I discovered a new trick when making a meatloaf today.

The trick was inspired by the much-lauded recipe for roast chicken that appears in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers, which the cook crush and I made last week in double proportions with great success. (It was a dinner party with some newish friends and I was shy about busting out the camera so no full post on it, but the recipe is really easy to follow and it as awfully tasty, so that’s all you need to know.)

The trick is twofold:

First, choose make the meatloaf in a cast iron pan rather than on a cookie sheet or bread pan.

Second, get the pan super hot by placing it in the oven for 10 minutes before putting your loaf in it.

The loaf won’t stick to the bottom, will cook faster, will cook more evenly, and will give you double the crusty bits (top and bottom), which I think is the best part of a good meated loaf.

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.

My friend Cynthia was commissioned to design the windows at Hermès:

As you can see, she is adorable. I had not seen her artwork before, and although I had every confidence that it would be as special and unique as she, and that she would bring to it even more care than she does her other job (and as the woman who, in my book, rates as World’s Best Waiter), I was completely blown away by how wonderful it is:

As an exhibit, the installation is called “Dodging the Shadows of the Sun”. It is global and specific and strange and familiar. Paintings that look like block prints, wallpaper that looks like painting, animals that look like humans, masks that make mannequins seem alive. India, Japan, Africa and New York. Evocative of travel and repose.

And at the risk of turning art into commerce, the windows lived up to their commissioned purpose: when I looked at them, I felt rich and elegant, and at the same time felt impoverished and provincial and that I needed to buy all of the objects the windows showcased so that I could be rich and elegant. In particular, I had a moment with the gold sandals (Hermes sandals, from Hermès - I just got that):

I’m wondering how many dinner parties I would need to cook for her as a barter for one of the paintings.

Wheels of blood oranges served with shaved red onion, salt and olive oil is another new favorite salad ripped off from Franny’s (who in turn ripped it off from some Sicilian, where they’ve been eating blood oranges and onions together since the Moors were kicking about). At two points, this is a very reasonable WW snack. Tart and juicy, it feels like a flood of vitamin C, sits lightly in your stomach and scratches both a sweet and a savory itch.

As you can see, the orange I bought at the Coop today is not terribly bloody; it is a Tarocco, a strain which has less pigmentation (anthocyanin) and therefore doesn’t appear as ”full blood” as the more familiar Moro. Its paleface nature doesn’t betray a wimpy flavor profile, however; the Tarocco is every bit as fragrant and berried as its more intensely-colored cousins.

Don’t be shy with the sea salt, don’t cut the onions too thick and don’t waste any of the juice if you can help it. There really isn’t more to this than what you see, but it becomes more than the sum of its parts.

I’m back on Weight Watchers in anticipation of my best friend’s wedding , and I refuse to accept it as a gustatory set back. I’m lucky that I enjoy a salad for dinner. 

I’ve been especially lucky, too, as I’ve dined at Franny’s bar twice in as many weeks. Oh, how I love to sit at the bar with a negroni and eat salad with my fingers in the company of a charming man. And if I subsist on steel-cut oatmeal and cherry tomatoes for the majority of the day and keep an eye on how many bites I have, I can eat pretty much anything that sounds good.

One of the salads offered recently consisted of leaves of tender escarole dressed with peppery olive oil, sweet-tart Meyer lemon juice and salty parmesan cheese. I could eat this every day and in fact have been making a dime-store version with a conventional lemon, romaine, everyday olive oil and pre-grated parm that I have lurking around the Old Stove pantry.

I eat it because it is healthy, and because it is filling and tasty if not as soaring as Franny’s (my version blushes at the very mention of Franny’s version, it is so inferior), and because it makes me think of the cook crush. I also eat it because when I measure the cheese and oil carefully (1 tablespoon and one teaspoon, respectively), it is only 2 points towards my Weight Watchers allotment.  Topped with a poached egg to compensate for the limited oil, it becomes a minimalist gesture of a Caesar salad, has a major increase in elegance, and weighs in at only 4 points.

Not bad for a filling (and quick and cheap) meal at home.

For a few years I rejected everything that smacked of home and hearth, including personal observations of holidays. I couldn’t break my family of traditions, but could do my best to be out of the country for the big annuals like Christmas and Thanksgiving, and let the little guys such as Easter and St. Patrick’s day slide by uncommented upon. But this past year my desire to mark the passing of time and the annual journey of the earth in its rotation around the sun has increased. Especially when the collective observations involve ritualized foods, as they so often do.

I’m in Boston right now, and it is St. Patrick’s day. I did not celebrate by getting shitty and heading onto the commuter rail and into the city for the parade as I would if I lived on the South Shore. But I did make a traditional New England boiled dinner and some soda bread for the family. Corned beef simmered with carrots, potatoes, pearl onions and cabbage, served with dense, caraway-flecked, butter-slathered bread  is a good meal for a chilly March day regardless of whether it is authentically Irish (it’s not).  

Irish Soda Bread

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Soak 1 cup raisins in hot water to plump, about 10 minutes. 
3. Sift together 4 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 teaspoon salt and 3/4 teaspoon baking soda. Mix in 1 tablespoon caraway seeds.
4. Drain raisins and mix into dry ingredients. Mix in 2 cups buttermilk.
5. Turn onto floured surface and knead in additional flour as needed until no longer tacky to the touch.
6. Divide into two balls, roll into tight circles, place on a baking sheet, slash a cross into each top, and bake for about 50 minutes, until dry when poked with a knife, hollow sounding and brown on top and bottom.

Waiting tables and cooking during brunch over the past year, I developed the theory that brunch is for chumps.

Sure, it is a convenient way to see folks on the weekend and still have time to do an activity afterwards, and there is sometimes a set price menu that makes it seem like a thrifty option, and afternoon drinking is encouraged. So, good. But, the economics!

Neither technique nor materials justify the cost. I am not the first person to observe that this meal consists largely of bread, eggs, potatoes and less-perishable, lower-cost meat items. The markup is enormous, and in some places, there is even a brunch tax: a dish served on weekends at 2 o’clock costs more than it would on a Tuesday or a Friday at 2 o’clock.

But. This observation about cost, and its implication that therefore brunch goers are chumps, was challenged by my friend the future ex-bachelor, who rightly observed that at most reasonable places, as a customer you get what you want out of brunch: stodgy food, tasty booze and permission to arrive in public looking messy.  

So, rather than holding forth on Why Brunch Is For Chumps - I can’t hold forth, because if you are getting what you want then all’s fair -  I give you Three Reasons Why Brunch Creates Negative Energy In The World. 

1. The care given to preparation, ingredients and presentation during brunch is sometimes substandard. The people cooking your food are quite possibly hungover. The people serving your food are almost definitely hungover. (The people cooking had to come in earlier, so maybe they called it an earlier night.)  Food should always be made and served with love. Corny and grand, but true.

2. Regard for the established menu is withheld by customers during brunch. I swear, people who would never have the cheek to ask for a change to a dish at dinner have no hesitation in doing so at brunch.We’ve all made special requests at one time or another, and some among us are guilty of always needing to have something changed. But at brunch, change requests are a plague.

At brunch you feel entitled to make special requests - for substitutions, omissions, additions and just plain inventions. Your sense of entitlement is extreme to the point of whininess and belligerence. You had to wait for a table. You got up early. You work hard all week. Waaah. If we don’t have omeletes on the menu it is because for one reason or another we don’t want to make omeletes.

(Cooks really hate this behavior. The people who serve you also hate you for this seventh-day demandingness, but because they need to scrape up every dime they can in order to make this terrible shift of low check totals even slightly profitable, they act like it is OK and pass on your demands, so from where a cook sits, they might as well love you for it.)

3. Both your servers and your cooks hate you not only because you are so demanding, but because there are so damn many of you. After having to wait for your table, you get pushed through too quickly to make room for more of you, and this exacerbates your whininess, and there’s always another order to get, place, fire, make, clear, and the whole day feels like an endless shitstorm of bodies and eggs.

Maybe when I own my own place I’ll eat crow on this, but I think that brunch as eaten out should be avoided. Doctor up a bottle of Spicy V8 with vodka and spices, toast an english muffin, and invite me over to show you how to poach an egg. Shit, I’ll even bring the Times.

If you don’t live in Manhattan, you probably haven’t put in major hours in our local bodegas, delis and green grocers, and may not know about the unusual treasures to be discovered therein.

The classic example in the East Village is the corner shop owned by a Punjabi family, offering standard fare (flowers, fruits and veg, beer, soda) and meeting their own needs with an epic freezer of meat substitutes, jars of instant curries, Vita cola and hot chai, appealing to the well-heeled, health-conscious Bobo with faux natural beauty products and new fangled granola bars, reflecting to India’s colonized past with a full shelf to British goodies like oat cakes, Hob Nobs, Heinz baked beans and Cadbury candy bars. 

In my direct neighborhood there are also often products scattered throughout that nod to the old school Eastern European presence. And so it was at Village Farm Grocery that I found tarragon soda.

One very green bottle peeked out at me from behind the seltzer. It was the color that compelled, as you can imagine. The Cyrillic-looking font on the bottle gave it away as something for the former Soviets among us. 

I got it home and had it on ice. Tastes faintly of licorice, rooty, very sweet and like tarragon. It goes flat quickly. Or I’m drinking it slowly. Sort of bad aftertaste, and plaque-making.

Tarkhun, as it is called in Russian, is made with Russian tarragon, which is hardier and less flavorful than French tarragon, which we westerners generally use to cook with and which is used to such elegant effect in classic cuisine like Sauce Bearnaise. My impression is that tarragon cola is not exactly common in the former Soviet Union, but like birch beer is here, available erratically and part of the cultural memory more than a regularly consumed drink.

This bottle was produced by the Natakhtari brewery, which makes beer in addition to fizzy drinks. Natakhari is in the Republic of Georgia and according to their website, owing to innovative technologies, modern forms and methods of management, they haveno analogue in South Caucasus. So I’m guessing that they are proud of their tarragon soda and I’m willing to accept it as a pretty good representation of how a tarragon beverage should look and taste.

My judgement is that tarragon soda is good for cultural anthropology but on the whole pretty yuck for consumption.

The first time I had kimchi stew at Momofuku directly after a Bikram class I realized that I had a problem. I have always liked this dish, but there was something about eating it after spending a couple of hours sweating up a storm that felt both virtuous and gratifying. Yet at $17 for the (admittedly huge) bowl, and Bikram 3 or 4 times a week, I can’t possibly afford to eat it each time I want it, even if one order feeds me twice. Going “authentic” and ordering kimchi jigae at a restaurant in Korea Town isn’t much better, even though it comes with generous banchan (side dishes like tiny crunchy anchovies with chile powder, pickled radish and seaweed salad) and is only about $15.

Kimchi has, to my mind, magical health-giving properties, This is part fervent belief, part science. The cabbage leaves set to ferment with salt, garlic and chile develop the same bacterial cultures that make yogurt a healthy choice - that’s what gives the chi its bubbly, pickled tang. And I’ve got this thing about cabbage by itself being one of the healthiest things you can eat. So, probiotically enhanced cabbage? Unbeatable.

And when I’m feeling rundown, as I was for much of this winter, I feel like I’m going to go crazy or get rickets if I don’t eat it regularly. It is a pressing need.

Desiring liberation from the shackles of restaurant kimchi stew, aware of the urgency of my need, I decided that it was time to being experimenting with homemade style. I read a few recipes online, referred to two Korean cookbooks, thought carefully about Mr. Chang’s marvelous version at Momofuku, and began. It was ridiculously easy, very fast and I must admit, delicious. The cook crush, who introduced me to the stew-after-sweat phenom after eating it post-schvitz, approved of my effort.

I will make and freeze some pork stock to use in place of water for the next batch. There will be a next batch. There will be many batches.  

1. Heat 1 tablespoon sesame oil in a casserole or stock pot. Sweat 3 cloves minced garlic and 4 scallion whites.
2. Brown 1/3 pound cubed pork belly. Add ~3 cups kimchi, heat through, scrape up fond on bottom of pan released by kimchi juices
3. Cover with water (or if you have it, preferably pork stock), adjust salt and heat with gochujang (salty, red, garlicky chile paste), and bring to a simmer.
4. Simmer for about an hour. This makes the pork tender and melds the fermented and umami tastes. Don’t rush.
5. Add half a package of firm tofu, cubed, and if you can find them, Korean rice cakes (these chewy disks are optional, obscure, and the subject of some research by me vis their difference from Japanese rice cakes, so more to come, but are an essential element to the sublimity of the Momofuku stew). If you can’t find the rice cakes, sigh. Bring to a simmer.
6. Adjust flavor with chile paste and sesame oil for spice and balance. 
7. Serve with chopped scallion greens and optional rice.

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.