Rich Mintz  

My latest TV find is The Supersizers Go… on the Cooking Channel, a three-year-old series in which a British pair (food critic and comedienne) spend a week at a time living the lives of different periods and gorging themselves on the contemporary dishes. It’s a fairly light conceit, and I don’t quite understand what “supersizing” has to do with it (unless you postulate, counterfactually, that in every period other than ours, people ate more than we do). But it’s entertaining, and mildly informative.

This week Giles and Sue went Victorian, and it does seem that people in Victorian days ate a lot more heavily than we do — their experience reminded me of when I moved to Atlanta in 1999, and had to adjust to a lot more fried food and meat and sweet tea than I was used to. My favorite moment was when they were served (by their cook, as a side dish, at an ordinary dinner on an ordinary evening) a plate of calf’s-ear fritters, which looked as though they’d be delicious if they had zucchini inside, but alas they didn’t. The rest of the boiled calf’s head was sitting nearby on a plate, dressed with about a pound of parsley; you can see it here.

It’s not Downton Abbey, but given the choice between this and watching Bobby Flay yelling, or Nadia G wielding her assets, I’d pick this. More on this episode here.

Just finished A History Of The World In Six Glasses, Tom Standage’s light historical narrative about six drinks (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) and the roles they played in different cultural periods.

On the “broad historical trends” front, I didn’t learn anything I didn’t know, but Standage was good with details (for instance, I hadn’t realized the guy who yelled “aux armes!” and set off the French Revolution had a name; and I hadn’t known tea came into prominence so late) and it made a compelling read. The narrative construct felt a little forced, but since I have a sort of industrial history fetish it didn’t really bother me.

OK, sure, I like greenmarkets as much as the next guy, but aren’t these people coming off as a little… whiny?

If you live in Southbridge Towers, not only do you have a (rundown, grungy, crowded, but serviceable) supermarket in your complex, you have Jubilee 2 blocks away, Zeytuna 3 blocks away, and a bright new Gristedes 4 blocks away, all of which are well-run and well-stocked, with lots of local and organic items. Zeytuna alone has about 100 varieties of olive oil. There’s a Whole Foods 5 minutes away by cab (and right on the M22), right near those greenmarkets they’re complaining are too far away.

I get it, farm-to-table is nice to have. But, hello, a record number of New Yorkers are on food stamps — I don’t consider “farmer’s market is 8 blocks away” a serious social problem.

It’s time to bring back one of my old standby recipes, which was adapted (almost 20 years ago) by my ex-boyfriend and me from a recipe in Sunset magazine (that’s “the Southern Living of the West,” for those who are keeping score). It’s easy, tasty, cheap, and (once you do the roasting) quick to serve. I bought a few pounds of Roma tomatoes over the weekend, but didn’t have a chance to roast them today, so I’ll roast them tomorrow.

One reason I like this recipe is that it’s extremely forgiving. Virtually any tomato can be used in this way and come out perfectly delicious, including the very crappiest cardboard-flavored pale pink Romas, as well as old Campari tomatoes that have started to get a little too soft (just toss them whole into the freezer in a Ziploc bag until a couple hours before you’re ready to use them). The best is to use smallish tomatoes so that there’s a lot of filling per unit of tomato body. In extreme circumstances, you can use sliced-up irregular tomatoes (as long as they’re fresh when you start, not precooked), or even mashed cherry or grape tomatoes.

The technique is simple:

Preheat the oven to 300.

Slice your tomatoes in half (or smaller) and set them flat side up on a baking sheet. Scoop out any loose seeds and pulp into a big bowl, but no need to take much trouble doing this.

To the pulpy bowl, add:

• a lot more parsley than you think you need, chopped
• three times as many cloves of garlic as you think you’ll need, minced
• a half-cup or so of good Parmesan, only if you have it available, grated fine
• a ton of pepper and salt
• half a cup or so of olive oil
• a bit of lemon juice, if available

Stir a few times.

Scoop a heaping tablespoon of filling onto every flat tomato half.

When you’re done, drizzle a little extra olive oil over the tomato halves and set the pan in the oven.

Wait 20 to 45 minutes (depending on how caramelized you like your tomatoes) and take the pan out of the oven. (At this point, you can cool the soft, pulpy, caramelized roasted tomato halves and pop them into a Tupperware in the fridge or freezer, to use later or a little at a time — although they rarely last.)

Meanwhile, boil some chewy pasta (like gemelli) until al dente. In a serving bowl, crush 3 or 4 of the roasted tomato halves. Add the drained hot pasta, along with about a cup of good parmesan and some kosher salt and fresh pepper, and toss. Garnish each serving with more tomato halves, and put more cheese on the table.

Serves half as many as you expect; leftovers will disappear mysteriously in the night.

Back when I moved in DC almost 20 years ago, I had a Salvadoran friend named Jaime and he once talked me into eating a pupusa, from a street vendor, which I remember as delicious. I recall DC (really Northern Virginia) as being very heavily Salvadoran (although surely Los Angeles, which I moved here from, gave it a run for its money), perhaps because Jaime pointed things out to me that I might not ordinarily have noticed; but for a combination of reasons (including unadventurous friends) I don’t think I ate Salvadoran food again.

But I’ve always been curious, and so tonight when I realized that my hotel was around the corner from a mid-priced Salvadoran restaurant called La Villa (apparently a branch of La Cabana in Columbia Heights), I decided to eat there rather than pick one of the random artisanal-comfort-food-with-your-choice-of-100-artisanal-ales-eries that have sprung up in this neighborhood since it stopped being slummy (i.e., beginning right around the time I moved away).

The place has a Mexican menu, too, but I suspect that all the staff and all the Spanish-speaking customers are Salvadoran (certainly in my casual cultural profiling of the people inside, the only people I saw eating identifiable Mexican food were from the gentrifying-gringo class), so I waved away the chips and salsa and went all Salvadoran all the way.

Great choice! I had roast chicken Salvadoran style (with roasted onions, carrots, and zucchini in a rich broth that had some alcohol somewhere in its heritage), served with rice and beans and a salad, and two pupusas (because I’m a sucker for any baked or fried good with ground corn as its base), each roughly the size of a frisbee, served with a little bowl of what I would more or less call kimchee, and a gigantic flagon of horchata. And a flan. The horchata may not have been strictly Salvadoran, but it was delicious nonetheless, and now I’m full of beans (in both the literal and figurative senses) and determined to seek out a convenient Salvadoran restaurant in New York and try some more things.

I went to visit a Polish friend in Ridgewood, Queens this weekend, and her kitchen was full of Polish groceries. I asked her if she had a Polish shop nearby, and she said “at the end of the block,” and walked me over.

While there I picked up a bunch of crap (horseradish, fruit cookies, cream caramels — and the word for “horseradish” is “chrzan,” certainly cognate with the “chrain” that every Jew knows from his/her bubbie), and along with the crap a large bottle of “sirop malinowy,” or “raspberry syrup” — just raspberry juice and sugar, cooked down to a thick essence.

It’s already come in use in the bar, and I think I’ll keep it on hand. It does everything grenadine does, but with a richer flavor. Right now I’m drinking Berkshire Ethereal gin (heavy on the botanicals, from Astor Wines), soda, and raspberry syrup, which I think is a combo that’s going into rotation here in the bar.

One of the things I learned from Adam Roberts’ book (which he learned from Ruth Reichl, after learning it in a different way from his upbringing) is that you benefit from becoming a regular at the restaurants you like: you learn what they do well, they learn how you like things, and a relationship develops.

Well, I’ve discovered the next restaurant I want to … have a relationship with, and it’s Peels, on a bleakish-but-improving stretch of the upper Bowery just below Cooper Square.

New York magazine recommended it for breakfast and I had it on my mind, so I went and checked it out recently, given that it’s more or less on my bike route to work. And boy, was I pleasantly surprised! Like Markt, another breakfast place I have a fondness for, they do good eggs and good potatoes; and unlike Markt, they do biscuits as well as or better than the Flying Biscuit, which was previously my gold standard.

The menu is a tad precious (no “eggs any style,” you gotta have them in one of the handful of styles they’ve canonized, such as poached with a biscuit and sausage gravy), but there’s enough range there, and everything is super-fresh and cooked to order. Drinkable Stumptown coffee made in a French press; attentive and friendly service; sidewalk tables; a high communal table inside. And they open early and stay open late. There’s a lunch menu, too, but I probably won’t bother; breakfast is my thing.

Special bonus: when I left this morning and went to the bus stop on the corner, my lovely friend Meredith was standing there! How random. Hi, Meredith!

In followup to this post, I want to mention that I received Adam Roberts’ book yesterday from Amazon, sat down at home to read the first few pages, and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting.

The book is about Adam’s personal transformation from where he started — as someone with no knowledge of food, no palate, and no idea where to begin — into a person who enjoys food and cooking, knows what he doesn’t know, and is unafraid of tackling new food experiences one at a time. It’s well-written, with a point of view and a sense of humor, revealing about the author and the experiences that made him who he is, hopeful about the possibilities in one’s life to reshape imperfect circumstances more to one’s liking. And sprinkled throughout with recipes and food commentary. I’m looking forward to the next one!

I’ve sort of had my eye on the Amateur Gourmet’s blog off and on for the last couple of years, and the experience was a bit uneven at the beginning. But I have to say, Adam Roberts (the name on the Gourmet’s birth certificate) has really started to find his voice over the past few months.

When I first started following the blog, I must confess there was a bit too much “omigod, I’m just a kid, I really don’t know what I’m doing but let’s see if I can figure this out without setting the kitchen on fire” for my taste. Some of that is a matter of age (I’m 15 or 20 years older than Adam, give or take, and before you grouse, I know I was just as precious and tentative 15 or 20 years ago.)  And once in a while it still grates.  But you know what? It’s not the young’s fault that they were born after I was. And it’s become clear that Adam’s a real workhorse, and he’s invested the time and planning and hard work needed to build a successful professional life doing something that interests him. That’s worth admiring, and I admire it, and it has lifted my impression of the product.

Besides, Adam’s written voice has matured as his knowledge of cooking and food has expanded, and he’s built a network of professional contacts who seem to genuinely like him, which makes it more than namedropping when they show up in the blog, in person or by reference.  I’ve even tried one or two of Adam’s recipes, which have come out great. So now I’m a regular reader.

Recently I’ve particularly been enjoying Adam’s “Someone’s In the Kitchen With…” video podcast series, in which he sits down in front of a webcam with some food personality or other (usually someone big enough that they’re recognizable, at least by role or credentials, but still human enough that they are capable of sitting down with Adam for a friendly chat without coming off like a blowhard) and leads them through a conversation about their work in food and their professional history. The latest, with chef/critic/memoirist Lauren Shockey, was typical: watchable for the full 30 minutes, only annoying once or twice, and substantive enough that I went right out and bought Shockey’s new book (and am going to make her frangipane tart). Given how reluctant I am to buy a new book in hardcover, even now with Amazon Prime, that’s indication of quality.

I’ve been meaning to make a trip to Tortilleria Nixtamal in Corona, Queens ever since I came back from San Diego full of delicious tortillas. But now I may not have to — Taqueria Nixtamalito has opened in the kiosk beside the Municipal Building (up against the Brooklyn Bridge ramp). They serve tacos and such, and also sell Nixtamal tortillas in bulk.

I had myself a pork taco and it was delicious — just the basics (meat, chopped onion, a bit of cilantro). A very different experience from the lushly braised, heavily flavored pork tacos at Toloache, but just as good and just as close to my house!