Gustatory Oddities from the Animal Kingdom

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aye aye

We spend a lot of time here at PitchKnives thinking about the peculiar feeding habits of one particular species, but what about all the other eaters out there? This was the question that came to me when Jason sent me this pretty awesome video about aye ayes. Aye ayes are a kind of lemur with a wicked-looking middle finger/ultimate grub-hunting tool. Seriously, just watch the video.

caecilian

Mom! We’re hungry!

But this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of some of the weird animal noshing that’s happening out there. Take the caecilian, for instance, a wormy-looking amphibian that lives in South America and Africa. Since the mother caecilians don’t want to leave their young to look for food, the young just strip the skin off their mom with special fangs and subsist on it. And then she regenerates it so they can do it again. So happy almost-Mothers Day, you lucky ladies out there! At least your babies (probably) did not repeatedly flay you and feast on the remains.

Or what about the male nursery web spider who meticulously gift-wraps a tasty insect in his silk in order to present it to a potential mate? It’s kind of like one of those Japanese gift melons that costs thousands of dollars. The really desperate male spiders (i.e. jerks) will even wrap up pebbles to try to fool the female spiders into mating. The female nursery web spider’s favorite song is the TLC song “No Scrubs.” Continue reading →

It’s Just Beer(!)

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#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

I’ve always had a difficult time mustering up a sufficient amount of care for my own hobbies, which is what I call my beer drinking, because hobbyist sounds better than drinker. I don’t spend time posting in beer chat forums, I don’t post #whatimdrinkingnow pics anymore (I bored myself), I rarely drink out of proper glassware, and I don’t spend a lot of money on it. Because after all, it’s just beer.

But I’m a total beer snob. This is the paradox in which we beer appreciators are stuck.

Beer is a beverage celebrated and sold for its relaxing properties. It’s the drink you have when you get home from the office or from the factory; it’s the drink with which you celebrate both special occasions and your slow days off from work. It’s the everyman drink; the drink to chill out with. When some of us turn up our noses at certain beers, pay $18 for a bomber, or go so far as to call beer our hobby, we risk running contrary to the beer drinking ethos.

For me, this is beer, exclamation point

This is beer(!)

Once you admit that, yes, beer is a hobby — you know a lot about it, you spend time and money on it, you really, really look forward to that seasonal releasing today — you are effectively rendering null the it’s just beer sentiment. Obviously beer is more than just alcohol to you. It’s beer, exclamation point! When you take it a step further and start caring about hop aroma and mouthfeel and shit — well, then you’re the kind of snob that drinking beer is supposed to keep you from becoming. Continue reading →

Tofu Shawarma with Garlic Red Cabbage & Roasted Tomatoes

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New York, like all great cosmTofu Shawarmaopolitan cities, I suppose, is a city of street meats.  In all sorts of parts of town (but especially those in which office dwellers in their daily dry-cleanables must descend by elevator onto swarming lunchtime streets that will one day give me a heart attack), men of assorted non-Western European ethnicities grill up all kinds of marinated beast on gas-powered metal carts.  I don’t eat grilled beast, of course, but damn if the smell doesn’t always make my mouth water.  The lines at these carts are often positively absurd, I have a friend who insists on going to a particular chicken-and-rice cart every time he visits, and I have no doubt that serious meatys coming from elsewhere in the country would have their minds blown to spend a few meals eating this stuff while leaning against some wall or fire hydrant.

So I get jealous.

And low and behold a shawarma spice mix called to me from the shelves at Sahhadi’s.  If you don’t know, shawarma (which Wikipedia defines as “a Levantine Arab meat preparation” but which is, etymologically, derived from a Turkish word for rotation) is one of those giant meat sticks you see turning next to a flame or heating lamp.  It’s like a gyro, basically, and I once saw someone shave meat from the spit using a circular saw, which was fairly cool.  And I figured I could do something veggie with this.

So boom: Tofu Shawarma with Garlic Red Cabbage and Roasted Tomatoes

  • 1 block of tofu sliced into 1/4″-thick pieces
  • shawarma spice mix
  • 1 1/2 cups of red cabbage sliced 1/4″-wide
  • 3 onions sliced
  • 1/3 of a pint of cherry tomatoes
  • olive oil and butter
  • 8 cloves of garlic
  • 3 tbs cumin seeds
  • 4 ounces plain yogurt
  • 1 lemon Continue reading →

Jumble o’ Seeds Puzzle

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Tucked in an section of freezer where I dare not interfere are tucked sundry packets of seeds, patiently wintering until Jason gets around to planting them each spring. Sometimes I wonder about the disastrous confusion that would ensue if these somehow got mixed up or mislabeled. Are you prepared for such an eventuality? Test yourself with this seed identification puzzle. And don’t be too tough on yourself; give yourself partial credit if you manage to name a vegetable in the same family as the answer I’ve given.

seeds1 seeds2 seeds3 seeds4 seeds5 seeds6 seeds7 seeds8 seeds9

Don’t click continue or scroll down until you’re ready for the answers! Continue reading →

Craft Beer Defined (No, Your Other Six-Pack)

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brewerymap-last-updatebig

US states by their biggest “craft” brewery

The elusive definition of craft beer is not exactly the meaning of life, but you’d think it was given all the attention it gets in craft beer forums (definition: an online symposium of slightly to highly intoxicated enthusiasts of commodified tastes). Guys with chat names like DuffMan23 and BeerPirateRockstar argue about yearly barrel output and shareholder standings.

Your basic Wikipedia definition of craft beer is that it’s created in small batches, which finally solves the mystery of what microbrew means. There is no USDA of craft brewing, and hence the definition remains in the hands of the defined. Realistically, anyone could slap craft on their label without legal repercussions, although the legions of drunk, self-righteous craft beer drinkers might give one pause before doing so. The Brewers Association (BA), a brewers’ trade organization, has a more in-depth definition, stating that craft breweries must be small, independent, and traditional.

Dogfish-Head-logoBy small, they mean producing six million barrels or less per year which, at 252 pints per barrel, comes to 1.512 billion servings. This is, like, a river of beer that makes my weekly consumption seem way more reasonable. It may be nothing to the big guys, but that’s a lot of beer! Sam Adams, who is frequently under fire for being “too big” to be craft, makes just 2.5 million barrels a year. Dogfish Head makes 175,000 barrels a year, which to me seems a more accurate limit, if we’re drawing arbitrary lines. Continue reading →

Earliest Spring Vegetables: Let’s Get Excited

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The first day of spring brought a few inches of snow to the Big Apple, and the real apples at the farmer’s market this weekend were looking a little tired. But take heart, ye well-wintered and weary-hearted: yesterday I noticed the first new buds on a tree. Spring is coming. Taking its own sweet time to get here, maybe, but it’s coming. So in celebration, let’s take a look at the first few superstar vegetables that should be hitting your local markets any day now, along with some ideas about how to use them. Those with green thumbs should also think about getting these same plants in the ground as soon as you think you’ve weathered the last frost. (And to inspire you gardeners, I’m using images from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, a favorite of ours, as well as one from Everwilde Farms.)

hudson arugula Arugula: Honestly, it took me a while to warm to arugula. It still seems to me an adult taste, like sitting through an opera or reading a Henry James novel. But warm to it I did, and at no time is it better than in the early spring, when the leaves taste perky rather than too bitter or spicy. Try them in a salad with a nice mustardy dressing (olive oil, mustard, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper), or use them in a sandwich to give it a little more kick than regular lettuce.

everwilde rhubarbRhubarb: I’m not sure I realized that you could make something with rhubarb and without strawberries until I was fully grown. But particularly if you like sour tastes like citrus (and I do), rhubarb is a natural choice. Stew it with some sugar and a little water, and you’ve got one heck of a topping for pancakes. And yes, strawberries or any other kind of berries you can get your hands on are great thrown in, as well. Continue reading →

A Cauldron of Southwestern Black Bean & Mustard Squash Soup

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I’ve been into beans this winter.  I like pouring something that could substitute for buckshot into a cauldron of water and ending up with soft, succulent morsels of food.  And I cannot overemphasize the appeal of the cauldron component; to make yummy beans from scratch, I have to take the biggest pot we have, a cast-iron thing of uncertain origin in the home, and fill it with all sorts of whatever’s-on-hand to make delicious what would otherwise be bland bean flesh.  I mean, eye of newt is surely not tasty to most palettes and Macbeth’s witches weren’t making dinner, so this is perhaps not the best comparison, but I like pouring and scraping and shaking whatever cool things I can find into a simmering pot and getting a little magic out of it when all is said and done.

Looking at this picture, I remember that we sprinkled some cheese on top, too.

Looking at this picture, I remember that we sprinkled some cheese on top, too.

So the other day I decided to riff on the rough idea of a Southwestern-themed bean soup I had burbling around in my brain.  We had a butternut squash on hand, not Shannon’s favorite vegetable, and I’m always trying to come up with ways to make yummy things folks don’t typically like.  Note that you don’t have to include all of these ingredients in your version.  You shouldn’t make a special trip to the store just for a lime or whatever, and the soup will be tasty even if you don’t get the mustard going.

Southwestern Black Bean & Mustard Squash Soup Continue reading →

Taking a Page from the Wine Snob Playbook

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Tools of the bookseller

What non-writers imagine writing to be

I’ve been drinking a lot of wine lately. As a bookstore manager, it is in my contract to provide several gallons of economically priced wine for every store event and occasional slow afternoon. We’ve had many events recently and it occurred to me that I’m probably drinking the wine equivalent of the High Life. It got me to thinking: as much as beer nerds may love to pick on wine snobs, there are many things we could learn from them. Examples:

1) Take time to taste your beer. There actually is a right way to taste a beer, and it doesn’t involve punching a key into aluminum. Much like wine, the appearance and smell have a lot to do with forming an educated opinion of the beer.

howtotastebeer

  • First, take in how it looks in all respects: color (natch), but also how the head appears (frothy, thin), the opacity (clear, hazy), and how it presents itself (bubbly, creamy, dull and a horrible conversationalist).
  • Secondly, stick your nose in there and take a big ol’ whiff. Beer comes in an astonishing array of scents. Each ingredient–malt, hops, and yeast–bring their own unique smell, as does the actual alcohol. Swirl the beer to better release the scents. Breathe in as you drink.
  • Lastly, take your time sipping. Let the beer sit in your mouth to note the mouthfeel (do you know what that really means?) before swallowing. (Don’t spit! That’ll get you tossed out of a bar, tout suite.)
Comfy bean bag chairs are like quantum physics, only occurring in theory

Like sober beer tastings, comfy bean bag chairs only exist in theory

2) Treat it like your mother. You wouldn’t invite your own mother to your place and then force her to sit in a dirty beanbag chair and eat SpaghettiOs out of a can, would you? Wine snobs know to treat their beloved beverage with the respect it deserves. Continue reading →

Where Did I Put My Farro Salad Knick Knacks?: A Blue Apron Experiment

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chilaquilesIf you’ve never heard of Blue Apron, you have either been living under a rock or you like cooking so much that it has never occurred to you to outsource your grocery shopping and meal planning to someone else. I was one (or possibly the other) until very recently, when my friend Monisha (note: she is infinitely hipper than me) hooked me up with a free trial. Here’s the way it works: subscribers get a weekly box of ingredients that they use to follow three prescribed recipes for two-person dinners. (There’s also a family plan that is for four people, two or four times per week.) And when I say they send you the ingredients, I mean ALL the ingredients, right down to itty-bitty bags of pre-measured spices and toppings that they label “knick knacks.”

knick knacksThe week of my free test run I chose the vegetarian box (obvs), which happened to be farro and sumac-roasted sweet potato salad, poblano chilaquiles topped with avocado and an egg, and roasted butternut squash with stewed white beans and gremolata. (I know, right? If you don’t have to look any of those words up, hats off to you.) I will admit that, in advance of the box’s arrival, I was a wee bit skeptical, mostly because it is in my nature to be skeptical.

But I am here to inform you that it was actually kind of awesome. First, there’s the oooh-and-ahhh Christmas present feel of opening a big box of interesting stuff. Second, it made me consider cooking recipes that were outside my typical repertoire. Third, there is a mindless pleasure in following a set of beautifully written directions, and Blue Apron must know this, because the recipe cards are like the supermodels of the recipe card population. Continue reading →

For the Love of Ramen in South Dakota

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buckeyes

An Ohioan would never search for how to make buckeyes, because it’s an inborn skill.

Okay, so things have been slow here on the blog lately, and I sat down today with a pure intention to write something serious, namely a rant about this article on school lunches that annoyed me greatly, blah, blah, blah. But when I went onto Huffington Post to find the article again, I stumbled upon this one, which is approximately eighty times funnier, and so I’m going to write about that instead and save the rant for some future day, possible a day when I have a school-aged child who eats lunch.

The second article was about what recipe, according to Google Trends, each state searches for the most frequently. It’s not very scientific, to be sure, but it does provide plenty of food for thought. What is Connecticut’s obsession with Moroccan chicken thighs, for instance? Are there really that many lobsters in Wyoming, or are Wyomans just so confused by them when they do show up that they have to Google what to do with them? Would Thomas Jefferson be proud that his fellow Virginians are searching for ways to make paneer above all else? I like to think so.

I was also a little surprised that cooks in my home state of Ohio are supposedly looking for recipes for spaghetti. You’ve got this, Ohio! Continue reading →