Food Blog

[bergerka]

I'm jumping the gun here just a little bit, not in ANY attempt to overshadow Marlene's most droolworthy blog (I must have been crazy to volunteer this week, because she's going to be a hard act to follow), but because I have just got to get the description of tonight's dinner in here before I go to bed and the memory of how delicious it was starts to fade.

For those who don't know, I'm Kathleen. I'm an opera singer and I live on the WAY Upper West Side of New York City (I think our area is now referred to as Manhattan Valley) with slkinsey (aka "The Genius" or "The Weeniehead," depending on my mood) and our three lovely ferret babies, Asher, Zebulun and Issachar. We also have a roommate named Charlie, who may figure in here and there because every once in a while I just have to comment incredulously on his eating habits (he's usually on one kind of diet or another, I have no idea why, and the latest obsession is the South Beach monstrosity, which seems to be Atkins without any fun).

Some of this will be familiar to those who read slkinsey's foodblog way back when, because, well, I live with him and he does most (fine, all) of the cooking. However, I have a couple of nights on my own this week (and I WILL cook, I promise, and SarahD has been coerced into being my guinea pig audience) and I usually eat breakfast, which he usually does not.

Some descriptions will have pictures attached, some will not. The digital camera is slkinsey's toy so I only get to play with it when he's willing and not using it for his own nefarious purposes.

Anyway, on to tonight's dinner. I went out to Bianca down on Bleeker Street with slkinsey and ewindels. At the suggestion of the host, we waited the 1/2 hour or so it took to be seated in the bar next door (I can't remember the name), where ewindels had a glass of some Australian red wine and slkinsey and I had quite reasonably priced gin gimlets. They did not taste noticeably of gin, but they were VERY sour. That was obviously not Rose's lime juice! It was refreshing, to say the least.

Once seated, we ate the following:

Good chewy bread with a rather bright green, peppery olive oil.

Gnocchi fritti with assorted meat: fluffy little pillows of fried dough, served with prosciutto, sopressata and mortadella, plus what slkinsey says was maybe coppa (?). The gnocchi dough was quite salty, and I was worried that, combined with the meat, the salt would overwhelm the dish, but it didn't.

Sautéed chicken livers with balsamic vinegar, on little toasts: Oh. My. God. These were, in a word, fantastic. The livers were full-flavored and moussetastic in texture, and the bite of the balsamic was just right to cut through their richness. I could've made an entire dinner out of this dish.

Both the antipasto AND pasta dishes were HUGE, by the way...more than enough for the three people sharing them.

Taglialini con frutte di mare: little spaghettiesque strands of pasta with a tomatoey sauce and shrimp, calamari, clams and mussels. Very nice, with peperoncini sprinkled here and there for a spicy little kick every once in a while. I found this dish a tad bit fishy, but please note that I am WELL KNOWN for being hypersensitive to "fishy" tastes. The mussels and clams were fantastic, it was just in the sauce itself that I found the fishy taste to be just a bit much.

Gnocchi in fontina sauce: This is the very first time I have found restaurant gnocchi that were ALMOST as ethereal as slkinsey's (he makes the PERFECT gnocchi, I have always been disappointed elsewhere). The little pillowy lumps were fluffy, light, melting in the mouth, and the fontina sauce was full-flavored and extremely rich. Again--I could've been perfectly happy to eat this dish all night.

I had the (crap, can't remember the name!) superthin cuts of filet mignon with roasted potatoes and rosemary. This dish, surprisingly, NEEDED a light dusting of salt to bring out all the flavors, but once I did that it was delicious. The meat was perfectly cooked (medium rare, on the rare side), the roasted potatoes were supremely "potatoey" tasting (that's not as common as one might think!), the taste of rosemary was everywhere, not overwhelming, just appearing here and there in my mouth as I chewed.

Slkinsey had the fennel sausage with white beans and tomato, which was something like an Italian cassoulet, if you will. This was terrific, hot, flavorful and filling, one of the best dishes of the whole night, surpassed only by...

Ewindels' cotechino (sp?) with mashed potatoes. The sausage was incredibly flavorful and delicious, the potatoes were smooth, silky and EXTREMELY "potatoey" tasting, and taking a bite of the two together was heavenly. In my opinion, he had the best main dish of the night.

Ewindels and I each had a glass of the house chianti, which was quite nice. Mild, not raw tasting as some can be, went very well with each of our dishes (including, surprisingly, the gnocchi with fontina sauce...the acid in the wine cut through the rich cheese sauce and enabled me to eat far more of it than was probably necessary).

Unbelievably, we ate dessert! Among the three of us, we shared the following:

Ciambella con mascarpone: this was a crumbly, slightly dry-textured yellow cake with mascarpone on top (there was some kind of booze in it). Flavorful, not too sweet, the only way I think it would have been better is if we had ordered a little vin santo to drink with it.

Torta di ricotta: my favorite dessert of the night. This was rich, yet light, with a texture like a very fine cheesecake, but without the heaviness in the stomach (not until a while later, anyway). Even after I passed the point of painful fullness, I couldn't stop eating this.

Tortino di cioccolata: this was a dense, dark chocolate torte with ganache spread over the top, served with hand-whipped cream on the side (it was so dense and thickly textured, we thought it was whipped mascarpone, so we asked). As ewindels said, it was sex on a plate.

My only serious objection to the restaurant was the noise level, which was REALLY high. For a teeny place, it didn't feel cramped, even though it was packed from the time we walked in until the time we left.

You can find slkinsey's VERY detailed report (it's making me hungry all over again!) here.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures.

I'm now going to drink about a gallon of water and go to bed. My first post tomorrow will be slightly delayed, probably until early afternoon, because I have to get up and go sing for the Christian Scientists tomorrow morning and won't eat until after I'm done (actually, my schedule on singing Sundays is usually get up, get showered & dressed and get the hell out in about twenty minutes. Half hour, max. This means I get more sleeping time).

The ferrets, in addition to their kibble, are about to have one bowl each of ground-up raw chicken (it's in the freezer, we chip some out and warm it a bit before serving each night) and ground-up cooked chicken. They seem to vastly prefer the raw, although Zebulun is picky either way. He refuses to eat if either of the other boys is watching.

Good night, and see you tomorrow!

K

Edited March 7, 2004 by bergerka (log)

[Pan]

Thanks for the nice report, K.

Why the gallon of water?

[Marlene]

Go bergerka!

[Jake]

Thanks for the nice report, K.

Why the gallon of water?

Perhaps because of the wine??? I'm just guessing, seeing as she has to sing and all in the morning....

[Pan]

Could be.

Performers are all different. I find it really hard to perform if I haven't eaten anything (I can get lightheaded under those circumstances), but other performers throw up before every concert.

[Suzanne F]

Thanks for taking this on, Kathleen! It will be great to hear someone ELSE's opinion of Sam's prowess -- in the kitchen, I mean.

[Mayhaw Man]

but other performers throw up before every concert.

Well, this is probably better than the audience throwing up afterwards.

[slkinsey]

The water deal has several reasons: 1. Being fully hydrated is critical to proper functioning of the vocal apparatus for singing. 2. The food at Bianca (that we had anyway) was fairly salty, which made us both thirsty. 3. Alcohol isn't the greatest thing in the world for the voice for a variety of reasons, and drinking a lot of water is the best way to mitigate these effects.

[Suzanne F]

Excuse me, sir, the question was not directed at you, I believe. We can wait for the blogger herself to return and answer (even though she'll say exactly the same thing. )

[bergerka]

Whew! Finally back online. I HATE getting up early (yes, 9 am counts as early) on Sundays!

My answer re the water is basically, well, what slkinsey said. Salty food + booze + late night = very dehydrated soprano, plus I don't warm up before these services (that's pure laziness, combined with unwillingness to unnecessarily piss off our neighbors. it would be different if I were singing Vivaldi, or Handel or something high) and drinking water the night before helps my voice stay flexible without extra effort. The solo this morning was based on a Bach chorale, so sat very easily in my low-to-middle range, so wasn't really any work at all. At least it's a nice sunny day, so the pain in the ass walk to the subway (this church is far away from EVERYTHING, way down on 25th Street between 2nd and 3rd avenues) was somewhat pleasant.

On to the food! SarahD asked me yesterday if I'd be eating for myself or for the blog--for the blog, of course! This isn't to say that I'll be doing anything differently, just that I'll probably avoid doing things like picking up a yogurt and an apple and calling it lunch, which I do if I'm in a hurry. I'd rather spend the time this week showing you some of the interesting and fun places we like to go during the work week.

On my way home, I stopped at Absolute Bagels at Broadway between 107th and 108th Streets and picked up a dozen assorted mini-bagels and some cream cheese, both plain and garlic/chive, which I hadn't yet tried. Sam and I have been devotees of Lenny's, at 98th and Broadway, for years (Sam introduced me to it one morning shortly after I moved in by getting up early on a Sunday, bringing home bagels, and serving me breakfast in bed with nice fresh hot coffee), but on Fat Guy's recommendation we tried Absolute and liked their product too. The minis, in my opinion, are much better than the big ones, they tend to be dense and chewy (I find the big ones a bit bready) and I can eat more of them without feeling as guilty.

By the way, you'll find self-deprecating references here and there about either my weight, which is just fine (I'm 5'11" and currently holding steady at 143.5 pounds. I'd like to work that down to 140, just so my favorite houndstooth Liz Claiborne pants won't be too tight). I've sort of appropriated an American version of Bridget Jones' weight obsession, which is to say that I weigh myself every morning, even though I know you're not supposed to, and yes, I do occasionally marvel at the fact that I can drop a pound and a half between 6:45 am (when I usually get up on work days) and 8:30 am. I promise, though, it's in jest. I work out on a semi-regular basis and I do try to keep my weight within a certain range, but that's mostly because I can't afford the all-new wardrobe I'd need if I went up a clothing size. I don't purge, starve myself or do anything stupid like that...food tastes too good. Anyone who has actually seen me eat knows that I don't REALLY worry about my weight that much.

Anyway, here's a picture of my plate with a garlic bagel, loaded up with garlic and chive cream cheese, a mini-poppy seed muffin (I bought two because they were too cute for words) and a glass of caffeine-free Diet Coke with lemon:

I then realized I hadn't had any coffee at all. This can't be allowed. I have so FEW vices, really...coffee has to stay. Usually I prefer a nice cappuccino, but we're out of beans and ordering them is Sam's department, so I used some of the beans our roomie bought from the Porto Rico Importing Company (they cost him $3.00 per pound, for that price they're not bad) and made coffee in the French press. Miscalculated a bit and made it just slightly weak, so I had to have two cups. I doctor my coffee with 2% milk (although I'll use whatever milk substance we have, none of that non-dairy creamer or coffeemate shit though, and I LOVE whipped cream in coffee) and one teaspoon of sugar.

Here's my coffee, with the French press and sugar bowl so that it looks pretty. Sam got these glasses with a bottle of Drambuie and I love them for coffee. In the background you can see the holder full of wood and plastic utensils and the one full of metal utensils, the back of the Rancilio cappuccino maker, and our other two cutting boards.

I'm now sated, and after two garlic bagels and one sesame seed, all with chive and garlic cream cheese (the stuff is addictive. We had plain, scallion and - ick - lox cream cheese waiting at home, but I couldn't stop with the garlic/chive!), one glass of diet coke and two cups of coffee, I'm sure my breath is wonderful.

The ferrets are taking a nap, all curled up together, and I think I might eventually join them.

More later. Holler if I've missed anything or if there's anything you want to know.

By the way, I'm kind of a technological idiot, and slkinsey very patiently and sweetly taught me how to size and upload these pictures. Yay Sam! Yet another of the multitude of reasons he's the world's best boyfriend.

K

[Pan]

You don't warm up at all before singing a service? You've got balls!

Don't you at least show up early enough to sing a few notes before singing for real in the service? I would never choose to perform without warming up beforehand!

What do you have against lox, or is it just that the idea of lox already combined with cream cheese is disgusting to you?

I'm enjoying this blog. In print, you're coming off pretty much just like you do in person - lively, funny, smart, talkative, interesting. And I'm sure your breath smelled fine, for us garlic lovers.

[mags]

Both dinner and breakfast sound divine, I am pea-green jealous of your ability to eat like that and keep your current weight, and I WANNA SEE PIX OF THE FERRETS!!!

[Jake]

Both dinner and breakfast sound divine, I am pea-green jealous of your ability to eat like that and keep your current weight, and I WANNA SEE PIX OF THE FERRETS!!!

Oh yes, please. Years ago I had a boyfriend who had a ferret. It was lovely, but did have a rather potent smell...

[KatieLoeb]

Both dinner and breakfast sound divine, I am pea-green jealous of your ability to eat like that and keep your current weight, and I WANNA SEE PIX OF THE FERRETS!!!

Oh yes, please. Years ago I had a boyfriend who had a ferret. It was lovely, but did have a rather potent smell...

Me three on the ferret pix! I had several ferrets through college and they're like kittens that never grow up and can fold themselves in half and get ANYWHERE they want to. A constant source of amusement.

They do have a bit of a smell, but if they're neutered it seems to abate a bit. Also they're no more trouble to give a quick bath in the bathroom sink than a pair of socks. Then they're shiny and sweet smelling for about a week or so. Kathleen, how do your boys take to an occasional bath? Mine actually liked it!

To stay OT, I'm really looking forward to hearing about your elaborate meals at Chez Kinsey/Berger.

[Marlene]

I really really wish I could sing I'm looking forward to your blog. And I wish I could eat like that and not worry about my weight

(psssst. Sam's not allowed to answer for you )

[bergerka]

Marlene & Mags: I will DEFINITELY put in some pix of the boys eating their chicken or beef. If I can get them to sit still long enough, I'll try for a good pic I can use as an avatar. They're a tad stinkiferous right now, because they're still whole and almost a year old (our vet recommended we wait till they were one year old before neutering...there's some evidence it prevents certain health problems later in life). They're also a tad aggressive; in fact, I'm interrupting my typing every few minutes here to go break up misunderstandings (Zebulun wants to be in the ferret tent; more importantly, he wants Asher OUT of the ferret tent. "MY TENT!"). I've noticed that the smell diminishes considerably after snipping, though.

We give the boys baths in the bathtub, actually. The oldest and the youngest love it...they paddle around in the warm water (it's not very deep, they can easily stand in it) and usually fall asleep with their little heads resting on my arm about midway through. The middle boy absolutely HATES it...he climbs us as though we were trees, tries to leap out of the tub and generally looks humiliated. The drying off process is possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen - we spread dry warm towels all over the floor of our room and the boys run, roll, dig in the towels and generally go insane until they're all dry and fluffy. Then they take a nap.

I got lucky and inherited my dad's metabolism...we (and my younger brother) are tall, skinny drinks of water. Until I was 25, I had to work hard to keep my weight above 130, and when I get stressed out I still drop pounds like a rocket.

Pan: unless I'm singing something very high or very difficult, I find it unnecessary to warm up for a church gig (particularly choral gigs, where I just have to blend), although I know a lot of singers who just plain cannot sing in the morning without a full warmup. My particular instrument sounds ok first thing in the morning and I'm not really exercising my full resources (especially at the Christian Science churches, where I have occasionally been mildly chastised for sounding "too operatic"). We do usually sing over one verse of each of the hymns and do a quick run-through of the solo, so that the organist and I can get it together, and that's all I need. Now--if we're talking a solo job like, oh, all the solos in the Messiah or the Mozart Mass in C Minor, that's a TOTALLY different story and requires my making fifteen to twenty minutes of weird noises with the keyboard before I get out there & do it.

And just to keep it on topic, I'm also lucky in that I don't have to worry that much about what I eat before an audition or a performance. I avoid walnuts and raw carrots, because I'm mildly allergic to them (no big deal, but they cause a little swelling in my throat and that is NOT conducive to making purty noises!), and I try not to eat for the hour or so before I sing, but I could if I had to. Before a performance I do try to eat foods rich in protein and complex carbs (A steak dinner with a baked potato and a leafy green salad is the perfect pre-show dinner for me). That's a trick I picked up from my cousins, who are type 1 diabetics and avid soccer players & surfers...they call them "long" and "medium" foods and find that they are the best for maintaining a sustained energy level over several hours.

Wish I had a show this week, now THAT would make for some interesting food blogging.

K

[suzilightning]

By the way, I'm kind of a technological idiot, and slkinsey very patiently and sweetly taught me how to size and upload these pictures. Yay Sam! Yet another of the multitude of reasons he's the world's best boyfriend.

even if he's a tenor???

sorry - i have a thing for men who sing lower than i do(mezzo).

looking forward to the blog, k - any don'ts before you perform?

[bloviatrix]

plus I don't warm up before these services (that's pure laziness, combined with unwillingness to unnecessarily piss off our neighbors.

Do you rehearse at home? I live in a building swarming with opera singers and classical musicians so I frequently get musical accompaniment in the halls.

[gus_tatory]

Pan: unless I'm singing something very high or very difficult, I find it unnecessary to warm up for a church gig...

bergerka: loving your blog.

question on the topic of food that influences one's singing voice: do you find that dairy foods mess with your voice?

[bergerka]

Pan, I forgot to answer your lox question! Sorry about that. I don't like salmon in any way, shape or form WITH THE EXCEPTION of the Copper River salmon carpaccio we had at JoeB's house one night (oh my, that was good), and smoked salmon REALLY gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Bloviatrix (I LOVE your username): Charlie (baritone), Sam and I do practice in our building. We have a great relationship with our neighbors, largely, I think, based on common courtesy - we don't practice before 10 am (except for those EXTREMELY rare occasions when one of us has a 9 am audition...and can I just tell you how much those suck?) or after 8-8:30 pm. Singers really shouldn't practice much more than an hour a day--the singing part, at least, because it's an extremely physical endeavor. I always compare it to working out one set of muscles, say, your biceps, for more than one hour straight. No personal trainer would let you get away with that! I can only think of one role in my entire repertoire that actually involves SINGING (not counting being onstage when NOT singing) more than one hour's worth of music...Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (it's hella long. The opera contains about three hours of music, and this bimbo is onstage almost constantly), and let me tell you, performing that was exhausting. I did NOTHING the next day that involved singing...I slept late, sat around and read a book...just recovered my energy. About a month ago I had to perform Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio on Saturday afternoon (for those who don't know, it's an extremely long role and very vocally challenging...it really takes me to the low and high extremes of my range and the most difficult part is the duet at the VERY END) and the Israelite Woman/Philistine Woman in Handel's Samson the very next day (not as long a role, but the last thing in it is "Let the bright Seraphim," which you've heard if you're a fan of classical vocal music). I've listened to the live recording of the Samson...and I'm TIRED. I SOUND tired. I should've had the sense to turn one or the other down.

The actual learning of music, of course, can be done with a keyboard or a recording and your brain...doesn't involve making noise your neighbors are going to hear and complain about.

Gus_tatory and suzilightning: Nah. The only foods I really avoid are the few to which I'm actually ALLERGIC (so far, walnuts, raw carrots, raw potatoes...but who eats those? and the other night a twinkie made me feel kinda chokey. There's also something in Pace picante sauce that swells my throat shut, but I don't really eat that anymore). I wouldn't necessarily want to drink a big glass of milk right before I went onstage, but I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it, either.

Backstage, I keep seltzer to stay hydrated (I'll go through two or three huge bottles of it during a show) and apples (they feel good on my throat and keep my breath sweet, also apples have lots of water, so are hydrating), usually. A lot of people don't like seltzer because it makes 'em burp...that's why I like it. A couple of well-placed belches backstage can defuse ANYONE'S stage fright. (kidding, sort of).

Sam's best boyfriendhood trumps his tenorhood any day of the week. Not that he's not also a fabulous tenor. He is. I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Anyway, dinner!

Sam and I weren't all that hungry because of the late bagel brunch, and neither of us wanted to leave the house and actually buy groceries, so Sam made a nice tuna salad with oil-packed tuna, red onions, cornichons (yes, Dave, cornichons), homemade mayonnaise, and lemon zest and we ate it on the rest of the bagels, and drank the rest of the caffeine-free Diet Coke.

Here's how the tuna bagels looked (they tasted delicious):

A friend came by to make brownies a week or so ago, and because he was leaving town he left us hthe rest of his bag of Nestle's semisweet mini-morsels. So I decided to try chocolate chip cookies with little bitty chips.

I used the "thin" cookie recipe from Shirley I. Corriher's "Cookwise," with a couple of modifications. I like all brown sugar, for one thing, and I up the salt amount just slightly because I like the salt in the cookies to contrast with the chocolate and brown sugar. Usually I use Maker's Mark instead of vanilla (as my best friend says, a shot for the cookies...a shot for the cook), but *tragedy* we're out.

Here's the cookie dough in the bowl:

Here are the cookies on the tray just before going into the oven:

Here's the finished product, cooling on a rack:

They were pretty good. I like the bigger chips better...I tend to be kinda sparse with the chips so that we can taste both cookie and chocolate, and that doesn't work well with the mini chips. You don't get enough chocolate. Not that I won't eat the cookies anyway. This is the reason to make a single recipe...if I only HAVE two dozen cookies, I'll only EAT two dozen cookies.

Ghirardelli double chocolate chips are the best ones I've had in cookies.

Sam made us vodka gimlets so that I could swan around the living room à la Myrna Loy as Nora Charles (The Thin Man Goes Home was on AMC today ). I even have the 30's style red silk nightie and dressing gown for it, but you are NOT getting a picture of that.

Here's my gimlet, nice and green:

Now we're watching the premiere of the new season of The Sopranos (I LOVE James Gandolfini). After that, we're going to feed the (currently arguing) ferrets and hit the hay. I probably won't get any pix of the boys tonight (they're cranky as hell), but I'll do it another night this week, I promise. Of course, as I say this, Sam is slicing some beef to feed them, so I might just get a pic or two and post it tomorrow.

Have a good evening!

K

P.S. has anyone else found the blog a really good excuse to go off on stream-of-consciousness rants??? Or is it just me? (it's ALL ABOUT ME)

Edited March 8, 2004 by bergerka (log)

[JennyUptown]

I can only think of one role in my entire repertoire that actually involves SINGING (not counting being onstage when NOT singing) more than one hour's worth of music...Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (it's hella long. The opera contains about three hours of music, and this bimbo is onstage almost constantly), and let me tell you, performing that was exhausting.

You are hilarious!!

[herbacidal]

you can bake?!

[bergerka]

Baby...I can...BAKE.

Yup, sure can. Cookies, cakes, etc., and I'm about ready to try pies again, because after (finally) successfully making fluffy, flaky scones for my best friend's baby shower back in...August?...I think I've got this not-handling-the-pie-dough-too-much thing down.

Last night, before we went to bed, the cranky ferrets had slices of raw beef. They're so cute about this...they delicately take the beef our of Sam's or my hand (except the baby, who SNATCHES it away and runs like hell), and scoot under the bed or into the ferret tent to munch in private. Then they come anxiously back for more, pretending to be little starving ferrets so that we'll feel guilty.

Breakfast! Have I mentioned yet that mornings really suck? I started my day with 1/2 hour of Pilates and 20 minutes on the stairmaster. Well, it was SUPPOSED to be 20 minutes on the Stairmaster. Sam was in the shower by that time and I kept being interrupted by ferret fights (basically, Zebulun was jumping on Asher and biting him till he squeaked...LOUDLY. Mr. Zeb got a time out for that one). I think it worked out to about 12 minutes of actual stairmastering and 8 minutes of breaking up fights.

I had french press coffee with the milk, which is right on the edge - it tastes fine but smells just slightly funny (I think this is the last day it'll be any good. Milk in NYC just doesn't last that long!) and one sugar, one chocolate chip cookie (well, I mean, they were just SITTING there) and oatmeal with a sploosh of milk and a blort of maple syrup. It would've been brown sugar, except that I used up all the brown sugar for the cookies last night!

Now I'm at my day job (floating legal secretary for a corporate law firm) after a hellish subway ride (PEOPLE SUCK), wondering if buying a cattle prod and using it on my fellow man is actually enough to guarantee me entry into hell.

K

[Rachel Perlow]

Even though I don't live in NYC, I find a half-gallon of milk goes bad before I finish it. So what I've been doing lately is buying 2 quart containers instead of 1 1/2 gallon container. Milk stays good for a long time as long as the container hasn't been opened. It costs a little more, but I don't throw as much down the drain.

[Varmint]

Then there are those of us who buy 4 gallons of milk each week!