enough about owning it and I would prefer if you withheld your judgments of them as heart-less Mother Earth haters). Re-crafting this memory, I toyed with different descriptions of the store-front, of the man or woman who sold it to us, of what I was wearing when it happened, but aside from my outfit (Levi’s, button up shirt, turquoise horse-head lariat) I don’t really remember any of that. I vaguely remember what we did before. I know because I’ve seen pictures that we road on a Gondola to the top of a mountain and I’ve pieced together that we hiked our way down. I don’t remember much of anything else between the last bit of the best hot dog of my life and the next three weeks of American adventure. But I remember every inch of the meal in my hand.

The bun was warm through the wax paper that held it and I felt the stubble of semolina flour against my palm. The girth of the hot dog said it meant business. The skin was tight and hard to bite through. It broke almost with a crunch but the filling was soft and full and the oils were still hot. The 100% veal dog was seasoned with caraway, sage, and white pepper and topped with spicy, grainy brown mustard and alfalfa sprouts that had been gently tossed in olive oil and salt. We went back the next day for dinner, only to turn our messy heads ground-ward on seeing the "Closed on Sundays" sign.

If I were to write a semi-autobiographic bildungsroman about a troubled 16 year old Valley girl, the Cupids Hot Dogs on Lindley and Nordhoff would be its major meta-fictive symbol. The original on Lankershim has been serving these gems for 63 years; if only I'm lucky enough to be eating them in 2071. I grew up eating Cupid's with the whole family on summer nights after long surf days, but the hot dog took on a new level of importance senior year of high school, eating two or three at a time in my boyfriend's mother's Astrovan stopping only for Dr. Pepper or a chili-filled French kiss. Some nights we'd eat hot dogs cruising in the Astrovan, eyes peeled for a dark street to park the car and make-out. When we had worked up an appetite again we would return for seconds. We ate Cupid's hot dogs and made out like it was all we could do. Once when I was 17 he told me that he would take hundreds of Cupid's hot dogs into a field and with them spell out the words "Will you marry me". I fell even more deeply in love. At 17 I was real easy to please.

The dog: the softest bun around, slightly sweet, extra tight skin, all beef, a little salty. "Everything" means chopped white onions, tangy yellow mustard, and perfect bean-less chili. The white paper wrapped around them did little to keep your hands from oil.

In descending order, we also have: Mexican Bacon Dogs for $1.50 in Downtown Los Angeles' textile/fashion district. The fat dog is wrapped in bacon, pressed onto the grill and topped grilled onions and red peppers. I like these with mayonaise and a bottle of Mexican Coca Cola (real sugar).

Nathan's at the Original Nathan's in Coney Island. I've lived in New York for not even a year and I've had about eleven hot dogs at the Original Nathan's. I like it with grilled onions and lots of ketchup with an extra-extra large $4 Killian's Red. The win over Papaya Dog only because of its proximity to soft-serve pistachio ice cream from Denny's Ice Cream Stand and the Wonder Wheel...the happiest place on earth. Also, if you really want to, you can buy an order of 2 dozen frog legs for like $13.50.



Grey's Papaya/Papaya King/Papaya Dog: Maybe I haven't had enough of these sober to be able to tell the difference but holy HELL that's a good hot dog for a damn good price. Their corn dogs are sweet with honey and never soggy. The last I had was in December on a Tuesday night at 3:30 am with a good friend. Walking steps behind him on the stairs down to the F train I tried to hold my hot dog in one hand and my fries in the other instead of the railing. He didn't notice me having trouble in my high heels until I slipped on black ice, skidded down the concrete, contorting my body mid-fall to save my hot dog. I did, but only at the cost of a large and bloody bump at the back of my head.

It's getting late and this is getting long. Speaking of long, tied for 4th are Dodger Dogs and free, bar hot dogs kept on those concession rotisseries and served on Wonder Buns. I'd take either or both right now.

A conclusion to come, but I think it can wait.

Cyclones, Comedy, Cocktails and Carbombs

Some mornings you don't notice yourself fall asleep at 7:45. Before you know it it's 8:37 and you're awake already and the sunlight has moved only inches up your shoulders. Your head hurts and your eyes are crusted together and every inch of your skin, the parts between your toes and behind your ears and your knee caps aches and burns and itches and smells.

By 8:42 this morning I was walking toward Greenwood Cemetery, coffee in hand, with unlikely company deep in sleepy, wordless conversation . The past seven days have been a dizzying cloud way too much booze, too many hot dogs, and not enough sleep. I'm exhausted and satiated, my eyes are glassy, my head hurts.

Sunday: We celebrated Easter a week early because my parents were worried about me being lonely on such an important holiday. Easter brunch at Tasting Room in SOHO with Dad. French-pressed coffee and French Toast filled with homemade ricotta. Dad tried hard to order vegan but they brought him a big bowl of yogurt instead of oatmeal. They brought him the right order eventually but the oatmeal turned out to be a big bowl of butter. Mass at Old St. Patrick's. There was more congregation than there were Bodies of Christ so I only got a nibble of Jesus. Maybe a full serving would have prevented the debauchery that was to follow my first mass since Pope Benedict.

That night I drank with my dad and Jack Morgan at Milk & Honey. Lavender Fizzes, Rosewater Gimlets, Fernet, Fernet, Fernet.

Come Wednesday I was pouty and sleepy as I pulled my warms sweats down and my cold jeans up at 11pm to meet with Veronica and her friends R and R at Le Souk, a Marrakeshi hookah lounge, bar, dance club, restaurant with belly dancers and cheap pitcher drinks galore. R managed to fill my glass with fruity sangria despite my fervent protest. It went from there.

The next four days straight brought mimosas at 10 am, Coronas at 11 am, Bordeaux at 3, 4, 5, 6, on and on and on til falafel and shwarma at 6:45 am.
Thursday we got lost in Central Park, walking with mouths open and eyes wide through signs of a new season. Grass is on the hills. Daffodils, cherry blossoms, sunshine. After dinner with an old friend I met Veronica and clanat the Comedy Cellar where cocktails and racial humor were followed up with 4.5 more hours of consumption on the LES.

Friday was for dresses and high heels. Lychee martinis, Jumbo lump crab cakes, Blue Point oysters and icy cold cava at Park in the meat packing were the perfect amuse buche to vodka and Red Bulls and salsa dancing at Son Cubano.

My very best friend Bridge, in town for just two days, kept me from nap-taking. Two minutes after she stepped out of the cab we were Coney Island bound. I combated the hangover I could feel approaching quickly with a preemptive strike of corn dogs and chili cheese fries from Nathan's. We met R and Veronica on the street corner, guzzled some $2.00 Coors before screaming our faces off on the Wonder Wheel, Cyclone, and Spook-o-Rama (aka Hell on Earth). The sun was only starting to set, the sky blushing, the sun cast halos on our faces. We walked bare foot on the cold, glass and covered sand, packed tight and damp, holding hands with our toes in the Atlantic. Our hands were cold holding cups of Bud Lite.



Dinner with Nick, Jackson, Jackson's date, Bridget, and J-Dubs at Belcourt was cucumber cocktails, Kumamatos and Wellfleets, sweetbreads with poached pear compote and marjoram aioli, and very rare, plummy purple, hangar steak topped with bone marrow. Dancing. Tempers. Exhaustion. Tears. Complete satisfaction.

The harder the drug, the harder the come down. Now, pass me the aspirin.

Hibernation is almost as hard to believe in as Catholicism, but maybe they both really happen?

My skin looks like a lizard's. My hair is dry and dead and frizzy and dull. I've developed spotty red rashes up and down my wrists and arms and my skin is translucent and bluish like an old, veiny man. I likely am deficient in vitamins C & D and am developing a pot belly and flabby back fat from day long sessions of inactivity and my nostrils are caked in wind blisters. I am much nicer to look at in California.


The television in the elevator says New York City will have a high today of 60 degrees. It doesn't feel like 60 degrees yet but when it does I think maybe I'll be able to write more, too. I think the thing is, since the environment (and my job) is causing so much wear and tear on my body, and because I've been feeling pretty negative for a good run, writing this all down just isn't rewarding. It's punishing.

I'm going to California next Wednesday. I wish it were Wednesday right now. I've played host to guest after guest after guest, and as much as I love them all, a girl needs a second to sleep in her own bed and listen to her own music and follow her own schedule.

Sad things happened this week. But good things happened too:


I went to Kitchen Bar with my incredible roommates for Polly's birthday. We feasted on spare ribs and grilled figs and mango margaritas. We watched American Idol on our big blue couch and our big wide-screen television, I got a taste of what "relaxing" means.

My mom came to visit at the beginning of the month. At the Bar Room at MOMA's restaurant, we met a wonderful man who used to be in the Metropolitan Opera whose mother was a communist and whose chess partner was Pavorati. Eating oysters in Grand Central we talked for hours with a woman named Karen who shared stories of her jet pilot grandfather and her quarter-back brother's recent engagement. We saw plays and drank cocktails and ate too much.



My dad came, too. We rode bikes to Red Hook, listened to enough live music to blow our faces off, chowed down on late-night, post-boozing falafel, had Turkish/Armenian (take your pick) coffee with the Russians at Brighton Beach, rode the Wonder Wheel on the opening weekend, and shared our share of secrets.


In between, though, I've drank too much, been too cold, felt too lonely, thought about home, neglected to pay any of my outstanding medical bills, eaten horribly, missed my parents, not cooked a damn thing, felt anxious and guilty and tired of this city and it's weather and it's dirt and it's crowds and waiting 20 minutes to get onto the escalator to go to my horrible office.

I could end this with some trope about New York and it's magic, but I won't.

Getting Back At It

I've been made to feel guilty by one too many people. Also, I'm starting to feel a little all talk and no walk...or all bark and no bite...or all bang and no buck. So I'm going to start writing on this thing, even if I'm ashamed and even if I get bored before I even start typing and even if I talk a lot of bullshit about blogs and the people who write them. But really, the things I do instead of blogging aren't really much cooler or more legitimate or more worth my time. But right now I'm going to watch some Goddard and eat more frozen yogurt with Jack Morgan.