DAY 17 – DESTIN FOODS

DAY 16 – MISO SECRETS

DAY 14 – VANESSA DUMPLINGS

DAY 12 – THAI DUMPSTER DIVING

DAY 11 – Once upon a time in Brooklyn…

DAY 8 – COOKING BOOKS

DAY 7 – LOBSTER DINNER

 

a curious way of keeping fish at a fishmonger's in Harlem

Visions of lobsters have been haunting me since my visit to Flushing, the New Chinatown aka lobster paradise. Much better, fresher and cheaper than what I saw in Soho or at the fishmonger on 8^th Ave between 33^rd and 32^nd, not so far from where I stay. In Europe lobsters are a bit of an expensive item but here they cost as much as a couple of sandwiches from a deli.

This is why tonight we are dining on lobster: raw lobster to be more accurate. Sara, Sabina, Pieri and I. I make it clear to them all that it is going to come unadulterated, sliced on a bed of tasty leaves and the brain and eggs poured into a Martini glass. My plan meets partial opposition and so one of the beasts gets a grilling. But in the end, no one can resist the velvety texture of the raw tails and their sweet, aromatic flavor. Even the greenish and pink brain matter everybody kept at a distance ends up receiving a lot of praise. In general, the head of crustacean is by far the best part. Sadly most people leave it behind. More sadly still, the use of frozen specimen by most restaurants justifies the practice. Heads are delicate and it is easy to spoil their flavor. This is why the head and eggs of a living lobster should not be missed or, worse still, spoiled by careless or excessive cooking.

If close my eyes I can see chefs murdering the possibility of exquisite flavors by smothering lobster in preparations that use high-heat to turn the flesh into a dry, stringy affair or by serving it cold, surrounded by mayonnaise. Pure barbarism. Lobster tastes and feels like a lychee of the sea. And I bet that brain and eggs are the most aphrodisiac bits.

We finish the evening off with a trip to the “Top of the Tower” bar at Beekman Hotel, on 1st Ave and 49th st, just a stone’s throw from the UN. It is an old-school bar, but few expensive cocktails and 360th degree views over the city.

DAY 5 – GLORIOUS DOUBLE BILL

Today we set off on an exploration of traditional Jewish joints. We start off at “Russ & Daughters”, a deli packed with cured fish, pickles, bagels, tubs of cream cheese and lots, I mean lots, of caviar boxes. Such lively deli are hard to come by in Europe, it’s Nothern European Jewish food, ranging from Poland to Lithuania. And the wooden casks filled with pickled cucumbers are there to prove that traditions keep alive and trendy this side of the ocean.

Of course there is a very old school tendency for food in cans and boxes (read: non-fresh) and some of what used to rare treats 30 years ago (Amaretti biscuit) may not be considered so rare today. Still the Finnish rye crackers packed in beautiful bright blue and sand-brown stacks are a surprise.

The second Jewish stop is Yonah Schimmel knishery. Before today, I had no clue what a knish was all about. The joint has a dusty, post 40s, rundown look about it. The Yonah in question is a huge man that looks as if he has emerged from a Fellini movie. Knishes are potato-filled pastries. They can be spiced up with sour red cabbage, broccoli or mushrooms. It is definitely an old-style dish that turns potatoes into something a bit more grand. My grandmother used to make something surprisingly similar to a knish but shaped as a round pie and using no pastry. I have no scales to judge Schimmel’s work. People comments on public forums vary from open insults to rapturous praise. All I can say is that he ships frozen specimens abroad and the badly lit walls show pics of famous people like Woody Allen eating at his shop. However, I also heard the sound of a microwave bell preceding the arrival of our plate…

Here she is, pretending to be there by chance, right in front of the Lower East Side parking lot that is housing NY’s Pickle Festival on a Sunday afternoon. Sabina is my travel companion and the other I refer to in these NY food diaries.

The Lower East Side is a traditional Jewish area. It used to be the home of dozens pickle shops but then rents went up and gentrification pushed the briny stuff out. Still once a year the New York International Pickle Day attracts hundreds of people who queue up to try kimchi and sauerkraut from Korean grandmothers, hippies and local farmers. Not all of the stuff is a fermented as it should be and I notice a semantic blur over the strategic impact of pasteurization. Korean kimchi seems to be more about loads of chili powder than about the glorious varities of preserved vegetables and roots that are to be found in that distant country. Still I come across some nice lactofermented roots and leaves from an organic farm that taste like the real thing.

Our trip is far from over. We head off to Coney Island, following Sabina’s suggestion and then follow the line to Little Odessa. Coney Island has the charm of an old-fashion decor, rusting at the edges and full of naive “dreamerie”. Here the magic of food is about the magic of fading hand-painted signs and curvy neon letterings. And as the sun dies off the advertising boards and the first lamps begin to glow, customers grab their last change to grab a multicolor lollypop or airy popcorn bag.

By the time we get to Little Odessa it is really dark. On the train we spot a young gagster with rough hands and smart clothes, a type that would fit in a movie about local crime. Off the last stop, 90% of shops have signs in Russian. We step into a large supermarket that sells dozens of ready foods, from pickled watermelon and green tomatoes to blinis filled with cherries or with moushrooms and sour cream. Given that a Russian restaurant is never an exceedingly jolly or inexpensive experience, the take-away restaurant perfectly fits our bill. We stock up on ferments, pancakes, stews and traditional Solyanka fish soup. I hesitate briefly over a tin of salmon roe, in what would have been a nostalgic tribute to my first Moscow trip but decide to stay simple and go for Russian style marshmallow sticks. Outside the supermarket a chilly wind is blowing, warning us that our plan for a wild picnic will probably feel rather Baltic. We secure a space on a bench, inside a condo with adjoining garden and proceed to a scientific tasting of each purchased item.

DAY 4 – ORIENTAL PLEASURES

You need to take the number 7 train, all the way to Queens and beyond, past crowded urban areas and industrial yards, beyond a huge park and the baseball stadium. At Flushing, the last stop on the line, is where a new wave of Chinese people have come to live. The place is neater than Soho, the streets wider and the merchandise exposed in the shops clearly fresher. The first supermarket I step into has vats full of crawling lobsters, in different sizes. On the floor there are boxes of live turtles and giant toads. And stacks of cabbages, bunches of longan fruit, ginger, pak choi. My thoughts go back to Shenzhen and Hong Kong – a carp jumping out of a basin on to the street and the green beatles crawling in the water: food as marvellous, living matter and eating as a celebration of life’s flavours.

The pork belly I had in Soho a couple of days ago is a pale copy of the fragrant, crusty, juice pieces that hang from every other window out here in Flushing. The only disappointing feature of Chinese cuisine are desserts, mostly bland sponge cakes or sandy cream tarts. The only spectacular item being a flaky round pastry filled with a thick custard and a piece of fermented black egg. God bless them! How do they do it?

Getting along with Chinese moors is no easy ride and we learn that buying a bunch of longans while refusing to take the plastic bag that comes with them (on ecological gorunds) may turn us into potential thieves as soon as we leave the shop and cross the attentive eye of the guy who is tieing the bunches together. He quickly turns into a screaming fury, despite our attempts to prove that we would not have dared to pass him by, had we had something to hide. Is he really thinking that we would be nonchalantly steal one of him bunches or is he shouting at us because we cannot fathom the grounds of his excessive rage? We’ll never find out, but merely return to the cashier and grab the wholy plastic bag of truth and peace…

On the way back from Flushing, we got off close to Jackson’s Hieghts, a mixed neighborhood of Mexican, Colombian, Indian and Chinese. The rain forces us to cut our exporation short but luckily we are close to what some friends consider the best thai restaurant in town, Sripraphai (64-13 39^th Ave. Indeed the place has an attractive trendy look (which normally I would not go for) and it is packed with people. A quick look at the menu already indicates that this is a place worth trying. First of all, the food is described in unsparing detail and it is not re-organised to fit the Western meal plan. You have soups, then stews, stir-fries, vegetables, rice in non-individual portions, ready to be combined at will for a large table of friends. Only at end, one finds a dozen classical thai dishes people would be familiar with from more touristy place because they mix coconut milk, curry and lime leaves with rice and veg. Back to the thai menu, there are a few things hardcore thinks that Im really happy to see, like a soup of beef knuckle with pork stomach and crispy pork skin. The soup in question is described as a “sour” soup, which points to a mix of tamarind and fish sauce. The real bonus are desserts, normally a sub-species of Oriental cuisine: here they confidently propose pancakes that mix fruit with dry meat or beans. It is refreshing to encounter a restaurant that manages to bring across to the US such a rich picture of thai cuisine and to execute it in such a delightful way. As there are only two of us, we cannot go for large orders like a whole steamed or fried fish, but Im sure I will be back soon for more.

 

DAY 3 – NEW YORK STAPLES

Do you get the bagel craze? The stuff is gummy. Even when you warm it up, it stays a bit gummy.

When I got off the plane at JFK airport, it was the cheapest thing on the menu at the cafe’ at the arrival lounge. So I got one. An onion bagel, with bits of fried onions stuck on top of it. Digesting it took several hours because of the onions. I can’t even think what possessed to eat something that was probably fried in car oil or shoe polish…

Anyway, I was supposed to watch a movie at the Lincoln Centre tonight and the area is not exactly a haven of Eastern delights. NY is full of “Delis”. I must have walked past thirty or so, on my way here from 33^rd St. But somehow they don’t tempt me. The one across the street from the cinema is a cross between a deli and a luncheonette. It sells sandwiches and wraps and a few warm things and you can sit inside. I ask for a bagel. And that is already a mistake. It’s gives me away as a bloody foreigner. Nowone asks for “a bagel”. You have to say which bagel you want. Because there are many different ones. The guy at the counter is getting increasingly more nervous by every second of hesitation I display. So I look over his shoulder and say “a black bagel”. Second BIG MISTAKE. What the hell is a black bagel? A black bagel? No, there are no black bagels, they are actually called “pimpernickel” bagels. Honestly, “rye bagel” wasn’t enough, the baroque version that gets one’s tongue tied up in knots had to be the favorite one. I only have some courage left to ask for cream cheese and then leave quickly with the warm package in my hand.

To my delight, I discover that the cheese actually came with a few nice bits of smoked salmon and that the rye, molasses-additioned bagel, tastes wonderful, crunch-creamy-salty-sweet. Truly American.