From Truffles to Popcorn

Per Se was life changing. Zagat got it right with the exclamation that it is “in a class all its own.” Ouest was a great post-Per Se meal—easing my transition back into the real world of food with a crispy piece of sturgeon over mushroom and edamame risotto followed by a tangy orange cheesecake. Delicious. Nothing will ever compare to the fifteen course mind-blowing, five hour extravaganza, complete with kitchen tour, several bottles of wine, and delicacies ranging from caviar to lobster to butter soaked morels—but Ouest at least cushioned my palate from what awaited back at school (namely, Ollie’s). There, my friends, for the sake of brevity and moving on to current events, was a summary of what may have been the two most culinary orgasmic days of my life.

Fast forward: My job. Mission: Figure out some semblance of self-control so that the constant flow of recipe testing, popcorn tastings, and brownie contests does not cause immediate and premature heart attack. Working at a food magazine is, in fact, everything I dreamed it could be in terms of the serious level of taste bud overload. A recap of my last two days on the job will give you a clear picture:
* Wednesday: Eat my yogurt and granola bar when I first wake up, so that I can last until 12, which is the approximate time that the first recipe wafts alluringly out of the kitchen. On cue, a buttery tagliatelle pasta with flank steak appears, followed by the pumpkin and cream cheese frosting cookie cake whoopee pies (being tested for the second time this week, so obviously I had to taste for the difference). An asparagus salad with onions and orange slices appears, not as a test, merely as an afternoon snack for those of us lucky enough (or crafty enough) to find themselves “conveniently” chopping something in the kitchen. Soon after, the interns embark on a mission to pick up lamb gyros in Queens, from the vendor who won the “Vendy Award” in 2006. I try one while I am there, for the sake of research—it is, indeed, heaven in a gyro. We deliver the gyros to the test kitchen where they will taste and prod the poor lamb (or mystery meat as I heard them unfortunately claim) until they figure out exactly what spices make it so damn good. After picking up a few last groceries for the kitchen, the clock is fast approaching 6 and I hurry to call and get a product sent in for a photo shoot on Friday. Eventually, I head off to dance, musing about the delicious day I just had.
* Today: Again, for the sake of brevity—I have just one thing to say: Popcorn taste test day. Thirty different popcorns. Several appalling flavors. Nausea. My whole day was spent preparing for this (“No I can’t order that for lunch! It’s popcorn day! Have to save up!). At the moment, all I am left with is a severe I Can’t Believe its Not Butter hangover and a desire to never touch a kernel of popped corn ever again. Such are the pitfalls of life at a food magazine.

To list, or not to list...

So, it has been an eternity. I know. I have devised a plan to get my lazy self back on top of things. I will post my to do/to write list up right here so that the pressure to fulfill expectations hopefully overrides my laze (I realize that is not a real word, but one of my goals in life is to get a word in the dictionary, so I figure that I should probably get going on that). My things to blog list is as follows:
1.) Per Se/ Ouest/ Melisse
2.) My Rachael Ray internship exploits (including, but not limited to: loving the test kitchen, feeling important in meetings with Nestle, as well as the tiring venture of setting up my phone and email system) <--sidenote: I have my own cubicle. Weird, right?
3.) New book obsessions (okay, Anthony Bourdain is officially who I aspire to be...minus the being a man part, of course)

I intend to tackle each item in the coming days--look out!

The Case of the Maple Waffle Swirl

Today I was forced to stand outside, waiting for my friends as they naively bought their Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Sadly, I now feel obliged to to tell the tale of Haagen-Dazs and its corruption.

It began only few months ago when a food obsessed girl spotted a sign advertising the Haagen-Dazs "create your own flavor" contest. Hit with a brilliant idea, she rushed to her local diner--dragging her boyfriend along--to film a witty video of her eating a warm Belgian waffle with caramelized pecans, vanilla bean ice cream, and maple syrup drizzled on top. This was destined to be her flavor inspiration and go on to win the title of 'best new flavor'. She called it Maple Waffle Swirl. After posting it on the competition board online, she returned to the website daily to scope out the competition. Lemon Bar Ice Cream? Wimpy. Peppermint stick? Already done. Rootbeer float? Too simple. Lillikoi Butter and Honey? Too intense. Maple Waffle Swirl? Perfect. Suitable for adults and children alike, fun yet classy, it was Haagen-Dazs personified. Then, one fateful day, she stumbled upon a new posting--"Blueberry Belgian Waffle" an ice cream creation posing as an original, when really, it was simply Maple Waffle Swirl plus blueberries. I was mad. I mean, she was mad. Obviously posted at a later date, Blueberry Belgian Waffle was clearly an impostor.

Fast forward to last week. The top 3 finalists were posted. Blueberry Belgian Waffle--nestled smugly between the Coco y Cacao and the Caramelized Pear & Toasted Pecans. I ask you, where is the justice in this ice cream filled world of ours? Perhaps these tragic series of events will force you to understand why I now must stand alone (outside of Haagen-Dazs).

Publicity!

Hey all, I've been published! Just in the Columbia Spectator...but still, published nonetheless! The article is all about expensive restaurants in the city. Yum.

Secret Lives of Foodies <--- Click!

P.S. Per Se: 8 days to go.

A Culinary Itinerary

Apologies for the long interlude between this entry and the last, my energetic sister has been in town visiting—consequently, consuming all of my time.

In the last week, however, my sister has provided a perfect excuse for multiple satiary outings into the city.

Hudson Cafeteria, with my boyfriend as a pre-sister arrival celebration, was the first on the list. We arrived in quite the celebratory mood and left disappointed and looking forward to forgetting our meal while wathcing Will Ferrell’s new film—which was (sadly) much higher quality than the meal we received at Hudson. The tuna tartar: tasteless (Will Ferrell’s jokes: tasteless as well, but at least I laughed). The appetizer of mushroom pizza with truffle oil was good, though it was neither appetizer size nor had any trace of truffle oil (or class for that matter). It was just a pizza, similar to the one I ate while watching last Sunday's Entourage premiere. My filet tasted the same as my boyfriend’s lamb, both brisket-y in taste and texture. I, personally, like my brisket to be called brisket and prefer it served by my grandma during Hanukkah dinner.

Jane, a downtown restaurant (just a short walk from the Houston street Subway station), provided a nice setting for a welcome dinner. The toasted ricotta gnocchi appetizer did, indeed, taste like “pillows of heaven” as one of my dining companions promised. The octopus salad literally had one long octopus tentacle, making it hard to share as well as visually a bit hard to stomach. The Ahi Tuna was fine, though I could have just done with the black rice with shitake mushroom and ginger underneath as an entire meal, and done without the overly expensive price tag for underwhelming fish. For desert, perfectly warm and crispy (though still tender inside) chocolate chip cookies with vanilla gelato floating in milk, kept my stomach happy and warm the entire walk home. Altogether, mostly pleasant, though not mind-blowing in any way.

Serendipity, needing no introduction or review to attest to the greatness of the frozen hot chocolate, provided a setting for gorging as well as an “impromptu” photo shoot of my sister and I simultaneously drinking two chocolates at once. All I can say is: do your self a favor and order the Peanut Butter version of their famous treat, sure to give you a sugar hangover for days to come, along with a permanent smile.

Diving in. Face first.

Seeing as my last blog post is the size of a Carmine's plate of penne vodka, I hope to keep this one on the shorter side. So, for the record, I'm trying.

I've been reading this book on food writing (yes, there are books just about writing about food) called Will Write For Food (witty, eh?) that I hope will aid me in my ongoing quest for culinary stardom. The author suggests these silly little exercises at the end of each chapter and I thought I would share a few that I have done with you.

A.) Completing these sentences:

The donut smelled stale, like... the wafting odor of a beer sitting by a California pool mid-August, having been forgotten by its tipsy owner.

The roast beef sandwich tasted as though... it was slaved over by a Jewish grandma who lovingly tells you to call her Babushka as she piles the salty meat and the creamy cole slaw higher than anyone’s mouth could ever fit.


B.) Describing eating your favorite piece of fruit:

The Santa Ana winds were particularly strong as I first bit down into the meaty flesh of the mango. Slicing the skin off half the mango, no silverware in sight, I headed face first into the sunny fruit. My feet were cooling in the pool—I sat at the waters edge, the rest of my body burning. The corners of my lips stung with the tangy kick that follows the birthday cake sweet initial flavor. My cheeks sticky, I sucked the remaining mango pulp that clung to the pit, straggling pieces catching in between my teeth. When I slid down into the water I could still feel the mangoes slippery texture on my tongue while the buttery honey flavor coated my mouth.


Okay, so, first exercise equals weird and funny, second exercise equals corny and sprinkled (okay drenched) with way too many adjectives. Was I eating the mango or trying to have sex with it? Can't wait for the next chapter, perhaps I can somehow work in the Buttercup Bakeshop cupcake I enjoyed today. Using my sister as an excuse for a cupcake field trip, we headed to Buttercup on 72nd to see if an equal to Magnolia could be found so deliciously close to school. I found that, tragically (for my waistline), they can.

I promised brevity, so look forward to a rant on my latest dining foray into the city in my next posting: hurray!

Restaurant Review finds itself as a Short Story

You know the moment during the happy birthday song in which everyone in the restaurant mumbles the name of the beamingly embarrassed person who sits at a table full of drunken, but equally beaming, friends? At Café Paradiso, this seems to be a thrice nightly occurrence; middle aged men and women ringing in their birthdays with some good wine, good food, and newfound friends. Yet, for some strange reason, this annoying phenomenon ceases to be annoying upon entering Paradiso. Strolling there from my house, a mere five minute walk, set the scene for what I was to find at the Café’s threshold—the lanky Italian owner waiting to greet us, a large table in the intimate forty-five person restaurant, and both an acerbically witty waiter as well as an overly sentimental yet altogether pleasant one. The cast of characters transported me to Italy for dinner at my distant cousins villa, at least, it would have if I had distant home-cooking Italian cousins.

We glanced at the menu, which was short enough to make a quick decision, yet appealing enough to warrant a second glance. The warm bread with crackling crust and fluffy white center told me to take my choice seriously. When the calamari with cannelloni beans arrived, I was wary—the calamari was crustless, not a fried tentacle in sight; instead, pieces of lightly garlic-ed bread were wedged into the mountain of spicy tomato sauce covered squid rings. Chewy would seem to indicate a less than desirable consistency, but the octopus was chewy in a way that redefines the word. The beans, which exploded open after the slight snap as I bit through the skin, lent a creamy compliment to the calamari perched on the crunch-perfect toasted bread. Though I am not generally a fan of spice, as I often feel that it overpowers rather than enhances food (even after the pleas of my spice-loving boyfriend), this dish was the very opposite.

As I alternated between wine and water to cool my slightly burning lips, the owner came over to chat. He told us the story of a man whose cousin came to visit, convinced him to open another restaurant (his first, La Finestra, was in the Valley), and then the cousin found his marriage in trouble and ran off to work it out with his wife, leaving the man with two restaurants to manage by himself. The owner told us that the man, who, we were certain, was none other than the owner himself, sold his other restaurant to take on a new challenge. This story proved two things: one being that I was right in my assertion that cousins were involved in this restaurant somehow and two, that family drama makes for good Italian food. The salad arrived and with gorgonzola, pine nuts, red peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes, it had all of my favorite ingredients on one plate. When I managed to corral all of the ingredients on to one forkful, the result was pure harmony; yet, easier said than forked, and most times I ended up with a bite that was sadly lacking in one of the key flavors. On a more positive note, the balsamic and olive oil on the greens managed to both fully cover the salad and also remain unobtrusive to the fresh ingredients—buono I say.

Off came both sweaters that I came layered in, the restaurant was warm and humming with conversation and we were off to a pleasant start. The entrees arrived and we all agreed they were solidly good, though it was the vibe of the restaurant that increased the pleasure I found in enjoying my lobster ravioli slowly. The “light tomato brandy sauce” turned out to be a bit on the heavy side, both in quantity and flavor. Had the flavors in the ravioli been stronger, the assertive sauce wouldn’t have been a problem; yet I craved the subtle sweetness in the lobster that was masked in the process. However, every so often, lets say, every other raviolo or so, a large piece of lobster tucked neatly into the ravioli filling would bring the flavor and the break in the creamy texture that I so desired, making the rest worth the wait. As I reached across the table to steal a bite of the steaming Osso Buco, it easily fell off the bone, onto my fork, and into my mouth—much to the chagrin of the dinner companion to whom the meat belonged. It was exactly as expected, a well-cooked cut of meat, juicy and sweet in flavor. The gnocchi lovingly placed in a pile next to the Osso Buco retained the earthy taste of a fresh potato while giving it an unnaturally creamy consistency. As the gnocchi and meat combination melted in my mouth, I felt a slight desire for less gnocchi stuck to the crevices of my back teeth and more in my stomach. A solid, though not innovative, main course, I waited to see what desert would bring.

The fresh strawberries over vanilla ice cream with balsamic sauce was the chef’s special recipe, while the tiramisu was touted (like most Italian restaurants) as the best. We ordered both. The tiramisu, which I should disclaim, is not my favorite desert in general, was fluffy light and relatively on the unsweetened chocolate side of the spectrum. The cocoa powder dusted heavily on top caused a slight coughing attack before I could let the light and dark desert dissolve on my tongue. As for the strawberry balsamic desert, the vinegar flavor certainly hits your tongue first, sending your brain the signal “no, no, I wanted desert;” yet, less than a second later your brain backpedals, realizing the balsamic flavor is balanced by the sweet-tangy balsamic soaked strawberry slice and the cool vanilla ice cream. As you adjust to the flavor, you find yourself spooning the balsamic syrupy ice cream soup from the bottom of the bowl—I know I did.