Author Archives: Jason

Andrew Leahey’s Kale Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie

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For Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law gave us a homemade cookbook entitled Rock N Eat.  We talk like this.  It’s part of our culture.

The first entry is for a kale banana peanut butter smoothie and it starts, “This is much better than it sounds.”

It is.

I mean, it’s shockingly tasty.  I like kale a lot, though I don’t think I’d be too psyched for a kale-flavored breakfast, and thankfully the kale taste is nowhere to be found in this smoothie.  It’s all banana and peanut butter goodness, reducing the kale’s presence to tiny flecks while bestowing all the nutrition of raw kale, which is, as Andrew writes, “pretty much the best thing you can put into your body.” Continue reading →

Dead Man Gnawing: The Nature of Beignets and the Precision of Vincent Drake (1st Century & 21st Century, A.D.)

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If you read our last Grub Match, you will have noticed repeated references to one Vincent Drake.  Vince just might be the best cook I know (after my mom, obviously).  He definitely embraces a holistic definition of “gastronome” like none of my other friends.  He seems almost as focused on the proper process of making a dish as he is on the actual end result.  He actually uses a jigger to measure liquor.  I haven’t seen anyone do that since my grandfather died.

Though Vince also happens to be one of the kindest people I know, he did not hesitate in his secret bid to steal the Grub Match crown for himself by replacing PitchKnives’ typical bar-based final debate with a mega brunch.  That brunch included brioche French toast, and he ended up, after making four loaves, with enough leftover dough for probably two more.  Enter: beignets.

Brioche is a viennoiseries, the French term for baked goods that use choux pastry dough, dough that is yeast-based but that includes extra butter, eggs, etc.  Beignets are viennoiseries as well, and V simply decided to reclassify the brioche choux pastry as beignet choux pastry and go to town. Continue reading →

Sorta Kinda Chinese Tea Series Entry Two: Sesame Black

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I can’t say with Gospel certainty (let’s stop and laugh at that for a second…) if sesame black tea predates the bubble tea I wrote about last week.  But I suspect it does.  We were eating sesame seeds at least 5,050 years ago.  The Assyrian gods celebrated their Creation by drinking sesame wine.

So sesame black tea with milk needs no gimmick like gelatinous bubbles or Rainbow Brite-colored mega straws!  No, it can be mixed up in a Chinatown bakery, in particular this morning the Dragon Land Bakery across from the perma-shuttered and dragon-topped NYC tourist booth on Canal Street.  The woman behind the counter spoons some of the black sesame tea powder (available on Amazon; who knew?) into my cup, fills the cup with hot water and milk, and drops in a Hong Kong Style-brand Ceylon tea bag.  The exchange takes some miming, fruitlessly precise articulation, and one mistake, but the two of us get the job done.

I take my seat at “Tiny Dancer” replaces “Grease” over the radio.  Everyone else here is speaking, reading, and looking Chinese.  They’re also middle aged or older.  Have all the young people turned completely to the novelty tea shops?  Am I into an old-person’s tea? Continue reading →

What Will Arizona Eat?

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Because Shannon is badass, she bought me horseback riding lessons as a combined Christmas-birthday gift.

I love horses.

I love them with something approaching the ardor of an 8-year-old girl.

You spend time with horses and you realize that they have a connection to humans that no other animals save dogs can claim.  The history of their existence is inextricably tied up with ours, and you can sense that when around them.  Learning to work with a horse can open a window into the ways our species is and has been connected to the natural world all around us, a window all the more important given how rapidly we are burying our sense of that integration under bells and whistles and hustle, hustle, hustle.

I wanted some of that, and Shannon hooked me up.

And soon I found myself hooking up the horses. Continue reading →

Sorta Kinda Chinese Tea Series Entry One: Taro

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I’m not sure how far bubble tea has made it out of our big cities.  In case it hasn’t made it to your locality: bubble tea, invented in Taiwan in the ‘80s, is tea (sometimes kinda maybe) that is filled with tapioca balls, which are little gelatinous spheres approximately a quarter inch in diameter.  Bubble tea is thus usually served, whether hot or cold, with oversized straws that can accommodate the “bubbles.”  These straws are typically whimsical shades of purple or pink or green.  The cups are frequently adorned with cartoon creatures that defy classification except to say that, by virtue of including features like a single eye or a blob shape or the power to bounce and blink without the use of any limbs, they are distinctly Contemporary Asian.  The only Western cartoon counterpart I can think of is the blob that used to bounce unhappily beneath a rain cloud in that Zoloft commercial.

Bubble tea, in short, is meant to be fun.  It is to tea what a Frappaccino is to coffee.

And it is just one kind of many tea drinks I have discovered living in a city with a large East Asian population.  Bubble tea seems to frequently contains no real tea.  Other “tea” drinks served either at tea shops or Chinese bakeries contain only milk or something called “creme” or water mixed with assorted powders the color of Willy Wonka products.

One of my favorites is sesame black milk tea.  It involves steeping a black tea bag in a cup of hot water and milk and stirring in some kind of magic sesame powder.  I had that again the other day while eating a Chinese cream bun that immediately made me feel as if I had swallowed half of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Continue reading →

Indian Curry Sweet Potato Fries & Purple Carrot Fries

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One of my cooking joys is turning someone who claims to not like a particular food.  Shannon is probably the most frequent victim/beneficiary of this pleasure.  I won out against her resistance to dark greens like kale and mustards, and I have recently joined the campaign for the honor of the sweet potato.

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a member of the botanical family Convolvulaceae that is, I was kinda surprised to learn, commonly known as the Morning Glory Family.  Yep, sweet potatoes are close cousins of Morning Glory flowers.  They’re the only commonly eaten plant of the 1,000 Convolvulaceae species.

And they’re worth eating.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a D.C. non-prof that advocates for nutritional awareness, found in its ’92 study of vegetables that the sweet potato is the most nutritious vegetable.  Ever.  I know, that seems crazy, it reminds us of a pumpkin or the third substitution option after curly fries, but it’s true.  Given its fiber, complex carbs, beta-carotene, protein, vitamins C and A, potassium, iron, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, et al, it scored in the Center’s test a numeric value of 184.  The second most healthy vegetable, the humble regular potato, scored only 100 points.

So we’re going to be eating some sweet potatoes in the Leahey home.

And you know I had to come up with some novel ways to prepare them.

First Move: The Peel & The Cut  –  Keep the skins.  A lot of the nutritional value is stored Continue reading →

36 Hours in Baltimore: Part II

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Saturday afternoon, after Reece’s eggs took the edge off a slow morning-after and post museum trip, we went to the Abbey Burger Bistro in Federal Hill.  Abbey patrons can build their own burgers around meats such as alligator, kangaroo, and elk.  I don’t eat that shit.

I didn't eat this. But this kinda captures a lot of what they do. And we were too excited to remember to take our own pictures.

I do, however, eat fried green tomatoes, which the Abbey has turned into a burger, and it will knock you out.  I mean, Knock.  You.  Out.

The batter on the tomato wasn’t too thick, wasn’t too thin (“Juuuust right,” said Goldilocks), and was fried to a golden crisp with the tomato hot and juicy inside.  I topped it with cucumbers, herbed yogurt, and probably a quarter-cup of goat cheese and ordered it on a whole wheat bun.

It was amazing.

I mean shockingly good.

I know this is a bit anathema to say of a place that serves elk on a bun, but this place makes the best fake “burgers” I’ve ever had.  On previous visits I’ve tried the shroom and homemade veggie burgers, and they’re fantastic as well.

Part of the success is based on the mix-&-match component of the build-your-own arrangement, but the greater part of the success stems from the superiority of those build-your-own ingredients and the expertise with which the tomato is cooked.  That’s not to say that this is healthy food, per se.  The burgers come with homemade chips that will fulfill your fat intake for the weekend, and for $2 more Rae subbed about a pound of delicious sweet potato fries for those chips.  And the sheer number of  possible ingredients (meat & “meat” – 13, bread – 7, cheese – 13, toppings – 37) can be overwhelming.   But goddamn if this wasn’t the best lunch I’d had in recent memory. Continue reading →

36 Hours in Baltimore: Part I

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Baltimore.  I love Baltimore.  It’s got that cozy, quasi-beat down feel I dig in East Coast Cities, a good smattering of galleries and museums, and an idiosyncratic funkiness that appreciates the weird.  While there for a birthday weekend earlier in the month, Shannon and I and my best friends, Rachel, Tim, and Reece went to the American Visionary Arts Museum, a place dedicated to self-trained artists, heavy on the work of mental patients, and able to encompass both this haunting applewood sculpture carved by a TB patient soon to commit suicide and a gift shop in which Reece could buy a whoopy cushion for his twin five-year-olds.

And since we like to eat—and since Tim in particular loves food more than most any other product of human civilization—restaurants factored heavily into the birthday plans.  Each establishment we patronized ended up, as if by magic, to be exactly what we needed at exactly the moments in which we patronized them.

Friday night, Rae and Tim were eager to take us to a spot called Ten Ten.  We were planning on going dancing later and Ten Ten boasts “handcrafted cocktails” that proved excellent primers for the club, as well as the reason that my memories of Ten Ten are limited primarily to them.

Pretty. Lethal.

Okay, that’s not totally accurate.  Tim’s lamb shank came on the bone and looked like both a Viking’s dinner and his mace.  And the Fried Brussels Sprouts with Chili Vinaigrette were superb.  As best as I can deduce now, they’d been steamed to the perfect shade of Late Spring Green and then pan fried briefly at very high heat, giving them those caramelized-charcoal spots that make for the best Brussels.

At the time, however, I’d had, as best as I can recall, two Electric Relaxations, composed of gin, Sloe Gin, honey, Pernod, and lime, as well as a nice glass of Talisker (identified by taste alone, I might add) before leaving the house, leading me to declare authoritatively to the table that after the steaming, the Brussels had probably been subjected to a blow torch ordinarily relegated to Crème brûlée. Continue reading →

What Will Oscar Eat?: Discriminating Palate Edition

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The Tomato Slayer has, in defiance of all that I have known of him up until this point, begun to show a bit of discrimination.

Those of you who read PitchKnives regularly or know us personally are aware that Oscar is generally a cut-rate food whore, though one capable of strategy.  He’ll eat constantly and is beyond tubby, but also has the sense to wait patiently until our backs our turned to go cheerfully push Bruce out of the way and go to town on his food.  He is in general our trash compactor: if there’s a crumb of kibble or a slight slick of canned food left uneaten in a bowl, Oscar is on the case.

 

Until Saturday, that is.  After going to see Amour (meh), we decided to bring home the remnants of our popcorn.  Surely Oscar would be partial to junk food above all other kinds.

Au contraire.  In a shocking display that turned conventional wisdom on its head, Oscar sniffed at the bag, only to turn away in favor of double checking that no scrap of breakfast remaining in his bowl had escaped his attention.  No amount of cajoling or enticement made a lick of difference.  Just look at Shannon.  She’s bereft!

Thankfully Dylan, the dimmest of the bunch and equally food-focused, was there to pick up Oscar’s slack. Continue reading →