Summertime, and the Living Is Unbearable

I don't want to be in the kitchen, and neither do you.   It's hot, it's sticky, and I ain't making risotto, or anything that requires me to hang around the stove.  And I don't have a yard and I don't have central air and I hate anyone who does.  There, that feels better.

At the end of the day, though, we must be fed.  In the summer, preparing food more often involves assembly than actual cooking, but that gets old fast.  How many Haas avocados stuffed with Maine crab can you eat?  Okay, wrong question, because any sane person's answer to that would be: Try me.  I'll ask another:  How many times can you face tuna salad on Triscuits?  I love them both, individually and together, but I reached my limit some time last week. 

One answer is to cook food that doesn't require much attention.  Corn on the cob, potato salad with dill, and grilled chicken thighs  with barbecue sauce. Heat a grill pan, which I wrote about on the NYDN site a while back.  Follow the same procedure for the chicken, except, in the initial seasoning, use salt and pepper only.  Slather thighs (the chicken's, not yours) with barbecue sauce when they are just about done.  Turn them every minute or so until they've reached your preferred level of crispy char.  You'll probably spend a total of five minutes tending to them.  Not bad.

I make my own bbq sauce with ketchup, grade b maple syrup, brown sugar, Coleman's mustard, and chipotle. Twice as much ketchup as maple, after that, it's all to taste.  Cook it down a bit, then let it cool to allow the flavors to meld.

The potato salad is a breeze, and god knows we could use one.   Halve as many new potatoes as will fit in a basket steamers.  Steam until tender, which will be a lot quicker than you might think.  Let cool, and toss with chopped dill, chopped pickle, minced shallot,  mayo, and mustard.  I like a little hit of pickle juice, too.  Don't stint on the salt and pepper.

All I'll say about the corn is that it had better be fresh, as in picked today, and that you'd best not shuck it until the water is boiling.  Into the pot and out in 3 minutes or so.  Butter, butter, butter.

The fine fat chicken thighs were a bit over three dollars.  The dill was four bucks.  Staggering.

FloFab? Fie on you, NeYoTi!

Florence Fabricant has been a respected New York Times contributor for nearly forty years.  She is now writing a weekly  food-related  advice column for the paper under a truly dreadful title: Dear FloFab. Is the Times looking for ads from iPad?

Meat and Potatoes

I was in a lousy mood yesterday, so I was yearning for a comfort-food dinner.  I was thinking mac and cheese, but Bruce was thinking a big hunk o' meat.  Since I wanted to take my mind off my ailing cat, I decided to cook something that I never had cooked: veal chops.  I've had them at restaurants, and loved them, but assumed they would be daunting to prepare.  Not a bit!  (And, yes, it was sustainable, cruelty-free, uncrated veal, okay?)

Of course, with meat, potatoes are de rigueur.  The first step, then, was to get the baby Yukon Golds in the oven.  Wash, dry.  Place on a baking pan, then coat them with olive oil, rosemary, and sea salt.


Roast at 425 until the skins are wrinkly and the insides tender and creamy, about 30 minutes.  (Meanwhile, take the chops, which should be about an inch thick, out of the fridge and let them come to room temperature.)  Pull the potatoes from the oven, and turn it to broil.  Rub the chops with garlic, then salt, pepper, and rub with olive oil.  The broiler rack should be on the highest shelf.  Broil 4 1/2 minutes per side, then let rest for 5 minutes or so.  The inner meat should still be pink.  If you are, heaven help you, a devotee of well-done meat, cook for 5 minutes per side, but I won't answer for the consequences.

I served the meat and taters with delicate little fiddleheads on the side.  It wasn't mac and cheese; in fact, it was far less time-consuming to make.  And pretty comforting, at that.

Sorrel Seems to Be the Hardest Word

Perhaps not quite the hardest, but it is frequently massacred by people who should know better. Sorrel is pronounced like the color, not Rob Petrie's writing sidekick, Buddy Sorrell.  To confuse matters further, sorrel the leaf is not related to the chestnut-horse sorrel, but to an old German word for sour, which is more than apt.

Last Saturday, when I was planning on making cream of sorrel soup, I got to the market too late; all that was left was a bunch of tender baby leaves, not nearly enough for me.  This week, at the same stand, the sorrel was all grown up, sporting huge coarse leaves and a rather insolent air.  Perhaps I would not be chiffonading this bunch, but wrestling it to the ground.

Sorrel soup  is tartly refreshing, and can be served anywhere along the heat scale from steaming to icy, generally in inverse to the weather.  The day was  relatively warm, so I decided on a lightly chilled soup.

First, peel a medium baking potato and cut it into smallish chunks.  Next, chop about 5 good-sized shallots, totaling about 1/4 cup.  While that was going on, melt a lump of butter (2 tablespoons or so)  in a large pot.  When the butter starts to bubble,  turn down the heat a bit and added the potatoes and shallots. 

 While they're heating,  chop up  five large bunches of sorrel, discarding any thick stems or brownish leaves.  Add to the pot, stirring as they soften.  Bite into a leaf: You'll get a real citrus punch!  Once the leaves are wilted, pour in about five cups of chicken or vegetable stock, bring to a simmer over medium to medium-low heat, and cook until the vegetables are quite soft, from 25 to 40 minutes, depending on your, stove, your pot, and how you chopped the vegetables.  Soup is very forgiving.


Remove from the heat and let cool a bit, so that  you don't burn yourself during the next step, which is pureeing the soup using an immersion blender or food processor.  Leave it a bit chunky , if you'd like, which is better for hot soup or puree it more thoroughly for cold.  Return to the heat, add a cup of heavy cream, bring it to almost, but definitely not, a boil, then turn off.  If serving hot, season and serve.  If serving cold, season more vigorously (cold turns down the temperature on spices), and chill. Don't shove it in the fridge right away, though, as doing so can quickly bring your fridge's temperature down to an unsafe level.

I like to garnish this soup with very thinly sliced young radishes, and serve with popovers.

Pearls before Swine Pasta Smackdown

Pasta versus antipasta death match.

Cupcakes, Cupcakes, Everywhere: Help Me, Alan!

Since when did cupcakes become a major food group? Since Sex and the City, that's when.  I've nothing against a cupcake a year or two, but these seemingly insidious little snack cakes are marching over the landscape like little frosted storm troopers.  Two cupcakes stores in Chelsea Market?  I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the food mall's name changed to Cupcake Market any day now.

I was going to further document the phenomen, but then--mirabile dictu!--Alan Rickman strolled by, and my mind instantly turned to thoughts of  a very different sort of treat.

More on Baohaus: Old? Ugly? Stay Away!

Eddie Huang, owner of Baohaus and the impending Xiao Ye, clearly doesn't like older people, or plan on getting older himself.  His statements are vile (not to mention discriminatory); I will never go near an establishment of his again.  [Eater]

Baohaus, or, wherein I disagree with every other NYC food blogger

                                        
 I'd been planning to go to Baohaus for some time, but kept putting it off due to a sense of unease.  Frankly, I was shying away from it, because Baohaus's pork bun was being cried up as the only pork bun now worth eating, and, oh, how deluded, nay, misguided we had all been before this charming little place came along and led us to the light.  Really?

It's a Taiwanese style bun; that is, it's more like an open-faced sandwich that the jelly-doughnut style pork bun that most of us are accustomed to.  Yes, the place is adorable, the people are charming, and the quality of the ingredients in the pork bun is impeccable, even though the tasty pork was so chewy that I had to shred it with my fingers.  But $4.50 for a two-bite bun?  That's one expensive little snack. 
 

I'll stick with the likes of Mei Li Wah, where I can get a super pork bun that serves as a meal...for about a buck.  Or stay closer to home, where I can get two plain slices for $4.50.  Maybe it's me, maybe it's the changes in the neighborhood, but I'm altogether tired of being offered tiny things for big bucks.

Wednesday Food Roundup

Sam Sifton reviews Nello, a restaurant that most can't afford, at which the food is inedible. Sign me up!
Our friends at Serious Eats talk about Pylos, one of my favorite EV restaurants.  Don't miss the fries, which are redolent of oregano and cheese.
Now that spring has come to NYC, you should be checking Lucy's Greenmarket Report at least three times a week--she'll tell you what's new and who has it.
A 135 year tradition ends, as Maine's last sardine cannery closes its doors, as reported by the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Another rural way of life ends. Sad.

Peach Ginger Sorbet from Ciao Bella

This peachy, gingery (she said, stating the obvious) sorbet, is riddled with chunks of ginger.  Breakfast of champions, particularly with the rather good California strawberries now coming into market.  There are tons of other intriguing flavors on the Ciao Bella website that don't seem to have made it to local stores; I hope that this one is the first of many.