I still enjoy Young Adult fiction from time to time, in part for nostalgia’s sake. I like learning, and rereading a favorite from my childhood allows me to remembering learning, which is a sweet memory indeed.
One of my favorite authors of all time is E.L. Konigsburg, and one of my most beloved books is From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler. In that book Konigsburg describes happiness as “excitement that has found a settling down place.” (But she the goes on to note that “there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.”)
Job. Dog. Cook crush. All in place. Settled in the best way. I’m back.
I finally got a reservation at Momofuku Ko, despite the fifteen second window each morning between the time they release the tables for the seventh day out, and when those tables become completely booked. The cook crush gave me the challenge, with the incentive of offering to pay for it, and the cookie of “you’re just the girl for it!”.
It only took a week of sweaty refresh button jockeying from 10:00:00 a.m. to 10:00:12 to make it happen. Each morning when staring at my clock waiting for it to turn to 9:59:59, I felt a little embarrassed about being part of a herd of people trying to get a table at an unseasoned restaurant. As though I believed that choosing to spend money somewhere particular makes you hip (it never does). As though popularity meaningfully corresponds to quality (it usually doesn’t). And now that it is done and I have the reservation, I feel depleted of adrenaline, and I’m sure will feel a lonely ache each morning at 9:59.
I have no intention of blogging each course step-by-step, but I will not be able to resist spilling more bytes when this meal occurs, especially after the rollercoaster ride of their online-only res system. The cook crush should be prepared to cough up for the wine pairing.
Snack the other night was broiled monkfish liver, served with tamari and a squeeze of fresh grapefruit juice and pulp, buttered toast, and a plate of steamed broccoli rabe.
Monkfish liver is rich and delicate, unctious, reminiscent of fois gras with a hint of a sardine flavor. In France it is available cooked and tinned to be spread on toast. In Japanese cuisine, where it is called “ankimo“,it is served uncooked on sushi or lightly steamed with ponzu (a citrus soy sauce). We serve it in the restaurant with much the same presentation as I made last night, which was a hybrid of the western and the Japanese preparations.
Ankimo is one of the foods the Japanese call “chinmi“, which translates to “rare taste” and identifies the food as being unusual, unique to a particular region, or less popular than it has been in the past. Many fermented foods are chinmi, especially entrailly seafood pickles. Monkfish liver is far less assertive or difficult than salt-pickled mullet roe, which is the only other chinmi food I’ve had, so I can only assume that it is considered chinmi because it is a little dangerous to eat (parasites are a threat when it is eaten uncooked).
I had it on my mind as a snack because the cook crush brought home a lovely bottle of Wakatake saki with which I thought it would be a special treat for two to share.
Monkfish liver is difficult to find outside of a restaurant.I had to go to Katagiri (the Japanese grocery store in midtown)as fishmongers generally don’t carry it and Sunrise and JAS (the Japanese groceries near my apartment) didn’t have any on hand. I expected that its rarity would correspond to it being very dear, but a generous serving for two cost only $2.04.
It was affordable decadence.
I could say that I’m linking to the Bruni Blog because he makes the following true observation about dining out:
“That’s the thing about restaurants. You never know. You really don’t. The most fervently recommended place in its prime can leave you heartsick; a place to which you bring relatively low expectations can delight you, and not just because your expectations were restrained.”
Blah blah, I tend to like Bruni’s reflections more when they are not in the context of an “official” review. Being delighted, expectations, yes, yes.
But really I’m linking to send a not-at-all couched signal to a certain cook who may or may not be reading this, about a wager with severe financial and gustatory implications.
If a certain restaurant is NOT reviewed formally, in the Times, by Bruni (or his Times replacement should he lose a knife fight with some other Italianophile over who loves Italian things more) by March ‘08, I get dinner at the restaurant most recently awarded 3 stars in the Times.
I could be wrong - that’s what makes gambling sexy, no? - but I believe that his latest unofficial review increases my favor, odds-wise.
Hell, I’ll even raise the stakes a fourth star.
I have apparently alarmed my parents into thinking I’m a wreck because of my heartbreak sandwich post.
I’m fine.
The guy I’m dating (see, still using present tense!) got upset because I found out which eleven secret herbs and spices he uses in his fried chicken batter. It got a little intense, I may or may not have threatened to publish the recipe on the blog, and now we’re taking a little breathing room.
But I still have hope, and if all else fails, can really hook up some mean breasts and thighs.
Love,
The (maybe!) future Mrs. Colonel Harland Sanders
I have long said that if I was a superhero my vision would be my special power. My hearing is also (selectively) pretty good (except when people mumble in which case what do you expect). Now that I think about it, I am also very sensitive to smell, not only in the romantic Proustean way but also in that I will begin to wheeze and break out in hives if the lady next to me at the gym is rocking too much cheap cologne.
I learned recently that this steroidal sensual perception also apparently extends to my tongue. According to the results of my Supertaster Test, I’m one of approximately 25% of the population with an unusually high number of tastebuds.
I took the test - chew on a strip of paper, note whether it has no taste, a slight weird taste, or a bitter taste - in the Serious Eats office. I would dismiss the science behind this test out of hand except that there was a wide range of response amongst us. One of us tasted nothing, others some weirdness, and to me the strip of paper tasted so foul that I couldn’t even last the proscribed 10 seconds.
The weird part is that I very much enjoy eating bitter things and have never been a picky eater, drink plenty of alcohol and love my veggies - all traits counterindicated by my newly discovered identity as a supereater. So I’m still not sure I believe.
If you want to get a test to see if you, too, are a supertaster, check out the SupertasterTest site and order your own.
As a girl growing up with regular field trips to Plymouth Plantation, I grew up with the belief that the sun rose on America in 1620 when the Puritan pilgrims landed here. Lately I’ve got a touch of Jamestown fever; the 400th anniversary of the settlement of the Jamestown Colony has popularized the revised understanding of the role that the Powhatan tribe played in our nation’s early history, as wonderfully captured on National Geographic’s America in 1607 site. And certainly attending college in the era of academic political correctness led me to reconsider the notion of the first Thanksgiving (though being politically aware of the relations between the pilgrims and the Pequots in no way reduced my ardor for a non-denominational holiday centered on eating good food).
So as I improve my understanding of early European settlements, it seems appropriate to share the fact that the first Thanksgiving in North America wasn’t at either of the colonies jockeying for position as most important. Canada owns the first Thanksgiving.
The first Thanksgiving in North America was allegedly celebrated in 1578 when Martin Frobisher, an English explorer traveling through Canada in search of a passage to Asia, held a ceremony of thanks for surviving the passage from England to Labrador. This celebration was reintroduced when the British won the Seven Years War and effectively took Canada away from the French, was adopted as an annual event in the 18th century and was formalized as a national holiday (second Monday in October) in 1879.
Canadian Thanksgiving is earlier than ours because the harvest up North occurs earlier than it does in America, and football doesn’t play as large a role in the whole experience. Otherwise, it is very similar: they eat turkey and mashed potatoes, their children make goofy crafts and take part in pageants glorifying the role of whitey in the New World, they go shopping the day after they feast.
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada.
I’m in the last stretch of a couple of 17 hour work days what with the cooking and the project management. My fingers hurt from burning them on the grill and then banging them on the keyboard. But I’m pretty happy, and not just because for this one moment in time I’m both cooking and making decent money. I’m also happy because it is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr!
So while I intend on posting about my meal at Gramercy Tavern, the smell of roux and the wonderfulness of working on the line in an open kitchen with a bunch of wicked cool women, today I ask you to consider the pirate.
Did you know that Buccanners were so called because of their practice of smoking meat over wooden frames, called boucan? These pirates were French rascals causing trouble for Spanish shippers in the Caribbean, and they learned this art of meat preservation from the indiginous Arwak Indians. Pirates love smoked meats, too!
If you wish to celebrate the day (or the commitment that pirates had to charcuterie), here is a recipe for grog:
To 1 (oz) of Rum, add the juice of half a lime and one or two teaspoons of cane sugar. Fill the rest of your tin or mug with water.
Enjoy, my mateys!
Practically speaking I’ve never seen a chef in a toque outside of the ICE classrooms or in movies. At any restaurant where I’ve worked cooks of all levels of the culinary hierarchy wear bandannas, baseball hats, do-rags, and commis caps. Who needs a hat that is 10 inches tall? Impractical.
But part of our ceremony for graduation was the receipt of a full-on chef’s toque - paper, but replete with all 100 folds and plenty of height. (And by the by, it is said that the folds of a toque are meant to reflect the 100 different ways an accomplished chef can cook an egg.)
I wrote about Le Grand Buffet and the general festivities of my culinary graduation when it occurred a couple of weeks ago but I didn’t yet have a photo of my class from The Great James Wendell.
My experience of the class as a unit was that we didn’t particularly gel. I’m not whinging about it - I loved school despite not having the camaraderie I’ve heard about from other students in other classes, and I feel lucky to have made the friends in class that I did make. So I’m surprised by the appearance of easy comfort and good times captured in James’ photo.
And at the risk of being distracted by my own navel, I wonder which is correct: my memory of us being thrown together without ever really taking as a team, or James’ documentation a bunch of people who are tight with each other, united in a common objective of learning?
At any rate, it is a cute photo and I’m sure my mom is happy to see me in that damn toque. And thought I’m miles and years from being a chef, I do think I could bust out at least 100 ways to cook an egg.
