Category: Ruminations

I had a Shack Stack (hamburger, Shack burger, and Shroom burger), cheese fries, half a Second City wurst, an Arnold Palmer, and a Concrete Jungle from the Shake Shack today. For research purposes. It is 1:30 a.m. and I am still filled to the gills. I wish I could boot and rally right now. I feel like Violet Beauregarde, in desperate need of an Oompa Loompa with a big needle and a juicer.

Doug thinks I should give myself an award for eating that much food. If I keep this up, I'll be a shoe-in for a Darwin award.

1. Bad website music -- Hello, I am trying to secretly surf the web while I am at work and your bad website music is totally blowing my cover. Okay, I get it, you're multi-culti, you're brown (but not too brown), you're exotic, your place is swingin', baby. It's bad enough I have to listen to whatever pap you decide to throw down on your turf. Turn off the assault on my computer speakers. You're drowning my Mariah out and that's not okay.

2. Small plates -- To hell with you and your so-called tapas! I am so tired of spending exorbitant amounts of money only to go home hungry because I am supposed to share my little serving of finger food with everyone at the table. I want to eat a meal and not have to grab a slice five minutes later. I want my protein entree to come with both a vegetable AND a carb-filled starch. Yes, I mean included in the price.

3. Waiters who ask if I want the bread -- Yes I want the bread and yes I want two pieces and don't make me feel guilty for asking for it. All those fools who have vilified the west's greatest starch contribution will cry when they realize that the decade they spent avoiding carbs didn't help them avoid their fat fate. What, people have been eating bread for centuries and NOW all of a sudden it's making them fat?

4. How would you like that cooked? -- I am of the opinion that there is only one way to cook a steak (rare) and one way to cook salmon (cooked through, no raw center). But when I'm at a restaurant, I want to know how the chef likes it. If s/he thinks it's better another way, I want to try it the chef's way. So, steak I understand -- there is a long tradition of asking for steak to be cooked your way. But duck breast? Fish? Pork chop? Dazzle me with your way, chef.

5. Disposable chopsticks in sit-down Asian restaurants -- Deforestation is real, and there's no reason to be throwing out wooden chopsticks every day when you have to wash the plates and silverware anyway. I keep a normal pair at work and refuse the chopsticks whenever I remember to.

Supply requests submitted from the Hudson house to sherpa Ganda for the second weekend:

Culinaria cookbook [12.7 x 11.1 x 1.9 inches, 8.08 lbs., hardcover]
Best Recipe cookbook [11.2 x 8.5 x 1.5 inches, 3.60 lbs., hardcover]
32 ounces semi-sweet Valhrona chocolate
Dutch-processed cocoa powder
recipe for Pecan Pie
recipe for barbecued ribs
puff paint

Alright, you know I don't usually cross-pollinate, but I produce the podcast at my day job and this week's podcast features Michael Ruhlman, author of The Reach of a Chef. That's my squeaky voice doing the intro. I conducted the interview with him, but I've edited out my squeaky questions. He also reads a passage from the book. The whole thing is about 25 minutes long. It was really fun to talk to him. He's quite tall and handsome in a sunny, San Diego way (I know he's from Cleveland, people, don't write me letters).

One of the things I edited out for time constraint is an interesting bit in which he says, "I just had, you know, coddled eggs there [at Balthazar] the other day...that's beautiful food, that's every bit as beautiful as the finest plate coming out of the French Laundry, as Keller himself would admit freely." Oooooh, snap!

Anyway, check it out. Download it as an mp3 or, even better, subscribe in iTunes so I can prove that people are actually listening to my podcasts. They cut the check that pays the rent around here. A little job security couldn't hurt.

What do you do when you get an email invitation to meet a group of strangers? And the email is from a man who calls himself "Mr. Cutlets"? And he asks you to "bring your camera"?

If you're me, you get very, very excited, make sure your cam batt is fully charged, and head uptown for a little rubdown...barbecue rub, that is.

The destination was R.U.B. (Righteous Urban BBQ). Mr. Cutlets is the pseudonym of Josh Ozersky, meat-lover nonpareil and author of the carnivore's manual to Gotham, Meat Me in Manhattan. Josh organized a mini summit on the art of bacon with a small group that included Mr. & Mrs. Allan Benton of Benton's Hams and Andrew Fischel and Paul Kirk of R.U.B..

We all lean forward when Allan Benton talks. He's a softspoken Tennessee man with a steady blue gaze. "I don't think Berkshire pork really makes a difference when it comes to bacon," he says. Crisp, thick slices of Benton's bacon come out from the kitchen -- smoky and not too salty, with picture perfect striping.
"What's your cure ratio?" Dana asks. About 80/20, Allan explains, and he doesn't believe in nitrates. Allan has been creating artisanal pork 6 days a week for 33 years, long before we started calling his type of work artisanal. The early years were lean, but with the avid support of fans like David Chang of Momofuku, Tom Colicchio's Craft, and Bobby Flay's Bar Americain, demand is high and business is good.

"If I were in it for the--" he rubs his fingers together, "I wouldn't have been able to do it for this long."

In contrast to the polite, quiet Bentons, Paul Kirk has an good-natured swagger and humor that you sense he keeps in check when company's over. He looks exactly like the white-bearded caricature on the wall. One patron standing at the cashier with a shirt that says "NEW YORK FUCKING CITY" spies him and bursts out, "I love your food!"

Andrew Fischel, Paul Kirk's partner at R.U.B., brings out red and white checked paper baskets ("Our finest china," quips Kirk) of meaty samples -- from delicious blackened hunks of brisket to dry-rubbed baby backs to hand-cut slices of moist, coriander seed crusted pastrami.

"My pastrami's better than Katz's."

"Let's not go too far—" says Josh.

"My pastrami is better--than--Katz's," Paul repeats.

Mrs. Benton squeezes a little barbecue sauce on her rib.

"You're putting sauce on my ribs?" Paul half-jokingly clucks.

"I'm from Tennessee," she laughs.

His ribs are fantastic alone. The dry rub is faintly sweet, the meat ringed pink with mesquite. The moist flesh falls off with just the slightest suggestion, and the bone underneath is as white and clean as a sun-bleached coyote skull in Death Valley. We sneak a peek behind the kitchen doors, where there are only a handful of packed-to-the-gills smokers -- no grills, no microwaves. There's a pot of barbecue sauce on the stove big enough to take a bath in. There are a few fryers side by side filled only, I'm told, with melted lard. Our delicious dessert of fried oreos (think hot St. Gennaro zeppoles with soft oreos in the middle) are fried in the same lard.

If I learned anything today, it's that I have a lot to learn when it comes to meat. Paul, Allan, and the rest of the table discuss hog and cow breeds, wet-aging vs. dry-aging, cures, brines, smoke, salt and spice. It's lovely to sit there like a piece of meat in a smoker, listening and absorbing their carnivorous knowledge.

The Big Apple BBQ Block Party is happening this weekend in and around Madison Square Park. I'm going away this weekend, so I won't be able to go. Even if you've sworn off the lines in years past, this may be the year to attend. They're implementing pre-purchase Fast Passes for big spenders; they've gotten rid of that stupid ticket policy and all vendors take cash or credit; and there are more participants than ever. John T. Edge* and Allan Benton will be giving seminars on the great pig. Pick up some tips from the masters for your summer grilling. Check out the website for details.

Besides, isn't it always fun to show Southerners how friendly we New Yorkers can be?

Allan Benton's ham and bacon are not yet available retail in New York (somebody get on that!), but you can purchase online: http://www.bentonshams.com
A little pre-BBQ reading for you: Mr. Cutlets' BBQ Bill of Rights.
Big Apple BBQ Block Party

*Disclaimer, John T. Edge's books are published by the people I work for. We have a lot of food books, what can I do?

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked if I knew where he could get a coconut cake* for Saturday. I had a flashback of the birthday cakes I'd had as a kid. Until Costco came along with their shrink-wrapped sheet cakes, my friends and I were subjected to my Pau's cake choices. What I usually got was a faintly sweet mocha cake with sugary, translucent white macapuno (young coconut jam) filling and mocha buttercream, which probably came from a Filipino bakery called Betsy's (if I recall correctly) in L.A.

Betsy's was one of my Pau's regular joints. He would go there once every other week or so on his way home from work. If I was lucky, I'd stick my hand into one of the white paper sacks and the pan de sal—oblong, dense dinner rolls that are slightly sweet, yeasty, and incredible with a little butter—would still be warm. They were even better sliced into three flat ovals, toasted, and topped with scrambled eggs with fish sauce, tomato and garlic. No pan de sal I've had from anywhere else could compare to Betsy's. I wonder if they're still around.

But I was always disappointed to see that funky mocha cake. It made me feel like such a foreigner. Why couldn't I have a normal flavor? I wanted chocolate or white cake with the kind of bleached white frosting so thick with sugar granules you could feel the grit between your molars when you rubbed them together. Or maybe a yellow cake with strawberry filling and a simulated whipped cream icing. Or, better yet, the cake of my dreams -- a freezer-dwelling, rainbow shaped Baskin Robbins confection with mint chip ice cream and a toothsome, icy layer of chocolate cake.

Now, of course, I can't stop dreaming of the mocha macapuno cake. Anyone know of any good Filipino bakeries? I suppose there are some in Woodside. I can taste it, I can almost feel it in my mouth -- that mildly sweet, coffee tinted buttercream; the silky macapuno strings in clear, sweet jelly; the airy tan sponge cake. I'm looking forward to the moment when that cake and I meet again, and I can prove that kid in my memories wrong.

*In case you're wondering, I suggested Billy's Bakery, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and Baked, where, unlike certain places we know, you don't have to place an order 8 weeks in advance and leave your first born child as an advance deposit to get a cake.

Wow, switching to Movable Type is turning out to be way more complicated than I thought it would be.  Thanks for your patience.  I hope to be fully functional by early June.  Sorry for the multiple personality disorder. 

I think I got food poisoning.  For the life of me, I can't figure out what it was.  Everything seems suspect -- that leftover piece of buffalo mozz, the homemade raita I had for dinner on Saturday, the excessive wine on Sunday night, the soy milk I'm supposed to use within 7-10 days of opening but never do.  Really, it could be anything.  I also got hives on Sunday.  In short, I'm a mess.

A conversation between Doug and me:

ME: [from the dining room where I am working on my laptop] The only thing I had on Sunday was exactly what you had.  Except I put soymilk in my tea.  Maybe it was that cheese sample I had...

DOUG:  [looking up from his computer in the next room, laughing] Oh my God, I just figured out what you are doing.  You are looking for medical advice on the internet.  You can't do that, Ganda.  That is the worst thing you can do.  It's just...paranoia soup.

In case you missed this cherce comment under a Gawker post about the skinny-fying Conde Nast mirrors:

I'll never forgot the day I saw a wraith-like Vo-ghoul having a lunch consisting of lettuce leaves with Sweet N ' Lo sprinkled on top. Ummm, yummy nums! Cancer makes u real skinny.

Why not just kill yourself?

A few years back, I read this book called Syrup (full disclosure -- it's published by the people I work for, but when I read it I wasn't working for them).

Syrup is a little novel about the power of advertising, a hot babe named 6 and a man with a plan.  It wasn't full-on satire, but it was pretty fun and frothy.  It's based on the idea that this guy creates a soda explicitly for yuppies.  It comes in a black can and it's called Fukk.  He sells the idea to Coca-Cola and makes shitloads of money or something.  I don't really remember what happens, but now I don't have to because life is imitating art.  Writer Max Barry should have patented that shit. 

But as far as I'm concerned, there's only one coffee flavored soda, and that's the Manhattan Special (made not in Manhattan but on Manhattan Ave. in Brooklyn, holla!).  If the caffeine in it doesn't rev your motor, all the sugar will.