Author Archives: Shannon

When Good Food Goes Rogue: Allergy Mysteries

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peanut picture

I found this whimsical peanut shower by Lou Beach in the New York Times. Yes, that New York Times.

While visiting my homeland of Ohio this week, I learned that my youngest niece has developed an allergy to chestnuts. Chestnuts! Victorian open-fire roasting events and turkey-stuffing festivals will never be the same for her, that’s for sure. And then just a couple days later, my friend Dave was laid low (very low, sadly) in the middle of a wedding celebration due to his unfortunate exposure to pine nuts. It seems that everybody has an allergy to something these days, which begs the question—what exactly is going on here?

To be sure, food allergies are not a new phenomenon. Sir Thomas More implies in one of his books that King Richard III knowingly used an allergic reaction to strawberries to accuse one of his lords of poisoning him, and subsequently demanded his head on a platter. Yeesh. In more recent history, Bruce Lee, the martial arts star who may or may not have suffered from a family curse, died from an allergic reaction to aspirin.

But if you think that allergies seem like more of a problem now than they were, say, when you were a kid, you’d be right. Continue reading →

The Way of the Mushroom

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Found 'em!Here are two truths that I have come to realize. 1) There are people out there with a natural affinity for finding mushrooms. You will know these people when you happen upon them, because at some point in the conversation, they will not be able to control themselves, and they will tell you about the massive morel supply they scored the previous day. When they go hiking, they practically trip over puffballs and hen-of-the-woods. If physics allowed for the sparkle in their eye to be mushroom-shaped, it would be. 2) I am not one of these people.

this is not going to work.To explain how I learned this, we need to back up a step, to my birthday last month. My friend Mignon gave me a mushroom box from Back to the Roots, out of which you can grow your own delicious fungi. It was a lovely gift, and one that filled me with trepidation, since Jason and I had bungled a similar gift a couple years ago. Twice. But this one did feature smiling children, oohing and aahing over their mushrooms, on the back of the box, which boosted my confidence. I can do most, if not all, of the things a four-year-old can do. And yet, when I found myself balancing cat food cans in order to anchor a wobbly and submerged bag of peat, I had little hope that this experiment would actually work.

Enter my brush with some mushroom folk at Bonnaroo. Continue reading →

Wearing Your Food on Your Sleeve

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banana guy

For those days when a t-shirt is simply not enough.

It’s been a slow blog week, dear readers, but I swear we have a good excuse. We were recovering from another fun year at Bonnaroo, where Jack White and Neutral Milk Hotel rocked my socks off. And while, sadly, the primitive skills guy was not there this year to impart his wisdom on mystical fox goodies, food was never far from my mind.

If there was one dominant theme in the t-shirts I saw people wearing at the festival, it was definitely…kittens. (Jason spotted two different kitten/Jaws poster spoofs, one that said Paws! and one that said Claws!). But taking a close second place were food-themed t-shirts of many flavors. And so today, let’s look at the ways you can let your foodie flag fly with your choice of garment. (I’ll link the photos to where you can buy these beauties, in case you want to bolster your summer wardrobe.)

Bonnaroo prides itself on its politically engaged audience. For instance, I saw a pretty awesome “Stand Up for Your Food” shirt at the festival, which I coveted but have not yet been able to find online. Anyway, why not make a statement with your tee, whether your opinions run toward supporting local farmers or force-feeding more geese?

TS-0804FRM-M-2FoodieShirts_GrowFood_1024x1024foie-2-large

Continue reading →

Tamarind Time Machine

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tamarind tofu

I didn’t even have to squeeze anything out of a sock this time!

A lot of the time, my days in Cambodia feel very far away. Going through my old notebooks is like walking into a weird time portal, full of interviews with people I don’t remember (“Question: how long does it take you to paint a single tuk-tuk?”), odd to-do lists (“Find copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for Savuth”) and discarded lyrics for a comedic folk song entitled “All My Linga Wants Is Your Yoni” (funnier than it sounds, I swear).

But with the publication of this cool anthology, which includes some of my Cambodian musings, I was looking for a way to pay homage to and feel reconnected with the Kingdom of Wonder. That’s when I went hunting through my notes for the recipe for Tofu with Tamarind, Chili and Basil. I scored it while writing a weekly column for The Phnom Penh Post called The Learning Curve in which I would try to learn traditional Khmer pursuits and then make fun of myself while I bumbled my way through them. Looking back, I see that I must have irritated a lot of busy people while researching this column, but they tended to be unfailingly good-natured about it, and Oeurm Pav at Arun Restaurant was no exception.

But would I be able to remember enough about interviewing her to recreate my favorite Khmer dish? It was a long time ago, my notes were sketchy, and even in optimal conditions, I’m lazy about measurements. However, I was able to purchase tamarind paste in an Indian grocery store in Queens, whereas in Cambodia, I had to boil the tamarind and squeeze it through one of Jason’s socks for lack of a cheesecloth. Perhaps giving undue weight to this head start, I decided that I could just intuit my way through the rest of it. Continue reading →

My Darker Self, Buried within a Knish

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“Okay, I’m really going to do it this time,” I whispered to Jason as he flipped through books on Brooklyn history with antiquated titles like Fire Laddies and Every Kind of Shipwork.

“Yep, you got this,” he told me. “Remember: spinach. Eye on the prize. Don’t get distracted by the lady with the pigtails.” He was right; the woman in question definitely had crazy in her eyes. I circled the table, trying out a stealthy, jaguar-like walk, and moved in for the kill.

knishbookcover-silverlauraWe had come not with the purpose of hunting, but of listening. Laura Silver, author of the new book Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food, was giving a reading in the Brooklyn Collection of the library. The reading and the Q and A session did turn out to be fun; that woman seriously knows her knish. But I found it a little hard to concentrate, still flustered by the scene of primal competition that had gone down at the preceding wine and knish reception.

yonah schimmel

What was at stake (photo courtesy of the Village Voice)

If we can back up for a moment, I will try to explain why I was excited about this reception in the first place. It’s possible, if you are reading this from somewhere that is not New York, that you have not tasted a knish. I don’t think I knew what one was until I first moved here, and, walking friendless and hungry around Central Park, I pointed to a deep-fried little square on a hot dog cart and asked if it was vegetarian. I think I got laughed at, but I was rewarded for my humiliation with a greasy, mustard-drowned potato pastry. A street knish: not fine dining, but exactly what I needed in that moment. And later, I found the sublime, handmade knishes at Yonah Schimmel, mounds of mashed potato filling so substantial that the thin pouches of pastry can barely contain them. Every cuisine has its dumpling comfort food—the pierogi, the gyoza, the tamale, the ravioli—and the knish is among my favorites. Naturally, when I heard about the reception, I looked forward to the opportunity to commune with fellow knish-lovers and break potato with them.

So I was a little upset when the other attendees turned into a pack of slavering, ravenous wolves, stealing the free knishes right out from under me. Continue reading →

Spring Cleaning, or Landscape of Culinary Failures

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rock candy

No, I’m not really sure what I was going for here.

Last weekend, Jason and I decided to clean the apartment. We like to test the limit of MCHT (Maximum Cat Hair Threshold), and we had recently been attaining new heights of achievement on that count. Given that, I wouldn’t really describe myself as being in a sunny mood as the cleaning got underway, but things steadily worsened as proof of my poor food blogger performance was discovered behind every dust bunny.

First, scattered about the living room, there was the leaf litter of forgotten blog post ideas. I had been so enthusiastic about making my own homemade limoncello when I first picked up this recipe card months ago. Ditto on that cauliflower pasta recipe that someone sent me, and the instructions for infusing honey with…actually, I don’t know what you infuse into honey, but I do know that I haven’t done it yet. Far be it from me to cast aspersions, but by the time I unearthed an article that Jason had saved on making one’s own complex spice blends, I had serious doubts about the likelihood of a successful follow-through, especially since he’s married to me.

On to the TV room, where I found menus for pizza and Thai takeout lurking among the sofa cushions and under the DVD player. I had been looking for these! Even so, they made me feel a little dismal. I suppose my affinity for takeout is no secret, but it’s a little depressing when a whole room of your home is decorated in couch potato chic. Besides, what kind of self-respecting food fan loses the best menus?

But the worst room by far was the kitchen. Even if one was able to overlook the lurid green jar in the corner, containing my sadly unsuccessful rock candy experiment, and the proof in the refrigerator that I am woefully inept at estimating the usefulness of allspice-flavored simple syrup, there would still be the stove to consider, cloaked in stains and difficult questions. Continue reading →

The (Almost) Ageless Tale of the Brooklyn Slice

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Viva-la-Pizza

Scott also holds the Guinness World Record for owning the most pizza boxes. One more reason to be jealous.

There is almost nothing better than a good slice of Brooklyn pizza—the molten cheese, the piquant sauce, the chewy crust. But I would argue that listening to Scott Wiener of Scott’s Pizza Tours talk about pizza might be even better than eating it.

During a recent lecture in the Brooklyn Collection of the public library, Scott won me over, not just because of his enthusiasm for pizza (which is considerable) but also his willingness to forego the easy route of merely touting the merits of various pizza joints and instead diving into the more complex terrain of pizza history. You should have seen the way his face lit up when he pulled up the PowerPoint slide of the preserved communal ovens from 1st century A.D. Pompeii. Or the way he elatedly traced the web of relationships that connected Lombardi’s in Little Italy to Totonno’s on Coney Island. (It’s true that I got a little lost during the part of the talk in which he discussed the physics of coal-burning ovens, but that might have been due to the monster pour of white wine a librarian had given me just prior to sitting down. Man, I love the library.)

Judging from the reaction of the crowd, I wasn’t alone in being wooed by Scott. There was an audible groan when the words “Papa John’s” were uttered, and crows of delight when he revealed a stream of research that hinted that the original Ray’s might well have been in Brooklyn, not Manhattan. I was a little concerned that one peculiar old dude might kidnap Scott just so they discuss the details of oven construction, about which the old dude seemed passionate.

The story of how Scott Wiener became the crowd-pleasing pizza maven he is today turned out to be almost as good as the lecture itself. Continue reading →

Garden of Victories

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melon seedling

Sure, you’ve heard of a victory garden, but what about garden victories? We at the blog feel like our gardening readers have gotten short shrift over the long winter months, but don’t worry; spring is officially in the air, and we want to give you a chance to brag about your mad plant skills.

So send us your best gardening victory stories. These can be brief–a couple sentences or a photo or two. For example, check out this scrappy little melon plant that sprouted on our windowsill this week. I think it’s cool that you can still see the watermelon seed whence it sprang. It’s like the chick who is still mostly inside his egg on Garfield and Friends.

Anyway, whether you’re looking for a forum in which to brag about your prize veggies (I’m looking at you, Farmer Dwight) or just particularly good at capturing the wonders of the garden in word or image (I’m looking at you, Keiko), send us your beauties, and we’ll gather and post them throughout the gardening season. And you know what they say: where there are victories, there are usually fabulous prizes. Hit us up at submissions@pitchknives.com.

Haiku Contest Winners!

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cherry blossoms

Lovely cherry blossoms at the BBG

It’s cherry blossom season here in New York, the time to sit in silence beneath a tree, observe nature, put quill to parchment and compose some traditional Japanese poetry. Or something like that. The entries to our National Poetry Month Food Haiku Contest were an artful blend of the ancient, the modern, and the kind of gross. It was no small job to judge these beauties, but we have for your enjoyment three finalists and one grand prize winner. Here in no particular order, were the Runners-Up…

Food guru and blog favorite Roger LaMarque (Brooklyn, NY) sent in this haiku (imparting some sage advice, as usual):

let me be your guide
eat pork butt and spotted dick
but avoid sweetbreads

From mountain man musician Dave Humeston (Columbus, OH) came this Appalachian Trail-inspired haiku:

stewing fiddleheads,
bring up the royal boil;
top ramen crowns out Continue reading →

Do You Like Me, Ooey-Gooey? Check Yes or No

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ample hills cookbookIt’s a little embarrassing that I’ve developed a hardcore crush on Ample Hills Creamery just as they are taking on a celebrity shine following the release of their eponymous cookbook. I would like everyone to know that I have totally liked this Brooklyn ice cream shop and their Salted Crack Caramel flavor for years at this point, the same way I liked Leonardo DiCaprio starting with his What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? days, way before everyone jumped on the Titanic bandwagon.

But there’s no denying that I have experienced a fresh rush of Ample Hills love ever since I went to an event last week at Powerhouse Books to celebrate the release of the book, and now, as happens with every good crush, I see them everywhere and find myself thinking of the texture of the St. Louis butter cake in the Ooey-Gooey flavor while at work, doodling pictures of ice cream cones in the margins of my notebooks, eavesdropping on other people’s conversations about my beloved in bars, etc. If you’ve never had it, you just have to trust me that this is sublime ice cream.

It is only fair to note that not everyone shares my unconditional excitement. Some people say it’s too sweet, some people say it’s too expensive, some people say that it rests on the laurels of a few stand-out flavors while everything else is sub-par. I understand that there might be a tiny kernel of truth at the center of each of those complaints. But this is a crush we’re talking about. So I think those people are stupid.

My concern at the moment is that this crush is almost certainly unrequited. At the Powerhouse event, the authors of the cookbook (co-owners Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna with marketing director Lauren Kaelin) asked the crowd to submit ice cream flavors inspired by books. Be still, my heart. If ever there were a contest made for me, it was this one, but I panicked and spent most of the allotted time wondering if maybe I could base an ice cream flavor on Slouching toward Bethlehem. Continue reading →