Prize of the Plaza

New Mexico July Part 2

The Original. This is the classic Frito Pie from the Five & Dime (formerly Woolworth's) on the plaza in downtown Santa Fe. Served in the bag, eaten with a spork, it is a hot aromatic nest of Fritos ladled with red chile, pinto beans, ground beef and cheese. I also like the optional diced raw onion on top. (A great-but-different version is served at the Atomic. Compare and contrast by clicking here). For me the ritual is completed by eating the Pie on a bench in the plaza with a Dr. Pepper, scarfing the spicy dripping crunchiness until I am glowing and red chile stains the corners of my mouth like a toddler after SpaghettiOs.

When Woolworth's began closing its stores in 1997, the residents of Santa Fe were so unhappily fired up about it that developers and an owner of the building protected a third of the store and essentially made it into a shrine to the former general store and lunch counter. They sold off a bunch of the old stuff including the lunch counter waitress uniform dresses. I got one and it ended up making a great "Ghost-of-Woolworth's" costume for Halloween. They added more postcards and tchochkas and kept the employees and Frito Pies. They also have good and very hot green chile stew (with beef).



On the plaza itself is a food cart, Roque's Carnitas. Roque is a fast talking character, and of course I love the food more because of him. He sells tamales and chicken or beef carnitas. He grills the meat with onions and green chiles and then puts it in a thick flour tortilla with salsa. His salsa is heavy with large pieces of tomato and is mostly liquid. I have never been able to really eat one with grace. I do manage to pay attention to the earthy, charred ingredients with bright, spicy slurping. They are satisfying because they are simple and good, and they taste like all the other carnitas he has ever made, the developed layers of everything that's been on that grill before.

Home for Chile Flowers

New Mexico July Part 1

Along an arroyo that runs through Santa Fe, New Mexico is chef Katherine Kagel's organic purple amaranth plant. All the plants in her home garden are organic, provided by Seeds of Change, a company that sells and promotes organic seeds and foods. Her restaurant, Cafe Pasqual's serves 98 percent organic food and wine. This afternoon I follow her from garden to kitchen to table, where eight people are fed a beautiful fresh summer dinner.

KK snips bok choy and yellow chard.



And bok choy comes in twins!

Check out this fabuloso recession special: greens from the July garden, garlic, pecans, feta and lemon served forth in a beautiful micaceous platter. Add some grains underneath and some tequila above and weather the stormclouds to come.

Sunday in Southern Manhattan

It was an eventful weekend (as in, the weekend was full of large organized events with websites). There was the Fancy Food Show at the Javits and the Unfancy Food Show in Brooklyn. There was the opening of Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls, (see one in the photo above) and there was the New Amsterdam Market, held outside of the Old Fulton Fish Market by the Brooklyn Bridge. (To see what goes on at the new one, click here).

I loved looking at all the bread, but especially these stenciled and slashed ones from B.R. Guest.

This is a luminous sample of fancy-tasting pomegranate chardonnay jelly from long island.

The market has occurred twice before, with the goal of becoming a permanent fixture for local producers. As it stands now, it is reminiscent of the Greenmarket but more like an expo with booths and samples and information, with a limited amount of products for purchase.

Also on display were foraged wild foods (loosely and quickly packaged), cheese from farms and companies like Saxelby Cheesemonger, honey, bread, a pizza maker, magazines and pickle producers. There were two ice cream flavors from the excellent Marlow & Sons: Cherry Chip and Anise Hyssop, both were intelligent and dreamy.

Even with the lovely samples of pink peppercorn goat cheese and beet soup, a more satisfying lunch was still necessary, as was escaping another dramatic thunderstorm. Luckily the special occasion Market was located very close to the old standby Joe's Shanghai, where soup dumplings were cheap and sublime, like always.

Orzo or Orzo

I am fascinated with the shapes of pasta right now. I have thought plenty of times (oh, texture-focused child that I was) about tortellini, and how to eat each piece by methodically maneuvering it around in my mouth so that the pinched together arms were directed towards my throat, and the folded over seam holding in the filling was placed exactly over my lower front teeth. This was the best way possible for a small mouth to experience the pleasantly ergonomic dissection of the storebought tortellini.

Imagine the tired parents who are just trying to get the kid to finish her dinner and not be distracted by it. Oh well! The way of a savoring life!

I also loved the feeling of eating Kraft macaroni and cheese, partly because we didn't have it at my house. The other reason was the liquid orange sauce, surrounding and dispensed by delicate inch long lengths of pasta and was mild and swimming with a lightness of being.

For me, spaghetti, fettuccine, and angel hair are perfect on occasion, especially at restaurants when I am spontaneously charmed by something I wouldn't probably make at home. The current intrigue lies in bite sized sculptural forms, and finding and imagining the qualities of the shapes, and the best usage. I have been frequenting an Italian market which has a huge selection of excellent pasta, in usual and unusual forms. I like Orecciette (shaped like "ears" or little bowls), and some wavy almost free-form ones. I have yet to try the tennis racket shaped ones although those tiny cross-hatches look appealing. Mouthfeel can be entertaining, or just contribute an interesting sensory aspect to food. Each shape delivers sauces and other ingredients to your tongue in different ways.

One night I used orzo, a pasta often used in soups. It is shaped like rice but larger and flatter. I used it in two unsoup related ways, just because.



orzo
sauteed red onions in olive oil with Indian spices (black pepper, cumin, corriander, cinnamon, chili, turmeric, and additional garam masala mixtures.)
fresh thin sliced scallions
fleur de sel
zest of a lime
a drizzle of honey

This one is best hot. It turned out with a good balance of spicy, salty and sweet.



orzo
red onion
scallion
tuna fish
kalamata olives
tomatoes, 10 cherry tomatoes
feta, crumbled
basil, chopped

I like this one cold. It is fresh and each bite offers a different combination of flavors.

All-American Summer Camp

I did not grow up in a family of campers. I am a camping novice, but completely sold on this activity that requires constant attention towards the fire and the next meal and can be communal or solitary and filled with freedom.

A stick of butter with the impression of corn.

I have a feeling these sample cones acquired a muted palette after sitting out in the sun and a few thunderstorms.

Man, it was so pastoral and pretty it was like being in the label of some Hidden Valley Ranch dressing. For expanded discussion of this imagery in American food culture, read up in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

Ew. Here was one option I spotted at a local grocery. Click on the picture to check out the ingredients and the disturbing hot pink color. There is a red seal on it that says "Inspected for Wholesomeness by the U.S. Department of Agriculture". The Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer suggests that boosting productivity at home and abroad is a solution to rising food costs. Apparently things are pretty simple for the Department and the Secretary.

And yes, we went with these, and they were delicious.

Pig Roast 2008

These are the highlights from the 2008 Pig Roast. This particular 24+ hour backyard barbecue occurred in southeastern industrial Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The subject was an eighty-three pound Heritage Tamworth Pig (raised and butchered locally), which I assume means not closer than Queens, but I didn't ask. Money was raised for America's Second Harvest. There were additional ribs cooked inside it. and onions. There were sauces, baby banh mi sandwiches, black eyed peas, collards, iceberg salad (with bacon in it) pulled pork two ways, ribs and more ribs, cornbread, beans, succotash, etc.

Moose Mike (Pig Roast Honcho) is a believer in pure and real ingredients, and lots of them. These are either in action or in your belly, and hopefully you can still remember where you live when its over. (Overwhelm factors can run high at his affairs).

Love Badge

Pecans and Ambrosia

This week my grandmother Elizabeth celebrated her ninety-sixth birthday. She is a tiny bird, and though she was never the cook of the family I recall some influential food situations that surely shape the genepool. She is a Texan, and always had a major interest in plants and flowers and trees, like the pecan tree. My dad also has a deep respect and love for plants and trees of the region and pecan trees and nuts in general seem to be in the the family taste. Every Christmas without fail my grandmother cracks and packages pecans (we say pe-CAHN) in Tupperware (nothing cutesy) and mails them, and my dad makes pecan pie. I think the family members like pecans, but I am pretty sure that honoring the tree and distributing its fruit is taken as seriously as any praline.

I don't remember too much candy available at my grandparents house, but there were always jordan almonds around. I always thought these seemed promising but their hard, chalky, not-very-sweet breakup would disappoint every time. It is possible that the jar of opaque pastel almonds was present for the aesthetic quality. After all, they were placed on the countertop where my grandfather arranged sliced fruit in a geometric mosaic on top of their cereal every morning.

At holidays and family reunions, Kaypah would make ambrosia. She made it in a large stemmed cake glass, mostly while seated. It involved layer after layer of colors and shapes and I remember I loved how it looked but hated the metallic-y taste of the canned mandarin oranges and the dry coconut dyed pink from the maraschino cherries. My dad instructed me to choke it down, and pointed out that no one liked it but we all had to eat it.

Driving to see the folks we would stop in Czech towns to pick up kolaches for them, a pastry with cheese or fruit like apricot or prune. We would also stop to get Elgin sausages and barbecue. My grandmother can certainly eat barbecue, which seems pretty bad-ass to me.

At her ninetieth birthday party, I remember we had a selection of appetizers including warm brie with almonds on it. For her entree she ordered the warm brie. There was some fussing about this from her offspring, but after all the 80 pound woman was ninety and she could do whatever she wanted. She had a pink napoleon for desert and a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream. I am floored by my grandmother's longevity, which I am convinced is a product of her stubbornness. The secret couldn't possibly be the Velveeta "cheese puddle" or the Coca-Cola she drinks every day with a mouthful of original teeth.

Though she might not taste much these days or hear, or see, I salute all the faculties of my complicated Kaypah with love.

Ruby Wednesday

Satiny fiber optic stalks of rhubarb are here, and I am going to figure out what they really taste like. Back in the day, I only knew rhubarb as a word that went between "strawberry" and "pie", and I can only remember the strawberries. So rhubarb and I have a midweek date.

I just got all this fresh corn, basil, rhubarb, and yellow and red tomatoes, and I am SO happy that it is spring. I made a pasta salad with eleven ingredients. I also want to point out that this spring has been taking its time and actually acting like spring, instead of switching suddenly from winter to august.

I cut up the 'barb and made half of it into a beautiful pink simple syrup for cocktails and lemonade, and I'll make the other half into a compote tomorrow. (Just less water). Maybe I'll even do some with hardly any sugar, for application in some savory endeavor. The goal here is to teach myself the flavor of rhubarb itself (in the edible cooked form and without the poisonous leaves).

I made a cocktail with rhubarb simple syrup, soda, ice and Hendrick's Gin. It was sweet and tart and floral and interesting. Rhubarb looks like a structured straw of green tinted water coursing through a red taffeta-paper slip. It tastes like fruit, like the definition of fruit. What meets the mouth is juicy, tart, sweet and subtle, able to color syrup a bold pink, or dissolve into a soft, bashful pulp.

Still Hot

Hey, I couldn't resist...

A Cherry Clafouti I made. This was a thrilling little thing to make; sort of a puffy baked pancake with an eggy outlook and cherries that stay fresh tasting. (As opposed to that sickly strange thing I think they often do in cherry pie).