Fat Guy

I have to cry foul on Sfoglia and Peasant, in terms of the price range set forth in post number one above. Nothing against either restaurant, but they're firmly in the next price category up from what we're talking about here.

The "Best Food Writing" anthology for 2007 has just come out. I find this book very useful because, even though I read quite a bit about food during the year, I manage to miss several key pieces of food writing each year. I count on "Best Food Writing" to catch me up. First things first: we're very proud that, this year, not one but two pieces from the Daily Gullet were chosen for inclusion. When you consider that there are only 52 selections in the book, that's a nice accomplishment for us. The two pieces are "The Greatest Restaurant on Earth," by Ivy Knight, and a thing I wrote last year for Hanukkah called "The Frying of Latke 49." Our friend David Leite, publisher of Leite's Culinaria, was responsible for the other two online pieces in the anthology. He wrote "Kitchen Existential," which appeared on the Morning News website, and he published novelist James Sturz's ode to meat, simply titled "Meat," on Leite's Culinaria. Of course the online/print distinction has blurred of late. Quite a few of the pieces in the book, such as pretty much anything in a major newspaper, appeared online and in print at the same time. You could piece together a good percentage of "Best Food Writing" just by Googling around. It would be a little harder to find the book excerpts, though. Pretty much everything in the book is a good read. If I had to pick the single best piece of writing in the volume, though, I'd have to go with John Thorne's reflection, "Simple Cooking, Then and Now." This deeply thoughtful look back at 25 years of publishing "Simple Cooking" is the last selection in the book and, I think, the most essential for everyone to read. Even if you're not a fan of John Thorne (I only am sometimes), it's important to read this piece. Also enjoyable: Alan Richman's profile of Michel Troisgros titled "The Best Chef in the World"; Laurie Winer's "Building the Perfect Pizza"; John Kessler's "The Japanses Paradigm"; and the entire section titled "The Meat of the Matter," which includes the aforementioned Sturz essay plus excellent pieces by Colman Andrews (steak), Pete Wells (butchering) and Raymond Sokolov (burgers).

I thought it might be helpful to re-illustrate the technique with regular button mushrooms. I used quite a few: two standard supermarket boxes. This is about the maximum my 12" skillet can accommodate without tripping over into steaming territory. So, the progression here runs from 6:46pm until 6:53pm: I didn't do a flawless job tonight. I didn't let the pan get hot enough before adding the mushrooms, I pushed pretty far on capacity, and I think I could have gone an extra minute to get some extra browning -- then again I was concerned that a couple of the mushrooms seemed about to burn. But, the mushrooms were quite tasty. We just ate them plain.

al di là al di là and also, al di là

I had another terrific meal today at Szechuan Gourmet. They were out of razor clams, but we survived. 3. Diced rabbit and peanuts with chili garlic black bean jam. This is an astoundingly good dish, flavor-wise. It suffers from a severe lack of eating convenience, though. You've really got to deal with a lot of little bones. Still, a must-have. Served cold. 6. Thin sliced beef tendon with roasted chili vinaigrette. This is the best rendition I've had of this dish, though it's still not something I'm a huge fan of. I guess I can see how the texture is interesting to some folks, but to me it's just cartilaginous and flavorless. The dish itself has great flavor on account of the roasted chili vinaigrette, but the tendon itself tastes pretty much like nothing. It's a texture food, and I don't love the texture. Served cold. 23. Szechuan pork dumplings with roasted chili soy. As noted above, plump and wonderful. 4. Sliced pork belly with chili garlic soy. Terrific dish, better than other versions I've had -- and a ton of it. We were warned that it would be served cold, but it was served warm-ish. 40. Braised whole bass with "spicy hot hot" chili and scallion. This is not only a great fish dish but also an unbelievable value. A whole, good-quality, moist bass for $18.95? Luckily one of the friends I ate with is a chef and he was able to serve up the fish with no bones and little meat loss. 50. Crispy lamb filets with chili cumin. I loved this dish. It's kind of like salt-and-pepper shrimp, but with lamb instead of shrimp -- and the addition of cumin. 52. Shredded beef with spicy Asian green chili leeks. This was a repeat of a dish I'd had before, but it wasn't as good today. It was good, but the leeks were more bitter and less fresh-crispy than before. 154. Young chow fried rice. An excellent rendition of fried rice, no soy sauce, very mild -- this is a good thing to order to offset all the spicy food.

The frying operation is totally behind closed doors.

The notion of sauce as the key point of differentiation between French and Italian cuisines does not reflect my experience eating French cuisine. Just as an example, I spent time in the kitchen at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House and I'm pretty sure I didn't see a single stock used in any cooking. Most dishes relied on jus or natural broths. There were some sauces used, but sparingly and as accents. Here's an account of a meal we had there a couple of years ago. Have a look at the use of sauce. It doesn't conform at all to the stereotype. Nor do meals I've had at quite a few Michelin-starred restaurants in France. Sauce, in the tradition of Escoffier, has not been dominant in serious French cuisine since the rise of Nouvelle Cuisine several decades ago. Not to mention, there's a lot more use of sauce in Italian cuisine than folks are letting on. So I think the points of differentiation lie elsewhere.

All the frozen fries I've ever seen have been blanched. I'm not sure there's such a thing as non-blanched frozen fries. Or maybe there is. Why are people assuming Sysco fries are better than supermarket fries? Since when is Sysco so great? I've seen several high-end natural/organic brands of frozen fries at regular stores. In particular, the Cascadian and Alexia brands should be pretty widely available.

There exists a frozen french fry product without bisulfites added for color retention? ← The organic brands seem to use citric acid for this purpose. When Keller says "We use fries which are 100% potato, which do not contain additives," he is almost surely being inexact. If they're a premium product the ingredients list is probably something like "Organic Yukon Gold Potatoes, Organic Sunflower and/or Safflower Oil, Sea Salt, Citric Acid." (That's the ingredients list from the Alexia brand.)

I've started a separate topic on the pros and cons of frozen fries. I think it's an issue that deserves its own topic.

On the "Why does anybody buy . . ." topic, frozen fries were called out as a culinary mockery. I think that issue is rich enough that it deserves further examination. Having never conducted actual side-by-side tastings, I'm agnostic on this issue. On the one hand, I recognize that fresh products are better than frozen products in most cases. On the other hand, there are noteworthy instances in which frozen products are superior. When it comes to fries, none other than the great chef Thomas Keller advocates frozen. Awhile back, when he was outed by Grub Street for using frozen fries at Bouchon, Keller said the following: I take a comment like that seriously. What do you all think?

Yeah, the decaf Colombian RSWP that I roasted earlier had a small bean size. A few fell through the mesh into the chaff collector but it was no big deal. But if you go to the very, very small size beans then you've got troubles, at least until the new drum becomes available.

Has anybody noticed: has there been mention of the kitchen counter in either the New York Times or New York Magazine?

Oh yes. One type of bean that I tried from one of the unlabeled bags I had lying around from way back was very small. The drum didn't contain it well so I had to abort. Apparently there is to be a small-bean-capable drum released by Behmor at some point, I guess with a smaller wire mesh. But until then if you're a very-small-bean person this machine is not really usable.

I've now roasted so much coffee it's just silly. The one thing I'll mention that I forgot to mention is that the thing has a nice light in it. This is not only useful for seeing the color of the beans as they're roasting, but also for cleanup purposes. The Behemoth gets my seal of approval. I'm convinced that it's a step forward in home coffee roasting. And as far as I can tell the claim that it isn't good for dark roasts is unfounded. Time to start passing it around.

In terms of chaff collection, the design of the Behemoth is imperfect. I'd say the chaff collector catches 3/4 of the chaff. There's a whole lot of chaff left in the back of the machine after a roast. The brush is not an efficient tool for cleaning it up because it pushes too much chaff onto the counter or floor. You really need to get in there with a Dustbuster. As I mentioned before, consistency is remarkable. The two one-pound batches I roasted this morning, back to back without even letting the machine rest, were indistinguishable (to me at least). It's also amazing to me how much output you can get from this thing. I don't even want to think about how long it would take to roast two pounds of coffee with the i-Roast.

Working my way through some of the samples from the Coffee Project, earlier this morning I roasted two one-pound batches of Zimbabwe La Lucie Estate Royal to full city with no trouble at all. 1#-P1-B. This coffee, by the way, is excellent. It's pricey at $8.50 for a single pound and $7 per pound if you by 25 pounds, but it's really nice. A little light in the body (I'll probably mix a bit of some other bean in for a bit more body) but amazing flavor and acidity. I'm sure it will be even better after 24 hours of rest.

I think when you take the two (as I see it) key factors here 1 - Food-safety concerns (real or imagined) that say if there's a hint of moisture in the meat then there are pathogens living inside and 2 - The need to cook off flavors out of deteriorated ingredients (which got that way due to lack of refrigerated shipping, etc.) then you get a cultural preference for food cooked to a certain level of doneness. Once that cultural preference is in place, it doesn't make a difference if you're a farmer or fisher with access to impeccable, fresh ingredients. You're still going to cook everything that way. Also, when it comes to poultry especially, a lot of the meat products of old weren't nearly as tender as the ones we eat today. So cooking the heck out of them was part of the tenderizing process. Plus you had inferior dentistry so you really had to get things to be non-chewy. Of course if you overcook a lot of things they become chewier, but try explaining that to someone who thinks "old school" on this issue. I mean, try to convince my mother not to cook the Thanksgiving turkey to 190 degrees. Try it. I dare you.

Yes, I was lucky in that when I went I was armed with this information. You figured it out, and so did most critics who've covered the place. So I was able to enjoy a lot of non-fried stuff, all of which was better than the fried stuff. And, it seems, the regulars sitting at the bar were ordering the non-fried stuff too. One thing I noticed that seemed odd: they deliver. I just can't imagine the fried food holding up well in that format. At one point in the meal I had to take a short cell-phone call and by the time I got back all the fried food had significantly deteriorated. I'd recommend focusing on the specials board: get any raw-fish items, plus the big fried oysters if they have them. From the regular menu, I think the best fried item is -- curiously -- the pumpkin. If you have a group big enough to taste a lot of stuff, get one of the po' boys.

I was in recently and found that there were many more "cooked" dishes on the menu than at the beginning. For example: "warm mushroom tart, portabello, crimini, shitake, pickled chanterelle, wild arugula salad" "fresh porcini and polenta pudding on a skillet, garlic, parmesan, mascarpone" "berkshire pork, black pepper, sweet potato, almond, scallion, pineapple-soy caramel" "chocolate and pinot noir braised duck, kabocha squash tapioca, raisin, oyster mushroom" "braised wagyu beef cheek medallion, chestnut-potato puree, vanilla, persimmon" "foie gras torchon, chocolate, brioche, ginger-red pepper jam, persimmon" "stilton soufflé, walnut crust, black pepper, basil-arugula ice cream" I found the experience mixed. The mushroom tart, for example, is inexcusably bad. The tart shell is dry and unappetizing, the mushrooms are bland and parsimonious. There's nothing to recommend the dish. The Berkshire pork was, however, a knockout -- exactly the sweet-savory triumph that the restaurant is aiming for, even though it's not listed in the "sweet and savory" section of the menu (it's just in the "savory" list, despite the pineapple-soy caramel). The foie gras with chocolate, also an excellent marriage. And the Stilton souffle should be a long-lived signature. While the desserts we tried were good, I think the real action on the menu is in the sweet-savory section (that's where the foie and the Stilton are). I'd like to try the "smoked trout caviar parfait, crème fraiche ice cream, vanilla salt, nasturtium." But, I probably won't go back any time soon. Too many negatives, too many weak dishes, service too self-important.

I had an impressive meal at Crave Ceviche Bar a couple of weeks back, then got busy and neglected to post the details. So, here goes. Crave Ceviche Bar is constructed along the "new paradigm" downtown restaurant model: a long bar dominates the place and most people eat there, and there are just a few tables off to the side. Except, it's in the most boring part of Midtown. It's on Second Avenue between 50th and 51st Street. When you're inside the restaurant, you simply can't believe you're in Midtown East. Neither the style of the place nor the crowd is neighborhood-compliant. It's as though through some sort of culinary Gerrymandering they decided that this particular block would be part of the East Village. On the menu, it says: "Ceviche is a preparation common in Latin America where dishes, most commonly seafood, are usually cooked with acid from citruses. At Crave, every dish is a take on ceviche but nothing is ordinary." That statement is accurate. The restaurant runs far and wide with the ceviche metaphor. I chatted with Todd Mitgang, the chef (formerly of Kittichai), and his explanation was that he loves raw fish but didn't want to do yet another sushi place. So, he figured out this angle, emphasizing acidity, and in the bargain created a unique, different, delicious restaurant. Mitgang, by the way, is not Latin (he's Jewish, from Long Island). Paul Adams of the New York Sun wrote an on-target review of Crave in October. He gives a good description of the concept: A typical dish description on the menu goes like this: That, by the way, is an awesome dish. The bitterness of the Swiss chard is the real surprise, then you have the crunch of the walnuts and the burn of the horseradish oil. The ceviche effect comes from the yuzu and beet juice. It works, beautifully. The word "ceviche'd" is used a lot on the menu. You have to get past that in order to enjoy the place. And you should, because most of the food is superb. The best dish of the evening was florida red snapper with a rich lobster broth (basically a bisque) poured over, with seared butternut squash, fennel and Chinese long beans, "ceviche’d" courtesy of aged Sherry and Sherry vinegar. Even just on its own, the lobster broth was one of the best I've had anywhere. The combination of that with snapper made a compelling case for snapper; it almost made the snapper seem like monkfish. You'll see what I mean if you try the dish. Also excellent: and The one dish we tried that I thought collapsed on itself by trying too hard to be a ceviche-type thing was the "Bread and Butter Ceviche," which is grilled olive bread buried under (and made soggy by) roasted shallots, goat butter, "clementine meat," and pink sea salt. (Incidentally, has anybody noticed that several of the new-paradigm places don't have normal bread service but, rather, have composed bread dishes that you need to order and pay for?) There was also a Kona Kampachi special which, like the tuna, had Swiss chard. It was great, but I've now eaten my fill of Swiss chard for the season. The wine list is compact, with a lot of good stuff under $50 and with good, short, no-BS descriptions of the wines. We had a 2004 Xarel-lo from Segura Viudas, priced at $34. It was described efficiently and accurately: "Almond biscotti, very powerful." Most of the wines -- not all, but the majority -- are also available by the glass. There's beer and sangria too. Pretty much all the dishes are priced in the mid teens, except for lobster and some of the meat dishes -- none of which I tried. I thought the servers were very good, knowledgeable, personable and enthusiastic, especially the lovely woman from South Carolina who handled much of the room. At the end of the meal they refused to present a check. I was at the restaurant working on an assignment and would have been reimbursed. So, it saved somebody some money, albeit not me. The owners of Crave are Brian Owens, Dino Andreakos and Todd Mitgang. They have plans to take over a space on 50th Street this summer to create an L-shaped restaurant that will face both Second Avenue and 50th Street. This will allow for a larger kitchen, so the restaurant will be able to open for lunch. Right now, it's dinner only because they need all the kitchen space for prep during the day. Crave Ceviche Bar 946 Second Ave. (between 50th and 51st) 212.355.6565 http://www.craveceviche.com

I would suggest you not miss one of the "with Napa and roasted chili" dishes.

Because I had about 10 ounces of the decaf Colombian RSWP beans and had used 8 ounces in the Behemoth, I took the last 2 ounces and roasted them in the i-Roast to a similar level of doneness. Then I made some press-pot coffee from each. In both cases the beans came out well. My level of ability to discern minor variations in coffee is not particularly high, but I think the drum roaster may be producing slightly mellower coffee than the i-Roast. Still good acidity, but not as harsh. Of course there are variables that are hard to control for. I tried to use sort-of-similar roasting curves but who knows? And I would normally not drink coffee until the day after roasting, but for this experiment I didn't want to deal with the delay. I also roasted some regular coffee, Colombian Supremo Bucharamonga Especial. This is my house coffee, the one I serve to guests etc. It's super cheap but I think the quality is great. Coffee Project sells it for $3 a pound if you buy 25 pounds. Because my wife drinks mostly decaf and has for awhile now, I have more of this Colombian Supremo Bucharamonga Especial stuff around than I know what to do with. So, it was no problem to waste 2 pounds on today's experiments. It took me 4 tries with 1/2 pound batches to achieve what I wanted to achieve: a Starbuck's-style incinerated roast that could be done on an automatic setting. The first 2 times I tried it I had to add time, then I nailed it on the third try, then I did it again to make sure I could replicate it. The machine is remarkably consistent, it seems. Anyway, I haven't worked up to a full-pound batch yet, but I can say with confidence that you can roast as dark as you damn well please on a 1/2-pound batch. When you get into Starbuck's territory, you do start to get some visible smoke -- but you get less of it with a 1/2-pound batch than you get with a 2-ounce batch in an i-Roast or FreshRoast. Tomorrow I'll try to roast a full pound to a normal medium roast. And maybe at some point, fire extinguisher in hand, I'll attempt a dark roast on a full pound, just to determine once and for all if it's possible.

This just in . . . Spotted today at the supermarket . . . Hard-boiled eggs . . .

I haven't had one in awhile because the location isn't convenient, but when I was out trying to find the best croissant in town the best one I found was at Petrossian Cafe. Not the restaurant, but the little shop mid-block on the avenue. This dates back to when Philippe Conticini and Chris Broberg were running the Petrossian pastry program. I'm not sure if they've maintained standards or not. My go-to place for a well-made croissant in the neighborhood is Le Pain Quotidien. By now there's probably one in everybody's neighborhood in Manhattan. And I actually like Ceci-Cela's croissants a lot. Certainly, if you took a poll of chefs you'd hear that as the consensus number-one pick. I hear they're about to close the original store and do a big expansion. Hope that doesn't hurt.