Past and Present Pattern

Passover is approaching. I was at Landau's this week, a fairly large Jewish grocery store in Boro Park, Brooklyn, where it was Pesach-Madness everywhere you looked. The entire store has been thoroughly reorganized for the onslaught of good business that the holiday necessitates. The endcaps are stocked for the season, with latex and powder-free rubber gloves, intricately braided candles, pre-packaged tiny packets of breadcrumbs, and clear signage for what is Kosher For Passover. The cleaning product aisle is impressive, since families will be performing a full-tilt spring cleaning. I bought some Chrayonnaise dip, a puree of beets, horseradish, vinegar, spices and mayo. There are lots of beets-with-horseradish and horseradish-with-beets situations, but I hadn't seen this smooth electric version. I also picked a soft and graphic marbled rye from the rapidly declining bread corner. There was an enormous mound of gnarly fresh horseradish, and I can only imagine the vapors it will release in its processing before reaching the Seder tables..a powerful scent drifting in the spring air.

Have You Been To Brighton Beach?

These are huge sheet cakes from a grocery store in the Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach, just a ways down from Coney Island, in Brooklyn. The one on the right is covered in poppy seeds and golden raisins. I had a cold red borscht at Gina's which was perfect with beets, dill, and a crunch of cucumber.

Pickled watermelon.

Pastries were for sale all around the store. There were savory ones by the hot bar of Stroganoff and cabbage, cherry turnovers by the salads, and enormous slabs of cake and piles of cookies that filled a case as long as my apartment.

The actual beach.

The Tapestry Dinner

Here are some pictures from the Tapestry Dinner, a supperclub-style evening I worked on with a crew of talented peeps in a wonderful loft in Brooklyn. Above is the salad course: watermelon, avocado, mango and cucumber with pea shoots and a spicy dressing. Below is the main: orange marinated grilled steak and cous cous.

Prep and plating was spacious and efficient atop the temporarily converted pool table.











Tea macerated oranges with pistachio creme anglaise and pistachio tuille. This was the best part! Well, and there was dancing...

Brooklyn April 2009

Fat Mardi From Brooklyn

Oh my, are those the sweet lumps of a bead-hungry parade-goer? No, they are Paczki (PUNCH-key), the plump Polish donuts that will magically turn you into one if you eat too many of them. They are eaten year round but are scarfed up especially on Fat Tuesday as the decadent parcels they are before the days of Lent. They are filled with jam, and the ones seen here are filled with cherry and plum (the real stuff, not a matte-finish polymer goo).

I researched king cakes again this year, an oval braided ring-shaped cake with garishly bright decorations in the Mardi Gras colors green, gold, and purple. I am interested in the community spirit of it. King cakes are shared in groups like most cakes and there is a trinket hidden in its crumb, usually a baby (representing the baby Jesus). Whoever gets this piece assumes responsibility for the next gathering and cake. It used to be that the trinkets were baked-in porcelain figures or penny-dolls, but these days liability requires most to have a plastic baby inserted after baking. I would love to see some of those old ceramic ones.

Perhaps there are king cakes to be had somewhere in New York, but there are definitly paczki. I found these at the tiny Polish bakery Rzeszowska on Manhattan Ave. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Watch out for these hard sugar figurine-weapons that are starting to be prominently displayed. Come Easter, they can be unwrapped and flung to inflict pointy, adorable springtime traditionalism.

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).

A Side of Brooklyn