Beer-Glazed Sausages with Charred Onions and Polenta

A few weeks ago, Emily's friends from Vienna were in town, visiting New York. They spent the week walking around the city, shopping and dining, clubbing and drinking. Whenever they were around the apartment, I naturally inquired about Viennese cuisine -- its pastries, its savories, its sweets. As the week progressed, I began craving German food, though I had rarely -- if ever -- had during my life. I proposed that on their last night I make everyone dinner to satisfy my craving, which had manifested itself in a craving for sausage.

I came up with this recipe for a sausage meal, which I think seems to be a marriage of German food (with the sausages and beer) and Mediterranean cuisine (with the polenta and roasted tomato. In keeping with this Austro-Mediterranean theme, we served the meal with a rich Catena Malbec wine instead of beer, which paired rather well with the buttery sausage and the charred onions. But to top off our meal, the Austrians pulled out some strong vodka, which we served with a Sour Cherry Tart from Silver Moon Bakery, and a lesson in key German phrases.

Somehow, the beer "sauce" that I originally intended to make came out as more of a glaze, perhaps because of the high yeast content of the beer I used. The result was deliciously thick, salty, and a bit sweet: a perfect last meal with new friends to say auf wiedersehen, a bittersweet goodbye.

BEER-GLAZED SAUSAGES WITH CHARRED ONIONS AND POLENTA

Serves 4-6

Six uncooked sausages, bought from butcher
1 small yellow Onion, cut into quarter-circle slices
½ cup Dark German Ale
2-3 vine tomatoes, cut in half
Fresh thyme
Olive oil

1 cup Polenta corn meal
2 cups water
½ cup grated Parmesan Cheese
Pinch of salt and pepper

Turn on broiler to high.

Cut tomatoes in half along their width. On a small dish, pour a circle of olive oil, add a sprinkling of salt, pepper, and fresh thyme leaves. Rub tomatoes, on the cut side down, in olive oil and herb mixture (these will be the tops of the tomatoes that face up in the broiler). Sprinkle a bit of Parmesan cheese on top of oiled tomatoes. Arrange tomatoes in a broiler pan, and put under broiler. Cook all the way through, until soft. Remove from oven and let cool.

While tomatoes are under broiler, heat a large sauté pan on high. Add oil to pan, turn down to medium heat, and add sausages. Begin cooking sausages by browning on all sides. Add onions and fresh thyme leaves to sausages. Turn sausages occasionally to cook through on all sides. When onions begin to brown, cut sausages in half length-wise and then in half across, keeping links in pan to continue cooking. Sauté sausages, cut side down, adding ale. Turn town heat to let mixture simmer, cover, and cook sausages all the way through, allowing onions to char.

In a medium-sized pot, bring two cups water to a low boil. Add polenta in a thin stream, stirring mixture with the other hand. Turn down heat to a simmer and stir polenta slowly. As the mixture begins to thicken, add parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Turn off heat, stir occasionally.

Keep an eye on the sausages to be sure that the meat cooks all the way through. When onions turn black and begin to char and the beer turns to a thick glaze, the dish should be ready.

Spoon a helping of polenta on a plate, arranging sausages and onion on top. Set one half of a roasted tomato on the side. Garnish with a sprinkling of fresh thyme leaves.

Guten appetit!

So many leftovers, so little time...

Thanksgiving: a gourmand's fantasy and a gourmet's nightmare. After a day of feasting, followed by a day of turkey-and-stuffing sandwiches, the last thing anyone wants to do is open the refrigerator again to find more leftovers, quickly becoming stale and begging to be eaten yet again.

But one can only have so many turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving before going into a tryptophan-Turkey-induced coma and forsaking turkey entirely for another year. Thanksgiving seems to be the holiday that creates the most waste; so much food is made, so much food is eaten, but still so much food is thrown away. Instead of throwing away our leftovers, my mother and I got creative this morning and decided to make a batch of Sweet Potato "Pumpkin" Muffins using the leftover sweet potatoes that no one wanted to eat. These muffins are the perfect antidote to an over-indulgent Thanksgiving meal: they are moist, sweet, and seemingly indulgent, but they're actually very healthy and full of fiber to help digest the weekend's food frenzy. We call them "pumpkin" muffins to deceive our cousins who were wary of the idea of a vegetable in a muffin. We modified the recipe from the book "Smart Muffins" by Jane Kinderlehrer (New Market Press, 1987).




SWEET POTATO "PUMPKIN" MUFFINS

2 Eggs
3/4 cup mashed Sweet Potato
2 Tbsp canola oil
2/3 cup Apple Cider
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp molasses
1 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1/4 Soy Flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soad
1 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp grated orange rind
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 ground cloves
1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 currants
Pumpkin seeds and cane sugar for garnish


Preheat oven to 400* Fahrenheit. Prepare 12 regular-sized muffin cups with baking muffin cups.

In a food processor, blend together eggs, sweet potato, oil, cider, honey and molasses so that the batter becomes light and fluffy.

In another bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and currants. Fold sweet potato mixture to dry ingredients a little at a time until mixture is completely incorporated. Do not overmix.

Spoon mixture into muffin tins. Sprinkle tops of muffins with pumpkin seeds and sugar crystals. Bake for 25-30 mins, until a toothpick comes out clean. The interior of the muffins will remain moist and soufflé-like.

Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee after Thanksgiving company is has left.

Bon appétit!

The Clock on the Stove

When I was in fourth grade, some weasel of a boy told me the following joke:

Why don't women need to wear watches? Because there's a clock on the stove.

I remember that what mortified me was not the blatant sexism of the joke told by this twelve-year-old-twit, but rather that I didn't get it. In my world, stoves didn't have clocks. My mother's stove was a gas range, and gas ranges don't have clocks because the heat from the fire burners is far too strong for electronics.

Kind of like a woman in the kitchen.

New York Magazine recently ran a feature called "A Woman's Place" about the difficulties of being a professional woman chef in New York City. It was in the form of a group-style interview with seven of the city's most prominent female chefs: "April Bloomfield (The Spotted Pig), Rebecca Charles (Pearl Oyster Bar), Alex Guarnaschelli (Butter), Sara Jenkins (formerly of 50 Carmine), Anita Lo (Annisa), Jody Williams (Morandi), and Patricia Yeo (formerly of Monkey Bar and Sapa)."

I've had the pleasure of tasting the savory warmth of gnudi at Spotted Pig melt on my tongue and of indulging in the buttery toastiness of the Lobster roll at Pearl... So brava, ladies, brava.

Like the article says, historically women have been the rulers of kitchen in the domestic sphere. And then -- like any good export of the the sexism capital of the Western world -- France showed that great chefs, male, were fit to cook for the king.

Female chefs in recent history tend to carry the weight of domesticity: Julia Child, Martha Stewart, TV chefs like Giada DeLaurentiis and Ina Garten, even Alice Walker might be considered more of a domestic than, say, Ferrán Adria (who is certainly more of a chemist than anything else...test tubes... really...). The sex appeal of these women is that they make food that reminds you of home, that somehow appeals to Oedipal mother-love. Giada and Nigella Lawson are babes, and (or because?) they cook and look great doing it. "How to be a Domestic Goddess," anyone?

I find these women brave, and I truly admire the less conspicuous chefs who command the hot strips of New York's most competitive kitchens. Perhaps the professional restaurant kitchen is one of the last openly sexist places of work, where testosterone-laden competition makes it difficult -- if not impossible -- for a woman to truly succeed in the restaurant world.

This is ironic, considering that the role reverses in the domestic sphere. If ever my father tried to cross my mother in Her Kitchen, it was tantamount offense to a Yankee crossing the Mason-Dixon line. It just wasn't done, and the consequences were dire. I witnessed explosions throughout my years at home when we crossed the line to assist with a meal. Timing was everything, and if we ever challenged the "rate-limiting factor" of a dish, we were toast, broiled, boiled over and put back on the spit for another go-around in the fire. I'd like to see Gordon Ramsay take my mother on, because I know that my mother commands Her Kitchen so well that even Ramsay would shy away, muttering defeated curses under his hushed and humiliated breath.

So for a woman to succeed in a kitchen, she's got to be a fireball. Sexy, powerful, unafraid of getting burned or cut or splattered by fat frying in a pan. And then she must also be able to fight the other fires of competition with the ultimate Alpha Male: He Who Cooks and is Still a Man's Man. The male chef has the ultimate sex-appeal. So no matter how you slice it, men once again get the one up on women... or do they?

I have daily dreams of abandoning all of my financial responsibilities and becoming a sous-chef to sweat it out under the guidance of an older, wiser Chef de Cuisine. I do the private, at-home-chef thing for the Nanny Family, and that's a cakewalk. I've done dinner parties, wine tastings, Italian family holidays, cooking one-on-one for my father when my mother was away. This doesn't really constitute a resume, but let's look at the details a moment:

Thanksgiving, 2005. Paris. First Thanksgiving on my own. Galley kitchen, 4ft by 6ft with a narrow walking space. 1.5ft by 2ft working space. The menu: Turkey roulade with wild mushrooms, pinenuts herbs and cheese (I can't remember what kind of cheese), peppers and zucchini stuffed with roasted winter vegetables and homemade breadcrumbs, honey-glazed carrots with mint, more vegetables I can't remember, plus amuse bouches galore and roasted peaches for dessert. Served for 21 people, prepared from scratch, in seven-straight hours of sweaty, back-breaking work (see photo above). I wanted fresh ingredients from the market, so in my ambition, I prepared the meal in one, single day. By the end of that night (3am), I was more possessed than Lady Macbeth -- and I couldn't eat a damn thing I made. I lost my appetite completely. But everyone said it was great.

Yet that was at home, in my domestic little French kitchen. I wasn't on the line, I wasn't handling multiple requests for multiple diners with multiplicitous tastes. It was my menu for my guests and they were having the menu that I created myself. So perhaps my first Thanksgiving wasn't that impressive after all -- perhaps it doesn't qualify me for a job in a professional kitchen.

So what's the alternative for women who aspire to cook professionally? A pastry chef? Ovens are hot (I've a scars to prove it), but they cook slowly. It's not like a gas, full-range stove with all six burners going at once and pans flying everywhere. Go to Casa Mono and sit at the bar while you have your tapas and Rioja -- you'll see what I mean. Fire is sexy. So ladies, keep cooking with fire. And move. Quickly.

Eggplant Stacks with Wild Boar Ragú

My father was one of five children -- two girls, three hungry boys. Like every good Italian family, meals were served at table from large plates that were passed from person to person. I assume there must have been some sort of passing hierarchy, because my father always tells stories of anxiously waiting for the plate to reach him -- the second-to-last child -- at which point the good parts of the dish had been taken. Because the men in the family had such great appetites, there was always a sense of immediacy to the meal: eat quickly, or be left hungry.

I am sure that the threat of not having enough dinner was part of what made my father love food so much. It wasn't that food was scarce for his family, but rather that my father's voracious, teenage appetite couldn't easily be sated around a table of a family of seven, plus guests. Fortunately, he and my mother bore two girls, which means that my father always gets the lion's share of the meal.

For my father's birthday last month, my mother and I gave him the gift of a culinary weekend: three magnificent dinners and a delicious brunch. The following recipe, Eggplant Stacks with Wild Boar Ragú, is one of the dishes my mother and I prepared for him. My mother has a knack for finding all sorts of wild game meat to put into her dishes. She buys the D'Artagnan brand boar products. My father, ever the wine connoisseur, recommends this dish with a sturdy Barolo.


EGGPLANT STACKS WITH WILD BOAR RAGU

Serves 4

1 large Vidalia onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound boneless wild boar meat, cut into medium-sized cubes
1 pound chopped tomatoes
3 bay leaves
Fresh or dried oregano
Fresh basil
1 cup red wine
1 large eggplant, cut into1/4-inch slices
Fontina cheese (or another similar cheese that melts well, like Istara)
Fettucine pasta, or another spaghetti-like variety
Salt and pepper, to taste


In a large cast-iron pot, sauté the onion in olive oil until translucent. Add garlic. Add the boar meat and cook until seared and brown.

De-glaze the pan with a splash of wine, letting the boar absorb some of the wine, about thirty seconds. Add the tomatoes and the bay leaves and oregano. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Let ragù simmer on low on the stovetop. leaving the lid of the pot slightly ajar. Keep stirring occasionally for at least two hours. The longer the ragù is left to simmer, the more tender the meat will become.

Brush the eggplant rounds with olive oil, sprinkling with salt and pepper. Grill both sides of the eggplant until cooked. Remove from grill, and set aside on a dish for assembly.

Boil a large pot of water for pasta. Add salt once water has begun to boil. Add pasta, cook until al dente, and strain water thoroughly.

The ragù iwill be ready to eat when the meat falls apart from the cubes and has absorbed most of the liquid.

To assemble eggplant stacks, begin first layer on plate with eggplant. Add a layer of fontina cheese, a spoonful of ragù, followed by a full basil leaf. Repeat until desired height is reached, about three layers. Top with a generous spoonful of ragù, cheese, and chiffonade pieces of basil. In another corner of the dish, twist pasta into a nest, spooning ragù into the center. Sprinkle with cheese, and enjoy with a glass of Barolo.

Buon apetito!

Desfile Mariano

Every Saturday, the Upper West Side becomes quiet. Shops are closed, restaurants are slow, and the streets are empty except for the steady stream of families, young couples, and groups of young people on foot, who stroll the sidewalks in observance of weekly Shabbat. But yesterday afternoon, the lazy calm of the afternoon was interrupted when Amsterdam Avenue was suddenly flooded with music, color, and the Virgin Mary.

I jumped up to look outside the window, and I was stunned by the array of colors and the sheer volume of people on the street, wearing traditional garb and joining in dance and song. Most shocking of all were the floats: huge, crepe paper displays of the Virgin Mother, crucifixes of Christ, enormous rosary beads carried by children up the avenue.

Catholic Hispanics of New York were parading to celebrate the tenth annual Desfile Mariano, a parade of floats in honor of the faith of the entire Hispanic world. Sponsored by the Office for Hispanic Subjects of the Arquidiocesis of New York, people representing twenty-four Hispanic countries gathered on the street to honor the different representations of the Virgin Mary in these cultures.

Everyone in the neighborhood was speechless and stunned by the beauty of the commotion. Jewish families observing Shabbat stopped walking to gather on corners and watch the parade go by. People danced, clapped, and joined in song; some shouted from the sidelines when their country's representatives passed by.

The beauty of that hour on the street was in the seeming spontaneity of the whole parade: no police guarded the street, no streets were blocked off. It was up to the passers-by (and one lone priest) to stop cars from chopping across the Amsterdam parade. Everyone of every culture and socio-economic class was fascinated by the display of Hispanic pride and Catholic faith, and everyone stopped to savor the moment. The Mariano Parade was, to me, a cultural feast.

Desfile Mariano Photo Album

Arthur Avenue: Little Italy in the Bronx

My father recently told me the following story. When my sister and I were young, my parents used to dress us up in fancy clothes and take us out to dinner, oftentimes to fine Italian restaurants around Connecticut. Our favorite was a lovely place in New Haven called Tre Scalini, an upscale favorite of Wooster Street residents in Little Italy. One Sunday night, I brought my little sister to the bathroom, and upon returning, showed my father two twenty dollar bills.

"Where'd you get that?" He asked.
"From the man at the bar over there," I replied, pointing to a man, well-dressed, well-jeweled, and in a finely-pressed suit.
"You can't take money from strangers," my father said, and called over our waiter to figure out how to return the gift. The waiter came by the table and my father inquired about the gentleman.
"Oh, you can't give that money back," the waiter said gravely. "You don't return gifts like that when the come from a guy like him." A wink and a nod.

Needless to say, my father was nervous so that we skipped our tiramisu dessert and left the restaurant without a fuss, but with a polite "thank you" to the signore, who replied with a nod of the head.

Now, thirteen years later, I recently found myself graciously accepting a liter of unfiltered Sicilian olive oil from the shop owner of Teitel Brothers Wholesale and Retail Grocery Company on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. When I asked how much I owed him, the shopkeeper gave me an eye.

"Whaddya mean?" He asked me. A wink and a nod.


Arthur Avenue is Little Italy in the Bronx. Located near Fordam University between Fordam Road and East 183rd Street, this stretch of neighborhood is as close to an authentic Italian neighborhood as one can get in New York. Forget Little Italy in China Town -- uptown in the Bronx is the real . It is an Italian foodie's paradise; both sides of the street are packed with grocery shops, butchers, delis, bakeries, pastry shops, between which people are constantly running with their wares to meet the demands of a very hungry clientele.

Recently, my dear consigliere urged me to get to Arthur Avenue to do a story for Goûter; he had been there on numerous, storied occasions when he lived here in New York, and he knew that I'd love it. A few weeks later, my parents announced that they'd be coming into the city to go to the New York Botanical Gardens and then having lunch on Arthur Avenue nearby. I invited myself along with them and their friends, hopped the MetroNorth to the Bronx, and navigated my way on foot to Arthur Avenue, a place that somehow felt like home. Everyone was out on the street, enjoying the lazy breeze of the autumn afternoon. And yet, the whole street was in a wonderful commotion of people eating, playing cards, chatting at the salon, eating, toting around groceries, eating, yelling from windows, having discussions on the sly, eating, running through traffic, smoking, and eating. Italian was spoken everywhere by everyone, and hands were flying about expressively from hip to mouth to chin.

My father was hungry, so the first thing to do was find Enzo's, the restaurant where we had been told to eat by one of his colleagues who grew up on Arthur Avenue. Even with the plethora of great eats to chose from (Roberto's, Dominick's, Pasquale's, etc.), we were told that Enzo's was the place to go. It was a delight, indeed. Enzo's is a homey little trattoria where neighborhood regulars dine in big family groups. The restaurant has brick walls with large, medieval tapestries, an impressive rack of wine on display, and beautiful, hammered copper ceiling overhead. The food is traditional Italian -- simple, but delicious. Our hostess felt like an old friend (she knew someone with our same last name on Long Island, a baker...), and she doted on us with friendly curiosity. We ordered a bottle of Tuscan Sangiovese, Castello Banfi Rosso di Montalcino (2005) -- dry, oak-ey, and ruby red. We began the meal with a round of appetizers: salty Clams Oreganata, buttery Polenta with white beans and savory sausage, and fresh Mozzarella di Bufala with big slices of red tomato, crisp basil, and roasted red peppers. By the end of that feast, we were feeling full, but when the pastas came to the table, our appetites expanded, and we loosened our belts. Rigatoni alla Siciliana with hunks of lucious eggplant and mozzarella in a sweet tomato sauce; Cavatelli di Broccoli Rabe with sausage in fresh olive oil with garlic, and Orchiette with peppery sausage, chicken, and portobello mushroom in a spicy, chunky tomato sauce. We passed around plates, picking and tasting, wiping up the sauces with fresh Italian bread with huge pieces of black olive baked inside. All around us, everyone was enjoying the same tradition, clinking glasses of wine in the mid-afternoon and easing digestion with a bit of Sambuca.

From Enzo's we took to the street to explore the local vendors. My mother and I ran across the street to Biancardi's Meat, which was like an entire meat locker unto itself, crowded with people and pungent with the smell of freshly killed meats. Biancardi's is the home of the delicious sausage from Enzo's, which comes in two varieties: spicy, and mouth-blowingly spicy. At the back of the store, the ceiling is covered in various, long salumi hanging from meat racks, to the right of which is a brooding portrait of the Madonna.

Next we stopped into Addeo Bakers, whose enormous loaves of bread came in various shapes and sizes. Large circular loaves, long loaves, hundreds of breadsticks of different varieties, and so much more.

On the previous block was the celebrated grocer, Teitel Brothers. Established in 1915, the grocery is a tiny little store that is packed floor-to-ceiling with delicious, gourmet Italian foodstuffs. Out in front are paint buckets filled with a variety of dried beans, canned beans and tomatoes piled into high towers, jugs of various olive oils marking the entrance, and a strange display of salted eels splayed out, as if to guard the door from hungry intruders. Inside, the store consists of only one aisle into which everyone -- customers, runners, shopkeepers -- are packed. Everyone screams and shouts their orders because everyone goes to Teitel's with a precise list of what to buy. Perhaps that is why the shopkeeper came running toward me and I was looking over shoulders in an attempt to browse around the store. It was from him that I got the olive oil, and another confirmation that someone of my same last name is a baker in Long Island.

I lost track of my father and his friend, only to lose him further inside of the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, an indoor market of various sellers with a variety of delicious and bizarre wares. In the front of the store is an area inside of which a handful of men are busy at work rolling fresh cigars and chain-smoking the dregs all day long. My father got stuck with a man selling a hodge-podge of kitchen goods in an attempt to buy my mother an electric tomato sauce machine to replace the hand-grinder that he so lovingly attends to during tomato sauce season at home (when she discovered what he was up to, his efforts went for naught). I wandered into the back with Glen and Robin, my parents friends, only to discover more butchers (pig's feet, cow's tongue, lamb's head, kidneys, hearts, livers), a green grocer, and a giant salumi hanging from the rafters. People were eating everywhere, snacking on delicious savories and sweets. Our appetites whet once again, we headed back to the street in search of Stratciatella Gelato (fluffy, creamy vanilla with thin, wispy shards of dark chocolate).

On the street, we saw Alex, our waiter from Enzo's. He told us where to go -- a pastry shop "around the corner, four shops in." Following his instructions, we found ourselves at DeLillo Bakery, the family store once owned by the parents of author Don DeLillo. The smell inside the shop was warm and sweet, and enveloped us like the crunchy crust of a cannoli. We were tempted to stay, but there was no Stratciatella flavor that day.

Back on the street, I found my father focusing the camera on a dapper-looking gentleman in a stylish, pressed gray suit, pink shirt with jeweled cuffs, who was talking to a lesser-looking fellow in drab clothes. I watched as the smaller man caught sight of my father, and the two looked over with faces blank. My father clumsily pointed the camera up toward a street sign, snapped what turned out to be a fantastic picture (but not of them), and then he hurried around the corner, and pulled me out of sight.

Fortunately, we stumbled into Egidio's bakery, where we found our gelato. Yet again there was no straciatella, but the feast inside was exactly what we had been looking for. In fact, it was in Egidio's into which I first stumbled on my lost way to find the New York Botanical Gardens to find my parents, and when I saw the shop owner again, she immediately recognized me as though I were an old friend. Carmela Lucciola oversees Egidio Pastry Shop off Arthur Avenue on 187th street all on her own, and even owns a beautiful restaurant, Dolce Amaro, around the corner back on the Avenue. We chatted for a while over the counter (again with the relative who is a baker on Long Island), and then she sent me with one of her employees to scout out the restaurant -- the only one in town with an outdoor patio.

When I returned to Egidio's, I found my parents and their friends enjoying heaping bowls of glistening gelato, smiling and content. Carmela whisked me around the shop, chatting about business, the neighborhood, speaking in English, then Italian, then English again. Somehow, I was able to understand and keep up with her. Toward the back of the shop's cases stuffed with buttery cookies, I found a tray of chunky biscotti, Quaresimali, or Lenten Almond Biscuits. These hard and crunchy cookies were created especially for the lenten season when good Roman Catholic Italians abstain from tempting sweets. Quaresimali, however, don't count, and pair perfectly with a teensy cup of hot espresso.

It was nearing 5 o'clock and my parents and their friends had to leave before evening traffic set in (albeit, they were doing the reverse commute). We all reluctantly left Carmela ("Ce vediamo, tanti baci!"), and as I walked down the darkening street, I felt a small sense of loss. There are days when I believe that New York is the greatest city in the world, and other days when I feel trapped by the concrete and the anonymity of the busy sidewalks. Arthur Avenue is neither concrete nor anonymous; it is a place that feels like Europe in America, and welcomes visitors like family. Leaving Arthur Avenue held, for me, the same feeling of anti-climax after holiday meals at home are over, and my loud, boisterous family all goes away (minus the relief of making it past the inevitable arguments and impetuous jokes). But like a good Italian family, there is always an excuse for another reunion, and I've already promised Carmela that I will return for the holidays to eat at Dolce Amaro.

Until then, I'll be dousing my food in the gifted olive oil, whipping of batches of Quaresimali, and trying to figure out who this baker is on Long Island with whom I share the same, multi-syllabic, ends-with-a-vowel, Italian last name.

Arthur Avenue Photo Album



QUARESIMALI
(from italiancookingandliving.com)

Makes about 1 doz cookies

• Sugar: 1 cup
• Flour: 1 1/2 cups
• Bitter cocoa powder: 1/2 cup
• Hazelnut paste: 1 3/4 oz
• 3 egg whites
• 1 orange
• Powdered vanilla or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Cinnamon
• Baking powder: 1 tablespoon

Beat the egg whites until firm then add the sugar and the nut paste (this can be replaced with 1 3/4 oz of hazelnuts, finely ground in the food mixer).

In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the cocoa, the grated orange rind, a pinch of cinnamon, a little vanilla and the baking powder. Slowly fold this into the egg whites: you should obtain a fairly dense mixture.

On baking paper (or a buttered tray) form , using a syringe or confectioner's bag (space well as these will swell with cooking).

Leave to stand for about one hour, then place in a warm oven (300° F) for about ten minutes.

***


Enzo's
2339 Arthur Ave.
(bet. Crescent Ave. & E. 186th St.)
718.733.4455

Biancardi's Meat
2350 Arthur Avenue
718.733.4058

Addeo Bakers
2372 Hughes Ave
718.367.8316

Arthur Avenue Retail Market
2344 Arthur Avenue
(No phone)

DeLillo Pastry Shop
606 E. 187th St.
(bet. Arthur/Hughes Aves.)
718.367.8198

Egidio Pastry Shop
622 E 187th Street
718.295.6077

Dolce Amaro
2389 Arthur Avenue
347.270.0081

Porcini Ravioli and Sage Butter Sauce

One afternoon, my Nanny Family made a special dinner request: porcini mushroom ravioli from Citarella, the "food mecca" of New York and the Hamptons. I don't shop at Citarella myself; I actually find it rather intimidating. When I go to market, I know how to shop by fingering around the produce to see what's in season, and by snooping around the aisles for things to work together into a meal. But Citarella has a different approach to grocery shopping. The little shop on 75th and Broadway is a food boutique where the incredibly selective array of food dictates what one is actually able to make. The "chef's helpers" and prepared foods are in abundance, however, which to me indicates that Citarella is more of a gourmet shop than a chef's market.

My gripes with the store aside, Citarella is a unique New York food destination. Their selection of meats and fish is diverse and fresh, the specialty foods are from all over the world, and the Citarella-brand goods are in a league unto themselves. Citarella's own ravioli are a fresh example of the store's commitment to quality. These delectable treats come with an array of fillings, from cheese to pumpkin, meats to broccoli rape. The ravioli are moist and savory; they are so fresh that the pasta literally melts onto the tongue. Because the Nanny Family is so keen on mushrooms, they requested the porcini mushroom ravioli. They are made with the perfect ratio of pasta to filling, the richness of which inspired me to craft the following sauce.

The simplicity of this sauce is what always astounds me every time I make it. It is visually unimpressive, but it is incredibly fragrant and packs a flavor that just tantalizes the senses. It is rich, yet light, and makes a perfect meal for an autumn day.


PORCINI RAVIOLI AND SAGE BUTTER SAUCE
Serves 4-6

Citarella-brand porcini mushroom ravioli (or another high-quality brand)

1 package fresh Sage leaves (about 2-3 bunches, must be fresh)
1 doz. Crimini Mushrooms
1 small Shallot, cut crosswise into paper-thin rounds, separated into rings
1 stick Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
1 Tbsp Olive Oil, with plenty on hand for frying sage and mushrooms
Pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper


In a large stockpot, set aside water to boil to pasta.

Pick whole sage leaves from their stems, wash, and gently pat dry with a paper towel. Set aside.

Remove stem from mushrooms, and clean caps by wiping off dirt from caps with a paper towel and using a small spoon to gently remove the gills and the ring. Slice caps into thin pieces, keeping shape of mushroom cap in each slice. Set aside.

Heat a medium sauté pan on high heat. Add a liberal amount of olive oil to coat bottom of pan. Retain some smaller sage leaves aside, and use the larger leaves to fry. Carefully toss in sage leaves to fry; the oil will spatter as the leaves cook. Turn down heat to medium-high and fry until crispy and green-gold in color. Remove only leaves with a slotted spoon, placing on a clean paper towel to absorb excess oil.

Place pan back on medium-high heat. Use the remaining oil -- which is infused with the sage -- to fry mushrooms. Add more oil if necessary, heat well, and toss in mushroom slices. Fry until golden brown and crispy. Remove only mushrooms with a slotted spoon, placing on a clean paper towel to absorb excess oil.

Turn heat down to medium. Melt butter in pan, and cook for about a minute. Add shallots and remaining fresh sage leaves, and bring to a low boil for another minute. Add tablespoon of olive oil, and cook until fragrant, about three minutes. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Once the water in the stockpot is boiling fiercely, add a teaspoon of salt. Gently toss in ravioli, and cook for about 3-6 minutes, until all ravioli float to surface. Drain well. Transfer ravioli to plates. Drizzle butter sauce from the pan over plated ravioli. Top with fried mushrooms and sage leaves; serve immediately.


Buon appetito!

Table for One: In Search of Regulars at New York City's Restaurants

My apologies to everyone who has been patiently been asking for more. I've had this story written and waiting to be edited for a few weeks now, so here it is finally for you to read. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed my experience.

Bello Sguardo, Upper West Side
Amsterdam Avenue, between 79th and 80th Streets

"There's hardly enough light for you to read!" she said, offering me a candle wrapped in crimson paper from her table. "Well, that's not going to help any."

Indeed, there wouldn't be enough light for me to read my book, even so early at 8pm on an August night in New York City. The lack of adequate lighting completely defeated the purpose of my mid-week dinner out by myself. After a day of wandering around Central Park and the Upper West Side, I decided to end my day over a lone dinner to read my new book, enjoy a glass of wine and a caprese salad, and savor the lingering heat of day that evening at summer's end.

There is something about dining alone in New York that makes this very lonely practice rather acceptable. Every restaurant in the city has its regulars, and I'd wager that a large percentage of these regulars dine alone. Perhaps it is the comfort of returning every day to the same restaurant; the staff becomes like family, the customer's preferred table like his own dining table at home. But even amidst kissing couples, lively families, and groups of women on friend dates, a crowded restaurant can be rather comforting to those who dine alone. This is why, on that particular night in August, I decided to forgo scrolling through my cell phone contact list and
request a table for one.

That night at Bello Sguardo, a fine enough Mediterranean restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, I found a bit of unexpected companionship. I was able to read only about a paragraph of my book (Picture Perfect, by Jodi Picoult) when my fellow diner interrupted to engage me in conversation. I found myself entranced by this woman, who told me an story more compelling than the one I read on paper -- the story of a woman's life, where love, family, creativity, and compromising truth and belief in oneself lead her here, next to me, to share my Table for One.

Stella, as she will be called for the sake of anonymity, is a regular at Bello Sguardo. With her jet black hair cut short in an incredibly elegant and stylish bob, she looked like an Italian Cleopatra on whom the waiters doted with a sort of maternal reverence. After she convinced me to order the Chopped Salad in place of the Caprese ("You'll get one tomato and a slice of cheese with the Caprese. The Chopped Salad is more interesting, or so it seems to me."), I ordered a glass of delightfully smooth and inexpensive Chablis, closed my book, and settled back for a simple meal and unexpected companionship.

Stella, like any good regular, called herself a very picky diner. Her meal, for example, was not on the menu. It was rather an accommodation by the restaurant's staff to suit her taste for that particular evening: mixed green vegetables, two rounds of eggplant parmigiana, and a spoonful of penne pomodoro. There hadn't been enough sauce on the eggplant, and she asked the waiter for more. "But you'll have to go downstairs to get it?" she asked, showing her knowledge of the complete topography of the restaurant. The waiter insisted on getting it for her, and so she agreed to have more sauce. Later she told me that she was hoping for string beans rather than mixed vegetables. She also complained --to me only -- that she should have been given Parmesan cheese. She resolved that just for tonight she wouldn't to be too picky.

I was curious to know why this attractive older woman would be dining alone. She was rather statuesque; her dark hair fell closely to her cheeks, as if to frame the features of her beautiful face. She wore the timeless combination of black and white clothing, and her manicured nails were polished a deep purple, just a few shades darker than her lipstick that painted her pouty lips. The only ring she wore was a simple, black band (made of plastic, she later confessed) on the pinky of her right hand.

When the waiter came to take my order, she encouraged me to ask for more feta cheese with my salad. I didn't, for once ordering straight off the menu without asking for changes. When I turned back to her, she looked both amused and disappointed.
"You didn't ask for more cheese..." she smiled.
"Oh, I didn't want to make a fuss. And those people over there look like they have the same salad with a nice bit of cheese on it."
"My children always say I'm too picky," she said, cutting a bite of eggplant with her fork. "I didn't realize I was picky. But I do think that the more I go to a place, like here, the more picky I become."

We talked for a bit about what made her picky: taste in food, taste in clothes, ("I have a pair of leather coolats with silk lining that I bought from Bergdorf Goodman's for $500. And that was in 1986, and I can still wear them... Ten, twenty, twenty-one years later."), and most importantly -- taste in men. She asked me what my past and present boyfriends had to say about my tendencies for pickiness. I laughed, and told her that it was less a question of my boyfriends' commenting on my pickiness, but rather a question of my friends who constantly comment on my pickiness when it comes to picking boyfriends. She chuckled, and then asked me to try to describe my perfect man.

For Stella, her perfect man had been her husband: "When I met him, I ran home and told my mother, 'I met my husband!' I knew right away." She looked nostalgic, and her eyes began to sparkle with dewy tears. "When I first saw him, he was sitting there with his hand on his chin, biting his thumb. His profile was so beautiful, chiseled like a statue."

Stella's husband was the brother of her good college friend, and Stella, after hearing about this brother all throughout college, finally concocted a plan to meet him. Their first meeting was a success, and after a year, they were married. "He made me feel safe and we just knew it was to be. We worked out the questions, and there were no doubts."

She told me about how her husband was a writer who composed beautiful poems to her, two of which she recited to me. Together, they had two children (two boys and a girl). "All I ever wanted were babies," she told me frankly. For her, a career was secondary to having a family. However, once the children came of age, Stella pursued the career of an actress. As a young girl, she did stage shows, but when she was older, she switched to film. "I did all the New York films," she told me humbly. "Serpico, Taxi Driver... I was in all of them. Back then, it was easy to get a part as an extra -- and I could take my babies to the set."

As her story goes, Stella entered the business rather "connected." She was discovered on stage by a fellow who told her to join the Italian-American division of the Screen Actors' Guild. As a bright young thing, she eagerly brought her new friend home to her father. "My father eyed him up and down, gave him a little upward nod. He did the same. It sealed the deal and I was in," she told me, touching my arm. "But when he left, my father screamed: 'What are you doing with a guy like Angelo?? Do you know who he works for?!?' But it didn't matter. Back then for us Italians, everybody worked for somebody."

We spent the whole evening wrapped in conversation about love, careers, food, and family. We touched on subjects that made her cry, we talked about things that inspired me to keep going for what I wanted and needed. At the end of the meal, she moved on to espresso, and asked her waiter if she could smoke. When he casually told her that she could not, she retorted by saying how she saw a friend of his smoking outside a few nights earlier. The waiter clearly couldn't argue with that, but out of politeness, Stella stood up and lit her smoke just on the border of the terrace. Like a star from an old film, she took long drags between thoughts, resting her elbow on the back of her opposite hand. "I think I'm starting to figure you out," she told me. And then she described me in almost perfect detail, and set me on course with a plan.

Once her espresso was finished, it was time for us both to go. We paid our checks (hers considerably less than mine -- another perk of being a regular) and we stood up to walk a bit together up the Avenue. We paused for a few moments at a sidewalk bench, and she lit up another cigarette "for digestion." As the ten o'clock hour neared, Stella turned to me and thanked me for my company, and excused herself to walk home alone into the summer evening.

Stella left me with some important advice, as well as other stories about her life which I guard for the sake of keeping the confidence with which she trusted me by recounting them. Of the many things I came to understand over that dinner with Stella, the most important lesson she seemed to stress was that we do not always have all of the answers. She encouraged us to live life with a little bit of recklessness in order to follow what the heart compels tells us to do. It seems that this philosophy has worked for Stella throughout her storied life. Even though now she dines alone, Stella has lived an entire life of fulfillment, where all of her hopes and needs were fulfilled. It is this life and the memories from it that have remained her trusted company through many a Table for One.

Knife Skills 101

Early this morning at 12:43am, I gave a doctor the finger.

It had been two hours since I arrived at the Emergency Room of St. Luke's Hospital. The nurse at triage complained to me about her late-night hunger. A woman two-and-a-half times my size with a breathing problem whined about being cold through her respiratory treatment tube while simultaneously sucking on Peanut M&M's. A few homeless people came in with "injuries" that required them to stay the night.

I waited patiently, slightly amused by my mishap, with my middle finger bleeding through a roll of gauze that trailed behind me because the triage nurse couldn't find her scissors to cut it properly.

I didn't cry when I sliced my finger open. I didn't panic when our cab driver had a hard time driving straight up Amsterdam Avenue. I didn't even get upset when I had to take a urine test to see if I was pregnant (the absurdity of which was made all the more amusing when my roommate told them she was positive that I wasn't pregnant, and the boyfriend of the sprained-ankle-girl questioned whether or not we were lesbians).

Not even the three-hour wait just to see a doctor had dampened my spirits. There was something rather vindicating about having my first trip to the ER be the result of a cooking accident. I was there because I had cut the cheese.

It was Mimolette cheese, one of my most favorite cheeses -- nutty, orange, and hard as wax. We were having a Delivery Lockdown Cocktail Party (awaiting a delivery from Bed Bath and Beyond) enjoying a bottle of Muscadet, Lemon Apples, Etorki Cheese and of course, the culprit Mimolette.

My other roommate couldn't slice through the cheese, and I offered assistance. I picked up the wedge, proudly poised to show off my cheese-cutting skills, and held the rind in my right hand, picked up the Swiss cheese knife in my left. A chorus of "watch your fingers" went up around the table -- which everyone did as soon as the knife skidded across the cheese and sliced through the tip of my right middle finger.

One bloody bamboo cheeseboard, one picture text message to my father, and one Google search for the best NYC ERs later ("Amanda, what are you expecting, a pre-suture spa treatment?"), I was on my way to bandage up my first serious injury that would allow me to become part of the ranks of cooks who sustain -- and relish in -- injuries from all sorts of kitchen mishaps.

Four years ago, I survived unscathed from a grill explosion in my face while grilling a filet of Tilapia. Two summers ago, I lost a bit of the tip of my right thumb while slicing vegetables on a mandolin slicer. When I was in Paris, I burned myself on my oven while pulling out a tray of roasted fall vegetables. I now have an hourglass-shaped scar on my right wrist. Since then, I've been in good shape. But this cheese knife cut was deep, bloody, and fleshy enough to seek real medical treatment. I like to think that my wound is a real chef's cut. Is it a bit perverse that I'm slightly disappointed that I cut it on cocktail cheese rather than while preparing a four-course meal?

In one week, I will get the stitches removed from my finger, and it won't look like a Frankenstein Finger anymore. I wonder if it will scar like the oven burn, or if it will return to normal like my eyebrows did after the gas grill explosion. Either way, I'm now in the Cut Cooks Club, and if anyone challenges my membership, I'll just show them the finger.

Diary of a New York Waiter

"I miss you." Spray-painted on a sidewalk in Paris, October 2005.

For those of you who have been missing Josh's serial of Diary of a New York Waiter, here on Goûter, don't fret. Josh has opened up his own independent blog, which is hilarious, poignant, and inspiring.

In his latest post about life as a waiter at "Café Roman," Josh reflects on what it means to be alone. As observes two of Roman's most loyal customers, Picky Pam and Two-a-Day-Tom, he confronts his biggest fear of growing old and lonely.


It's what each of us fears most, being alone. And yet, if you look around you, so many of us do end up that way. I find that I look towards my own future and the possibility of spending a great majority of my mature years by myself, and instead of accepting it, I deny, deny, deny. "I'll have a life partner and he won't die first."Or, "I'll have lots of children...children who will be content spending significant amounts of time with their old, lonely Dad."

But then I think of my grandmother, who lost her oldest of two daughters (my mother) to breast cancer, and who lost her husband two years later to heart failure. She, a woman who spent her life giving her entire self to her family, spent these past eight years sitting abandoned, re-watching episodes of Little House on the Prairie, welcoming any distraction no matter how familiar it is. There are, however, things I believe my grandmother, had she pushed herself to do so, could have done to better surround herself with peers and friends so as not to feel so utterly alone. She could have joined a book club - she reads more than anyone I know. She could have worked some kind of desk job that her bum knee would not have prevented her from being able to do. At Cafe Roman, we have two extreme regulars, who, like my grandmother, are elderly and alone. Every day they come in, both with their own quirks, ready to visit their respective surrogate families of waiters.



To read the rest of the post and more about Josh's adventures, visit Diary of a New York Waiter at http://newyorkwaiter.blogspot.com.

Risotto with Mushroom and Thyme Ragù

Risotto is one of my all-time favorite dishes. When I was asked to prepare it for my "nanny family," I was absolutely thrilled. When they requested mushroom risotto, I was elated.

Risotto is a dish that many people tend to eat in the colder seasons because it is such a substantial and comforting meal. It was perfect for last week's weather in New York, when rainy cold Autumn days suddenly interrupted our August heat, which was then promptly restored over the weekend at 100*.

Risotto is, however, a very versatile dish that can be prepared for any season if the right ingredients are used. It is a meal that can showcase the produce of the season. Wintertime root vegetables are excellent for a comforting meal of Risotto with Butternut Squash and Sage. In the spring, welcome the new season with Risotto with Shrimp and Spring Asparagus Tips. Take advantage of summertime tomatoes with a Sweet Tomato and Basil Risotto with Peas. In the fall, take through the woods under changing foliage to collect mushrooms for this Mushroom Risotto with Thyme.




RISOTTO WITH MUSHROOM AND THYME RAGÙ


For the Risotto:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup yellow onion, diced
1/2 cup fennel, finely diced
3 small cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup carrot, finely diced
1/2 cup diced Portobello mushroom
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups Arborio Rice (risotto rice)
6 cups fluid: 2 cups vegetable stock, 2 cups mushroom stock, 2 cups water (kept warm in a small pot on stove)
1 cup grated Parmesean cheese

For the Mushroom Ragù*:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup fennel, finely diced
2 small cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup carrot, finely diced
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
1 cup sliced Crimini mushrooms
1/2 cup sliced Shitake mushrooms
1/2 cup sliced Portobello mushrooms
1/2 cup small Oyster mushrooms, whole
1/2 cup Black Trumpet mushrooms
1/4 cup dry white wine
Salt and pepper, to taste

* Vary the types and quantity of mushrooms you use, depending on taste and availability. If using dried mushrooms, re-hydrate for minimum 2hr before cooking in warm water, and retain mushroom water to use as mushroom broth in risotto.



Heat oil in a large, heavy sauce pan. Add diced onions and sauté until they just become transparent. Add fennel, garlic and carrot, and thyme, and sauté mixture until vegetables just become soft. Sauté in mushrooms until they soften, and add 1/2 cup dry white wine to de-glaze pan.

Once wine has mostly evaporated, add rice. Sauté and stir mixture gently, about 1 minute, being careful not to brown or burn rice. When rice becomes fragrant, add remaining cup of dry white wine, stirring slowly and often until liquid has been absorbed by the rice.

Add 1 cup hot broth, and simmer until broth is just nearly absorbed by the rice, stirring slowly and often (about 4-5 mins). Add more broth, 1 cup at a time: each cup should be absorbed before continuing to the next. This allows the rice to become tender and creamy, instead of bloated and sticky. Continue until rice is thick and creamy, about 20-30mins.

While risotto is simmering, heat a sauté pan with olive oil to begin preparing the mushroom ragù. Just like the risotto, add diced onions and sauté until they just become transparent. Add fennel, garlic and carrot, and thyme, and sauté mixture until vegetables just become soft. Sauté in mushrooms until they soften, and add remaining 1/2 cup dry white wine to de-glaze pan. Cook until mushrooms are cooked, crisping the edges. Set aside.

In the risotto pot, add parmesean cheese and stir in completely. If you are making this risotto ahead of time, stir in cheese before serving to avoid binding the rice. To loosen rice, add more warm water and a touch of olive oil.

To be sure risotto is done, try this old trick: if the wooden spoon can stand straight when plunged into the risotto, it's done.

Serve risotto in a large, shallow bowl. Spoon a portion of risotto in a mound in the center, sprinkle generously with mushroom ragù on top, and a light dusting of fresh thyme leaves. If available, drizzle truffle oil across the top for a rich, woodsy flavor.

Serve warm and enjoy. Buon appetito!

The Tradition of Good Taste: An Interview with Jacques Pépin

Even amidst the busy bustle of the farmer’s market where crowds of locals and summer travelers picked through the ripe and colorful produce, his familiar smile drew me straight to him. Indeed, he had already drawn quite a crowd to his little booth off in the shade where he sat signing his new book, Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook; but it wasn’t the crowd of admirers that gave him away. It was this smile of Jacques Pépin, so familiar and inviting, that instantly helped me to recognize one of the first and most esteemed celebrity chefs of our time.

A resident of Madison, Connecticut, Mr. Pépin lives just minutes away from the town in which I grew up. Throughout my growing up in Connecticut, I had occasionally heard of Monsieur Pépin’s comings-and-goings about town; making celebrity appearances at local epicurean events, signing books at R.J. Julia Booksellers, performing cooking demonstrations at Cook’s Kitchen. I had even spotted him once, late one night on the Shoreline East commuter train. But when I heard that Mr. Pépin would be in person at the Florence Griswold Museum’s annual Connecticut Farmer’s Market, I quickly arranged an interview with him, then jumped on the MetroNorth from New York and made my way home.

Yet despite all of his local fame, Jacques Pépin is not just a local celebrity. He is one of the original celebrity chefs who brought French gourmet cuisine to the United States, and has since taught chefs and ameteur cooks alike about the elegant possibilities that can be had in every meal.

Born in France near Lyon, Mr. Pépin came to the United States in 1959 and soon became a rising culinary entrepreneur and one of the original celebrity chefs. He has accomplished so much throughout his career; from cooking for Charles de Gaulle to cooking with Julia Child, Jacques Pépin is unquestionably one of the culinary greats. But unlike many celebrity chefs of the moment who portray a chef's career as fame, glamour, and glitz, Mr. Pépin has always maintained a sense of humility and realism about working in the kitchen: “You still sweat a lot, and you still work Saturday and Sunday, and you still work 16 hours a day, you don’t make that much money. So you really have to go into that business for the right reason, which is really having the bug and loving what you are doing.”

Now in his early seventies, Mr. Pépin looks as though he could still handle the energy and the stamina required by this life of a chef. On that summer afternoon of the interview, wearing a patterned short-sleeved button-up shirt with his grey hair swept into a dapper coif, Mr. Pépin had the relaxed yet sophisticated air of an epicurean Frenchmen, truly in his element surrounded by food. He welcomed his admirers with sincerity and signed their books with care; even after decades of international celebrity, it seemed as though Mr. Pépin still had an appreciation for these simple rewards of his fame. “I certainly did not go into that business [of being a chef] to ‘become famous,’ because it was totally unheard of until 30 or 40 years ago.”

When Jacques Pépin first started his career, being a chef was not the glamourous career that a culinary career seems to have today with the current obsession with foodie culture. Back then, being a chef was still very much considered a position of service: “At that point, we were quite low on the social scale. Any good mother would have wanted her child to marry a lawyer or a doctor, or to become a lawyer… but a cook? But now, we are genius.”

Being a “genius” is one thing that Mr. Pépin can include on his list of qualifications, not only for his culinary aptitude, but also for business savvy, his ability to translate French cuisine to Americans (and vice-versa), and his academic background in liberal arts. Like any great artist, Mr. Pépin dedicated much of his life to learning all of the nuances of his craft. After beginning in his mother’s restaurant, Le Pélican, at age 12, Mr. Pépin left school the following year to begin his French apprenticeship under chef Lucien Diat at the Plaza Athenée. Upon coming to the United States, Mr. Pépin enrolled for a PhD in Civilization Literature. Yet even though Columbia did not accept his final thesis about the history of French cooking within the context of French literature, Mr. Pépin’s educational experience gave him a context into which he could place his own work and translate the nuances of French cuisine to his American audience. Later in life, he used this academic background to become a teacher himself: “I teach that [field of study] at Boston University now, the same class, and there is a Master in liberal arts with a concentration in Gastronomy. The crazy part of it is that we’d be very happy to have that today at Columbia.”

All the while that Jacques Pépin was learning about the art and literature of French cuisine, he was simultaneously learning about American food culture of mass production during his ten-year apprenticeship with the Howard Johnson Company. It might seem anathema for a French gourmet chef to be learning from the hands of a chain-restaurant entrepreneur, but for Mr. Pépin, it was the birth of his American gourmet career. “I wanted to work in a totally American environment, learning the language and learning about American eating habits and about production – mass production – and chemistry of food.” He credits the success of his work with New York restaurants to his experience at Howard Johnson, both his consulting on Windows of the World in the World Trade Center and his restaurant, La Potagerie on Fifth Avenue.

It seems so very hard to believe that the McAmerican way of cooking could provide anything of use to the hands of a young French chef. But Mr. Pépin fully esteems his American experience, and was even ready to defend American produce over a comparison to French. “The earth is the earth. If you grow it the right way, it is the same result.” A walk with him around the local farmer’s market showed that such a claim might be true; but ultimately I got Mr. Pépin – an avid gardener himself – to admit that there was some truth to my bias for European goods. We discussed wild mushrooms (Mr. Pépin is an avid mushroom-hunter in Connecticut and upstate New York as well as in Europe), which he cited as evidence to the mystery of diminished taste in American produce: “Now I’m talking about walking 15 miles up the mountain here or there, so it’s not like its cultivated or anything. It just doesn’t have as much taste as it has in Italy or in France.”

Just like Mr. Pépin may have to apply extra seasoning in America to bring out the flavors of produce, he also makes an effort to keep some of his French “rituals and traditions” in his life here in the United States. Like true epicurean, Mr. Pépin’s culture is one that truly involves the use of all of his senses. “My culture is a culinary culture, and that takes place around the table, and there is much more than food.” He and his wife, Gloria, are avid epicureans, and he cooks often with his daughter, Claudine, who has also made herself in to a well-known chef. Summer seems to be the time when these cultural traditions come about most easily: “From going mushrooming to playing pétanque, you know we play boules, to going frogging as we did the other day, to going to the beach to get the tiny little white bait that we fry like French fries, to doing the garden.”

For Mr. Pépin, incorporating these epicurean traditions into his life is what defines him. Much in the spirit of building a community, Mr. Pépin sees his culinary culture – particularly the communication of recipes – as a way to keep traditions and pass on cultural rituals. “If we do a ritual like playing boules, those rituals are part of a culture and part of the culture is those rituals, and those rituals are expressed in traditional recipes.” Like the academic that he deeply is, Mr. Pépin cited Claude Lévi-Strauss: “The process of cooking is the process by which nature is transformed into culture.”

The ritual of cooking is, for Mr. Pépin, the ritual of narration. Is it telling a story, keeping traditions, and bringing people around the table in conversation. As we made the last turn to a stall in the farmer's market, I couldn't help but ask him what he was planning on making for dinner. Gloria had purchased red leaf lettuce, fresh corn, and a few tomatoes, and I was curious what he was crafting with those simple ingredients. But like any good chef, Mr. Pépin did not have a recipe in mind, and would just follow his senses: "For dinner? Well, we'll just go home, look at what we have, and then, well, we'll see."

Sensual Living: An Epicurean Life Defined

With the exception of the correct pronunciation of this blog's title, the question of what the meaning of "epicurean lifestyle" is one that I receive fairly often.

(To set the record straight, goûter is the French verb, "to taste," and it is also the masculine noun for "a snack." It is pronounced: "goo-tay", not "goo-ter," certainly not "gow-ter" and not "goo-tee-ay." To those who can't pronounce this word -- you know who you are, and let's practice saying it together sometime.)

The word "epicurean" comes from the 3rd and 4th century Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who initiated the Epicureanism movement in a school that started in his home. The school taught the principles of pleasure and sensual living, with an optimistic and secular world view with humans and relationships at the center. He taught his philosophy in the garden of his home; the gate of the school's garden bore the inscription: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."

Epicurus' school was the first Greek philosophy school to admit women, and it stressed the importance of friendship and kinship through its teachings about following a life of pleasure. Epicurus glorified the body, and developed a non-religious spirituality through his belief in pain and pleasure as measures to know evil from good. Contrary to criticisms of his philosophy, Epicurus did not advocate hedonistic revelry: "By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom." [From Letter to Menoeceus] Instead, he posited that pleasure is (when taken in measure) a kind of human divinity that should be celebrated and admired:

Epicurus did recognize the potential problems with a life of pleasure: "No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves." [8th Principal Doctrine] So what happens when Epicureans go wild? The ubiquitous restaurant critic of the New York Times, Frank Bruni, published an article in yesterday's paper entitled: "Fine Diner to Riffraff: Tipsy Tales of 4-Star Benders." Mr. Bruni goes inside New York's most lavish restaurants to find that despite the most formal décor, some restaurant-goers have hard time maintaining decorum.

Mr. Bruni cheekily recounts some of the most raucous and raunchy stories from New York's finest epicurean destinations. There is episode of the table-top dancing woman at Daniel; skinny-dipping in the restaurant pool at the Four Seasons; Sex-sous-la-Table; Sleeping between courses at Picholine; and countering foie gras protesters by showing bodily proof of the effects of "fat liver" on a fat man.

Clearly, these diners are hardly epicureans because they lack the most important qualities of an epicurean life: temperance, wisdom and appreciation. Perhaps I should correct myself; I am sure that some of them heartily appreciated their meals and their misadventures. I certainly enjoyed reading about them. But what is epicureanism, and what does an epicurean life mean?

I've been called a "flâneuse" after Baudelaire's "Le Flâneur." From the French "flâner," "to stroll," the term describes he or she who strolls city streets and takes the role of the detached observer. To me, this love of ambling about and observing my environment is a product of my epicurean lifestyle. I lived my life in Paris almost entirely through my senses; the above picture is of the table of my 21st birthday, where I celebrated with my dearest of friends at my favorite Moroccan Restaurant, 404 Restaurant Familial in the Marais district. After our dinner of lamb and vegetable tagines, couscous, fresh salads, North African wine, and honey-drenched sweets with mint tea poured from on high, we lingered around a table cluttered with glasses of all shapes and sizes that sparkled in the dancing candlelight.

I observe, I read, I taste, I touch, I feel. Cooking for me is an incredibly sensual experience: my hands are my tools. I cannot cook without touching and tasting everything. If this is a surprise or repulsive to you, just have a look inside any professional kitchen -- you're not the first to taste what has been put on your plate. I believe that part of being a good chef means having a relationship with your food; if you can pick your vegetables, get your fingers covered in the earth. Go to a spice market and let the spice aromas dance under your nose. Always taste while you are cooking so that the flavor romances you as your meal unfolds. Eat with those whom you love, for eating is a communal experience to be done slowly, with attention, and with care.

This savoring of food, ingredients, time and friends is part of what defines an epicurean lifestyle for. Of course, one should always save room for dessert -- for what would a life of good taste be with a sweet and happy ending?


Epicurus, from Letter to Menoeceus:

"We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come."



404 Restaurant Familial

69, Rue des Gravilliers

75003 Paris
+(33) 1 42 74 57 81



Leave me a comment with your definition of epicurean lifestyle. And as always: bon appétit!

Banana Oat Cookies

Kate is known affectionately among her friends as "Grandma." Her indulgences include English Breakfast tea, afternoon naps and quiet evenings at home. This all coming after a first year of serious fun at Cornell University, followed by three more years of rigorous pre-med studies. Now Kate is on her way to Yale Medical School, and she is taking the summer off to re-charge at home in Connecticut. Kate has been one of my very best friends since high school, and I am extremely proud of her medical school achievement; I want her to be my doctor someday.

So what happens when you mix part-Grandma with part-MD? Comfort food that's also good for you. Kate sent me this delicious recipe for Banana Oat Cookies that uses all very healthy ingredients and promises a satisfying crunch for your sweet tooth as well as your health.


BANANA OAT COOKIES

1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1/3 cup vegetable oil or apple sauce
3 ripe bananas
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup wheat germ
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional for some extra sweet!)

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Whisk cinnamon and vanilla with egg and oil/applesauce in a large bowl. Add ripe bananas, creating a soft mush with a fork. Mix to incorporate. Add rolled oats and wheat germ, and fold in raisins, almonds and chocolate chips until mixture resembles a dough.

Let sit for 15 minutes.

Since the cookies are dense, they don't shape when they cook. Shape the dough into small, flat round circles to cook the inside thoroughly. Bake at 325 degrees for 15-20 minutes, watching them often as these cookies can burn easily.

Enjoy warm, with a cup of English breakfast tea, of course.


Bon appétit!

On Being Green

Tomorrow on July 18th, there will be a whole new reason to line up at Whole Foods. As if the lines at Whole Foods weren't long enough, the debut of the market's new "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" tote by accessories designer Anya Hindmarch might just draw the line out all around my favorite Columbus Circle haunt. Since Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio came out of the environmentalist closet (yoohoo -- Ralph Nader, anyone?), it's now hip to be green. And it seems even hipper to cash out on this trend. I will admit -- I've been eyeing the advert for the Whole Foods tote for the past two weeks, and I am indeed making plans to get up early just to buy some unnecessary groceries so that I might be able to have the tote, too. Why not? WF is limiting the bags to 3 per customer (and $15 each), and this anticipation of customers rushing the registers must mean that the bags are going to be trendy, right?

Grocery shopping is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have a small collection of non-disposable grocery bags that I take with me every time I shop. I use these totes partly for environmental reasons, but I have them mostly because they afford much more room to pack in groceries than do the plastic bags, and I can sling them over my shoulders. This last bit is important for pedestrian New Yorkers on a budget like me who have to take the subway or bus with a week's worth of groceries, and then cart said groceries up five flights of stairs without help. So with neither an elevator nor a grocery-toting-Knight-in-shining-armour to help me up the stairs, the "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" tote (which appears to be much larger than the ones I have now) is something that I will get up early for tomorrow morning. It's practical and -- apparently -- stylish.

The funny thing about carrying groceries around in New York is that people rarely offer any help. This past Sunday afternoon, I was making the trek from Whole Foods to my front door when one of my lazy, stoop-sitting neighbors looked up at me and said: "Someone must loooove you!" I couldn't really decipher what he meant; wasn't I the one carrying the groceries on my shoulders like a Sahara Desert camel? Did he think that there was someone awaiting my return home who would cook me a meal from these environmentally-friendly grocery bags? And if there were -- wouldn't he have been carrying them with me?

And why didn't the stoop-man offer to help me around the corner?

The way people respond to a grocery-carrier on the New York subway is rather peculiar to me: rather than move around or offer a seat or (heaven forbid) a bit of help, people become nervous and irritated at the sight of someone taking up excessive space. I sometimes get looks that read aggravation, pity, amusement, or even: "Why didn't you just take a cab?"

It is in moments like that when I feel very green myself. I'm carrying environmentally-friendly bags, pounds of organic produce, I'm navigating my quarter-life-crisis in "the real world" and I'm jealous of those who do take cabs without taxi-guilt, or better yet -- of those who get their groceries delivered for an extra charge, no delivery time guaranteed (but that's okay because they live in a doorman building).

I love the subway in general, and there are moments that make the grocery run through the subway worthwhile. Much in the spirit of In the Metro by French anthropologist Marc Augé, I tend to look at my subway ventures to Whole Foods and back as an ethnological adventure. Or -- with a less academic tone -- a chance to look at human psychology. The subway has a code of conduct: don't look anyone in the eye; observe people through your peripheral vision; give up your seat for the elderly, the pregnant ladies, or for pretty young women; warn tourists that the 2/3 express train does not stop at Columbia University (but rather, at Mamma's Fried Chicken); hold on to the pole and pretend that you won't get germs. One would think that helping with groceries might be included in this list, but it isn't for good reason: why trust a stranger with your organic produce?

With all of these rules and regulations (some suggested by the MTA, most just simply understood) comes another kind of code that I can hardly decipher myself. The glance across the car, the lingering bump on a crowded subway, looking up from a newspaper or a book, moving down the car to share a pole, an accidental slip of the hand, the taking out of iPod headphones; these are all the little indicators of Subway Romance, the most enigmatic, ephemeral and exhausting type of romance I have yet encountered in New York City.

I found my solemate on the subway. And then I lost him at 66th street, probably to a rehearsal at Juilliard, or worse yet, to a date at the Metropolitan Opera. And then I am resigned to continue on to 59th Street Whole Foods, and on the way home I'll run into yet another solemate who inevitably gets lost somewhere between the stops on the Upper West Side.

Sometimes this understanding of togetherness-but-for-another-stop is often just a figment of my imagination, but sometimes it is reciprocated. And then the game begins -- glance, read, glance, move down the car, bump, oh I'm sorry, smile, it's okay (bump me again), take out the iPod, makes his way to the door, look back and make eye contact through the glass, and as the subway slows we realize that no, we're not getting off at the same stop, and we don't even say goodbye.

Last week I was making a grocery run home in the evening after work, trying to read "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan and balance two overflowing Whole Foods bags between my ankles. At 72nd street, the train filled up with suit-clad men and women transferring from the express train from Downtown and Midtown Manhattan. I maintained my turf in the middle of the train, and people miraculously gave me space to harbor my groceries. As we pulled into 79th street station, I felt a hand just at the small of my back where I had been leaning against the pole. I turned to find a tall, dark, handsome creature of the subway, tie askew, just coming home from work, spying down into my grocery bags. He shot a quick and timid smile, then turned back to his Stephen King mass market paperback. And then he turned back again to look at the book I was reading as I spied at his. Again catching eyes, we acknowleged the mutual curiosity. Our mutual curiosity.

But what to do? I'd never read a word of Stephen King, I don't know the horror genre, I've never even seen a screen adaptation of a King book, so I couldn't ask about the book. Should I ask him if he lives on the Upper West Side? Too lame. Ask where he's coming from? Work, clearly. Ask for help with groceries? No, the bags were my conversation piece, and an easy one for him to latch on to: "That's a lot of bags you have there, where are you getting off, want some help?" This would be the easy way for him to start conversation. But no, he was the shy-and-curious type, and I though I consider myself a seasoned subway rider, I'm still green when it comes to the art of the subway pickup.

And he only stayed on for one stop. As he made his way to the door, he stepped around and too close to me, and then shot a wide-eyed look and a hint of a smile through the dark, mirror-like window of the subway door. The subway slowed in the station, and I contemplated getting out too and walking the extra blocks home. I knew that this would accomplish nothing, especially with the groceries. Our romance was limited to thirty seconds and seven blocks. When the subway finally stopped, he gave me an extra moment to reconsider as he paused at the open doorway, discreetly twisting his neck to look behind him. But this wasn't my stop; it was his. He stepped off the subway and disappeared, and I stood clear of the closing doors.

While most just slip away, some Subway Romeos actually do succeed in breaking the barrier of space and silence: What are you reading/listening to? Where are you headed? Here, have my seat. You go to Columbia? And my personal favorite (in the dead of winter when I was wrapped up in scarves): You look like you're going to hijack the train -- can I have your number?

No way, my arms are full of groceries in environmentally-friendly tote bags, can't you see?


Author's Note: I didn't end up getting one of the bags. I woke up the morning of July 18 to a thunderstorm and an email from Naomi urging me to get down to Whole Foods immediately: "my mum just said that a supermarket here had been selling those bags
for ages, and people were queueing up at 4am!!" I ran to 59th street, splashing through puddles and jumping across subway cars, only to find a big sign at the Whole Foods entrance that read: "BAGS SOLD OUT!!" Apparently the bags had sold out in one hour (which meant that when I left my house at 9am, they were already sold out). Whether naïvely inexperienced, jealous, or environmentally-friendly -- I guess this proves that it really isn't easy being green.