K-Town, Etc.

Anyone who knows me would gladly attest to the following: I am not a nice/forgiving/happy/generous/enjoyable-to-be-around human being when I am hungry. This is just fact. I get grumpy. I get hypoglycemic. I swear to whomever I'm with that I'm just going to die. I could substantiate this with a thousand vignettes from childhood and beyond, but I'll leave it up to the imagination of my readers.

Now, on Friday afternoon, I ended up in Manhattan, walking up 6th Avenue, where you ain't bound to find anything worth buying, unless you're really into plastic beads or fresh flowers. This includes anything remotely ingestible. It's a culinary wasteland. I was starting to get my familiar hypoglycemic hand shake, and became immediately convinced that if I did not stop for food RIGHT NOW, I would... well, you get the picture.

My companion did not much care for my theatrics and kept telling me to pick a place, but what was there to pick? A corner bodega? A McDonald's? None of this jived with my "local foods" or "homemade" mantra that I've been espousing since August.

Inevitably, we ended up on 32nd Street, home to Korea Town, commonly referred to by drunks and foodies as K-Town. We were reminded of a place recommended to us by a friend of mine a few months ago, but before we made it I saw signs for Pho32 & Shabu and decided that we need walk no farther: Pho it was.

Pho32 & Shabu specializes in two things: pho (duh), and shabu shabu. Pho is a delicious Vietnamese soup, and Shabu Shabu is this method of cooking wherein a pot of steaming broth is lit on fire before you and you dip assorted things (a.k.a. meat, vegetables, tofu) into this broth until they cook. I opted for pho, since I've never been able to get shabu shabu down.

First, a salad of cabbage and ginger dressing arrived. It was slightly bitter, crisp, salty, perfect. Next, a plate of lime, bean sprouts, shaved green peppers, basil. Finally the soup, a large bowl of beef broth, thin-sliced flank steak cooked rare, beef brisket, rice noodles. I was instructed to spill my plate of stuff into the broth "to taste" (that meant spilling the whole thing in). A condiment caddy displayed sriracha, hoisin, and chili paste. I dumped that in, too. What resulted was a rich, meaty, basil-y, crunchy, chewy, satisfying bowl of stuff. True pho eaters will tell you that tripe is a very important part of the pho experience. But I will tell you that I think tripe is disgusting and I don't like the way it looks like cotton or spun sugar, sitting out on the butcher display in my neighborhood, so I will never order my pho with tripe.

My dining companion ordered great fried chicken potstickers, but I wouldn't go back just for those. I would, however, go back for that soup, which may have been the most transcendent bowl of Asian noodles ever, aside, of course, from those pork-perfect ramen bowls at Ippudo. Slurp, slurp.

*
Pho32 & Shabu
2 W. 32nd Street
New York, NY 10001
212.695.0888

A Spanish Inquisition

I apologize to my readers for a lack of promptness in retelling tales of my recent travel to Barcelona and the Costa Brava. There were so many memorable meals and so much worth processing that it feels impossible to distill the five day trip into one mere blog post. Obviously, El Bulli and my night there deserves an unhealthy cut of attention here, as does El Celler Can Roca, where I enjoyed dinner the night before heading to Roses for my 35-course feast. I should, however, mention in the meantime that Spain was full of culinary possibility. My first meal in Barcelona was enjoyed on my 29th birthday at a small restaurant within Barcelona's famous Boqueria. Seated at the bar, we ate a plate of fish cooked a la plancha--prawns, razor clams, manilla clams, firm white fish, squid. We ate mushrooms and asparagus tips drenched in good olive oil and we ate pan con tomate (which we would eat much more of in days to come) and a rib steak grilled on the flattop and dusted with Maldon salt. We ate French fries and, finally, creme caramel with a candle in it. It was our best meal in Spain.

Other great meals followed. At Els Pescadors, the daily catch arrived atop gorgeous scalloped potatoes and roasted onions. A snack of brined baby garlic made most of us swoon, and we could have asked for no better treat than a plate of 'Joselito' Iberico ham, straight from the pata negras.

One night, in Barcelona, we were taken out to dine with wine friends, who lamented the fact that good restaurants were mostly closed on Mondays. No matter. He found a traditional Catalan space for us, ordered peppers a la plancha, fried lamb brains, various cured meats. But the restaurant's claim to fame was its massive wine list, more of a tome than anything, and through dinner seven diners were treated to seven impressive bottles of wine. Some wine got lost in the recesses of a wine-logged brain, but not to be forgotten were a 1998 Chateau Latour, deemed corked by some (I argued that 1998 was an off-vintage and that now, ten years later, inadequate grapes were showing signs of the weakness of the year, tasting green. We split our opinions down the middle; I drank what others passed up.) and a 1987 Vega Sicilia 'Unico,' demonstrably better than the pricier first-growth.

Our kind friend picked up the check. But there were more surprises ahead.

Once we tackled the demons of the highway leading north from Barcelona--a flat tire befell us mid-trip--we tucked in to our first of two long and undulating meals, this one at Michelin two-star El Celler de Can Roca. We ate nineteen courses, seven of which were deemed "snacks." We drank a bottle of vintage Cava (1999), a 2007 Egon Muller Spatlese Riesling, a 2001 Donhoff Riesling, and, our most impressive of the evening, a 1999 Jacques Prieur Le Musigny. Memorable delights of the evening included a bright cherry broth filled with one halved cherry, a slice of smoked eel, and a scoop of ginger ice-cream that resembled a cherry completely; a preparation of sole that involved pairing the fish with five descending sauces (olive oil, pine nut, fennel, bergamot, and orange), a steak tartar that played on sweet and savory elements; and an apricot made of blown sugar, airbrushed pink and orange and dusted with sugar and releasing, at the tap of a spoon, a creamy interior of apricot nectar.

A trip through the wine cellar with one of the Roca brothers (Josep, the sommelier), revealed a mind-blowing dedication to the regions of Sherry, Priorat, Champagne, Burgundy, and the Mosel. The cellar consisted of five separate rooms, all built from old wine boxes. In them, Josep described the virtues of his favorite regions, showed videos from prize vineyards, and involved us in tactile games (in one such moment, he pulled a piece of green silk from a worn wooden bowl and lifted it, stretched it, urged us to touch; it was riesling, he said: strong, resilient, elegant, not ruined by age).

We left dinner at two in the morning, after arguing with our server about the meal charge: it was noticeably absent. But no, they told us; the food, a total of $1,000 Euro, was a gift. Our only expense was our six bottles.

I suppose El Celler set an impossibly high standard for fine dining, but if any restaurant could rise to the challenge, it is El Bulli, the notoriously impossible-to-get-into hotspot for molecular gastronomy on the beach. When we arrived, we were immediately brought to the kitchen to meet Ferran Adria. We took pictures and stumbled back to the sweeping vistas of the patio, where we would have our snacks in clear view of the Mediterranean.

There were snacks, and there were cocktails, all of them conventional-ish, none of them conventional. Mojitos arrived in pure cane sugar sticks. We chewed them to release the rum and lime. "Mimetic" peanuts looked like the whole suckers found at baseball stadiums, but when they hit the mouth they turned into very cold peanut butter. A milky cocktail came with the pleasant addition of candied pine needles ("eat the needle and then take a sip," our waiter instructed; El Bulli has many, many instructions) and tasted the way you would imagine very sweet and delicate pine sap would taste.

It would be silly for me to describe all 35 courses. For one, they weren't all good; two were actually inedible and several inspired a lot of laughter. The most memorable parts of the meal included three fun and different bottles of Champagne (NV Diebolt-Vallois 'Prestige' Gran Cru Cramant, NV Jacques Selosse 'Blanc de Blancs' Gran Cru Avize, 1998 Paul Bara 'Comtesse Marie de France' Gran Cru Bouzy); a course entitled "Margarita Cactus," which was really a cactus leaf infused with tequila, lime, and salt (we ate the leaf); a course entitled "Oyster Leaf," which was an actual edible leaf that came from Norway and, amazingly, tasted exactly like an oyster (it came with a mignonette); a dish called "Coco," a giant frozen dinosaur egg (but not really) that the server broke at our table and told us to eat with our hands, as the shell was a melty cool-cold Coco Lopez-type concoction; a dish that was a dessert but that looked exactly like shellfish innards (it was supposed to); tea service, wheeled over and prepared by a woman who clipped herbs from live sage, basil, thyme, mint, and tarragon plants; a cardboard pop-up birthday cake that came replete with a real, lit candle at my very own place setting; a box of forty or more assorted handmade chocolates (I sampled them all); and, finally, Cuban cigar service on the terrace as the punctuation mark to our meal.

Our bill was outrageous. But what's more outrageous than seven hours of gluttony? As a token of appreciation, the staff gave us each copies of A Day At El Bulli, a color book showing the crazy workings of the oiled machine. Not that I would have forgotten. Not in a million years.

*

Els Pescadors

Placa Prim 1

08005 Barcelona, Spain

34.932.252.018

*

El Celler de Can Roca

Can Sunyer, 48

17007 Girona, Spain

34.972.222.157

*

El Bulli

Caja Montjoi

Roses, Spain

34.972.150.457

Boroughs Other Than Mine

Before I head back across the Atlantic to visit some of the world's more gossiped-about eateries, I owe it to you, dear readers, to describe my last few days here on this continent.

On Wednesday afternoon, I was treated to a comped lunch at Prime Meats, which included a very delicious soft pretzel with sweet Bavarian mustard, a soft-poached farm egg over sauteed trumpet mushrooms with a grilled white sausage, and a small-but-noteworthy spiced stout cake. The sausage came with a horseradish mustard, spicy enough to satisfy me. The stout cake, possessed of a different judicious spice set (clove and cinnamon and the like) was gooey moist.

For a snack, I ended up at another Carroll Gardens joint, the newly opened Eton, Too, sibling of the original Eton, which serves dumplings and shave ice. I spent a few frustrating hours driving around the big island of Hawaii last August hunting down authentic shave ice, so it's nice to know I can get it close to home. Shave ice, for those unaware, is delicately shaved ice topped with flavored syrup, or syrups, if that's your bag (it's mine). In Hawaii, they also top their shave ice with: condensed milk, fluffernutter, mochi bits, chocolate syrup, canned fruit, vanilla soft serve, etc. Hawaiians are big on preserved food, i.e. spam. I'm a purist: give me a shave ice in a plastic cup that looks like an upside-down hat and one of those straws that doubles as a spoon and I'm good to go.

I had a half lychee-half watermelon. It was delicious. I also bought chicken-mushroom and pork-beef-cabbage dumplings to go. Heat and eat. Yum.

Later, after more wandering around BK, we ended up at Buttermilk Channel, where we snacked on pickles (our second helping of the day, after a duck into Stinky Brooklyn for pickles made at another local restaurant, Chestnut), grilled bacon with a mustard vinaigrette, bratwurst with sauerkraut and French fries, and four small baby back ribs with a mediocre slaw. The ribs were passable, as was the bacon. But the bacon... that's a dish you go back for.

Call these dalliances the introduction to my very meat-heavy pre-birthday birthday party last night at Korean hot spot Kunjip. I called for a reservation, and it's a good thing I did; the line snaked around 32nd Street and we still had to cram in to our side-by-side tables. Everything came at once. Fried dumplings, steamed dumplings, kimchi, daikon, egg custard, blood sausage with cellophane noodles and hot peppers. In a large skillet, the servers cooked boneless short ribs (outstanding), de-veined shrimp (also memorable), and slabs of pork belly (regrettably overdone). Bibimbop made my Polish friend sweat, though I found it only moderately spicy and perfectly coagulated owing to a raw egg on top.

We drank OBs. At the meal's end, the music increased to unpleasant decibels and a cake--made purely of orange segments and topped with three lit candles--arrived before me.

So perhaps that was the perfect American parting gift, even though it was not at all American. Espana, here I come.

*

Prime Meats

465 Court Street

Brooklyn, NY 11231

718.254.0327

*

Eton Too

359 Sackett Street

Brooklyn, NY 11231

718.222.2289

*

Buttermilk Channel

524 Court Street

Brooklyn, NY 11231

718.852.8490

*

Kunjip

9 W. 32nd Street

New York, NY 10001

212.216.9487

Greenmarketing

I've been trying to stretch the few dollars I have, which means cooking more and eating out less. So if you're wondering how many meals can come from $50 at the greenmarket and a little over $30 at Whole Foods and other, more local, markets, here it goes.

On Wednesday, I went to the Queens County Farm Museum, where I got two small black peppers, four large heirloom tomatoes in different colors/varieties, four kirby cucumbers, two ears of corn, and a discounted pork chop for two (all pork at the Queens County Farm Museum is currently twenty-five percent off) for eighteen dollars. Next, I hit up the Astoria greenmarket for local peaches, yellow plums, one eggplant, one yellow squash, one red onion, and Japanese turnips (seven dollars). The next morning, I went to a salumeria near my house, where I bought a pound of fresh bucatini for three dollars, and the fish market, where I got a half pound of rock shrimp for another three dollars.

At Whole Foods, I undertook my most expensive shopping for the week. I bought hormone-free grass-fed cow cream, fresh butter, Maytag blue cheese, a pint of Van Leeuwen pistachio ice cream, and apricots from Red Jacket Orchards in upstate New York.

Friday, I made a run to the Union Square greenmarket for farm fresh eggs, a loaf of wood-fired whole grain bread, bush basil, a small watermelon, blueberries, and sour and sweet cherry nectars (twenty dollars).

My meals went as thus:

Thursday:

Fresh bucatini with corn, rock shrimp, turnip greens, caramelized red onion, summer squash, eggplant, and cream; Peppers, eggplant, and Squash roasted with Blato olive oil; Yellow plum crumble with pistachio ice cream.

Friday:

Leftover bucatini for lunch.

For dinner: Heirloom tomato salad with pickled Japanese turnips, kirby cucumbers, Maytag blue cheese, bush basil, corn; Grilled whole wheat bread; Poached farm fresh eggs; Yellow plum crumble with Van Leeuwen pistachio ice cream.

Saturday:

Leftover eggs and bread for breakfast.

Leftover tomato salad for lunch.

Monday:

Another tomato salad from the remains of the cheese, turnips, tomatoes, cucumber, basil, and red onion. (The corn is long gone).

That leads me to today. I had poached eggs and toasted bread again. I never get tired of eggs. For dinner tonight, I'll be making that pork chop, grilled, with a Red Jacket Orchards apricot compote, more grilled bread, and a salad of watermelon and basil. Less than a hundred dollars at local establishments bought me dinner for two for almost five days, nothing to complain about.

My recent goal has been to buy food grown near where I live. I try to buy organic when I can, but mostly, I try to stay local. It isn't as easy as it seems. For whatever reason, most of the grocery stores near me sell food that is specifically non-local: mangoes, bananas, strawberries from California, milk from some milk plant in Iowa. Cooks who live near 14th Street have the near-daily luxury of shopping at the Union Square greenmarket; for me, that's a forty-five minute trip, one-way, and a ten-block walk with my haul.

Worth the effort?

Sometimes.

I don't question whether or not this food tastes better; it does. I don't question whether or not this food is better for me; it is. I do, however, question how normal people are supposed to eat locally when it takes nearly two hours of the day to get groceries. Is the carbon footprint I reduce by eating local food negated by the carbon footprint I create just getting to my food?

I guess I don't know the answer. It would be easier if groceries stocked food from actual farms, rather than genetically modified California lettuce. Maybe that's the distant future calling. Who knows?

Meals Abroad

It would be impossible--and not worth anyone's time--to recount all the piddling details of my two week sojourn in Croatia. But some details are worth repeating. One afternoon, on the second floor of our rented Korcula villa, three heaping platters appeared before us, bearded mussels and whole prawns threatening to spill off onto the floor. The mussels were clean and uncomplicated in a way you never find in New York and the prawns, though requiring some lobster-like effort, yielded large tails of supple meat. It certainly beat an equally memorable--if less successful--meal served to us in that same Korculan villa: whole squid, cartilage intact. We weren't expecting this particular version of calamari when it arrived on our plates.

But nevermind. There were other meals worth remembering. An afternoon boat cruise took us to a smaller, less-populated island, Lastovo, where the savvy restaurant-owner of Augusta Insula announced his specialty as "Adriatic lobster and pasta." Adriatic lobster is notoriously expensive and, unlike its northeastern kin, dispossessed of claws. I wouldn't have necessarily wasted my time had the man not suggested it and pulled this admiring American to the side of a dock, where he pulled cages up from the Adriatic. He told me to pick my lobsters, and pick I did, and later, they arrived, chopped in thirds, amidst a tomato sauce over al dente linguine. We scooped the meat from the sliced bodies with our forks and fingers, washing our hands in lemony finger bowls. Before the lobster, we had been presented with fried bread (filled with caraway seeds) and fish carpaccio (tuna, monkfish, anchovies, and shrimp) dressed with fine Croatian olive oil and lemon.

Perhaps my favorite meal was in the town of Pupnat, close to the commercial hub of the island of Korcula. Konuba Mate is owned by a single family and they grow and make everything in house, the Croatian answer to the slow food movement. Fresh squeezed lemonade came sugarless; we were expected to sweeten it ourselves with the bright pink sage syrup provided ("pink from the blossoms," our server told us). An antipasto platter included a fresh goat cheese that squeaked when we ate it, juicy grapes, charred eggplant and eggplant pate, aged goat cheese from the same local goats, split fresh figs, ham smoked right there, bitter olives, and a loaf of fresh bread with carraway seeds. For dinner, we shared grilled and quartered lamb along with grilled apples, onions, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. The peppers in Croatia are the light green of cucumbers, and, like cucumbers, are served with virtually everything. Thin rolled veal came with little polenta cakes and a hand rolled pasta, resembling the pici of Tuscany, floated in a creamy wild fennel sauce (fronds only, a bit to my chagrin). The goat cheese appeared once more, this time in fresh ravioli with sage and brown butter. More pasta, this time with an almond pesto made with fresh basil and tomatoes. And, as with most Croatian meals, a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, basil, and judicious amounts of local olive oil.

For dessert, we passed a carrot cake stuffed with a layer of cheese, a creme caramel, a flourless--though not nutless--chocolate cake, a fried pastry resembling funnel cake and dusted with confectioner's sugar, and two granitas, one rosemary-lemon verbena, one lavender-thyme. Various grappas appeared and disappeared, this one herbal, that one amber from the effects of a local fruit whose name we never caught. I drank a glass of dessert wine made there. During our time in Croatia, we never drank anything but the most local of wines, and they were good enough for drinking, if not for some laborious oenophilic conversation.

What else should I recount? Perhaps a meal caught on our way back to Dubrovnik, where we would, two days later, catch our plane home. The town of Mali Ston lies at the base of green Croatian hills, directly on the flat waters where famous oysters and mussels are harvested daily. Even the nicest Mali Stonian restaurants sell their oysters for the equivalent of $1.50 apiece, flat, briny things that make you wonder why you would ever want to eat an oyster anywhere else. Kapetenova Kuca, of course, served far more than oysters on the halfshell. So, too, arrived gently fried oysters, and then a seafood salad of marinated black and white mussels, rock shrimp, prawns, and octopus. Next, two towering dishes of every seafood available: whole cooked fish resembling sea bass, fried white fish and prawns, grilled rock shrimp on skewers, steamed clams and mussels and white mussels (tough to open with a dense, meaty texture), whole prawns that had been cooked in oil in a pan, small flash-fried bait fish, grilled and fried zucchini and eggplant. The list goes on. We ate until we couldn't any longer and then we threw the towel in and I ordered a cherry cheesecake, festooned with sour cherries.

They say Croatia is all about the ocean, and it is. The Adriatic is everywhere and it certainly is nice to look at. But I'll remember, along with that sliver of blue cutting up the coast from white rock, along with the silvery olive trees and the figs plump on the trees and the pomegranates beginning to bend branches forward with their August weight, the unmistakable brine of a Croatian oyster, lingering just long enough.

*
Augusta Insula
Lastovo, Croatia

*
Konuba Mate
Pupnat, Croatia

*
Kapetenova Kuca
Mali Ston, Croatia

Absence Makes The Heart Go Hungry

I apologize for my absence in the blogosphere. Life has invariably taken over writing, filled with weddings and airport delays and all of the trappings of real versus virtual. This isn't to say that recent food adventures have not been noteworthy (some have; some haven't), but by now my mental notes have dwindled to a few dim memories.

But who can go on vacation without one last meal? I leave tonight, and last night's last supper happened to coincide with my friend's 30th birthday party. Said friend's sister and I planned a dinner for eleven people at Back Forty, known mostly for its grass-fed burger. But this was no burger-fest. Instead, it was a down-home Maryland crab boil, replete with newsprint tablecloths and wooden mallets. In New England, we eat lobster. I hadn't ever been to a crab boil, and I'm not completely sure I'd go again. It was fun, but it was also messy and complicated.

For forty bucks a person, the kind folks at Back Forty will deliver an appetizer of salt cod fritters, served with a spicy mayonnaise dip. Next comes crabs in three separate (and large) deliveries, silver buckets turned over the newsprint as Old Bay-doused suckers tumble every which way. The waitress instructs the table on proper crab-procuring procedure, which involves peeling back the outer tab of the shell "like a beer can," snapping off the shell's top, and twisting each leg off. The legs have almost no meat, and the body has slivers underneath useless gills; the spongy devils must be removed by hand. The real treasures are the claws, but the tough shells can't really be done by hand. That's what the mallets are for, but be forewarned that hitting a crab claw with a mallet forces crab juice in many directions. All my crabs seemed to squirt in the direction of my boyfriend's eyes.

With dinner came grilled corn rolled in Old Bay and boiled in salt and butter. These were fine, but no match for the fruit cobbler at meal's end, some happy combination (we think) of blueberry and peach, shortcake, and whipped cream. I don't know how many crabs I ate; we must have plowed through at least one hundred, and that's no exaggeration. And while the crustaceans were tasty enough, I'm not so sure I'd want to work that hard for my food on a regular basis.

*

Back Forty

190 Avenue B

New York, NY 10009

212.388.1990

Just Ducky

I'm not a big fan of repeated experiences (at least in terms of the execution of this blog), but my Monday night dinner deserves mention, even if I just wrote about dim sum haven Pacificana last week. We went back for the Peking Duck, which we had eyed on a neighbor's table that night that we ended up with the heavenly clams.

First things first. I started with a mediocre hot and sour soup that I would never order again. Strike one. But the vegetable dumplings that followed--wrapped in a translucent dough and stuffed with all sorts of chewable veggies, like mushrooms and water chestnuts--made up for the minor misstep. If these dumplings are any indication of the dim sum experience at Pacificana, it's one I wouldn't want to miss out on. We also ordered a plate of bone-in spare-ribs. They were fatty and luscious and salty and sweet and there were a lot of them for $6.

And then there was the duck.

You can order a half duck--which we did--for $14.95, or a whole duck for $28.95. A whole duck would have garnered way too many wasted leftovers. Our lacquered beauty came to the table in one piece. Our waiter sliced and diced, taking large squares of skin and dipping them in hoisin sauce before placing them on pillowy buns. Next came dark meat, followed by cucumber spears and more sauce. We each had three buns and the waiter disappeared and then returned from the kitchen with the rest of our carved bird, most of which we ate with our fingers.

This is not your traditional American duck-on-withered-pancake guy. No way. It's so much better. And at under $15 a pop, it's a stone's throw away from cheap eats.

*

Pacificana

813 55th Street

Brooklyn, NY 11220

718.871.2880

Gone Fishin'

I did have a few minor restaurant dalliances this week, which I won't get too far into, since this post is primarily about cooking and not dining. Lunch with a friend (and on a friend) at Mary's Fish Camp yielded a perfectly sufficient lobster roll, though the hot dog bun could have used a bit more butter. It was literally bursting at the seams with lobster, certainly not something a New Englander complains about. Also, I finally found steamers in New York. Real steamers. Fragile and white-shelled steamer clams that need the sand washed off before you dip the suckers in butter. The portion was too small, but I'll live. I'll likely take another trip to Mary's in the future for a whole fish (they had several varieties, both roasted and flash fried). Lobster roll is one of those things you order when someone else is footing the bill.

Yesterday, I decided to tackle a fear of my own and prepare a whole fish at my house. I've never done this before and I disagreed with a lot of the recipes I read. I didn't want to cook en papillote, because I wanted a crispy skin on the fish. I also didn't want to blast it at 400 degrees because I had chosen fennel, a thick and fibrous vegetable, as one of the stuffing elements. I decided on a 350 medium-slow roast and a finish under the broiler.

One of the great things about living in Astoria is the fresh fish markets. I asked for a whole red snapper and was shown several. I settled on a 2lb fish (generally a pound lighter after de-boning) and asked the monger to clean it for me (gutting and de-scaling, basically). The same red snapper that went for $5.99/lb went for a whopping $14.99/lb at the fish market at Grand Central. Astoria is chef-friendly; Manhattan is not. Back home, I slit the skin so it wouldn't rip and stuffed it with things I had in the fridge: garlic, thyme, the fennel, nicoise olives, halved grape tomatoes, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The remaining items I placed around the fish in a baking dish. Then I let the whole thing rest in the refrigerator for a few hours.

I cut red bliss potatoes in half and covered them with thyme, salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil in a separate baking dish. These went into the 350 degree oven twenty minutes before the fish. Once the fish went in, it was only twenty or so more minutes until the whole lot was ready for the broiler (larger fish obviously take longer; we were basically waiting on the fennel). I finished the fish off with some amontillado before browning it to deglaze the pan. The broiler browned the fish and potatoes, which were completely up to my high standards.

This fish was among the most aromatic and freshest I've had in a long time. We drank mint lemon-limeade with it, our own creation, made from a dozen lemons, a few limes, and a simple syrup made from cane sugar. My regret is that the mint turned brown. In the future, I might try blanching the mint first to preserve its color.

But all in all, this was a resounding (and resoundingly inexpensive) success.

Asian Sundays

According to former-Times-writer/current-cookbook-writer/DavidChang-confidant/hippie-dippy-foodie/brother-of-famed-cocktail-maestro-Jim Meehan Peter Meehan, a meal at Pacificana, in Sunset Park, is best enjoyed with the dim sum throngs on weekend mornings.  It isn't to say that Pacificana doesn't have anything to offer beyond congee and dumplings, but evidently the cart game is their specialty.  Oh, that and the $30/lb. king crab, prepared in a 4-course meal, dinner only.  Average weight of a king crab: 7 lbs.  

Anyway, obviously it wasn't a king crab kind of night, and we missed the boat on dim sum.  That didn't keep us from the cavernous, banquet hall-style Pacifica, where we were the only white people in a sparsely seated dining room.  Like most dim sum restaurants, Pacifica presents a regal touch: chandeliers, white linen, servers in tuxedos, non-disposable chopsticks, bright red walls.  I could imagine a bustling brunch somewhat resembling a wedding. 

We started with small cups of wonton soup.  The wontons were delicately wrapped and full of all kinds of hidden gems, like chopped shrimp.  The broth tasted like it came from actual chickens and the bok choy floating therein gave the soup crunch.  To satisfy the health nut in me, I ordered a plate of sauteed mixed vegetables: broccoli, green peppers, snow peas, bamboo shoots, cucumber, and celery.  They were tossed in some kind of delicate salty white sauce, not the gooey glop that so often accompanies mediocre Chinese.  Next up, the star of the evening: manila clams in a brown sauce sizzling on their hot plate atop tiny bundles of rice noodles.  The noodles had literally been bound unto themselves. When I bit into these hot packages, they pulled back against my teeth, the perfect bounce for a noodle.  The clams slipped easily from their shells and we dragged them through the brown sauce, some amalgamation of garlic and onions and ginger and, well, something brown. 

For dessert, the Asians around us received complimentary bowls of something black and beany.  Maybe we reeked of our Americanness, as no such bowls arrived at our places.  Instead, cubes of coconut jello jiggled their way to our seats.  I didn't complain. 

*

Pacificana

813 55th Street

Brooklyn, NY 11220

718.871.2880

Bay What?

I think the last--and possibly only--time that I visited Bay Ridge was in the late 1980s when my parents went to pick up their Volvo station wagon at the Bay Ridge Volvo dealership.  Pretty much the only details I knew about Bay Ridge were: 1. There was a Volvo dealership there, 2. It was farther into Brooklyn than Park Slope, and 3. My friend Peter lived there and drove to the train station in Sunset Park in the mornings because it was too dang far from the City.  

But I spend a lot of time in Brooklyn and I've learned that you can save more than a few pennies eating in the boroughs instead of eating on the island.  Last night was a terrific case in point.  A google search for "steak" led us to Austin's Steak House in Bay Ridge.  Decor is Sopranos-inspired.  Maitre'd might actually work for the mafia.  More than a few male patrons were wearing loafers without socks.  The woman sitting by herself at the bar in high high heels and a lot of lycra is, my date assures me, a prostitute.  Not that I really care.  A man in his 60s singing misquoted pop songs floats around the dining room with a microphone "delighting" guests.  Or whatever you want to call it.  I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. 

We skipped appetizers, the traditional steakhouse platitudes: shrimp cocktail, caesar salad, crab cakes.  In retrospect, we could have skipped sides, too; our skinny asparagus with browned garlic came undersalted and mashed potatoes were too watery in consistency.  But oh, the steak.  I can't believe I'm writing this, but I'm pretty sure that's the best steak I've ever eaten in New York. 

It was a cowboy steak, otherwise known as a rib-eye.  It came on the bone, an inch-plus thick.  It had the black crust that only comes with super high heat and a butter glaze at the end of cooking.  It was a little too salty (believe it or not), but the meat itself had the dense funk of honest-to-goodness dry aging.  It was just as black-and-blue as I'd ordered it, with a perfect deckle at the top of the rib.  What can I say? I'd put that baby up against a Luger porterhouse any day of the week.  Even my date's filet mignon (ugh), definitely not my cup of tea, tasted remarkably good.  

Austin's is not a whole-package experience.  If you want that, go to BLT Prime, or another trendy steakhouse that serves overpriced and admittedly delicious side dishes and desserts (Austin's sources their desserts from elsewhere and we didn't even bother trying them).  But if you truly want the best rib-eye in New York, I think I've found it.  Trust me, I'm just as surprised as you are. 

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Austin's Steak House

8915 5th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11209

718.439.5000