Fat Guy

I used about a pint of frozen beef stock plus a pint of water on this occasion. When I don't have stock on hand I like to do a mirepoix in the braising vessel first. The mirepoix plus some water (or wine, or beer, or whatever) plus the juices from the meat get you something pretty close to a stock. I don't have a standardized recipe. It's more like whatever chili-appropriate seasonings are around. To the best of my recollection this batch (what you see illustrated here is maybe a quarter of the batch) contained a few hot peppers from this gigantic bag of dried peppers that I've had for years and will probably not use up before I get my AARP membership card (I only use a few hot peppers these days because I'm feeding a three-year-old kid; in days of yore I'd have used a fistful), lots of cumin (that's the main spice for me), some nice paprika that someone brought me back from a trip to Hungary, probably coriander, and that may be it, all ground up in one of those mini coffee grinders. I prepare it with the anticipation of adding salt, pepper and oregano in the cooking process, though one could easily add those things to the mix as well. I find that it freezes very well. I have no idea how it tastes right out of the freezer but once you cook with it I can't imagine there's a discernible loss of quality. It actually looks better after it cools and you reheat it. There's a serious thickening process that happens during the cool-down, and it holds when you reheat. Ideally, chili for me is a three-day process: day 1 braise the meat, refrigerate overnight; day 2 cook the beans and combine into chili, refrigerate overnight; day 3 reheat and eat. Add a day 0 if you're making stock. That's a lot of days, but there's actually not that much active cooking time involved at all.

Things kind of got away from me today so I didn't get to make my big weekend finale dish until after dinner. We'll be eating it for the next several days I'm sure. Last night I braised a piece of brisket that had been knocking around the freezer for many moons. This is sort of an unorthodox approach to chili-making but I've found that it works better for me when I braise the meat whole then dice it later. I refrigerated the brisket overnight in one container and the braising liquid in another. This afternoon I made beans using the Russ Parsons oven method, the best way ever devised for cooking beans. Then we had our own dinner, which consisted of leftovers: lentil soup, lasagna, chicken fingers. After dinner I dumped the beans into a colander -- that way the whole dish can be done in one pot -- and made a mirepoix from every aromatic vegetable in my inventory: the last onion, the last shallot, some garlic, carrots, celery. While the mirepoix was cooking I roughly diced the brisket, after removing some of the most obvious fat, and set it aside. I added the last of my chili seasoning mix -- another thing I made ages ago and froze. Then the beans, the braising liquid from the brisket and a box of Pomi crushed tomatoes, plus plenty of salt and pepper, as well as some dried oregano. I let that cook down a bit (there was precious little space in the pot -- I estimated wrong there) and then added the meat, let that heat through and let the mixture thicken for a while. The result: a week's supply of brisket chili.

I've now started work on tomorrow's dinner dish for our virtual potluck. I'm making brisket chili. Tonight's prep consists of braising a piece of brisket that has been in the freezer forever (maybe a quarter of an actual brisket) in beef stock. I'll refrigerate that overnight and, tomorrow, I'll defat the stock and dice the brisket. Meanwhile I'll make some beans and then combine everything into a chili-like dish. Stay tuned. Looking at what I can do in a second week, one thing is for sure: we still have a ton of leftover product from the first week. There's chicken two ways left from tonight (cooked chicken fingers, and raw chicken for fried rice or something along those lines). There's still lentil soup, enough for several more meals built around that. And the chili I make tomorrow will be enough for three family meals, easily. Then there are some things in the freezer I never even got to this week: a container of meatballs in sauce, a bunch of frozen vegetables, some things wrapped in foil that I still haven't inspected. That's not even getting into all the grains and legumes we have around, the remaining cheese in the fridge, all the tomato products, cans of tuna, pasta both dry and frozen . . . this could go on for a couple more weeks before I would get to the mac-and-cheese-from-a-box stage of the game. And if I can top off the egg and vegetable supplies, forget about it. I also see on my calendar at least two big free meals out coming up this week: a dim sum event on Sunday and a steak event on Tuesday. So nobody is going to starve here. One thing I wanted to mention: when all this is over, be sure to lock in your savings. Don't buy double and restock all the stuff you used. Take advantage of the money and space savings by letting well enough alone. Maybe we'll even learn something about how to spend less shopping every week going forward. I think that's probably the case for me already.

Day 6 This morning for PJ's breakfast I made him a poached egg. Before I got a chance to photograph it, though, Ellen had cut it up for him. My breakfast consisted of toast, a little of the shrinking butter supply and three Advil. Ellen also made PJ a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, as they were planning to be out. For dinner the request was for chicken fingers so I did my best. We had almost two pounds of frozen chicken breast cutlets in the freezer. For breading, I used the two remaining eggs, some flour, and some panko. And I cut the two remaining sad potatoes into wedges. Even though I have a vented hood, deep frying is something I really prefer not to do in the apartment. I've found that it's possible to get pretty good results with both potatoes and chicken cutlets by using a high temperature in the oven on convection. I ran out of egg before running out of chicken, so I chopped up and put away the rest of the chicken for prospective fried rice or something. Progress in the oven: Dinner: We didn't finish the chicken. Not even close. So there's another leftover to consider. Alas, we are now out of eggs.

I should add that after cooking pasta in boiling water, I use that water to bathe and, after that, I filter it using reverse osmosis and make it into ice cubes for use in my specialty cocktails.

Most non-foodie types I know already use too little water when cooking pasta. That's one of the many reasons their pasta always sucks. Where is McGee's substantiation for the assumption that people are using all this water? Gourmets are using it because it makes the pasta better, but the average American is already using too little water in too small a pot. I think it would be worth an extra $20 million if everybody would double up on pasta cooking water so I wouldn't have to eat spaghetti that tastes like it came from a can. Anyway, McGee's arithmetic seems to assume that people's stoves are powered by oil. In fact many people have gas stoves, and many people get their household electricity from coal, nuclear, hydroelectric and other power sources. In addition, there are about 20 million better ways to save $20 million on energy. Energy used for cooking is a tiny slice of the household energy pie. If everybody turned the hot water heater down a few degrees, or weatherized, it would save something like a zillion dollars a year. But it's personal transportation, not pasta making, where we'll need to look in order to make any progress on the oil front.

Gas is included in my rent and it's a minimal amount anyway. I just don't care enough.

I guess I'm just not curious enough to care about the answer to the question, especially since the method results in a quality loss. The argument that we could all save water this way seems incredibly weak. Of all the ways to conserve.

How delicious! Bravo. ← I was pretty proud of myself. Then, last night, working on a totally different project, I stumbled across the Ducasse dish that inspired mine. It was better.

What I learned from this article is that if I want really good, starchy pasta water to thicken a sauce I'm going to 1- boil a lot of pasta in a little water, 2- save that water and throw the pasta in the garbage, 3- make new pasta the right way and 4- combine. I don't think that's a good way to save energy and water, though.

Okay, so Sunday supper will continue to be discounted. Here's the word from the man:

Before I report on Day 5, a quick announcement: Saturday night, which will be day 7 for a lot of us, let's have a "virtual potluck." In other words, make your best dish after a week of no shopping (which means it has been two weeks since you've shopped) and post about it. One dish, like you'd bring to a potluck. Day 5 For breakfast I made PJ an egg sandwich, Ellen had yogurt and cereal, and I had three Advil and a fistful of pretzel nuggets (so as not to take the Advil on an empty stomach). This afternoon we had to take my mother to Costco so she could buy supplies for her Saturday sports program for disabled kids. So we decided to put together a free lunch of Costco samples: today's offerings in Yonkers included cheese tortellini, pita chips with Alouette garlic-and-herbs cheese spread, some crackers that tasted a little like pita chips with Alouette garlic-and-herbs cheese spread, assorted cakes from the David's Cookies people (served under a yard-sized red canopy), cubes of cheddar cheese and two different energy drinks. PJ requested rice with duck sauce for dinner. Trouble was, no duck sauce. So I fabricated a duck-sauce substitute from apricot and plum preserves, a drop of soy sauce, a drop of sesame oil and a little hot water to thin the mixture. It seemed to work for him. He also ate a healthy portion of the fritatta/omelette/whatever that I made with half of our remaining eggs (only three left now). In the freezer I found some mushrooms that I had cooked and frozen months ago. I did it because they were nearing the end of their usable lives and we were about to go out of town. Normally something like that, in the freezer, would die a slow death and eventually be discarded during spring cleaning. But thanks to this week's challenge they actually got used. They reconstituted quite well. Only three eggs left now (the three in the bowl got cooked):

This just in regarding March and April: I've already emailed to find out whether the $35 dinner price works for Sunday supper. I'll follow up when I get an answer.

A few other quick food notes from today. For breakfast I made PJ some oatmeal with raisins in it; I'm not sure what he had for lunch because he was at my mother's; for dinner he had pasta with Parmesan and a side of cucumbers and tomatoes (the last of those). Ellen had the remaining salad and some lentil soup for dinner, and I don't know what for her other meals. The only actual meal I ate was that egg and its assorted components. There were also some California rolls and such on set that I snacked on. I hurt my leg getting off the M96 bus, so my dinner consisted of Advil and M&Ms. Going to try to sleep it off now.

Today I had to do a cooking demonstration on camera. When the director/producer/cameraman (this was a low-budget thing) asked me what I'd be cooking I had a number of ideas but ultimately decided that I needed to remain faithful to the week-without-shopping concept. I knew I had to do something with Dave the Cook's smoked trout. The butchering of the trout wasn't pretty. I extracted a goodly amount of flaked flesh in the end, though. I originally thought maybe I'd mix it with rice, as suggested, but I didn't feel a high comfort level with that process. Then I thought about potato puree but didn't want to use my last potatoes. Salsify puree would have been nice but I don't have any salsify. Then I thought about grits, which I thought I had but turned out not to. But I did find some medium-ground cornmeal from Bob's Red Mill in the back of the fridge. I figured medium-ground cornmeal pretty much equals polenta. So I made some creamy polenta with salt, pepper, butter and a little Parmesan (I know lots of Italians refuse to do cheese with fish but a little Parmesan with smoked fish made sense to me). Then, off the heat, I folded in the flaked trout. Then I spooned some of the trout-polenta mixture into two Le Creuset mini cocottes. On top of each I cracked an egg. Sorry I don't have a lot of process photos but we were taping so I couldn't stop. Here's a photo of the eggs, though. I covered the cocottes and cooked them in a water bath for about 5 minutes. Then when the egg was set but still runny I garnished with smoked paprika (to pick up the smokiness of the trout) and citrus salt (to add a little acidity). And in the end: All from the pantry. Very exciting. I didn't feel that in the end I had to compromise on the quality of the dish at all. In fact the no-shopping challenge forced me to innovate a little. If I'd gone shopping I'd have bought some predictable chives or another fresh herb for garnish. But I had to dig deeper and I found that paprika and salt, which in the end were I think better, more appropriate and more creative garnishes. I'm not sure I'd say the polenta came out better than potato puree would have, but it was good and interesting this way.

I think the big difference is that Vongerichten and Kunz were doing fusion in the early 1990s, when their brands of it were groundbreaking. If two new chefs came on the scene today with fusion concepts like those they'd hardly be noticed. I think Susur Lee, who is a very talented chef but is no Vongerichten or Kunz, may face the same difficulty.

The second person from the left, top row, is Waldy.

And a lot of weeks 7, is what he told me when I chatted with him for a few minutes at Shang. Regarding the strand of discussion on whether New Yorkers are biased against out-of-town chefs, I just want to say that I personally am not at all biased against out-of-own chefs. I was Ducasse's most impassioned defender when he opened at the Essex House. You can find a score of posts from me saying Per Se is the best restaurant in New York at the moment (ever since Ducasse at the Essex House closed). I love out-of-town chefs. I hope they all open restaurants here. And I don't care whether they spend one second in their New York kitchens. I just care about what's on the plate. That being said, Shang is just not a great restaurant.

A recap of last night's disgustingly gluttonous, but wonderful, dinner: the ninth annual Beefsteak at Beacon NYC. Maybe I should just not eat at all for the rest of the week.

Last night was the ninth annual Beefsteak at Beacon, and Waldy Malouf was kind enough to have us as his guests again. (Us being me and Ellen, who took the photographs here.) I've now been to several Beefsteaks and Chowders, and each time I go to one or the other I think "I like the Beefsteak better than the Chowder" or "I like the Chowder better than the Beefsteak." Either way, they are two of my favorite eating and celebrating days of the year. I eat at Beacon a lot. Over the past couple of years it has entered the small club of restaurants where I dine on my own dime more than 10 times a year. During that same time I've had the opportunity to get to know Waldy Malouf a lot better -- some time ago he crossed the friend threshold -- and the better I know him, the more I eat his food, the more impressed I am. Occasionally I have a normal meal at Beacon -- normal as in going for dinner or lunch, sitting at a table and ordering from the a la carte menu -- and in that regard Beacon is quite good, essentially a "chef-driven steakhouse" (the restaurant's description) that offers excellent steaks (Niman Ranch via DeBragga) and a large selection of non-steak dishes executed much better than steakhouses do them. But I think where Beacon truly excels is in its additional offerings: special events like the Beefsteak and Chowder (and game dinner, and others), the kitchen counter, the Sunday supper (also discussed on the kitchen counter topic, because I didn't think we needed yet another Beacon topic), the burger bar, the brunch service and probably some things I'm forgetting. These are the times when Waldy Malouf, who is one of the most talented chefs I know but doesn't get to utilize the full range of his skills for the a la carte meal service, has the opportunity to work outside the boundaries of the chophouse menu and display his creativity, ingenuity or both (the Beefsteak is more ingenious than creative, of course). The Beefsteak has always been a great event but has evolved over the years to be even better. It is now always sold out, so Waldy now uses it as a way to raise money for the Green Chimneys charity, with which he has been involved for ages (when I look at Waldy's list of culinary accomplishments my rough calculation is that he's 140 years old). The folks at Green Chimneys made this cow for Waldy a while back and it now stands proudly on the sidewalk out front of the restaurant to welcome revelers to the Beefsteak. When you enter you're given a Brooklyn Brewery beer mug and an apron (on the table there are paper hats). You're supposed to eat with your hands, and this year I did as did all the men at our table (the women all asked for and received flatware). The hostesses continually circulate to refill your beer and later there's Maker's Mark bourbon. When you arrive the band is playing and the tables are set with baguettes and New York cheddar. First up, jumbo lump crabmeat salad and jumbo shrimp cocktail. Next, mini burgers, bacon-wrapped kidneys and grilled lamb chops. The flaming herb bouquets on the lamb-chop platters were a nice touch. All of these items are served family style in great profusion, however the surplus of those mini burgers was particularly hilarious. The servers were pushing them like methamphetamine, bringing platter after platter. Our table of mostly big guys went through three of those platters and the servers were still trying to get us to take more. For the main course, DeBragga & Spitler provides whole dry-aged striploins and Beacon cooks them as roasts. Waldy and chef-de-cuisine Sergio Lopez (who recently graduated up to replace former chef-de-cuisine Mike Smith who is now executive chef at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) work furiously to carve the meat into chunks and pile it high on platters. I don't know about you but I rarely get to eat the New York strip in its roast incarnation. As you might predict, it's even better this way than when served as individual steaks, because the roasts take longer to cook and develop all sorts of flavors a normal quick-cooked steak doesn't get a chance to develop. Maker's Mark bourbon served in very cool wax-dipped Maker's Mark glasses. (I am now the proud owner of a set of four, but have no idea how to wash and maintain them without wrecking the wax.) For dessert, profiteroles with smoked-vanilla ice cream. Remember, everything is eaten with the hands so these make a lot of sense. The cuisine is, however, only one aspect of the Beefsteak. In addition to the live music there's overall an incredibly festive atmosphere. On top of all that there's Waldy's incredibly gorgeous team of hostesses, wearing flapper dresses for this occasion. I wouldn't say I dine at Beacon just for the hostesses, but they certainly represent value added. The kitchen crew. Waldy presenting the check to the Green Chimneys guy: Chris Carey, son of former New York governor Hugh Carey, leading the restaurant in a stirring rendition of "God Bless America." Waldy Malouf with the meat. The waiters. And here's Waldy with his team of hostesses aka "Waldy's Lovely Ladies." (Can you guess which one is Waldy's daughter? Seriously. The guy is actually related to one of those women.)

Today was one of those lost days where I'm on the move all day and, since I know I'm going to have a huge dinner out, I basically fast save for an orange, a yogurt and a handful of M&Ms. It was also a hectic day, with a plumbing issue kicking in just as I started to photograph the preparation of PJ's egg for breakfast: That's as far as I got. I then had to rush back and forth between the stove and the plumbing problem, stopping to wash my hands each time I needed to tend to the egg. It was crazy. The egg got overcooked. Etc. Later in the day I discovered some evidence that Ellen made herself oatmeal for breakfast. I had an individual serving of Chobani Greek-style yogurt. PJ boycotted lunch, because he had a whole mess of snacks (almonds, walnuts, pretzels, raisins, chocolate-chip cookies) in the stroller on the way home from school. I had an orange and some M&Ms (plain) for lunch. For PJ's dinner I made him cheese ravioli before we went out for our big dinner: Those are cheese ravioli that I buy in boxes of 100 at Borgatti's on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Last time I was up there I bought 2 boxes and froze them in small zipper bags of 25 each. Of course I didn't make 25 ravioli for a three-year-old kid. I made maybe half that many, all of which he ate, followed by an ice-cream pop. Our evening involved a steak event. If I can get those photos up soon I'll link to them. I'll be back to cooking interesting stuff from the pantry tomorrow.

I'm sure that's true (ditto for Lumiere in Vancouver) but Susur was nonetheless a great restaurant (Lumiere too). Shang doesn't seem to have the potential for greatness. I hope I'm proven wrong, though.

Susur Lee seems to be living here now, and he closed Susur to open Shang. I'm not sure that matters, but if anything he has followed the path that earns love for out-of-town chefs. None of which is enough to compensate for a weak restaurant. Cena's failure was surely a business issue unrelated to the restaurant's quality or reception. The food was superb, as were the reviews. I think they got customers. I bet they had an untenable financing arrangement or something like that, because all the ingredients for success were there. There have always been amazing restaurants -- not just in New York, but in New York Lespinasse and Cello are good examples, as was Ducasse at the Essex House -- that have up and closed for behind-the-scenes reasons having nothing to do with how good they were.

The smoked trout I mentioned above: I'm planning to flake the meat and mix it with a potato puree. Can somebody please give me very explicit instructions for getting the meat off those trout?

Ducasse was a critical bomb at the Essex House -- possibly the highest-profile critical bomb in the history of New York restaurant reviewing. I happen to think almost all the critics got it completely wrong and that it was one of the best restaurants in the history of New York, but that's a separate issue. In the case of Shang, if anything, I think the reviews overall have been too kind. I'm under something of a gag order but when I read the review by the critic I dined there with, I was amazed at the generosity of the review given how weak the meal was (then again there were other visits without me, I guess). Out-of-town chefs in general tend to win some and lose some here. Per Se is arguably the best restaurant in New York City right now and Keller, though he had a career here long ago, is basically an out-of-town chef running a branch of an out-of-town restaurant here. He was very well received when he opened here. Le Bernardin was originally in France, wasn't it? Masa in California. I think that makes for a majority of four-star restaurants with out-of-town origins. If Susur Lee had opened a great restaurant I have little doubt it would have opened to critical raves. He didn't. It didn't.