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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The Great…e-SCAPE. Get it? You know, because there are scapes in this 02 Jul 08

You don’t get it at all, do you Steve?

Sometimes I wish I could post in 3-D, because that peanut? Totally looks like it’s poised to leap off the screen at you. That peanut will cut a bitch.

I often bemoan the fact that I am too fucking lazy* to get up early enough to make it to the Greenmarket in time for quickly snatched up, fleeting seasonal delicacies like ramps and garlic scapes. I salivate over other people’s beautiful photos, promise myself I’ll go this coming Saturday and then stay up late on Friday reading back issues of Love & Rockets and sleep until noon the next day (I’m fortunate to have equally lazy dogs who enjoy sleeping in on weekends).

Thankfully, I now have my own personal organic farmer to provide me with fleeting seasonal delicacies. Well, me and the 75 other people in my neighborhood CSA. He grows ‘em, he brings ‘em to the neighborhood, and I pick ‘em up after work and enjoy my beauty sleep guilt-free. So thank you, Farmer John, for enabling me to eat this delicious new potato and garlic scape puree with my pan-seared halibut and snap pea slaw.

*On a laziness scale of 1 to 10, I’m a 17. On a good day.**

**I REALLY like sleep.

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Cheap Ass Monday: Down by the Boardwalk 30 Jun 08

Not actually on, near, under, or down by a boardwalk.

I’m going to tell you right now: this post? Is not really funny. Feel free to leave if that’s a problem, and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming later this week.

As you can imagine, it’s been a bit of a rough weekend; I haven’t really felt like cooking, let alone photographing and describing my meals in detail. Funerals and their associated activities are always kinda rough, and I’m not nearly far enough in the mourning process for my own father not to have all that shit get dredged up, compounding things. Blargh.

I gotta tell you, the Orthodox Jews and their burial services? I to the N to the T-E-N-S-E. It’s so…biblical, with the actual rending of garments and the shoveling and the Hebrew and the phlegm. I’m emotionally drained just thinking about it.

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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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Thursday Night Smackdown: Maybe Fish Sauce Isn’t Entirely Evil 19 Jun 08

I don’t want to harp, really, but I do feel that I must state here again that I do NOT own a mandolin.

I finally got a copy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges, and immediately wanted pretty much everything in it. I was going to do the peking duck, because yum, but the directions instructed me to hang the glazed raw duck from a hook overnight in the fridge, where you’ve also placed a small battery-powered fan to keep air moving around the duck. Thanks for adapting that recipe for the home cooks with normal-sized refrigerators* at whom your book is aimed, Jean-Georges! Really helpful.

Still, I can’t be too angry at him because despite his chef stardom he still eats hot dogs. So I decided to go with his Charred Lamb Salad, a riff on traditional Thai beef and lettuce wraps that sounds MUCH more boring that it actually is.

*Maybe I didn’t read the introduction carefully, maybe it’s only for home cooks with home meat lockers.

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The Big Stomach Wave Makes the Love 18 Jun 08

What does it all mean? Hell if I know. All of today’s captions are brought to you by the nutjobs who found TNS via google. This one’s for you, Mr. or Ms. “Upside Down Belly Button.”

Really, what was this person looking for? “The big stomach wave makes the love”? Is it some grody thing that I’m naive for not knowing? If so, I’d like to continue on in my blissful ignorance.

A few weeks ago the New York Times Wednesday food section had a feature article on ricotta that included instructions for making it yourself, and I’ve been brooding over it ever since, wanting to make it. I could resist no longer, so I decided dinner tonight would be ricotta crostini. It’s a win-win-win: I love cheese, I love nibblies, and I love dinner. Success!

I ended up making two savory crostini - one with prosciutto and thyme, one with a sweet and spicy quick tomato compote - and one sweet, with honey, walnuts and cardamom. All were dinner worthy, and all will re-appear on my table. Quoth Brian, “It’s like crack!”

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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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Thursday Night Smackdown: It had a really good personality 12 Jun 08

John Stewart: the bald spot is growing, but he’s still damn funny.

So a few weeks ago I randomly left a comment on a post at Serious Eats, the result of which was my being randomly chosen to receive a copy of Paula Disbrowe’s Cowgirl Cuisine. Paula is a French-trained New York-based food writer who removed herself from the big-city rat race to live in Texas, cook on a ranch and write a cookbook filled with pictures of herself. I know we’ve all wanted to flee our humdrum existences to live a life of leisure surrounded by goats in the Texas Hill Country, where “Texas Hill Country” is read as “Tuscan villa” and “goats” as “Italian supermodels.”

Seriously, there are a LOT of pictures of her in the cookbook. And not pictures of her cooking or engaging in Texas-type activities like riding horses, erecting homemade border fences or driving to Mexico for cheap over-the-counter pharmaceuticals; that would make too much sense. Just pictures of her standing around, lying in fields and, I shit you not, stripping down to go skinny dipping (don’t get excited, you can’t see anything).

Anyway, despite all the auto-photography and the terrible, terrible title, I bring you: shrimp-stuffed poblanos with walnut sauce and classic cornbread.

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Cheap Ass Monday: Hot as Hell Cucumber Salad 09 Jun 08

Pretty.

Apparently, I don’t spend ENOUGH time on the internet, because I’m adding a new feature to TNS: Cheap Ass Monday. My grocery bills have, uh, been nudging ever so slightly upward for the past few months; I have no idea why that might be. No matter the reason, I need to figure out a way to offset some of the more obscene Smackdown costs, and I know lots of us are looking for quick, less expensive meals so we can save our money for blowout trips to the French Laundry. Or, you know, to pay the mortgage or utility bill (thanks a lot, heat wave).

So Monday will no longer merely be “Monday” but “Cheap Ass Monday,” where we endeavor to make a tasty dinner for two gluttonous adults for $5 or less. Play along at home! The rules are:

• You (me) have to actually MAKE dinner out of actual whole, fresh ingredients. The Wendy’s 99-cent menu does not a Cheap Ass Monday make. I mean, technically it does, but that’s not gonna fly around here.

• Normal pantry items that right-thinking people should have in their homes (salt, sugar, olive oil, etc) do not count toward the $5 limit.

• I am the arbiter of what constitutes a “normal pantry item” and reserve the right to stretch the definition thereof in order to meet my self-imposed dollar limit.

• Some Mondays may be skipped without prior notice if I am feeling lazy.

Cheap Ass Monday kicks off with a refreshing, raw cucumber and peanut salad. Not only is it too hot in New York to even think about entertaining the idea of considering turning on the oven, it is also too hot for humans to effectively digest complex foods. Also, the knobs on the stove may well be too hot from the ambient temperature to touch; I can’t say for sure because I didn’t want to chance it.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Wherein I Fail to Learn a Lesson 05 Jun 08

Another mistake, or a deliberate refusal to learn?

I’ve been wanting to start cooking more vegetarian meals; we’re definitely a little meat heavy*, which is both pricey and not super great for us. I’ve got the Moosewood book and Patricia Wells’ Vegetable Harvest, the most butter-and-cream heavy veggie cookbook I’ve ever seen, and I recently picked up a copy of Veganomicon. It’s a vegan cookbook, and I freely admit that while I had read good things about it, I bought it mainly for the title. Because who doesn’t love Evil Dead II? “Give me some sugar, baby.”

I thought I’d use the book this week because I knew I’d be eating a giant hunk of filet mignon at a gala event Wednesday night. Also because I have not learned my lesson about tofu (although as with the mac and cheese, it was not the tofu that doomed this dish (not that the tofu helped)). So: vegan moussaka.

If you don’t want to read about vegan moussaka, I’ll sum it up for you using Brian’s description of the meal: “Tofu? Tofucked.” And I promise animal fats up the wazoo next week.

*Understatement.

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