Allium sativum, known in anglo-saxon as the spear-leek, and hence to us as garlic, is one of the oldest gastronomical plants known to man. It is believed to have originated in central Asia a few thousand years ago, and to have been spread across the known world by humans who just can't get enough of the stuff. It was the staple food of Egyptian pyramid-builders, and came over to the New World with the earliest Spanish explorers. Today there are countless varieties of garlic cultivated the world over, including cultivars that have become uniquely identified with particular regions.

Fairway usually keeps at least a couple of varieties of garlic available, so I gathered a few over the course of a few weeks and decided to do a little taste test. I use a fair amount of garlic in my cooking, so I thought I'd try to identify my favorite one. I was able to find four varieties: one from California and three from France.

Clockwise, from the upper left, these are (1) L'Ail Rose de Lautrec, the famous pink garlic of the Midi-Pyrénées, famous for its use in cassoulet; (2) standard American white garlic, from California; (3) L'Ail Violet de Cadours, a lesser-known purple variety from southwestern France, not far from Lautrec; and (4) L'Ail Fumé d'Arleux, the famed smoked garlic of northern France.

Each of these garlics has its own peculiar history. Clotilde has ably described the culture of pink garlic. Purple garlic is something of a stepchild to its pink cousin; situated on the opposite side of Toulouse from Lautrec, Cadours is still seeking an AOC designation for its signature product. Cadours produces about 800 tons of garlic annually, compared to about 4,000 tons in Lautrec.

The garlic you're used to seeing in the supermarket is a white variety prevalent in California, and particularly associated with the town of Gilroy, the self-proclaimed Garlic Capital of the World. Gilroy assumed this title in imitation of Arleux, the home of my last garlic variety. In Arleux, in the cold and humid North, the farmers learned to smoke their own variety of pink garlic sometime around the sixteenth century. It is hypothesized that the discovery was made by accident, as the smoke of kitchen fires improved the flavor and shelf-life of braids of garlic stored indoors. The garlic of Arleux is woven into magnificent braids and cold-smoked for ten days.

This is all fine and good as a history lesson, but I wanted to know how all this garlic tastes. To get a fair sampling, I prepared each variety three ways: (1) raw, both straight and rubbed on dry toast; (2) dry-roasted unpeeled cloves; and (3) peeled cloves confited in olive oil. The roasting and confiting were both done at low heat to allow the garlic time to caramelize. Safety Note: if you're going to confit garlic, you should either use the oil right away or discard it; garlic is known to harbor Clostridium botulinum spores, which can survive low-temperature cooking and thrive in an anaerobic environment like a layer of organic sediment sealed with oil.

So do these different varieties of garlic taste different? Absolutely. The California garlic was by far the sharpest of the bunch. Raw it was firey and harsh; cooked it was mellowed but still had considerable bite. Eating too much of this stuff could definitely cause some serious indigestion. The pink garlic was much milder, even when raw. Cooked, it became quite sweet and mellow, very smooth. The dry-roasted preparation was superior to the confit; the heavy flavor of olive oil overpowers this delicate allium. My violet garlic seemed to have suffered from poor storage; it had a faint aroma of mildew, and had begun to develop light green shoots in the center of the bulbs (a dead giveaway of garlic past its prime, such shoots must be removed prior to cooking or they will become bitter). Beyond that, I would say its characteristics were similar to those of the pink garlic (which also suffered a bit from age, but not to the same degree). The smoked garlic, however, was by far my favorite. Nearly as mild as the pink garlic, it had the added dimension of gentle hardwood smoke. This made it complex enough to be satisfying raw, and added a layer of intrigue to the cooked preparations. Given its expense, I would only use this garlic in a dish where it's going to be the star performer, but when allowed to shine, it is really quite remarkable. The added expense of the other French garlics is similarly unjustifiable where the garlic is going to be playing only a supporting role (in a tomato sauce or as part of a marinade, for example). California garlic may be harsh, but it's cheaper than dirt.

A few pointers for would-be garlic aficionados. First, select whole heads of garlic that have a taut, unbroken layer of paper, and none of those gray or black speckles around the root (that's mold, and you can taste it). Choose heads that are heavy for their size and have firm bulbs -- this indicates high water content, which in turn indicates freshness and proper storage (and makes cooking easier). The odor of garlic comes from sulfur compounds formed by the degeneration of the fat-soluble molecule allicin, garlic's primary defense mechanism and a powerful antimicrobial, antifungal, insect-repellent chemical. Unfortunately, there is no proven way to eliminate allicin's odor, which continues to develop in our bellies as we digest it. This is why garlic breath can last for hours or even days, and why a heaping dose of garlic can reveal its odor in your sweat. Some suggest eating parsley, the digestion of which does release certain compounds that neutralize or counteract foul odors. But when all is said and done, the consumption of garlic will inevitably make you stink to some degree. There's a bright side though, captured in an New York yiddish proverb: A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.

Posted by jeremy at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)

There are some very fancy markets in this town. They stock all manner of rare and exotic ingredients for a generally curious, often pretentious, and usually profligate clientele. There's a saying attributed to P. T. Barnum about the kinds of people who shop in these places, and God help me, I'm one of them.

There are some scams even I won't fall for, though. Consider the poultry section at Whole Foods Columbus Circle. Wandering around the store, I got the idea to make a dinner of seared duck breast with roasted shallots and acorn squash, sauteed wild mushrooms, escarole, and a thyme-infused red wine pan sauce.

I started thumbing through the individually-wrapped magrets de canard, the skin-on boneless breast of moulard duck. They are priced between twelve and fifteen dollars apiece. One magret would be enough for two appetizers, but probably only one entree. I'm facing the prospect of dropping over thirty dollars just for the protein component of a one-course meal for two.

Then I look down and see whole moulard ducks in the bottom of the poultry case. They all cost around twenty-five dollars. It takes a while for me to realize that this isn't a mistake, that Whole Foods is actually charging its customers more for two duck breasts than for the whole duck.

There are different kinds of decadance. There is decadence in which we take pleasure in a sense of our own sinfulness; where we do things we know we probably shouldn't, because it just feels good. As long as nobody gets hurt, I have no problem with this. But there's another kind of decadance, which is just flat-out immoral. It consists of a sort of willfully wasteful luxury. Of spending more than you should on something and then throwing most of it away, not because it's useless, but just because you don't care enough to extract its full value. It's the field full of skinned buffalo carcasses in Dances With Wolves. It's Marie Antoinette's cake. It's the magret de canard at Whole Foods.

For less than the price of two magrets you can get a whole moulard, and after a little knife work and a little time at the stove you can extract the two magrets and more. Cut up the excess fat and skin around the neck and body cavity and you can render it into cracklings and pure duck fat. Remove and bone out the duck legs, cook them in the rendered fat, and you have confit. Roast the bones and simmer them with aromatic vegetables and herbs, and you have two quarts of duck stock (reduce it and you have a quart of concentrated stock; reduce it some more and you've got a pint of rich, gelatinous duck glaze).

When you can have all these things with just a little extra effort, paying more for less isn't only foolish, it's a sin.

Posted by jeremy at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

You don't realize you're awake when you first become aware of the whispering of the waves. Moments later you still haven't opened your eyes, because you don't remember that when you do you'll be greeted with the day's first glimpse of paradise, a twinned and inverted image of the vision that you drank down slowly the night before. It's morning on Tortola, and breakfast is waiting.

Breakfast consists mainly of a plate of magnificent local fruit. Mango and papaya trees grow wild here. If you've never had a ripe mango off the tree, you just don't know what mango tastes like. Some non-native watermelon and lime wedges fill out the presentation, with a garnish of the peppery oregano-style herb that grows like a weed in the surrounding jungle.

At the corners of our breakfast plate is a fruit picked off a nearby tree. Its woody scales might lead one to mistake it for a pinecone, but when cut open it yields up a comb of creamy white flesh studded with hard black pits the size of almonds.

This is Annona squamosa, more commonly known as a sugar apple. A tropical cousin of the mulberry, it thrives in South America, the Caribbean, and has even been cultivated in southern Florida. It sometimes passes under the name "sweetsop", a contrast to the "soursop" fruit whose juice is popular in the leeward islands. It is also sometimes confused with the custard apple, which is in fact a related but quite different (and not nearly as luscious) fruit, Annona reticulata.

The flesh of a sugar apple is creamy as custard, its texture (but thankfully not its odor) reminiscent of durian. The sweet, mild flesh can be scooped out of the hard shell with either a spoon or the teeth. The flesh is sucked away from the onyx seeds, which are then spit out. A bit uncouth, perhaps, but this process pays dividends. We toss our seeds over the side of the balcony, into the jungle covering the weaving path down to the sea. In two to three years there will likely be a few more sugar apple trees bearing fruit here, and as far as I'm concerned they are well worth the wait.

Posted by jeremy at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)

I've posted about my old standbys in Chinatown, but I did manage to try something completely new while I was there. On the corner of Mott and Bayard, there's a little fruit stand displaying, among other more pedestrian items, a row of spiky brown globes hanging off hooks in yellow nets. I've come here to buy my first durian.

Is this some strange weapon left over from the rough-and-tumble days of the Five Points? One can certainly imagine a drunken thug tearing through a gangland brawl, braining his enemies with a durian attached to a chain. But no, durian is actually a fruit, native to Southeast Asia, that ranks with the mangosteen as among the most celebrated plants in the culinary pantheon. Just as the mangosteen is considered the queen of fruits, durian is hailed as their king.

The most often mentioned characteristic of the durian is its smell. Even people who love it above all other foods admit that it usually has an "off" odor. Hotels and public buildings across Southeast Asia post conspicuous signs banning the fruit from their premises. Less charitable gastronomes make no bones about it: durian just plain stinks. But if something can smell so foul, and yet still evoke paroxysms of pleasure in its broad and devoted following, it must taste pretty friggin good. So I ponied up the royal fee of five dollars American for one of these skull crushers, and gingerly toted it back to the Upper West Side.

When I got my first durian home, the first thing I did was open up all the windows. I couldn't detect any odor from the unopened fruit, but I had heard that once you break the skin of a durian its smell floods the air. Durians are usually opened with a machete, but those are hard to come by in the genteel West 70s, so I sharpened up my slightly less menacing cleaver. Bracing myself, I hacked away, fully expecting to be overpowered by a stench somewhere between that of an open sewer and a week-old dead body.

My durian smelled of neither. Perhaps this is a result of dislocation from its native land: I understand that durians harvested for sale abroad are of a special variety that can be picked before they are ripe, that they are frozen for transport, and that both of these treatments diminish its odor (and, many claim, its flavor). That is not to say that the smell was pleasant: it was faintly reminiscent of a gas leak. But it was certainly manageable. More off-putting is the tactile experience of opening a durian. Its hard, almost bony exterior yields to a forceful blow from a sharp instrument, revealing the durian's soft, cream-colored flesh. I was reminded of a line from the Simpsons:

[Kent Brockman]: Professor ... would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?

[Professor]: Yes I would, Kent.

Anthropomorphisms aside, I was able to scoop out the durian's flesh and separate it from the leathery, coral-colored seeds that lie at the center of each segment.

So how does durian taste? For me, the most striking part of the experience of eating durian is its texture. It really is like eating custard. The similarity is almost creepy. I imagine that in a region where dairy products are scarce to nonexistent, the sensation of creaminess must go a long way in raising the popularity of a foodstuff, even one that smells bad and is separated from the consumer by rows of sharp spikes. In this respect the durian is remarkably similar to another Eastern delicacy: the sea urchin. Personally, I would just as soon whip up some egg yolks and milk.

The flavor itself was understated: faintly reminiscent of bananas, mildly sweet, but with the lingering undertones of that gas-leak smell and an oily rubbing-alcohol note that I believe many Western durian-tasters equate with the sharpness of raw garlic. I know that my Bayard Street durian is probably a poor representative of the species that is traditionally eaten as soon as possible after it spontaneously drops off the tree in a Siamese jungle, but it just didn't do much for me. I couldn't eat more than one segment's worth of flesh, and tossed the rest.

As a post-script, I later learned that durian is considered in Eastern medicinal traditions to be an extremely "hot" food, i.e., it falls into the "yang" side of the "yin-yang" balance. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that durian eaters avoid other "yang-y" foods, especially alcohol. I wish I had known this before I washed the king of fruits down with the king of beers. I suffered from some wicked indigestion the whole night.

Posted by jeremy at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

A few weeks ago, I bought a handful of ramps at Fairway. The ramp season, which begins in April, is only a few weeks long. I just barely caught the end of it. But I bought my ramps on the way home from work on a weeknight, at about 11:00 p.m., and never cooked them. I just snapped a photo and tossed them in the fridge. A week later, they were gone. Fairway wasn't stocking them anymore. I resigned to waiting another year for this most evanescent member of the leek family.

Tonight on the way home from work I stopped by the Whole Foods Market in the Time Warner Center to pick up some fresh fruit for tomorrow. I was walking through the produce section, when I saw these: Canadian ramps. Ramps, also known as wild leeks, grow in the forests of the Appalachian range, with the mountain regions of West Virginia being most famous for their ramp festivals. Apparently ramp season doesn't just end all at once; it moves northward to Canada. The Canadian ramps are slightly slimmer than their southern cousins, but just as full-flavored.

Ramps have a potent garlicky, oniony flavor, which is rather difficult to tame. Some enjoy their brash, stinging aroma and taste, but for most of us ramps require a long, slow cooking process to mellow and sweeten them. In fact, overconsumption of raw ramps is said to cause a pungent odor to exude from the pores of the consumer. I like to stew my ramps: brown them lightly in a little butter and then add some chicken stock, simmering them for about a half hour. When you first heat the ramps the leaves will inflate like a balloon; this is just the water in them being converted into steam and trapped between the layers of the leaves. As you cook the steam will escape and your ramps will return to normal.

Both the bulb and the leaves of the ramp can be eaten, but there is a thin, slimy film surrounding the bulb of un-cleaned ramps that must be removed before cooking (you can pull it off like a sleeve). Any spindly roots and their root cap must also be trimmed away before cooking. You can find Canadian ramps at Whole Foods Columbus Circle for $9.95/lb. (Don't worry; you couldn't possibly eat more than a quarter pound of these little stinkers).

Posted by jeremy at 01:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember the story about the porcupine who turned into a shad? Allow me to illustrate the point. This is a shad filet boned by the expert fishmongers at Citarella:

This is what they had to do to the poor creature to get all its bones out:

Now you know why I don't buy shad whole. Incidentally, the meat of shad is not nearly as interesting as its roe. As I've said before it's essentially a giant herring: oily, fishy, relatively firm-fleshed. If you can get it to hold together in a pan, you can treat it like mackerel or even catfish. Just keep the windows open; you don't want this smell lingering in your home.

The cooked shad fillet isn't bad, but it isn't that great either. I'm thinking maybe the best thing to do with this fish is pickle it, like the herring of Scandanavia or Zabar's. Sounds like a project...

Posted by jeremy at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This week marks the celebration of Passover, the Jewish festival of unleavened bread. For eight days, Jews are forbidden to eat any "chametz": grain products that contain leavening such as yeast or baking powder. The dietary laws also reflect an understanding that a natural fermentation process occurs within 18 minutes after water comes into contact with the flour of wheat, barley, spelt, oats, or rye, which can result in a leavening effect. Thus, no food made from these grains is kosher for Passover unless it is baked dry within 18 minutes of the addition of water to grain. During the week of Passover, therefore, Jews forgo normal bread in favor of matzah (also spelled matzo), a flat, crunchy wafer.

Matzah may be the least palatable food ever devised by man. But for a week, we must eat it, or tempt the wrath of God. So I've taken it upon myself to find the least offensive matzah on the market today. I've collected all the varieties of matzah I could find in various supermarkets (21 total) and conducted a taste test to identify the tastiest matzah of them all. (That's Frost Street: Eating all the crap so you don't have to). Before getting into the tasting notes, I should explain the categories of matzah listed below. If you lack patience for all this detail, you can skip right to my recommendations.

Traditional Matzah: This is your garden-variety bread of haste, made from special Passover wheat flour and water (more on what makes the flour special in a second). Sometimes egg is added for flavor and body. The point is that these matzahs are perfectly suitable for the Passover table, and are mass produced so as to be widely available.

Shmura Matzah: This is the pascal equivalent of artisinal bread. The word "shmura" means "watched", a reference to the requirement that a rabbi watch every stage of production, from the harvesting of the wheat, through its threshing and milling, on to mixing and baking, to ensure that no water is introduced before its proper time. Shmura matzah is made in small batches, often of whole grain flour, and typically in hand-formed round wafers (distinguishable from the square shape of mass-produced varieties). Most shmura matzah is made in areas with large Jewish populations, and sold to the local community (the most notable exception being shmura matza made in Israel for sale in the United States). I have included in my tasting only one example of shmura matzah, found in a grocery store.

Designer Matzah: Much of the matzah on the market today is not kosher for Passover. Nine of the 21 matzahs I found fell into this category (six of them carrying the Manischewitz name). These matzahs usually contain added flavors -- some of them are even flavored with malt, a definite Passover no-no due to the fermentation taboo. No observant Jew may eat these products during Passover, and no rational creature would eat them if not compelled by religion or starvation to do so. Their raison d'être escapes me, but my guess is that there are many Jews who like to obey religious imperatives in spirit rather than in letter, so I have evaluated them all the same.

Traditional Matzah

	Streit's This is the grand old matzah of the Lower East Side, manufactured here by five generations of the Streit family for almost a century. Light and neutral in flavor, not too brittle nor too grainy in texture, this is the benchmark against which I'll judge all the other traditional matzahs.
	Manischewitz Sodium Free Manischewitz (pronounced man-uh-SHEV-its) is the Wonder Bread of matzah. You can find it just about anywhere matzah is sold. I was unable to find a kosher-for-Passover Manischewitz matzah that had any sodium; presumably this is the standard product. It is a bit darker than Streit's, with a more burnt, carbony flavor. Some may find this to be a welcome alternative to the utter blandness of other matzahs; I do not. There is also a faint musty aftertaste to the Manischewitz; this may be a result of improper storage, but improper storage may be an inevitable consequence of Manischewitz's massive volume. This comes in a bigger box (16 oz. instead of 10 oz. for most other matzahs).
	Manischewitz Thin Unsalted This is just Manischewitz Sodium Free in a different box. Any difference in thickness or weight is too slight to be detected by my household instruments, although the thin matzahs are about 3 millimeters shorter in both length and width than the regular Manischewitz. This being the case, you'd be a fool to buy the regular Manischewitz over the thin kind; the latter seems to give you more matzahs per ounce at no added cost (compare the costs at your local matzah-monger).
	Manischewitz Thin Tea Matzos Again: new box, same old matzah. The burnt flavor is a bit less prominent here, but maybe that's just because I'm getting used to it. There is one less matzah in this 10-oz. box than in the Thin Unsalted 10-oz. box.
	Yehuda This one's made in Israel, and cheaper than the Manischewitz clones. It has a slightly more toasty flavor than Streit's, and isn't as light, but is more pleasant than the brittle char of Manischewitz. A good value.
	Horowitz Margareten This brand is actually made by Manischewitz, but marketed under a different brand name (I can only imagine the tales of corporate intrigue in the matzah industry that led to this arrangement). This matzah is palpably thicker and denser than the other traditional matzahs, but has an even more insipid taste: utterly lacking in any wheat flavor, devoid of toasty notes, with a faint wood-pulp aftertaste: it's like a piece of cardboard.
	Rakusen's This matzah is noticeably thinner than the other traditional matzahs, but its flavor is inconsistent. Some pieces have appreciable char on them, and others are practically blond. The flavor varies accordingly, from charcoal overtones to a Streit's-like neutrality. One thing to notice: The perforations on this matzah are more evenly spaced than on other matzahs, making it easier to control how they break (or come apart if moistened for a recipe). These matzahs are also smaller than the other brands, resulting in more matzahs per box.
	Goodman's This matzah is distributed, but apparently not manufactured, by Manischewitz (more corporate matzah intrigue). It's texture is very similar to that of Manischewitz: dry, flaky, and brittle. The flavor is more neutral: no strong carbon notes, no pronounced wheat flavor. It's like eating crunchy, mouth-drying air.
	Manischewitz Egg Matzos Finally: taste! Egg matzah usually has some egg yolk powder added to it to add body and flavor. The rabbis seem to think that this is OK, since the egg matzahs I found all bear "Kosher for Passover" seals of approval. Purists might flinch, but I say bring it on. This matzah is smoother and sweeter than the eggless varieties, and dries the mouth less. It tastes almost malty, although there is no malt in it.
	Streit's Egg Matzos The sweet smoothness of egg yolk is less pronounced in Streit's offering than in Manischewitz's, and the texture is drier. I think I prefer Streit's un-egged matzah to this one; it tastes more like what it's supposed to be.
	Horowitz Margareten Egg Matzohs I can detect no egg flavor in this. The egg seems to have drawn Horowitz out of the realm of cardboard and into the domain of un-egged matzahs. And it's more mouth-drying than the other un-egged matzahs, to say nothing of the egg varieties. This matzah is a waste of eggs.

Shmura Matzah

Manischewitz Matzo Schmura I've tasted hand-made shmura matzah from Israel, Brooklyn, and Silver Spring, Maryland. This is not shmura matzah. Shmura matzah is usually about as thin as a CD, blackened and charred in an irregular pattern, with a hearty flavor of whole wheat and a dense texture. Manischewitz may have complied with the religious regulations governing shmura matzah, but its product is like a whole-wheat version of its standard offering. There is a hint of bran flavor, and the matzahs appear speckled with whole-wheat confetti, but the texture is still dry and flaky, the aftertaste still faintly musty. This one isn't worth the extra money.

Designer Matzah

	Manischewitz Unsalted This matzah is made with enriched wheat flour rather than special passover flour, it is therefore not kosher for passover. But that doesn't mean they went to any trouble to make it pleasant. To my palate it's identical to the kosher Manischewitz varieties. The only distinction I can note is that this matzah tastes faintly bitter, but that may just be a reflection of my displeasure at having bought four different boxes of the same damn thing.
	Geffen Traditional Like the previous entry, this is made with enriched wheat flour rather than special passover flour. It has a faint buttery taste up front, which gives way to a funky aftertaste. It has a good balance of toasty flavor, and is not overly brittle. If this was kosher for Passover, I might consider using it at a Seder.
	Geffen Whole Wheat This matzah is shot through with spots of wheat bran; it looks like a redhead at the beach. But this wheat lacks any redeeming qualities: it's harsh, moldy-tasting, and undercooked. The texture is the matzah equivalent of a rubber tire: dense but not crunchy or brittle, essentially leaden.
	Manischewitz Thin Salted This is bizzare. This matzah does not have salt mixed into the dough; the salt is sprinkled on top. Every once in a while you get a grain of salt which wakes up the flavor of the wheat inside, but most of the salt just gets brushed off and sits in the bottom of the box. The salt does add a dimension to the flavor of matzah, and this one is less charred and musty than the other Manischewitz varieties. But you could achieve the same effect by brushing the regular matzah with a little water and sprinkling it with salt.
	Manischewitz Saltine Wow, this tastes kinda like saltines! You know why? It has malt, shortening, and YEAST!!! The most unholy thing you can eat during Passover, and Manischewitz markets it in a matzah. Shandeh! Plus, it's not even a good saltine - not flaky enough, not salty enough, not enough shortening. Double shandeh!
	Manischewitz Savory Garlic Basically the same concept as the Manischewitz Thin Salted, but with garlic salt. Quite a bit of it actually. There's a kitcschy cheap-pizza-parlor appeal to this one, but it's basically the same old dreary Manischewitz matzah. The raw garlic flavor actually accentuates the musty aftertaste, which is bad enough as it is. I guess this might make an interesting matzah pizza.
	Manischewitz Egg & Onion Okay, now we're talking. This has egg yolk powder, onion powder, and salt in it. This is a cracker I might actually eat outside of Passover. The salt brings out the richness of egg and the sweet, smoky flavor of cooked onions. And because there's egg in the mix, this isn't nearly as dry, brittle, or mouth-drying as the other traif matzahs.
	Manischewitz Everything An unleavened homage to the everything bagel. It contains garlic powder, onion powder, poppy seeds, and salt. It also contains malt: a necessity to simulate the flavor of a bagel, but nonetheless a sin during Passover. However, it does not contain egg, so it is as brittle and mouth-drying as any other Manischewitz matzah. The poppy seeds add little, and the garlic and onion do not get along well. The salt tries to bring them together, but only ends up overpowering them both. Finally, the texture is denser and less flaky than other Manischewitz matzahs.
	Manischewitz Apple Cinnamon This one's a little peculiar. Apple juice is used instead of water to mix the dough, which is further sweetened with brown and white sugar and flavored with cinnamon. The first thing you taste when you eat this matzah is -- matzah. Bland, undercooked wheat. Then a wave of sweetness and stale cinnamon washes over you. When that passes, the aftertaste remains musty like all Manischewitz matzah, but this flavor is accentuated by the absence of the powerful hit of sweetness. I imagine you would have a similar experience if you emptied a bag of Quaker Instant Apples & Cinnamon oatmeal into your mouth.

Frost Street's Picks

So which is the one matzah to rule them all? Well, in my book, these are the winners by category:

• Traditional Matzah (no egg): Yehuda/Streit's (tie)
• Traditional Matzah (with egg): Manischewitz Egg Matzos
• Shmura Matzah: Anything But Manischewitz
• Designer Matzah: Manischewitz Egg & Onion

Happy Passover all. I'll be posting some matzah recipes over the next couple of days, until I have to get into Easter mode for Lisa.

Posted by jeremy at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

The forecast calls for snow in Manhattan today, but I'm not fazed. I know that spring is coming to New York. How, you ask? Because I passed by Citarella on my way to work today, and there are two signs in the window: the first reads "Boned Shad", and the second reads "Shad Roe". Pennsylvania can keep its groundhog; for inhabitants of the Hudson River Valley there's no better barometer of the onset of spring than the beginning of the shad run.

The Hudson River was once a feast of marine delicacies: oysters as big as your fist, mussels, eels, and myriad species of fish. For over a hundred years, though, the ecological stresses of marine shipping and pollution coming downriver from Albany and its environs -- particularly the carcinogenic PCBs spewing from General Electric plants along the river -- have either wiped out the native species or rendered them unsafe for human consumption. Now the mighty shad, essentially a giant herring, is all we have left. Because it spends almost its entire life cycle in the ocean, coming upriver only to spawn, it remains thankfully untainted by the poisonous Hudson waters, and we may still eat of its flesh.

That is, if we can get to its flesh. Aside from the potentially deadly blowfish known to well-heeled sushi daredevils as fugu, a whole shad may be the most difficult fish in the world to clean. A Native American legend tells of a disgruntled porcupine, unhappy with his spiny existence, who complained to the god Manitou and asked to be changed into something else. The god supposedly turned the ungrateful porcupine inside out and tossed him into the river: he became the first shad. Where most fish have one row of pin bones, shad have three. And some of the shad's pin bones branch out into Y-shapes. Expert fishmongers, with years of experience and an intimate knowledge of the fish's anatomy, still require several minutes to fillet a whole shad. The best the average home cook can aspire to is an hour's toil for bone-studded shad tartare.

That's OK though, because the real prize of the shad is not the meat, it's the roe. A shad roe sac is a blood-red pod of egg grains, ranging in size from a baby fingerling potato to a kirby cucumber. It is usually sautéed, pan-fried, or occassionally broiled, whole. Classic preparations include shad roe with bacon and onions, or shad roe scrambled eggs.

Shad are indigenous to the eastern seaboard, and although they were successfully introduced to the Pacific Northwest a century ago, Hudson River shad are still the most prized. The shad run, the annual migration of the fish upriver to spawn, usually begins in mid-March and ends around June 1. The largest and fattest shad, named "lilacs" for the shade of their scales, don't usually make it upriver until the end of the run, so it's worth waiting until a little later in the season for a better catch. The state authorities forbid fishing for shad between Friday morning and Sunday morning during the run, to prevent depletion of the spawning beds, so the freshest fish is probably to be had during the week as opposed to the weekends. I'm not too anxious to taste the first shad of the season, but you can be sure there'll be a shad recipe on this site in the weeks to come. Then you'll know for sure that spring is really here.

Posted by jeremy at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

They say that oysters are an aphrodisiac. By "they", I mean writers from Juvenal, who listed the consumption of "giant oysters" among the habits of lascivious women, to Camille Paglia, who likened the sensation of oyster-eating to that of a certain intimate act. Cassanova is said to have consumed fifty oysters a day. There is some science suggesting that the high zinc levels in oysters stimulate production of hormones like testosterone and progesterone, and have beneficial effects on the metabolism. Other nutrients and minerals in oysters, such as glycogen, B-vitamins, iron, and iodine, are said to promote blood oxygenation, muscle contraction, and stamina. There are those who suggest that the aphrodisiac qualities of oysters are psychophysiological: oysters may enhance the libido for no other reason than that they are expected to. And there have been intimations that the flesh of the oyster itself resembles a particular region of the female anatomy... but I don't really see it.

Of course Valentine's Day dinner must begin with a dozen oysters on the half-shell -- if for no other reason than to set up a sensual bulwark against the torrents of flesh-numbing alcohol that are sure to follow. Above is an image of the mighty midget of the Pacific, the Kumamoto oyster. Kumamoto is a city on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, relatively close to the now-infamous city of Nagasaki. Its oysters were once unique in the Pacific, indigenous to the warm waters of the local bay. In the first half of this century the Kumamoto was an also-ran to both the Crassostrea gigas species that dominates the cold-water coastlines of northern Japan and the petite Olympia oysters native to the west coast of North America. As Olympia stocks diminished in both supply and popularity, oyster beds from British Columbia to California began importing seed oysters from Japan -- but not Kumamotos, which continued to be a local oddity relished mainly in nearby Kagoshima.

Oyster importation shut down during the Second World War, until General Macarthur's occupation authority jumpstarted the post-war reconstruction of the industry with an order of 80,000 boxes of seed oysters bound for the United States. The supply of oysters from the North had been interrupted (to use a euphemism) by the recent decimation of the labor force in Hiroshima, and so seed oysters from Kumamoto were used to make up the shortfall. Not long thereafter, the Kumamoto oyster died out of its native habitat in Japan due to a combination of commercial impatience (they take a long time to grow to edible sizes in warm water) and pollution. It seems the American armed forces accidentally rescued this rare Japanese oyster just in the nick of time -- by intentionally killing a few hundred thousand Japanese civilians.

This cruel irony turned out to be a boon to the oyster-loving world. Today, all Kumamotos come from the west coast of North America. They have taken root in waters from Vancouver to Eureka. They are sometimes marketed under their less exotic brand name of "Western Gem"; the rococo fluting of their deep-cupped, silver-dollar-sized shells easily distinguishes them from the broad, flat striations of the larger east coast oyster (more on that below).

Kumamotos are small by American standards, but the rampant supersizing of American cuisine has thankfully overlooked the world of fruits de mer. Round and firm, sweet and mild, and too small to inspire revulsion or fear, they are a perfect introduction to the intimidating world of raw oysters. They lack the briny rush of other bivalves, and their metallic mineral flavor is so subtle that you could miss it if you weren't looking for it: Kumamotos are like a fleshy nugget of San Pellegrino. This oyster is all about texture, and its texture is supple and provocative.

The subtle harmony of the Kumamoto is a marked contrast to the stark contradictions of the Blue Point oyster, the other of the two varieties I chose for Valentine's Day.

Named for a town on the Great South Bay of Long Island, Blue Points were the prize of the American oyster harvest for nearly a century. Queen Victoria preferred them above all other varieties; for a time the fishermen of the south shore shipped over a hundred thousand barrels of the shucked treasures every year. The reputation of these magnificent shellfish spread so wide that counterfeiting and theft took hold; the state legislature had to impose one of its first and only origin control appelations on them, and rampant poaching led native fishermen to attempt secession. As with the Kumamoto, the Blue Point oyster has deserted its namesake locality. Encroachment of tidal waters in the first half of the twentieth century raised the salinity of the Great South Bay to the point that its oysters could neither grow healthily nor avoid salt-water predators. Today, the term "Blue Point Oyster" can be used for any east coast oyster of the species once found at Blue Point, but is often used to denote a Long Island oyster.

The wispy filaments of a Blue Point oyster lack the substance of the Kumamoto, but they are suspended in a liquor of potent steely salinity. The Blue Point is a briny bivalve, but it has gossamer flesh; you do not eat a Blue Point as much as you drink it, as you would a gulp of icy seawater. With a squirt of lemon juice -- and if you are so inclined, a dash of tabasco -- the act of swallowing a whole Blue Point oyster may be the epitome of the raw shellfish experience.

There are tricks to preparing and eating oysters, some of which are the stuff of folklore. One old wives' tale holds that you should never eat oysters in months whose name does not contain an "R". There is wisdom in this: oysters begin spawning in May, which reduces their glycogen levels and tends to make them mushy and thin for several months; the warm water and air temperatures of summer can also promote bacterial growth in the beds or in transport. A fear of food poisoning from oysters may also be justified: hell hath no fury like a rotten bivalve in your GI tract, and they spoil easily. To be safe, eat only oysters whose liquor is clear (not cloudy), and only those whose aroma is clean, like that of mineral water or iodine. A fishy smell is a huge red flag; when in doubt, throw it out.

Your safest play is to buy fresh oysters, keep them on ice (without allowing them to become submerged in liquid water) until ready to eat, and shuck them yourself. Oysters should be tightly closed when fresh; the point of an oyster knife strategically directed with some force into the hinge of the shell should wedge it open. Once the hinge is breached, use the edge of the knife to scrape the adductor muscles off of the top and bottom shells. Work over a bowl and be careful not to spill any of the liquor when performing this maneuver; the briny elixir is the essence of the raw oyster. To reduce the risk of gouging your non-knife-wielding hand, you may opt for a kevlar- or steel-mesh glove, or in its absence, a hardy dishtowel that you will not mourn when it is encrusted with the gritty sludge of a dozen oyster shells. You can -- and should -- reduce the mess by scrubbing the oysters under cold running water before shucking, with a wire brush if you've got one.

Traditional accompaniments for raw oysters on the half-shell include lemon juice, horseradish, mignonette sauce (a melange of wine vinegar, minced shallots, and white pepper), or cocktail sauce (an American abomination that masks the oysters' true flavor). The classic service of raw oysters is on a bed of crushed ice and rock salt, and chilled seaweed if the latter is available, but I have always found it most satisfying to drain the little beasts from their shells seconds after shucking, while they still quiver in my kevlar-sheathed hand.

I offered Lisa a dozen raw oysters this Valentine's Day, as I had offered her her first raw oyster a year earlier. Humor me though she did, she apologetically admitted that she was not terribly fond of them. I am crestfallen. The Kumamoto has deserted Japan; Blue Point, New York is bereft of bivalves; and now my Valentine is impervious to the lures of the world's most famous aphrodisiac. There is nothing to be done; the judgment of history crumbles under the weight of my girlfriend's tastes. In the words of James Thurber, the oyster is a blob of glup, but a woman is a woman.

Posted by jeremy at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Everybody hates anchovies. They're the running gag of American dining. The ever-popular caesar salad would be universally reviled if the anchovies that traditionally lent body to its dressing were ever actually included. An anchovy pizza is not so much a meal as it is a practical joke. Even cartoons get in on the fun - remember Scooby, Shaggy, and their pizza with anchovies and chocolate syrup? Yeah, those crazy stoners will eat anything. Even anchovies.

Those in the know seem to think that we Americans hate anchovies mainly because the anchovies we eat are really crappy ones. The scrawny, mealy fillets we find in tins of sunflower oil on some back shelf in our grocery stores and supermarkets are supposedly a poor facsimile of the true anchovy, which is relished by the sophisticated Mediterranean palate.

Fairway claims to be the exclusive American retailer of anchovies from the house of Roque. It also claims that these are the best anchovies in the world. Fairway likes to toot its own horn.

According to my research, Roque is one of the three surviving traditional producers of anchovies in the French town of Collioure, a Mediterranean port city at the foot of the Pyrenees, just miles from the Spanish border. Once the seat of the king of Mallorca, the town was more recently the inspiration for Henri Matisse and the Fauvists in their first steps toward modernism. Collioure is heavily influenced by Catalan culture, and its gastronomy thus relies heavily on the mountains and the sea. And yes, the town is apparently world-famous for its anchovies, and has been for centuries. It produces 500 tons of them each year.

If my French is any good (and that's a big if), Roque's anchovies are taken directly from the port and, before any processing, covered in salt for several days. They are then removed, beheaded and eviscerated by hand (by hand, mind you, thousands of these five-inch fish), and placed back into salt for three months. The blood and juices of the fish ferment, while the salt prevents spoilage, allowing the fish to develop deep and complex flavors. Some of the fish are sold still whole and packed in salt, others are filleted and packed in oil.

Salt-packed anchovies are the most prized by foodies, so I opted for a jar of whole salt-packed Roque anchovies ($5.99 at Fairway on 74th and Broadway). The jar says to soak them in tap water for half an hour, but I've seen experts soak their anchovies in milk, and my experience has been that this draws out some of the offensive fishy smells and flavors from other sea creatures. So I took four whole anchovies (leaving at least a dozen still in the jar), brushed off their salt, placed them in a bowl, and poured about a cup and a half of milk over them. Half an hour or so later, I took one out and filetted it (removing the backbone; the pin bones are thinner than a human hair and impossible to get rid of). The fish still smelled extremely, well, fishy, but I grabbed one of the fillets, popped it in my mouth whole, and started to chew.

This is probably the wrong way to eat anchovies. The salt, oil, and fermented fishiness of the whole fillet was overpowering. I could hardly keep the thing in my mouth long enough to swallow it. It wasn't an unpleasant taste, exactly, but it was simply too intense. I tried the other filet from my first anchovy chopped up on a generous slice of toast. This was a bit more palatable, but I still think anchovies are not really that great on their own. Like the fermented fish sauces of modern Thailand or ancient Rome, they are probably best used as a seasoning, adding depth, richness, and not least of all salt, to otherwise flat, one-dimensional dishes. In this capacity, I am looking forward to using them. These salt-packed Roque anchovies are really in a totally different league from your gritty pizza-parlor fillets. They are soft, oily, and smooth in texture; they practically melt on the tongue. Unfortunately, they also practically melt in your hands. I washed my hands three times last night, and I could still smell fish on my fingers this morning.

Posted by jeremy at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Last night I discovered that Fairway will slice their Grade A Hudson Valley Foie Gras to order. Although several other gourmet grocers in the city carry foie gras, most of them will only sell it whole (although D'Artagnan will sell shrink-wrapped packs of two pre-cut slices). Where each whole foie weighs about a pound and a half, and costs around fifty bucks a pound, Fairway is the place to go if you want to try just a taste of this treat. But before I get ahead of myself, a few words about the controversy surrounding foie gras are in order.

Foie gras, French for "fat liver," is the liver of an engorged migratory waterfowl. In France mainly geese are used, in the United States ducks are prevalent. Over 4,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians discovered that the livers of geese were fatter and tastier when they were about to migrate than at other times of the year. This is because the birds gorge themselves in the weeks prior to migration in order to store up enough energy for their long seasonal flight. This energy is generally stored in the animal's liver in the form of fat. In the wild, a migratory waterfowl's liver will double or triple in size through the self-gorging process. The Egyptians were the first to domesticate these birds and artificially fatten their livers by gorging them prior to slaughter.

The Egyptians passed on their knowledge to the ancient Romans, who took a liking to the fatty livers and began gorging geese on a diet of figs. This practice was brought to the province of Gaul, where it has been nurtured lo these many centuries. A few hundred years ago, with the discovery of the New World, corn replaced figs as the primary medium for fattening up the geese. Today in southwestern France, the current capital of foie gras culture, raising geese for their livers is a deeply-rooted tradition. Most families have a goose that the lady (or, if present, the grandmother) of the house is responsible for keeping and gorging with corn and table scraps, to make its liver ready for the Christmas and New Year's feasts. Today, the typical foie gras is 6-10 times the size of a normal liver, and is approximately 80% fat (roughly the same as whole butter).

For decades, owing to strict import restrictions, foie gras was available in this country only in preserved tins of mousse or terrine. Then in the 1980s, a pair of entrepreneurs established a farm in New York state for the cultivation, harvesting, and sale of foie gras from a hybrid duck breed, using a system first developed in Israel. The result was Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the first legal, fresh foie gras available in the United States. Today, Hudson Valley continues to be the primary - if not the only - supplier of fresh foie gras to the nation. Hence, the foie gras you find in your specialty grocer's meat case is the exact same product as is served in the country's finest restaurants.

So what's the problem? Well, the problem is that any argument against using animals for food is exponentially more persuasive in the case of foie gras. As PETA will be happy to tell you, the life of a bird destined to produce foie gras is not one that you or I would want to live. The birds are kept in small pens to limit their movement (and concomitant burning of food energy or risk of injury). Where the traditional method of gorging involved pouring food down the animal's throat through a funnel and sometimes tamping it into its stomach with a stick jammed down the esophagus, today a metal nozzle attached to a pressurized hose injects cornmeal mush down the gullets of hundreds of birds, seriatim. As with any factory farming operation, the animals become susceptible to injuries or diseases which often go untreated, and unsuitable animals are either allowed to die painful deaths or simply killed outright. Add to this the process of force-feeding, and the production of foie gras can easily appear to be a barbaric and inhumane enterprise.

There is evidence for the animal-rights position on foie gras in the nature of the product itself. Foie gras comes in three "grades" or levels of quality. A grade "A" foie gras looks like the picture above: smooth, creamy beige in color, and firm. Livers graded "B" and "C," on the other hand, are less highly prized because they are bruised, marred with blood, lacerated, or misshapen. Generally these defects are not the result of processing; they are injuries sustained by the animal in the last days of its life, either as a result of confinement or as a result of the gorging process, and likely caused the animal considerable pain.

On the other hand, there have been spirited defenses of foie gras production from its practitioners, who believe it is safe and humane, and who seem to deeply care for the well-being of their animals. And it must be stressed that gorging, while inherently repugnant to human beings, is a part of the natural life-cycle of these birds. Furthermore, they do not possess a gag reflex, and always swallow their food whole.

The arguments over foie gras have spilled out into the streets. Shortly after it began operations in the United States, Hudson Valley's farm was raided by New York state police at the instigation of PETA. The farm was initially shut down on charges of animal cruelty; these charges were eventually dropped and the record in the case sealed. More recently, animal rights activists have vandalized a California restaurant that serves foie gras, causing significant property damage and fear for the personal safety of the chef and his family.

So where do I come out on all this? As I've said before, it is hypocritical and dangerous to try to dissociate the idea of meat-eating from the idea of killing. The animal that gave forth the pristine boneless skinless chicken breast at your grocer or in your caesar salad probably had a pretty horrible life too. It was forcibly debeaked and declawed, held in pens where scuffles with other animals could injure or kill it, subjected to the rough handling of high-volume farming, and finally slaughtered with grotesque efficiency. There's no real way around it in the modern economy: all meat is cruel. Is foie gras any worse than assembly-line poultry, beef, or pork? Would it be more humane if it came from a bird that had been hand-gorged by a French grandmother than from a bird that was fed with a metal tube? Frankly, I don't see how. And I think this is where the animal rights argument breaks down for people who have faced what it means to eat meat and have decided to do it anyway.

I suppose I count myself among such people. And for me, a seven-dollar, 3/4-inch thick slice of foie gras from Fairway is about as good as it gets.

Recipe: Seared Foie Gras

Ingredients:

• One slice fresh, grade A foie gras (3/4 inches thick)
  
• Salt and fresh-ground white pepper
  
• 2 tbsp apricot jelly
  
• 1 tsp water
  

Using a sharp knife, score each side of the foie gras in a cross-hatch pattern, cutting about 1/8 inch deep. Dip the knife in warm water as necessary to prevent it from sticking. Season with salt and pepper on both sides.

Heat a non-stick pan on high heat. While the pan heats up, combine the jelly and water in a microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on high for 20 seconds. Stir until smooth.

When the pan is very hot, place the foie gras in it. Sear it for 15-20 seconds, or until well-browned, then turn over. After another 20-30 seconds, pour on the apricot glaze and immediately remove the foie gras and sauce to a warm plate. It is essential not to overcook this dish; foie gras is mostly fat and will melt completely away if cooked too long, and you want the slice to have a very rare center.

Serve with toasted brioche or baguette slices and a sweet wine such as Sauternes.

Posted by jeremy at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Well, I've found a source for pig's feet, but I'm still a little uneasy. Western Beef, the bargain basement supermarket cum walk-in meat locker chain, has two cases of fresh-frozen forequarter trotters in stock at their store on 63rd and West End. But a forequarter trotter just doesn't have that much meat on it, and I don't know if it'll be enough to stuff. I worry about the effect of this short-changing on my guests; an old Irish legend suggests that serving pig's feet from the front legs can only lead to bloodshed.

There is another option, and that's Chinatown. There are meat markets on Bayard, Elizabeth, and Grand that cater to Chinese tastes, and pig's feet are a Chinese delicacy. I called these places up, but nobody spoke English, so I guess I'll just have to trudge on down there. Meanwhile, I've got to start thinking about my cassoulet. This French meat and bean dish takes a good 2-3 days to make, and I don't even have the ingredients yet. Time to get in gear. Tonight I'm going meat shopping.

Posted by jeremy at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday was the penultimate farmer's market of the season in Rhinebeck. Next weekend Lisa will be coming down to the city, so this was my last chance to get a hold of the Hudson Valley's natural bounty at the source. I decided I'd finally take a chance on the local game bird farmers. Thanksgiving is coming up, and I could use the practice.

A few words about turkeys, then. The turkeys that you and I grew up with are Frankensteinish creations. Their gargantuan breast muscles are the products of decades of selective breeding and chemically induced gigantism, and the birds who grow them have lost their ancestors' ability of flight. The result is more white meat for the American family that likes to think of itself as health-conscious while it scarfs down portions the size of a small country, and the gradual disappearance from the national consciousness of Ben Franklin's favorite bird, the American wild turkey.

It is perhaps the singular triumph of man as predator that he makes his prey dependent on him for its survival. The shrink-wrapped meat puppet you'll probably serve to your family this Thanksgiving was barely able to move, let alone fend for itself, while it was alive. This dependence, of course, gives the farmer control over his livestock - control over what it eats, how it grows, and what its children (if it has any) will look like. This control allows the Butterballs of the world to progress ever closer to the platonic ideal of the American turkey market: a twenty-pound breast teetering atop two spindly legs. Remember, any food and energy the turkey's body expends growing leg meat is less food and energy going towards growing breast meat. It's this rationale that recently led genetic researchers to applaud the engineering of a featherless chicken.

Of course, the tradeoff for all this progress is flavor. The wild turkey that the Founding Fathers were familiar with looked and tasted nothing like the bloated beasts we carve up every November. Turkey is a game bird. It forages. It walks. It flies when it has to. It eats what it finds in the wild. A wild turkey looks nothing like the shoe-leather-covered protein balloons you see in most holiday photo spreads. Its breast, in comparison, looks downright sunken. Its legs are meaty and make up a larger proportion of its total weight. It is bonier, to be sure, almost as bony as a goose. And its meat, even the white meat, is darker, gamier, like a true game bird should be.

There are some farmers - a small but growing number - who use their control over the lower rungs of the food chain to preserve the variety and richness of our culinary experience. This is often thankless work, and so it needs all the enouragement and support those of us who really care about our food can offer. The game farmers had wild turkeys for sale yesterday, and I bought one. Buying a wild turkey is an undertaking. Your frozen Butterball may cost you as little as $0.69 per pound for up to thirty pounds of bird; a wild turkey will cost at least $4.00 per pound, and they are smaller than their engineered cousins by an order of magnitude. I got a six-pound bird for about twenty-five bucks; I suppose if they grew them big enough I could get a forty-pound frozen Butterball popsicle for that much. But if this is what you feed your family at one of your only meals together over the course of a year, it should be something special.

Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe the market knows more than I do about what makes good food good. Maybe I should just buy an SUV and shop at Sam's Club or Costco and ignore the slow extinction of one of this country's native food treasures. Maybe it's OK to trade five pounds of provocative, unfamiliar food for forty pounds of pedestrian, inoffensive food. But I'm going to find out for sure. I'm going to see what I've been missing. My first wild turkey is brining in my fridge right now.

Posted by jeremy at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The grilled cheese sandwich, especially with a bowl of tomato soup, is classic suburban-America comfort food. Eating one for dinner every once in a while reminds us of our culinary innocence, a time before we worried about trans-fats and low-carb diets and the excesses of agribusiness; back when the gooey, salty, unnaturally orange warmth hiding between two slices of toast just felt like home.

But let's face it, we're grownups now, and eating grilled cheese for dinner two nights in a row is just plain ghetto.

This was my dilemma as I walked home from work last night, realizing that the bareness of my fridge might compel me to cross that line between nostalgia and squalor. If I was going to preserve the charm of last night's trip down memory lane, I had to get some more groceries.

I stopped into Citarella, a block and a half from my apartment, on the way home, trying to maintain my recent health kick with a good dose of fresh fish. But as I looked over the variety of aquatic life glistening on beds of chipped ice, I just couldn't get excited. Citarella may have the freshest stock of any retail fishmonger in the city, but sometimes that's just not enough. There's something about fresh fish that feels insubstantial, transient, groundless. Even a hot fish dish can sometimes leave you feeling cold, like a quick dip in the ocean followed by a long, slow drying off in the open air. And with winter coming, food that sticks with you, lingering long after the meal is over, is one of the best ways to keep warm.

But who has time to braise lamb shanks or throw together a pot roast in the middle of the week? Certainly not me. So passing over the fish and meat counters at Citarella, I decided to head upstairs and wait for inspiration to strike. And there they were, like ingots of iron and antique brass stacked up in a deli case: smoked fish. Trout, chubbs, whitefish, salmon, sturgeon. The evanescence of the sea fixed in a matrix of salt and woodsmoke; preserved, permanent, warm.

I picked out a whole trout and a whole chubb, some crème fraîche, a shallot, and a jar of capers. At home, I assembled the lot on thick toasted slices of the hearty brown bread I used for my grilled cheese sandwich the night before. Long after the meal was over, hints of brine and campfires remained on my lips, my fingertips. Fish that lingers. A different kind of comfort food.

Posted by jeremy at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)