slkinsey
-
Posts
11,151 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by slkinsey
-
-
When something is butterflied, a piece of meat is cut in half almost all the way through and then spread out flat. It refers to taking a piece of meat, cutting into the meat and thereby spreading out that piece of meat over a larger area. Spatchcocking specifically refers to cutting through the backbone (or breastbone) of poultry and spreading the whole bird out flat. Since the meat itself is not opened up and spread out when a bird is spatchcocked, is is not butterflied.
-
We are so ahead of the curve! Scrolll down to the last question.
-
Do you suppose that there may be some kind of quasi-institutional pressure for US food writers to dislike Ducasse's NYC places? Like they might be seen as having the wrong kind of taste if they enjoyed it? After the ADNY review debacle, I can imagine most critics going in to Mix already knowing they wouldn't like it and were going to give it a bad review. And, indeed, they may feel consciously or subconsciously that their work may be viewed negatively if they go against the grain. The same may be true with a certain group of diners as well. Certainly this happens in my world, where many people go to an opera performance already knowing whether or not they will like a performance by Rene Fleming (it is both cool and uncool to be a fan of La Fleming, depending on one's peer group).
-
You will find that the chef at Moto is very much a fan of cooking sous-vide.
Sounds like an interesting place. I'd love to check it out.
-
Yup, Lodge cast iron.
Seasoned raw cast iron is not, IMO, good for braising and low/slow cooking unless you like the taste of iron. Careful seasoning can mitigate the reactivity problem somewhat, but cannot eliminate it entirely. If you cook something for several hours -- especially something containing wine, tomato or other acids -- that metal taste will get in there.
-
Does enameled cast iron go in the dishwasher?
-
The proof of this hypothesis is, I think, found in the abundance of extremely mediocre pizza coming out of coal-fired ovens in the City.
The hypothesis sounds good on the face of it, but I didn't think there were more than a handful of coal-fired ovens operating in NYC. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Can you be more specific about which places with coal-fired ovens are producing mediocre pizza?
Several of the Patsy's have coal-fired ovens, AFAIK. And all are mediocre other than the one in East Harlem.
-
Jamie, my working hypothesis is that the quality of the pizza depends on three things, in this order: 1. the quality of the ingredients, 2. the expertise of the pizzaiolo and 3. the equipment used.
Great pizza starts with great ingredients. No one can make great pizza with crappy cheese and an insipid sauce. Then, as Di Fara demonstrates, a great pizzaiolo can take the pizza to the next level on just about any equipment. Finally, I do agree that there are certain effects that are only possible with a coal- or wood-fired pizza oven. But the third consideration only comes into play if the other two are already met. I don't believe a coal-fired oven can overcome substandard ingredients, and I don't believe a coal-fired oven can compensate for an unskilled pizzaiolo or an operation which has priorities other than the quality of the pizza (e.g., volume -- one of the things that makes Di Fara so good is that Dom's slow pace keeps his crappy oven at the highest temperature it can manage). The proof of this hypothesis is, I think, found in the abundance of extremely mediocre pizza coming out of coal-fired ovens in the City. I'll take a skilled pizzaiolo with a gas-fired stainless oven over some schmo with a coal-fired masonry oven any day of the week.
-
I sincerely believe that you could limit your pizza search to the places that have [coal-fired] ovens, if expediency was an issue. Which, of course, it isn't!
Before Saturday, I would have said the same thing. But, if nothing else, the pizza at Di Fara puts the lie to this argument. Dom's pizza is miles better than what many coal-fired ovens are producing -- quite a bit of which is not all that good (e.g., non-Harlem Patsy's).
-
I am embarrassed to see that even though I grew up in Brooklyn, I never heard of DiFara's pizza until this thread. Man, do I feel deprived! I wish I could be there for these outings.
What's the matter, your car's broken? Come for the next one.
...just the way the pizza is made makes it unlikely that it would be mozzarella (di bufala), since mozzarella has too much moisture and if slow cooked at a lower temperature as his appears to be would make the crust too soggy. The best pizze with mozzarella di bufala is baked quickly in a very hot oven.It is definitely high-moisture fresh mozzarella but not, as Joe points out, mozzarella di buffala. It is Fior di Latte Ovoline from Grande. Dom uses something like 75% Grande low moisture mozzarella and 25% of the fior di latte fresh mozzarella, then sprinkles on some parmigiano reggiano just before taking it out of the oven. This imparts the richness and freshness of fresh mozzarella without making the pizza soggy. If you take a look at this picture, the white parts are from the fior di latte fresh mozzarella:
-
That's the standard calzone size?
As far as I know, yea. Take a look at the menu:
I only see one price for calzone, and it says "large."
To add a bit of data: I just completed the all-important "reheated leftovers" test. Put two pieces of artichoke pizza and one piece of porcini calzone on a cast iron round griddle pan and then into a 350 degree oven for around 15 minutes. The pizza crisped right back up, much better than most leftover pizza which is almost always slightly soggy no matter what you do. The calzone needed another 5 minutes to heat through and was also delicious. Definitely better than run-of-the-mill reheated pizza.
What we really need to do is go out there around 2:00 on a Tuesday or something like that. Then business will be slow, and I bet we could ask him a lot of questions. It's an interesting prospect, because I think he represents a rare level of access to this kind of expertise and he seems happy to talk about it.
-
The thing that is so stupid about these reviews is that most anyone who has been to Mix with an open mind understands that they are serving outstanding food. Not only that, but Doug Psaltis has got to be the most approachable chef at that level in the city, or among the top two or three in that respect. And really, I think they miss the mark when they criticize the place for not being casual and fun enough. It's not a fancied-up casual place, it's a casualed-down über-fancy place. I find a lot of the things there (peanut butter and jelly, maccheroni and cheese, we even had "grilled cheese and tomato" there) are a lot of fun, in a certain sense. But it's in the sense that a Schubert song can be fun, not in the sense that a Weird Al Yankovic song can be fun. The same thing is true with respect to the prices. It's not inexpensive compared to, say, SQC or Pastis -- but it certainly is less expensive compared to AY/NY or Jean-Georges.
-
From what I understand, that's the size they make the calzoni at Di Fara. Beautiful, aren't they?
Fuck yeah! (I like the picture where you and Joe are transfixed by the thing.) Great pictures; I really wish I could have come. It'll be frustrating to go to DiFara's and not be able to try all that stuff at once. Please say that you all won't mind another trip to Brooklyn in a few months.
The pictures are awesome, aren't they? I only wish we could have got one of Dom pulling a pizza out of the oven with his bare hands. But the crush around the counter, and the angle and speed at which he works made it pretty much impossible. I love those pics where you can see straight into the oven.
As for another trip to Di Fara in a few months... definitely! JJ, we actually brought home leftovers, much to my dismay. Yes, I am sad to say that my fellow eGluttons were as big letdown. We ordered enough food to feed 18 people, and the 9 of us were only able to finish enough for 17. If you were there, I feel confident that we could have eaten enough for at least 20.
-
From what I understand, that's the size they make the calzoni at Di Fara. Beautiful, aren't they?
I agree about tasting the round plain pizza first. But, as Pan points out, Dom makes 'em in the order he makes 'em. It was crowded off and on while we were there, and Dom was more or less working constantly (although things had thinned out appreciably by the time he left, so Joe and I were able to chat with him for a few minutes), so I am willing to make great allowances with respect to the order of the pizze. In future trips there, I'll definitely try to make sure we get the plain pizza first.
I should add that I hope my discussion of the few minor flaws with the plain pizza do not convey the impression that I didn't eat it with great enthusiasm.
-
One of the guys at Gotham Wines & Liquors just told me that Lagavulin would not be imported into the US for a 4 year period. Any truth to this?
-
Hmmm... Liquore Strega doesn't taste so licorice-like to me. I taste black pepper, a few other things hard to define... and maybe the slightest hint of anise. Then again... the bottle I have is one I found unopened in a crate of my grandfather's stuff that he bought when he was living in Rome back in the 50s. Maybe it changed with age.
-
Di Fara - 1424 Avenue J at 15th Street, Brooklyn
Owner and solo pizzaiolo Domenico De Marco is the show here. Dom, as he seems to be called, was born in Italy outside Napoli. As JosephB and I discovered, he returns there from time to time and remains quite fluent in Italian. He makes all the pizza right out in the open, at his own deliberate pace. And yet, there was not heard one single complaint from the large crowd assembled to purchase his wares. Mr. De Marco is definitely one of those artisans whose artifice borders on art in a certain sense, and it was a pleasure to watch him at work. All the pizze are formed by hand and sauced with Di Fara's excellent house-made tomato sauce. Then he picks up an old box grater, shaves some low-moisture mozzarella directly onto the pizza, scatters on a few dabs of fresh mozzarella and a drizzle of olive oil. The whole thing goes into a delapidated old stainless steel pizza oven. Yes, that's right... a gas fired stainless steel pizza oven. And yet, he still manages to turn out some of NYC's best pizza. As Fat Guy remarked to me recently, based on his own comprehensive look at NYC pizza some years ago, the more you look around the more you come to understand that the quality of a pizza depends far more on the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the pizzaiolo than the equipment used or an adherance to certain pizza-making dogma. So, on to the pizza:
We started with one of Di Fara's house specialties: the square pizza. Well... really it's a rectangular pizza. The crust is slightly thicker than a standard round pizza, but not at all thick and bready like a"Sicilian" pizza. Unlike their round pizze (more on this later), the square pizze are baked in large rectangular pans greased with olive oil. Dom ladles on a fairly thick layer of sauce and then bakes just the crust and the sauce in the oven. Later, the tray comes out for some cheese and other toppings, plus a little extra sauce before going back in for another baking. We had two: one with pepperoni and one with sauteed fresh artichokes. Both were outstanding. The crusts were robust, stiff (as opposed to flexible) and extremely crispy. The pepperoni was sliced by hand significantly thicker than is usual. The artichokes were amazing. It is the first time I have ever had non-canned artichokes on pizza in the US.
After that came two of the largest and prettiest calzoni I have seen. Each one was essentially a pizza folded in half. The first was cheese, prosciutto and rape di broccoli. The second was cheese and porcini. Most everyone preferred the porcini calzone, and he certainly doesn't skimp on the mushrooms. Despite being gigantic, they were surprizingly light. That said, I would have preferred a smaller amount of filling for a better crust-to-filling ratio.
Last came the standard, plain round cheese/tomato pizza. This was excellent in many ways. First and foremost, it is the perfect vehicle for experiencing Di Fara's excellent sauce and cheese blend. The toppings are not applied with a heavy hand, which is always a plus in my book. The crust was thin and crisp. However, many of us felt that it didn't have quite the character that well-made pizza can attain in the hands of an expert working with a coal- or wood-fired oven. The bottom was nicely browned, but there was no char and no blistering of the top crust. Significantly, as JosephB and I discussed, the crust didn't have quite the morbidezza we would have liked (Joe can describe this better than I). The very best pizza has a crisp bottom, but also a thin layer of softer, less cooked-through dough above. Di Fara's pizze take around 15-20 minutes to bake, whereas coal- and wood-fired ovens take around 5. Our working hypothesis is that the longer baking at Di Fara means a more evenly and fully cooked crust, whereas coal- and wood-fired ovens work so quickly that the bottom is crisped and the toppings cooked before the crust is entirely cooked through. All this said, however, the fact remains that Di Fara's "standard" pizza is still miles better than most NYC coal- and wood-fired examples -- a testament to Domenico De Marco's skill.
-
It's not necessarily a brat-grilling uniform. Ordinarily the proper attire includes bare arms so you can burn off all your arm hair. This is more of a "-20 degree wind chill" kind of uniform. The camouflage pattern is very important for those times when you want to conceal yourself among a large group of hunters... especially if those hunters are trying to steal your brats.
The model, I agree, is quite stunning.
-
While I don't necessarily disagree with these points it strikes me that the consistently best espresso, by far, I have had has been in Italy. The places there 1. tend to pre-grind the coffee, 6. use the tamper on the front of the grinder, and 11. could never tell you how hard they tamp.
-
some of my favorite espressos have been from beands best described as medium-dark (full city plus). Perhaps just a hint of oil on the surface at most.
This is, in my experience, the Central-to-Northern roast in Italy. The coffee can get pretty carbonized in the South, but still often not as dark as some of the so-called "Italian espresso roasts" one finds in the US.
-
it should take 20-30 seconds for the espresso shot to appear, from when they push the button to start it to when they stop the machine. This should also produce 1.5-2 ounces of espresso for a double shot.
You think it's 20-30 seconds from pressing the button to 1.5-2 ounces? I have heard that one "starts the clock" once the first bit of coffee comes out the spout. On my machine (Rancilio) it can sometimes take 7 seconds or so for anything at all to come out. That doesn't leave much time for extraction.
-
alacarte, laurenmilan and herbacidal... if I may step in with my moderator hat on: please keep it about NY burgers in here. OT talk is for PMs and the Member Bios, and other food-related topics are for other threads. Thanks!
-
What's forbidden rice?
You can't have any.
-
I like Pan's criteria of <$30 without wine per person. Nothing in NYC can be "fancy" for 30 bucks.
NYT Articles on Food, Drink, Cooking, and Culinary Culture (2002–2005)
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
If only there were a place where a wide variety of people who know about and appreciate food on all levels could write about their impressions and thoughts concerning various restaurants...