Vermmont 2011: The Kiely Family Outdoes Themselves

Foreword: this post is dedicated to the people of Vermont who are still wresting their incredible state out of the muck left by Irene. To find out how to volunteer, go to http://vtresponse.wordpress.com/. If you can't volunteer in person, you can donate to the relief efforts here.

There are many traditions at the Shakespeare camp I teach at in VT each summer; my favorite is that campers often invite the staff to their homes for dinner.

This gracious ritual has given me a window into the food lives of Vermonters, and it's a different perspective than the one you get from national press focusing on the state's upscale farm-to-table restaurants. Those places are great, I'm sure, but the impression I get is that tourists enjoy them far more often than locals.

Perhaps that's because of how good so many locals have it. Backyard salads, berries and even chickens were all on the menu this year, as was homemade ice cream, churned before our very eyes (and very thighs) and so forth. But only once did we have duck confit.

Mr. Kiely is a doctor, and thankfully the Hippocratic oath doesn't apply to poultry. Mr. and Mrs. Kiely slaughter a flock of their own ducks each year in order to make confit, and this summer I was finally the happy recipient of their carnage.

The Kiely clan is undeterred by the fact that their daughter isn't even a camper anymore. In fact, she's now on staff. Here she is eating berries at the home of current campers who led us into their prolific patch one night.

This year the Kielys made us dinner even though we weren't able to go to their house. And so, with the precision of caterers, they mobilized the confit along with gazpacho, their own roasted veggies, salad, the best quiche I've ever had, homemade peach ice cream (below), homemade ginger ice cream, and molasses-spice cookies, also homemade.

Everything was superb -- even better than the sushi feast, Greek extravaganza or shrimp risotto the Kielys have made us in the past, which is saying a lot -- but the confit was of course the star of the show. Because it was confit.

But now the Kielys have become their own worst enemy. Because where can they go from here when they make us dinner next year? I don't know, but I'm eager
to find out.

Knobbed Russet: A Darned Fine, Though Ugly, Apple

This Knobbed Russet was one of the best -- hmm... maybe the best -- apples I've ever eaten. It is not, however, one of the best apples I've ever looked at.

"Knobbed" is not an adjective I want used to describe my fruit. "Knobbed" is an adjective I want used to describe old-timey walking sticks sold at craft shops for tourists in Asheville, NC. "Juicy" is an adjective I want used to describe my fruit.

Luckily, the k.r. was both knobbed and juicy, unlike the mealy Sheep's Nose apple (another heirloom) I once bought from Cornell Orchards in Ithaca. What impressed me most about this dingy looking fruit was its aroma: like biting into a perfume bottle, but without shards of glass piercing your tongue.

Just another reminder, as if you needed it, that heirloom produce can blow supermarket produce out of the water in terms of depth, subtlety, and mildly off-putting, quaint names.

I'm reminded of something someone recently said to me while I was helping to prepare a post-wedding brunch in Chesapeake, VA. I paraphrase:

"I've tried growing organic but it just doesn't work. At least the vegetables are never pretty."

There a lot of things I dislike about that comment, but here's the most obvious. If the most important criteria for food was the normative standard for "pretty," wouldn't someone have eaten Cindy Crawford in, like, 1991?

Yet she lives. Therefore, eat knobbed apples.

Seven Courses

As a wedding present to some friends, Elise and I constructed a seven course meal this past Saturday. The courses were:

1. Cheese (aged Gouda, cheddar, Parmigiano, a super-cowy local feta) and Castelvetrano olives.
2. Peter's Point oysters
3. Purple oak leaf and arugula salad with toasted almonds and avocado.
4. Mushroom puree.
5. Wax beans in butter, sherry and sage.
6. The Best Thing I've Ever Made.
7. Caribbean Red Papaya and Greek (white) yogurt.



Only the next day did we realize how little cooking we actually did, having focused on minimal presentation of high quality, mostly local ingredients. This goes along with my culinary theory of get good stuff, don't f*ck it up. For instance, for an amuse we served three still-wrapped ground cherries. They were as complexly flavorful and engaging as anything made by a human.

The mushroom soup was a clash of wilderness and civilization. I made a stock from last year's tougher bits of Chicken of the Woods, which we then pureed with the most banal of fungi, the white button mushroom, partly to prove that even a pathetic mushroom is still an incredible thing. The marriage of the wild and civil 'shrooms was a happy one, as is our friends'.

The papaya and yogurt came from a discovery we made last week in NYC. Hungry and stuck in a not very fun or affordable part of town in terms of eating, we stopped at a corner store and bought Greek yogurt and a half of a ripe papaya. We dumped the entire container of yogurt into the cavity of the papaya and slobbered over it on a city bench.

The thick, dry yogurt made for a fascinating texture contrast with the juicy, squishy papaya. The only change we made in serving it to friends was a little drizzle of honey. Another thing I like about serving this for dessert is that it it doesn't contain sugar and isn't cake.

And now for #6, The Best Thing I've Ever Made. In the Crockpot I braised two grass fed beef shanks in an improvised Sichuan liquid of soy sauce, honey, star anise, one clove, some smashed ginger, three kinds of "pepper" (whole black , dried red, toasted Sichuan peppercorns) a splash of rice cooking wine and one of cider. This simmered for about six hours, and you can imagine how it made the apartment smell.



The soft, sweet-salty, aromatic meat was pulled from the bone and served atop a single, perfectly brown, crusty, pudgy latke cooked by Elise. On top of the meat were matchsticks of tart green apple tossed with chopped, fresh red chiles, lemon juice, salt, and finely minced cilantro stems.

I'd been wanting to make it ever since having something similar at Market. The main difference, besides the latke, was that the heat in Jean-Georges' apple slaw was invisible. I'm not entirely sure how it got there (rubbing? injection?), which drew me in all the more. But, like a savage, I used actual bits of peppers in mine.

I have not yet mentioned the one thing unanimously declared the night's best. After the entree I let everyone have a spoonful of the beef's cooking liquid, a sublime nectar composed of the ingredients I've already discussed plus the now rendered marrow from the shanks. I could describe it, but I'd rather use my short time on this earth to think about it one more time.

It was a good meal and, we presume, a good gift. At least as good as a nice serving platter.

What I Ate in Hawaii, Part 4

When I couldn't remember the name of the Japanese pub we ate at in Honolulu, I knew that there was a single word I could google to have my answer. In seconds I had it: Tokkure-Tei.

That word was "norichos." And what, pray tell, is a noricho? Only the most delicious portmanteau I've ever tasted.

The noricho is a zany marriage between nachos and sushi (where the "nori" comes from). Now that I re-read that description, it kind of makes me want to vomit, but I swear that they're delicious. Who doesn't want to eat deep fried, nacho-shaped wedges of seaweed piled with roe, avocado, daikon sprouts, tomatoes, and American cheese?



Okay, so the American cheese still kind of makes me want to vomit, but after much sake it made me want to do the reverse of vomit (eat it).

The somewhat kitschy, fusion-born noricho is surely the signature dish of this very fun to eat at Japanese pub-style eatery, itself a cross between a sushi bar, a gastropub, and a tapas restaurant. But they also do straight-up sushi very, very well, as in the butter-soft, super fresh, not even remotely fishy tasting mackerel nigiri.



I happen to love mackerel in all forms, even canned, but this was the best I've ever had it. We also ate tender, charcoal grilled slices of tongue....



A sweet, creamy portabello dish that was like slow-cooked mushroom candy...



Baked Alaska rolls....



And the boiled peanuts that start the meal, which are oddly similar to the hot boiled peanuts found throughout the South.



We finished with a perfectly good grilled okra, but at that point in the meal and after that much sake, I think we were all secretly wishing we'd just ordered a second round of norichos.

Instant Seder for Two

On the first night of Passover, Elise and I found ourselves wanting to celebrate but stuck without anywhere to go. Guess our se-dar was broken.

So we hastily constructed our own Passover meal and it ended up being my favorite ever. Quick update for those who don't know: Passover is the holiday commemorating the Jews' exodus from Egypt and it's celebrated by holding a ritual meal called a seder.

On Passover we celebrate our freedom and we remember our time in bondage. This theme is driven home by the fact that the lengthy seder often feels like bondage and the meal that follows seems like sweet, sweet freedom in comparison.

So Elise ran out to buy those foods that best embody the taste of liberty: liver and ground fish.



It wasn't long after the inspiration for our spontaneous seder struck that we were seated at our candle-lit kitchen table with a thematically appropriate feast at hand. The menu included chopped liver, gefilte fish, matzoh, charoses, salad, a dry, minerally French white, chrain (horseradish and beets) for the fish plus the other items on the seder plate (with fresh, local oysters standing in for the salt water - controversial but delicious). For charoses we just minced the last of the apples from our wedding and soaked them in rosé.



Jews of my generation think that most of these foods can only be found in family legend or in jars in that one, sad section of the grocery store so dominated by the color orange. But it was all surprisingly easy to make and turned out perfectly well even without following recipes (my grandmother never used one, so why should I when replicating her cooking?). We watched MB's chicken liver pate video for inspiration and I thought back to my article on fried gefilte fish from last year.

Remember, these things are not hard to make. This is the cuisine of destitute Eastern Europeans, not timpani.

For the spiritual element we passed a library copy of an Elie Wiesel haggadah back and forth, glossing over the parts that don't do much for us and expanding upon those themes we so love. It was a deeply satisfying experience but unfortunately at the end of the meal the tone suddenly changed for the worse. The empty bottle of wine brought us the terrible news that a beloved muppet had gone mad, killing a vendor of alcoholic drinks.

The Best Sauce I've Ever Made

I recently braised two turkey drumsticks and a few carrots in a dutch oven. The liquid became the greatest sauce I have ever made.

Once the turkey had cooked to the desired consistency (not quite falling off the bone -- call it walking the tightrope of the bone), I reduced the liquid (old white wine, older Herbes de Provence, water, salt, pepper) and added just a bit of butter. The resulting sauce was so good that it falls into the category of so good there must be a name for it in French.

The herbs (or "herbes") and the sugar in the carrots and wine made for a sweet and succulent complement to the turkey. And here's a compliment to the turkey: your meat was very tasty.

But the best part about the best sauce I've ever made was the fuel; the dutch oven started on the range in the kitchen but ended up nestled in the glowing coals of the fire pit outside. The kids who live downstairs (with their parents) asked me to make a fire for them, but they quickly lost interest once their marshmallows were toasted.

I was left with a heap of glowing coals that, once I remembered the pot back in the kitchen, looked like money in the bank. In fact there was a (slight) financial benefit to using the coals, which were made from gathered wood, over the gas, which I -- and the planet, meaning you -- pay for in more ways than one.

I carried the dutch oven downstairs and left it on the coals, which, like making tea from a stone, was something I have always wanted to do. When I could no longer discern a glow down at the pit, I figured it was done. It was.

It seems all of my dreams end in fire and all of the things I think are French involve poultry and reductions.

A (Delicious) Ghost from the Past

I recently received a slim box in the mail with the surname "Gannon" written on the return address. I knew that could mean only one thing: I was going to eat some of the best chocolate in the world.

For those who don't know, Brendan Gannon ran the artisanal chocolatier known as La Tene out of Cambridge, MA. He had sent me a precious box of his spectacular creations as a combined wedding present/holiday gift, and I was thrilled to savor his stuff once again. There was only one catch... Brendan Gannon had been dead for years.

Well Brendan hadn't, but La Tene had. In a turn of events that still breaks my heart (or at least my taste buds), Brendan closed the doors to La Tene a couple of years back for no particularly shocking reason except that it can be really, really hard to run a small business. At the same time I was burying my own creative enterprise, the sketch comedy group my friends and I had started in college and that kept us touring around the U.S. for years afterward.

I was ready to let the comedy group go, but I was not ready to say goodbye to La Tene, and I told Brendan as much in no uncertain terms. His chocolates are simply the best. From the vegan peanut butter cups to the triple creme truffles (or the Sichuan peppercorn truffles, or the Guinness truffles...), this was a man who knew what he was doing. And what he was doing was making great chocolate.

I relished each and every one of my phantom La Tene chocolates as though enjoying one more night with a lost love. Actually, you can just change the "as though" in that last sentence to a comma.

I'm guessing that the box I received was part of a limited run that BG did for the holidays, because as far as I know it is simply no longer possible to experience La Tene. But if you really, really want to, I suppose you could beg Brendan or offer up vasts sums of money here.

But maybe that would be asking the beautiful and mysterious woman to take off her scarf.

Wedding, Honeymoon, Homecoming

Last week, I got married. It was incredible. Neither words nor 0's and 1's masquerading as words could describe it.

What I can describe is the food. The entire experience can be broken down into three distinct food phases: wedding, honeymoon, and homecoming.

At the wedding ceremony, we (barely) ate:

-mushroom, leek and ricotta salata strata
-turkey chorizo and black bean strata
-the best soup I've ever had (sweet potatoes, chicken stock, cumin, peanut...)
-roasted potatoes
-Iggy's rolls
-Iggy's croissants
-tons of incredible cheese
-arugula salad
-rivers of West County hard cider
-boatloads of roasted marshmallows
-bushels of sun crisps and merle rouge
-olive oil gingerbread with cranberry glaze, whiskey whipped cream and candied Buddha's hand (our wedding cake)

All of which was prepared by my good friend, the excellent chef Mrs. Amanda Jane Loring. If you want her to cater your event, and you do, drop me a line and I'll put you in touch.

For our honeymoon, my wife (!) and I then went to Portland, ME to do little besides eat. We consumed:

-french fries fried in duck fat, in Duck Fat
-the best piece of fish I've ever had: a small square of seared swordfish toro at Miyake
-one of the best cheeses I've ever had, Maine made (the name escapes me, but I'll post it later)
-Honeymaker mead (wouldn't be a honeymoon without it)
-Damariscottas and Pemaquids
-the rest of the Sustainable Red
-$2.75 bahn mi at Kim's
-leftover Iggy's croissants
-leftover olive oil gingerbread with cranberry glaze, whiskey whipped cream and candied Buddha's hand (our former wedding cake)

The first meal I made once home is the one pictured at top. Baked chicken legs and apples with a root veggie melange and hearty salad greens, the latter two from our winter CSA.

The food at the wedding was delicious, geared to please a crowd, appropriate for brunch and indicative of our epicurean ethics. The food on the honeymoon was sheer decadence. The meal back at home was a balance of both. May my new wife and I eat thus till the end of our days.

Fall Raspberries: The Best I've Ever Had

I'm going to be honest with you. Berries aren't as sweet as you think.

Yet when you think berries, you think sweet, largely because you think of what we do to them: crisps, cobblers, cream and sugar. Fresh from the bramble it's a different story, as the flavor profile of a berry is often dominated not by sugar but by pucker.

I generally prefer the taste of unadulterated ingredients, so I appreciate the tang of a real berry, but the fall raspberries I've been eating lately have me singing a sweeter tune. I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but it seems as though there are very different raspberries in summer and in fall. Also, there are raspberries in fall at all.

I usually think of raspberries as a strictly summer thing (barring tasteless - in more ways than one - imports) and am glad to see that they're getting a second wind. My hunch is that the fall raspberry is a different variety that's on the up and up as eating locally and seasonally gains ground.

From what I've observed (and not from any actual research), fall raspberries differ from their summer counterparts in two ways. The color, like the weather, is darker. The flavor is sweeter, more mellow, somewhat honey-like and almost absent of any acidity.

I'm reminded of a passage in the Omnivore's Dilemma about different recipes for eggs from different seasons, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in our recent past, there were similarly varied treatments for summer and fall raspb's.

I'm sure that in the annals of cookery there are absolutely delicious fall raspberry-specific tarts and sauces and such, but they're just so good that I can't stop myself from gobbling them up unaltered.

What I Ate On Or The Night Before My Birthday

-chips and guacamole
-ribs with chile de arbol
-pozole
-the best flan I've ever had
-coffee with orange rind and cinnamon
-Tres Generaciones Plata
-oats and eggs
-leftover yellow dumpling soup broth
-trail mix: almonds, raisins, coconut
-water
-coconut water
-ham, mustard and cilantro sandwiches (it's what we had)
-trail mix: peanuts and cranberries
-wild mountain cranberries
-wild blueberries
-one partridge berry
-an accidental mouthful of Sculptured Rocks creek water
-beef tongue and tendon in vinegar peanut sauce
-pork belly in garlic sauce
-Sichuan dumplings
-towel gourd with bamboo fungus
-cumin beef
-crispy salt and pepper ribs
-white rice
-lots of sake
-tea smoked duck
-dan dan noodles

The Best Tisane I've Ever Had

Expletives and herbal tea don't often go together, but I'm pretty sure I muttered one after taking a sip of this after last night's dinner. Made from freshly plucked anise hyssop and cilantro flowers, it was the best tisane I've ever had.

For those who poo-poo herbal tea in favor of true tea, know that equally complex flavors are possible from plants besides camellia sinensis. I didn't fully believe it myself, but this tea was the most powerfully flavorful thing I've put in my mouth this year.

Like garlic scapes, the flowers of herbs are a double boon. A culinary asset on their own, removing them also make the parts of the plant that you really want to eat (the bulb of the garlic and the leaves of the herb) more productive. The flowers of the anise hyssop were a shade of purple that would look at home in a Monet, but once hit by the hot water they became pale. I took comfort in knowing that the purple was now somewhere in the liquor, and that I drank a color.

The hyssop is incredibly sweet and of course very licorice like, and the cilantro flowers are, unsurprisingly, a very floral incarnation of the already cool and lovely cilantro. Together the two were sweet and deeply aromatic with just a hint of savory, no stronger than an association.

We spend so much time comparing the flavors of tea and wine to other things like flowers and herbs. So why not go straight to the source and just drink the flowers and herbs?

Or, as a friend of mine one said, if people want things to sell like hotcakes, why not just sell hotcakes?

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.

Ambrosia

For breakfast I usually eat cereal. Unlike most Americans who might make the same claim, by cereal I mean actual cereal, not creatively shaped sugar.

The word "cereal" formerly referred to grain rather than the industrial product created by manipulating it into as inexpensive and addictive a substance as possible. As in Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain.

I want to eat the kind of food that a goddess can be goddess of, and it just wouldn't work with Frosted Flakes. But my diet also has a non-exclusivity clause, and no matter how strident my conditions might be, there's always room for an egg and biscuit sandwich. With butter.

Elise has a thing for baking, and while I generally prefer my grains whole (and garlicky), I simply cannot refuse her warm, fluffy creations. Like the one pictured above. She had made her best batch of biscuits ever, thanks in large part to some extra cream we had lying around. The next morning, toasted, with a little butter and a gently scrambled egg, they were the epitome of breakfast. Ceres may be the goddess of grain, but as far as I'm concerned, my girlfriend is the goddess of scrambled eggs in a biscuit.

Would I have thought to make a buttery little breakfast sandwich for myself? Probably not. Was it better than the spartan, boiled grain breakfasts I'm used to? Let's just say that there's a reason McDonalds makes McMuffins and not McMillet n' Miso.

The Best Roasted Chicken I've Ever Had

At long last, I've perfected my roasted chicken. The secret is sustainability.

After years of experimentation (meaning inconsistency), I no longer fuss about whether or not I should be stuffing the cavity with lemons, brining, or even which spices to use. I don't use spices. With real chicken, they're irrelevant.

I get the oven very hot and rub a sustainably raised bird with olive oil and salt, roasting breast side down until it almost starts to burn, flipping and doing the same on the b-side, then turning the heat down to let it finish.

But that's just the beginning. The most important step is to stand over the chicken once you've pulled it from the oven and to tear off pieces of the meat with your fingers, dredging them in the fat that collected at the bottom of the skillet and eating them, moaning, despite the fact that you've burnt your tongue.

In the OD, MP uses the phrase "a more chickeny chicken." The chicken I most recently cooked, purchased from the awesome Lionette's in the South End (now with carbon neutral bicycle delivery service), was the chickeniest chicken I've ever had. In tasting such chickeniffic chicken, I realized how misleading it is that the word chicken has come to mean neutral or plain.

See the phrase "tastes like chicken," which has become a mantra for mediocrity. People use it to indicate that something tastes plain, acceptable, and non-threatening. "Tastes like chicken" really means "tastes like nothing."

The flavor of real chicken is a presence, not an absence. We hear time and time again that organic, locally grown, sustainable ingredients taste better than their GMO counterparts, but the fact of the matter remains shockingly apparent every time you get your hands on real food. Industrially produced knock-offs taste no more like food than the Monkees sounded like the Beatles.

A real bird will be more expensive than its supermarket cousin, because it lived a real life. So eat less of it at a time and appreciate it more.

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Recipe: Roasted Chicken

1 sustainably raised chicken
2 tbsp sea salt
1 glug of olive oil

1. Pre-heat the oven to 500.

2. Rub the chicken with the oil and salt.

3. Roast the chicken, breast side down, until the back has browned. Then flip and do the same for the other side.

4. Once the breast has browned, turn the oven down to 350 and continue to cook until the meat melts off of a drumstick with the slightest provocation and the juices run clear. (About 50 minutes all in all.)

Buffalo Yam Chili

Like some of my all-time favorite dishes, this one just came to me out of the blue, like a buffalo thundering across the prairie and then into my pot.

I'd never heard of chili with yams (or pineapple vinegar) before, but the spirit moved me to unite these unlikely but not unfriendly ingredients. It turned out to be the best chili I've ever had. I'd be tickled for others to take up the gauntlet, and if you do make it, drop me a line and let me know how it turned out.

There are three reasons as to why it was so good. The first was the choice of ingredients, especially the spices. For those still using "chili powder," I strongly suggest creating your own mix. You might find that you prefer more cumin, or less partially hydrogenated oil and silicon dioxide, all of which are commonly found in the pre-made stuff.

I went heavy on whole cumin seeds and chipotles, and their smoky heat paired beautifully with the sweetness of the yams, while the buffalo kept it grounded.

A word on buffalo. Yes, I used buffalo, like a buffalo, not like a buffalo wing, which is chicken. Some might balk at the idea of eating a buffalo, and if you're ethically opposed to eating meat, then I understand where you're coming from. But if not, and you just can't stomach the thought of eating an animal that doesn't appear in a white kid's barnyard animal picture book, I have no sympathy for you, and you don't deserve to eat this anyway.

Also, from what I understand, buffalo don't tolerate confinement, and so raising them in a CAFO is not (yet, I'm sure) an option. Therefore any buffalo meat, even if it's in an otherwise ecologically disastrous chain supermarket, is technically free range, for what that's worth, which is something. As the NYT reported in '07:

"A meeting of people who raise buffaloes is not at all like a meeting of people who raise conventional cattle. For many buffalo herders it is a calling, an effort to save part of their national heritage. They talk of sustainability and even of a holistic approach to raising their animals, which, unlike cattle, are still wild, not domesticated."

Of course you shouldn't eat too much of it, as you shouldn't eat too much of any meat, especially red. Which is why I used a small amount of buff for a big pot of chili, going with the Mark Bittman-Thomas Jefferson approach of using meat as more of a seasoning than a main dish.

The second reason it was so good was browning. Brown everything you put in the pot, from the cumin seeds to the meat. The broth will be richer, the color darker.

The third reason it was so good is that it was chili.

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Recipe: Buffalo Yam Chili

3 yams
1/4 lb ground buffalo
1 large can of tomatoes (or fresh in season, but never these)
2 cups of precooked beans in the pinto or kidney family (or 1 small can)
2 onions
1 red bell pepper
5 cloves garlic
2 dried chipotle peppers
2 tbsp whole cumin seeds
a splash of homemade pineapple vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
salt to taste
neutral, high heat oil for browning (i.e. canola)

Note: This might seem like a lot of ingredients and steps, but you're only really doing two things: browning and simmering, and you can certainly handle that. Therefore you'll need a skillet and a big pot.

1. Put the tomatoes in the big pot on medium heat.

2. Toast the cumin seeds and chipotles in the dry skillet. Add the cumin to the pot with the 'maters, set the chipotles aside.

3. Cut the yams into bite sized hunks. Seriously brown them in the oil, then add to the pot.

4. Dice and brown the onions. Mince the garlic and add it and the diced bell pepper to the skillet when the onions are at the halfway point. Transfer to the pot when ready.

5. While the onions are in the skillet, de-stem and de-seed the chipotles. Soak in some of the warm tomato water until soft, then muddle (or blend), and add to the pot.

6. Brown the buffalo. Add to the pot.

7. Add the beans, simmer ten minutes, then add salt and vinegar.

8. If it needs more kick, add cayenne to taste. It's good now, but it will be better tomorrow.

Homemade Tortillas

For no good reason, in all of my 28 years I've never made a tortilla. Pita, crepes, pancakes, yes. Tortilla, no. (That last sentence was in Spanish.)

And I still haven't, but last night Elise did, and the results were transformative. If only the standard, suburban "taco night" style dinner would replace packaged tortillas with the real deal, that horrible imitation of Mexican food would become less wooden puppet and more boy. If you then improved on ground beef with "taco seasoning" and shredded iceberg lettuce, so much the better.

But even if you're having DIY burritos or fajitas and you've assembled the world's finest fillings, relying on the contents of that telltale slim ziplock bag for your wrapper can still undo all of your efforts.

Last night I realized that there's nothing like holding a homemade tortilla in your hand. It's durable, yet pliant. Soft, yet firm. It's like holding the hand of a trusted friend, and then eating that hand.

We (Elise) also poached a couple of chicken legs and made a simple sauce with a can of diced tomatoes, dried poblanos, and a splash of the cooking liquid from the chicken. We rolled up the meat from the chicken with a hearty dose of the red sauce and a spear of romaine and were in heaven.

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Recipe: Tortillas
From the More-With-Less-Cookbook
(makes 8-11 tortillas)

Combine in mixing bowl:

2 c. unsifted flour
1 t. salt

Cut in with pastry blender (or a fork or your hands):

1/4 c. lard or shortening (we used butter)

When particles are fine, add gradually:

1/2 c. lukewarm water

Toss with fork to make a stiff dough. Form into a ball and knead thoroughly on lightly floured board until smooth and flecked with air bubbles. To make dough easier to handle, grease surface, cover tightly, and refrigerate 4-24 hours before using. Let dough return to room temperature before rolling out.

Divide dough into 8 balls for large tortillas or 11 balls for common 8-inch size. Roll as thin as possible on a lightly floured board, or between sheets of waxed paper. Drop onto a very hot ungreased griddle. Bake until freckled on one side. (Takes only about 20 seconds.) Lift edge, turn, and bake on second side.

The Best French Fries I've Ever Had

Until now, the best fries I'd ever had were in Ithaca, NY. It's no secret that I have a soft spot for the town, but it's with good reason.

A friend of mine who is also a former Chez Panisse employee is considering moving from the Bay Area, and Ithaca is near the top of her list. Partly because she's interested in a grad program there, but partly because it's one of the few towns in America that won't make a former Bay Area foodie feel like they live in the desert outside of the house in Beetlejuice.

So it was no surprise that I had great fries there, especially because the region is also known for something called salt potatoes. But yesterday, all that changed. Elise had a rare free night now that her new show is up, and there was only one thing on her mind: making fries.

They were the perfect fry, with crisp skin and light and creamy guts. She admittedly has a heavy hand with salt, but in this case it was just right, going toe to toe with the surprisingly sweet taste of the taters. Crispy, fluffy, sweet, salty - may my epitaph be so kind.

We have three guesses as to why they were so ethereal. First was her general skill, including the decision to steam and then fry. Then there was our luck of having the right potatoes chilling in the hallway thanks to our winter CSA. But the third and most unusual reason was the choice of fat, or fats, rather.

We just so happened to be low on all oils, so she made a blend of peanut, canola, and olive. We wouldn't have done so for any other reason but necessity, but it just might have been the killing stroke that made these the best fries of my life.

Now who's gorges?

Finally, Frank Pepe

The golden pizza fleece of eating Frank Pepe's has eluded me for years. I could never count the times I've driven past New Haven, but for a slew of reasons, I've never been able to stop in for a slice.

Some friends once brought me a white clam pie while in Amherst, but it had been out of the oven for hours, so I didn't consider it a valid test. Then, last month, the stars aligned for a quick dinner in New Haven while traveling from New York to Boston. It being a Monday, FP's was closed.

Flash forward to last week, if it were possible to flash forward backward. Elise and my first stop en route from Boston to St. Louis was none other than that infamous pizzeria. I'd heard about it for years, had been taunted by the sign for exit 2 on 91, and have craved the real thing ever since that cold, soggy tease. With such high expectations, of course I was disappointed.

That's not to say that it wasn't great pizza. It was. In fact, it was probably the best pizza I've ever had. Why, then, didn't I like it? First, pizza has a ceiling. I know this is a departure from my Trillinesque love of all foods, no matter how lowly or unsustainably grown, but the best pizza just isn't as good as the best braised goat stew or Tarte Tatin, like the excellent one I had last night at Dijon in Ithaca. The best pizza can only be so good.

The second reason, to be completely unfair to Frank, is that I wasn't in the mood. We'd hit traffic on the way in, gotten lost, had a hard time finding green space to walk the dog, and were anxious about the 1200 miles that lay before us. Being in such a state, even the gamiest wild persimmon could go unappreciated.

I owe Frank Pepe another chance. I'm going to go back, take my time, drink a beer before puzzling through the spreadsheet-like menu, and enjoy what I know is some fine pie. I just have to work on being the best pizza eater.

Only then can I share in the sentiment of this bathroom graffiti.

Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was awesome. We've had some real feasts in years past, but this time we wanted to scale things down. More Maynard, less Somerville. It started out with a perfect breakfast revolving around Elise's cheddar and rosemary biscuits, which we topped with Seth's present, a jar of pure sorghum syrup from his travels through Arkansas.



The evening festivities of course centered around food. It was kind of like this, but without the hydrocolloids and ironic mustaches. The cornerstone of the meal was an array of wood grilled veggies from our new fire pit out back. Half of the fuel came from the woods about ten feet away, the rest from craigslist (cherry, hickory, oak, maple). The crookneck squash came from our garden, ten feet in the other direction. Doesn't get much more local than that.

Also on the menu were heirloom tom's and cukes, grilled purple and white eggplant, corn, onions, and champagne. Besides the latter, everything was local, purchased at the Maynard Far-Mar just hours before the meal.

For dessert Zach brought an incredible melon, described to him as having the texture of an apple and the flavor of a honeydew, which it did. Somehow Elise managed to bake a killer peach and blackberry pie while gardening full time and rehearsing for a new show six days a week, including five hours on the day of. She snapped a pic pre-top crust, but no record survives of the finished product.



The pita was fun to make and the best I've ever had, not a difficult feat considering how crappy most pita is. Thanks to BoB for the recipe. The inspiration came from a desire to not have to do dishes, and I could never buy disposable, so we figured everyone could have their plate and eat it too. Tossed on the grill to toast up, they made fantastic platforms for monster piles of smoky eggplant, hummus, cucumber, tomato and feta.

With food fads ever surging towards impossible perfection, when I look back on this post on future birthdays, I may scoff at my repetition of the word "local." But for now, it -- and "fair trade" and "sustainable" -- is the best we can do.

Grace Garden

Blogging about Grace Garden is like beating a dead horse. Scads of bloggers and chowhounds have already made public this gem of an eatery, eventually even drawing the attention of "old media" such as the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post. Still, I cannot contain my enthusiasm and feel compelled to do my part in the crusade to publicize what is obviously the best Chinese Food in America. Many are surprised to find such a place in Odenton, though I think it's a fitting home for food fit for a god.

We began with fish noodles, featured above. Are they noodles, or are they fish? The answer is "yes." It's hard to imagine something so soft, so subtle, yet so richly flavorful. They have a perfect ratio of give to bounce and are an absolute pleasure to chew. While eating them I thought: "Why is the idea of shaped, ground fish somehow familiar to me?" Then it came to me: gefilte.

Grace Garden might also be the only restaurant in a strip mall that features a rotating, just picked seasonal veggie dish straight from the owner's garden. In typical Grace Garden fashion, this attribute was in no way advertised, the only tip- off being a photo on the wall of some pea greens. When we inquired about these, we were told that they were no longer available, having been replaced by chive blossoms. After those peak, they plan to harvest their winter melon and serve it with soup that has been cooked inside of it.



This was the best single-vegetable dish I have ever eaten. Chives are so often so pathetic, so tasteless, nothing more that dry O's sprinkled onto a baked potato as an afterthought. Eating this dish was like only having seen dusty old dinosaur bones in a museum then finding yourself in Jurassic Park, surrounded by velociraptors of freshness and flavor. The szechuan fish fillets were even more mind-blowing.



This and the pork belly with rice powder were the two dishes that absolutely put me in a trance. I stopped talking and felt a surge of euphoria well up inside me, one not unlike the theobromine high I've gotten after an L.A. Burdick's hot chocolate. Beside the soul satisfying experience of eating great food, my only guess is that I was feeling the effects of the tongue-numbing szechuan, or sichuan, peppercorn. But I probably just think that because, like absinthe, it was until recently banned in the U.S.

Grace Garden is clearly the über food blog darling. Unpretentious, ethnic, off the beaten path but close to a major city, it is the ultimate find. I thought it was the best Chinese food I've ever had, and Dave thinks it's the best food he's ever had. When we asked the owner, who is also the chef, what the secret to his cooking is, he said:

"Heart. You must feel the ingredients that you are going to cook. Also, you need very good sauce."