Fat Guy

The Society is pleased to welcome Varmint Bites as an eG Ethics code signatory. Varmint Bites, a blog by Dean McCord, focuses on food and family in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. For many years, Dean was a host, manager and officer of the eGullet Society, and he is now a member of the emeritus staff group. I have to confirm this with Dean but I believe I was present, about a decade ago, when the Varmint nickname was developed. It was at a lunch counter in or near Raleigh, where near the counter was a rack of hunting and fishing magazines. One of the magazines was called "Varmint Masters." We couldn't stop laughing about it. Eventually Varmint became Dean's eG Forums member name and later his blog name. Welcome!

We were in the middle of our own cooking project, and getting a little hungry, when a chef-instructor from the neighboring kitchen came in to ask if we wanted lunch. I guess next door they had prepared "family meal" for the students and had, as seems to be standard, made ten times as much of it as needed. So we said "sure," and he brought in hotel pan upon hotel pan of food. Skirt steak, chicken, hamburgers, roasted vegetables . . . We also prepared ten times as much food as our group could possibly eat, so at the end of the day I was able to load up a bunch of quart-sized takeout containers with food. I took several large pieces of skirt steak, a container of our adobo chicken and a container of chicken from the class next door, a quart of rice, some water spinach and some other stuff too. It's enough to feed my family for several days. I only go into FCI once or twice a week, and only for an eight-week period while I'm teaching my class, but the people who go in there every day could I'm sure easily eat six meals a day without ever spending a penny.

That's probably right. I'll follow up with that and other details once I get the written materials. Edited to add: yes, in addition to saying "Ube" about 30 times throughout the day, and in addition to noting it on her menu and in materials she posted online before class, and in addition to showing us the packages of product that said "Ube," Annette also wrote it on the whiteboard:

We cooked so many dishes it wasn't possible for every person to help with every dish, so I'll have a number of knowledge gaps filled in later. When Annette provides the written recipes I'll try to post them. Being the least skilled cook in the room, I spent much of the day doing the most menial tasks available: cleaning and chopping scallions, peeling and dicing cucumbers, slicing radishes on the mandoline, removing the seeds from hot peppers, browning pieces of chicken in a skillet, etc. I hasten to add that I performed those tasks poorly. Those are pigs' trotters that had been simmering in a vinegar-laced broth all morning while we were out shopping. These would become "crispy pata" after deep frying. These are some of the things we got at the market, and some other provisions. That's water spinach in the back. The jars are full of some sweet bean and tapioca-like mixture that get spooned over ice cream. In the red bag are lychees and rambutans. Here's a look at Annette Tomei, our instructor. In that second photo, showing some of our group, on the far left is Haley, another instructor at the FCI. She was Annette's primary assistant. I'm going to have to confirm spelling of names, because I only heard the names -- I didn't see them in writing. The cluster of three people you see between Annette and Haley is the Filipino expert contingent: (left to right) Louisa, Benji and Rocky. I think Benji is Annette's brother-in-law. I need to confirm that. Also, obscured in the photo, is one of the students from my class, Ana, who writes a Latin-food blog called Hungry Sofia, where you'll probably find a more precise report on the day than you'll find here. The ribs (pork), chicken and fish (trout) were marinating ahead of time: The fish went on racks to dry: Annette then deep fried both the fish and the trotters, which were later roasted in the oven as well: Haley preparing the kilawin, which is also apparently called kinilaw, which is basically a Filipino ceviche. I prepped all those vegetables by the way: Benji helped throughout, tasting and adjusting to get the Filipino flavors he was after. For the chicken and pork adobo (adobo is the best-known Filipino dish), Ana and I browned all the meat, which had already been simmered. It then went back into the pot. We made ice cream from ume plum. Making ice cream is really easy when you have a Vita-Prep, a professional ice-cream machine and two FCI chef-instructors to do it for you. We also sauteed water spinach with tomatoes, shallots, shrimp paste and some of the cooking liquid from the adobo, and we prepped some mangoes and steamed some rice. This is part of our buffet, which wasn't set up all in one place so it wasn't possible to take just one photo to show it all. The big pot has rice, next to it is the water spinach, the tall metal pot has a lemonade-like beverage made from a lime-like fruit I have to get the name of again, and the pile of white stuff on a plate is a dessert called palitaw where we boiled discs of a glutinous rice dough and then rolled them in coconut: This is an amazing cake, casava bibinka, the preparation of which I wasn't involved in: I also was not involved in making the fish soup (singiang), though you may notice those are also the vegetables I prepped. The soup itself was not blurry; that's just the photo. The menu as planned, though there were some changes driven by market availability, human resources and time: I'll follow up with more details once the written materials show up in my inbox.

Next we went shopping. By no means did we do all the necessary shopping. This was more of a market tour, actually. There were three facets of the overall shopping operation: 1- a lot of stuff was acquired ahead of time so that meats could marinate overnight, things could simmer all morning, etc.; 2- some staples came from Western purveyors, e.g., butter; and 3- while we were out in Chinatown we acquired some vegetables, fish and a few other last-minute needs. We visited: Tan Tin Hung Supermarket (121 Bowery at Grand) Po Wing Hong Food Market (49 Elizabeth at Canal) Asia Market Corp. (71.5 Mulberry near Bayard). This was probably my favorite place. It's mostly packaged goods, and the selection is seemingly endless. Sun Vin Grocery (75 Mulberry). By now our group had rendezvoused with our two Filipino guest experts, so they got in on the decisionmaking and picked up water spinach as an addition to the menu. Hong Kong Market (68 Elizabeth at Hester). This is where we got fish. We also picked up a few mangoes and other fruits from street vendors. All the while, Annette shared what she has learned about Filipino ingredients. I retained little, and also all the stores kind of blurred together. We were ducking in and out of places with great speed. I may very well be saying something about one place that I meant to say about another. By tomorrow I'm sure Annette will have followed up with documentation, so I can reconcile everything. At a few places I noticed the same thing Mitch noticed: actual sections of Filipino ingredients. That makes sense. We have a lot of Filipinos here. If they're not eating in Filipino restaurants, some of them must be cooking at least some Filipino food at home. For myself, I acquired as much produce as I could carry, because the produce prices in Chinatown make a mockery of what I pay uptown. I got water spinach (because I knew I'd be learning how to cook it), baby bok choy, guy lon, ginger, garlic, grapes, cherries and several boxes of strawberries.

Speaking as a New Yorker who travels to Philadelphia on occasion, and who gravitates towards what Philadelphia has that New York doesn't or what Philadelphia has that's better than New York, the following would be my list: 1. Reading Terminal Market. Whenever I go there, I bemoan the fact that New York doesn't have an equivalent. Chelsea Market doesn't do the trick. 2. Carman's. Sui generis. Just bear in mind that it has limited days and hours of operation, and that it's a place you kind of have to get to know. A lot of first-time customers find it a little disorienting, as it doesn't follow the standard customer-service model. 3. Cheesesteaks. Philadelphia has such a rich cheesesteak culture, no other city can compete for sheer breadth and depth of offerings. 4. Nanzhou Handdrawn Noodle House. A total dive that does the best I've had, though I actually think the shaved are better than the pulled. 5. Rangoon. They've got some amazing food there. I don't think anyplace in New York compares. Which is not to say there aren't dozens of other terrific things to eat in Philadelphia. But if you're limiting it to a New York v. Philadelphia set of decision criteria, that's my list.

It was a long day. The first thing we did, after meeting up outside of the FCI's Grand Street entrance, was venture into Chinatown for some breakfast. We didn't eat Filipino food for breakfast. I'm not even sure such a thing is possible in Chinatown, or anywhere else in town for that matter. We started with tofu at Tung Woo Co. (232 Grand St. at Bowery), which is a hole in the wall (literally, it's just a carve-out with a counter facing the street) serving mostly tofu. For a dollar you get a pint of freshly made, warm, silken tofu. For $1.50 you get a quart. It comes with a little container of sugar syrup. The woman looked at us like we were nuts when we asked for a fistful of spoons. These are all cell-phone photos so sorry for the poor quality especially of the indoor shots. Around the corner there are some stone steps outside a building that might be or have been a bank, so we settled in there and ate some comforting tofu, pouring a little sugar syrup at a time on top. We ate about half of it. There was much discussion about how to convey the rest back to FCI. I suggested we throw out the remaining 60 cents worth of tofu but nobody listened to me. It was claimed with authority that later, after we cooked all day and laid out a buffet, the tofu would be part of the buffet and we could taste it again, and that this would somehow be educational. Upon our return to FCI the tofu was placed in the refrigerator. It was of course completely forgotten and never re-emerged. I assume for the next week various people will open the refrigerator in the FCI's fourth-floor kitchen and wonder what it is. Then in about a week someone will throw it out. After our tofu appetizer we went over to Century Cafe (123 Bowery between Grand and Hester) for baked goods and iced tea. The two furry looking ones in the foreground are called crunchy taro buns. We got them stuffed with pork but there were several other options. They were by far my favorite, tasting a little like old-fashioned chow mein but much better. (The crispy outside was a little like chow mein noodles, and the gooey taro interior with chunks of pork was reminiscent of pork swimming in the thick white sauce of 1970s chow mein.) Moving clockwise, there's a coconut croissant, a bun stuffed with bean paste, and a brick of lemon-curd-filled sweet bread. The place was packed -- not an empty four-top in the house so we took the end of someone else's table and the table for two by the bathroom and reallocated a bunch of chairs so our group could sort of cluster together. Century Cafe even has a website: http://centurycafe.com/

Here's one example where Christeta Comerford, the White House chef (who is Filipino) says: http://www9.gmanews.tv/story/43553/White-H...San-Miguel-beer She's Italian-American, as far as I know.

Nobody has come up with a convincing answer to the question "Why aren't there more Filipino restaurants in the US?" Filipino is the second-largest Asian-American group after Chinese-American so in theory there should be more Filipino restaurants than Indian, Korean, Japanese or Thai. But there are hardly any. Some have suggested it's because the Filipino culture doesn't look approvingly on restaurant careers. Some say it's a marketing issue. Nobody is really sure what's going on here. Certainly it's not because the food is bad. There are as many great dishes in the Filipino repertoire as there are in any other Southeast Asian cuisine. And today I'm going to eat them. I'm on my way downtown (writing to you from my home away from home, the #6 subway) to attend a 5-hour Filipino cooking class at the French Culinary Institute taught by Annette Tomei. Annette is one of the chef-instructors at FCI and is also a student in my food-blogging class. Annette writes a food-travel blog called Wander, Eat & Tell, and it's well worth checking out, whether you're interested in culinary travel to Italy, Brooklyn or Sebu [correction: Cebu], and also for Annette's experience, expertise and infectious enthusiasm. The class runs from 10am to 3pm. We're supposed to meet out front of the FCI at 10, shop for ingredients (and, I hope, have snacks) in Chinatown, repair to the FCI kitchens to cook, and then have a late lunch wherein we eat what we've cooked. Annette is doing this for free, out of the kindness of her heart and her belief that Filipino food deserves more exposure, so the only cost to those of us taking the class is a contribution to the ingredients kitty. I'll report back later.

The menu description is "Frittata - Merguez, Pepper and Onion." It's basically an open-faced omelette with Merguez sausage, peppers and onions on top. Depending on how strict you are about the definition of frittata, you might argue that it's not a frittata. I'm pretty sure they make the Merguez sausage, but I'd have to double check.

I've been back at L'Ecole for brunch the past two weekends, with parties of five, so I think now I've tasted everything on the brunch menu or maybe almost everything. A big surprise on the appetizer section of the menu is the fried calamari. It took a few visits to get to it, because it's such an unlikely brunch appetizer, but it's some of the best fried calamari I've had. Not only is the calamari itself unusually tender, but also the breading-and-frying job is incredibly competent. There's also a spicy chipotle aioli with it, which is even less brunch-like than fried calamari itself, but like all the sauces at L'Ecole it's made to a very high standard. Having now tried it three times, I'll say that the poached salmon entree is a total winner. It's a tied hunk of salmon that isn't really the size of a baseball but has that scale of visual impact when it's served. Also comes with a few pieces of asparagus and a citrus sauce, but the salmon itself steals the show. Other favorite appetizers: hamachi tartare, smoked salmon, seafood sausage Other favorite entrees: eggs Florentine, eggs Benedict, frittata with Merguez sausage, steak and eggs. Desserts do cost extra and are neither necessary (the two courses you get in the prix fixe are a lot of food) nor important (they're better than average restaurant desserts but not superlative). If you want to maximize value, the way to go is the two-course prix fixe and nothing else. Once you start adding other stuff the value becomes less amazing relative to other restaurants. The only item I'm not particularly recommending is the hamburger, both because ratatouille on a hamburger is not appealing to me (though you can of course just leave it off) and because this hamburger is not particularly competitive with the top examples in town.

Nothing new to report. As I mentioned, I'm going to do everybody a favor and stop posting updates until there's an actual airing, after which there should be a link to the video available. Rest assured, when there's a link or an air date, if there ever is one, you'll hear all about it!

Some bread freezes better than other bread, in my experience. Delicately textured rolls and such freeze only well enough to be used as toast. Heavier, whole-grain breads tend to freeze exceptionally well, such that I've been fooled many times, and fooled other people many times. I even know of one restaurant where the in-house baker doesn't work Sunday but the restaurant is open, so they just freeze bread on Friday and Saturday and use it on Sunday. There appears to be no record of any customer ever noticing -- including me. But there's another issue with sandwiches. It's one thing if you make and eat a sandwich immediately. But if you make and pack a sandwich to eat later, the advantages of fresh bread are pretty much lost. And using frozen bread actually works as a mini-refrigeration system for a while, plus at least in the early part of the day, while the sandwich is sitting around wrapped in foil or plastic, frozen bread gets less soggy than unfrozen bread if you're using fillings and spreads that tend to make bread soggy. So for sandwiches that I'm going to take with me somewhere, I actually prefer frozen bread. That's a separate question from fillings, which I haven't experimented with as much.

We spend a couple of weeks a year at our friends' beach house, where they have a Jenn-Air cooktop with downdraft ventilation. This is a high-end installation with ducting to the outside. In my experience with this one unit, it's not an effective system of ventilation for serious cooking. It's fine if you just need to pull out some steam from making macaroni and cheese from a box. But if you want to sear a piece of meat it's a different story.

The Society is pleased to welcome Caviar & Codfish as an eG Ethics code signatory. Caviar & Codfish is the popular cooking blog of Robin Damstra. She started the blog as The Clumsy Cook in 2006 and renamed it Caviar & Codfish in 2008 "with a vague idea that it meant something along the lines of 'a blog covering everything from the posh to the peasant,' but I mainly just liked the name." Welcome!

It turns out that Adam Kuban of SliceNY and Serious Eats, who gave me the initial push to republish the old pizza guide, has in his possession an actual hard-copy printout from 8 years ago. He has posted about it on the SliceNY blog.

The Society is pleased to welcome In Jennie's Kitchen as an eG Ethics code signatory. In Jennie's Kitchen is the blog of Jennifer Perillo, food editor at Working Mother magazine and contributor to Parenting magazine and others. In Jennie's Kitchen "dishes up a daily recipe to keep you satisfied all day long." Welcome!

Just when you thought you'd heard the last of this, the Toronto Star's columnist tries a week without shopping.

I have no idea whether the methodology here is credible -- I imagine it's questionable given the scope of the claim -- but a New York 1 News poll indicates the half of New Yorkers have stopped dining out.

The Society is pleased to welcome The Wine Curmudgeon as an eG Ethics code signatory. The Wine Curmudgeon is the blog of Jeff Siegel, wine writer for the Star-Telegram newspaper in Fort Worth, Texas, and Advocate Magazines in Dallas, Texas, as well as a contributor to many other publications. Jeff's philosophy is: "The wine industry tries to intimidate consumers instead of educating them -- and nuts to that." Of particular note is Jeff's recent blog post on "Wine Blogging and Ethics." Welcome!

The following is the list of signatories to the eG Ethics code. The first post of this topic will always contain the current list of signatories. Subsequent posts on this topic are for welcome announcements. As we audit each signatory and roll out the list, we will be trying to make announcements each weekday. There are many signatories in the pipeline, but we won't add them to the list until we give them each a proper welcome. eG Ethics Signatories Blogs and other website signatories A Canadian Foodie Aidan Brooks, Trainee Chef Alexandra Forbes An Olive Tree Grows in Manhattan Bakin’ & Bacon Caviar & Codfish The Cocktail Revolution Conversations at the Wienerburger Diner Cooking With Julie Docsconz - The Blog Do You Know The Muffin Man? Don Lucho Eat in OC Eating in Dallas Edgeplay From the Southern Table Hungry Sofia In Jennie's Kitchen Indirect Heat Local Appetite Luscious Repast Lydia Itoi MacGyver's Kitchen Mark Cooks Mark Is Cooking matthews-table.com On Food and Becoming a Chef On Golden Fond Oui, Chef Pen & Fork Prix Fixe Raw Gastronomy Scott Can Cook Seattle Food Geek So Good: Food & Wine with Heather Johnston Tasty Travails The Tea Archive Upstart Kitchen Varmint Bites The Vegetarian Gourmand Vino Mundo The Wine Curmudgeon The Wright Table Individual signatories "BadRabbit" "Banana Lady" "Clarence Pitbull Shields" "David Wondrich" "Devany" "Dick Atchison" "Docrjm" "donnalabel" "J.J. O'Leary" "j6ppc" "judiu" "Kelly A Donovan" "KendallCollege" "Leslie Craven" "Lindacakes" "Lisa Shock" "LPShanet" "lyndon" "Marya D." "Mickey Berman" "mollyf" "Monique" "mossland" "Oakglen" "Pat Oneill" "Pearl Shavzin" "PedroG" "Peter B Wolf" "Peter the eater" "Porthos" "ray goud" "ronseale" "Splificator" "stick" "T Raveret" "tgbell10100" "Theabroma" eGullet Society volunteer team signatories [TK]

This just in from the publicist: the Richman pizza shock and awe campaign continues with a GQ blog entry on three New York pizzerias: Emporio, Ignazio’s and Tonda. It also ends with the teaser: "Next week: The old guard—Patsy’s, Grimaldi’s, and Di Fara."

Just as a data point the North Carolina pitmaster Ed Mitchell is using all organic meats at his restaurant, The Pit, in Raleigh. http://www.thepit-raleigh.com Based on the menu I wouldn't characterize it as super-expensive, and without seeing the portion sizes it's hard to tell for sure, but it does seem at first blush to be substantially more expensive than the average North Carolina barbecue place.

When I was younger and cheesier my default order at any standard-issue pizzeria was extra cheese on a whole pie, and it didn't seem to me to come out like the Ray's slices. For lack of a more precise term, the Ray's cheese layer seems creamier to me than that of a generic pie with extra cheese, or a deep-dish pie. I don't know if it's a blend of cheeses or a specific product or something in the craftsmanship (which seems less likely) but a Ray's slice doesn't seem to me like just a generic slice with extra cheese.

If I had to take a wild guess I'd say they're using gas-fired steel pizza ovens with ceramic oven-floor inserts. But you never know. Next person to go there let us know.