Reflections on Ramp Season

So guys, you know I love these things, right?


If you don't, there's a good chance that we've never spoken. Or that you've never been to the beach with me. As I have one pretty conspicuously tattooed on my ribs. (Sorry ancestors and grandmas.)


I went characteristically ramp-crazy this spring, but noticed that while nearly everyone I know has been forced to try them in my presence and (I hope) enjoyed them, there's been a lot of ramp backlash lately. I've heard grumblings of fad-ism, that people only go crazy for them because they're tough to get, even during their unfairly short season. These grumblers also mention that these 'foodies' really only like ramps because it seems pretty cool to be ferociously hungry for something that hardly anyone knows about. A secret, stinky little club. (Let's take a quick minute to discuss how much I kind of detest the word 'foodie'. We're people. We eat food. Being excited about it shouldn't get a diminutive 'ie' tacked onto the end of it. There, I said it.)

Anyway. My adoration is undeterred.


I was taught to love onions, garlic and all things in the allium family by two people. My mother, who cooked them into nearly every meal I ever ate as a child, not to mention as a grown-up, and my father, who SHOCKED me by chomping straight into a raw green onion right before my eyes. I was never the same.

So, it is in their honor that I continue to go totally allium crazy at all times of year, but especially ramp season. We (Sidekick and I) started with butter grilled ramps atop one of his most impeccable burgers. He makes the best burgers, did I mention that?


I moved on swiftly to the tastiest deviled eggs.


I, inevitably, moved on to pickles, which were gobbled up all too soon.


I also have some ramp butter relaxing coolly in the freezer. Just waiting to delight us come fall and winter - if I can wait that long.


Ramp Deviled Eggs

12 large eggs
1/2 cup sour cream (plus a few spoons of crème fraiche if you have it)
2 teaspoons whole grain mustard
1 tsp. white wine vinegar
8 - 10 ramp tops (use the bulbs and lovely pink stems for something else, like PICKLES)
knob of butter
salt
white pepper
smoked paprika

Cover eggs with cold water by 1 1/2 inches in a 4- to 5-quart pot and bring to a rolling boil. As soon as the water boils, take the pot off the heat, cover tightly and let sit for exactly 12 minutes. Meanwhile, chop the ramp tops and saute with the butter and a pinch of salt until tender, but still bright green. Let them cool and TRY not to eat them all. When the eggs are finished, rinse them under lots of cold water to stop cooking.

Peel eggs and halve lengthwise. Carefully remove yolks and push them through a fine mesh strainer with your fingers over a mixing bowl (I know it sounds silly, but these will be the creamiest, lightest deviled eggs you've ever eaten). To the yolks, add sour cream, crème fraiche, mustard, ramps and stir with fork until combined well. Add the vinegar, mix gently. If you want the filling to be little looser, add a little more vinegar. Season to taste with salt and white pepper, then spoon into egg whites.

Sprinkle the smoked paprika over and serve them to grateful friends, significant others, or yourself with a cold Lillet.

Spring, At Long Last

GUYS. I missed you.

So much has happened! Want to see?

There were dinners with friends.



The above delight was put together by Luke and Jennifer from the FANTASTIC Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.

I (prepare yourselves) baked a chocolate mousse cake that DID NOT suck at all. No, seriously, look!



Mitch and Suzy got married!



(Coincidentally, on this same night, my Sidekick and I got extremely drunk.)

These guys got EVEN CUTER:



Then, rhubarb came back in season!



This happened for a month or so...



I got a new job! The Sidekick and I got engaged! And best of all, ramps are back!



Now you're up to speed. Check back for upcoming catering debacles, more booze and pickles!

The Last Days of Gourmet

I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that I'll never get to work at Gourmet.



When I first heard that the magazine was closing, I mourned the loss of pretty pictures, thoughtful articles and spot-on recipes. Kevin Demaria's recent photoblog The Last Days of Gourmet reminded me that there was once a brick and mortar establishment that housed all of those fantastic brains I appreciated so much. You should take a look. It's stunning and sad and will make you realize that you just don't have enough gadgets in your kitchen. Thank you, Kevin. I can't wait to see what you get into next.

An Extremely Upsetting Lunch Decision

Guys. My tastebuds. Are so upset with me. I am upset with me. And I am upset with Daisy May's BBQ Cart.

Looking at the above, I can't see much wrong. This is a Daisy May's Bowl of Texas Red. This thing is fabled as a fantastic winter-warmer-upper, in the classic "bowl of red style" that I grew up to love. That means, no beans, just straight up red chile sauce with chunks of pork, or in this case, beef.

The good: The meat is abundant and tender, big lovely chunks of beef. There are flecks of REAL red chile swimming in the thick, murky, sauce. Also, they give you shredded cheddar, sour cream, chopped onions and a fairly decent tortilla.

The bad and the ugly: It tastes as if the cook behind it, slightly hungover from a party the night before, accidentally mistook sugar for salt and dumped in eight or ten handfulls. Then, recognizing his mistake, added an equal amount of salt to compensate. The result, I'm extremely sorry to say, was inedible. And now I'm out $8.00.

Has anyone else eaten this before? I want this to be a fluke so desperately. A good bowl of red is SO hard to find, but I couldn't trudge farther than four bites in.

Pouring One Out for Gourmet

Sad news in stomach grumbles today, as Condé Nast announced that Gourmet, in addition to three other of the brand's magazines, will be discontinued. This ends 68 years of beautiful photography, elegant recipes and a love for all things tasty that requires me to keep my windowsill stacked with back issues. What comes next for Ruth and the other remarkable staff? Let's hope more books. Cooking and otherwise.

While it's still live, check out this excellent slideshow of all things food and web on the Gourmet site: http://www.gourmet.com/food/2009/08/food-online-a-to-z#slide=1. There are some serious gems in here.

I think we should all pour a little out for our homies tonight, whatever special vintage you have on hand - in my case, PBR.

Stomach Trumps Brain: An Adventure to Cafe Edison

Let me start by saying this: Cafe Edison is a lot closer to Time Square than I like to get. Go ahead and accuse me of being a curmudgeon, it won't phase me. I hate it here for so many reasons. I hate the walking arterial clog of Midwestern tour groups. I hate the neon Olive Garden sign that is the size of 11 of me. I hate that restaurants there have to do things like this:

And most of all? I hate, HATE that TGI Friday's.

Ok. Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about some things I like. Something really special happened yesterday. On my misguided walk down Broadway from 54th to 47th, as I weaved in and out of clumps of clueless, slack-jawed visitors, I passed no less than 20 flyer hander-outers, tour bus guides and other people who try to get you to buy stuff off the street. The special part? None of them said a word to me. This means that my gait has finally become that of someone who doesn't need to be sold any crap in Times Square. This means that I have discovered the body-language phrase, "Leave me the hell alone." I feel like I've passed a test. I like this.

Here's something else I like:



After finally arriving and settling down inside Cafe Edison's dingy, Art Deco dining room, this matzoh ball soup came to me no more than 45 seconds after I ordered it. I know this looks like a bowl. To normal people this is a bowl. At Cafe Edison, this is a cup. Now, no one's matzoh ball soup will ever beat my Grandma Glenda's, but this is a pretty decent approximation. The actual matzoh ball has no business being both as enormous as it is and as fluffy and tender as it is at the same time. The chicken pieces are substantial, juicy and taste like they've been simmered for hours. I don't love noodles in my matzoh ball soup, but it's an offense I'm willing to forgive for $3.50.

Next came the sandwich:



I think it's clear that I have a pickle abuse problem, so right off the bat I'm pleased by this plate. The requisite midtown diner cole slaw, which I tend to ignore, actually got me to take another bite. And another. And another. The corned beef, while a little on the dry side, is homemade. Hear that? Home. Made. The rye bread is soft, with a little crunch on the crust.

Munching away on the kind of food that is increasingly more difficult to find in New York, I started to forget my initial panic attack as I neared the bright lights of Disney Square. I noticed the tables of elderly Jewish couples being served regular orders without menus (How do I know they were Jewish? I just know. How do you know when it's about to rain?). I even noticed, with decidedly less malice than usual, the one large table of six or seven very large out of town visitors. Having a particular shape and size only achieved by driving a car everywhere you go and not being able to go outside in the winter, they perused Broadway playbills, subway maps and bus tour programs. I found, at this moment, not disdain for these people, but pride, because if they managed to stumble just slightly off the beaten path into the Cafe Edison, they were at least doing one thing right.


Cafe Edison
228 W 47th St
New York, NY 10036
(212) 840-5000
(Cash Only)

Spring Mid-Terms (or How Baked Ziti with Meatballs Saved My Life)

This is my first year in New York.

Many view their first year in New York as a test. For me, it's Spring Mid-Term season. Well, if you can call this Spring. I would call it 'Second Winter', but I'm a desert kid.

For those of you not perched on our spectacular little island (archipelago?), let me let you in on a little secret: it has rained for six days straight. I've been told not to complain about the weather in New York. I've been reminded by benevolent forces that what I'm noticing is that New York actually HAS weather, unlike the sometimes subtly dampened climate of my youth. So, I'm learning to actually use an umbrella. And to recognize hot pink Wellies as a legitimate fashion decision.

Despite all of these positive steps in the right direction, sometimes, when you work in Midtown and have to wear fancy clothes no matter what the weather outside is like, you need a little extra help staying positive. Here's where Papa Perrone comes in.

Folks, I give you... LUNCH.



I apologize for the quality of this photo (aren't blurry photos what food blogs are all about?), but I had to take it with my phone, quickly, before I shoved the rest of it down my gullet.

This hulking behemoth of a lunch plate, baked ziti with homemade meatballs, tops out at $8.50. In a neighborhood where you can hardly get a cup of soup for under $10, Papa Perrone is truly a hero. He parks his large, extremely well-equipped food truck right around the corner from my office, on 55th between Madison and Park.

Guys, take another look at this, I'm not kidding:



Some people turn their noses up at food from carts/trucks. Stupid people. Who hate their taste buds and love to waste money. Papa Perrone's truck has a longer line trailing from it every time I go, with good reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'll eat a sandwich from Pret on an off-day as well, but there's no way it could ever compare to lunch from this man, for a few reasons: This man is about taste, generosity, an un-flinching love of perfect marinara and a general air of good-naturedness every time I see him. Also, he will put anything on garlic bread.

Sometimes, when it's really miserable outside, it's so nice to know that there's someone out there who loves your stomach as much as it needs to be loved. That someone is Papa Perrone.



Papa Perrone's
55th btw Madison & Park
917-880-1432
www.papaperrone.com

Enjoying Fiscal Responsibility: Eating at Home

Times are tough for everyone. Poor kids in Brooklyn being no exception. And, as my dear friend Dr. Booze once exclaimed, "My tasting menus don't pay for THEMSELVES."

With that in mind, my Sidekick and I have been eating at home with much more frequent regularity. This isn't really anything new as we both love to cook as much as we love to eat. It has, however, made us think more than we ever have about curbing our spending, especially on groceries. Lucky for us, I was raised in a house where budgeting was NEVER synonymous with eating things like Hamburger Helper. My parents lovingly instilled within me the ability and desire to use humble ingredients to delicious, fresh and noble ends.

So, we've started to think about each meal in terms of how we can stretch our hard-earned dollars. We've stopped letting basic ingredients like eggs, cheese, bread and milk sit around in our fridge to die a slow, lonely death.

Breakfast is an excellent place to start. I'm in a diner phase, which means I crave a hearty breakfast around 11:30 every weekend morning. My Sidekick and I pulled together this bagel sandwich with eggs, some speck and aged provolone from snacks the night before, and a fruit salad of bananas, Granny Smith apples, a tangerine, topped with a bit of mascarpone (left over from a pasta sauce a few nights before), drizzled with cinnamon and honey.



Toad in the Hole (or eggs in a basket, as I grew up with them) are one of my Sidekick's go-to breakfasts. I love this breakfast, but always feeling like it's missing one element.

DUH, cheese.

It's obvious that I'm a grilled cheese fanatic. I would eat it every day if I had my choice. I've also hatched a theory that most of my favorite meals are just a variation on a grilled cheese sandwich. Bagels and cream cheese, quesadillas, cheeseburgers, pizza, all just different forms of the same unbelievably wonderful idea. Bread, cheese, other stuff, heat.



With that in mind, I've started tinkering with Grilled Cheese Toad in the Hole. The first one I made (above) looked awesome in the pan. But the hole was so much deeper than in a normal piece of toast, that the egg couldn't spread out to cook evenly.

In subsequent versions I've made my signature Drunk-In-College grilled cheese and cut a much larger hole in the finished product. I then return it to the pan, drop a little nubbin of butter in the cut-out, and pour in an egg (seasoned with a bit of sea salt and some chives, this really becomes something to be proud of). The heat of the pan is important, I've discovered. If it's too hot, your egg starts to freak out, and becomes a mix of big craters and crunchy brown edges. Keeping the heat lower means that the whites have more time to set, while you keep your yolk nice and runny for dipping purposes.



I'll continue to mess with this and report back.

Extending this buy-cheap-eat-famously philosophy to dinner, we've been eating a lot of root vegetables, especially beets. Beets are awesome for so many reasons. They make everything pretty, taste delicious, are so easy to cook a monkey could do it and top out at $2.50 a bunch. It took me a little while to win my Sidekick over to beets. Anyone forced to eat nothing but pickled pink disks from a can in their childhood will obviously have some reservations. Now, he's a beet fiend.

Our cheap and quick Valentine's Day dinner? Roasted beet and goat cheese risotto, with a salad of roasted shitake mushrooms, sticky-sweet cubes of rosemary roasted parsnip, watercress and a roasted garlic vinaigrette.



The next night, we had some leftover beets and beet greens. This led us to a garlic and mustard rubbed flank steak with creamy horseradish beets and sauteed greens.



With stuff this dirt cheap and pretty, who could ever eat tuna-noodle casserole again?