dog days with david chang

This summer, while at Saveur, I got to talk to David Chang about his new cookbook. One of my favorite bits didn't make it onto Saveur's site, but I wanted to share it with you:

JA: Well’s it’s funny—it seems like you’re confounded with this rapid rise [to success], so I was wondering if doing the book might have helped you to process the last couple of years in any way…

DC: Yeah, it totally did. Just going over all that stuff—it’s sort of insane. It just feels like dog years. You know, it feels like it went by very fast, but it literally feels like 30 years.

JA: I think that's New York years too.

image from Esquire.com

Dog years!

And by the way, I love the book (click). It reminded me of graffiti artist Claw Money's scrapbook (click), only with pickle recipes, and gave me a good sense of the Momofuku dynasty as it stood when he wrote it.

Although David Chang doesn't really vibe "dad," I kept thinking of the restaurants as his kids:

There is the firstborn and eternally popular Noodle Bar, reliable home of sweet and fiery Ramen broths; Ssäm Bar, the temperamental late-bloomer that courted death before exploding into the late-night pork orgy it is today; Ko, the fine-boned beauty whose two Michelin stars Chang lives in terror of losing; and, last but not least, Milk Bar, the sugar-buzzed little sister attached to Ssäm’s side.

Paging through Chang’s stories of fleeing pants-less chefs in Tokyo and converting East Village dens of iniquity into risky restaurants left me intrigued. Recipes like spicy pork sausage with rice cakes and pan roasted asparagus with a poached egg and miso butter made me hungry. So I called up David Chang for more details...get some here (click).

That St. Louis shout-out at the end was completely unscripted.

how now, brown cow

You might remember that this summer, I spent some serious time communing with cows (click). A piece of the experience appears in the October edition of Saveur Magazine.

I suggest picking up a copy--the kitchen staff was testing this issue's recipes while I worked in the editorial office this summer. The beet stew, lamb with salsa verde, and cinnamon coffee cake are especially outstanding.


My personal highlight begins on page 12: a love letter to my mom, our family's farm, and Elsie the Cow. (click.)

Here's mom at the farm, finding the photo of her grandparents that shows up in the magazine.

hold the syrup

In today's age of food porn (click), I'm pretty sure the interview I engaged Eric Berley in for the little Saveur (click) piece that went with this photograph would qualify as phone sex.

Photo: Landon Nordeman

I've never met Eric in person, but suffice to say that one Thursday morning this summer he made me very, very, hungry. Next time I'm in Philly, I'm calling in on those fabulous Berley boys at Franklin Fountain (click).

fashion fuel

Earlier today I gave you the soundtrack of my morning. If only I could have given you a taste!

Have a lick at Dossier. (click.) More Fashion Week coverage to come...

the heat is on

Get ready for a summertime stream of consciousness.

"The heat," firstly refers to competitive chile pepper eaters, like Peach Moore, pictured below at the Ohio Chile Pepper Festival in 2001.


This is a still from a DVD (converted from a home video) that Peach sent me as I was reporting this piece (click) for Saveur. She's wearing a chile pepper-inspired outfit a friend made for her. Muy cute, no? I especially like the guy sweating next to her and the kids looking on, flabbergasted, as Peach keeps her cool.

image of Carl's from stltoday.com

I also recently reported a roundup of burgers (click) that the Saveurites discovered as they reported the magazine's latest issue.

Had it included my own nostalgic favorites, you might have read about steakburgers at Steak 'n Shake after back-to-school shopping with mom at the St. Louis Galleria (Mom was partial to the patty melt), frosty rootbeers from the keg and paper-plated burgers at Carl's Drive-In in Richmond Heights, MO--also with Mom, post-hiking hamburgers at the Habit in Santa Barbara, CA and more recently, Friday night burgers and beers with the boys at the Corner Bistro in NYC's West Village.

Imagine researching this piece around lunchtime. Not easy.

Oh! And, speaking of St. Louis, and the heat being on...check out this article my old schoolmate Ben Hochman wrote about the heart and soul of Cardinal baseball. (click.) "The Heat is On!" was a great Cardinal theme song of my childhood--I had a bumper sticker with it on my bedroom door for years. And Ben is totally right. To any of us St. Louis kids, Jack Buck's voice was nothing short of a lullaby. Well done, Ben. But one question...what about Willie McGee?

where I've been

Here are some pictures from the project that's keeping me from writing more at the moment...

see here (click.) wait for the kicker quote.

so new, she's still wet behind the ears

cheese: the next frontier

When I agreed to sit on the judging panel of the North American Jersey Cheese Awards happening in Syracuse, New York next weekend, it all seemed pretty small and informal--like this little cheese montage.


Then, this morning I got an email from the head judge (chief justice?) letting me know that there will be 83, yes, 83 cheeses and butters from 30 producers in 16 states, plus Canada, entered in the contest. Tomorrow I'll be receiving my judging packet, with a sample judging form and a list of cheese terminology. Although I've been assured my role is as an aesthetic judge, rather than expert, I'm a bit intimidated by my roster of co-judges, which includes a former New York State cheese grader as well as the Dean of the Cheese Education Guild.

All the cheeses I'll be judging next weekend will be made of cows' milk, specifically from the Jersey breed. In addition to being beautiful, Jerseys are smaller than other dairy cows, and produce milk is higher in butterfat--pretty little rich girls, if you will.

I decided I need to educate myself a bit before passing judgement on some 83 dairy products.

So, I got on the subway to the Essex Street Market and sought direction and basic cheese-acation from Anne Saxelby, the cutest cheese-monger I've yet to encounter--click. (And they are, truly, a really cute breed.) She gave me a crash course between filling orders and taking phone calls in her wee alcove next to Shopsin's.


Anne told me that milk + culture + rennet + salt = curds + whey, the whey is then drained off, leaving curds which are pressed and aged...then...cheese! Right now, my knowledge and experience of cheese is new, young, fresh and unfettered, much like this little curd.


But soon, it will be more like this Jersey raw milk Bouree, buttery, washed in brine, "with a slight pungent aftertaste."


Stay tuned, we've got a long way to go. As one caring acquaintance advised, "start taking your acidophilus now."

craig claiborne: 1920-2000

From Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer:

"The second bête noir for the beginning cook is a lack of daring and a fear of failure."


A lack of daring is definitely one bête noir (sort of like a pet peeve) that Craig Claiborne did not suffer from. He was a son of the south who saw the world in the Navy, decided he'd like to be the food editor of The New York Times and enrolled in Swiss hotel school, thanks to the G.I. Bill. In 1957 he took his post at The Times, where he remained until the mid '80s. He was also openly gay in the puritanical post-war U.S., which must have been very difficult. Perhaps that's why he was known for being utterly approachable in spite of his gift for elegance and style--he knew what it meant to be an outsider.

I learned about Claiborne at a panel given at The New School last week, where food writers discussed what his career meant to their field. I most enjoyed hearing about him from those who knew him.When I say "those who knew him," I mean people like his former colleague Betty Fussell, who once called him "a yokel and a gooney bird" in print and restaurant consultant Clark Wolf, whose starry-eyed memory of Claiborne's 60th birthday party appears in this short piece I wrote for Saveur (click.)

But I also mean people like my mom, who knew him only from his columns in The Times. "I trusted him," she told me when we talked on the phone last night.One of the first cookbooks she gave me when I went to college was his Kitchen Primer, a little marigold yellow paperback that's sitting beside me now.


It has many wonderful basic tips, all written in Claiborne's clean classy style. We learn from his advice, but also from his life's example. As he says in the introduction to the Kitchen Primer:

In my opinion, it is harder to cook spaghetti to the proper degree of doneness (most people overcook it) and get it to the table hot than to make a proper soufflé. And have courage. The best of professionals have known (and later cherish) their early disasters.

Find the Saveur piece here: click.
And please, vote for Deanna, if you haven't yet today, here: click. It's working! Her rank is rising.

sara

looks so pretty making quesadillas in her kitchen.

second stop

The Second Stop Café is such a welcome new neighbor.
It could never front on Gimme! Coffee for the sheer joy of stooping it with the perfect (yes, perfect) cup to go--especially on a day like today when spring starts to make little sounds like she's starting to wake up.

But check it out: a big wooden table to work at, natural light, a ceramic "We are Happy to Serve You" cup of Stumptown coffee (New York's newest drug of choice, it seems) and a slice of lemon pie oozing with real sugar-soaked lemon slices and tart custard-y filling, topped by a flaky spelt crust.
I'll tell you what, it beats working in the newsroom.

the people who make pickles in your neighborhood

The New York Times ran this article yesterday about the new wave of Brooklynites who like to make their food the old-fashioned way. I too thought this was interesting, particularly as it pertained to pickles.

Back in September, when my graduate program required me to pitch an idea for a broadcast news package I simply said, "pickles are the new black?"

Our teacher (click) loved it, so my partner Lois Desocio and I were off an running. My strength proved to be hunting down picklers, while Lois was the savvier scriptwriter. Neither of us had ever done any work with film or editing, so while the result is rather amateur, we're also sort of proud of it.

Click To Play

Keep an eye for a few of the same faces from The Times' article, like Steven Manning and Bob McClure. A special prize goes to the first person to identify the girl in the mirror at the Bushwick Country Club.

Perhaps I would have posted this months ago, had I known an article on a similar subject would be The Times' most emailed story. The video may make you glad I chose to pursue print journalism over broadcast, but if Beth Linskey (click) doesn't make you smile you should have your pulse checked. Fast-forward to her, if you must.

This won't be the last of the pickle reports. Be warned.

Joe Ades

photograph from ekonon's Flickr photostream

The inimitably dapper Joe Ades, an icon of style and salesmanship, passed away on Sunday, at age 75.He was a fixture at the Union Square Greenmarket, where he famously sold vegetable peelers on the sidewalk in impeccably tailored suits. The first time I saw Mr. Ades on his seat in Union Square, I bought a peeler. He enchanted me with eccentric energy, flecks of spit flying from his mouth as he furiously skinned a bright orange carrot, practically shouting about the peelers' Swiss precision, a thing of beauty.

The New York Times closed their profile with Mr. Ades' daughter remembering the bits of carrot he left behind at the day's end. I know I'm not the only New Yorker who will sorely miss his sharp-cut shreds of color on the sidewalks of Union Square.

a fresh start: breakfast

We had the first Tuesday of a new era earlier this week, and now I'm happy to introduce the first Third Thursday.

As 2009 finds me even more food-focused than usual, I'm happy to introduce the Dossier Food File. From now on, you can find my monthly musing on the joys of consuming and creating food and drink at Dossier Style. The main dish will fall on the Third Thursday of every month, with little cocktails, side dishes and sweets in between.

So, last week's post was about food and new beginnings, and this one is too.


I keep thinking about Elizabeth Alexander's exquisite inaugural poem.
I especially loved the lines:

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

and at the end:

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

It was just perfectly composed of simple words, none of which were unnecessary.

The best food is the same way, no?
Simple ingredients, each serving to compose a coherent creation, like this bowl of toasted granola with wildflower honey I had this morning at the Drake Cafe in Toronto.

I'll be back in the old (new?) USA tomorrow.
If Canada and New York both sound too cold to you, check out the first of the Food Files for a taste of the Caribbean...more to follow.

Hope you're hungry.

their eyes were watching god

Manhattan's pastries are eager to see what 2009 will bring...

theobroma cacao: sensual sustainable seratonins

Single-origin chocolate should have been starring at last weekend's New York Chocolate Show.
Jill Santopietro wrote and blogged about it for The New York Times. It's been the high point of my kitchen cupboard since August, when I visited Fazenda Monte Alegre, Diego Badaró's cacao farm in Bahia, Brazil.
So I bundled up Sunday evening to catch the end of the show, ripe for cacao-buzzed inspiration.

Instead I found chocolate records inscribed with holiday messages, mannequins wearing chocolate dresses and a "Divalicious!" chocolate fountain for marshmallow-dipping. I don't mean to sound like a scrooge, but it seems silly to go to such great lengths to create a novelty out of what is such a magical material to begin with. But, alas...


Diego, he of Cacao Badaró in Brazil, an alchemist in the truest sense, came to New York for the occasion. Tuesday night he shared his wares with a few friends: some special chocolate-makers, farmers and importers of exotic fruits. In an apartment in the West Village, a red wine and dark chocolate-fueled jam session brought us all back to Bahia, the origin of Cacao Badaró chocolate. Magic is restored.

Below is a little taste I recorded that night:

The farmers and chocolateirs on their instruments in the background, Diego telling about cacao farming and my photos: beginning in New York, then taking you back to the origin in Bahia.

banksy, beatriz and brooklyn

So last week food was politics. This week art is politics. I mean, art is food. And it's all interactive. Wait a minute. Here I am, totally confused by this, text messaging via a pack of Orbit Sweetmint.

I'm sending a message to my mom, who has been here for the past two weeks and now refers to SOHO as "my neighborhood," and only walks on Broome cause there are too many tourists on Spring.

Tom Slaughter took that photo. He tends to get his lines crossed as well. Click here to see his Obama poster and vote for it, if it's your favorite. You're voting for a poster, rather than a candidate at this stage. I told you it was confusing. This was a great article in the Times Magazine about artists and Obama, from a while back. Click here for that.

Tom knows that I looovvvve Beatriz Milhazes' work. Last week I brought my mom to her opening at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea. Go, go, go to this show. Color-therapy, that's what her work is. A visceral simultaneous embrace of and escape from all this stimulus, food, art, politics and what not.

And a bit of Brazil.

Here's another detail from the show below.

Mom was impressed. Sort of. (Moms are tough, you know?)
I'll tell you who she's really impressed with.

Banksy.

She feels he must be just about the smartest guy in the whole world.

We happened upon the anonymous ("genius!") artist's West Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill the other night. Complicating matters further, these fish sticks are swimming around in front of another gallery owner (who doesn't know who hired him to sit at the Pet Store).

His gallery in Williamsburg, Artbreak, is also having an Art for Obama event in October. Click here for more information on that.

Banksy's New York ambush coincides exactly with my mom's visit to the city, leading me to wonder...no...

Mother Hen watches over her chicken little nuggets.

My sister and I are going to have to go a long way to beat mom's new favorite. Even Sara's own chicken-raising (click here) might not give old Banksy boy a run for his money.

I'm afraid I might have fueled mom's new art-crush, with the help of the New York Times.

My enthusiasm, and street cred (I'm talking in the eyes of my mom here) combined with the Times' credibility (see their article here).

I'd been thinking a lot about interactive art since I did my homework (here) about Maia Marinelli's piece Mocean.But what I've concluded after all this interactivity is that the point is that we all interact with each other, not just with technology. Especially now. Except for that I'm saying this online.

Paradoxical, I know. It all goes back to that pack of Sweetmint.

Tonight momma will move from her neighborhood to mine for the next couple of nights.
That's where I took this last photo, on Grand Street in my neighborhood...the same Grand Street where the pet storekeeper's gallery is.