Don’t just take my word for it — the trustworthy Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice says so:
Read More“Little India has bloomed like a rosewater lassi, so that now the thoroughfare and surrounding streets form a South Asian business district more impressive than either Jackson Heights or Iselin, New Jersey.”
My new favorite kind of pasta is called campanelle, which means little bell in Italian. It’s listed as a “specialty collection” pasta at Barilla, which I really hope does not mean that it will some day disappear. The pieces look like some kind of non-delicate flower, like a lily or some other flower that doesn’t take any shit, not a wussy peony or pansy. Campanelle goes so well with broccoli rabe and garlic and some white wine.
It’s getting tedious not knowing where I’ll be on Thanksgiving. We’re waiting to hear whether we’ll be going to Merry Olde England [tm] where they (obviously) don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, which is pretty much my favorite holiday, bred for its skills in magic (obscure reference assistance available here). I don’t like football but I do love a holiday that is focused around cooking and eating.
Read MoreI had brunch this morning in the Village at a place called Deborah where they serve lots of good unusual options, plus “fresh squeezed juices” “where possible.” Now I’m not a professional chef, but it seems to me that it’s not that difficult to serve fresh squeezed juices in everything. To what dish is it impossible to add juice? Luckily the huevos rancheros I ordered did not contain juice, nor did Alison’s “married” eggs (not sure what that was about, but it’s how the dish was listed on the menu). Damien had french toast that included strawberries, so I imagine they contained some juice, although presumably not squeezed.
Also there was a dish that no one ordered which was described as
3 links Linguisa sausage 2 sliced (low sodium) Spam with toasted garlic steamed rice, 2 eggs and salsa verde
Now if you look at the image above, you’ll see that the meats are claimed to be “free-range”. This begs the following questions:
That is all for now.
Read MorePupusas in Red Hook from tractorfeed on Vimeo
Read MoreAs a semanticist I tend to use the “does it alter truth conditions” test to check whether two words or phrases are equivalent. For example, is there any possible world where “the cat sat on a sofa” is true but “the cat sat on a couch” is false? It appears that a court case will decide whether “made from” is equivalent to “made with”. The people at Equal, who are apparently extremely concerned about the possibility of the American consumer being misled, are taking the people at Splenda to court because the Splenda people claim that Splenda is “made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar.” But it turns out that there is no sugar at all in Splenda. So the Equal people are pissed. Rightly so? If I were in a restaurant and waiter described a dish I ordered as being “made from truffles and arborio rice” I would certainly expect the dish to arrive containing truffles. It’s rather creepy in my mind anyway to imagine what types of chemical processes are involved in either Equal or Splenda, but regardless it should be interesting to read how some poor lawyer has to argue that something can be “made from” x and not contain x. I wonder if a semanticist will be called in as an expert witness.
Read MorePlease read my latest pickle news.
Read MoreFor a while I was a big fan of dvd commentary, and considered it a useful tool for appreciating cinema. Check out 400 Blows, or any Kurosawa, or really any Criterion Collection release. But recently my thoughts have changed.
Lately we’ve taken to watching films over dinner, which ends up spreading the viewing across a few evenings, and sometimes results in completing a film when we’ve still got wine left in the bottle, or food on our plates, prompting me to fire up the dvd extras. So last night we finished watching “Stranger than Fiction” which I generally liked (I could probably sit through anything that had both Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman), and I made the big mistake of starting to watch the included behind-the-scenes featurette. I ended up being so irritated by some of the behind-the-scenes people that it ended up contaminating my whole experience, and now I think I don’t like the film as much. Walt was spot on when he compared it to really enjoying some dip, say, and then making the mistake of reading the label and realizing that you’ve just ingested guar gum and hydrolized corn proteins.
Apparently, really irritating superficial people can make films that I enjoy; I just don’t want to know about it.
Read MoreA friend of mine works at a wine shop in Chelsea called “Appellation” which carries mostly organic and biodynamic wine. Because I’m frequently in the area, I often drop in to see her and pick up a bottle. I end up getting whatever she recommends because I trust her taste, and it gets me to try things I might not otherwise. A few days ago she told me she wanted me to try something which it turns out I’ve never had before: sparkling red wine! It’s called Solo Reggiano and it’s from the Medici Ermete winery in Italy. Apparently the winemaker himself is from that Medici family, and had been in the shop earlier to show them his stuff. I asked if he had been wearing a codpiece and tights — sadly he hadn’t. But the wine was nice, strange, but fun to try. She told me to chill it and serve it with anything. We had it with a broccoli rabe orecchiette dish, but I could imagine it with a wide variety of things, actually.
Read MoreSo it seems that when you drive north of here along the coast, you run into people who substitute some kind of long [a] for the syllabic [r] in word final position. And these people are up in arms about the “langostino lobster” which is starting to appear on menus, often just called “lobster” — the nerve! Senator Olympia Snowe, of my summerhome-state of Maine, is apparently “hot” about the issue (CNN’s word, not mine), and the Maine Lobster Promotion Council contends that these upstart langostinos “cost Maine fishermen $44 million in lost sales to restaurant chains since April.” I tend to think it’s global warming that’s the lobster fisherman’s real enemy, but whatever.
So much depends upon a name. It turns out that the langostino lobster is not really a lobster so much as a crab. The FDA, ever vigilant about market forces, approves “langostino” as a market name for two species: Cervimunida johni and Pleuroncodes monodon. Good thing, too, for those who would sell these insects of the sea, as the “common name” of this creature is the squat lobster. Somehow people don’t want to eat something called the squat lobster, but they’ll gobble up “langostino” lobster. At some point you must have tried the trendy Chilean Sea Bass, but probably only after its redesignation as such. Would you have ordered it back when it was called Patagonian toothfish? Or perhaps you fancy a plate of blackened wartynosed mullet? This last one is an actual type of fish recognized by the FDA’s list of market names for seafood. Is there any question why this fish hasn’t made it to the lofty heights of episode ingredient on Iron Chef?
To sum up, here’s the langostino lobster:
and here’s a real lobster:
As for me, I prefer crab.