Thursday N…afternoon Smackdown: I’m Having Dinner at Babbo, Suckas 03 Jul 08

At a VIP table, no less. Suck on THAT.

Okay, I know this is bad form. It’s my blog, it’s my inaugural event, and here I am, copping out and making a quick lunch so I can skip out on you to spend a night on the town. But here’s the thing: cook eat FRET is in town. And she’s now total BFFs with Joe Bastianich, co-owner of many of Mario Batali’s restaurants, so she managed to get this fancy-ass table at Babbo tonight. And I am not afraid to send a deluge of whiny emails to internet personages to secure reservations like this one. And her mother will be at dinner, so hopefully I’ll get a stock of embarrassing childhood stories I can use as blackmail to get more invitations to dinner like this. And so the circle of life continues. It’s beautiful, really.

I couldn’t not smack something down, though, so I decided to make a light lunch that would be worthy of the occasion but would be light enough so as not to impinge on this evening’s gastronomic adventure. Therefore: Chilled cucumber-yogurt soup with quinoa timbales, courtesy of Lorena Sass’ Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way. It’s a perfect refreshing summer lunch, or first course at a fancy vegetarian restaurant, the kind where vegans go for special occasions. (”Will you accept this cruelty-free Canadian diamond set in hemp as a gesture of my desire to spend my life with you in monogamous co-equal sustainable partnership?”)

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Cheap Ass Mondays: A Little Fancy, A Little Schmancy 23 Jun 08

I made this dinner purely as an excuse to gloat about my egg-poaching skills. Seriously, look at that fucking thing. It’s like art.

Did I make this dinner just so I could gloat about my infinitely awesome egg-poaching skills?  I may have.  But maybe I ALSO made it so I could gloat about my willingness to make things painstakingly by hand - let us not forget the angel hair cucumbers - rather than relying on the modern conveniences that would hasten dinner’s journey to my table. Because I? Am better than you.

To wit: fresh, hand rolled and cut pasta tossed with onions, garlic, red spinach and bacon and topped with a poached egg. Proof that cheap can still be pretentious!
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Cheap Ass Mondays: Re-inventing a Clichè 16 Jun 08

Do you listen to Aimee Mann? You should, she’s really good. I have spoken.

For the second installment of Cheap Ass Mondays, I bring you variation #999,999,998 on rice and beans: Mexican-ish stuffed peppers. Can you really have a feature called “Cheap Ass Mondays” without featuring rice and beans at least 30% of the time? I’m still new here, but I’m guessing you can’t.

These peppers appeared regularly on my table back in my vegetarian days (August 6th and 7th, 2000). Yes, I was once a vegetarian, for about four years. It will come as no surprise that sausage, my Scylla, and bacon, my Charybdis, wrought the downfall of that halcyon time. Although I’m now an unabashed carnivore and committed to eating meat in a more ethical, organic, sustainable way - although I’m not always successful - I would like to bring some vegetarian favorites back into rotation for the health of both wallet and gut.

I don’t know why hot, humid weather makes me want Mexican food; maybe I figure that as long as I’m already drenching through my clothing, I can’t get any more gross and I may as well go for the full-on sweat-fest and eat spicy food. I just know that I want it, and these peppers fit the bill. Fast, versatile, cheap, filling and tasty.

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Fish balls, fish balls; eat them up. Yum! 31 Mar 08

Did you know: If you want to take your fish balls out to the movies, you DON’T HAVE TO PAY to get them in! What a deal!

Say someone challenged you to come up with a dish involving your choice of seafood, lime and coconut. You’d probably come up with something a lot like this, I’m sure: coconut rice and yellowtail suckers with a trio of spicy lime dipping sauces. Because when people think “fish,” they think “lollipop,” right?

Okay, I know, it sounds freaky and maybe a little bit gross. It’s just that the ingredients for this month’s Foodie Joust over at the Leftover Queens’s lent themselves so well to a variety of Thai-inspired fish dishes and curries. And they’re all looking really good, and I don’t think I could top ‘em. So I figured, if I can’t beat you in flavor inventiveness, I can… also not beat you in shape and form. But at least in the meantime, I get to eat a fried thing on a stick. Also I get to say “fish balls” a lot.

Fish balls. Fish balls. Fish balls.
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a thursday night smackdown of questionable methodology 13 Mar 08

It’s not meat!

Tonight’s Smackdown comes to us from Creole by Babette de Rozieres, a beautifully photographed collection of 160 classic and not-so classic creole recipes. On the menu: Creole Seafood Risotto.

On the surface, this dish seems like a total winner: shrimp, scallops, and fish, risotto finished with some creme fraiche, saffron and scotch bonnet peppers bringing the creole mojo, and more shallots (8) than I have ever used in a single dish (It serves 4. So, 2 shallots per person. Babette doesn’t fuck around with shallots.). Although the flavor is ultimately a winner, a tragic misunderstanding of classic risotto procedures leads to fatal textural compromises. Amazon informs me that Babs is a French celebrity chef, making this all the more surprising.

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Oat Odes. 24 Jan 08

Irish steel-cut oats
The breakfast of champions
With maple syrup.

Oats from a packet
With fake apple-cinammon
A food-like product.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Qui est votre papa? 17 Jan 08

Voulez-vouz couche avec moi ce soir?

Tonight, from Claudia Roden’s The New Book of Middle Eastern Food: Lamb meatballs with eggplant sauce served over bulgar pilaf with pine nuts.

I’m going to admit it right up front: this was not my week to pick the Smackdown battle, and I was not overly psyched about these dishes; I have a backache and am a little cranky, and I really could have gone for some mac and cheese. But once one accepts the Smackdown (and buys all the ingredients… and has a spouse who’s really, really excited), one does not back away from the smackdown. Plus, spicy lamb meatballs. Yum.

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Sated. 09 Jan 08

Leftover farro risotto and shrimp makes an *excellent* lunch, does not not make one’s office stink of fish when it’s nuked.

Copycat. 08 Jan 08

It’s midnight at the oasis.

For Brian’s birthday this year we went to dinner at Perilla, the new-ish restaurant in the West Village opened by Top Chef season 1 winner Harold Dieterle. I could easily wax rhapsodic about the crispy pork belly with pea shoots, trumpets, and banyuls-vanilla gastrique, which I ate entirely with my eyes closed so that other forms of sensory input would not interfere with the experience. But I won’t because I have opted not to try and re-create the pork belly; it would be too dangerous. We consume enough pork products around these here parts.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about the side dish of farro risotto with artichoke heart confit, parmesan and chili-grape salad we shared alongside the main course. It was wonderfully creamy, and the farro grains had a bite and nuttiness not found in arborio rice, the traditional risotto base. The grapes were strangely wonderful, and provided one of the perfect moments when you eat a combination of foods you would have never put together and find a whole new flavor you never knew you loved.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Us 1, Food 0 03 Jan 08

The food in question, prior to battle. I’ll wipe that smug look off your face, pepper.

Tonight’s smackdown: Pan-seared striped bass with yellow-pepper hominy and poblano vinaigrette, courtesy of Bobby Flay’s new Mesa Grill cookbook. Except that the striped bass was really halibut.

This recipe is full of great flavor, with the sweet gentle heat and touch of acid in the poblano vinaigrette both cutting through and complementing the yellow pepper hominy. The fish sits perfectly between the two and its delicacy is a nice contrast to the slightly coarse texture of the hominy; this recipe wouldn’t be nearly as yummy with chicken, pork or beef. We had to stop ourselves from eating all the hominy right from the pot, so lured were we by all the sharp local cheddar that got mixed into it.

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