Author: zora

Don’t Mind If I Do…

What else can you say when a candy bar is so straightforward, so blatant in its desires?

(I’ve lost my original, quickly torn and crumpled wrapper, my sole souvenir of Toronto, so this pic comes courtesy of The Candy Critic.)

I like perusing the candy aisle in other countries–in the Netherlands, for instance, it’s all licorice. In Switzerland, you can barely find any dark chocolate. And in Canada, which seems just like the U.S. in so many ways, you find maple-flavored everything (maple Cadbury Flake, maple Coffee Crisp, maple Kit-Kat), and Smarties that come only in red and white (“Save the red ones for last, eh!” says the label).

The Eat-More, though, appealed because it seemed to be a homegrown candy bar, not just a Cadbury product tweaked for the local market. Once I unwrapped it, I saw it falls into the somewhat unappetizing category I’ve come to call the “turd bar,” for lack of a more poetic term. Baby Ruth, all lumpy with peanuts, is the ur-turd bar–none of those artful swirls of chocolate enrobing a luscious center. Without too much imagination, you know what’s inside the BR, and if you don’t chew it carefully, well… OK, you get the concept.

The Eat-More isn’t lumpy, but it’s a pretty unappetizing combo of dark chewy toffee holding together lots of chunks of peanuts. It kind of reminded me of going hiking with my mom and my brother, where we stand around in the middle of the trail poking at a piece of scat while they remark on what the critter could be based on the visible vestiges of its diet. The Eat-More could just as well be hiker scat, at the end of a long backpacking trip when he’s got nothing but gorp left.

Now I’ve made the Eat-More sound so disgusting that you won’t believe me when I say it was great. It was perhaps the ideal urban energy bar–all the quickie protein and sugar, and none of the stigma of an actual energy bar, which we know are eaten only by rock-climbers and baby boomer women and, oh, fine, people, very much like myself perhaps, who were getting over a stomach ulcer. (I still can’t look at a Luna Bar, especially those lemon ones.)

The ingredients are basic and not too toxic, but it’s still complicated enough to merit actually buying, rather than just making at home–unlike those Larabars, which are very much in the turd bar category, and happen to be just dates and nuts and other dried fruit pressed into a bar. I’ve got all that stuff at my house, and it won’t cost $3.50 and look like a turd if I just eat it in handfuls.

And there’s no chocolate. This might seem like a major drawback, but as an on-the-go snack, it avoids being too decadent. Which means you can just…eat more. Eh.

Sub Rosa… is Sabrosa

So I get a little email last week, alerting me to something clever someone’s concocted re: Thanksgiving.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens just enough for me to assume it’s some tedious PR thingy. But I scan it, I click the link, and…oh yes. Someone seems to be living my fantasy over in Oregon. (What is it about Oregon these days? Must be the wine?)

See, it’s these genius bohemian types running a secret restaurant. And listening to groovy music. And carving stone. And making wine. And having naked barbecues!!! (OK, the carving stone part I’ve never really fantasized about, but everything else fits like a glove.)

Here’s what they are planning for Thanksgiving:

At Sub Rosa we’re always turning ideas inside out just to see how they look from a different angle. Take Thanksgiving for instance.

The American Indians had held harvest celebrations for centuries before the Pilgrims showed up. America’s early settlers had a rough go of it and ended up ill and starving. The generosity and compassion of the First People saved our ancestral butts. Let’s take it back just a little further in time to find the real inspiration for this idea – no, not to Leif Erickson, but to Christopher Columbus.

Chris was looking for India and spices when he ran into the outer shoals of the Bahamas. Spice wise, it is not that hard to make the bridge from our traditional Thanksgiving dinner to an East Indian Thanksgiving meal.

Pumpkin pie leads the way to India – nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves and baked pumpkin. If you know your Indian food, you instantly recognize these as staples in the Indian kitchen and key ingredients in your mom’s favorite pumpkin pie.

So you jack that up with crystalized ginger and a cardamon whipped cream and you are sailing straight towards Kerala, a province at the tip of India. Cumin rub on the bird; stuffing with dried fruits and cinnamon; Horseradish mashed potatoes; Cranberry chutneys gone to Bombay and back all help turn your American standards into East Indian delicacies.

The Dinner Recipes:
Appetizer: Curried Nuts
Greens: Gujarat Green Beans
Starch: Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
Curried Yams with coconut milk
Turkey: Cumin and Coriander spice rub
Condiments: Cranberry Chutney
Cucumber Raita
Stuffing: With raisins, cinnamon, almonds, celery and of course, bread
Dessert: Chiffon Pumpkin Pie with crystallized ginger galore

Garam Masala – Classic Indian spice mixture

Here’s a little Indian music to listen to while you prepare the meal and feast on the dinner. Click to play.

Prep Music:
Ashwin Batish – Bombay Boogie
Ashwin Batish – New Delhi Vice
Habib Kahn – Indian Blues
State of Bengal – Walking On
Bally Sagoo – Indian Dub
Yerida Gunginalli – The Drink That Has Gone Up
Zakir Hussain and the Rhythem Experience – Rap-anagatum

Dinner Music:
Ravi Shankar – Vilambit Gat in Teental
Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt – Meeting By The River [needs volume]
Thievery Corporation – Lebanese Blonde
Talvin Singh – Light
Habib Kahn – Triangle
Habib Kahn – Raindrops
Ustad Sultan Khan – Rag Bhupali

Sounds good to me.

Ack, jealous!

Omigosh, Amelie is in Japan. Which I knew. But she’s staying in a capsule hotel! Ack. Why this is on my life list, I have no idea, but it seems so nifty and efficient. And, to judge from the pictures, just as sleek and space age as I’d hoped.

Happy Wedding, Todd and Sarah!

Todd ‘n’ Sarah, the superheroes of weddings, had their third and final celebration a couple of weeks ago, just as you would hope, in a moody basement on a side street in Williamsburg. They asked me to cook up a mess of food in the Mid East vein–which to me means hella garlic, and that Turkish eggplant deeeeee-light, courtesy of Ciya, the super-delicious restaurant in Istanbul.

And for such a crowd, it also means Human Salad Bar.

It’s exactly what you think it is, people. (But not what you think it is, cannibal people.) To make your buffet dinner that much more appetizing, a yummy-looking human being is splayed out amid the cornucopia.

The Human Salad Bar is a gambit I learned from the late, great Barton Rouse, King of Terrace Flaming Club, to whom we all owe the simple yet essential wisdom of Food=Love. I feel like I should describe Barton in detail, but I’ve never tried–it’s hard. Handlebar mustache. Eyes full of glee, especially when saying, “I’m so proud [about the orgy].” Skinny, with checked chef’s pants flapping. Chain-smoking. Then just dipping, but hanging out with Chris in Jim’s room smoking joints and brainstorming party menus. Wallpapered office full of tattered cookbooks like White Trash Cooking. Writing out the menu board every day, mulling ecstatic adjectives and chalk colors. Advising Peter to trim his pubes–it makes your cock look huge. Making fun of the skim-milk-loving girls, who incidentally always had giant breasts. Generally teaching uptight college-age overachievers to get over themselves–perhaps with a dining-room floor full of raw chicken feet. And helping misfit college-age chain-smokers feel at home. He cared about us all so much. And we loved him for it.

Barton definitely rounded my sense of theatrical food presentation. Sure, when I was little we had a Halloween party where we made a corpse out of food (pasta salad for the guts), but Barton put a real, live person up there, covered in slices of deli meat or chocolate pudding (but Saran wrap first, of course–no one wants hair in their food). He pushed the cornucopia vision wherever possible–whether at home, which overflowed with wallpaper samples, tchotchkes and Pekingese dogs, or at a party, where there was always way too much cheese, booze, and Barbies stuck in theme cakes.

Anyway, there I was planning for Todd ‘n’ Sarah’s, and I realized…there was Karine, a veteran of these events. Here’s the proof:

That’s me on the left; Karine on the right. We’re both wrapped in colored Saran wrap (I don’t think they sell that anymore–too bad, as it was a great easy costume item), and I believe that’s Queen Helene Peppermint Mud Mask acting as pasties on our breasts. We’re mermaids, in case that’s not clear, and there’s a raw bar that’s going to be set up in front of us.

So Karine, it’s like I only have to mention I’m catering this party and that it’s kind of a costume-y crowd, and I swear she volunteers to be the HSB. OK, maybe I propose it, but we’re definitely on the same page. The best part is that really, all I have to say to her is “Cleopatra’s Barge,” and she’s on the case, costume-wise. Some people need a little more micro-management when they go shopping the post-Halloween sales at Ricky’s, but Karine has it all under control.

Tamara is my lovely assistant that day, and Karine shows up around 5pm, and gamely chops up cabbage and pops seeds out of pomegranates, for, like, 800 famished diners. (When, oh when will I be able to look at a cabbage and realize that it takes a good 20 people to eat one, especially when there are ten other dishes on the buffet?)

But soon she dashes off to effect the transformation. Tamara does the eyeliner. We arrive with the food; Karine is wearing a trenchcoat. Guests are champing at the bit, fondling their plates and asking what the food is–it’s like a freakin’ yard sale, where people are bargaining with you before you even wake up. But food cannot be served until the HSB is in place. Et voila:

Classy, right? She’s even got an asp on her breast.

What the heck, here’s another angle:

Karine is probably the best person for this job, and I’m not just talking about her svelte figure and willingness to wear nothing in public. She’s also extremely stoic about pain induced by lying in one position for a long stretch, and she’s pleasant to strangers–she was happy to distinguish the meat and the veggie versions of the eggplant stew for the guests.

But after everyone had eaten, and Tamara had fed Karine a few dates soaked in Jack Daniel’s, the HSB could just chill a little…

(That’s Sean K. jammin’ on the laptop in the background. Cleopatra’s Pleasure Barge never sounded so good.)

Tamara was so inspired by the pasties that she wore them (I mean, a brand-new set–Karine tore hers off and tossed them out the car window when we were going over the Williamsburg bridge) just a couple of days later, to a big benefit for The Moth.

And oh yeah–the food (labneh with mint and garlic, hummus with lots of lemon, baba ghannoush, cabbage slaw with pomegranate seeds, The Eggplant Business, rice pilaf with currants and vermicelli, and some awesome Greek pitas from Poseidon) turned out deliciously, and I wasn’t so exhausted I wanted to cry when it was all over, which is a vast improvement over some of my previous ginormous catering endeavors. I think it was the love I felt Todd ‘n’ Sarah, a lovely couple if I ever saw one, and from cooking the rice over a restaurant-level flame at the kitchen where we staged the last prep phase. And of course, the love of Barton. When he sees a woman in pasties with some pomegranates balanced on her thighs, I know he comes running, from wherever he is.

Joey in Astoria

Did I mention this already? (Rhetorical. I’m too lazy to look back, but I’m 99% sure I didn’t.) It’s an all-Astoria blog, with resto openings and closings and gossip and the whole bit.

It alerts me to the fact that Malagueta, the Brazilian place on 36th Ave where I think I had my–oh Jesus–28th?! birthday, is in the Michelin guide to NYC. Which is great, and great for them, but then the whole Michelin operation is brought under the interrogation lights when I see that both Brick and 718 are listed. Which are two of the biggest faux-bistros in Astoria (apologies to Brick staff, considering recent tragedies), and at 718, Tamara and I got a pizza with a dead fly on it besides. AND we got sullen talkback from the waitress and the kitchen when we complained about it. 718, you are dead to me. (I like saying that.)

For real bistro-ness, I second, or 82nd, all the votes for Le Sans Souci on Broadway past Steinway, even if they did chuck our duck confit that time. (I was going to link to that story, but now I can’t find it. What if Blogspot is slowly chipping away at my entries? I get anxious enough thinking about all the things I’m actually forgetting, much less those being lost into tech wormholes.)

unicorn flower’s Journal

Heidi sent me this link. She’s building the guy’s house or something. It took me several tries to get over the “unicorn flower” title (in lower case like that), and the pink-on-pink color scheme.

But now I’m actually looking at the words (which are in purple), and they’re interesting. Very hifalutin food experience this guy is living, but always fun to read about, and not precious at all. (Man, am I tired of those “today I made a beautiful croquembouche, and here is a beautiful photo of it, and that’s just how beautiful my life is” food blogs.) I think what sold me was this guy’s explaining why he always carries three Sharpies when he’s working in the kitchen: “having an extra sharpie around is like having a spare crackpipe in your pocket that you can just give away to your friends without asking for it back.” Classy.

Not Livin’ the Life

I’ve been so sunk in despair, I couldn’t bring myself to type the terrible words: Tamara and I are not going to be the next Chivas Life Editors.

What essential social role might this be? Well, we’d have been the paired equivalent of this guy. Most important, we would’ve been paid $100K to travel the world and report back on the fabulous, glamorous, tasteful, exhilirating Chivas-y adventures we had. We had visions of partying in Senegal or Ghana, partying in Belgrade, partying in Lviv, and saunaing in Finland. Well, it was a little more refined than that, but that’s all I can remember now.

Frankly, I can’t imagine why we weren’t picked. I don’t know anyone more qualified than us. But I suppose that’s the same flawed logic behind not understanding how Bush got elected. It’s a big country. And, now that it’s all over, I can safely admit I still get Chivas Regal and Crown Royal confused.

Cooking with The Headhunter

A couple entries back, when I slagged off those Dream Dinners people, this woman left a comment, backing up my accusation that DD customers were just freakin’ wimps. She’s a single mom with three kids and two jobs, she says, and she manages to cook dinner all the time, for god’s sake.

So I click over to her blog, Cooking with the Headhunter–and, damn, she also manages to keep an insanely detailed and beautifully photographed blog on top of it all. I knew we were on the same page when I saw the photo of her freezer–full of a side of beef (named Reggie) and almost half a pig (aka Archie). Aww.

But now I feel like an incredible slacker. Not only can I barely muster cooking dinner these days, I can barely blog about it. Must start using freelance office time more constructively.