I LOVE NY–An Eater’s Weekend in the Big Apple

Just like the souvenir bumper stickers and T-shirts say, except with the heart symbol. A few weeks ago, Chelsea asked me if I could take off the weekend of my birthday, which this year was also Fourth of July weekend. I said sure, as I am glad to take any opportunity to get away from the job. But little did I know what she had planned. Obviously, she planned big. Specifically, she had planned to take me to Mario Batali’s Babbo for dinner. Seeing as we live in Chicago, that was real big.

Of course, my birthday was only one day, so we had to plan out the whole weekend, and that involved dining at some of the many great places that we only get to hear and read about. But first, before the food, before the drinks, before the amazing service, I just have to write down how much this city impresses me. I know that being there on a holiday weekend can be a little misleading because most of the locals are away, escaping their hectic routines. Still, there were enough good people left to give an idea of who makes up the population–for instance, Mr. Big and Chris, the fabulous designer from “Project Runway” who did things with human hair that no one thought possible. And the great bones that make up New York were still there.

This was the first time I was there in the summer, so I had the good fortune to be able to really absorb the architecture and my surroundings.

We also visited the area of the former World Trade Center, which we did not do the last time we were there. I’m not sure what is planned for the site but the city has moved on, and I will never forget.

Chelsea at Ground Zero

There is so much history and character in New York that makes me proud to be an American, believe it or not. Kind of fitting for such a patriotic holiday and for someone who doesn’t often feel so patriotic.

But enough of the cheesy sentiments and on to the juicy and tasty tidbits. First of all, we had the luxury of being able to stay with Chelsea’s good friend who has a place in SoHo. And we also got to take a tour of her friend’s big-city newsroom office. It seems like our friend is adapting well to New York life, as she too split town the day after we got there! Good for her, though, as she got to live it up on the beach, and good for us as our stay was made so comfortable by getting to stay in a comfy apartment in a great location.

Some people look at my photos from trips and say, “Sure were a lot of pictures of food!” Well, I am a chef. And food is beautiful. But there are many other pictures. Like this one:

Since Chelsea and I love to eat and cook so much, planning a trip around the restaurants we want to go to helps us to organize our trips. It’s not like we have an itinerary for everything, but if we know we are going to have lunch at Franny’s

and chocolate at Jacques Torres

we’ll make sure we walk the bridge back to Manhattan to work it all off!

Before I get into the specifics of each of the places where we ate, I have to say that everything was great. The growing season is really starting to kick in, and that was definitely reflected in all of the dishes we tasted. We even hit a couple of farmers’ markets just to scope them out.

Our first restaurant was a pilgrimage of sorts. I remember many years ago being handed the book Simple Cuisine, written by the chef Jean George Vongerichten. This book is all about creating simple yet elegant food whose flavors are bright, light, and tasty due to techniques that embrace fresh broths and the juice from vegetables rather than the use of heavy butter, cream, and demi-glace, which are popular in traditional French cuisine. So a trip to one of Jean George’s restaurants was a necessity. Believe it or not, Jean George offers a $27.07, three-course tasting menu in several of his restaurants. We opted for the one in the “casual” dining room of Nougatine, which is in the Trump Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.

You can actually look into the kitchen from the outside of the restaurant, so if you are geek like me you can watch the cooks preparing the food.

Below are the pictures of the food from Nougatine. The tasting menu offers two choices in each category, so naturally we ordered one of each course plus an extra course.

carrot and ginger soup

watermelon salad with arugula

peeky toe crab with asparagus and melon

prawns with rice vermicelli

petit filet with creamed corn

strawberry, cake, and mint granita

chocolate brownie

I was very happy with everything and feel like I’ve come full circle by tasting a nice range of Jean George’s dishes. The brilliant colors are the first indicator that his cuisine is vibrant and fresh. It’s nice to have a multi-course lunch and not leave stuffed as well!

After lunch I mentioned to Chelsea that it was probably the best start to any vacation we’ve had! A nice walk through Central Park helped to solidify that feeling.

That night we headed out to a relatively young restaurant called Resto, a Belgian-style place with a pub-like atmosphere. We tend to like these types of places that are casual but tend to have really tasty food and beer. I also liked the overall look of the place. Especially the gunmetal Xavier Pauchard stools.

Some standouts on the menu were the chicory salad with crispy pig’s ears and the braised beef cheeks over fries.

The next day was a rainy one. The whole weekend was pretty overcast with spotty showers but we weren’t complaining. We headed to the Greenmarket nonetheless and took shelter a couple of times under some produce tents.

One sight that I wish I had taken pictures of was of the many cooks and porters who were making their way through the market, loading up dollies and push carts with boxes of fresh produce. They were even using their own Lexan kitchen boxes, which was particularly impressive–no waste! Craft was one of the restaurants I recognized doing this because of the workers’ embroidered jackets.

One positive thing about overcast weather is that it makes for better photography. Especially at the Greenmarket, where the color contrast tends to be so intense.

After consulting our damp Time Out NY Dining Guide, we pinpointed the mini empire that is Bouley Bakery and headed in that direction. We had a late breakfast/lunch above the bakery. Then we headed downstairs to the bakery for a few sweets and some coffee. Canneles must be consumed wherever they are found. The canneles at Bouley Bakery were incredibly delicious, with their unique chewy outside and just a hint of some sort of spicy liquor throughout the eggy interior. We also enjoyed an incredible grapefruit dacquoise.

Bouley Bakery

canneles de Bordeaux

upstairs from the bakery

enjoying dacquoise

The rest of the afternoon was spent bumming around, and we snuck in a much-needed nap before dinner. I’m glad for that because dinner turned into a mini marathon of dining and ummm, research, of creative mixology.

Sometimes the best experiences turn out to be the least-expected ones. This was the case with a little restaurant in Greenwich Village that is gaining a lot of notoriety these days, Blue Hill. We had the chef’s tasting menu and also put together another tasting of various dishes in order to sample a wide range of the menu and to get a good feel of the chef’s philosophy. In addition, we were brought a few complimentary starters, one of which was a cured meat sampling made from the heirloom pigs raised at the restaurant’s farm upstate. Without going in to detail about each and every dish, I can say that the meal was absolutely incredible. It was not elaborately plated or garnished. The fresh ingredients of impeccable quality and the flawless preparation of those ingredients made the meal memorable and kept me thinking the whole time, “This must be what Chez Panisse is like.” The comparison was even more apparent when we were presented with a small dish of unadorned cherries after dessert. I would really like to try the chef’s other restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in the future.

Blue Hill

After dinner at Blue Hill, we walked to Tailor, a hip, forward-thinking bar in SoHo, to ring in my birthday. Tailor definitely lives up to the hype, with a variety of unique flavor combinations and surprises on its cocktail menu.

The next day we took a trip to Brooklyn and wandered around the waterfront. We had heard about the pizza place, Grimaldi’s, at the base of the bridge and thought it would be a good opportunity to try some Brooklyn pizza. Well, it took a stroll past the block-long line complete with a huge thermos of water for thirsty patrons standing in line to realize that we would not be trying Brooklyn pizza here.

The next turn of events turned out to be quite interesting. We consulted our handy Time Out guide for another pizza option, called it, there was no answer, before we came across another option, Franny’s. We wandered for a while, got directions from a nice woman who had felt our pain of being a tourist in an unfamiliar place, hopped on the 2 train, and sat right across from someone we had met in San Francisco who, unbeknownst to us, had relocated to NYC. After a nice chat on the train we headed a couple blocks to Franny’s, which turned out not to be what we expected–a typical Brooklyn pizza joint. Rather, it reminded me that I had once sent Chelsea some photos of Franny’s taken by a photographer and food blogger I keep up with, Ulterior Epicure.

I didn’t take any pictures of the food at Franny’s because I was too busy eating amazingly delicious food like fresh sugar-snap peas and Neapolitan pizza, and drinking delicious beverages like homemade celery soda and Brooklyn-brewed beer.

After a hike back across the bridge and a little freshening up, our trip culminated in the piece de resistance, my birthday dinner at Babbo.

The place certainly lived up to its reputation–an elegant room, delicious food, and cool music. Once again, we were given the VIP treatment, but this time I think it was because we had to wait a little while for our table. The portions at Babbo are definitely on the hearty side, so keep that in mind if you are a tasting menu kind of diner. Our eyes were bigger than our stomaches but everything was greatly appreciated.

Just when I thought the night couldn’t get any better, Chelsea gave me a birthday card. When I opened it I found some pasted images of what else, a Caja China!!!

Do I have the coolest wife in the world or what?!

A nice stroll home on a warm summer night marked the end of yet another dream-like adventure.

Thanks to my pumpkin,

my pumpkin

See you next time, NYC.

Summer is for Purple Thumbs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As sure as the solstice tells us it’s summertime, so does the purple shadow of the mulberry tree. Around this time of year, the swollen mulberries that aren’t eaten by birds (whose purple droppings are in their own way an indication of the season) fall around the perimeter of their trees, splattering juice that permeates everything it touches.

I love mulberries. Growing up, I had a mulberry tree an arm’s length from my bedroom window, and every summer I would eat handfuls of berries right from the tree. Once I piled some berries into my favorite bowl–an old teal, glazed ceramic dish with a grooved handle that my grandmother gave me, which I normally reserved for ice cream–which I sadly broke when I threw the bowl into the air after a spider emerged from the depths of my mulberry bootie. I outgrew my fear of spiders, but not my fondness of those little sweet-tart berries.

I was pleasantly surprised the first time I spotted a mulberry tree in the city. A few years ago I discovered a really tall one in an empty lot adjacent to our apartment building. Giddy at finding (free!) produce in an otherwise nondescript, overgrown lot, I threw caution to the wind (the tree is located right next to the expressway…aaah, fumes!) and collected as many berries as I could reach. Their tangy, blackberry-like goodness contrasted nicely with the vanilla ice cream, both in color and flavor.

Two days ago I took pleasure in purple thumbs once again after I spotted another mulberry tree. Art and I were bicycling home from Maxwell Street Market when I slammed on my breaks, skidding in the berries that had fallen into the street. I’m happy to have found a mulberry source closer to my new home and can’t wait to indulge in these urban-foraged finds again this summer.

Spring Dinner 2008

The Stuffed of Life

I’m going to start this post off because I feel like a proud parent. Instead of a child though, I’m proud of Chelsea and her recipe for these stuffed peppers. If I had a bumper sticker made it would read, “Proud Parent of the Best Stuffed Pepper Recipe.”

Chelsea: My grandmother could cook. In my family, everyone agreed she could make anything taste good. Actually, it was probably said in more colorful prose, with a slight Midwestern drawl, a purposeful nod of the head, and an expletive or two thrown in. Sometimes there’s really no better way to show respect for good cooking.

Maybe her way with food was borne out of the Depression, where it took real creativity to make humble rations taste great. At her funeral, my grandpa reminisced about how, during especially tough times, she could feed a family of six on a can of tuna, and still no one could top her on flavor. Perhaps it’s that she cooked with love. I don’t recall seeing many cookbooks around the house; maybe she was just a natural.

Funny enough, I can’t remember whether I ever ate one of her stuffed peppers, but I definitely remember watching her make these for my grandparents’ dinner when I was hanging around her kitchen after school, which I often did. The peppers were red or green bell, most likely from the garden, the bread crumbs ground from day-old bread. Of course, there was bacon. As for the rest of the ingredients, I could be forgetting a few things. She didn’t write down most of her recipes, so as with many of her dishes, I have to go by memory–of smell, sound, and just being there.

For the peppers, and for those memories, I remain grateful.

Link to recipe here.

Whole Animal Butchery

The American diner has become so used to buying their meat in little plastic packages that they’ve forgotten that the meat comes from an animal. Some people are offended when their trout arrives with the head on it, and some people are turned off at the thought of eating chicken off the bone.

I would like to buck that trend. The chef at A16 in the above picture goes so far as to butcher whole lamb in his open kitchen, only inches from the bar seating. That’s pretty cool.

I didn’t kill this deer above but I volunteered to butcher it. I had butchered plenty of whole pigs, lamb, rabbits, and saddles of venison, but never an animal that had simply been field dressed. I drew the attention of some neighbor hunters who were very interested in my butchering techniques. Most hunters tend to just remove the “backstraps,” or loins, from the animal and maybe a couple of rump roasts; the rest of the carcass is taken to processing facility, where just like beef from a feedlot, it’s mixed in with other carcasses, and a couple of days later you return for some packages of jerky and summer sausage.

The amount of meat from a whole carcass is quite substantial.

Talk about a chef’s cornucopia. Just like a summer farmer’s market busting at the seams, a whole animal opens up endless possibilities for dishes. Of course there are the prime cuts, like tender boneless loin, rib chops, and roasts. But there are scrap pieces that can be seasoned and ground for breakfast sausages or crepinettes.

Overall it’s a rewarding experience. I have a much deeper respect for where my food came from and feel like I want to honor it in a way. I hope to be able to utilize this philosophy once again in a professional environment. I believe people will be able to experience such a labor of love.

Teamwork

“There’s no I in team.” “Two heads are better than one.” “I couldn’t have done it without you.” “I can’t do it without you!”

“So, let’s make something happen!” ” Sooner than later.” “You only live once.”

A Pleasant House

traditional Cayman house

Originally uploaded by art and chel

Inspiration: Where Does It Come From?

A textbook definition of inspiration will read something like: an arousal of the mind or the product of one’s creativity.

A chef is creative, therefore, he or she must be inspired.

So what inspires a chef?

I myself am inspired by cultures, seasons, ingredients, places, and memories.

The dish above was created by a chef named Adoni Aduriz at a restaurant in Spain’s Basque country called Mugaritz. It may look simple on the surface, but just like a beautiful painting this dish was created by an inspired artisan, and it has a complex story.

While the dish above was the product of one chef’s inspiration, it also is an inspiration to me. Some people wonder why I take so many pictures of food and plan my vacations around it, and that is why.

In fact, I think I can get more inspiration out of a lunch than many people get on a tour of the Louvre. You do have to know where to look, but to be inspired you have to look beyond the surface.

Cooking with the Senses: Tasting Aroma

One of the things that bothers me when I dine out is if the service staff wears too much perfume or cologne. It can interfere with the natural aromas of the food and spoil my appetite. I remember having to send a server home once because of this. It was 10 a.m. I was in the kitchen setting up for lunch and kept getting this massive waft of perfume that I could literally TASTE. I pinpointed the source of the Eau de Toilette and very calmly broached the situation with her. I explained that the amount of perfume that she had applied to her body was beyond a reasonable level for anyone working at a restaurant. She told me that many people have actually complimented her on her scent. I asked how many of those people were customers at the restaurant, and she failed to mention even one. Needless to say, she was instructed to leave the restaurant and return without a proverbial cloud of artificial scent.

Just today, a representative from the digital music system (of all companies) that I use at the restaurant stopped by to try and get more business out of us. She mentioned that they offer a hold service for the telephone that will play music. No thanks. She mentioned that they also offer some visual media for the TV screens. They will show our logo mixed up with some imagery and broadcast it on the TVs. No thanks. Then, she started to explain their “scents” program. That’s right, they have expanded from the digital music world to the olfactory world! I couldn’t believe my ears. She had no idea where she was heading with this one. There was talk of chocolate cake scent in the BATHROOM to stimulate chocolate cake sales. There was other talk of “natural” scents to be used throughout the restaurant for “scent recognition” purposes. This was scientific jargon I wanted to have nothing of.

Negativity aside, there is a positive side to all of this. Day two of Chelsea’s lilac project has taken a sweet turn. She has set herself up with some egg whites, superfine sugar, a tiny paintbrush, and lots of lilac flowers. The result? Candied lilacs that taste how they smell. There are few foods that I can think of that can accomplish this. Durian is one food that I can think of that tastes how it smells and trust me, that’s not a good thing. The lilacs, especially the heartier white ones, taste just like candy. And the perfume fills your mouth with flowery goodness. This can only get better!

Cooking and the Senses: The Intoxicating Allure of Scent

One of the reasons I love cooking so much is because the result often transports me to another happy time in my life. The taste of homemade raspberry ice cream reminds me of hot summer days picking and eating raspberries and coming home with blood-red hands and not a care. The sound of corn popping on the stove takes me back to Friday night movies on the couch with a big bowl of the buttery stuff.

Scent is, of course, another essential sense when it comes to enjoying cooking. I often hold a cluster of tomatoes up to my nose to be immediately transported to the middle of my mom’s garden when the tomato plants were so large they would swallow me up. If I catch a whiff of smoke coming from a chimney far away I think of a cold winter dusk when I’d be dragging my sled back from the field to the orange glow of the family hearth and a bowl of gooey French onion soup.

This week, while Chelsea took a detour on her way to work, she drove by our old apartment and spotted the old lilac tree in full bloom. I probably would have just driven by and reminisced about the three or four springs that we spent in that apartment savoring the intoxicating aroma of the lilac tree as it would blow through the dining room window. But that wasn’t enough for Chelsea. She had to OWN that scent. So, the next day she knocked on the old apartment door with a pair of scissors in a Trader Joe’s bag and met the acquaintance of the new tenants. They made small talk, and Chelsea asked if they would mind her snipping a few blossoms from the tree that seemed like it was part of our family for so long. Of course they didn’t mind and wished her a pleasant day.

When I got home from work there were several bunches of lilacs exploding out of vases throughout the apartment and their aroma reminded me of happy times. There is a culinary connection though. Chelsea learned that lilacs are indeed edible and set forth infusing them into spirits and has plans to candy them!