The Perils of Research

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I’m not sure anyone ever really taught me how to do research, which is probably why my skills don’t go much beyond Googling something. Nevertheless, determined that the same fate should not befall my adult literacy students at my neighborhood library, I decided to have them research some facts about countries. On the day we were looking at websites, one guy, who was writing a paper about Australia, decided he wanted to know more about Australian food. “Perfect,” I thought, “I have a food blog. I should be able to manage this one.”

However, nothing about Australian food really came to my mind besides the vague words “bush tucker” and the haunting question of whether Anthony Bourdain was in the Australian outback during that one episode of No Reservations when he ate warthog anus. Anyway, we typed “australia” and “food” into Google. And this, on some dude’s blog in 2005, was quite honestly one of the first things to turn up:

snake1

I tried to point out that this might not be the best fit for inclusion in his paper, but by then a crowd was beginning to form. “I know they have this thing in Australia called Vegemite,” I tried lamely and was quickly drowned out by disgusted ewwws and echhhs as we scrolled further down the page and found this: Continue reading →

What All the Hip Sugar Plum Fairies Are Up to This Weekend

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sugar-sweets-cupcake-2012New Yorkers with a sweet tooth: you may now begin rejoicing. This Sunday, October 21 is the 3rd Annual Havemeyer Sugar Sweets Festival, a bacchanal of sugary goodness benefitting the City Reliquary. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the City Reliquary, it’s a cool museum devoted to quirky New York artifacts. Ever wanted to see a display of paint chips from the L train or a set of dentures recovered from Dead Horse Bay? You’re in luck.)

Both bakers and eaters of sweet things are welcome at the festival, so head down to the intersection of Havemeyer and Metropolitan in Williamsburg on Sunday and check it out. Even if you don’t happen upon the PitchKnives jam on offer, there will be plenty of treats for sale, as well as contests like the Best Booze-Infused Dessert, Best Sweet Slice and Best Fall-Flavored Treat judged by professional confectioners. Check out all the details here.

Pump up the Jam: Cranberry Orange

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canningAs favors for our wedding last year, Jason and I decided to make a bunch of different homemade jams and give each guest a jar. Why this occurred to me, when I had little to no experience making jam, I have no idea. But aside from some bad pre-wedding dreams of giving botulism to everyone I loved on the same day, the plan went miraculously well.

So when I realized a couple weeks ago that I didn’t know how to bake, I resolved to make some jam for the Havemeyer Sugar Sweets Festival rather than botching a pie or cake. Jam, to me, is easier to deal with than baked goods because you can taste it and make adjustments before you’re done. Plus, the process of sealing the cans is a little like a mad science experiment. I am always inordinately pleased by that little sucking sound that the lids make when a vacuum forms inside the cooling jars.

For those of you who find the idea of preserving something intimidating, here are the basics: you put some sweet or sour stuff in a jar, you wipe off the rim and screw one of those two-piece canning lids on it, you put the whole thing in boiling water for a while, and then it pretty much takes care of itself. (Okay, there are a few more details you should probably mind, but not many. If you find yourself having botulism nightmares, check out Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan as a good resource book.)

Anyway, the fun part is making the jam itself, and for the festival, I went with an autumn theme: apple pie jam and cranberry orange jam. Here’s the recipe for the cranberry variety, which has a yummy sweet-tart thing going and a beautiful ruby hue: Continue reading →

Near Beer 2012: Good Stuff’s Just Around the Corner

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Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head in his own Beer Bubble

Two great things were born in 1981: The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) and me. The GABF is touted as the biggest, oldest beer tasting in the US; I am touted as a big ol’ beer taster, myself. This year’s GABF was held last weekend, meaning for me, three days of texts from gloating friends who attended: “Dude. Just talked w/ Sam Calagione for like 5 min!” I was totally jealous of this one-on-one with the founder of Dogfish Head. It did occur to me though, after my fantasy chat with Sam, that I live in a Beer Bubble. Craft beer has not touched everyone’s life like it has mine. I came of age in a great era for beer drinkers; however, while craft beer has come a long way from 1981, we can still do better for our fellow Americans.

According to BeerAdvocate, the US was home to 4,131 breweries in 1873. But matters just spiraled downhill from that peak to 1919 when some self-righteous sons-a-guns cursed the whole country with Prohibition. That screwed things up profoundly. Americans were not even allowed to brew their own again until 1978 (respect-knuckles, Jimmy!). I’ve dated guys older than that law. Continue reading →

Baggin’ It: Lunch Packing Tips

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brownbagThe lunch tips from our Baggin’ It Challenge are in, and our winners have been declared!* In this post, we’re compiling some of the ideas we received so that our readers never again have to worry about the grim prospects lurking within that brown bag.

Some Assembly Required: Picnics are inherently fun, so take one to work with you. Tearing off hunks of baguette and putting together the perfect combo of pesto, cheese and tomato is the kind of thing that never fails to cheer me. And as an added bonus, packing your lunch piecemeal keeps the bread or crackers from getting soggy over the course of the morning. (One caveat: If you’re packing a lunch for people other than yourself, you might want to clue them in beforehand—my father once choked down a plain dry bagel before finding the container of peanut butter my mother had packed in the bottom of the bag.)

Changing Form: Just because you have leftovers, doesn’t mean you need to eat them in exactly the same way the next day. My office has a microwave, but I rarely use it. You’d be surprised how good (and different) take-out like Chinese or Indian food tastes cold. Put some cold General Tso’s Tofu atop a bed of lettuce and veggies, and you’ve got yourself an excellent salad for tomorrow’s lunch. Continue reading →

Going the Distance

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scarecrow

"Come, ye food pilgrims!" says this scarecrow at Nixtamal.

How far would you travel for the perfect meal? That’s not a purely academic question for most food enthusiasts I know. I’ve been contemplating the importance of the food pilgrimage ever since our friend Ben mentioned the fact that “there are about four restaurants in Queens that people in Brooklyn are willing to travel to.” He and his wife Jenny had just brought Jason and me to one of these places, Tortilleria Nixtamal, in Corona (more on their heavenly homemade tortillas in a moment). The weird thing was, Ben didn’t even need to say the names of the other places he had in mind for me to instantly fill in the blanks with the restaurants I believed he meant: Dosa Delight in Jackson Heights, Nan Xiang in Flushing, and anywhere that is liberal with the feta cheese in Astoria.

I’m not sure what makes these places travel-worthy. I can say with reasonable certainty that I’ve never had and never will have the best meal of my life at any of them. But while I’m probably willing to put more time into traveling for food than most (see: any End of the Line post on this blog), it’s a rare gem that I’ll submit to slogging to repeatedly, and Dosa Delight and Nan Xiang make that list without question.

Perhaps part of it is the travel itself, the hardship endured for the sake of taste. When Jason travels to Jersey City and Sapthagiri Restaurant, I can see his eyes get wider with longing for majjiga with every rumble of the PATH train. Majjiga is a curious beverage, a sort of spicy cilantro-flavored lassi. (Interestingly, the menu translates “majjiga” as “buttermilk.” It is definitely not buttermilk.) As much as Jason enjoys the taste of majjiga, I think he enjoys equally the experience of telling the proprietors of Sapthagiri how far he has traveled to drink it, for which he is often rewarded with slaps on the back and a big pitcher of the stuff on our table. Continue reading →

One Order of Rollmops, Comin’ Up

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It’s been a wet and dismal week here in New York (even without the dying bananas and poisonous rice), so we thought we’d aim for a little mid-week lightness and sunshine with one of our food brainteasers. Can you match these obscure food terms to their meanings? Curl up someplace warm and treat yourself to hot cocoa if you get all of these right. Actually, just drink the cocoa anyway.

1. Laverbread
2. Omakase
3. Brunoise
4. Rollmops
5. Falooda
6. Socarrat
7. Tang
8. Gremolata
9. Poolish
10. Ballotine
11. Cynar
12. Waterzooi
13. Pigeage
14. Affinage
15. Kiwano

a. Pickled herring folded around pieces of onion, olives or pickles
b. A mixture of flour and water with a little yeast, used as a starter some forms of dough
c. The process of punching down the floating grape skins in fermenting wine to drown aerobic bacteria
d. An orange and yellow melon distinguished by the spiny thorns on its skin
e. The section of steel inside the handle of a chef’s knife
f. The art of aging cheese
g. A Welsh delicacy made from seaweed gathered from the rocks on the coastline
h. The toasted rice at the bottom of a pan, especially in paella
i. A deboned leg of a chicken, duck or other poultry stuffed with ground meat and other ingredients, tied and cooked
j. A classic Belgian seafood stew, sometimes including chicken, with an egg yolk-thickened vegetable broth base
k. A bitter Italian liqueur with a strong artichoke flavor
l. A traditional South Asian beverage of rose syrup mixed with vermicelli, tapioca pearls and milk
m. A basic knife cut measuring 1/8 inch by 1/8 inch by 1/8 inch
n. A multiple-course sushi meal chosen by the chef
o. A condiment made from finely minced parsley, garlic and lemon zest

Don’t click “continue” until you’re ready to see the answers! Continue reading →

Community News: Uncle Ben and Old Lace

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Turns out most rice we eat has dangerous levels of arsenic.  This is particularly true in baby and infant food.   Arsenic is a Category One carcinogen specializing in lung, skin, and bladder cancer.  Oh, happy day.  The gist: eat less rice, no more than half-a-cup per day.

A while back Consumer Reports ran a study that turned up serious levels of arsenic in many brands of apple and grape juices.  This prompted them to do another round of tests on rice, particularly susceptible to arsenic because it’s a water plant.  What CR found was that pretty much each of the 65 rice products they tested with 223 samples—brown or white, organic or synthetically-altered, adult cereal or infant cereal—were tainted far above EPA standards.

The EPA does not regular arsenic in food.  It does so in water, though, choosing 10 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic as the threshold of acceptability.  This level was negotiated by the USA Rice Federation and chemical companies up from the 5 ppb threshold favored by scientists, and negotiation of thresholds for naturally-occurring arsenic are still being negotiated.  The cost to the rice and chemical industries of working that negotiation are far less than the cost of making their products safer, you can be sure.  Rice is a $34 billion-a-year enterprise.

Once CR released its study, the FDA, who has been studying arsenic in rice for decades, released its findings thus far.  The results are more-or-less the same. Continue reading →

Baking 101: As Easy As…

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dutch apple pie

Proof that I baked a pie! And that it bubbled over.

I can cook, at least at a level at which I can be reasonably confident of eating and enjoying the result, but I can’t boast the same self-assuredness about baking. A friend and co-worker recently asked me to bake something for the Havemeyer Sugar Sweet Festival (more about this awesome upcoming fundraiser in future posts) and blanching, I realized that, food blogger or no, I don’t know how to bake a damn thing.*

So this fall and winter, I’m going to try to teach myself to bake, and you will have the pleasure of watching all my mistakes. I considered doing a “Julie and Julia” sort of thing in which I try to go through all of the recipes in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that my mom gave me when I moved out of the house more than a decade ago, but there are like four or five whole sections in there filled with just baked goods, and really, who has the time? At any rate, I figured that whether I was seeking the alphabetical or philosophical beginning of any dessert list, apple pie would appear near the top. Besides, we had a lot of apples in the fridge.

pie ingredientsI came home with the ingredients for a Dutch apple pie and felt sort of ashamedly intimidated and decided to nap for a little while. Finally, though, screwing up my courage, I embarked on a crust. I had forgotten to buy shortening (doh!), so I used butter, and I also don’t have a pastry cutter, so I used a fork. Let’s just say that this was not ideal, and it was not the most beautiful piecrust in the history of piecrusts. But from there, the process got easier, maybe because I decided to start drinking beer while I peeled the apples. By the time the whole thing was assembled, it looked, if not impressively perfect, at least substantial. I had also made a colossal mess and used up a ridiculous amount of time. Apple pie, unlike Rome, can be built in a day, but if I’m the one constructing it, there better not be too much else going on. Continue reading →