White Mountains, Blue Berries

One way to beat the summer heat in New England is to rise above it. Yesterday I left the steamy, swampy lowlands of Boston for a chilly, misty mountaintop in New Hampshire. Cardigan, to be exact.

As if the dramatic weather wasn't enough of a reward, the summit was also rife with wild blueberries.



And mountain cranberries.



Now maybe you're not supposed to pick the berries in a National Park, but it's better for everyone if you eat the fruit growing at your feet rather than stuff trucked in from Mexico.

Just leave some for the bears, and for me.

The Best Thing I've Had All Year

..was a lobster bolognese at the Green Street Grill last Sunday night. I simply couldn't understand how any combination of earthly ingredients could taste so good.

My guess is cream. Lots of cream. And lobster stock. Generous hunks of lobster meat, including claw, didn't hurt either.

Yet even those incredibly delicious components don't fully explain the dish's magical powers. I could combine cream, lobster and lobster stock at home, but they did something else, something I don't understand, and it left me awestruck. Probably, it was butter.

Go there just to eat it.

Cheese Wheeze

A word on food as it relates to health. Specifically, my health.

These days there's plenty of skepticism about picky eaters disguising their preferences as allergies or the even less convincing "food sensitivities." But I've learned from personal experience that these distinctions are to be taken seriously.

Early this year, I dragged myself to an allergist for help with chronic congestion and wheezing that had become nothing short of scary. Elise's birth mother died from asthma, and so I take having trouble breathing very, very seriously. The allergist told me that there was nothing about my lifestyle or environment that was worth the money or effort to change, and that I needed only to use an inhaler or nasal spray when things got bad. Since they were bad every day, I started doing so regularly.

The drugs were shockingly effective, but I didn't want to be on them for the rest of my life and knew that there was more to the story. I made an appointment with a local acupuncturist/nutritionist to see if I could get to the root of the matter. That root turned out to be dairy.

The acupuncturist, who I now see regularly, suggested that I might have a food sensitivity to dairy. I was doubtful, especially because I didn't think that I ate that much dairy, but decided to see what would happen if I experimentally cut it out.

This is no exaggeration. Within days, I felt as though a weight had been lifted. I completely stopped wheezing, and the nasal congestion that I had come to accept simply as part of being Jewish completely disappeared for the first time in my adult life. Now, in my new, quasi-vegan life, I never use the inhaler and always breathe clearly. No cheese, no wheeze.

Was it because I have a unique sensitivity, or would every adult do better if they cut out the white stuff? Is it genetics, and if I were born a strapping, Swiss goatherd I could eat milk for three meals a day? Is the problem that I was raised on pasteurized milk and so I have an f'ed up immune system? I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that I'm breathing as clearly as a wind tunnel, and I'm not interesting in doing anything to mess it up.

And now, a shameless plug for my acupuncturist. The guy is really, really good (as is his wife, who practices in the same office). Go to him:

George Mandler
Assabet Valley Natural Health
32 Powder Mill Rd, Maynard, MA 01754
978-461-2001 (office)
617-913-5970 (cell)

Image courtesy of Just Clean Fun.

Another Feast at China Road

Last week I found myself in Syracuse and of course made time to feast at China Road. Or rather I went to Syracuse in part because I knew it would mean going to China Road.

The menu included cold spicy cucumbers, soup dumplings (the adult version of Gushers), turnip cakes (pictured above, though not quite as good as those at the International Buddhist Society in Cambridge - mmm!), a "sausage" hot pot, sautéed pea greens (perhaps my favorite veg), and the best ma po tofu I've ever had.

It was a sensible menu for two raging omnivores and a vegan, but it really got good when, still hungry, us omni's ordered the spare ribs with rice powder, for dessert, and ate it with our hands.

China Road was my first introduction to real Chinese food, and it is very good, but I'm amazed to now have something even better right in my own backyard: Sichuan Gourmet II in Framingham.

While Grace Garden is still the tops, the S.G.2 is so good that, weeks later, I can't stop thinking about my last meal there: two kinds of equally porky and garlicky dumplings, cold sesame noodles, dan dan noodles, yu xiang eggplant, twice cooked bacon, fresh bamboo with spicy wonder sauce (the "wonder" was Sichuan peppercorn oil), and cumin flavored dry beef with chili sauce.

Still, I love China Road and will eat there anytime I'm in the neighborhood. At the very least it's always better than the only other meal I've had in Syracuse: a horrible, fatty lasagna I once ate while waiting for a locksmith to let me back into my car.

Eating the Sun

As I poured eggs over some repurposed truffle salt French fries from the Franklin in Gloucester, this minuscule splash reared up, freezing mid-leap from the radiant heat of the skillet.

It's just a little drip, yet it conjures images of the most spectacular celestial activities, like comet trails and solar flares, giving new meaning to the phrase "sunny side up."

And why shouldn't it? As Pollan reminds us, we are essentially sunshine eaters. The chicken that laid the egg ate the grain, which had in turn consumed the sun. It's all very chad gadyah.

It also brings to mind the words of John (Fire) Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man who has had a tremendous impact on my thinking about most things, food included.

He said:

What do you see here, my friend? Just an ordinary old cooking pot, black with soot and full of dents.

It is standing on the fire on top of that old wood stove, and the water bubbles and moves the lid as the white steam rises to the ceiling. Inside the pot is boiling water, chunks of meat with bone and fat, plenty of potatoes.

It doesn't seem to have a message, that old pot, and I guess you don't give it a thought. Except the soup smells good and reminds you that you are hungry. Maybe you are worried that this is dog stew. Well, don't worry. It's just beef -- no fat puppy for a special ceremony. It's just an ordinary, everyday meal.

But I'm an Indian. I think about ordinary, common things like a pot. The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud. It represents the sky. The fire comes from the sun which warms us all -- men, animals, trees. The meat stands for the four-legged creatures, our animal brothers, who gave of themselves so that we should live. The steam is living breath. It was water; now it goes up to the sky, becomes a cloud again. These things are sacred. Looking at that pot full of good soup, I am thinking how, in this simple manner, Wakan Tanka takes care of me. We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things, which in our mind are mixed up with the spiritual. We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life. We have a saying that the white man sees so little, he must see with only one eye. We see a lot that you no longer notice. You could notice if you wanted to, but you are usually too busy.

Sichuan Gourmet in Framingham

Anyone who has meticulously scoured Chowhound for the best Chinese restaurants in Boston (guilty!) has surely heard of Sichuan Gourmet in Framingham. Anyone who hasn't just did, and everyone should go there.

Pictured above is what I couldn't finish from my leftover smoky hot shredded chicken with cayenne. I loved it, but no one who grew up on "barbarian pepper" could ever eat (or digest, I should say) equal parts chili and chicken, which is how the dish is served at S.G.

Zoe's in Somerville is still my top pick for one stop shopping Chinese food (range, price, location, jellyfish), but at Sichuan Gourmet I tasted the single best Chinese dish I've ever had within 416 miles of Boston (the distance to Grace Garden, the best Chinese food within 7,000 miles, the distance to China). That dish was Dan Dan noodles.

The chef had expertly combined sesame, garlic, and chili, all present, none overpowering. The noodles were dressed with the perfect amount of sauce then topped with crispy ground pork, and for the first time I understood why Fuchsia Dunlop is so crazy about them.

While I haven't made a completely exhaustive search of Chinatown, so far I generally agree with the notion that the best Chinese food in Boston lies in the burbs. But if you're like me and Ezra Klein (favorite political blogger!), and you really like Sichuan cooking, go to Framingham.

If you can't make it there, the stuff in Chengdu is probably good too.

Sustainable Shrimp

See here for my latest post over at the Chefs Collaborative blog. I recently attended their "Shrimp and Sazeracs" meet and greet with the folks behind Four Winds Seafood, a sustainable supplier from outside of New Orleans.

If nothing else it whetted my appetite to return for a full meal at Hungry Mother, a Cambridge restaurant that serves Southern food better than most of the food in the South.

My apologies for the poorly exposed photo - it was after a few Tabasco martinis.

Clean Your Plate, And Your Leftovers

For the second time in my life, I recently had take-out food so bad that I actually washed it off to make it better.

The offending dish came from a local Chinese restaurant that, despite its horrific, gaudy exterior, I desperately hoped would be good. I hadn't even thought to eat there until examining the dinner menu while having a (flaming) drink at the bar with some friends from out of town. When I saw the Yu Shiang section, my spirits lifted, or perhaps I was being lifted by the spirits shooting up the long straw from the scorpion bowl. In either case, I decided to go back for dinner, and I'm sorry I did.

I ate as much as I could while at the restaurant, choking down rubbery pieces of meat, the omnipresent (in bad Chinese restaurants) bell peppers, and a thick, cloying brown sauce that seemed composed of equal parts sugar and corn starch. I know that would just be powder, but that's how it tasted.

To make matters worse, while eating I was reading Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Peppercorns: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. The contrast between the dishes in her pages and the one before me was depressing beyond the help of any cocktail, no matter how on fire it was. I took most of it home.

There I dumped the slop into a strainer and ran it under water until the sauce broke free and it once again resembled food. I dressed it with nothing but the contents of the two bottles in the photo at top, soy sauce and toasted sesame oil, and the improvement was shocking. The food now tasted more like food and less like the food version of the restaurant's facade.

Still, I'll be going back for cocktails.

---------------------------------------------

Recipe: Washed Yu Hsiang Pork

1 takeout container of bad yu hsiang pork
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
running water

Dump the "food" into a strainer and hold under running water until the sauce has been rinsed away. Spit down the drain in contempt.

Shake the food until relatively dry.

Dress with sesame oil and soy sauce.

Hi-Rise Bakery Potato Bread

Humans are such repulsive creatures, especially foodies. We never want the same thing twice no matter how good it was, always searching for the next thrill, be it the latest obscure grain (farro) or the cheapest tongue mulita (Tacos Lupita).

For instance, how often did I go to the fantastic Hi-Rise bakery during the years in which I lived a few blocks away? Twice.
Now, through the eyes of others, I've seen the error of my ways. This first happened in the Ferry Market in San Fran, pretty much the last place you'd expect to feel good about your own town's food. But when I mentioned that I had come from Cambridge, the cheesemongers at Cowgirl Creamery started gushing about the H.R., and I couldn't help but blush. I felt like a supermodel had told me that I was beautiful.

Then yesterday I took an out of town guest there to secure provisions for his flight back to Ithaca, which of course is the San Francisco of Tompkins County, New York. As soon as we set foot in the door, I saw the expression on my friend's face, the drool seeping from the corners of his gaping mouth, and I realized how numb and ungrateful I had become. I crossed out the existing words in my thought bubble ("Ah, the place with expensive sandwiches") and instead wrote in my highest compliment to any Boston area eatery: "Wow, this is the kind of place you can find in New York!"

I'm eating a slice of their potato bread right now, and its sheer splendor has shaken me out of hunting mode. Why look elsewhere when you've got something this good right in front of you?

Thin, crunchy crust, moist and fluffy interior, deep potato flavor. Those Cowgirls were right: I am beautiful.

-------------------

Hi-Rise Bakery

56 Brattle St
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02143
(617) 492 3003

208 Concord Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 876-8766

Kimchee Pancake

In damp, cold, snowy weather, a hot, crusty, kimchee pancake seems like the perfect food. It also makes sense seasonally, since this is the time of year when fermented veggies are the only kind available, excluding root vegetables and Chilean green beans.

A pajeon is also a good way to use up kimchee if you've got more than you can handle. I've started buying mine at Little Pusan, our local Korean restaurant and home of the best food in town. When I realized that they sold their excellent homemade kimchee in bulk, I had the following conversation with the owner, a charmingly opinionated woman:

Me: What size does the kimchee come in?
Her: Eight-fifty, six dollar, twelve.
Me: I'll take an eight-fifty.
(She disappears into the kitchen, returning with a five pound jar.)
Me: Whoah, that's a lot of kimchee!
Her: Not a lot.
Me: How long will it last?
Her: (Huff!) Three month. Six month.

It lasted me about one month, which helps me structure my visits to the restaurant. I always want to eat there, but don't want to get to a place where I lose interest or take it for granted. But now when the jar runs out, I know that it's time to go back for a meal and a reload.

I'd include my recipe but it's not quite there yet. I basically mixed kimchee with an egg and enough flour to bind, then fried it in hot oil. That wasn't bad, but see Wandering Chopsticks for a little more precision.

Quote of the Day

Lionette's is Boston's only all-local meat market. These are people who are deeply concerned about the world's food supply, especially when it comes to duck fat. This hails from their always awesome monthly newsletter:

"Local and sustainable food does not cost more, the price tag on local and sustainable food is the real price for food, and there are no hidden costs."

577 Tremont Street
South End
Boston, MA 02118
ph: 617-778-0360

Roasted Rotating Root Veggies

If you aren't doing so already, start eating this.

This year roasted root veggies are making up a large part of my winter diet. Partly because we're getting a lot from our CSA, and partly because they seem like the most perfect cold weather food. There's something about this season that just makes me want to eat things that grow underground.

A hearty portion of veggies like these goes a long way. I'm finding that a big dose of tubers and bulbs takes the place of both the starch and vegetable in a given meal, thereby compromising about 80% of what I feel the need to eat. A plate of these plus a drumstick or a slab of tofu and you're in business. A slice of bread and some salad? Superfluous.

I used to think of this dish as a specialty item, but I recommend that everyone bump it up to staple status. The key to not getting bored with it is to keep things in rotation. Thanks to the CSA, I have turnips, sweet potatoes, unsweet potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and some stuff I can't identify but which looks great. Any three of those will do, so you can imagine the possibilities and varying degrees of sweetness.

My advice is to buy a bunch of different kinds of root veggies and then make them in different combinations. They'll last forever, plus you don't need much of any one of them at once. When you take a little from each root, your pan is often too full. And like the price of olives at an olive bar, the roasting temp for all of these is roughly the same, so mix and match with abandon.

Filling veggies may sound like an oxymoron to anyone who hasn't experienced them, but I could almost live on these alone.

-----------------------------------

Recipe: Roasted Root Veggies

1 tbsp coarse salt
3/4 tbsp rosemary (more if fresh)
3 twists of a pepper grinder
oil to coat
Equal parts of any of the following: beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, onion, parsnip

Pre-heat the oven to 400.

Cut the veggies into bite sized pieces - they smaller they are, the faster they cook.

Note: I only peel the parsnip and beets.

Toss well with the remaining ingredients.

Roast at 400 for 45 minutes to an hour, tossing three times to ensure equal oil coverage. Toss gently, with two metal spoons, to avoid breakdown.

They're done when a fork meets little resistance from each variety of veggie.

My Latest

In Phoenix and the Forward.

Edible Nation: Haley House

Boston's own Haley House, a Catholic worker house/soup kitchen/restaurant/farm/low income housing center/educational facility was written up in the most recent Edible Boston. The story then made the cover of Edible Nation. Check it out:

http://www.ediblecommunities.com/ediblenation/

My favorite quote is from Boston Police Officer Bill Baxter, aka "Donut," who teaches gang resistance through cooking:

"The way we prejudge foods (such as "I plain hate onions") is the same mental mechanism that we use to prejudge people."

Verrill Farm Barbecue

It was fire that sought to destroy Verrill Farm, and it is fire that they now tame to cook barbecue. And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Along with smoke and spices, you can taste defiance in their recipe. Despite massive setbacks, Verrill has every intention to rebuild using events like the weekly barbecue to help get things going. Pulled pork sandwiches are available every Thursday from 3-5pm (or until it lasts) and are made from meat raised in Massachusetts.

I went last Thursday, and despite bitter cold and howling wind they stuck it out until everyone had gotten their sandwich. One patron donated a hat to the young man serving the 'cue from a chafing dish. Clearly he was eager for the opening of their temporary farmstand, which unlike their current operation will have walls.

On the eve of a new administration and with the global food crisis raging, the liminal space Verrill occupies represents the razor's edge on which our systems of food production cling. Just as the life of the pig ends to support the life of the Concordian foodies who eat it, so does community support help Verrill sprout anew from the ashes.

Unlike other forms of activism, the rewards here are pretty concrete. Support a local farm, get a great sandwich.

Winter CSA: The First Drop-Off

My first CSA changed my life. Suddenly my vegetable intake skyrocketed from greens on the side to stuffing as much fresh produce into my diet as possible. If you're not used to it, downing that much foliage might take some getting used to. But after just a few days, you realize it's the best way you could possibly eat.

Your vegetables (and sometimes fruit and fungi) are not only fresh, they're still the same temperature as the ground. You eat what is local and what is in season down to the very day. Food you never thought much about before, like fennel, suddenly becomes a bridge connecting you to your foodshed. The lines between the individual and the landscape blur as you start to feel like you're actually part of the world you live in, much more so than if you just shopped at Whole Foods.

Sadly, I haven't been able to participate in a CSA for a few years due to work related travel. Sure I ate lots of great stuff from Farmers Markets, but it wasn't the same. I missed that weekly boatload of greenery that had changed my life. I missed letting nature pick the menu.

Thankfully, starting this Fall I won't be traveling as much as I used to and more farms are offering Winter CSA's for those like me who missed the main growing season.

"What's that" you say? "Fresh produce in New England in winter? Impossible!"

Not exactly. It's what everybody did until pop tarts showed up. Growing: it's not just for summer anymore, again.

Starting this week and going through mid-December, once a month we'll get forty pounds of incredible, local, seasonal, organic-ish food. The Belmont CSA which I've subscribed to follows an interesting model in which different farms team up to contribute to a single share. We get apples from one place, greens from another and so on. Our first drop included the following:

-onions
-potatoes
-sweet potatoes
-apples
-Mark Bittman's favorite kind of kale
-lettuce
-delicata squash
-Napa cabbage
-leeks
-a pumpkin
-the best peppers I've ever had
-Japanese turnips
-carrots
-spinach
-beets
-a huge daikon
-fennel
-green peppers

Oli, the official new dog of Tea and Food, was particularly into the spinach.

My Dinner With Alice

We didn't exactly dine together, but I did nibble local cheeses in the same room as Alice Waters earlier tonight, and I figure that may be as close as I'm going to get.

As I mentioned in my last post, Harvard graciously hosted a surprisingly intimate (and free) round table discussion with Alice Waters, the new Slow Food USA president Josh Viertel and special guest Anna Deavere Smith, who by a total fluke I have actually written for in the past.

The event was held in the Faculty Room of Harvard's University Hall, where two long tables were spread with the afore mentioned cheeses as well as espresso cups of freshly made bay scallop chowder, hors d'oeuvres such as squash tartlets with apple something or other on top, and fresh local cider.

As 200 years of Harvard presidents stared down from their portraits and the elaborate glass chandelier clinked overhead, everyone had one thought on their mind: is the delicious revolution just for people who hang out in rooms like this? I'll here note that the crowd was surprisingly diverse for a bunch of affluent looking white people.

The answer was a vehement "no." During the round table discussion and the Q&A that followed, each panelist made it absolutely clear that good food is a right, not a privilege, though Alice did step in at one point to remind us that it must also be "a pleasure."

While setting up, the wait staff seemed nervous, though not as nervous as their supervisors. I imagine they prefer hosting fundraising events to serving food to a woman described by some as the greatest chef in the world.

The evening was presided over by Director of Humanities Homi Bahabha, who looked very Wes Anderson in his checkered mustard Nehru jacket and glasses like those of the forgotten Batman villain "The Bookworm." But perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was Ms. Smith's reading of an excerpt from one of her previous works in which she had actually played the part of Alice Waters.

As the evening drew to a close, I started eyeing the enormous blue hubbards nestled in the centerpieces. My mind flashed back to visiting Hamilton College for a performance some years ago. There my troupe and I had "liberated" five such squashes, which equaled well over a hundred pounds of orange flesh. We were told they would be thrown out after having served their purpose as family weekend decor. When I saw the squash at Harvard tonight, I immediately began thinking about how to once again save such fine specimens from the dumpster.

Then I remembered what we'd been talking about all night. I realized that, despite all of the horrible things that have happened in the past few years, the local food movement is actually stronger than it was then. In the time that has elapsed since the Hamilton evacuation, more and more universities such as Harvard have become likely to actually understand and use such materials rather than feeding them to a landfill. In fact, Harvard dining services has just ordered 46,000 pounds of squash from a local farm to last them through the winter.

Thankfully, some things do change.

Zoe's Chinese Food, Somerville

I'll cut to the chase: this place is great. When I'm craving my favorite Chinese restaurants (Grace Garden of Odenton and China Road of Syracuse), I feel lucky to at least have Zoe's nearby. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but if you know how good my top two are, you'll realize it's actually just a compliment.

As when eating at Grace Garden, make sure to ask about the seasonal vegetable dishes. This roughage will brace you for the otherwise fleshy feast you are about to consume, and it's not too shabby either.

All whole fish options are delightful, the tea smoked Duck is as it should be, the salt and pepper squid are almost too hot to eat (another fronthanded compliment), and the sweet and sour lotus root appetizer will leave your tongue befuddled in all the right ways.



Equally good if less exotic is the spicy cucumber appetizer. It's almost an oxymoron, and that's why it works.

Other perks include a BYOB policy and a liquor store right across the street.

-----------------------

Zoe's Chinese Food
289 Beacon Street
Somerville, MA 02143
(617) 864-6265

Food Writing Class

For any who is local and interested in taking my food writing class at the Boston Center for Adult Education, see here and click on the link at left:

http://www.bcae.org/SearchECat?open&Query=MFOD%2001

If you mention that you heard about it through the blog, you get a cookie.

Brookline Lunch in the Boston Phoenix

See here for my first piece in the Phoenix, an "On the Cheap" covering Brookline Lunch in Central Square. And since they didn't want this photo of the homemade hot sauce and jam, I hereby donate it to the blogosphere: