Augieland

Thoughts week ending 9/8/06

…I am not sure who the people that come to Augieland are, but I assume some of the more regular readers are from my neighborhood since most of the stuff I write about happens within 20 blocks of home. For a very loose and somewhat wide guide of the neighborhood I refer to you can simply look at the map of the 66th assembly district in New York. Well, neighbors and readers, it is time to get civic.

If you ever made it to the Blind Tiger Ale House at its old digs you know it was awesome – a true sawdust-on-the-floor seedy little place that took beer very very seriously. (In the interest of disclosure I entered their chili contest last year and lost to a bar employee so I am clearly biased against the place). It was one of the few actually great and real New York bars left. In the vein of Stoned Crow on Washington Place and Johnny’s on Greenwich, it was a place that welcomed and enveloped the neighborhood, unapologetically being a bar for people comfortable in their skins looking for camaraderie in the diverse city; catering to people who actually live here, who don’t really care what brand shoes you are wearing. It was a place that was pure NY in that if you loved good beer you were part of the Blind Tiger, and that was all it took.

The Blind Tiger was driven from its home at 518 Hudson by the current inflationary trend late last/early this year. According to a letter Eater published from the Blind Tiger, the biggest reason they have been given by the license board for not having their liquor license approved for their new place in our neighborhood is a letter the State Liquor Authority received from our Assemblywoman Deborah Glick. On her web page in the ’06 neighborhood update, Ms. Glick bemoans this exact dilemma of the people and places of character that make the Village and the rest of her district so wonderful being driven out by rising prices, making it seem strange that she would be trying to stand in the way of such a salt of the community place relocating within the district.

I have to assume that Ms. Glick had never actually been to the old Tiger and is basing her reaction on words like “beer” and “bar.” Well, being one of Deborah’s constituents and a Blind Tiger customer I have decided to:

1) sign the petition
2) call her office (212 674-5153)
3) email ([email protected]), and
4) write (853 Broadway Suite 2120 New York, NY 10003).

I hope you will do some of the same. Let Assemblywoman Glick know that we are independent people who want independent establishments and that our celebration of character and individuality is what has always made our community wonderful. The Village has always been home to revolutionary people and places and in a city of ever- spreading mediocrity where places like the Caliente Cab Co. have taken hold, Blind Tiger and places like it are both important and revolutionary. Tell Assemblywoman Glick that if she can find it in her heart to accommodate a new place called Pardo’s that represents itself as “The No. 1 Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken Chain” just around the corner from the Tiger’s new location at 281 Bleecker Street (where it is functioning as a coffee shop while awaiting approval of its liquor license) we should have to open at least one home-grown beer bar.

In the meantime, please go buy some coffee at the Blind Tiger (a lot and often). They are going to need income to fight the good fight…

… Almost across the board I find that beets, especially red beets, taste like dirt. It’s something I have come to accept and even expect as part of their flavor profile. My copy of The Organic Cook's Bible claims that all root vegetables, including beets, express terroir more than other vegetables and that this flavor of dirt indicates nutrient deficient soil, a concept that has caused me to move the credit for the couple of times I have had non- or less soily ones from a chef’s skill in cooking to his skill in sourcing. Red beets appeared in our CSA allotment this week and Wife simply roasted them (for about an hour in a 425 oven on tinfoil in their jackets) peeled and sliced them and put them on a salad. Our CSA is organic and in general I find their food most flavorful, but these beets are ridiculous, absolutely perfect. Anyway, this must also have something to do with the crazy weather this year as well as their nutrient dense organic compost, so I strongly suggest you seek out your favorite organic farmer in the NE of America and buy beets. After years of learning to accept the flavor of mud, these are life changing stuff…

… The truths and the statistics as I believe them are that raw milk is safe when produced by small farms from grass-fed cattle and that it tastes far better than pasteurized milk, therefore I consume it on a very regular basis. This article in the Daily Mail suggests that studies in Great Britain are showing strong evidence that it may also be why I haven’t suffered from seasonal allergies. Ha! Anyway, I’ll keep drinking it for its taste, but apparently if you suffer from hay fever or eczema you may want to stop cycling through uselessly small non-drowsy levels of Claritin and just partake in a couple glasses of raw cow’s milk (realmilk.com can tell you where to get it). Definitely don’t tell Schering-Plough, they will have the USDA shutting us down in seconds…

…Dude, what the eff???

Thoughts week ending 9/1/06

…So Bayer, a German company, has crops of GMO rice growing in America. I assume this is because GMO’s are’nt allowed in the EU, as well as in most of the rest of the world. The decision makes sense of course because besides being one of the few places that can buy food that has had different poisons spliced into its genes, we are happy to offer our entire ecosystem to multinational chemical companies to try stuff out on. Why not?

Anyway in this case, Bayer was playing around with three different versions of a rice that has a bacteria spliced into its genetics in order to make it poison-proof so that agri-business can dump unbefore seen amounts of poison on ceral crops. Sounds exactly like the miracle we need, right? We will never know, because years ago Bayer gave up on it and never finished it’s approval process.

“Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced late yesterday that U.S. commercial supplies of long-grain rice had become inadvertently contaminated with a genetically engineered variety not approved for human consumption.”

So something that is not supposed to be in our food is in our food.

“Bayer CropScience of Monheim, Germany, had provided information to the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration indicating that the rice poses no threats to human health or the environment.”

So we are not worried because the guys that have done the contaminating tell us not to worry.

“Johanns said he did not know where the contaminated rice was found or how widespread it may be in the U.S. food supply. The agency first learned about it from the company, he said, after it discovered "trace amounts" during testing of commercial supplies.”

We would have no idea if the company didn’t come clean about their screw up, and even that they have now done the first half of our job, we have decided it doesn’t really merit much of an understanding.

“Johanns acknowledged that the discovery could have a significant impact on rice sales -- especially exports, which are worth close to $1 billion a year. Many U.S. trading partners have strict policies forbidding importation of certain genetically engineered foods, even if they are approved in the United States.”

The USDA, whose primary job it is to insure that we can safely sell our food, knows little other than that we may not be able to sell huge amounts of our food, thanks to this little screw up.

“If we become aware of any new information to suggest that food or feed is unsafe, we will take action," Johanns said.”

We feel confident that the guys that screwed it up in the first place are the right ones to look out for the best interest of our farmers and our consumers and will trust them to handle decisions on how to handle this going forward.

So here we are, years after Bayer stopped caring about this certain frankencrop, and it is polluting the rest of our crops, which in turn makes the affected crops un-sellable in most of the world. Whether or not they are unhealthy for us seems beside the point, a trifling matter to be ignored. Do any of the rest of you feel like we might as well find out exactly how many of each of our tax dollars go to this agency and withhold them next April 15th???

...Once faced with the contention that it was cheaper to buy some burritos from Taco Bell than anything else by a friend in college, I countered with my evaluation of the cost effectiveness of a pound of pasta, a head of broccoli, some garlic and some olive oil. Some simple kitchen skills can turn the advantage to the consumer when looking for healthy/ fairly-priced food. Here are some pretty reasonable thoughts regarding how to get real food into the lives of people in a lower income bracket…

…I know this is convoluted and a tough way to get there, but this article from the Times proves to me that an open market is the way to make food better. In spite of the enormous subsidies given to corn in America, these farmers and consumers have managed to find each other and are improving their respective situations. I am sure it won’t take long for this to get all screwed up, by the government looking to help big business compete with the smaller farmers and muddying up what grass-fed means as they are already doing with organics. But at the moment, in an open un-tampered market, this seems to be working well, even if you need to learn the name of a good maker and not be lazy and just trust truth in marketing (but would you buy brand-less clothes?)…

…Turns out not all Chicago politicians are boobs; some are just slow to act. Mayor Daley finally comes out about the silliest legislation ever…

Thoughts week ending 8/25/06

…. Had dinner at Hearth this week and was discussing with Marco how interested I was in having the food of a guy famous for his mashed potatoes (Robuchon). I joked it would be like having a favorite restaurant with a chef famous for his gnocchi. In turn, with our entrées Marco sent out some of his mashed potatoes. All I can say is try them, they are seriously fantastic. I would say more but I was well served by the time I tried them and it could just be the Pinot talking…

…Went back to Intent this week and had the amazing curry Crab Napoleon again. This time it was far more about the curry than the crab. What had been a fantastic dish about the flavor of crab and butter accented by a touch of curry and the crunch of potato was this time an interesting curry dish…

…The Times has an article about foie civil disobedience going on in Chicago, begging the question what will happen when this already ridiculous situation gets taken to a new level by Joe Morre (the genius alderman with such a clear understanding of the current food situations and ethics in the world and Chicagoland that he saw fit to outlaw one of the few positive products produced by American farmers) if he tries to punish these civic-minded people standing up for their civil liberties? Who will be the Bill Kunstler for this Chicago Sevenish???

…Speaking of civil disobedience and stupid laws, USA Today has an article about raw milk, and how safe or unsafe it is. I seek out raw cheese whenever possible, and regularly drink raw cows’ milk. I don’t drink it because I believe it to be a miracle cure or because I know that, thanks to the current situation of most farming in America, commercially sold pasteurized milk is so loaded with hormones and antibiotics that it is probably dangerous. I drink it because it tastes better, and because I am the kind of guy who geeks out on the changing flavor it shows through the seasons of the year. If you are interested, go to the Weston A. Price foundation’s website or realmilk.com and figure out how to get it. If you are concerned about its healthfulness, read Ron Schmid’s book “The Untold Story of Milk” and all the studies made in the interests of factory farming the USDA and CDC are very happy to pass along. I will testify that, although my experimental food lifestyle has given me many of the illnesses the government warns you about (I have never considered them very bothersome I just keep Lomotil in the medicine Cabinet), I have never been made sick by fresh raw milk from grass-fed cows on a small certified farm, and have no doubt the supposed risk is worth the actual reward…

…The Times also has an article on how to make Zak Pelaccio’s Cubano. Just like any drug, the subsequent trips are never as good as the first so I will simply say if you decide to play along you will know you have made it right if you have good sensations in non-food places, as I did the first time I had it back in ’03 at Chickenbone (still the only thing that ever got me to Brooklyn six consecutive times; they now serve it at 5 Ninth)…

…Just when you think Coke may be becoming the new McDonald’s as far as the ire of ethically conscious consumers goes, McDonald’s starts an awesome campaign giving Hummers to children. Usually I am not a guy to protect children from companies (let them learn like I did through slow poisoning), but on this site you get to write dirty words on the McD sign and it’s fun for a couple minutes (yes I signed the petition)…

In response to Reader

Dear Reader,

Thanks for your comment. As far as Frank and my arrogance, you are indeed correct. As I wrote the post I knew I was being way too catty but couldn’t help myself; boring summer day with little inspiration and I allowed my boredom to turn on Frank, to no good outcome. I apologize.

As far as Riedel O series stemware goes, I do not critique the shape, I critique the fact that they force the heat of your hand in proximity with the juice, and no matter how many studies are done, being someone who likes both whites and reds a little cooler than room temp and far cooler than body temp, I must stand behind my feelings that they have no place in a serious wine program.

Thanks for keeping me in line. Maybe with Robuchon now open there will be more exciting stuff to think about, hey August is almost over.

Best,

Augieland

In response to Erin

Dear Erin,

 

Thank you for your call to arms regarding Frank’s blog post “Out of Season,” but let me warn you ahead of time that in this case I see no need to call Frank a boob, or his behavior buffoonish, rather in this case I find I may be of assistance in translating Frank. I see why this post is confusing; since he is one of the key food writers at The New York Times and since Frank primarily writes about food you should be safe assuming he has a basic understanding of food and the verbiage regarding it. But you must realize that he writes for the Dining & Wine part of the Style section.

 

So, sadly our assumptions have made posteriors of us. Frank’s reviews are quintessentially about current style and the way it makes him feel. Think of Jack from Will & Grace, there is no need for accuracy or comprehension on his part as long as at the end you understand whether Frank and his cohorts were shown a good time or not. Food has the smallest amount to do with it, which is fine as long as we keep in mind that this section is called Dining & Wine, not Food & Wine. Frank says as much in his recent Le Cirque review. If you read what he wrote, it is clearly not a two-star place, but since he was the restaurant reviewer for the Times and the restaurant’s behavior around him changed accordingly each time they figured it out, it gets two stars because, “On the right night, for the right diner, it can muster a magnificent performance.” Frank neither reports as an everyman, nor bases reviews on his perceptions of the food, unless two stars means one good dish for every bad -- “It does a superb foie gras terrine, a sorry risotto Milanese. Its ethereal Dover sole meunière makes you believe that this fish was put into the seas to await its appointment with butter and lemon. Its drab lobster salad makes you question the crustacean’s gastronomic calling” -- rather than the published definition “Very good.”

 

Trust me and take for granted that Frank cares little and knows less about food, and that it is not germane to his position. If you want to read about food in the Times read Fabricant, or Pollan, or the other writers learning and living as they go through the process. When Michael Pollan wants to write about GMO potatoes he gets some and grows them in his home garden and it is in the Times Magazine; when Frank wants to do some investigative journalism he pops in the car for a road trip to Atlantic City or a tour of burger outlets in America, and it is in the Style Section. It is probably all best summed up when you wrap your head around the fact that on the third day of Diner’s Journal, Frank’s blog, he used his new freedom in this interactive forum to let us all know how good Hooters really is.

In the case of your referenced entry in Frank’s blog “Out of Season” I see where you might get confused, because in three simple steps Frank moves from his declared topic to talking about something almost like his declared topic:

 

First step: “If there’s an adjective that appears more often than any other in the press releases I get, it’s “seasonal.” Here Frank is establishing what trend he will be addressing, which is why it is his purview and not that of a food writer.

 

Second step: “Chef X is reaping the seasonal fruits of the Greenmarket. Chef Y is doing a seasonal menu. Chef Z is cooking dishes that use only the freshest seasonal ingredients. All are proclaimed deities of seasonality. The betting seems to be that this religion plays especially well with discriminating diners.” Here Frank is letting us know that it can be very pesky writing about food trends for the paper of record, especially when the kids not currently deemed hip are vying for your attention, the woes of being the popular kid with final say on who is in or out. He hints that if it is your job to promote restaurants you should be careful how much you pester Frank because you, too, may receive misguided wrath in the future. If he has just had a bad science class, or feels yucky about the way he looks that day, you may just get branded un-cool while Frank lives out his lifelong dream of being a Heather. More than anything else, though, he separates himself from those that are “discriminating.”

 

Third step: “And then there were the menu items whose heaviness seemed at odds with these long, steamy, sticky days: grilled German sausages; pieces of toast slathered with smooth chicken liver; a hanger steak with not only a rectangle of concentrated marrow atop it but also, on the side, a creamy horseradish dip and a potato gratin.” Here Frank’s emotions take over his accuracy: he is not discussing seasonal ingredients, he is discussing seasonal fare.

You see sausages have no season and neither do chicken livers or beef. As far as horseradish, it is one of the last things harvested in late fall and is cherished for its preserve-ability and use throughout the year. As for potatoes and milk (for the gratin) a short trip to the greenmarket will let you know if they are currently seasonal (they are).

You see what Frank means by “eating out of season” is eating un-seasonal fare rather than un-seasonal ingredients. Sure he starts you off by talking about the greenmarket and that is confusing, but if you put young Jack from Will & Grace back in your head you will see what he means is he is being naughty and eating hearty winter-type foods in the summer.

 

Of course what the chefs and the publicists that keep sending Frank all the news are suggesting is that seasonal food in season tastes better, and they are right. Because Frank has taken a contrary tone you are thinking Frank is suggesting tomatoes taste good in January. (That’s not what he means look at his rave reviews of these out of season meals: “Those sausages were flabby, and dull in flavor” and “Most of it was satisfying in its way — no doubt about that”). What Frank is suggesting is that because there are foods that fare well through the non-prolific seasons and we tend to eat them in the winter, he is assuming them out of season in the summer, autumn, or spring, when of course what makes them winter food is that they are not seasonal at all.

I am sure that if the Times thought their customers wanted a guy who could truly evaluate food and its preparation writing about restaurants and their service they would hire one (ahem). But as long as what the consumer wants is the simplicity of stars to decipher what is being written, the writer seems unimportant. As long as they do not encourage tackling topics like estrogens in soy, and keep the focus on whether or not people on an expense account (I have read the position affords low six figures a year) can have fun at said place, Frank seems the best man for the job. Just go to Chinatown Brassiere and see how “a stylish new uniform for General Tso” makes you feel, just keep in mind that while it is “slightly chewy” the important thing to remember is, “with dining as with so much else, knowledge is not always pleasure’s friend.”

 

Best,

Augieland

Medium-rare pork

Frank Bruni is a conundrum to me. I truly enjoy his writing and at times I feel he does an exceptional job of putting into words aspects of restaurants that are often most charming or most annoying. I would not call Frank’s talent one for insight or consistency (as great as Little Owl and Gilt are, it is inconceivable that they share the same rating of 2 stars). In order for me to make sense of his reviewing, I have kind of settled into the acceptance that Frank doesn’t rate restaurants on their actual execution but rather on how they make him feel. Like a rich person buying this season’s fashion trends, Frank cares whether the shoes match the bag far more than if they are well made.

 

As much as I enjoy Frank’s restaurant reviews, I have been loving his blog. Every now and then I jump on and take a poke at him; for no good reason the forum brings out my best and worst. But generally, with his hair down in the looser blog format, Frank can dwell on minutia and he tends to be more insightful, and in some cases catty, which rules.

 

 

Recently, though, in his blog Frank has written an article on medium-rare pork that in my opinion shows him to be very uninformed and lacking in a most basic understanding of food, which I think may be dangerous to his readers or at least encourage the blissful ignorance of the American food consumer I hate most. Frank’s assertion that pork may, and probably should, be eaten medium-rare is in fact true; his reasons are buffoonish.

The truth is if you go to the USDA website it will inform you that they recommend as a safe guideline an internal temperature for pork of 160° Fahrenheit. The base reason for this is a type of roundworm called Trichina worm, which can live in pork and causes a parasitic disease in humans called Trichinosis. Through a brilliant evolutionary trick, the larvae of these worms have a protective layer that dissolves in our stomach acids allowing them to start growing. They then go on to find their way into muscle tissue, making people sick. This happens to twelve people annually in the entire US, so this is currently a disease affecting .00000004% of America (largely this vast epidemic is blamed on hunted game poorly prepared by the home cook). 

 

So if we were in so much danger of a worm taking up residence in our muscle tissue, why would Frank be so willing to throw caution to the wind? He doesn’t really say. He quotes Chef Campanaro as saying, “If the pigs are raised properly, there’s no reason to be afraid.” Which makes perfect sense: to Frank.

 

The good news is that you can and should take Frank’s advice to heart, but you will be much safer if you know two things: medium-rare means that the meat maintained an internal temperature of 145° for five minutes, and that the larvae of Trichina worms die at 144°. I am not sure how or why the USDA came up with their 160° guideline, or the CDC their 170°. What I can tell you is there is obviously little requirement to understand food to work at the USDA, the CDC, or to review restaurants for the New York Times for that matter. (I keep reminding myself these jobs are ensuring open markets for US agricultural products, preventing disease, and reviewing restaurants (not food) respectively).

 

The result of the USDA’s guideline was that cooks in the past were only given the message that pork must be cooked well or it will hurt you, which somehow translated to crucify it. Of course, once it was inured that pork needed to be cooked beyond tasting good, it was easy for it to become tasteless in the first place through CAFO farming practices. The truth is no one has ever worked to identify which pork does or doesn’t have worms; the problem was solved in cooking (these worms are tiny little things that translate to little more than protein once they are dead).

 

You should eat pork medium-rare because it is far juicier and more flavorful. If you don’t want to believe me (I wouldn’t, I am little more than a blowhard with a blog) keep cooking your pork to 160°. If you are seeking out pork from better pigs from more artisanal producers (breeds ironically often dependant on your consuming them for their survival) it will have some of the fat that has been bred out of industrial pork in the interest of marketability as “the other white meat.” This pork with more natural levels of fat will tolerate the higher temperature better; you can also hedge your bets by brining (especially with leaner cuts like the tenderloin).

 

In the end what is best, I find, is to presuppose the government is lazy and assumes you are stupid. Then find out what is behind their directives. Once you evaluate the actual threat and the available solutions (you can also just freeze pork for three days at -4°F as long as the pieces are smaller than 6 inches thick, probably the real reason only 12 Americans a year are affected by Trichinosis), apply this knowledge to your decisions. If you only do this by following up on this post and fact-checking my claims, then confidently cook your pork to 145° rather than either brutalizing it with heat out of fear or tradition. Worse would be striving for some random theoretical level of pinkness as our man at the Times suggests. You will at least have greatly improved quality of life when it comes to Pork.

 

Supertasters?

The New York Sun has reported that Jancis Robinson has declared and had herself medically certified a “supertaster,” only to be closely followed by Robert M. Parker Jr. Apparently Jancis has two times the taste buds of 65% of the other women on the planet. Robert, not to be left out and sadly lacking a plethora of glossopharyngeal nerves, has declared the grooves of his tongue deeper than everybody else’s. Wrong for two pretty major reasons, I think it is time we as the consumers of their products rescind their invitation to our little food-and-wine-are-fun party.

In the first case, these claims are deleterious because they say to the common tasters, those looking to these pundits for guidance, you need to be special to taste. I like to believe I have an ability to relay the experience of flavors to people well, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the bumps on my tongue or some unique ability. The truth is I taste a lot, many things, and often, and because of my love of tasting I often do so in the company of other people passionate about gustation. We then discuss our experience and through these discussions become better at describing sensations. That’s it, nothing fancy. Consuming and BS-ing, that’s how you identify aromas like raspberry, Band-Aids, pencil lead or salamander, not by being born with more taste buds than three-fifths of the rest of the world that share your gender.

In the second case, these claims are imbecilic because they show a fundamental lack of knowledge of the basic process they are claiming to be so fantastic at. I have never really studied the physiology of taste seriously, but I do read copious amounts about food and wine and as a result have learned plenty on the fundamentals of the subject. The reality is taste buds and tongue grooves serve six simple purposes in the way we perceive sensations of flavor. They sense sweet, bitter, salty, and sour, they offer a sensation of richness when met by certain protein strands, and through an interesting geometric fit with the chemical structure of capsaicinoids they tell the brain to produce endorphins everything else about taste happens in the nasal cavity. That is it. Neither of the situations these two are declaring would make you particularly good at seeking out nuance in wine, just extra sensitive to the balance of tannin, acid, alcohol, and sugar (possibly to a fault if this supposed increased sensitivity makes touches illusive to us average tasters glaring to your touchy buds). So all they are claiming is extrasensory perception of exactly the things people at the beginning of wine comprehension already know their preference for. Ask anyone if they prefer their wines sweet or dry, they will have an answer.

So why then (assuming Bob and Jancis have done at least as much wine reading as I have, and know that these claims are baloney) would they announce super genetic predispositions that, even if true, have little to do with actually tasting wine? Well, I am proud to say because of me. Me and all the other people writing blogs about the pleasures of wine without asking to be praised as geniuses, people who have never felt the need for silly acts like insuring our palates, just women and men who love wine and love interaction with other people that also do, and therefore seek it out.

In an attempt to fortify their brands against us interlopers, these two have turned their backs on the one truth all we wine lovers hold most dear: wine contributes to a quality of life and is accessible by all. So, sorry people, spend the next couple days finding places where wine is being discussed by people with no motives other than enjoying wine and join in those conversations. Once you have, turn your back on these two scared old folks, desperately grabbing at straws to save their place as know-it-alls. It’s a new generation where everyone is capable of enjoying wine to its fullest without paying for subscriptions.

Chicago dogs

I place the Chicago dog very highly and confidently at the top of the world of junk food, up there with the likes of the Philly steak, the NY slice, the LA roadside taco, and NJ’s disco fries. The basic ingredient list for a Chicago dog is a dark red Vienna Beef hotdog on a poppy seed roll with shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, celery salt, thin yellow mustard, a pickle spear, chopped onions, neon-green relish, and sport peppers. Starting with just the colors of the relish and the dog and moving into the fact that, except for the sausage, it is largely a hand-held salad, it is a truly unique food. Someone at some point took the direction “everything” to an existential level.  There are contrasting, bold, forward flavors like the smoky salty dog, and the vinegary acerbic mustard, there are aromatic notes to the celery salt and piquant notes to the little peppers, similar flavors compare in the natural sweetness of the onions and tomato next to the sugary sweetness of the ridiculous relish. All come together to make a pretty involving portable treat.

On this trip I made four stops for dogs:

When I land at Midway airport I usually find a reason to grab a dog at Gold Coast Dogs in the little food court area. Most often I am traveling to Illinois to catch up with Bestfriend and to do some destination dining so I am never sure when another opportunity will arise. Sometimes the excuse is as simple as it’s a better use of the next ten minutes than standing at the carousel waiting for my bags. In this case, I had landed at 10:15pm and figured it was the easiest way to grab a late-night snack. When I arrived and found them cleaning the steam table I thought I had missed my opportunity, but happily came to find I could still get a dog.

I ordered a steamed dog with everything and got a pretty straightforward, sadly not exactly hot, dog. At best, it was tepid which allowed it to become mostly about the flavors of the mustard and the celery salt. Not the best dog I have had, even from Gold Coast.

Watching the Mets-Cubs game from the Sheffield Rooftop afforded another dog opportunity. Because of the nature of the open spaces around Wrigley some of the adjacent buildings have taken advantage of both their vantage and proximity by building watching areas on their roofs. Included with the price of admission to the super-fourth floor perch is all you can drink (canned beer till the 7th inning stretch) and all you can eat (grilled cookout fare, and frozen pizza).

I had a grilled dog with everything. A wide-gauge dog with that kind of plasticy bite topped more with burger fixings than dog toppings. It had chopped tomato, sautéed onions, pickle chips, sauerkraut, and raw onions, with Heinz yellow mustard in packets and ended up tasting more of bitter over-cooked white vinegar than anything else. I tossed it after two bites and got a cheeseburger, which while only mediocre by cookout standards, passed as a burger (something the dog couldn’t).

I went to Wiener’s Circle for the first time after I saw Dave Attell on his Insomniac show cutting up with the rather brash counter ladies in the wee hours of the morning a couple of years ago. This time I went because Nellie insisted after reading my Italian Dog post that it was definitely worth my trying their Char Cheddar Dog because it is one of the possibly greatest dogs in the world. I of course agreed to try it, as long as she committed to sample the wurst genius to be found at the Windmill in Long Branch, NJ.

At the Weiner’s Circle I asked the (not necessarily ingratiating but nowhere near as hostile as they are at 3am) counter lady for a Char Cheddar with everything. I was served a Vienna Dog with its ends quarter-split and nicely blackened, with all the standard accoutrement plus a double pickle spear, noticeably ripe tomato slices, and a drizzle of a bright orange sharpish cheese product. Besides violating the integrity of the bun with moisture, guaranteeing you eat 30% of the dog from the paper carrier tray, the addition of cheese brought an oleaginous salty quality that played very well, adding another dimension to a dog that already sits at a good balance point of the flavors. I have no doubt had I stopped here on the way home from some of those many “too much cheap American beer from large plastic Solo cups” nights of my youth, I would with great regularity and conviction espouse the merits of this tasty bite.

The last stop of this journey was Hot Doug’s. When Chicago area magazines do surveys, Hot Doug’s often appears on the “favorite places to eat” lists of the Chicagoland chefs I respect most. On a little corner far from the city center (the 3300 north block), across from an empty field with a crew using a backhoe to dig a hole deep enough to fit an extension ladder, is a small (about a dozen four-top tables) lunch-counter kind of place somewhat haphazardly decorated with things like pictures of Brittney Spears, an 8x12 print-out of sausage-centric German phrase translations, and in large white lettering the slogan that “the two nicest words in the English language are encased meats.” There are two menus at Hot Doug’s: one, about ten square feet painted in yellow and red on the wall, offers about a dozen options; the other, a chalkboard about a foot-and-a-half square written in all the colors of an eight-pack of chalk, offers about 8 selections. The larger menu has pretty standard options ranging from “The Dog,” a run of the mill Chicago dog, to “The Ace Patrick,” an immersion-fried corn dog. The shorter list has gourmet sausages as varied as Thai or crawfish and chorizo. All dogs are offered steamed, charred, fried, or fried and charred. On Friday and Saturday they also offer duck fat fries (this couldn’t go unmentioned).

I got The Dog, charred, with everything. Leaning more to brown than red, the link at the center was all the things a dog should be, smoky, spicy, and salty, with a snap to the casing and a juicy stuffing with a resilient chew. If there is an aspect you want to play the center of the mélange of components in a Chicago-style hot dog it is the dog, and this one does so well.

The best part of Chicago dogs is they are all over the place and are made by many people. There is no one dominant place franchising stands all over town. Without straying far from Bestfriend’s apartment, I think I could try 50 made in 50 ways by 50 people, so setting a favorite would just limit opportunities. That being said, although I probably enjoyed Doug’s most this trip, he does himself a disservice in the “best” category, because when I return I will be busy trying his other sausages; they look very interesting. When I want a prototypical, this is what I think of when I crave a Chicago dog, dog I will be heading back to Wiener’s Circle, probably for a Char Cheddar with everything, extra sport peppers (it seems to make sense with the cheese).

In response to Keith

I've noticed that you tend to hit different vendors in the greenmarket for different items, this one for tomatoes that one for meat etc… Besides the obvious that the guys with meat usually don't sell vegetables how do you know which farmer has the best tomatoes or mushrooms vs. the 5 or 10 others who sell similar items or which butcher to buy your steak or bacon from?

I don’t play favorites. I believe the tendency toward routine breeds apathy. Just like with restaurants, I do my best to immediately try the new guy, compare him to the existing guys, and categorize him compared to the competition. In my experience, people settle once they are established so sometimes the new guy has a welcome refreshing, enthusiastic approach, and sometimes he just gets it wrong, meaning sometimes the old standbys rest easy and sometimes they are rocked and left behind.

There are some guys with obvious specialties – Tim Stark for tomatoes, Keith Stewart for garlic, and so on. But I have a theory that since the chefs of NYC use these guys the best stuff goes to them, and we may find better by turning our back on fame. That being said, when I planned an heirloom tomato salad for the first course at my wedding I introduced a Jersey caterer to Tim so I would know I had the best (or very close to it) on the table, and no fall goes by without Keith’s garlic in our house.

So where does that leave us? We are left milling about the market touching produce; make a habit of touching produce and you will know all you need to know about who has the best what. The best indicator of freshness and ripeness for most all fruits and vegetables is water. Water will tell you all. Pick up the worst tomato at the Greenmarket and the best at Whole Foods, and for the same size the one at the market will be far heavier. Heavier because picked ripe it is juicier, and shorter travel means less time for that moisture to evaporate.

Sure, tomatoes (my whole reason for supporting a Greenmarket system in general, if there is a bigger disparity in the food world than that between the glory of farm stand/home grown tomatoes and the patheticness of every other version (be it organic or not) I have not come across it my general searching) are an easy one to pick. If the fruit is heavy, the skin is tight, the flesh is resilient when you press it with the pad of your thumb, and if the stem pulls or twists away pretty easily, you have a good candidate for purchasing. So now just walk around, see who has the best price and meets these requirements.

For other fruit I will simply say traditional farming breeds much more unique-looking specimens than the industrial monoculture people for some reason call conventional today. I find it reassuring to embrace odd-shaped fruit – the tomato that looks like it grew around a rock or the apple that looks like 1/8 of it was not exposed to the sun and as a result is shorter. When I find parts where animals have been at them I like to take a glass half full approach: cut the parts out, and be thankful that something else found my food appealing enough to eat.

For lettuces, corn, herbs and the like, look at the cut end. Is it moist? If so, it has recently been cut (soon after cutting the moisture will retract into the heart of the vegetable, and no spraying with water will fake this). Then break it. Great produce is so full of moisture even lettuce leaves will snap at the rib rather than bend. Don’t be afraid to tear a leaf from a head of lettuce and taste it, if they don’t have some out for tasting. Just do it because you want to buy, not eat.

Nothing is sillier than habits like peeling back the husk on corn. Unless you hit the exact quadrant that happens to have a worm, you won’t have learned that, so now all you’ve done is make sure there is corn inside, and since the habit for shopping means you must observe at least two ears, the farmer is left with one that has been passed on by someone who knows so little about quality that they thought they could learn something in this manner in the first place.

As far as Union Square goes, there is also the benefit of competition/knowledge of consumer to help cover your bases. Some serious chefs, as well as some people that seriously care about land stewardship, shop at that market, so if a stand isn’t good, it won’t last there. But get there early, for some reason these attentive choosers are also early risers.

So now that we know what to look for and that even if we miss the best possible offering we are pretty safe, what else can we do? Talk to the farmers, talk to each egg person, I once bought a dozen eggs because a little girl helping her parents told me the names of the chickens that laid them. I am sure it was just fun and tales being told, but I like to encourage closeness, with my farmers and by a strange urban extension my food.

I can’t stress price enough. Being at a farmers market is not a license to steal. Food should be fairly priced, and when asked any small farmer will give you a story that in the long run has him about ten thousand dollars a year in the red once he pays his organic dues. Look around the market, see what people are charging for ramps, and buy from the guy with cheaper ones. But know Organic certification does cost more, and promises more at this point.

Which of the neighborhood wine shops do you recommend? I like astor for the huge selection and great prices for everyday bottles but cant pass up stopping in Union Square Wines for those new tasting machines on my way home from work.

Wine is fun; I often wander into wine stores, ask a guy to recommend some juice, get him to tell me all he can about it, take it home and drink it. It is great if I love it. If I don’t, I must consider if it is what he said it would be, and if it is I am still positive on the shop and will just steer things better to my preference next time I’m in. In this way, I find I get the most exposure to what’s going on in the wine world.

Once I have taken someone’s suggestion and decided if they are operating at a good level of information (the web and Oxford Guide to Wine are good tools), taste, and unique approach (a test both Astor and USQ pass), I look at price. In today’s age this is as easy as putting the name and vintage into winezap.com or winesearcher.com and seeing how they stack up (Union Square only beats Sokolin and Park Ave in this game, their prices are pretty lousy, cool kegerator or not).

I am quickly becoming a fan of Bottlerocket, west of Fifth Avenue on 19th Street. They have a unique approach, an intimate feel, a good selection, they seem to see the value in developing regulars, and are always in the fair range when I double-check them on price, plus who doesn’t love a wine shop with a bottle of Ripple at the register?

So I guess in most choices I am happy to pay up for quality, authenticity and uniqueness, but only to a fair price, and the way to know where this is to be found is to spend your afternoons meeting purveyors and sampling their wares. Often when I do it leaves me with a very good feeling of appreciation for my neighborhood, and that is always nice.

I hope you find this helpful, never forget Lucy’s Greenmarket Report, an effort all of us in the vicinity of The USQ Green Market should be grateful for.

Cerdo Ibérico in America

“I’m invited to a tasting/launch of some of the first offerings of the world’s greatest pigs served in America, appearing only now for the first time because of years of stupid policy by the FDA? Count me in!” is what I said. To be fair, it was presented as, “Through cooperation with the USDA, one of the oldest and most respected purveyors of Cerdo Ibérico (those famous black footed Iberian pigs) will be bringing the beautiful products of Embutidos Fermin to America in association with José Andres. Come sample the first release of their charcuterie.”

So here’s what all that means. For some reason recently in American history our government saw fit to protect us from eating products made from these pigs just as they did with the pork of Parma, Italy, because thousands of years of people eating them without incident still wasn’t a good enough guarantee for us plus the fact that their diet leaves them second to only to olive oil for oleic acid. We far prefer it when our meat is so sloppily butchered it needs to be sprayed with a boiling bleach solution and then irradiated to remove any doubt that all the things our industrial processing screwed up in its haste,have been removed with the flavor and the beneficial oils (long ago thrown out on the factory farms). No way could we trust artisanal producers making food that cultures have thrived on for years. Better to destroy individuality and taste… but there I go again, ranting about the least common denominator approach to safety our government supports when my intention here is to bring good news.

So take 2….Action….So here’s what all that means. After years of work and some foreign companies jumping through our bureaucratic hoops, some people (José Andrés, and the Martin Family of Embutidos Fermin, in this case) have gained the right to bring products made of the black footed pigs of Spain (considered by many, yours truly included, to make the best charcuterie in the world) to us.

At the event we tasted three types:

Lomo: made from the loin, this is kind of the show-off piece for people that cure pig meat. Inherently the loin is a very lean cut, and since fat is what covers up the mistakes in cured meats a great luomo is sweet and soft, while a bad one is jerky. The flesh of these loins is so red it seems paprika must have been involved at some point along the way even though it probably wasn’t.

Chorizo: the famous paprika sausage of Spain (this one needs no cooking, not to be confused with Mexican Chorizo, which is raw) it is wider in gauge and therefore more moist than the chorizos I have had before in America, pointing out the way the fat studding it translates the piquantness of the cure.

Salichon:  a pretty straightforward sausage. Moist and meaty, about half fat and half meat with detectable salt, pepper, sugar, and an herbal note I couldn’t place, with a greenish, nutty finish.

These were good examples of what you make from the other parts of a pig, those excluding the legs and shoulders. As tasty as these sausages are, though, they are not the hams of the pata negra (the black footed pigs). Clearly the work of an artisan and representational of a skill rather than a place, sausages are not what America has been missing, it is the hams. For the months leading up to slaughter, these Spanish pigs feast on acorns fallen from trees and double in weight, and the hams made from their legs are probably one of the most beautiful representations of a place and the flavor of savory there is. They also take a long time to cure, averaging around two and a half years.

In addition to the diet of acorns, another contributing factor to their flavor is the fact that the Iberian hams are cured on the bone with the foot attached. This affects the taste in two ways. First, by not cutting the ligaments at the ankle the meat stays taught and thinner during the cure, affecting the amount of water evaporating. Second, the meat cannot be cut on a machine which is of the most importance – rotating blades cause friction which causes heat and heat changes the flavor profile of the product, so perfection in any cured ham is thin, hand-cut slices from the leg. [Note: some day I’ll discuss Berkel slicers.]

Since the ok to import the Iberian products happened recently, these faster-curing sausages are here now. But for the be all end all in cured pork, we will still need to wait until spring/summer ’07 as the hams complete their cycle.

To illustrate this, our hosts brought in the “greatest ham guy in Spain” to slice a Serrano ham, not from the Cerdo Ibérico. Quite a show: a tawny gentleman with white hair set about using a fantastic collection of specialized knives (including one of the longest, thinnest, most flexible, slicing knives I have ever seen) to remove the protective fat and then began producing slices of cranberry red flesh so good I went back about four times, and this wasn’t even the ham made from the black footed pigs.

Besides these samples and the promise to regroup when the actual pata negra hams are ready, there were a collection of Spanish cheeses, Marcona almonds, tiny green olives, a very refreshing cocktail made of sherry, lemonade, and a float of Sprite, and a collection of local chefs, mostly those interested in new Spanish cuisine (like Wylie Dufresne and Wesley Genovart) and authentic product (like Zach Allen and Peter Hoffman).

The journey of a thousand miles starts with the single step. Getting these sausages indicates the promise of the hams, and the hams would seem to say to an optimist that there is hope that our food choices will not always be dictated by bureaucrats with poli- sci degrees and judges with law degrees, but rather by consumers with desires to have the best available product and producers with instincts to earn the money those people will pay. Maybe soon I’ll have raw milk from grass-fed cows at the Greenmarket. Till then, I’ll dream and appreciate being invited to cocktail parties as fun as this.