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For all my complaining, I actually had a pretty good day-after-my-birthday. Relieved of the pressures of our court appearance on Thursday, my team gathered in the partner's suite to surprise me with cake and cards. And when I finally got up to Rhinebeck, Lisa presented me with this masterpiece, lovingly crafted with her own two hands. I don't think a cake has ever tasted so good to me.
There was a time when birthdays were the greatest days of the year. They were days that brought you closer to those things we covet but can earn only by patience: a seat at the grown-ups table, a driver's license, the right to vote, a legal beer. They were days when those who cared about you would gather and be merry and celebrate the fact that you were alive.
It's been a tough week. We're going to court today, and I've been working some later nights than usual. It's cold and windy and gray outside. And yes, today I'm one year closer to 30.
There aren't any celebrations today. I'll head to court with a bunch of other lawyers, and afterwards there'll be a debriefing and probably more work to do. This weekend Lisa's taking me to the Escoffier Room at the Culinary Institute of America, which I've been looking forward to for weeks, but today she's a hundred miles away. My family is even farther away. And my friends -- well, there may be a round of drinks tonight, but frankly, my friends all work too.
Tonight I think I'll go home and bake my own damn cake.
I was just in an elevator with two paralegals who were talking about their home cooking. The wiry, suspiciously vegetarian-looking he-para was explaining how easy it is to add a little soft tofu (for protein) to his homemade spinach with garlic. The blushing, blonde, obviously carnivorous she-para, carrying a cafeteria tray loaded with an unidentifiable stuffed breaded meat (and with a straight face), excitedly declared how much she loves cooking tofu.
I don't think they saw me shaking my head.
While your roast chicken is resting under a foil tent, you can -- and should -- make a quick gravy in the same pan the chicken was cooked in. The chemical reactions that occur during cooking - caramelization of the sugars from the vegetables and the Maillard reactions involving the proteins from the meat - will leave lots of crusty brown bits stuck to the bottom of your roasting pan. If you look at these bits as simply more work for the dishwasher, you are missing the entire point of roasting. These brown bits, diluted in a flavorful liquid which is then thickened with flour, will concentrate all the best flavors of the chicken and aromatics you just cooked in a savory gravy that is as good on starch as it is on the chicken itself. Ingredients can vary, but the important steps are fourfold:
Within these steps are an infinite number of possible variations, most notably in the liquid (or liquids) you use as the base for your gravy. My favorite method runs as follows from the end of Thursday's chicken recipe:
When a junior associate at a large Manhattan law firm tells you on Thursday that he'll do something "tomorrow," what he's really saying is he'll do it "tomorrow, in the unlikely event that I am not locked in a room with two other associates and twenty boxes of documents that have to be read before Monday."
Perhaps owing to the fact that this blog began as the days were growing shorter and colder, I've written a lot about comfort foods. Chalk it up to light-deprivation if you will. Even though the days are getting longer now, New York has been pummelled by onslaughts of arctic wind over the past few weeks. The need for comfort food has not abated.
This week it was roast chicken. A good roast chicken is one of the easiest and most satisfying meals you can make yourself. When choosing a chicken, pay a little more for a better bird. Bell & Evans and Murray's are both quality birds you can find in a lot of supermarkets, they cook up juicier and with richer flavor than generic chickens. Small-farm organic chickens can be fantastic, but quality varies. Mass-produced birds from agribusiness outfits like Purdue and Tyson are cheap, but you get what you pay for; they tend to be waxy, bland, and overprocessed (do you really want to eat something prepared by these guys?). If you start with a good bird, you'll have a hard time screwing up this recipe. And the leftovers are great cold or reheated.
Ingredients:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Coarsely chop the carrots and celery, quarter the onions, and roughly crush the garlic. Reserve.
If the giblets and neck are inside the cavity of the chicken, remove them. Rinse the chicken inside and out in cold water, and pat dry (again, inside and out) with paper towels. Cut out the wishbone by cutting around both sides of it with a paring knive and pulling it out with your fingers (this makes carving a lot easier).
Sprinkle the inside of the chicken generously with salt and pepper. Stuff the cavity with half an onion, all the garlic, and enough carrots and celery (in equal parts) to fill it up.
Truss the chicken. This step is often overlooked, but it ensures that the light and dark meat cook evenly, and helps the bird retain its juices. Cut a length of kitchen twine three to four times the length of the bird. Bend the wings back to tuck the third joint underneath the first joint. Place the bird breast-side up, neck facing away from you. Put the center of the twine under the triangular tail piece. Bring both ends around the outside of the ends of the drumstick, then bring them down on the insides of the drumsticks, criss-crossing them. Now bring each end of the twine around the side of the bird towards its neck, and pull tightly to bring the legs together. Bring the ends around the outside of the wings and tie them together at the neck, squeezing tightly to make the bird as compact as possible. Cut away any excess twine once you have a secure knot.
Rub the outside of the trussed bird with the olive oil, and sprinkle it with the herbs, about 1 tsp of salt, and a sprinkling of black pepper.
Pile the remaining vegetables into a roasting pan just large enough to hold the chicken, mounding them around the edges of the pan. Place the chicken, breast-side up, on top of the vegetables. Bake at 425 degrees for 60 to 80 minutes (if you still have the neck and giblets, add them to the pan after about 40 minutes, excluding the liver). To test whether the chicken is done, prick the thickest part of one thigh with a fork or skewer. The juices should be faintly rosy. If they are completely clear, your chicken is overdone.
Remove the pan from the oven, set the bird on a separate carving board, and loosely cover it with tin foil. It should rest for about ten minutes before you carve it. If you don't let it rest, the juices will spill out all over your carving board instead of staying in the meat where they belong. You can use this time to make a pan gravy. More on that tomorrow.
I pass by the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle every day on my way to work. Its two towers, nonexistent a year ago, now dramatically punctuate the northward view from my firm's offices. The construction scaffolding came down a week ago, but the grand opening is still two weeks away.
I've been waiting for this moment ever since I heard of the haute cuisine food court that would be setting up shop inside. Five world-class chefs are opening top-flight restaurants in the new building, the most hotly anticipated of which is Thomas Keller's East Coast version of his famed French Laundry: Per Se. I've been watching the per se website for weeks now in hopes of being among the first to spot the public reservations desk number (bigwigs, assuredly, have already made reservations via a private line). The release date for this number has been pushed back from January 15 to February 1, hinting at a soft opening in a space that is undoubtedly still rough around the edges. But I've been checking the website every day to make sure I don't miss the boat.
Now, as she so often does, Florence Fabricant has scooped the foodie world, dashing my hopes of an inside track. Reservations at Per Se will be accepted starting February 2, at (212) 823-9335.
I'm sorry, did I say February 2? I meant February 3.
46 West Market Street
Rhinebeck, NY
845-876-5551
Do one thing, and do it well.
This past weekend, Lisa and I tried out one of the most recent arrivals on the surprisingly trendy restaurant scene in Rhinebeck. The area benefits from its proximity to the Culinary Institute of America, some of whose graduates (and dropouts) fall in love with the Mid-Hudson Valley and never leave. One of Dutchess County's favorite restaurateurs, a man named Bing, returned from a period of world-traveling to open his long-awaited eponymous restaurant this past fall.
The physical space of Bing's restaurant is designed to invoke the various cultures that influence his menu. Bing has chosen a strange way of doing this, dividing his dining space into six separate rooms, each with a distinct cultural theme. This idea is gimmicky and cute, and probably allows Bing to book lots of private parties without shutting down the rest of the dining rooms, but has the potential to be more trouble than it's worth, as it was when Lisa and I visited.
Simply put, dividing the restaurant into so many distinct compartments seems to rob the front-of-house staff of the flexibility they need to attend to all their customers. In our room, two waiters and two busboys attended to about 40 diners, with a captain checking in occasionally during his rounds from room to room. Twelve of the diners were all at one table, for a retirement party. A table for twelve cannot be handled by just one waiter, which meant that the other 28 of us in that room were basically given short-shrift by the wait staff the entire night. And since the remaining wait staff was probably spread equally thin in the five other rooms of the restaurant, there was no way the captain could compensate. I'd say the answer is a bigger staff, but the rooms are so tight that there isn't really enough space for more wait staff to be milling around.
When the wait staff can't efficiently mediate between the kitchen and the diner, even the best food suffers. Bing's kitchen staff are quite skilled, and generally turn out well-prepared dishes with strong flavors. But if a party of two's entrees sit on the pass for five to eight minutes while the entire wait staff is serving dessert for a party of twelve, the entrees are not going to be at their best when they make it to the table. If a waitress doesn't have time to pick up a drink order at the bar, a wine carefully paired to a particular course can't work its magic. And communication between Bing's wait staff and its kitchen apparently isn't smooth enough to work out the timing in these situations.
There are other little things I might complain about. A roasted vegetable terrine was overpowered by red bell peppers, and apparently the chef has not decided what temperature he wants it at -- it was served warm on a cold plate. The shell of a meyer lemon tart was so hard as to be impossible to cut and difficult to eat. But the food, on the whole, is not Bing's problem. The risotto was creamy with a slight bite, his tenderloins of beef and pork were perfectly cooked and accompanied with powerful but still subtle sauces. What the menu lacked in depth, it made up for with skill of preparation.
Which brings me back to where I started. For all Bing's travels, there is not a strong influence of any particular culture evident in his menu. His cuisine is, basically, the same ecumenical New American fare at which the Culinary Institute of America so excels: a commercialized melange of the least threatening flavors and ingredients from around the world. The confused design of his restaurant is simply incongruous with the output of his kitchen, and he is paying a dear price for it in the level of service he is able to provide his customers. Maybe he should drop his attempts at cross-culturalism and instead trust to what he does best: serving quality New American food with a finely honed sense of style and taste.
See, this is what I'm talking about. We coastals like to look down on the flyover states, but hell, they've got a lot of heart. After all my talk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, here are a bunch of corn-fed red-blooded Americans chowing down on the food of their immigrant ancestors: Deep-fried cow brain sandwiches. Somebody book me a flight to Indiana.
What I thought was just a 48-hour bug turned into a four-alarm gastrointestinal crisis over the weekend. My malady was diagnosed as bacterial, which means it was probably (irony of ironies) a foodborne illness. There is a handful of common foodborne illnesses out there, none of which you would wish on any of your friends. Most of them are contracted by ingesting bacteria that either live symbiotically within the animals we eat or are spread by careless food handlers in processing or preparation. After being ingested, these microbes lodge themselves in the intestinal wall and start to do their dirty little business. Symptoms can range from cramps to vomiting to (eep!) bloody diarrhea, all with or without fever. Dozens more foodborne illnesses have been documented, some of which you would not wish even on your worst enemies. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the brain-wasting illness linked to mad cow disease, is one of these. It takes years to incubate, affects mainly people in their twenties, and has a 100% mortality rate.
I won't tell you where on the spectrum of unpleasantness my symptoms fell, but I am not experiencing any degenerative neurological effects. Suffice it to say after four days of not being able to leave my apartment (within which the greatest distance to the lavatory is about twenty feet), the doctor put me on Cipro. Yeah, the stuff they send in to get rid of anthrax. I'm feeling much better now.
So is the reckless gourmand chastened by his brush with the dangers of indiscriminate eating? Does he emerge from his sickbed resigned to a diet befitting his delicate constitution? Are the days of foie gras and anchovies lost forever? Hell no. If you're going to go your whole life without trying a raw oyster, or a steak tartare, or a raw-milk cheese, just because you're worried about the tiny chance that somewhere along the line you might have to endure a few days of intense abdominal distress, you're probably the type of person that has eight rolls of duct tape in your closet and a bomb shelter in the backyard. You and I will never understand each other. I don't know what it was that made me so sick, but I enjoyed everything I ate last week, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Let germs to come do what they may. I've got modern medicine and a pocket full of sick days.
Sorry folks, but I've just been sideswiped by a pretty vicious stomach bug. I'll be on the BRAT diet for a day or two (don't worry, I'm taking my zinc pills). Assuming I don't die, I'll be back in a few days. In the meantime, those of you with functioning digestive systems should eat more anchovies and foie gras.
Everybody hates anchovies. They're the running gag of American dining. The ever-popular caesar salad would be universally reviled if the anchovies that traditionally lent body to its dressing were ever actually included. An anchovy pizza is not so much a meal as it is a practical joke. Even cartoons get in on the fun - remember Scooby, Shaggy, and their pizza with anchovies and chocolate syrup? Yeah, those crazy stoners will eat anything. Even anchovies.
Those in the know seem to think that we Americans hate anchovies mainly because the anchovies we eat are really crappy ones. The scrawny, mealy fillets we find in tins of sunflower oil on some back shelf in our grocery stores and supermarkets are supposedly a poor facsimile of the true anchovy, which is relished by the sophisticated Mediterranean palate.
Fairway claims to be the exclusive American retailer of anchovies from the house of Roque. It also claims that these are the best anchovies in the world. Fairway likes to toot its own horn.
According to my research, Roque is one of the three surviving traditional producers of anchovies in the French town of Collioure, a Mediterranean port city at the foot of the Pyrenees, just miles from the Spanish border. Once the seat of the king of Mallorca, the town was more recently the inspiration for Henri Matisse and the Fauvists in their first steps toward modernism. Collioure is heavily influenced by Catalan culture, and its gastronomy thus relies heavily on the mountains and the sea. And yes, the town is apparently world-famous for its anchovies, and has been for centuries. It produces 500 tons of them each year.
If my French is any good (and that's a big if), Roque's anchovies are taken directly from the port and, before any processing, covered in salt for several days. They are then removed, beheaded and eviscerated by hand (by hand, mind you, thousands of these five-inch fish), and placed back into salt for three months. The blood and juices of the fish ferment, while the salt prevents spoilage, allowing the fish to develop deep and complex flavors. Some of the fish are sold still whole and packed in salt, others are filleted and packed in oil.
Salt-packed anchovies are the most prized by foodies, so I opted for a jar of whole salt-packed Roque anchovies ($5.99 at Fairway on 74th and Broadway). The jar says to soak them in tap water for half an hour, but I've seen experts soak their anchovies in milk, and my experience has been that this draws out some of the offensive fishy smells and flavors from other sea creatures. So I took four whole anchovies (leaving at least a dozen still in the jar), brushed off their salt, placed them in a bowl, and poured about a cup and a half of milk over them. Half an hour or so later, I took one out and filetted it (removing the backbone; the pin bones are thinner than a human hair and impossible to get rid of). The fish still smelled extremely, well, fishy, but I grabbed one of the fillets, popped it in my mouth whole, and started to chew.
This is probably the wrong way to eat anchovies. The salt, oil, and fermented fishiness of the whole fillet was overpowering. I could hardly keep the thing in my mouth long enough to swallow it. It wasn't an unpleasant taste, exactly, but it was simply too intense. I tried the other filet from my first anchovy chopped up on a generous slice of toast. This was a bit more palatable, but I still think anchovies are not really that great on their own. Like the fermented fish sauces of modern Thailand or ancient Rome, they are probably best used as a seasoning, adding depth, richness, and not least of all salt, to otherwise flat, one-dimensional dishes. In this capacity, I am looking forward to using them. These salt-packed Roque anchovies are really in a totally different league from your gritty pizza-parlor fillets. They are soft, oily, and smooth in texture; they practically melt on the tongue. Unfortunately, they also practically melt in your hands. I washed my hands three times last night, and I could still smell fish on my fingers this morning.
Last night I discovered that Fairway will slice their Grade A Hudson Valley Foie Gras to order. Although several other gourmet grocers in the city carry foie gras, most of them will only sell it whole (although D'Artagnan will sell shrink-wrapped packs of two pre-cut slices). Where each whole foie weighs about a pound and a half, and costs around fifty bucks a pound, Fairway is the place to go if you want to try just a taste of this treat. But before I get ahead of myself, a few words about the controversy surrounding foie gras are in order.
Foie gras, French for "fat liver," is the liver of an engorged migratory waterfowl. In France mainly geese are used, in the United States ducks are prevalent. Over 4,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians discovered that the livers of geese were fatter and tastier when they were about to migrate than at other times of the year. This is because the birds gorge themselves in the weeks prior to migration in order to store up enough energy for their long seasonal flight. This energy is generally stored in the animal's liver in the form of fat. In the wild, a migratory waterfowl's liver will double or triple in size through the self-gorging process. The Egyptians were the first to domesticate these birds and artificially fatten their livers by gorging them prior to slaughter.
The Egyptians passed on their knowledge to the ancient Romans, who took a liking to the fatty livers and began gorging geese on a diet of figs. This practice was brought to the province of Gaul, where it has been nurtured lo these many centuries. A few hundred years ago, with the discovery of the New World, corn replaced figs as the primary medium for fattening up the geese. Today in southwestern France, the current capital of foie gras culture, raising geese for their livers is a deeply-rooted tradition. Most families have a goose that the lady (or, if present, the grandmother) of the house is responsible for keeping and gorging with corn and table scraps, to make its liver ready for the Christmas and New Year's feasts. Today, the typical foie gras is 6-10 times the size of a normal liver, and is approximately 80% fat (roughly the same as whole butter).
For decades, owing to strict import restrictions, foie gras was available in this country only in preserved tins of mousse or terrine. Then in the 1980s, a pair of entrepreneurs established a farm in New York state for the cultivation, harvesting, and sale of foie gras from a hybrid duck breed, using a system first developed in Israel. The result was Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the first legal, fresh foie gras available in the United States. Today, Hudson Valley continues to be the primary - if not the only - supplier of fresh foie gras to the nation. Hence, the foie gras you find in your specialty grocer's meat case is the exact same product as is served in the country's finest restaurants.
So what's the problem? Well, the problem is that any argument against using animals for food is exponentially more persuasive in the case of foie gras. As PETA will be happy to tell you, the life of a bird destined to produce foie gras is not one that you or I would want to live. The birds are kept in small pens to limit their movement (and concomitant burning of food energy or risk of injury). Where the traditional method of gorging involved pouring food down the animal's throat through a funnel and sometimes tamping it into its stomach with a stick jammed down the esophagus, today a metal nozzle attached to a pressurized hose injects cornmeal mush down the gullets of hundreds of birds, seriatim. As with any factory farming operation, the animals become susceptible to injuries or diseases which often go untreated, and unsuitable animals are either allowed to die painful deaths or simply killed outright. Add to this the process of force-feeding, and the production of foie gras can easily appear to be a barbaric and inhumane enterprise.
There is evidence for the animal-rights position on foie gras in the nature of the product itself. Foie gras comes in three "grades" or levels of quality. A grade "A" foie gras looks like the picture above: smooth, creamy beige in color, and firm. Livers graded "B" and "C," on the other hand, are less highly prized because they are bruised, marred with blood, lacerated, or misshapen. Generally these defects are not the result of processing; they are injuries sustained by the animal in the last days of its life, either as a result of confinement or as a result of the gorging process, and likely caused the animal considerable pain.
On the other hand, there have been spirited defenses of foie gras production from its practitioners, who believe it is safe and humane, and who seem to deeply care for the well-being of their animals. And it must be stressed that gorging, while inherently repugnant to human beings, is a part of the natural life-cycle of these birds. Furthermore, they do not possess a gag reflex, and always swallow their food whole.
The arguments over foie gras have spilled out into the streets. Shortly after it began operations in the United States, Hudson Valley's farm was raided by New York state police at the instigation of PETA. The farm was initially shut down on charges of animal cruelty; these charges were eventually dropped and the record in the case sealed. More recently, animal rights activists have vandalized a California restaurant that serves foie gras, causing significant property damage and fear for the personal safety of the chef and his family.
So where do I come out on all this? As I've said before, it is hypocritical and dangerous to try to dissociate the idea of meat-eating from the idea of killing. The animal that gave forth the pristine boneless skinless chicken breast at your grocer or in your caesar salad probably had a pretty horrible life too. It was forcibly debeaked and declawed, held in pens where scuffles with other animals could injure or kill it, subjected to the rough handling of high-volume farming, and finally slaughtered with grotesque efficiency. There's no real way around it in the modern economy: all meat is cruel. Is foie gras any worse than assembly-line poultry, beef, or pork? Would it be more humane if it came from a bird that had been hand-gorged by a French grandmother than from a bird that was fed with a metal tube? Frankly, I don't see how. And I think this is where the animal rights argument breaks down for people who have faced what it means to eat meat and have decided to do it anyway.
I suppose I count myself among such people. And for me, a seven-dollar, 3/4-inch thick slice of foie gras from Fairway is about as good as it gets.
Ingredients:
Using a sharp knife, score each side of the foie gras in a cross-hatch pattern, cutting about 1/8 inch deep. Dip the knife in warm water as necessary to prevent it from sticking. Season with salt and pepper on both sides.
Heat a non-stick pan on high heat. While the pan heats up, combine the jelly and water in a microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on high for 20 seconds. Stir until smooth.
When the pan is very hot, place the foie gras in it. Sear it for 15-20 seconds, or until well-browned, then turn over. After another 20-30 seconds, pour on the apricot glaze and immediately remove the foie gras and sauce to a warm plate. It is essential not to overcook this dish; foie gras is mostly fat and will melt completely away if cooked too long, and you want the slice to have a very rare center.
Serve with toasted brioche or baguette slices and a sweet wine such as Sauternes.
Lisa and I had a small get-together with some of my college friends and her high school friends on New Year's Eve. I usually try to serve something special on New Year's. Apparently I'm not the only one. At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the checkout line at Citarella was so long it wound all the way through the store and out the front door. The wait at the fish counter was about an hour. It took me about an hour and a half to get two lobsters, some Wellfleet oysters, and a 2-oz. tin of Osetra caviar. Fairway was almost as crazy, but the cash-only express lanes were quick as usual. Plus, they had some killer wild mushrooms this week: hard-to-find and super fresh.
I took my first shot at butter-poached lobster Wednesday night. This method, pioneered by Thomas Keller at the French Laundry and since plagiarized by hautes cuisiniers across the country, requires you to plunge the lobsters in boiling water just long enough to kill them (30 seconds or less), extract their meat, and cook it in beurre monté (butter that has been emulsified with water as it is melted so it doesn't separate).
Although the results were tasty, I made at least two mistakes. First, although I got the claws out in one piece, I forgot to remove the blade of cartilage from the center of the larger part of the claw. Lobster isn't supposed to be crunchy. Second, I either cooked the lobster too long or heated the butter too much, because the meat was as firm as that of a boiled lobster, and the whole idea of butter poaching is to keep the meat tender and soft. Oh well. Nobody but me seemed to mind, so I can't be too disappointed. The full New Year's Eve menu can be found below.
Happy New Year everybody. Have a great 2004.
New Year's Eve Menu
Wellfleet Oysters on the Half-Shell
Crepe of Duck Confit, Shredded Green Onions and Chinese Barbecue Sauce
Wild Mushroom Ravioli with Parmesan-Cream Sauce
Butter-Poached Lobster with Potato Gratin, Asparagus Tips, and Saffron-Vanilla Butter Sauce
Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries
At Midnight:
Osetra Caviar with Blinis and Crème Fraîche
Champagne