A Chicken In Every Granny Cart

I get a bit stressed out at work from time to time. It's shocking, I know. I mean, from what I've written about myself here, I'm sure you think I'm smart, calm, caring, in-control, and just possibly funny. To one degree or another those are all true, but you should also know, I can be one major-stress puppy.

So yesterday, something went wrong and I found myself in front of the vending machine at work (yes, to deal with stress at work, I eat). I scan the offerings; chicken salad, oreos, potato skins, butter-braid pretzels, pop tarts, candy bars… Damn, no cheetos? (I have a major fake cheeze problem) Oho, but what's this? Sweet Island style potato chips? For 65¢? Oh yes, this I must try!

I have no idea what Herr's is going for in this flavor, but good-on-em for trying! They're tangy, sweet, creamy, a little spicy and packed full of umami. I'd describe them as a cross between the new Spicy Thai Kettle Chips and some chip coated with cheese and spices. These are some serious chips. Coated in a sublime flavor that seems to blithely skip over the ridges of the chips.

Instantly I was taken away from the crapiness of my day… there was a thought tickling the back of my mind… yes, could it be? The flavor of these chips brought a food memory wriggling out of my brain, yes, these chips very closely resemble… The salsa I've been trying to recreate for a few years now, One (condiment) That Got Away!

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be able to recreate the salsa from the recipe on the back of this bag, but as long as I don't tell any of my coworkers about this amazing vending machine discovery, I'll always have these chips (that is until the vending machine man comes to refill it and doesn't bring these with him).

My aunt will be so proud. She will also be relieved… I taught myself how to make spätzle yesterday.

My aunt, the daughter of German immigrants, has been making her brand of spätzle for family gatherings for longer than I can remember. In the weeks leading up to, say, Easter, I’ll call my mother, “Are we going to Syracuse? Is Aunt L going to be making spätzle??” over, and over and over, even now that I’m old enough that I really should know better.

Aunt L’s spätzle are different than any other I’ve tried at any German or Austrian restaurant anywhere in the world. Hers are much thicker, closer to a dumpling and less a little sparrow (and no, I don’t mean this kind of sparrow) and more like a gorgeous, fat goose. Also, as a bow to my family’s obsession with garlic, she browns them off in oil and garlic until they’re golden and crispy. To me, they are the picture of culinary perfection. I truly believe I could eat her spätzle every day for the rest of my life.

For my first attempt, I think my spätzle turned out pretty well. Mine were smaller, but they had the same chewy, toothsome feeling as my aunts. When I make them again (and I will make them again!) I will use fewer eggs, maybe 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks, plus more milk and even a little more flour. Then again, maybe I’ll hold off until Easter, when I’ll badger Aunt L into making hers for me again, you know, as research…

I served my spätzle with kielbasa (we’re a melting pot of Eastern European culinary traditions my family is…) and sauerkraut all braised with caramelized onions and dry vermouth. The kielbasa was much different than what I’m used to. I was inspired to try some local sausage from the East Village institution, Kurowycky Meat Market, which was unfortunate, because well, to be frank (heh), I didn’t like their kovbasa at all. It was nicely spiced and full of large chunks of meat but had a strange, gamey smell/flavor that I just couldn’t get past. I’m a little sad really. I thought maybe, finally, I’d find a more convenient local source for my kielbasa fix, but alas, I’ll have to keep making that trip to Eagle Provisions in Brooklyn. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Recipes for both dishes below the break.

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Yesterday I outted myself as a sauce junkie, admitted my condiment addiction, so today, I put forth the greatest condiment conundrum I've ever faced; the search for the perfect salsa. I hope someone can help me get my fix!

A few years ago, I was asked if I wanted to go to Cozumel over Super Bowl weekend. Being one that doesn't give a fig about football, but does love habanero salsa, swimming and conch cocktail, how could I refuse?

So off I flew. I nearly ran into a shark while snorkeling (no contact lenses), I did bandera shots with a local, and I managed not to get sunburned, but most importantly, I ate at La Choza. It's very unfortunate that their website sucks, because, if I've ever eaten at a restaurant that I wish, oh how I wish, would make their secret recipes public, this is the one!

Their pollo en relleno negro and sopa de lima are awesome, but the true draw, the condiment that got away, is the salsa. Yes, just the normal salsa they put on the table to eat with tortilla chips, the reason to hop on a plane and sit in a tropical paradise and feel like you've discovered a hidden foodie nirvana, is for the salsa at La Choza.

I went back at least three times trying to dissect this secret, firey elixir. It resembles an aïoli more than a traditional salsa. It definitely has acid in it, both in the form of vinegar and citrus. I think the chiles had been fire roasted because I remember little flecks of black in it. It had definitely been emulsified with an oil, that's what gave it the creamy texture, and it had a serious kick, probably the local habaneros I would imagine. I've tried to recreate this salsa many times, and failed miserably each time. I've done research up to my eyeballs, and have found nothing.
The owner gave me one intriguing clue, that his family was originally from Michoacán and that most of the dishes on their menu were a mix of family recipes from the old state combined with the traditional dishes of Quintana Roo. I've tried exploring this route too, and well, gotten nowhere.

I have a problem. Hi, my name is Ann, and I’m a condiment addict. Phew! Just saying that makes me feel a little bit better. But sadly, the fact remains true, I have a real problem.

Every time I’m in a grocery store, pretty much anywhere in the world, something always catches my eye, and I buy it. That’s the thing with condiments; they’re cheap, they’re intriguing, and they’re small so you can justify carrying them home across a giant ocean, well, that is if you only buy one bottle.

And just so as we’re clear, I’m not talking about fancy ketchups (although, to be fair, I really love ketchup!) On my last trip to London, I toted home something called “Gentleman’s Relish,” a strangely spiced anchovy paste in a goregous ceramic box that looked more like it should be holding a ladies’ powder than stinky fish paste. When I went to Mexico I brought back so many chilies, salsas and moles I got pulled over at customs. Even my trip to the Adirondacks for a long weekend with my family was fraught with condiment buying danger, namely, the garlic & chipotle barbeque sauce from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

But the thing is, I feel very little remorse for my problem, I mean, it could really be worse… I could be addicted to, say, caviar, jetting around the world looking for the perfect roe. That would be pricey. And, seriously, sometimes my addiction can be a boon, like last night when I jazzed up an un-promising sandwich with some Key Lime Mustard and Beet & Horseradish spread (sounds nasty, tasted divne!) So maybe it’s not such a problem, I should just embrace my foible and move on, I mean, it really could be worse.

Saturday was a sad, draining and depressing day. One of my best friend’s mother’s had succumbed to cancer earlier in the week, and so a group of Manhattan and Brooklyn-ites headed over a bridge or through a tunnel to New Jersey for a beautiful remembrance of an amazing woman’s life.

I was tired and hungry when we got back to the city, so off we went to feast on therapeutic buttermilk battered fried green beans. I guess the boy could tell I was in no mood to think or cook, so he suggested trucking up to the farmer’s market to procure some root vege so he could make one of his famous pureed soups for me. What sane girl would say no to that?

We settled on a classic; Parsnip & Apple, but once at the market I was seduced by the Jerusalem Artichokes. As I was scrubbing the girasole, the boy was sauteing the onions and garlic and said to me, “Is there anything more full of promise than a pot of onions and garlic?” It was a nice thought at the end of a crappy, sad day, that a glug of olive oil, a few onions and crushed garlic could truly be the start of nearly any dish from around the world.

We didn’t get to eat the soup on Saturday, some group therapy was in order (read, a party) so we cooled the soup, grabbed some Gin and headed out into the night.

But Sunday was all about relaxing. With the soup bubbling away on the stove, I cued up disc 2 of Bleak House (another series I had missed during TV Free February), decanted a bottle of wine and got set to do nothing. It was blissful.

I don’t think my wine choice was perfect for the meal, a 2000 Chateau Ste. Anne from Bandol in Provence. It smelled lovely, all flowers and leather in the glass, but tasted a little tight and tannic with the soup. Perhaps I decanted it too late. But, after a little time to breathe, it eventually went very, very well with a little Wallace & Gromit.

Head below the jump for the recipe for this easy, soothing soup.
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I’ve been working on this post in my head for days, trying to figure out the best way to present it to the world. It has been crafted in response to a post over on The Kitchen. Sara Kate notes, “the topic of knives comes up regularly around here people just love their weapons of slicing and dicing,” and so she opens the floor to the readers saying, “we also love an old knife with a good story.”

Many people think of their knives as workhorses, dependable blades that will last forever with the proper care, but people like me, who get wibbly at the knees at the sight of a discounted set of Globals, we think of our knives more affectionately. My knives remind me of the kind souls that taught me many important life lessons over the course of two decades. Yes, my knives, as odd as it may seem, remind me of the horses of my past.

Allow me to explain…

Both horses and knives (and by default cooking) can teach us a lot about the world and ourselves. They teach us to be patient, to trust our instincts, to be detail oriented, to think ahead, and most importantly to care, not just about ourselves, but also about other living beings and the environment around us.  Horses and the farm and eating teach us that the world is ours to care for, and that’s an important lesson, no matter how it is learned.

Messermeister 10″ Chefs Knife
This knife I purchased when I was thinking of becoming a chef. I had lost my job in the post-9/11 downturn, I was depressed and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so a friend in culinary school who knew I liked to cook, asked me if I wanted to come and intern with her at a kitchen run by a high school friend. I jumped at the chance and subsequently bought this knife, mainly, because all the men in the kitchen used big knives, and I didn’t want to look like too much of a girl.

This knife taught me many lessons and removed huge chunks from my fingers. It was wild, hard to control, large and dangerous, just like my old horse Broadway. B (as we called him) was huge (nearly 6′ where the neck meets the back), very high strung and strong as hell. I got more concussions and a few broken bones off him, but he was my attempt to enter the bigtime. Neither event happened, I never became a restaurant chef, and I never became a professional rider. sigh.

Wüsthof 17cm Santoku Knife
I could never quite figure out why everyone on TV seemed to chop with a granton-edge Santoku knife. I thought it was because they lacked skills, were just pretty faces, hired for their laughs and clevage, and therefore had to make up for their lack of training with fancy dancy knives. Two birthdays ago, trolling the knife counter at Broadway Panhandler, I decided it was time to try one of those puppies out, to see what all the fuss was about. Boy was I wrong (god I hate to admit that).

I love this knife. I love its balance, the way it rocks on the board, the intense control it affords me and how much of a better cook I’ve become because of it. This knife reminds me of Andy, the goregous little 1/2 Arab, 1/2 Heinz 57 variety pinto mare that took me from being a rider and made me into a Rider. Every kid in my county’s 4-H program took lessons on Andy. She could do anything from dressage to barrel racing to fox hunting, and was intelligent enough to know when someone was a good enough rider to teach them some very important lessons. Andy was possibly the most intelligent creature I’ve met of any species, and the culinary experiments I’ve embarked on since buying this knife form an era of learning and experimenting akin to my time learning from Andy.

Messermeister 7″ Chefs Knife
This isn’t actually my knife, it’s the boys knife, but I helped him pick it out soon after we started dating. I was spending a lot of time at his house, and for some reason, bringing one of my knives over to use in his apartment seemed like far too big a step forward. So, I convinced him that it would be a good purchase for him to make. He still uses it when he cooks for me. I like that. And while we now live together, and many of my things entered his apartment prior to my official moving in, my knives were amongst the last of my possessions to move in.

It’s kind of like my old boy Wilson. My folks bought half of him for me when I was a little girl. The other half belonged to one of my friends that rode at the same stable as me. Wilson was not a perfect horse, he had a funny white blaze that ran down his face, and then hooked over one nostril, like he’d been clocked in the face by a boxer. He could get out of any blanket we put on him (we nicknamed him horse-dini (I was young!)), but he brought our families together and eventually, we sold Wilson, my friend and I went our seperate ways, yet now, 20-odd years later, we’re sisters. I can’t say that it was the knife that brought the boy and I together (that’s just silly!) and I can’t say it was Wilson that helped form a new family (a little less silly) but I can say that they’re both memories that make me very, very happy.

Many might say that Sunday was the polar opposite of Saturday. Rather, it was a perfect balance. Saturday, I woke up and immediately thought, I must be outside, whereas Sunday, was all soft grey, and rainy, the perfect morning to laze about the house drinking tea and browsing through the “library.” For some reason, the boy grabbed Pamela Thomas’ Greenmarket.

He thumbed through this little jewel of a book, but was simply captivated by “Most Voluptuous Cauliflower,” a recipe from Anne Rosensweig of the Lobster Club (I did a quick google search, and much to my dismay this fabulous sounding restaurant is closed, and I couldn’t determine if Chef Rosensweig has landed anywhere else).

That he should fixate on a cauliflower recipe is nothing new. Everyone’s got their “thing;” his is cruciform vegetables in all colors, shapes and sizes (cauli, romanesca, brocc-(oli, oflower, rabe, etc), cabbage in all colors, and yes, Brussels sprouts). And my thing? Without pause; mushrooms. I think easily I could include mushrooms in everything (and often do) and eat happily for the rest of my life. You’ll see the fusion of these two passions in just one second….

Out and about, strolling through the mist, I asked what the boy wanted to do with the rest of the cheese from DiPalo’s. Without skipping a beat, “cauliflower!” he said.

Okay, cool, I had a drizzle day mission. So off I traipsed to pick up a new Emile Henry baking dish from TJMaxx (such an overlooked resource for great, cheap housewares in the city!), some crimini mushrooms, thyme and, of course, cauliflower.

The dish came together in a snap. I used Chef Rosensweig’s recipe only as jumping off point. I decided to use a Shaker white sauce as the binding agent. I believe the French call it bechamel. (To be exact, I used White Sauce #2 from Amy Bess Miller & Presis Fuller’s opus, and my favorite cookbook in the whole world, The Best Of Shaker Cooking).

For the final dish, I just tried to create what mental image the name evoked to me, and man was the final dish decadent. Please try this the next time you’re craving something rather simple, but completely, soul-satisfyingly comforting. This is basically your grandmother’s mac & cheese, just with cauliflower in place of the elbow macaroni.

And possibly the best part of this meal was that it paired absolutely perfectly with my favorite wine in the entire world, the bunny wine, also known at Le Mas Au Schiste.  It comes from this vineyard (warning site only in French) in Languedoc, and as you can see from the picture on the site, that’s no cute bunny! In fact, at one shop where I get my fix of this wine, they had no idea what I was asking for, they thought the animal was some sort of gorgon!  Either way, this is one of the most amazing wines I’ve ever tasted in my life, but I don’t get to drink it much, because I can’t always find it.  At least I’ve got one bottle still left in the cellar!

recipe and another glamour shot after the break

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Saturday was so unseasonably, wonderfully warm a trip to the Union Square Farmer’s Market seemed very, very necessary. I was hoping, rather irrationally, to see signs of spring amongst the produce, but alas, the produce was the same as it’s been for the past 5 months; root vege, onions, the mushroom lady, the kimchee lady, the greenhouse leafy greens people, winter stored apples, parsnips, potatoes, horseradish, and on and on.

BUT! And this is a big but… the FLOWERS! Oh man, the flowers. Even the herbs were feeling the vernal love. Goregous rosemary shrubs, blooming no less. *sigh* If only I had a garden!

And since I found no inspiration at the Market for dinner, I pushed along to Soho to peruse the produce available at Gourmet Garage while the boy stood in line for fresh mozzarella at DiPalo’s. Ah, spring, when a young man’s heart lightly turns to thoughts of milky, salty mozzarella!

And what did my thoughts turn to? Sunny, sweet, tangy citrus. Originally, I was fixating on sweet Palestinian limes. I had gotten them a month or so ago to use in Poc Chuc, but alas, they weren’t there. So I grabbed two heriloom, Sicilian blood oranges, two hyper trendy Meyer lemons, a fat, frondy fennel bulb and some frisee (I swear, I wasn’t feeling the alliteration while shopping.)

I sectioned the oranges, thinly sliced the fennel, squeezed the lemons over the whole lot (in a bowl of course) sprinkled liberally with salt, chili flakes and lots of lovely, peppery extra virgin olive oil. I let it all sit and macerate for an hour, then poured the liquid off into a cup, tasted it and adjusted the dressing with a little sherry vinegar. Frisee goes into a bowl, oranges and fennel on top, dressing over it all. Simple, delicious; one foot in winter, another foot toeing into spring.

It’s Friday! It might hit 70 degrees in New York City today! This is the kind of day that restaurants, take away joints and bars with outside seating are made for! Get out of the kitchen and enjoy it!

I’m a huge fan of Project Runway. I was very excited for the finale last night. I was super happy Chloe won (she deserved it). The show is fun to watch, all bitchy comments and sassy comebacks, sexy clothes and nervous breakdowns, but it is also a mini-MBA in 10 episodes, a theory Virginia Postrel can explain more clearly than I can.

But there was another reason I was excited for this season to be over… It meant Top Chef was about to begin. How could a show about cooking and restaurants fail to be awesome? Hell’s Kitchen was some of the most compelling, evening-plans-busting television I’ve stumbled across in ages. So, did Top Chef live up to my expectations? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

First, I don’t care if Katie Lee Joel owns twenty restaurants, is Thomas Keller’s heir apparent and can make classic Bordeaux in her basement (and did I mention she’s Billy Joel’s wife?). The lady is BORING. She comes across as only a pretty face with not a culinary thought in her head. (And it doesn’t help that her bio on the show’s Website states “she has been featured in publications like People, In Style and Hamptons Style.”) Woooooowe! She’s got street cred!

Second, as much as I love Tom Colicchio and his food, he’s just not Gordon Ramsey. (But, I just discovered he has a blog about the show, cool!)

Third, they voted their “Santino” off the show in the first episode. Bad move my friends, bad move. Ken was brash and annoying, but I’m pretty sure he had skills that didn’t make it onto his first plate, and to top it all off, he’s hot and Irish! Oy vey, bad move…

He lost the snap challenge (or whatever it was called) for sticking his finger in a sauce while working on the line. So? I’ve worked in and around kitchens, if that’s the worst thing a chef does, count yourself very lucky.

But the thing that reaaally skeeved me out was that in the very next setup, all the competitors dishes were placed on one long table, and then 10 (yes TEN) people all dug into them. No individual plates, no serving utensils, just, dig right in folks, don’t be shy!

EWH!

Any self-respecting chef would never allow that to happen. When doing a tasting of new dishes for your front and back of house staff, chefs insist that each person serve themselves with one serving utensil onto an individual plate. You can’t run a restaurant if everyone has the flu that the hostess gave everyone.

Basically, I was disappointed. I think the chick from the FCI is going to win it all. The crazy old lady should have gone down last night. They think she’s cute, I think she’s annoying. The model girly trying to switch careers and the natural foods chef need to go asap as well. And finally, where’s the food? There was almost no focus on the food last night, and let’s be frank, no cooking show can succeed without some serious, sexy food shots. Maybe Bravo is afraid of showing people cutting up little lambies and cutesy fishies (can fish be cute? Patagonian Tooth Fish are some ugly mo-fos!)

So, will Top Chef be kicked off the Bravo island?

I guess only time will tell.