Stockpile

Items currently in my purse awaiting a day of snacking at work: 

Dried apricots and dried mango

Pint of blueberries

Container of sliced watermelon

Healthy Valley Organic Granola Bar (they use cane sugar and whole grains)

BLT made from arugula, tomato, Proscuitto di Parma, whole-wheat wrap

As a side note completely unrelated to food, I do not understand why when I hold the big, heavy doors on the back exit of the bus people walk out without taking the doors.  I'm not standing there so that everyone can get off the bus; I'm waiting for someone else to take the doors and then pass it to the person behind them, etc.  I was not hired by the MTA to stand outside every designated bus stop in New York City to make sure the passengers get off safely.  That would be a cool job, but it's not mine. 

The doors are heavy and they need to be held open and I would be a giant loser if I just let the door smash into the person behind me, which is sometimes what I feel like doing.  That being said, what kind of person sees a tiny and overloaded woman standing on the street holding the bus door open and doesn't think, "Oh, I should probably take the door from her"?  

Sometimes New Yorkers aren't as bad as people say.  Other times they are far, far worse.  

Back To The Future

Starting tomorrow, I'll be a gainful restaurant-industry employee once again.  Whether I like it or not, this probably means a massive change in my diet, a move I'm reluctant to make.  

Forget about being thin.  Since I quit refined sugar (and the dreams eventually stopped haunting me), I have slept better, had more energy, and felt less hungry more of the time.  Despite the insane amount of tortuous exercise I have subjected myself too, my cravings never got the better of me.  Sure, pizza still called to me from the slice vendors.  At times.  But those cravings that had seemed insurmountable completely disappeared once the white flour and sugar filtered out of my system. 

Yesterday I ate an entire head of cabbage.  I cooked it--I'm not completely off my rocker--but still, I'm pretty sure you couldn't have convinced me, three months ago, that I could be the type of person who could actually sit down and enjoy a head of cabbage.  But I did.  I found it delicious. 

Like most Americans, I was probably suffering a pretty severe B Vitamin deficiency without even knowing it.  Weight drops off me at the rate of two pounds a week (for those counting, that's ten pounds since I quit refined sugar).  

But I'm going back to a controlled environment, where my food is prepared by other people.  I'm also going back to service, which means ten hours on the floor with little to no food, certainly not in tune with my "eat every three hours" mantra.  

I'm planning the following strategy to combat a relapse: I will stuff my pockets with snacks, I will eat breakfast and pack my lunch, I will eat a very small amount of family meal just so that I don't look like a complete a-hole, and I will stay away from candy, which has always been my go-to decadence when I'm starving during service. 

And no matter how much they tempt me, I'm not making bacon the staple protein of my diet, though it is secretly my favorite thing on earth. 

The Best Sandwich In The World

Is the BLT.  I don't care what anyone says; sandwiches do not get any better than this. 

I made my own "healthier" version last night.  It goes something like this: 

Warmed whole-wheat tortilla

The best tomatoes I could find, given the season

Arugula

Proscuitto di Parma

Olive-oil mayonnaise

Easiest.  Meal.  Ever.  Warm tortilla.  Spread one tablespoon of mayo on said tortilla.  Lay down arugula, sliced tomatoes, and one to two ounces good proscuitto.  Roll and eat.  

It really doesn't get any easier--or simpler--than this. 

Using What You Have

I hear a lot of people say things like "I don't have time to cook," and I completely understand that sentiment.  When I used to come home late from a night of service, the last thing I wanted to do was spend time in my kitchen.  The immediacy of my hunger was often either ignored or placated with a quick fix slice. 

Pretty soon I'll be headed back to my late-night life, which means some internal adjustments.  I'm pretty sure that I've found the answer to feeding oneself well and often and it isn't as hard as I'd once believed.  The key?  Keeping lots of food in the apartment.  

I know. It sounds ridiculous.  Actually, I used to avoid buying fresh produce because it often went bad before I had a chance to use it.  Read: I was too lazy to do anything with it, which is why it so often went bad.  Last night, I got home in the evening after a trip into the city.  I was starving and I didn't want to go to the grocery store.  I decided to improvise with whatever I had in my refrigerator.  

I had one frozen chicken breast, which I was able to defrost under hot water. 

I had one bunch of leftover asparagus. 

I had a whole Texas scallion.  

I had a persimmon.  

I had a cucumber. 

I had an open can of black olives. 

I had a shallot and lemon vinaigrette from the night before.  

I put the asparagus, sliced persimmon, Texas scallion, and chicken breast on a baking sheet.  Then I poured the vinaigrette over everything, mixed it with my hands, salted and peppered the mess, made sure nothing overlapped, and threw it in a 400 degree oven.  I chopped the cucumber and black olives and put them in a bowl and ate them with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.  After six or seven minutes, I flipped the chicken, but left the veggies to turn scorched at the edges.  Not too long after that, I pulled the whole roasted mess out of the oven and tossed it into one very large bowl.  Ta da.  Dinner is served. 

If you surround yourself with foods that don't require much thought or preparation, you can make a delicious and fresh meal in less than half an hour.  People think too much about ingredients, or amounts, or the time it takes to chop an onion.  But if you're lazy and hungry, like I often am, you'll take the path of least resistance, chop the onion as coarsely as you can, toss everything with a thin layer of olive oil and leave it to its own devices in a very hot oven.  

Cooking is not brain surgery.  All you have to do to make yourself decent meals is care about ad understand your product, whether it be canned olives or an overripe persimmon.  Keep your fridge stocked and force yourself to use what you have.  Nothing is more satisfying than creating something out of nothing. 

By the way, those Texas scallions char really nicely, almost like the onion bits left at the bottom of a Sunday roast pan.  

Spring Springing

Here is what any knowledgeable foodie can look forward to during the burgeoning weeks of spring, which are almost upon us: ramps, asparagus, morels, fava beans, spring garlic, sweet peas. Spring harvest is almost here, which means a welcome wish goodbye to all those root vegetables we've spent the winter eating.

As an early celebratory move towards a spring feast, I cooked myself a spring meal last night. I grabbed asparagus from the market. It was from California, and I don't usually like to buy produce that's spent so much time traveling, but I was really craving asparagus, and besides, I had 15 quail eggs in the refrigerator, and what vegetable goes better with eggs than asparagus?

I blanched the asparagus for five minutes in boiling water and then transferred them to an ice bath to retain their color. Then I made a simple vinaigrette of chopped chive, shallot, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little bit of truffle oil.

The quail eggs were a little more complicated. I decided to make a good old project out of dinner and found a recipe for deviled quail eggs. Boil the eggs for three to four minutes and remove. Cool the eggs under cold water and peel. Slice in half. Removing the yolks is tough; I used my fingers, which seemed to work better than any kitchen tool. I mixed the yolks (from seven eggs) with one tablespoon mayonnaise--I use olive oil based mayonnaise only--the juice from half a lemon, a teaspoon of dijon mustard, salt, cracked black and cayenne peppers.

The final part of dinner involved sea scallops from the fish market. A note to anyone buying scallops for searing: if the market sells "dry scallops," buy them. Sea scallops are brined in order to make them appear more white and larger. As a result, when you put them over a high flame, they release their internal moisture, making it impossible to achieve a proper sear. My market didn't have dry scallops, so my scallops were lightly brown instead of brown-to-black. But they still tasted good. I kept it simple, with salt and pepper the only adornment.

But added to my asparagus with vinaigrette and deviled quail eggs, that was more than enough. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring produce.

The Man In Gold

Allow me to recount the high and low points of an entire day dedicated to watching celebutantes strut their stuff on the red carpet.  

Part I, Overpriced Brunch

Here's what Oscar's, the so-called brasserie of the Waldorf-Astoria, can offer you if you're willing to spend a morning there: a Continental breakfast for $25; two eggs with meat, toast, and homefries for $22; a mediocre buffet for $20; a side of 'seasonal fruit' for $14; toast with butter for $5.  

The buffet included runny scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, a fruit selection of flavorless honeydew melon and canned pineapple, various sticky pastries, bagels with cream cheese, granola with berries, and some kind of yogurt smoothie that I chose not to investigate further.  No toast.  No real fruit.  Pretty much nothing I was interested in eating.  The coffee wasn't bad, but even if I were staying at the Waldorf-Astoria, I would never eat at this ridiculous excuse for a restaurant a second time. 

Part II, Friends Cook Healthier

My Sunday ladies made their own whole-wheat pita chips (toasted on a baking sheet with spices) and served them with hummus.  Turkey burgers came on larger slices of toasted pita, replete with a homemade tzatziki recipe, which consisted mostly of Greek yogurt, garlic, and cucumber.  More veggies in those burgers: my friend slipped in diced peppers and onions and served the whole deal with crispy baked sweet potato cubes. 

Part III, Sugar Wins After All

Despite our attempts to watch the Oscars without falling into the trap of eating fast food, greasy food, or processed food, our stomachs got the better of us.  Once our burgers were gone, we all craved something sweet.  One of us (name withheld) suggested hitting up the nearby Burger King for a butterfinger pie.  Another of us (that would be me) said that if we were going to eat cakes we might as well walk over to the Neptune Diner on Astoria Boulevard where the cakes were somewhat fresh and where they didn't post the ridiculous and hard-to-look-at calorie count next to the item on the menu. 

So we walked across the highway in the freezing cold and returned with one slice of cherry pie, one slice of carrot cake, one slice of chocolate brownie cake, one slice of cheesecake, one slice of blueberry pie, and one vanilla milkshake. 

The fruit pies were gummy, fortified with way too much gelatin.  Also, none of those fruits are even in season, so I'm sure the fillings came from a can.  Oh, well.  The crust was pre-fab tasting, but still reminiscent of those little pocket pies that came with home-packed lunches, the ones wrapped in wax paper.  

Cheesecake was a success, creamy, abundant, way too large a slice.  Carrot cake had raisins--a welcome addition, as far as I'm concerned--but way too much frosting and, inevitably, sugar.  Ditto for the brownie cake, which my chocobsessed friend declared "too sweet," a turn of phrase I've never heard slip from her mouth.  But really, she was right.  The cake tasted more like a can of Duncan Hines chocolate frosting that happened to have some bits of cake floating around in it.  

The vanilla milkshake was great, but I only had a sip.  We discussed the New England terminology for the same drink.  Up north, a milkshake consists of milk and flavored syrup.  Want ice-cream in your drink?  Order a frappe.  That's what we call them.  

I fell into a sugar coma shortly thereafter.  It didn't come as much of a surprise.  In fact, the whole evening, right down to the dancing Slumdog winners, was utterly predictable.  Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

*

Oscar's American Brasserie

The Waldorf-Astoria

301 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10022

212.872.4920

*

Neptune Diner

3105 Astoria Boulevard

Astoria, NY 11102

718.278.4853

Time Of My Life

If I were to go back in time and change anything about my undergraduate trajectory, I probably would run for high office of my school's newspaper. For four years, I worked as an Editorial Board Editor and inflammatory columnist (the kind who received copious and likely warranted hate-mail). Our independent paper, free from the staid confines of university tradition since the bold year 1962, held yearly elections at the end of fall session to determine the following year's Managing Board.

I probably would have made a good Editorial Page Editor, and I may even have followed in the footsteps of two of my own favorite editors, both of whom went on to serve as Editor-in-Chief. I was put off, at the time, by the prospect of long hours and by the process itself, which required written recommendations and other generous projects that my 19- and 20-year-old-self wasn't all that into.

I think of this all now in the wake of last night's newspaper dinner, held once a year in February. I haven't attended the Columbia Daily Spectator's Blue Pencil Dinner since I was a lowly sophomore, but it was high time I returned to the geeky fold. Spectator was, in a lot of ways, the community that helped me discover myself. Did I know I could write? Of course. Did I know that so many others could write better? Of course not.

And so, last night's dinner had nothing to do with the limp chicken, pedestrian chocolate mousse, or embarassingly bad California chardonnay and merlot. No, it was an opportunity to meet up with all those people who served time in close quarters to produce a daily, who knew the love and fury of building a newspaper. None of us knew, when we joined, that September 11 would happen on our watch, that some of us would die young, that our plans would change with a changed economy. We had always resisted that desire to look too far into the future.

My most brilliant editor was in attendance last night. She's one of these rare people who has a handle on anything and everything relevant. In one breath, she explained her PhD thesis (which she described as a riff on a David Foster Wallace essay) and two minutes later she was incredulously describing that some of her freshman students hadn't been born when Guns 'N Roses' Appetite for Destruction hit record stores. What more inspiration could I have asked for as a writer than this perfect marriage of low and high cultures?

Sometimes I think that's what food writing is all about, a configuration of high and low that most of us struggle to get our minds around. Many of my friends from the Spectator are writers now, trying to come of age in a medium that society keeps telling us has fading relevance in a modern world. I admire their virtue; they ask me for wine advice. We're all just trying to make peace with a changing world.

Anyway, I don't have too many regrets. If I had been on the Managing Board, my own story probably wouldn't have ended that differently. I don't write for a living, it's true, but I also have always known the place of the pen in my own life, even if ball points don't pay the bills.

Marc-ing Territory

I used to be a regular at Landmarc in the Time Warner Center, partly because I used to work in midtown and Landmarc serves until 2 am nightly.  Also, the hot spot used to be known for this weird trick they pulled with their wine list: no wines served by the glass, and a list dominated by magnums and half-bottles.  If memory serves, there were no ordinary 750 ml bottles on the menu.  

Times may have changed, but Landmarc still bustles on a Friday.  Here's the thing about Landmarc.  In all of my years of late-night stopover appearances, I mostly only ever ate two (delicious) dishes: bone marrow with country bread and a rib eye cooked rare.  With French fries.  My new attempts at self-preservation (and the battle to wear a size 26 without unbuttoning my pants, a goal now reached) mean no tasty white crusty bread, which makes the bone marrow--toasted in the bone and served with sea salt, a demitasse, and caramelized onions--obsolete.  And my personal ban on red meat (for the most part--let's not go crazy here) means no more rib eye, although I allowed my brother to order the hulking 23-ouncer so that it stayed in close proximity.  

My realization, then, was that, without my unhealthy staples, Landmarc just wasn't what I remembered.  I ordered the quail, which came in a vastly oversized portion (honestly, who on earth needs to eat two birds for dinner?) wrapped in undercooked bacon.  Traditionally, quail is snapped at the breast bone and cooked meat side down so that the skin crisps.  The bacon got in the way of any crispy skin, and even the bacon itself, gummy and unpleasant, didn't do the birds justice. 

And why stuff a quail?  The meat should be the point of the game, and my meat was overdone in places and underdone in others.  Quail, like duck, should arrive medium-rare.  Some parts of my bird were cooked all the way through, while others looked as if they'd never seen that long grill in the back.  A stuffing of some kind of bready thing and sausage rendered the dish a gloppy mess.  I wouldn't order it again. 

I subsisted, then, on a tasty bite of my brother's rib eye and two vegetable side dishes, haricot verts that tasted strongly of celery (?) and roasted mushrooms that were perfect but not enough to live on.  Dessert may have been the highlight, and may still be the best sweet deal in town, a sampler of blueberry crisp, lemon tart, creme brulee, nutella eclair, chocolate mousse, and tiramisu, all for $16.  Cotton candy--you have to ask for it--arrived in traditional paper cones.  Flavor of the night was Dimetapp grape.  

I should mention, too, that Landmarc is still a bargain basement when it comes to wine.  We drank the 2005 Beckmen Grenache, because my mother won't drink anything French--"too dry"--or crisp--"I like it big and full-bodied."  Our tastes couldn't be farther apart.  Beckman Vineyards, based in the southern Californian enclave of Santa Ynez, produces rich and ripe wines at a variety of price points.  For $56, this was a great deal for an American wine, if you like that sort of thing.  

In fact, you'll find more than a lion's share of bottles between $50 and $60, nothing to scoff at in hard economic times.  Too bad the quail can't meet the same standards.  Next time, it's back to the drawing board.  Flour ban be damned: I want my marrow back.  

*

Landmarc at the Time Warner Center

10 Columbus Circle, 3rd Floor

New York, NY 10019

212.823.6123

Mashed Heaven

Because I live alone, it's not all that often that people are cooking for me. And by cooking for me, I mean people who are not ringing my doorbell at some ridiculous hour with a plastic container of takeout. That's not the same as "cooking."

I was on dog-and-15-year-old-sister patrol last night, which meant zipping to Westchester after pilates (don't I sound like a wealthy houswife, minus the wealth?) for makeshift dinner with my little girls. My dad had asked me if I wanted any food left out in exchange for my services. My only caveat was no white flour or sugar.

And so, in two sealed pyrex containers I found my fate: roast chicken (good, but someone had already stolen most of the skin, which, in my estimation, is really the only part worth eating) and my personal favorite, mashed potatoes.

I know so many people who say things like "I make the best mashed potatoes in the world," or, "my mom makes the best mashed potatoes in the world," or "the instant mashed from my high school cafeteria are the best mashed potatoes in the world" (in my hometown, one in ten students received most of their daily nutrients from insta-mash). But my dad actually makes the best mashed potatoes in the world.

In a flavor competition, I have no doubt that we'd reach an impasse. I rarely use skim milk if I'm doing potatoes for a crowd and my secret ingredient--nutmeg, there, I said it, you dragged it out of me--always inspires a bunch of oohs and ahhs from the crowd. Long ago, I learned the secret of good mash lies in the temperature of the added ingredients. Warm milk and butter will incorporate better into mashed potatoes than straight-out-of-the-container leche.

The other rule to live by when making mashed is what kind of potato to use. Mashed potatoes taste best when they come from a high-starch, unwaxy potato. Fingerlings, purple potatoes, new potatoes, and pretty much any other pretty little potato will not do. I prefer Yukon Gold potatoes when I cook because they yield a buttery yellow color reminiscent of the key ingrediant. Russets, a more traditional option, hold up fine, too, and are usually easier to find and less expensive (though not by much; potatoes are never really expensive). But the reason my mashed are always good and never sublime (and to my two lovely guests who came over for pork and mashed two weeks ago, that was an unfortnate mistake owing to an attempt to draw salt out of my potatoes, which I'd bastardized, and so they turned out watery and not very good, not a reflection of my true mashing abilities) is because I do not own an egg-beater or hand blender and am far too lazy to dirty a kitchen aid to puree my potatoes.

I let them cook until they are especially fork-tender, yes. And I always put those gym workouts to the test with vigorous and serious dedication of masher to potato. But if you rely only on human ability and put the toys aside, well, sometimes you get lumps.

The thing is, I know my dad uses an egg-beater. I've seen it. That's why his potatoes are always 100 percent lump-free. I also know he's not stingy when it comes to butter and--let's face it--with potatoes, butter is the only condiment that'll do.

In any case, they were reliably delicious. I forewarned my sister that there had better be mashed potatoes waiting for me when I got home, or I'd be one unhappy camper. I know how 15 goes; food disappears before it has left the grocery bags.

She was kind, though, and left a family-of-four sized portion for yours truly. It took willpower to prevent myself from going back for thirds.

Quick Fix

I was running around like a crazy person yesterday, trying to do all the things I hadn't done while out in Arizona.  I didn't have time to do a whole elaborate dinner for myself, so I improvised with things I found at the market.  I had about ten minutes to spare at the vegetable stand, where I bought things that inspired me: a carton of persimmons, a Texas scallion (looks like a cross between an onion and a scallion, with a large white bulb at the end), a few kirby cucumbers, a jalapeno, a red pepper, Boston lettuce, and some cilantro.  Large shrimp at the fish market actually lived up to their name, so I took home a quarter pound, plenty of shrimp for one person to stretch over the course of two days.  

I assembled the framework for my dinner in the afternoon.  It took less than 20 minutes, proof that even the most time-pressed career person can get a home-cooked meal on the table.  I poached the shrimp in boiling water until they turned pink (roughly five minutes).  In the meantime, I chopped my purchased veggies, with the exception of the lettuce and with the addition of some celery I found hanging out in my vegetable compartment. 

Cooked shrimp was drained and cut into thirds.  I added it to the container housing my chopped vegetables.  Next, some canned pineapple--minus the juice--two heaping tablespoons of light sour cream (more than enough, trust me), one tablespoon of sriracha, some kosher salt and, of course, fresh ground pepper.  When I came home from the gym later at night, I picked some lettuce leaves and rolled the creamy mixture up into it, using the lettuce like a wrap.  Actually, iceberg would have worked a little better, but I really hate the watery taste of iceberg lettuce, with one notable exception: as lining for a good old traditional BLT. 

Really, the greatest thing about doing something like this for dinner (apart from the convenience factor) is that it's the easiest possible way to integrate a wide variety of vegetables into one's dinner.  And really, you could sub in or out any fruit or veg.  Grapefruit could have easily replaced the persimmon.  Red cabbage could have provided color instead of red pepper (I grew up surrounded by pepper-haters).  Shredded carrot would have offered a beta-carotene kick.  

So there you have it: dinner for one very busy individual, done quickly and healthily.  And did I mention that the final product was creamy, spicy, crunchy, and completely delicious?  Or maybe that goes without saying.