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About Town

Last week I went for soup with my friend Michael at Maychan Ramen & Robatayaki they have a sake themed modern decor, but as of yet no sake, they plan to have over a hundred kinds when they get their liquor license. In the mean time it is a great place to catch a reasonable bowl of soup. They range from 10-14 bucks and are damn, tasty and can still be enjoyed in relative quiet before the drinking hords descend. The Sake kight fixtures are tacky in a fun way and the soup of a good quality, Michael had a pork based soup redolent of peanuts and coriander. My spicy sea food soup was less successful, broken bits of clam shell and chunks of crab cartilage made for a challenging dining experience. None the less I'd gladly go back and try some of the other options or just had the pork n' peanut soup Michael had - it's was great.

Robataya hadn't even opened when I wandered in last week, they were having a small pre opening dinner, but the door was open so I went in and was wowed by the amazing look of this very beautiful traditional Japanese restaurant. I'd go just to sit in this room and enjoy the atmosphere.

I'm running off to Newark today to help my friend Frank prepare a cocktail party. He has been working with the St. Philip's Academy helping them set up a seed to table program for the students there. I can't wait to see it!

More later.

Cool Architecture

This is an image of Taiwan's new Taichung Convention Center which will be covered in solar-powered skin that naturally ventilates the structure reducing energy consumption and doing all sorts of other wonderful and green things.

From up above it looks like rolling hills with trees on top, the idea is that the building should be part of the landscape, I think it looks great.

For the whole story check out TreeHugger or head over the the Bejing based architects MAD Ltd that designed it for more images and info.

Farewell Gourmet and Chanterelle

Certain institutions have established themselves so firmly in ones mind that it isn't even a question as to there durability. It's like Ford Motors, Heinz Ketchup and McDonalds, you just assume they will always be with us. So it was with great surprise and some sadness that I read this week that two such institutions were closing Gourmet Magazine and Chanterelle (which never re-opened after their summer break).

My friend Ilse gave me 5 years worth of Gourmet magazines when I live on Gloucester street in Toronto, I cherished them and even moved them with me when I came to New York. They planned a very important part in teaching me how to cook and entertain. For years no one could touch them, they were the ne plu ultra of cooking magazines. Of course they were a cooking magazine way back when there were only a few, unlike today's over crowded market. Like so many others I don't buy magazines any more, they seem like a waste of a tree especially when you can get everything you want online.

Ruth Reichel who I have great respect for took over Gourmet and reinvented at a time when it had become stogy and old fashioned, and even thought she did here damnedest to breath to life into it the moment had already passed. Fancy cooking magazines where no longer the rage, now everyone want simple, quick and easy. An Every Day Food pamphlet they could get for a few bucks at the grocery store check out. With simple recipes often using packaged goods they already had at home.

The truth of course is that people aren't cooking like they once did, we watch more food shows and do less cooking then other other time in our history.

Which makes the closing of Chanterelle all that more surprising. I would have thought in the uber posh neighborhood of Tribeca a venerable temple of chic cuisine would have thrived, especially one of such quality as Chanterelle. What I remember most about Chanterelle was their first place in Soho, it was the same austere old room, high ceiling with those fancy French Provincial (I'm not a furniture expert so correct me if I'm wrong) dining room chairs, giving the room a feeling of understated luxury. I'd pass by and stop to stare in the window and admire the over the top penmanship of the hand written menu, wondering if I would ever be wealthy enough to eat there. When they moved to Tribeca it seemed like they went from being small and exclusive to being an institution akin to someplace like the Four Seasons. A prime corner with soaring windows in the heart of downtown's version of the upper east side. Rich people with pretenses of hipness.

Chanterelle had been open for almost 30 years. I only ate their once, for lunch, a friend took me for my birthday, it was lovely, the food was delicious, but for me the scene was to rich and uppity, my hair wasn't blue enough and my wallet not Gucci, I prefer even my fancy, special event restaurants to be comfortable and monumental austerity never really felt cozy to me. Which isn't a criticism so much as just an observation, I always had the greatest respect for their style, it was just, to me, very fancy, in an old fashioned moneyed way that never made me feel comfortable.

Gourmet magazine published for 69 years, there had been rumour one of Conde Naste's food magazines was going to close, but all the bets were on Bon Appetite. In the end I suppose it came down to which one had the most ad pages. Another example of bad business making decisions based on the bottom line, not on history or quality; but maybe that's just me being nostalgic?

Even though I didn't dine at Chanterelle or buy Gourmet magazine I was glad somehow that they existed to show us how the other half lived and to give of in nothing else a glimpse, a thrill at the possibilities and a hope that maybe one day we would be able to cook that well or eat that richly.

Charcuterie and Pork CSA

Trolling around the Brooklyn Kitchen's site I noticed they are offering a Charcuterie and Pork CSA with their friends over at The Piggery.

Humanely raided, sustainable, local, low carbon foot print, these people are the real deal.

Here's the low down:

The CSA will run 12 weeks from Dec-Feb, and each week you will receive a selection of fresh meat, as well as sausages, pate, bacon and other cured delights. At $300/share it's a great value.

Pickup will take place at the Brooklyn Kitchen Labs, 100 Frost st. on Thursdays from 5:30-7:30PM

It's a great deal and perfect for the Winter months. I love how CSA's have moved beyond fruit and veggies, soon you'll never need to go to a store again everything will be local and farm fresh and all you'll have to do is pick it up once a week.

9th Annual International Pickle Festival: The Video!

This was so much fun! I think my movie making is getting better, the pickle makers in the video represent only a portion of all the booths. The very end of the video is from the Brooklyn Kitchen booth, who seem to be the go to people when it comes to pickling supplies. I'm really excited to go to Williamsburg and check them out.

Oh and I seem to have lost the capital "I" in my video title but if you squint the "L" from Annual looks like it could be the "I" from International just with funny spacing.
Work with me on this....

When a Hamburger is no Longer Benign

I was reading this article this morning in the New York Times and I had to take a break because it was so freaky and upsetting. It reads like a horror story. The heading of the article: Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Inspection of Ground Beef. Then it goes on to tell the story of this poor 22 year old dance instructor who becomes paralyzed from the waste down after a 9 week coma which all started because she ate a burger that her mother grilled for her.

The movie Food Inc. follows Barbara Kowalcyk who has become a "food activist" since her 2 1/2 year old child Kevin dies from E. Coli he got from a hamburger bought from a Jack in The Box. She now is fighting to give the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meats.

Here's the most spin chilling, yet somehow not surprising paragraph from the article:

Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.

The fact that the government lets this happen, that the government who is aware of these practices is so unwilling or unable to regulate and properly over see basic food safety is beyond shameful it's criminal.

I could go into a big political diatribe, but instead I'd just say that if you are going to buy ground beef or really any meat you should get it from a very good source, meaning specifically a butcher who you know and trust and hamburger should be ground sirloin, one piece of meat that is then ground. It should not be hundreds of pieces of random cow spit from a huge machine in a factory, ground altogether and finally shit out onto little styrofoam squares ready to be covered with plastic and sent to your local fast food chain or grocery store.

In New York City I'd recommend Marlow and Daughters.

No ones life should be destroyed or ended because they ate a hamburger. I mean this is something that happens in poor countries right? This can't happen here? The patties that this poor 22 year's mom made that nearly killed her, were produced and marketed by the giant food corporation Cargill and packaged as: American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties

Concord Grape Ketchup and Individual Turkey Meat Loaf

On Wednesday I was volunteering at my CSA with this nice cancer researcher named Eric, he's not only smart, but a good cook and a wine maker! Of course I'm thinking, I can barely find time to do the dishes never mind be a brilliant scientist/chef and wine maker. So of course when he mentions casually that Concord Grape Ketchup was awesome and easy (just make a ketchup recipe only with grapes instead of tomatoes) I had to come home promptly and make some!

I love Concord Grapes and am always wanting to make the most of the season by extending it through preserving, pickling and jam making. So I ran home from my CSA volunteering gig with Eric and started looking for recipes. My first mistake I think was to look for Concord Grape Ketchup recipes. Most of them just seemed like grape jam with some spices and vinegar. So I tool a peak at some actual ketchup recipes and started experimenting. The first thing I have to say is that there are a lot of really crazy recipes out there. The key I found to making grape ketchup work was to get it thick enough (some recipes called for added water?) and to get a depth of flavor that seemed to be lacking from all the grape ketchup recipes, they just seemed one note to me. The key, I think, is adding come cooked onion, it helps the texture, depends the flavors and gives it a much needed savory note.

Of course once I figured out how to make the ketchup work to my liking I had to figure out what to serve it with. Turkey meat loaf was on my mind because we had ordered ground turkey from Wise Organics, initially I was thinking for burgers but I love a good meat loaf, so I started to look for some recipe inspiration....again sometimes I read recipes and wonder what people are thinking? Worchestire sauce, skim milk, chicken stock, ketchup, skim milk, bread crumbs? It all seems a little bit too processed and bland to me. Also I don't understand why the addition of extra liquid?

Bread crumbs have many good uses but to just add them to meat as a filler or binder seems kind of like a missed opportunity to me when you can use potatoes.

Concord Grape Ketchup

Remove the stems from 3 lbs of Concord Grapes, rinse and place in a large heavy bottomed pot. Cook over medium heat (I covered them, checking in every few minutes to give a stir and see how they were doing) for about 10 minutes until they have broken down.

In a skillet heat 2 tablespoons of canola oil add 1 large roughly chopped onion and cook for about 5 minutes until it is translucent.

Remove the grapes from the heat and sieve into the container of a blender, discard the solids.

Add the cooked onions along with 1 c brown sugar, 1 c cane sugar, 1 t cinnamon1 t ground cloves, 1 t ground allspice, 1 t ginger powder, 1/2 t mustard powder, 1/4 t cayenne, 1 1/2 t salt and 6 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar in the blender with the grape juice/pulp.

Blend until smooth and pour back into a heavy bottomed pot. Add 2 bay leaves, bring to a simmer and cook on a low heat for about an hour.

Adjust the seasoning adding freshly ground black pepper to taste. Remove the bay leaves and ta da Grape Ketchup. Yum.

You can either can this (2 pint jars) or just place it in a clean resealable container in the fridge.

Turkey meat loaf is a weird thing. The recipes I read all sounded kind of bad and the comments on so many of the sites I looked made a lot of the recipes sound really unpleasant. In some instances people are making it with low fat ground turkey breast, so it's dry, mealy, chewy and tasteless. So the first thing is if you are going to make it use organic ground turkey that is a mixture of light and dark meat. The recipe that follows I have only made once, it was delicious and brilliant with the grape ketchup, but, I made it using a method describe in many recipes which is that you take the raw meatloaf mixture and put it on a sheet try and mold it into a loaf shape. Mine did not cut well it fell apart. It was better the next day, but when I contemplated all the things I could do to make it easier to cut (more eggs or egg whites, bread crumbs...) I decided to just make it in a different shape. I like the idea of single portions, it makes for a lovely presentation with a little salad or green beans on the side and you don't have to worry about trying to get that elusive perfect slice.

Individual Turkey Meat Loaf

Preheat an oven to 425 F

Cut into chunks 2 cups of red skin new potatoes and boil in salty water till soft, drain and reserve.

Meanwhile in a skillet om medium heat add 4 T of olive oil and lightly saute 2 roughly chopped large onions, 6 finely chopped garlic cloves and 6-8 branches of Thyme.

Cook for about 8 minutes, you want the onions to be translucent but not brown. Take off the heat

Add 2 teaspoons of salt 1 teaspoon of freshly grated black pepper and 1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes into the onion mixture and let cool.

When cook remove the thyme branch ripping off with your fingers as many as the leaves as you can and discarding the stems.

Add the cooked potatoes and 1 heaping T of grain mustard and with a masher mix it all together into a sloppy mashed potato mixture. Adjust seasoning remembering it should be highly seasoned as it will be diluted when mixed with the unseasoned ground turkey.

In a large bowl place a generous 2 pounds of ground organic turkey, mix in 2 well beaten large eggs and with a wooden spoon or your hands add the potato mixture.

This will be fairly wet, but still hold together, place about 1 cup of mixture in large 3" muffin tins.
It should make about a dozen (I will do this the next time I make it and report back) or if you are really fancy and have those mini loaf tins they would be swell, but be sure to adjust the amount you use to fit what ever tin you make it in with the knowledge that they will shrink be swimming in juice ( a drip pan would be a good idea)

Cook for about 25 minutes or until they reach 170F on a meat thermometer. Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan.

If you do this before I get to making the smaller version please let me know how it goes!

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Basis Foods Comes to the Meat Packing District

I was very excited to see that a company I had never heard of, but whose mandate I enthusiastically support is coming to New York. Basis Foods is "mission driven" NYC based company that is making it easier and more affordable for farmers to get there produce into the grocery carts of customers like us, easier and cheaper. They also have what appears to be very extensive wholesale network providing products to restaurants and stores.

They use the phrases "farm to chef" "traceable" and my favorite: "Food should be grown by farmers, not engineered by scientists."

I wish them the best of luck and encourage you to check out there web site and consider attending the NYC Food and Wine Festival which they will be taking part in.

It's not clear to me from looking at their site when they are going to open, but ti seems they have been doing the farm to chef wholesale side of things for a quite a while and the small retail store is a further expansion of their business.

I can't wait! More updates here as they come in.