slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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I agree with Alex re the heat issues. Any time a delicate, aromatic food is subjected to a lot of heat over a substantial length of time, the very same volatile chemicals that give it all its interest are driven off.
As for other truffle products, I have always felt that the best bang for the buck is "truffle carpaccio." This is a jar of the trimmings from black summer truffles in oil. It provides a nice truffle presence without breaking your pocketbook. If you want to make a risotto or potato puree with truffles, you could do much worse. I think it's better for these uses than truffle oil (which, AFAIK, are all artificially flavored). That said, truffle carpaccio (and black summer truffles overall) are no match for real black truffles or, better yet, white truffles.
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This might also explain why you are told when making a reservation that shorts, jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers are NOT allowed.
Do they really say that?!
They were very polite about it, but yes, they made clear there is a dress code.
That says something very interesting about different restaurant cultures around the US and, one supposes, the world. I could never imagine walking into a place like Per Se in an outfit that included shorts, jeans, t-shirts, or sneakers.
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Ugh. This is like the people who make a point of going to the Hard Rock Cafe when they are in a foreign country. "Oh boy! Crappy American food in France!"
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I also have an interesting stock-making hypothesis I am going to test the next time I make stock (soon, because I am running out).
I am going to run all the meat, bones and vegetables through my industrial-strength meat grinder. My thought is that it will lead to faster and more complete extraction of both flavors and gelatin. My general stock-making process, FWIW, is to leave it on the stove overnight substantially below the simmer (~180F/82C).
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This might also explain why you are told when making a reservation that shorts, jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers are NOT allowed.
Do they really say that?!
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Sounds cool, Sara. Are you sure you don't mean stracciatella? Were the clams and the pasta in a broth? The only pasta with which I am familiar that I would describe as "pearl-like" is fregula from Sardegna.
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Ah! Interesting. Do they describe it as "frozen almond milk" or "almond milk ice cream"? The use of the word "ice cream" might be ill-advised in that it leads one to the expectation of a creamy texture rather than an icey one. Perhaps "almond milk sorbet" would be better. I wonder what Fat Guy and Snausages2000 would say about it if they reexamined their impressions with a "sorbet" paradigm rather than an "ice cream" paradigm.
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Nope. "Trotter" just means the food of a pig (or sheep) -- especially when used as food.
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Yes.
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Calimero, I'm glad to hear that you think Setaro pasta is a top product. As Sam said, the Italian grocery store in the Chelsea Market in NYC has an impressive selection of Setaro pasta. The prices are $3.99 to $4.99 per kilo, which is quite a bit more than you are paying, but well worth it. It is now the only brand I buy.
It's not the only brand I buy (I have maybe 4-5 favorite brands), but I certainly am buying a lot of it!
I think it's worthwhile putting the price in perspective, too. While Setaro may cost as much as $2.27/pound ($4.99/kilo) in New York City compared to De Cecco at around $1.30/pound and "lower" brands as low as $0.75/pound... a pound of pasta is still a lot of food for two dollars and twenty-seven cents! That's enough pasta to make dinner for a family of four, or... er... Fat Guy and me. So, while Setaro may be "expensive" compared to Garofolo, it's still quite inexpensive in the grand scheme of things -- especially within the context of what everything else costs in a place like NYC. It's certainly cheap enough that making Setaro one of the "house pastas" I like to have around for frequent use doesn't have much of an impact on my food expenditures.
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I use pasta from Naples for everydays pasta dishes. The brand is Pasta Garofalo. For special occasions (if I have to use dry pasta) i use pasta Setaro.
Setaro! One of my favorites. JosephB turned me on to a place in NYC that sells a lot of Setaro, and I've been cooking it frequently. In fact, I have some Setaro bucatini in my kitchen right now that is about a meter long.
I also like Latini and Rustichella d'Abruzzo.
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I don't think anything says summer quite like the beautiful Gin and Tonic.
I've always meant to try David Rosengarten's G&T recipe. It calls for 3:4 gin to Schweppes Tonic Water... but the interesting twist is that the ice cubes are made with frozen Schweppes Tonic Water. He says he prefers Plymouth, though, which doesn't make much sense to me. I'd rather have a more strongly juniper-flavored (and more alcoholic) gin in a G&T. Something like Junipero.
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Yes, but... it's disdain leavened with amusement.
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What follows is even more fun:
Ninety percent of the customers are in sport coats or sun dresses, golf shirts, khakis, trading desk twin-sets, checked buttondowns, even a few ties. Because, you know, it's a restaurant. And you would think it more comfortable to eat in dry clothes.But in this city, what is in the wallet always trumps where the wallet resides. No one says boo. The gym rats take their places at tables and the rest of us turn to our plates, eyebrows raised in disdain and amusement.
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Okay... we've had some fun topic drift. Let's reel this one in and get back to NYC-compatible restaurant attire.
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As bergerka says, we found our way down to Landmarc Wednesday evening, along with Eric Malson. I think it's safe to say that I am even more fond of this place now than I was following my initial visit.
Now... I'd only been to Landmarc once before, almost exactly one month ago. Yet, the minute I walked into the front door the FOH manager recognized me immediately and said, "oh, we have a special tonight I know you're going to like" (more on that later). Okay, for the record, we did communicate with the restaurant before we showed up for our offal tour last month, and it is a bit unusual for people to run around the city gobbling down organ meats, but there are places at a similar price point on the UWS I've been visiting for years that don't make me feel this welcome. This level of personal attention and warmth was typical of our entire evening there.
Since it was still a bit early in the evening for us (6:30) we decided to have a drink at the bar. Very nice. As reported, it is a small bar (although there is another little area over to the side where people with drinks can congregate). Visually, it is very impressive. You can get a good idea of the style here. We chose from their list of house cocktails. bergerka had a "pomegranate negroni" (tanqueray, campari, pomegranate juice, soda) that was very nice. Eric and I had what they call a "French gimlet." This is a "new style gimlet" made with both sweet and (mostly) fresh lime juice. The "French" part is that the glass is rinsed with Ricard. They're usually made with Grey Goose vodka, but we had ours with Bombay Sapphire instead. Delicious. The sourness of the fresh lime juice makes it very refreshing, and a slight whisper of Pernod is always there in the background. I'll be trying this one out at home for sure.
After that, bergerka and I split an "Ice Wine Martini" (which the bartender graciously offered to split into two glasses for us). This drink has got to be their signature cocktail at this point. It's similar in conception to the Per Se Cocktail, which is to say that it is a simple, austere drink where good vodka serves as a canvas for a high quality secondary ingredient. At Landnarc, it's Ketel One vodka and Hunt Country ice wine with a fresh blueberry garnish. We loved it and, interestingly, by the time I got to the bottom of my half-sized cocktail, the blueberry had really started to flavor the drink. Landmarc's cocktails are all very competitively priced (especially compared to the Per Se Cocktail) at ten or eleven dollars. The bartender, Dan Lerner, is a fan of the classics, has mad skills with a Boston shaker and pours from the glass half using a julep strainer -- all things I like. Interestingly, he's also the son of a well-known classical singer and voice teacher. Continuing the theme of friendly hospitality, both owners and the beverage director dropped by for a chat while we were at the bar. When it came time to eat, they even gave me the same table I had last time (which is a nice one, IMO, with a good view of the entire restaurant). My only substantial criticism of the bar is that it is quite close to the open fire/grill at the back of the room, and it can get a little warm on that side of your body.
The special turned out to me a pig's trotter appetizer, which of course I had to have. It turned out to be a small cross-section of cold boneless pig's trotter with some mustard and a nice little salad of frisee and parsley. It was cool. I've never had trotters cold before, and the gelatin gave it an interesting texture. bergerka had the foie gras terrine with pickled red onions. I'm not sure I have much to add to what others have said on this thread. It is extremely tasty (how couldn't it be?) and an amazing deal at 12 dollars. Plenty or places could charge 20 for this and people wouldn't bat an eye. Eric had roasted marrow bones with onion marmalade and grilled country bread. Three huge marrow bones, which arrived at the table still sizzling and contained an unusually large amount of marrow. Hard to go wrong there. I don't know why every restaurant in the city isn't offering roaster marrow bones. We started with the 9 dollar half-bottle of Rioja which, as tommy says, one can hardly afford to not order.
For mains, Eric had the sweetbreads I described in a previous post. They were great. bergerka had a small order of mussles with pesto and cherry tomatoes and a side order of frites. The frites could have been a bit crisper for our taste, but the mussles were wonderful and a small order was enough to feed an army! Fat Guy is right on the money about the pesto/tomato/mussel broth. At this point, I think they just know to start bringing over extra baskets of bread whenever anyone orders mussels. On pnapoli's recommendation, I had the grilled quail with sautéed mushrooms, bacon and cherry tomatoes. Some of the best grilled quail I've had. Quail is often dry, but not this one. Cooked just through, but moist and flavorful throughout. With the mains we split a half bottle of Jed Steele 2002 Carneros Pinot Noir (12 dollars!) that was very nice... just the right amount of richer and deeper.
We had the "works" for dessert again. The chocolate mousse had seriously improved since last time, and is lighter with good bitter undertones. They now offer a very nice nougat glacee instead of the apple tart, which is an improvement. The granitas are also improved, and are actually now sorbets (coconut, strawberry and orange). The blueberry crumble, creme brulee and lemon tart remained as the high points, but everything else definitely took a step closer to that level.
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"The Allen Cocktail". The receipt calls for:
4 parts gin (i.e., 2.0 oz)
1 part maraschino liqueur (i.e., 0.5 oz)
1/2 tsp fresh lemon (i.e., 0.1 oz)
lemon twist
colored text is editorial
This recipe isn't all that different from my Aviation recipe:
2.0 oz : gin0.5 oz : fresh lemon juice
0.5 oz : maraschino
Lemon twist
The main difference is that the Allen Cocktail uses substantially less lemon juice. Other than that, they are identical. I would tend to agree with Dan that these ratios don't sound as good to me. The drink would be too sweet and wouldn't have the refreshing sourness of an Aviation.
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[On the other hand, I tend to cook and eat pasta more like an Italian than an American. This is to say that I don't use much sauce, that the taste and the texture of the pasta is the most important thing to me, and that I always make sure the pasta stands up to the tooth. When I am eating spaghetti, I want that subtle "d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d" feeling as my teeth break through every individual strand of pasta on my fork.
I don't overcook my spaghetti or use too much sauce (actually, I use less than my Italian grandparents). I can get plenty of strands on the fork. When you're biting through a forkful of strands of spaghetti, there's no way you can tell if those strands happen to be long or short.
Well, then, all I can suggest is that our perceptions are different. In my experience broken-in-half pasta long strand is unappealing for the reasons I outlined, namely: 1. it does not wind around the fork very well without flopping off (unless overcooked); 2. it does not do a very good job of twirling up the other ingredients (e.g., little clams or pieces of guanciale); 3. when biting into the pasta twirled around the fork, it lacks a certain textural interest it has for me at full length. As with everything in life, YMMV.
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You can often find key limes at Fairway.
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I cut up my spaghetti after it's cooked...nothing precise...I just run a dull table knife through the pasta bowl. Why? I'm not interested in recreating the spaghetti scene from "Lady and the Tramp". Short strands get the job done. There's no need to do the winding-the-fork-on-the-spoon trick with short strands and short strands also tend to save my shirt from errant sauce splatters more than with long strands.
In my mind, you're missing the best part of what pasta can be. If you're finding sauce splatters on your shirt, you're using too much sauce. If you don't notice the difference, I bet you're cooking the pasta too much. Now, of course, these ideas come from my own personal Italian-influenced ideas about what pasta should be like, and I wouldn't suggest that there aren't other ways to enjoy pasta... but I will admit that I think many of these other ways are missing out on the best part.
Pasta Police, be damned.Speaking of the pasta police, we have a funny story in my family. When my mother was living in Rome after the War, she went out to a trattoria with her family for some pasta. They commenced the fork-and-spoon routine that is common in America. Upon seeing this, a friendly older Roman gentleman jumped up from the adjacent table in mock horror, said "oh, no! you mustn't eat spahgetti that way!" and went on to explain that the pasta should only be twirled by the fork on the plate -- never with a spoon.
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Besides, regular mass-produced strand dry pasta is only what, a foot long? No reason to make it any shorter. I have some artisinal dry pasta that is around 4 feet long!
That only indicates that the length is completely arbitrary--packaged pasta is cut for the convenience of the producer.
No, I wouldn't exactly say that is true. What I would suggest is that around a foot long is the minimum length required for long strand pasta. Your suggestion that the typical length of long strand dry pasta is completely arbitrary doesn't make sense to me. If that's true, it is only true insofar as it relates to how short the pasta is, rather than how long. This is to say that it is undoubtedly more convenient for the producers to have shorter lengths of strand pasta. It would certainly be easier from a packaging, shipping and breakage standpoint for the producers to make 6-inch spaghetti rather than 12-inch spaghetti. That they don't implies to me that the current length is considered a minimum standard. It is quite common for artisinal dry pastas to be sold in a longer length.
I've broken my spaghetti in half my whole life--so did my mother, and her mother too. I've cooked it whole, and as far as I can tell, it made not the slightest bit of difference. Either way, you twirl it up and stick it in your mouth.Of course I can't dispute your personal subjective experience. From my own experience, I'll say that I can definitely tell the difference. On the other hand, I tend to cook and eat pasta more like an Italian than an American. This is to say that I don't use much sauce, that the taste and the texture of the pasta is the most important thing to me, and that I always make sure the pasta stands up to the tooth. When I am eating spaghetti, I want that subtle "d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d" feeling as my teeth break through every individual strand of pasta on my fork.
In my experience, broken-in-half strand pasta does not have very much textural interest. Also, broken-in-half strand pasta does not pick up the other ingredients very well as it is spun around the fork. In fact, I find that broken-in-half strand pasta doesn't spin around the fork very well at all.
That said, perhaps a more American style of pasta cookery (more sauce/less firm) might eliminate many of these differences that are important to me. I cannot imagine that any Italian would agree that 6-inch long spaghetti was just the same as 12-inch long spaghetti.
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So here's my challenge. You pizzeria officianados...I'd love it of you could have a high level cone of silence (thank you Don Adams and Mel Brooks) and come up with the top 2 or 3 pies in Manhattan. I believe in sometimes taking chances with new places but pizza is different.
Hi Taz.
If you're looking for the best "classic NY-style coal oven pizza" I would suggest the following...
1. Go to Patsy's in East Harlem for a plain cheese and tomato pizza.
2. Go to Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge for a sausage pizza. Show up early for lunch to be near the front of the line and get your pizza from a maximally hot oven.
These two pizzerie represent the best in the classic NY style today, IMO, and both are very convenient to your location via public transportation.
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The main thing about breaking pasta is that it ruins the textural element that is created by the long strands. If long strand pasta was meant to be eaten in short little pieces, it would have been manufactured that way.
Besides, regular mass-produced strand dry pasta is only what, a foot long? No reason to make it any shorter. I have some artisinal dry pasta that is around 4 feet long!
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I've been meaning to go (it's in my 'hood) but haven't been able to get there yet.
Cocktails That Will Never Work -- But They Do
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
Hmm. Interesting. Well, everyone can't like everything.
I've heard that there are even people who don't like gin.