Archive for January, 2009

I’ve added another statement to my dealbreaker list.  If you EVER ask a butcher whether mortadella or salami is lower fat in front of me, I will not only disown you as a friend/loved one, I will publicly mock you and then make it my personal mission to make sure you are barred from every establishment serving cured meat in the country.  This means no Mario Batali restaurants.  Don’t let this happen to you.  The points of these meats are to be fatty and wonderful.  You do not eat them when on a diet.  So really, who cares.  If you’re that concerned, maybe you should fry up some turkey bacon.  I hear it’s a mediocre substitute for pork fat.

blissful union of cured meat

It is of utmost importance that my future children become foodies or they will be sent down the river, Moses style, and in this big bad world, will unlikely be fortunate enough meet his same fate. To ensure their safety and my sanity, I am already planning ahead, and I’ve written a parenting plan. As my children will likely not exist until at least the year 2025 (barring some unfortunate event coupled with an abortion/coat hanger ban), I am graciously sharing this plan with the world. That way, young parents and parents-to-be can raise precious little people with good taste.

Pregnancy:

Be sure to eat plenty of the four basic food groups: pork, salt, fat, and burgundy. I know what most doctors say about fetal alcohol syndrome, but friends assure me you are allowed to consume, like, a glass of wine every couple of days and it’s totally fine. Risk it. Babies who have burgundy as part of their genetic make-up are 9 times as likely to understand that wine is so much more than red vs. white.

Day of birth:

While mom is going through labor, dad has one job: be ready with a camp stove and frying pan so when it looks like baby is about to bust free of its prenatal incarceration, he can sear some foie and fry some bacon. This may not be “sterile,” but imagine the impact of feeding new baby bacon and foie seconds after its tasted air. Bacon and foie are more important than air, anyway.

these parents get it

Infancy:

Diet: Never feed baby from a jar. Ever. Instead, make your own versions of baby food. Here are some thoughts to get you started: mashed up carrots cooked in duck fat, pork belly (soft enough to be gummed, just be careful with heat), foie gras (terrine in particular), o-toro, pears poached in red wine (you can mash these up after they’re softened), panna cotta. Remember, if it can be cooked, it can be put in a blender and turned into baby food, even if you need to grease the wheels a little with a fat of some sort (but remember, fat is a basic food group, and good for growing babies). There is no excuse for Gerber’s. Additionally, be sure to supplement daily intakes of formula and/or milk with whatever you’re drinking from your cellar. This is also a good moment to talk to baby about the differences between all the villages in France, how Napa became a wine-growing mecca, and why Alsacian Riesling is different from the German variety.

Play time: Foodie babies don’t need toys, they need cooking utensils. Probably not knives yet, but a wooden spoon never hurt anyone. Also, foodie babies should be encouraged to play with their food. This develops the visceral connection you’re going for. And plus, who doesn’t want to stick their hands into a big terrine of paté? Indulge your little one. Lord knows they’ll remember when they’re sitting at French Laundry 20 years later, wishing they could still do those things like in the good old days.

Toddlerhood:

Diet: Now that your child can go to restaurants and interact with other humans through basic forms of communication, there are some rules to follow. First, never allow a foodie toddler to order from the kid’s menu. If you’re taking them to the right restaurants, portion sizes should be small enough for them to finish, anyway. Second, it’s important to give toddlers limited choices so they can feel like they’re a part of the decision-making process (or some psychological recommendation like that). This helps you. You can guide your child foodie toward understanding subtle differences in foods by asking questions like: honey, do you want braised pork belly or braised pork shoulder tonight? This puts them leagues ahead of their playmates who only get the option: chicken or beef?

Play time: Toddlers like matching games. What better excuse to teach them how to pair wine and food? With a special edition of Memory, they’ll easily see that a montepulciano d’abruzzo pairs magnificently with spicy marinara dishes! And by the time they can walk and reach the wine in your cellar, they’ll have an extra-special fun chore: picking the wine for dinner!

Childhood:

By now, child foodie should have a good understanding of how flavors work together. Children like projects. So while their classmates are doing science projects and making displays of their ancestors for school, your kid can do a MORE fun activity: plan dinner parties! Ease your child into this. For your next dinner party, have them plan the appetizer course, and guide them through the nuances of what you put on a cheeseboard, how to serve ceviche to 60 people, and how to make your own crackers. Soon, they’ll be ready to take on the whole event- all you have to do is get some guests together and show your kid off. This phase of life is also a perfect time to hone the knife skills. Sure, conventional wisdom says that sharp objects should be kept out of reach of children, but if they don’t start chopping garlic now, how are they going to pull off Thomas Keller’s pig’s head recipe by the time they’re 15? Finally, if your child isn’t consuming at least a glass of wine a night and commenting on the acidity/body/finish, you aren’t working hard enough.

Teenage years:

This is when your kid is likely going to rebel and go to McDonalds or Olive Garden to be “different.” Allow them to rebel. And then cook a lot of meals made of foie, bacon, and truffles, bottle the smell, and waft it into their bedrooms. They’ll come crawling back anyway as soon as they realize they don’t have to break into your liquor cabinet like the rest of their friends because you’ve been allowing them to drink from the wine cellar (if only the bottom level) for years. Celebrate their triumphant return to your good graces with a tour of Napa’s restaurants and wineries. The time has come for them to understand the promised land. Assuming that this pilgrimage happens in mid-high school, gently suggest that your junior/senior focus their extra-curricular hours on becoming a sommelier by reminding them that they already have the wine knowledge, and this will definitely get them laid more in college.

Alas, someday, it will be time to let the baby out of the nest to make their own way in the world. Hopefully, that own way will be in a place like the Culinary Institute of America or Master Sommelier school. But even if they choose a boring career like finance, take solace in the fact that they’ll likely be able to take you to dinner some day, and you’ve given them the tools to make that meal count.

I’ve received this article from 3 friends already today:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html?_r=2&em

Do you know what this means?  It means that I have arrived.  I’ve been trying despearately for YEARS to associate my personal brand with bacon, and it’s been hard work.  After all, attendance at pig roasts, 5 course dinners revolving around bacon, and restaurant events promoting pork belly constitute a major burden on a social calendar.  Understanding the subtleties of the perfect bacon texture takes a lot of experimentation in the kitchen and a lot of sacrifice of the hot bod.  Convincing Jews who keep kosher and vegetarians to sample pork products takes a lot of dedication to the cause.  And annoying activities, like becoming a fan of bacon on facebook, obsessing over how to work the food into every course of a meal including dessert, and developing a habit of saying, “mmm… bacon” whenever the subject hadn’t come up in awhile, may have put some strain on personal relationships.  But through these activities, I’ve prevailed.  I am now the bacon queen, ready to take the crown, and perhaps the bacon bikini (though maybe I should do a sit-up first- or donate it to a friend who eats a lot more vegetables).

It may be time for an intervention, though.  I’ve become so thoroughly a part of the bacon world that I have to admit something kind of embarrassing:

Thanks to cruising food porn websites, I knew about the Bacon Explosion before the NY Times article.

And the second I saw it, I modified the recipe to incorporate more pork.

The Bacon Explosion

Vivid are the memories I have of realizing certain beliefs that I put such stock in were actually fiction. I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real from my best friend’s older sister, and I still remember the onset of logical processing that occurred after she declared that the fat guy was really my parents. OF COURSE a 300 pound man couldn’t fit down a chimney. OF COURSE reindeer can’t fly. It didn’t stop the tears from flowing, though, because I was afraid that knowing the truth would give my parents a pass from giving me presents (luckily, that didn’t happen until I was about 23). Equally disheartening was the day I realized my parents didn’t know everything. I think that happened in high school, and I found myself shouting “What do you MEAN you don’t remember how to take the derivative of this calculus function?” The panic was due partially to the fact that all bets were now off on me finishing my homework, but also because I was venturing into unknown territory, where I’d have to pursue my own calculus-ridden course. Terrifying.

My most recent crisis of faith came when Fortune announced their 100 top places to work. Until this year, I’d eagerly awaited that list, plotting my resume drops based on who had the most perks and employee satisfaction. When I worked at Chipotle, which was an incredible place to work but never made the list, I always imagined the top 100 must be workers’ utopia, where the employees love life beyond my wildest dreams and never wanted to leave work. They probably slept in their offices, in company provided hammocks, and listened to the sweet sounds of nature to aid their rest. They ate foie gras in the cafeteria and held hands and sung while completing their tasks. And then this year’s list was announced and all of my dreams were derailed: my current company was in the top 100.

In my attempt to process this, I went through all the stages of grief. After the initial shock wore off, I felt angry with myself, for believing a fluffy magazine could actually pretend to know anything about the best places to work (hello, those companies probably give them advertising dollars, we’re all in it for profit after all), and angry with Fortune for letting profit taint their reporting on such an important subject. Next came denial. Maybe there’s a mistake, I thought. Maybe they aren’t talking about the same company. Maybe somehow some company somewhere slipped through the trademark mechanisms and happens to have the same name as the company I work for. And maybe that company is the paradise I’ve always imagined. Then pleading: I was on the phone with Fortune, begging them to take that company off their list in order to save their credibility. This probably didn’t work since I was mostly just pleading into a robotic answering machine, but I like to think someone somewhere got that message.

The logic began to set in. Of course my company would boast high rates of employee satisfaction. No matter that we work 80 hour weeks, are on call at all times, and are under the constant pressure of climbing the hierarchy. No big deal that the travel schedule causes all kinds of relationship problems and divorces. Who cares that work-life balance is non-existent in practice or that we work in windowless rooms or that they guilt you into doing things by making you compete against your peers for ratings. If you surveyed my co-workers, you’d find an interesting phenomenon: few have any basis of comparison, because they were recruited right out of school, and most feel that no matter how bad their day is, at least they aren’t in banking. On the surface, there are a lot of perks: 5 weeks vacation a year (no one uses all that time), lip-service to flat organization (not really true), all kinds of extracurricular activities that are semi-required (so it looks like people want to spend more time at work), the list goes on. If I were writing that article, I’d probably be jealous of my company on paper. And Fortune deals in print, so paper must be, like, the bible for them.

So I’ve reached the final stage of grief: acceptance. And as I throw my Fortune in the trash (or actually, close my browser, since we all know print is dead), I realize how much time this is going to save when I’m not preparing resumes at this time of year any more. The grass is always greener, but I like to think that this experience is helping me get to a point where I can just make the best of my own lawn.

Most of my friendships surround, in some way, a deep and unconditional love for food. I used to be able to dub someone “my foodie friend.” Not so, anymore. They’re all foodies. Otherwise they’re off the island (kidding, sort of). However, a handful of my most magical friendships have been bonded on one glorious premise: 1 night, 2 dinners. Such an occasion is not for the faint of heart and, therefore, is often unpredictable. True food devotees, however, jump on the chance, and I can spend lifetimes with them talking of little else than what tastes good.

This weekend past, I planned to discover one of the best Thai restaurants in New York with Cindy, a girl I’d met several times through friends, but had become aggressively interested in befriending for real after discovering her love for food and her unmatched knowledge for some of the best restaurants in the city. In particular, she covered the Asian cuisines better than anyone I’d had contact with up to that point, and thus filled a hole in my soul and stomach. After a drunken night in which we manically discussed the best ethnic brunch places, I developed a friend crush and creepily followed up with her via all electronic means available (namely facebook messaging and copious texting) to make sure we made good on our promises to explore everything from ramen to vegan Indian. She was a good sport. As nervous as my intense pursuit probably made her, she agreed to meet me in Queens on Sunday night.

Dinner 1: Sripraphai is located on an unassuming street in Queens, but it boasts the title of best Thai food, several years running. The roasted duck salad, according to Cindy, was one of the top 10 DISHES in the city. Naturally, we ordered that. Along with crispy cat fish, so delicate I barely believe it actually had meat involved, the best pad thai I’ve ever eaten, and Chinese broccoli with crispified pork belly- crunchy on the outside, velvety melted fat juice on the inside. We happily discussed our various culinary pilgrimages, devotion to food porn, and favorite chefs, and I knew I was in love. Not as in love with the situation was my friend Pat, who’d good-naturedly agreed to come along. I can understand. It was probably kind of like going to the Met with an art history major: fun for, like, the first 20 minutes, but then exhausting and irritating after they start with the nuts and bolts of 17^th century art (because that’s the boring art wing). After a couple of hours of conversation focused mostly on the nuances of the spices in the Thai salads, Pat excused himself for a drinking engagement, something that most young 20-somethings like to do, while Cindy and I decided to spontaneously meet her friends for a “drink” at the best ramen place in New York.

Dinner 2: Ippudo is widely acknowledged as one of the best ramen noodle places in New York, and Cindy’s friend Anthony built it up immediately by saying it was better than the ramen he’d had in Japan. I’d never had ramen in Japan. I’d also never had real ramen in the U.S. But I couldn’t imagine a better place to start a food love affair than at one of the best places to eat said food. So I knew basically the minute that I walked in the door that our agreement to meet for a “drink” was really an agreement to meet for a second dinner. My heartbeat quickened with excitement at this prospect, but that could have just been the duck and pork fat working its way into my arteries.

Our group of four became fast friends over discussion of the pork buns, dripping in fat and saucy goodness. Dinner 2: a big bowl of ramen noodles. It was then that I knew Cindy and I were going to be good friends. No words were really exchanged, we just placed the order. Because foodies don’t let foodies pass up a best ramen situation, even if it’s going to lead to extreme discomfort in a couple of hours. Cindy’s friends Duwi and Anthony also immediately bestowed themselves in my good graces by ordering, in addition to the pork buns, sides of pork belly bites, which we ate plain, with no messy accoutrements like sauce or soup. And then we all sat around, made various moaning sounds linked both to ecstasy and overeating discomfort, and talked about our culinary pilgrimages. Riding the good vibe wave, I ate until I wanted to pass out on the floor. Luckily, I have a second stomach for dessert, so I could endure the matcha crème brulee.

mmm. pork buns.

2 dinners and 3 extra chins later, all we could do was sit around and smile at each other over an after dinner drink. And in that moment, a lifetime bond was formed. Suddenly, I found myself planning reunion trips for the four of us in Napa and France, picturing scenes of dinner parties, and picking out future bottles of wine as gifts. We’d take our foodie vows together at French Laundry, hands clasped around salmon cornets, and toasting with a perfectly paired champagne. Perhaps we’d even link arms and feed each other foie gras, which is way better than feeding each other mediocre cake. The honeymoon, naturally, would be a tour of the world’s best restaurants, where we’d get fat, poor, and happy. Winters of cassoulets, summers of garden vegetables, we’d get a dog and name him Thomas and then get another and name him Grant. And in the meantime, we’d enjoy the moment eating in Manhattan dives, commenting on the newest food fad, and sending recipes and recommendations to each other from across the globe. Someday, I hope the sparks fly like this in a real romantic relationship, and perhaps on a firmer foundation than food snobbery. But for now, the way to my heart: 1 night, 2 dinners, 3 kinds of pork. 4 new friends.