A Hunger Artist

Consumer Advisory Warning

2009-07-18T07:06:00.004-04:00

The Worst Pizza I've Ever Tried to Eat

Last night I had pizza that was so bad that I could not believe how bad it was. There was nothing redeeming about, nothing. The sauce was sweet and thin, the cheese was typical pizza shop quality mozzarella (tasteless and rubbery) but the kicker was the crust.

One has to be clever to construct pizza crust that is mushy on the inside, crispy outside, under baked, absent of yeast flavor and salt, pale and ugly. But whoever designed this recipe shows himself to be an evil genius of pizza couture in the way he managed to make the pizza smell like a CINNAMON DONUT!

Yes, you read that correctly, the crust has something in it that makes it smell like cinnamon. And no, it wasn't an accident, I searched (googled) for posts about PEACE O PIZZA (apparently it's a franchise operation) and found others who made the same comment.

Peace O Pizza makes the frozen stuff in the supermarket and public school cafeteria pizza look like high art.

Evidence of Genius: Exhibit 1

2009-07-16T17:04:00.003-04:00

Not that anyone has ever had any reason to doubt the depth and breath of my intelligence. But it can't hurt to publish a reminder of how miraculously smart I am to warn off those who might try to get over on me during one of those moments when I pretend to be in a weakened condition.

For example, this morning I decided to tackle a problem that afflicts millions but until today has proved to be unsolvable.

As everyone knows fly-swatters are reasonably green, cheap, and low tech devices that in the right hands are pretty good at killing flies. However, many people who use them have terrible aim and timing and do not manage to kill too many flies. Plus, killing flies by smacking them with a fly swatter often results in the dismemberment of the fly which leaves the killing area littered with fly parts and guts - a real liability in a kitchen where sanitation is a major concern.

My solution to the problem is to combine an ordinary fly swatter with a can of fly spray. Now, when I want to kill flies, I pop the cap on the spray, depress it with the paddle of the swatter, and no matter how bad my aim is the flies drop like flies.

Curing salt for pancetta

2009-07-15T12:20:00.000-04:00

Crawling

2009-07-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

by Mike Pardus*

Bob and I and a few other foodies started getting together a couple of years ago for occasional (mostly biannual) binges of food, drink, and discussion.

This year we decided crawl around Lower Manhattan-Chinatown. Armed with a map of the area and a list of well recommended street stalls, markets, dives and restaurants. Six of us met at the corner of Mott and Pell Streets and set out to eat everything in sight.

Before we even had a chance to get our bearings and choose a direction, we ran into an old friend with whom I'd toured Singapore and Vietnam. She was out for Dim Sum with her husband and invited us along. First stop Pings, on Elizabeth Street for Dim Sum.

After about an 90 minutes of "tea snacks", our friends left us to find our own way, so we wandered across the street to Aji Ichiban - a Japanese snack shop which sells typical sweets (gummy worms, that sort of thing) but also dried, fried, and flavored fish bits and fruits , that are pickled dried, and seasoned in ways most westerners can't imagine. We were soon buying tiny sacks of interesting - sometimes unidentifiable - tidbits for sidewalk snacking and later inspection: dried shredded sweet squid, tiny sesame glazed whole fried crabs, baked cuttlefish slices, salt pickled and dried plums...mouth explosions every one; some interesting but not compelling, while others begged to be loaded into a bag with deionized water and hooked into an IV line.

"Beer" said Kris Ray, fellow founding crawler "we need beer." 'Nuff said.

After establishing our position on the map and reconciling it with our list of approved sites, we crossed the street and walked into Oriental Garden. The somewhat formal sit-down restaurant was nearly vacant at 3:30 pm, and the Maitre'd hotel was glad to seat us. Fresh, live shrimp by the pound, stir-fried with garlic, was the perfect snack to give us and excuse to order beer. Heads, shells and all, they were like so much crunchy popcorn and enticed us to sit through 2 rounds of Tsing Tao.

2 meals and a snack in less than 3 hours, we allowed ourselves a leisurely stop to check out the fancy chop sticks at Yunhong Chop sticks and expensive, exotic teas at TenRen's Tea.

On another day I might have been content to stumble from one place of food and drink to another, but unbeknown to my increasingly hyperglycemic colleagues I was on a mission. For a month I'd been asking everyone and checking out websites, looking for the best Bahn Mi (Saigon Sub Sandwich) in Manhattan. I'd narrowed the search down to three, but we only had time (and appetite) to check out two of them.

The first choice was Saigon Bakery at 138 Mott St. A sandwich shop literally in the rear of a jewelry store, there was a line five deep when we arrived at 5:00 PM. "No more, we are closed" pronounced the proprietress.

The look of dismay on my face must have flipped a sympathetic switch in her heart ( or the greed button in her purse) because she said "For you, we have one left - but only chicken. " And I walked out ahead of the line, undoubtedly with someone's dinner tucked under my arm. My five accomplishes on the side walk passed it around, relishing each sweet, savory, and tangy bite. Bits of marinated and griddled chicken thigh were packed onto a warm bun slathered with mayonnaise and made succulent with cucumber slices and sweet pickled daikon and carrot shards.

Then, after a few of our crew made a pit stop at an unremarkable looking chocolate shop for coffee sodas, we headed over to Kuma Inn for dinner.

* I found this post by Pardus in our "Drafts" folder. It was written on June 29, 2009 a day after we'd concluded our trip to Chinatown, NYC. -Bob dG

I'm a bloody rock star!

2009-07-09T18:23:00.010-04:00

I've wanted to be a rock star ever since I first saw real live rock stars on the stage at the Fillmore East in, I think, 1969. I was 13 when I saw Albert King, Chuck Berry and The Who tearing it up a what was arguably one of the two best venues for rock concerts in the world (The Fillmore West being the other). And given how thrilled I was to see Chuck do whatever that dance he did was called (duck walk?) and the maniacal Keith Moon breaking drum sticks as he played faster, and with more skill than any rock drummer I can think of, you would be forgiven for thinking that I ran home and formed a band.

But no, I've never been serious enough about music to actually learn how to play and instrument and singing loud enough to be taken seriously as a R&R singer has always felt to me to be, I don't know, impolite?

So, even though I've always wanted to be a rock star, I never bothered to become one, until now.
And check it out: I did not have to pick up a guitar or open my mouth to do it. All I had to do was butcher.

See, according to Kim Severson writing for the New York Times, butchers are competing with chefs to be the rock stars of the culinary world. (So as a chef and a butcher I must be competing with myself? Odd.) She cites people who say butchers are hot, and that they like the fact that we wield big knives and are often covered in blood.

So now I'm a rock star and I've got Kim Severson and the NY Times to thank for it. Of course I have to thank my audience too, because without my fans, I could have never become the bloody awesome super star that I always knew I was but was too lazy and untalented to achieve on my own!

Never mind the bollocks, here's the butcher

Give me some skin

2009-07-09T16:41:00.001-04:00

It's a little embarrassing to admit this, but there was a time in the early 1980's when I used to pull the skin off of chicken to make stock. I seem to recall thinking that removing the skin would make it easier to degrease which, of course, is true. However, skin is loaded with flavorful molecules and contains a large amount of collagen protein which, when heated in the presence of water, breaks down to gelatin. And as most of you know, it is gelatin that gives chicken stock, or any meat stock its "body" or "heft." So removing the skin is stupid.

Nowadays, I not only leave the skin on when I make stock, but I often add extra skin to bulk it up. At work we ask the farmer who raises, slaughters and butchers our chicken to save the skin which he sends to us in 5 pound bags. I don't use all of the skin he sends in stocks, some I add into poultry sausages when i think the meat is too lean. But I'll be damned if I'll be tossing it out the way I did when I was a wet-behind-the-ears chef wannabe.

Critic’s Notebook - The Cult of the Artisanal Pizza - NYTimes.com

2009-07-08T13:00:00.001-04:00

Recently they have tried to convince us that hamburgers are worthy of endless permutations, concomitant criticism and marketing buzz. Now it looks like the hipsters of the restaurant establishment are gearing up to turn pizza into an "it" food. Yawn. What is going to be next, hot dogs or salad perhaps?

Of course I know that these trends involving gussied up low food cost products are fueled by economic necessity. And I certainly have nothing but respect for the people who make the stuff well. It is the sturm und drang of the critics and consumers that I find so tedious in its sameness from fad to fad.

Critic’s Notebook - The Cult of the Artisanal Pizza

Coffee deal

2009-07-06T20:54:00.002-04:00

After reading my post about Doma Coffee, he became overwhelmed by a fit of chutzpah I suspect is not at all atypical of people who spend half their lives on ocean going ships and asked if my name could get him a deal on coffee. I blew the comment off, but Terry Patano, Doma Coffee Roasting Company's owner and principal rotisseur des cafes, read and took the comment to heart and offered TyroneBcookin (and anyone else who wants to sample Terry's work) the following deal:

Between now and August 6th, 2009, order one pound of Doma coffee and Terry will add in a half pound of another coffee of his choosing. Just make sure to fill in the line on the order form that asks for your company's name with the words "A Hunger Artist."

Also please keep in mind that I have no financial interest in any of this. I'm only trying to promote the work of a fellow artisan and expect no financial or material gain from any transaction that anyone makes with Doma Coffee Roasting Company.

Ratio: Best Nonfiction of 2009... So Far

2009-07-06T17:21:00.001-04:00

Michael Ruhlman's Ratio continues to astound and amaze me. The book, already in it's 4th printing following it's publication in April, just picked up a kudo from Amazon for Best Nonfiction of 2009 (So far).

When he first told me that he was going to write it, I thought it was a great idea. But I figured that it would only sell to professional chefs, culinary students and cooking geeks looking for a way to simplify their cooking and the way they think about recipes. Well, there is either a hell of a lot of people who fit that description or the book has much wider appeal than I'd assumed.

Best Nonfiction of 2009... So Far

Coffee roasting made dope or fly

2009-07-04T16:16:00.004-04:00

If you have a hard time believing that there is anything fly or dope, about roasting coffee this promotional video for Doma Cofee Roasting Company, might just change your mind. Doma Coffee Roasting Company is owned and operated by Terry Patano, who, even though I've never met him, I regard as something of a homeboy or "homie" in the street parlance of my particular hood.

Seriously now, I first tried Terry's coffee last year when he graciously sent some samples to my crib. Then I tried it again when he sent more and now that he sells the stuff online my wife, who gets goofy when she drinks the stuff, orders it about once a month. It's certainly the best coffee I've ever been able to buy on a regular basis. No Starbuck's style blast furnace treatment here. Every bean is roasted just enough to acheived a complex and robust nose, and no more.

The Pork Fat's Tale

2009-07-02T21:30:00.003-04:00

Okay, so the title is a reference to Canterbury Tales and probably indicative of nothing more or less than I do not know what to call this post about one of the many acts of charcuterie that I committed this early summer week. Time to move on...

Vegetarain bones make easy cracking

2009-07-02T17:02:00.000-04:00

Cannibals who prefer that their livestock abstain from meat eating apparently know what they are doing.

A joint Australian-Vietnamese study of links between the bones and diet of more than 2,700 people found that vegetarians had bones five percent less dense than meat-eaters

Surely the weaker bones of vegetarians makes it much easier for the anthropophage to extract the marrow.

Vegetarian diet 'weakens bones' - Yahoo! News

Thanks to Tags for sending this to us.

3 cents on the Kuma dollar

2009-07-01T12:17:00.002-04:00

by Mike Pardus

I'm not even going to try to recall the avalanche of plates that consumed us on Saturday night. Suffice it to say that King has his chops DOWN. All of the basics are solid - braised things are meltingly tender, fried things hot and crisp, reductions unctuous and powerfully flavored, dressings and dips balanced and suited to their accompaniments. I think the highlights for me were the steamed edamame ( so simple, but perfectly cooked and dressed with such a light touch of Lime/thai basil oil that there was debate at our end of the table as to weather it was there at all, or just in our imaginations) and the braised-then-grilled baby octopus - a difficult protein to do properly. Tender but chewy, soft interior-crisp outside, briny and spicy...yum.

I have some photos of various plates to upload later. One warning - when you go looking for Kuma Inn don't be put off by its exterior. The Blade Runner chic entrance is just the way it should be and says, in effect,

No "Tourists" Allowed

Me, a gavone?

2009-06-28T20:17:00.007-04:00

Call me whatever you like, but I don't think you can call me a gavone unless one day of virtual filter feeding in New York City is enough to make me a glutton. Wow, did I ever eat and drink a lot last Saturday during a gastronomic ramble through NYC’s Chinatown and Little Italy. Last year’s tour of Little India in Flushing, NY did not involve one 1/3 of the calories that I ingested during this masticatathon.

It began with a desultory train ride in a dirty grey Amtrak train through Philadelphia and some of the most miserable hyper-industrialized landscape in North America, viz. the marshlands (Really called The Meadowlands; but my standards of literacy will not permit me to refer to a swamp as a meadow .) of New Jersey. It was not until the train slid into the tunnel that leads into Penn Station that my mood blew up over what I was about to do.

See, I love Manhattan. When I’m in Manhattan my heart beat slows down and my mind goes into a state where it is perfectly alert to its surroundings yet it daydreams like mad. It tosses up images of what the city looked like when I was a kid or what it imagined it looked like when my grandparents lived there as children. It even throws in images of things I read in books and saw in movies. The city becomes a split screen experience where now plays opposite to the imagined past and the living walk side by side with ghosts.

My brain did not start amusing itself by populating the city in earnest with ghosts until I was in my ‘30’s and was working on 34th Street at the New York Restaurant School. I taught classes at night that ended around 11PM. It was during my walks up to Grand Central Station that my brain started to embroider the present with the past in earnest. Now it happens every time I’m in there, and I love it like salt. But whoa, I’m running way off topic!

I checked into my hotel in Union Square (Way cool digs!) around noon, grabbed a cup of coffee at a Starbucks where some guy with red spots on the back of his neck was milling around asking people if they’d seen the bottle of detergent that had been given to him by the "Health Department" (more like "Brain Police"). Coffee-in-hand and heart-in-mouth hoping that the guy wouldn't accuse me of stealing his soap, I made my way down to the corner of Mott and Pell St. to meet up with my crew.

Mike Pardus had called me to say that he and Megan Jessee were going to be a few minutes late because their GPS –probably cold cocked by the same stupid inducing radio waves that caused the recent economic crisis- got confused in the Financial District. But Krishnendu Ray and David Livert were already there munching on ice cold perfectly ripe lychee fruits. Kris had a big bag of them and man, they tasted great as we stood there sweltering in the heat of the midday sun. My hands soon became sticky from the sugar and I got a little annoyed when no one would let me wipe them on their clothes. (I mean: WTF?) Then out of the crowd Pardus and Megan appeared, then Anne E. Mcbride materialized and we were off.

It was pure coincidence that we met Pardus’ friend and collaborator Wendy Chan with her family as we were deciding whether or not to go into Aji Ichiban to ogle and sample its snack food. Instead the Chans proposed that we join them for lunch at Ping for dim sum (see slide show). After Ping we stumbled into Aji Ichiban and rummaged through bins of sweet squid, tiny crispy and sweet crabs and a whole lot of stuff that would make my kids recoil in horror at the mere thought that anyone would eat such stuff (What else is surprising thank you?)

After Aji Ichiban the afternoon was a blur until we stopped at Oriental Garden for beer and a big bowl of whole stir fried shrimp (Don’t worry, the eyes only look cool, they don’t have much taste.). Then a hurried walk to Bahn Mi Saigon Bakery and another Vietnamese sandwich shop so that Pardus could check their Banh Mi against the version he makes at CIA (the geek was actually taking notes), a chop stick shop (YunHong Chopstick Shop) with chop sticks that made me sad that I eat with a knife and fork unless I’m eating Chinese or Japanese food (which is not very often)and a tea shop whose name I forgot long before I will ever forget the beauty of its design.

We stumbled into a fierce and beautiful downpour as we made our way east past not much of interest except a 40 plus story cobalt blue glass apartment building that was the most beautiful ugly piece of architecture I’ve seen in a long time until we reached our final stop, Kuma Inn on Ludlow Street where we had a reservation for dinner at 7:00PM.

Of course by this time I felt like eating like I always feel about prostate exams. However, I had very good reasons to overcome my queasiness over swallowing another dose of food. King Phojanakong, the chef and owner of Kuma Inn had been my student in Introduction to Gastronomy in 1996 and again after he returned from his internship at Restaurant Daniel for my class in Advanced Culinary Principles (aka Experimental) class. He was also in Mike Pardus’ charcuterie class. In other words the chef was one of us.

I’m going to leave it to Mike Pardus to explain what the meal was like and how King is doing in what is probably the most competitive restaurant market in the world. Suffice it to say here that the food is highly idiosyncratic to King’s acculturation as a Thai-Pilipino, native New Yorker who is highly trained in French culinary technique, design and philosophy. I came away gob smacked by the experience.

But how could I not have been? I was in the city I love more than almost any other place on the planet with great friends eating and drinking with a former student (Who doesn’t seem to hate me!) and -wait a minute, I almost forgot to mention Neil Guillen, another former student was working there too- you know, I may not be a gavone for food, but I wish I could eat that kind of experience all day every day. Sigh.

A Quickie

2009-06-27T07:00:00.003-04:00

I am just about to blow out the door to catch a train to NYC to meet up with Mike Pardus, Kris Ray and a bunch of other culinarians for a walking tour through the markets and eateries of China Town, so I am not going to spend too many words on this post.

Here is a slide show of some of the work I did at the farm last week.

And some follow up shots of the same product the way they looked this week.

LATER!

Garden Update

2009-06-25T17:44:00.001-04:00

My garden as of this evening.

Time For [Slow] Lunch @ School

2009-06-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

"It’s time to provide America’s children with REAL FOOD at school."

I suppose many districts will have to cut the salaries of administrators to be able to afford trained chefs to run their kitchens, but hell, I know plenty of people who would not mind losing an assistant-assistant superintendent if it meant that their kids would not have to eat cheese sticks and pizza or biscuits and gravy for lunch.

Time For Lunch : Home : Slow Food USA:

The state of the oven

2009-06-24T13:18:00.003-04:00

My aging mind is such a blur of past events that I really don't remember when Jerl Pino took over the completion of the Tuscan style wood fired oven that Trent Hendricks and I began in September of 2008. The date he took charge doesn't matter anyway. What's important is that he took over the job, because unlike me, he's actually going to get it done.

I took these photos last Saturday (6.20.09). I'm guessing that working at his usual rate of 1 or 2 days per week, Jerl is two weeks away from completing it to the point where we can begin to fire it up to baking temperature. He needs to build the chimney, build the outer wall (with block) then fill in the gap with insulation (mortar and vermiculite). When that's done, we will build a series of increasingly hot fires to temper the masonry before firing it up for baking.

I have no doubt that baking in this thing is going to be like learning to bake all over again.

In Case You Were Wondering

2009-06-24T11:45:00.002-04:00

I despise the term “foodie” as it applies to people who, like me, center their lives around food and cooking. Because it ends with the diminutive suffix “ie,” foodie trivializes a habit of mind and craft that very many of us take seriously enough to try to earn our living by it. Foodie also symbolically lumps, professional chefs, food historians and Food Network fans into a silly sounding category similar to the one inhabited by obsessive fans of Star Trek (trekies) rock bands (groupies) and dope (junkies).

However, even though I think the word demeans everyone who uses it and everyone it applies to, I use it anyway because I know of no other term in popular speech that works as well to describe the mostly loosely affiliated network of people who spend most of their time thinking through food and cooking.

Nicholas Kristoff takes up the cause

2009-06-21T08:07:00.002-04:00

As the newly released documentary Food Inc. makes its way through the movie theaters of the nation, it seems to be churning up a wake of outrage over the way that food is treated within the black box of the gastro-industrial complex.

Op-Ed Columnist - Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms - NYTimes.com

Here is a trailer for Food Inc.

For Pork Lovers Only

2009-06-20T18:56:00.002-04:00

I took this picture of forty pounds of fat flensed from the outside of pork loins (fatback) yesterday (6.19.09). I used some of the fat for salami and and some I cured as lardo. I'll follow up with shots of the salami (I made 100 pounds) later in the weekend.

Cereal Killer on The Loose

2009-06-17T10:26:00.004-04:00

This sounds like real trouble

"The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world's wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S."

A 'time bomb' for world wheat crop - Los Angeles Times

Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It

2009-06-16T07:23:00.004-04:00

So what are these scientists going to doubt next: the health dealing benefits of pastured acorn fed hog fat and grass fed beef; the wisdom of universal vaccinations against flu viri; the existence of god and reality of life after death? I mean: how dare they?

Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It - NYTimes.com

Christian Albin, Four Seasons chef, dies

2009-06-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

Chef Albin died 5 days after he was diagnosed with cancer. I suppose he might have been one of those people who put his job ahead of his health. RIP Chef.

Christian Albin, Four Seasons chef, dies -- Newsday.com

Slow Salami Sunday UPDATE

2009-06-13T17:04:00.004-04:00

Last Sunday I wrote about how I acted on an urge to make a batch of Tuscan style salami. The post outlined the process up to the beginning of the fermentation of the meat. Today's post picks up the process on Wednesday when I retrieved the meat from the refrigerator in my garage and ground it.
It was my intention to stuff it at home too. But I decided against it when I realized that the stuffing attachment for my Kitchenaid stand mixer would ruin the texture by pulverizing the fat -which I wanted to remain in ~1/4" chunks- as it worked along the worm gear. So I took the forcemeat to the farm and expressed it into hog casing with the piston stuffer then brought it home to age.

Salami Stuffing Process

At the farm I always age the meat in the cheese aging room which is well controlled for humidity, temperature and air flow. But whenever I've aged meat at home in the past, I've winged it by hanging it in the basement and crossing my fingers. Well, I've decided not to do that anymore and build an aging room. But before I start shooting nails into the foundation and putting up studs I'm going to tinker around with different prototypes by way of determining how big the room needs to be, how often the air needs to turn over etc.

Here is my first prototype aging room. I put it up on Saturday in about an hour. Humidity is controlled by a vaopirizer hooked up to a timer. The air is turn over twice a day by a small fan (also on a timer). I expect that future versions of this will include a larger humidifer with a humdistat and a larger much slower turning fan.

Aging Room