Tag Archives: competition

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 →

Thrill of the Hunt: My Addiction to Menu Competition

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I admit that I can be a tad on the competitive side. Once, when Jason and I were first dating, we got onto long parallel escalators in a PATH station. When I saw Jason start to trot a few steps forward on his escalator, I thought we were racing and jumped forward like a runner off the block. When I got to the bottom, flushed and slightly sweaty, and looked back up at Jason, he was scowling. “I was just trying to catch up to you enough that we could hold hands across the banister,” he said. “Also, I think you might have a problem.” I, of course, denied that enjoying a friendly escalator contest should be magnified to a DSM-IV kind of issue. And yet, a dinner last week made me reconsider the charge.

We were eating at a restaurant about which I had heard quite a lot in advance. It’s the sort of small-joint-makes-a-reputation-for-itself that I usually love, so the fact that I was disappointed in my meal was all the more crushing. But worse still was the fact that Jason’s choice of entrée was truly fantastic. I had to listen to him making happy sounds of enjoyment the entire meal while I pushed my gloppy sauce around on my plate. The reason we were there in the first place was that I was taking him out for his birthday, so I tried to reason that it was only fair that he liked his meal more. But the truth was glaring: he had won. I can’t help it; I love it when we’re eating out and we taste each other’s meals and Jason says something like, “Mmm, mine is good, but yours is great.” It makes me feel like I have accomplished something, however small. It makes me feel like I have managed to raise the act of ordering off a menu to an art worthy of competition. Maybe I do have a problem. Continue reading →

Reminder: Send Us Your Best Summer Cocktail!

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cocktailsTemperatures are once again rising like a flock of seagulls on the wing. It’s important to hydrate…and why not throw in a little gin while you’re at it? We’re calling on all you gifted mixologists out there to cool our sweaty brows.

Send your signature summer cocktail recipes to submission@pitchknives.com. We’ll try the ones we like best and rate them according to taste, creativity and capacity to refresh.

It’s only right that the winners receive a token of our gratitude. What will it be? An artful swizzle stick? A crocheted beer coozie? A hand-mixed glass of Shannon’s signature cocktail, the Bee’s Knees? You’ll just have to win to find out.

Entries are due this Saturday, August 11. So get to it! Shake, stir, and please, please chill. The address for entries is, one more time, submissions@pitchknives.com.