September 2007 Archives

Quince are coming into the Greenmarket! Raw, they're dry. They're rock hard. They're covered in gray lint. The astringency sucks the moisture right off your tongue. But cooked -- genius! That dry, grainy flesh, so sweetly perfumed, soaks up the white wine and vanilla in this sweet-tart, syrupy quince butter. Though the green ones have more pectin, choose ripe, yellow fruit for this recipe. I've riffed on the ingredients in a Claudia Fleming recipe my friend Julie recited to me once. The result is a rosy, speckled compote just sweet enough to spread on a piece of warm toast with salted butter. It's also excellent spooned over a little bed of ricotta cheese. I can't stop eating it.

Note: Vanilla beans can become an expensive habit, but there's no substitute. I got mine from Penzey's in the Grand Central food market -- 3 big, moist Madagascar pods come in a resealable test tube for $6.89. I hear SOS Chefs on Ave. B has great vanilla.

Quince-pear butter

5 large, ripe quince
white wine
water
1 vanilla bean
3/4 c. packed brown sugar (more or less to taste)
1 bosc pear

Peel, core and roughly chop the quince. Put quince in a saucepan with enough wine and water to cover (1 part wine to 2 parts water). Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean. Add beans and pod to quince. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until the quince is soft. Mash the quince with a fork til the fruit is spreadable. Add the brown sugar. Peel, core and thinly slice the pear. Add to the quince butter. Simmer for 15-20 minutes longer til pear is tender. (It'll be thick and lava-like. Scrape the bottom of the pot regularly with a rubber spatula so it doesn't burn.) Cool and refrigerate. Makes about 4 cups. Keeps for about 1 1/2 weeks (but I don't expect this batch to last me for more than five days).

Cutlets, I love you, I read you regularly, but I gotta stand up for the lady M.F.K. What you call treacly, precious and brittle, I would call feminine and melancholy. The woman knew how to string words together with economy and style. I'd love to be 1/10 of the writer she was. Besides, comparing her to those other writers is like comparing white asparagus to a great hamburger (or a plate of char kway tiew, or escargots en pots de chambre). All are good for different reasons. You don't like white asparagus, fine. But overrated? That's a little harsh.

Name: Kurt Wolf Langer

Occupation: Activist

Borough: Brooklyn

Relationship status: None

What did you eat today?

Ham and cheese on rye, salt’n’peppa kettle chips, coffee

What do you never eat?

Eyeballs, Chinese food

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Home made pesto

What is your favorite kitchen item? Mortar and pestle, cauldron

Where do you eat out most frequently? Jackson Heights / Woodside

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Champagne and oysters with THC-infused lemon sauce, pumpkin soup with opium cream, warm beet and goat cheese and spinach salad with balsamic Owsley LSD dressing, prawns vindaloo with peyote masala, fruit soup with vodka, spring lamb chops with magic mushroom reduction glaze, cheese and PCP plate, crack-cocaine and cardamom dusted warm chocolate soufflé with home-made vanilla ice cream, Louis XIII cognac and a clove cigarette.

So I couldn't tell you where Paul Liebrandt's restaurant will be or what he has in store for it (won't be Italian food), but I can tell you what I hope winds up on the dessert menu. Liebrandt made a bunch of cocktails for a Ciroc vodka demo I went to, the best being a lemon meringue stinger -- an ice cold (Pacojet-ed) vodka lemonade topped with hot Whip-it lashed egg white foam (egg white with with lemon juice, gin, and simple syrup, heated in the whipping canister to 160 degrees in a water bath). High temp meringue on the upper lip, icy tart alcohol on the tongue. Not the kind of thing you want to drink a whole martini glassful of, but a fun trick that you could recreate it at home as a final dessert palate cleanser.

As for the vodka, I didn't try it straight because, well, I drank a whole martini glassful of the delicious stinger on top of several lethal liquid nitrogen-caipirinha sorbets. I was down for the count by the time the straighter cocktails came out. I'll let you know how it goes when the bottle gets opened.

We tried a fab, affordable white at Jadis this week -- Henry Brochard "Les Carisannes" Sauvignon Blanc 2006 from Loire. Light and crisp, it has a nice passion fruit aroma to it. Very summery. Would be great with a light, ladylike lunch of salad, bread and cheese. Or maybe with a Brazilian fish mouqeca and rice. Yum.

My friend Francis said it tasted like Umbungo, a fruit drink popular in England in the 80s. I couldn't tell if he thought that was a good thing or not.

Went to eat at Butter on Wednesday, hosted by my friend Wirt who cooks in Alex Guarnaschelli's kitchen. Because we all went with Wirt, we got extra TLC and a few bonus nibbles from the kitchen, so this is not going to be a review.

Disclaimer aside, if you're interested, here's what I have to say about it. People think of Butter first and foremost as a celeb hive. They don't discourage this reputation -- visit the a href="http://www.butterrestaurant.com/">Butter website and the first thing you see is a video of Paris Hilton on Letterman talking about how it's her favorite place to eat. An accolade like this might otherwise turn me against a place since:
1.) Where the celebs go, the lame wannabes follow
and
2.) I wouldn't ask a Mormon how to make a martini, so why should I take restaurant advice from someone who, clearly, doesn't eat?

But Wirt tells some great celeb stories, one of which is that Paris Hilton:
1.) Always brings flowers for the chef when she comes in.
2.) Couldn't be more gracious to the staff
and
3.) She eats. Yes, she really eats! And she tips really well.

And I believe him. It's plausible, don't you think? Yes, she courts attention, but that doesn't mean I should dismiss her as substance-less, right?

And so, here we are at Butter, a place with serious food that sometimes gets lost in the Page 6 shuffle. Alex Guarnaschelli is a true Greenmarket fanatic. I saw her there days after the birth of her daughter, Ava, chatting up her farmer friends and swooning over scallions. Butter's food reflects that passion -- a tower of onion rings is made from the Paffenroths' sweet Kelsae onions; panko-doused crispy oysters are nestled on a dill-fragrant tartar sauce and showered with edible purple flowers; sweet late summer fennel is roasted and transformed into a nourishing soup. I loved the cup of velvety watercress soup with its tiny truffled brie sandwich -- so dainty and pinky-in-the-air. My favorite entree was probably the slow-cooked pompano, enrobed in creamy beurre blanc atop a bed of Greenmarket sweet corn and greens -- light yet rich, it's the perfect transition dish between summer and fall.

And what a lovely room. Curved, lofty arches with woodgrain wallpaper are stacked horizontally against a lightbox image of a birch forest. Plush booths line the walls under low lights, punctuated by massive bunches of spindly, hunched branches. The room recesses endlessly -- it's like the Holland Tunnel under an enchantment spell by Galadriel. We were there on a Wednesday and the room wasn't loud -- in fact, all of the tables seemed to have that rare air of privacy that can be so hard to find in New York. It would be a great date restaurant.

Prices aren't insane (apps are about 16, entrees about 28), and portions are actually quite generous. I'm serious. And if you've got room at the end of the meal, get the raspberry beignets dipped in creme anglaise -- puffy little sugar-coated rounds with seedless raspberry coulis, they're what jelly doughnuts better be like in heaven. For your sake, I hope the dessert menu hasn't changed by the time you read this.

Butter
415 Lafayette St. at Astor
6 to Astor Pl.
(212) 253-2828

I'm from California, and I am still easily impressed by some of New York's wonders. Take fall, for example. It came on Friday, maybe Saturday -- snap! Just like that. Like somebody just flipped the fall switch. Like we were on a crowded subway train, and as we pulled into the station, fall just snatched summer's still warm seat from right under our noses. And I went from wishing the berries, peaches and tomatoes could last 4ever to remembering, hey, you know, I miss the taste of hot coffee. And cinnamon sugar. And won't that walk be nice tomorrow?

Tonight, I made a late dinner of a cold roasted sweet potato. I ate it on the subway on the ride home, its skin and flesh the colors of New England autumn and the D train. I enjoy these kinds of selfish/monastic meals most in the fall. I'm not in a rush to go from summer's sensual bounty to winter's sluggish fat padding. I'm just taking a break and fortifying myself for the long haul, thank you very much.

Name: Jerusha Klemperer

Occupation: Slow Food Minion

Borough: Manhattan (but I left my heart in Brooklyn)

Relationship status: Single, uh-huh yeah

What did you eat today?

Oh jeez. Some days are good days and some days are bad days. Breakfast was a Luna Bar, lunch was Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken Salad from Rice, and dinner was Stonyfield Frozen Yogurt. A fairly bad day, foodwise.

What do you never eat?

Fast food—no way, no how.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Dijon mustard, organic eggs, butter, vanilla soymilk, chocolate soy milk, frozen bananas. [Interesting. For banana bread? --Ed.]

What is your favorite kitchen item?

My 6 inch kick ass chef’s knife.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Lately, Ditch Plains.

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

First I’d like to thank the world for ending during peak growing season. I’d like a farmers’ market smorgasbord: a last-of-summer’s-beautiful-tomatoes salad, an ear of fresh corn, some handmade pasta with fresh basil pesto, finished off with a slice of rich, moist chocolate layer cake and a tall cool glass of milk.

Visit Jerusha's blog, eat here 2.

Remember how I was like, Pinkberry's great? After three visits to the Park Slope competitor, I am now an Oko convert. Their original "Greek-style yogurt" flavor is excellent with berries -- icier and more substantial than Pinkberry, without that powdered milk flavor that Pinkberry can have. No mochi, but it doesn't need it. Me likey. I know, I'm a total yogurt flooz.

On Tuesday night, I ran into a renowned chef who was enjoying a night off by dining at Franny's. He called Franny's the best restaurant in New York.

"Besides yours," I winked.

"No, this place is better," he replied.

Franny's specializes in what I would call "feel good" food. "Comfort food" is a moniker that has come to represent the kind of soporific white starch dishes that are as heavy as a wool blanket -- think macaroni and cheese, chicken pot pie, beef stew, mashed potatoes and gravy. Franny's sprightly pizzas, enzymatic charcuterie and bright sides provide all the familiarity of comfort foods, but they don't leave you feeling leaden. You can eat simply and heartily without having to feel bad about yourself afterwards.

I'm not going to tell you which of the city's pies I like best -- I think there's room for all kinds of pies, from the cold rectangles at Grandaisy to the late night quickie at Joe's. But Franny's makes a pie you ought to treat yourself to every now and then — thin, crisp-chewy and popping with black blisters. The clam pie is killer, dabbed with a mysterious savory sauce, showered with spicy chilies and the chlorophyll bite of roughly chopped parsley.

But it's the sides I could happily live off of -- mostly naked, jewel-toned vegetables, adorned judiciously but imaginatively. We loved the raw black Tuscan kale salad, with its pock-marked heft and iron-rich meatiness. It stood up well to tart lemon and bright grated pecorino, the leaves practically tumbling off the plate. We also loved the tiny kernels of white corn, relieved from the cob and sauteed gently with rich local butter, lime juice and chilies -- all the flavors of Mexican-style street corn, but unfettered by opaque mayo and cheese.

The garden out back is perfectly charming, just a backyard protected by a few stately trees, the nonchalant fences strung with white Christmas lights. On a lovely evening, after dusk's mosquitoes have finished feeding, it would be heaven to linger with a sweet glass of La Spinetta moscato d'Asti or the last few drops of a bottle of barbaresco, feeling wistful about Indian summer. I wouldn't mind one last clam pie before the cold creeps in.