I’ll be playing around a bit with the look of the blog, so don’t be shocked and nauseated by the way it looks. It will probably change several times, hopefully for the better!
Ego, And Changing Recipes
I have worked on my barbecue dry-rub recipe for several years, and finally arrived at a mixture of the usual suspects (sugar, paprika, cayenne, and uh, some other stuff) that was pleasing to my palate and that of most of my guests. So what did I do? Screwed around with it! Pretty clever, huh? I didn’t even change the recipe that much, but I also changed the amount of the rub that I put on what I call the “knuckles,” — those chunks of meat and gristle and cartilage connected to the ribs. I have learned how to trim the pork racks so that they look great (and that will be the subject of another post), but obviously don’t want to discard perfectly good food, so I barbecue these knuckles separately, and toss them to any stray children and dogs who may be wandering around. Actually, they taste pretty damned good, so I’ll usually munch on them too. Part of the allure is the pungent taste of the rub. The pieces are small, so they get a big dose of the stuff in comparison to the ribs. And because the rub has lots of sugar, it’s an appealing combination of caramel from the cooked sugar, and the zing of the other spices. Good stuff, unless you are stupid and arrogant and don’t follow your own recipe.
Lesson learned. I promise never to short-change my palate or my guests. A full dose of rub is now guaranteed.
How Did We Ever Live Without This?
Ignoring the unarguable fact that this stuff is ugly, why would you want to eat your plate after a meal? And notice what it is made of — hardtack. I remember reading stories of sailing ships and the awful food they had after the fresh food was eaten. Hardtack played an important role in the hatred of shipboard life.
I’m Moving!
After struggling with a pretty pathetic blogging system I have decided to upgrade to WordPress. Wish me luck! Hopefully the change will occur seamlessly, but based on pretty much everything I know about the internet and computers, my hope is misplaced. I will eventually return to blogging, or just toss my computer out the window. Whatever does happen will happen in the next few days.
Sliders!
If you don’t know what a slider is, please, just go away. This post is for real eaters, and besides, a life without sliders is a life not worth living.
Here is an interesting blog about…well, you’ll have to guess from the name. But the guy has obviously made a careful study of how to make sliders, and he uses as his inspiration the best on the planet: White Manna.
Moules Frites
Ah, diet food! Well, not actually low in calories, but it is a relatively light meal, at least in comparison to a large bone-in rib steak. I went to the store with the expectation of returning with some large chunk of gilled (no, I have never tried whale) pelagic predator, otherwise known as tuna or swordfish. But the mussels looked so damned good and fresh, I received special dispensation from my wife to deviate from the plan. But what are mussels without French fries? Nothing! And quite conveniently, I had several great looking russet potatoes.* So, for no other reason than to be respectful of the history of the relationship between mussels and potatoes, I had to make fries. I won’t bore you with the details; just fry them twice, once at low temperature and once at high temperature. Continue reading “Moules Frites”
Steak, and that damned salt again!
A simple meal: pan seared rib steak with Tommy’s Potatoes. Nice and easy. But once again I was blindsided by pomposity (my own). It’s that damned salt again. Instead of using my standard Kosher salt, I ground a bit of Hiwa kai Black Hawaiian Sea Salt on both sides of the steak, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper for good measure. I would love to take credit for cooking the steak perfectly*, and while it was cooked nicely, the kicker for the dish was that stupid, pompous, expensive salt. I love good quality ingredients in my cooking. But salt? Every time this happens I have less moral authority to poke fun at all of the jerks in the food world who pontificate about free-range tomatoes (at five bucks a pop!) and sustainable agriculture and happy, carefree, heirloom pigs.
The stuff is really good, and you should try it. Just don’t tell them that I sent you.
* 2 inch bone-in rib steak. Blazing hot cast-iron pan for about 3 minutes on each side, just enough for a good char, then into a hot oven for another 3 or 4 minutes. Let it rest for several minutes, and you’re done.
Pork And Super-Pork
If the past several years of the pontifications of many food writers are to be believed, the best foods are also the leanest. And if you can’t get beautiful, uniform, pristine, fatless pork, you are in some way unworthy of being considered a real cook. But fat is flavor, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Oh, there are techniques to extract amazingly concentrated flavors from lean meats and vegetables — just take a look at some of the French “cuisine minceur” cookbooks. The food is great! But it is a huge amount of work, inaccessible to most people. Can some foods taste great without fat? Of course. But some foods are simply better with fat, and pork may be at the top of that list. There has been pushback from some of the more interesting chefs, led, it seems, by David Chang, of Momofuku fame. Eat at one of his restaurants (if you can get in), and you will discover a man who revels in pork fat. His new restaurant, Ko, opens its reservations website at 10:00am and it’s full by 10:01am. I wouldn’t be surprised if his next venture is a spa in which the patrons are immersed in warm pork fat before being massaged by Rubenesque masseuses. Continue reading “Pork And Super-Pork”
A Reply From 9 North
I received a polite comment about my 9 North post…from the chef! I sent him the link because it’s tacky to criticize him behind his back. To his credit, he was nice, and didn’t tell me to stick my amateurish, asinine comments. He also pointed out that his steaks are indeed 21-day dry aged from a local company.
I think that Mr. Bernstein is a serious chef trying to create a serious restaurant, and I am going to take his food seriously. That means holding the experience to the standard that he is trying to reach, but hasn’t achieved yet. I think that he will get there.
9 North — Wayne, NJ [closed]
New restaurants should be like Avis in their old commercials: “We try Harder.” And although the folks at this very new (they opened last Tuesday) Wayne restaurant certainly tried hard, it obviously is still a work in progress. Our waiter told us that two of the waiters quit on Saturday at 5:00pm, so I certainly will not ding them for being overwhelmed. And even if it isn’t true, we knew what we were getting into. After all, it just opened, plus it’s a pretty ballsy story, so he gets credit anyway. The remaining waiters really hustled, and someone recruited a 12-year-old kid, who shows great promise setting a table.
What I didn’t find to be lacking was the service, which was confused but earnest. And the presentation was excellent and interesting, so no problems there. I didn’t like the fact that both fish dishes were overcooked, while the steak and lamb were cooked perfectly. That tells me that whoever is running the kitchen either doesn’t have a handle on what is, at least to me, the most important part of cooking besides cleanliness . . . cooking both fish and meat to the correct temperature . . . or that he just isn’t too interested in fish — which is fine, but don’t put it on the menu.
But on to the meal. We started with crab cakes — excellent, served with a simple mustardy sauce — that were a bit small. A weird “Lobster Strudel” that I really didn’t like, but nobody else complained, so maybe I’m the one with no taste. A well-made onion tart, and a mushroom risotto (I can’t resist risotto). The risotto was well executed but a bit on the simple
side. . .just sautéed mushrooms and rice. I enjoyed it, but it should have been a more complex dish. The menu says “Wild Mushroom Risotto, Duck Confit, Port Syrup.” Not a chance. They were out of the duck confit appetizer, and obviously, there was no duck available for the risotto. And port? Nope.
The aforementioned steak, which they claim on the menu to be “dry-aged,” was perfectly cooked, but if it was dry-aged, it was in dog years. The rack of lamb was, once again, a simple preparation but obviously good enough that my brother-in-law finished it before I could snag a piece. He is a card-carrying carnivore, so I will trust his judgment. But how do you screw up salmon? I could tell it was overdone from across the table. My sister-in-law, a much, much nicer person than I, said, “oh, I like my fish well-done.” And my pancetta-wrapped monkfish? What a nice idea — and one that I will steal quite soon. But it just doesn’t fly when the monkfish is as crisp as the pancetta. Okay, I am exaggerating slightly, but it was dry and tough.
Wayne, New Jersey, is not a hotbed of fine dining. If these folks can iron out the significant kinks in the service (and figure out how to cook fish), they will succeed, and I will return. The prices were reasonable, it’s BYOB (always a wonderful thing), the decor is stark but not unpleasant (decorated with the chef’s girlfriend’s artwork, which isn’t bad), and they have a small room off to one side that can be used for private parties. I also would suggest to the owner-chef that he come out of the kitchen and take a look at the dining room every once and a while. The service was pretty ragged on his first Saturday night — so bad that some people left without eating — but I didn’t see him once. I am not owed a chat with the chef simply because I have eaten at his restaurant, but come on, on your first weekend? Ask how everything was. I would have told the truth, and then I’d come back!
Update
I received a polite comment about my 9 North post…from the chef! I sent him the link because it’s tacky to criticize him behind his back. To his credit, he was nice, and didn’t tell me to stick my amateurish, asinine comments. He also pointed out that his steaks are indeed 21-day dry aged from a local company.
I think that Mr. Bernstein is a serious chef trying to create a serious restaurant, and I am going to take his food seriously. That means holding the experience to the standard that he is trying to reach, but hasn’t achieved yet. I think that he will get there.