Running Food: Coconut-Almond Bars

Adapted from The Bakery in New Paltz, New York. This is a great pre- or post-run snack. It's also a good snack for when you want to kill your hunger totally dead - it's so dense that it fills you up immediately. We cut them, baggie them, and keep them in the freezer - they're great cold. We tried taking them on bike rides a couple of times but they were a bit crumbly after being jostled around for a couple of hours.

Combine:

two cups rolled oats (we've also done this w/ steel cut and that was fine too)

one cup unsweetened coconut chunks or flakes

1/2 cup chopped dates (or raisins)

1/2 cup raw almonds

1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup cashews

Mix:

1 1/2 cups natural peanut butter

1 cup honey

1 teaspoon vanilla

Microwave the PB mix for one minute. Combine with the dry ingredients. On a greased baking sheet, spread mixture into a 1"-high rectangle. Cut into bars and freeze, or, if you prefer, bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, cool, and cut.

Dates = quick carbs

Honey = quick carbs

Nuts = healthy fats; sustained energy

Oats = reduces cholesterol and offsets the risk of upper-respiratory infections (common in runners)

Summer Quickies

I have a big super-post coming up about the By George Washington-To-Washington Great American Road Trip I went on in August, but there is a little pile of stuff that will grow into a big mound soon if I don't get it out of the way.

Summertime and the Eating is Good

First things first.

Look what fell off a truck the other day!

$50 worth of assorted canned tomatoes, a mere six weeks before chili season kicks off.

I Am Loved. I don't mean that in a creepy "spiritual" sense, but seriously, what luck.


More Funny Plums

I posted a picture of some lemon plums I bought at the farmer's market a couple months ago.

Last time I went the same guy had these:

I didn't get a name for them, but they were good, with sweet flesh and really tart skin. I know that's the basic makeup of a plum, but something about the wrapping on these things was sharper than the darker purple plums I'm used to. I can't say I search out plums, but I've been enjoying these odd varieties.


The Enlightenment of John Thorne

Okay, I've written about Thorne and his book Serious Pig a lot. Thorne writes about Maine a lot, and talks about the blueberries like they hold nirvana in the bottom of the bucket. He's been right about most everything else, who am I to question him on this one?

Axel & Lou in Maine. Nothing special, just a camping trip. They always dress like that.

So while I'm there I drive by four or five blueberry stands on the side of the road before I finally give in and pull over. I bought the big one, of course, and munched delicious blueberries the rest of the way to Penobbmikdaosrpuijwkedchiuo, or whatever that place was called. It was long.

Pemaquid Point. Sorry. It wasn't that long, but I still couldn't remember it all weekend.

The blueberries were perfect, of course, smaller than the ones you buy in the store but with nearly double the flavor intensity. I ate most of my first purchase by the time I got to the hotel.

The place we were staying was beautiful, a bed and breakfast with a view of the lighthouse, a high end restaurant and a bar on premises and plenty of paths for late night beach walks.

Being a full service type of joint, the wedding took place outside and then we came in for drinks and dinner. I had a stuffed lobster that was characteristically small for the self-conscious class of the restaurant, but damn good. It was on a perfectly made risotto with steamed vegetables. Somehow I got a picture of my name card and glass of scotch, but not the lobster. Probably for the best, that's one of those times when your date looks at you like you're insane when the camera comes out.

The next night we ate at the bar, a decidedly un-stuffy place with a five item menu written in chalk near the entrance.

Who could resist?

I got the flat bread with onions, duck fat and prosciutto and then, for good measure, the salmon BLT. I knew that flat bread would go quick once the other drinkers got a look at it.

This was some serious bar food. The sandwich was good grilled bread with an herb mayonnaise, lox, bacon, tomato, small chunks of red bell pepper and fresh mixed greens. I live in the land of the specialty sandwich and this salmon BLT was holding it's own.

As for the pizza, well, I'm not the guy to be rating that dish. I'm biased. Everybody thinks their kid can sing. This is a dish invented for people like me. I loved it, but so did everybody else, so I think I can reliably report that it was excellent.

Okay, back to the blueberries. Just after I got back to New York, I got an email from Jordan, an old friend from Kansas who's a pretty great cook herself, very much in the home-cooking, learned-it-from-my-granny vein that I ride most of the time.

Hey,
I've been rediscovering "reading for pleasure" now that school is done. You won't be surprised that the cookbook section of the public library has been a frequent hangout spot. My current read is "The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper." Decent book, probably not worth a purchase. Anyway, towards the end I stumbled on a recipe for sugared raspberries, apparently taken from "The Gift of Southern Cooking" by Edna Lewis. Lewis, it says, is "a granddaughter of slaves, raised on a farm in Freetown" with a talent for preserving fruit "which keeps its taste fresh because there is no cooking involved." (I'm getting to the point, I swear). Here's the recipe:

2 cups (about 1 pound) fresh raspberries (or strawberries or blackberries)
2 cups sugar

Put berries in a bowl, cover with sugar. Mash the shit out of everything until "they are liquefied and no trace of whole berries is left." Transfer to a jar and refrigerate for at least 2 days. Will keep for up to a year.

It really is just fruit and sugar, and I find it strange too. However, the fancy pants NPR cooking bunch SWOON over these in the book. Maybe you will too.

So I tried it with the blueberries. I did one with the full compliment of sugar and one with half the sugar. They're both good, it's blueberries and sugar after all, but they don't set up into the normal jam consistency. I've never noticed a diminishing of flavor from cooking jams, so I'm not convinced of the 'problem' this recipe is trying to correct.

I've been putting the sauce in oatmeal. It's delicious. And I made these with Weezy:

We called it The Lumberjill: Maine blueberry cupcakes, filled with blueberry sauce and topped with crystal sugar. The sauce cooked into the bread and solidified into a little blueberry nugget in the middle of the cupcake that was sweet and tart and obviously naturally flavored, which is rare in a blueberry treat.


Doing what Mark Bittman says Part II

Mark Bittman is my friend.

Not in a drinking buddy kind of way, more like I'll buy a magazine if it has an article by him in it. For instance - Runner's World, October 2009 has an article called 'The Good Food Diet' where they interview Bittman about his running habit and he suggests a bunch of eating guidelines for training, weight loss, blahblahblah.

I think the first time I heard of Bittman was when my mom bought me and my sisters copies of How To Cook Everything, a general, wide ranging cookbook that he wrote. He also writes for the New York Times, in the food section on Wednesday. I'm borderline obsessive about the Times crossword and Wednesday is a day I usually finish, so I see the Times food section every week.

My brilliant sister Rachel found an article of Bittman's from the Times online, 101 Simple Salads for the Season, she did a short posting from it a couple weeks ago. I actually saved the hard copy from that week, and combined with the article from Runner's World, I'm heading into marathon training with a salad menu for the ages.

Bittman says he's training for this year's New York City marathon in the article. He spends most of his time espousing an entire eating regimen that is focused on plants and lean meats but gives you plenty of wiggle room to eat whatever crap you want, in moderation. It's very sane and very reasonable and how people who run marathons tend to act. The only surprise is that I've turned into one of those people.

USDA data shows most people get about 70 percent of their calories from that heavy side of the see-saw, and only about 30 percent from plants - and almost everyone in nutritional science believes the numbers should be reversed.
Plants, of course, means vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, and nuts. What do these things have in common? One, the don't have ingredients, they are ingredients. Two, they might be shelled, or peeled, or trimmed, but they're essentially unprocessed. Three, for the most part, they have few calories.

And then he goes on to talk about the science of all of it and the CO2 that is created by factory meat farms, and a bunch of other shit people already know and choose to ignore. That's the thing about Bittman, platitudes aside, the guy can cook.

First I made #60.

#60 - Sear tuna, or use good canned tuna. Chop it up and mix with chopped apples, halved seedless grapes, chopped red onion, olive oil, a bit of cumin and black pepper.

My version goes: do all that, grate some Romano on top. This is a good salad, I'd like it better with chicken instead of tuna, but it's the cumin and black pepper that make it stand out.

#41 - Halve avocados and scoop out some but not all of their flesh. Roughly chop and toss with black beans, queso fresco, cilantro, chopped tomatillos and lime juice. Serve in the meaty avocado shells.

That all sounded good, but there was another entry catching my eye just down the page that I thought might send this delicious guacamole salad over the top.

#44 - Make a crisp grilled cheese sandwich with good bread and not too much good cheese. Let it cool, then cut into croutons. Put them on anything, but especially tomato and basil salad. This you will do forever.

This you will do forever. From now on I'm ending every recipe with that sentence.

I added slices of fresh chilies and salt, but otherwise left it alone. Good god.

And, last but not least, some kind of spinach-chicken-apple thing I made and forgot about and then found a picture of on my camera.

Bet it was good!

Our Little Baby's All Growns Up!

Where does this one even start? How do you describe a transcendent moment in life, those rare times when you climb up from a long held plateau of comfort, stretch your arms and legs into new positions, pump new blood into your brain and see the stars from a fresh position on the planet? How many times do you get to lose your virginity?

First of all, let's hear it for summer. Not to sound like a commercial for Labor Day, but there is a lot to be said for beer and barbecue by the water.

I did a lot of traveling this summer, had a lot of good times, but in August, in the Thousand Islands section of Canada, on the bank of the St. Lawrence river, under a partly cloudy sky, I became a Man.

Michael Hull is dead. Long live Michael Hull.

Barbecued Suckling Pig

I was going to Canada on a working vacation with Shiloh and Melissa, a Cinematographer and Producer I work with a lot. We were going to interview the owner of this completely bad ass catamaran. This boat has twin helicopter turbine engines. It sounds like it's going to SPACE!

He's making adjustments to the boat this year and plans to get it over 200 mph next summer. For now he's having to live with topping out at around 190 mph. Like I said, completely bad ass.

The cook at his day job

But vacation was the thrust of this working vacation and we spent most of our time riding jet skis, playing horse shoes, drinking single malt scotch and starting fires. That's what the boys did. There seemed to be a lot of knitting on the girl's end.

ANYWAY, Melissa went out of her way to find me a little present in the form of a whole pig because she's a sweetheart and a genius. A working woman's philanthropist and a fledgling dream-maker. My best friend the day she called and said she found me a pig.

Melissa's dog Nala, a fan of my barbecue if there ever was one

I've been talking about this, the Holy Grail of barbecue, for years, but I never had the chance to try my hand. It was always in the back of my mind, knowing that in some weird way I was training for the day. Learning how to control heat from live fire, learning how different sections of the animal react to slow heat, figuring out how to tell when the meat is done by touch, without having to cut into it and release juice too early.

I enjoy cooking nearly anything. I enjoy cutting up an apple to go with cheese and wine. I'm not that hard to please, but this pig had the feel of an event. The night before we cooked him the women decided to give the pig a name they didn't like so they could build up a little animosity toward him before I put a big metal spike in his ass. I think they decided on Omar. When was the last time you named an apple?

The place we would be buying the pig, Rick's Butcher Shop in Brockville, Ontario, deals with guys like me all the time. They have kind of a first-timer's package where they rent you an electric spit barbecue on wheels with a trailer hitch and the whole nine. The guy loaned me a big cutting board and gave me an apron and we were on our way.

Did I mention he cut the head and feet off for ease of use?

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The house we were staying in is on an island, which means getting this wheel-mounted barbecue contraption to the island first. Which meant hiring a boat, because the boats we had were driving boats, not grill hauling boats.

Welcome to my world

Once we got to the island we realized there was no way this thing was getting up the thin path to the yard, so we chained it to the dock and ran an extension cord. You know, some real man shit.

And then I busted out the cookbook, the brilliant Pork & Sons by Stéphane Reynaud, a gift from an equally brilliant girl that I ignored for a long time. The book, not the girl. Now that I've opened it up, it's been nothing short of inspirational and was the first place I went when I found out for sure that this pig thing was going down.

The recipe is short, I'll reprint it here in it's entirety.

Barbecued Suckling Pig

PREPARATION TIME: 45 MINUTES
COOKING TIME: 3 HOURS

SERVES 12

1 suckling pig, 5 to 6 weeks old
10 shallots, chopped
10 garlic cloves, chopped
2 1/3 cups chopped smoked bacon
7 ounces country-style white bread, soaked in heavy cream
generous 1/3 cup Dijon mustard
3 eggs
1 bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
20 fresh sage leaves, chopped
scant 1 cup olive oil

FOR THE BASTING LIQUID

4 cups white wine
2 1/4 cups olive oil
scant 1/4 cup Dijon mustard

Ask your butcher to prepare the pig and save the liver and heart for you.

Place all the remaining ingredients with the liver and heart in a bowl, and mix together well. Spoon this stuffing into the pig and sew up the cavity with trussing thread. Tie the feet underneath the pig with wire and cover the ears with foil to prevent them from burning.

Whisk together all the ingredients for the basting liquid in a bowl. Place the pig on a spit over the barbecue and cook, basting frequently, for 3 hours.

Page 278

Okay, sounds pretty simple, but there are a lot of details that are left out. For one thing, the best suggestion I got from the guy running the butcher shop was to separate my coals to the ends of the grill because the shoulder and hips of the pig would need more heat than the empty middle. Made perfect sense, but I never would have come up with that on my own.

I got the fire going and mixed up the stuffing. I couldn't find shallots so I used red onion instead, and I used raisin bread instead of white. It looked good.

I had high hopes for the stuffing, it seemed like this could become my new go-to stuffing recipe, whole pig or no. With the fire building, I stuffed the pig and sewed him up. I suppose if you own a butcher shop in the mountains of France, you're prepared to sew up a pig with trussing thread. I was not.

The pig's skin is really thick, even a young pig like the one I had. I ended up using a 3" nail that I bent in the middle with the thread tied just under the slim head of the nail. I also had to use pliers so I could push and pull this chunk of metal where I wanted it to go. It got done, but I suggest having a tandem pig-sewing team at your disposal if you can.

With the stomach sewed, I tightened the bolts on one side of the spit. They cut the head off at the shop, saying that made it much easier to use the spit because you didn't have to shove it through the skull. There was also a big loose hole where the pig's anus used to be. They asked me if I wanted the head cut off. They didn't ask if I wanted the asshole cut out. Writing it like that, I can see why.

The stainless steel spit slid through effortlessly, and I tightened the bolts on the spikes at the other end. Let's do this.

Omar, after about an hour



One side got charred while we figured out the spit motor

I started basting him immediately. I tried not to baste more than every half-hour, but really I wanted to stare at it and basting was the best excuse. It smelled amazing almost immediately.

The charred side annoyed the hell out of me initially, but once he got going my attitude changed. The other side was crisping up nicely but didn't seem to be in any danger of charring. The burn happened in the first few minutes, so there was no way the meat was overdone under it, which meant that we would have two types of skin to chew on when this project was done. It was an experiment, right? This was my first one, cut me some slack.

Omar's top butt

Omar's bottom butt

My spike wasn't set very well in the back end and after a couple hours he was cooked enough to flop around a little with each revolution. I kept waiting for him to fall off of the spit but it never happened. He just kept getting softer, caramelizing on the outside in the smoke, breaking down into shreds on the inside.

The book suggested 3 hours on the spit, but the book said a 5-6 week old pig. The butcher shop suggested a 25 pounder for my adventure and it never occurred to me to ask how old a 25 lb pig is. At the three hour mark, my pig seemed like he was cooked through, but he had a little more work to do. We started early enough to buy some time, so I headed in to make corn on the cob and my spicy summer slaw.

Omar at 5 hours, soft side

Omar at 5 hours, hard side

The charred side of the pig had split wide open after five hours, the stuffing had dripped out enough bacon oil to make a stinky puddle in the bottom of the grill and the back end was about to melt off of the spit. Betty made an impromptu barbecue sauce and I got the thick gloves off the dock.

Omar, resting



Shiloh, basting

After letting Omar catch his breath, I started in with a knife and cut through both tenderloins and the spine with no effort. I didn't even mean to. I was just poking at it and cut through bone with a little flick of the wrist. I put the knife down and pulled it apart with my fingers.

Omar, butchered

And now I understand why the true traditionalists don't serve ribs at their barbecue restaurants. I always thought it was a silly regional thing, like tomato based sauce or mustard based sauce, but it's about more than that.

Believe it or not, there are smart people who think about things like when and why people started cooking their food. The two best guesses those smart people have go something like this:

1. After naturally occurring fires subsided, people ate animals that got caught in the fire and were cooked. They were attracted to something about the cooked meat, possibly the flavor or texture. And, of course, they were easy to catch. Presumably the marinade was terrible, but it had to be a lot easier to eat than raw meat and a lot better tasting than rotten meat.

2. People hung their meat over a controlled fire at night as a means of deterring other animals from eating their hard won food. When they woke up in the morning they had delicious smoked ham hanging in the tree. Or smoked otter or saber toothed tiger or whatever.

Both theories also rest to some degree on man's natural proclivity for things that don't kill us. Cooking meat is a much healthier way to consume it, especially when you're eating whatever game you can catch with stone tools.

Even undercooked meat is substantially better for you because it is the outside of the cut, the part exposed to the most bacteria, that gets done. One thing I like about science is that the simplest idea usually wins. If you smell a piece of rotting flesh and a piece of barbecued flesh, it isn't that hard to figure out which is more appetizing. We have been eating cooked food for at least 50,000 years now and have most likely evolved the pleasure centers that react to the smell of roasting meat and vegetables. But, like sex and language, these were probably instincts related to survival before they were a source of joy. This was all pre-barbecue sauce, so. They had a long way to go.

Today, realistically speaking, spit roasting a suckling pig over an open flame is probably as close to a pre-historical cooking experience as you're going to get. It is meat eating in it's most basic form, even with an electric spit and a bottomless cooler of imports. The barbecue purists that don't serve ribs know that when you cook the whole pig, pulled pork is all you get. The ribs were so tender the meat jumped off the bones like a tourist stretching her legs after a long bus ride. The bones broke in half with a little squeeze.

Everything shredded in my fingers, both hams and both tenderloins. The front end fell apart on the cutting board while I was working on the bottom, leaving soft bones sticking out all over the place. It was delicious.

Mike tasting, clearly blitzed on smoked pork



Omar, plated

I can be easily tempted into hyperbole, but this was what I like to call a Grand Canyon experience. I saw pictures of the Grand Canyon my entire life on everything from postcards to t-shirts to billboards, but it is impossible to describe the grandeur of the place to anyone who hasn't been there. You can't properly photograph the Grand Canyon.

No matter how many times I read about cooking a whole pig, I never quite grasped what an undertaking it was. I didn't make it any easier by deciding to do it on a tiny island, but regardless of your locale, this is a project. All I can say is that it's worth every penny and every minute. That, and have some helpers.

The only thing I was disappointed in was the stuffing. I don't know if I did something wrong, but it was a sloppy, disgusting mess when we were done. I put it in a bowl and tried to serve it, but even the most adventurous eaters at the table passed. I ate some of it on fresh bread, but it was so soaked through with bacon grease and juice from the pig that it left an unpleasant residue in my mouth. I can even live with that if it tasted good, but it was bland on top of being greasy.

I don't know. The theory was floated that the stuffing isn't meant to be eaten, that it's just there to keep the hollow cavity in the pig's midsection moist. Everything else in this book has been clever, inventive and delicious, it doesn't make sense to me that they would stuff the pig and not figure out a way to eat the stuffing. There are multiple recipes in the book for ears and snouts. If they can figure out how to eat that crap, why wouldn't they eat the stuffing? I still haven't figured it out.

Omar on a stick

After dinner we started a fire and put Omar's head on the end of the spit to keep us company. Everybody drank to the pig and I declared that he had recieved a king's finish.

Omar is dead. Long live Omar.

A big 25 lb thank you to Melissa for working out the logistics of this thing, Shiloh for thinking of it in the first place, and the Farrs & Lumps for being willing to go a bit crazy with me every now and then.

Chowda, Rhode Island Style

This story starts in Rhode Island. I don't have many stories that start in Rhode Island, so I'm kind of savoring it. I may say Rhode Island 25 or 30 more times before this posting is done.

I was in Rhode Island for work first, shooting a commercial for the Marine Corps. Most of the spot was done in South Carolina, but we did one day in New England. As is known to happen in New England, we were working just down from what looked like a brilliant clam chowder place, Aunt Carrie's. I didn't have time to stop in while we were there, but I looked up Rhode Island in the Road Food book when I got home, and guess what I found?

Aunt Carrie's

Aunt Carrie's, at Point Judith on the ocean, has been a summertime destination since the 1920s. It remains one of the few places in Rhode Island that still lists a full shore dinner on its menu. It starts with chowder: your choice of white, red, or Rhode Island-style, which is clear and bacon-flavored. That's accompanied by crusty gold balls of deep-fried clam-flavored dough called calm cakes as well as steamers with broth and butter for dipping.

Road Food, 7th Edition, pg 63

Okay, between that little opener and the raved about Indian Pudding at the end, I was sold. Luckily I was back to Rhode Island a couple weeks later, including a stop in Narragansett at Aunt Carrie's.

Grey Chowder & Lobster Pizza

As with many good New York stories, this one starts at Grand Central Station. I know I said it started in Rhode Island, but that was more aesthetically true than literally true.

 

In fact, let's have a digression. There's a lot of crappy food in Grand Central, but when I was looking for something to snack on while riding the Metro North to meet My Friend With A Car, I found the Grand Central deli. I don't know what they actually call it, but that's what it is - a super fancy deli squeezed into what looks like an entrance hallway.

I can't say I know the history of the Grand Central deli, but the first time I ate lox and cream cheese was from whatever version of a deli they had when I was 18. I was riding to Boston with my uncle Tom and he bought bagels with lox, cream cheese and onions before we got on the train.

The place they've got now is brilliant, probably 100 yards long, crammed on both sides with display counters of fancy shit. It's expensive, but hey, if you want cheap move to Nebraska and eat spam. How often are you in Grand Central? I live here and it's maybe once a year. How could you resist?

Cheese!

Fancy Cheese!

Meat for your cheese!

 

Cured peppers, fat slices of tomato and fresh mozz

 

I'll take one of everything

For all my talk, I chose simply. Coffee and a danish. I hadn't been awake long, and besides, there was all that chowder coming.

First stop of the day, the famous Aunt Carrie's

I had to get one of everything, of course, especially the Rhode Island-style 'grey' chowder. The corn was good and sweet, the shrimp roll was awful. Breaded, frozen shrimp that had been over cooked in french fry grease and scooped onto a dry roll was not doing it.

BUT, that wasn't what we were there for. The clam cakes were great, very dense hush puppies with whole clams in them. I didn't taste much clam in the dough, but there were enough pieces in each one to get the point across.

I had the clear chowder, which didn't actually taste like bacon at all. It didn't taste much like clam either, it had more of a salty potato flavor than anything else. I had some of my lunch mate's chowder, she got the white, and it was perfect. Something about the creaminess of the milk cut through the salt, leaving room for the clam flavor to come out. Neither of us tried the red, but those two small cups were enough to convince me that, like chili is better off with beans, chowder and milk are natural, if not completely necessary, compliments.

The other big surprise of Aunt Carrie's was Indian Pudding, a tasty dish that is similar to sweet potato pie, but with a lot less sugar. It seems to be a mashed and probably baked sweet potato dish, spiced more or less like pumpkin pie.

Wait. According to Wikipedia, there's no sweet potato in it:

Indian pudding

Indian pudding is a more elaborate form of corn hasty pudding. It consists of milk, corn, and molasses, (or, alternatively, maple syrup and honey, and sometimes sugar), spices (nearly always including cinnamon and ground ginger), butter, and usually raisins and nuts, baked in a slow oven for several hours. It is a traditional New England dessert.

From Wikipedia entry for Hasty Pudding

Tasted like sweet potato to me, but I barreled through it pretty quick, it could have been the spices that I associate with sweet potato and not the base itself. Either way, it was good.

When we got to where we were going, it was beautiful.

Beach

Gull

 

Lighthouse

Surfers

And then it was time for dinner.

We didn't have a plan for dinner, but we were in Newport by that point. Newport is a neat little town with a bunch of small houses that overlook the ocean. There was a wharf area with a large seafood market, an area where personal boats were docked, multiple ice cream and taffy stands and a bunch of restaurants.

We chose the Rhode Island Quahog Company, but fresh seafood was the lick at every eating establishment on the strip. We ate at one of the fancier places, but there were lobster specials advertised up and down the strip, 2 for 1 beers and all the steamers you could handle.

I ate enough steamers dipped in butter to make a meal, but it was the only appetizer size they had. Oh well!

The steamers were good. They tasted like the ocean, a sense you can only get when you're at the coast. Like vegetables lose the hint of dirt after 24 hours off the vine, these clams must have been dug that morning.

But like I said, lobster was the thing. We started with a stuffed lobster that came with the claws intact and the tail shell filled with a minced lobster and crab meat stuffing that was buttery and delicious.

The large pieces of claw meat were a good offset to the stuffing and kept the whole thing solidly in 'lobster dinner' territory. But a good stuffed lobster is something most decent coastal restaurants can get right.

What I was excited about was the lobster pizza. Seriously.

Baked cracker crust pie with a layer of white sauce, topped by chunks of fresh lobster meat, sauteed mushrooms and chopped scallions with a coating of melted mozzarella. There were herbs in the sauce, but I don't recall what they were.

This was one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten. The crust was just right, the sauce was great and the chunks of lobster big enough to remind you of why you came to Rhode Island in the first place. We were on the deck, the sun was setting by this point and the air was starting to get thick with ocean water. I had a cold stout to compliment the pie. It was the perfect set up for that meal.

Fully satiated on lobster and beer, it was about time to start heading back to the city. My friend's Father is a big fan of Rhode Island and used to bring her and her siblings to this area when they were kids. When he found out we were in Newport he gave her a laundry list of stuff to bring back, including a gallon of local chowder and a couple pounds of steamers. So we had a little shopping to do before we could get on the highway.

I got coffee and taffy. And an awesome magnet.

Kansas: A State Of Excitement

Someone's clearly been lying to them.

All in all, the trip to Rhode Island was a huge success. Our work got done at a very leisurely pace, great local seafood was had by all and I marked off another entry in the Road Food book.

Nicely done.

Any Excuse To Use Cinnamon

The good news is, I have a friend. I know a guy, so to speak.

Actually, it's not a guy, it's a girl, and I know lots of girls, but now I know one who has a backyard. It's more of a deck really, but that's beside the point. I know a girl, who has a back deck, big by New York standards, and it's open air. AND it's on 12th St, a half-block from The Strand and about 5 blocks from my place.

Needless to say, I started talking barbecue as soon as I saw the deck for the first time. Sarah's a brilliant girl and world traveler, but I'm not intimidated. By her own admission, she can't barbecue worth a shit, so she has a deck to offer and I have a service to provide. We were fast friends.

Thing is, as Andre 3000 says, 'you can plan a pretty picnic but you can't predict the weeeaaather!' It started raining the night before our cookout, and didn't stop until two days later. SUCK!

Which leaves me stuck with all this meat.

Meat Sauce

Calling this simply 'meat sauce' might be an understatement. I could come up with something more detailed, but there's so much going on it would have to be a nine word name that includes at least the words ribs, sausage, cinnamon, wine, herb and tomato. It's too much. Cook it, make some pasta. Call it purple polka dot bikini.

The idea for making a sauce came from Martin Scorcese's documentary about his parents, Italian American. You'd recognize his mom from Goodfellas, she plays Joe Pesce's mother who loans him a knife to cut the 'deer' from the front grill of his car.

At one point in the doc, she's making a classic New York Italian meat sauce. Scorcese gives the recipe in the credits, like a proper '70's auteur.

The Sauce:
Singe an onion & a pinch of garlic in oil.
Throw in a piece of veal, a piece of beef, some pork sausage & a lamb neck bone.
Add a basil leaf.
When the meat is brown, take it out & put it on a plate.
Put in a can of tomato paste & some water.
Press a can of packed whole tomatoes through a blender & pour it in.
Let it boil.
Add salt, pepper & a pinch of sugar.
Let it cook for a while.
Throw the meat back in.
Cook for 1 hour.
Now make the meatballs.
Put a slice of bread, without crust, 2 eggs, & a drop of milk, into a bowl of ground veal & beef.
Add salt, pepper, some cheese & a few spoons of sauce.
Mix it with your hands.
Roll them up, throw them in.
Let it cook for another hour.

This is a pretty standard recipe, time tested and hard to get wrong. I was watching the movie at work the night before our rained out barbecue, so it was on my mind when I was looking at the pile of fresh meat I had in the fridge the next day.

The recipe I used is my version of the classic, the main difference being spicing. I add cinnamon, an idea I picked up from a rib sauce recipe that has long since been lost. Also, I never have spare veal or a leftover lamb neck bone laying around, so my meat selection is always determined by whatever looks good at the store that day.

On this day it was ribs and sausage.

Ingredients

2 tbl olive oil
2 lbs beef ribs
2 lbs sausage
1 cup red wine
1 28 oz can of stewed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste (optional)
1 medium red onion
5 cloves garlic
5 basil leaves
Salt & Pepper to taste

Rub for the ribs

2 tbl salt
1 tbl pepper
1 tbl cinnamon
1 tbl brown sugar
1 tbl ground chilies or chili powder
1 tsp ground nutmeg

Mix the rub ingredients in a bowl and rub it on all sides of the ribs.

Rubbed Ribs

Put the olive oil in the bottom of a deep pan and heat it over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add as many ribs as you can fit on the floor of the pan. You want to brown all four sides of the ribs, so piling them won't work.

Brown the sausage too.

Flip the ribs until they're brown on all four sides. Tongs are great for this job.

As the ribs and sausage brown, take them out of the oil and drain them on paper towels. Chop them into large pieces. They'll look delicious, like this:

While the meat is browning, chop the onion and garlic. When all of the meat is out of the oil, add the onion and garlic and saute until they're starting to go soft. Add the wine and scrape any crusty bits off the bottom of the pan. Bring the wine to a boil and add the chunks of meat back in, simmering until the wine reduces a bit, about 10 minutes.

Chop the canned tomatoes, reserving the juice from the can. Add the chopped tomatoes and juice to the meat, along with the tomato paste, if you want it. The wine can be too strong for some people, the paste goes a long way toward cutting the acidic taste of the grapes. If you don't plan to add the paste, you should plan on cooking the sauce for a little longer, in order to help it thicken.

Depending on how you like your sauce, some recipes would double the amount of tomatoes and wine and chop the meat into much smaller pieces. The meat is the star of this dish for me, the sauce is a compliment to big chunks of ribs and sausage. A classic meat sauce is more about the sauce with the meat as a filler/flavoring agent. The difference, really, is one can of tomatoes.

With the tomatoes in, add the basil leaves and stir it up. Taste the sauce now and add salt and pepper if you want. I usually also add more cinnamon and dried chilies, some people may prefer to add sugar. This is where you make it your own.

At this point you're pretty much done. Lower the heat and let it bubble slowly for 60-90 minutes while you go tease the dog with leftover bits of rib.

Nala, you want some rib?

That's a yes.

Sit Nala. Good girl!

While the sauce gets acquainted with itself, toast some garlic bread and chop a salad. The salad for this meal was spinach, toasted pecans, sliced pears and goat cheese with a blueberry/pomegranate dressing. A little sweet, but it was a good balance to the hearty, savory sauce.

Oh! Make some pasta, something with big holes.

Shiloh got screwed last time I made beef ribs, and Shiloh really likes beef ribs. This time I made sure he got seconds.

Thanks Martin Scorcese's Mom, great idea.

Recipes I'll Never Cook #2

This recipe speaks for itself. Found in The Complete American-Jewish Cookbook, 1971 edition. The person who lived in Mike's apartment before him left this behind when they moved out. Perhaps because they tried this recipe and came away disappointed.

Quick Mock Welsh Rabbit

Measure 3/4 cup grated American cheese in a cup. Pour boiling water over it to fill cup. Let stand for 10 minutes in a warm place. Drain water off carefully. Pour the remaining creamy mass over hot toast. Season and serve at once.

Mmm, creamy mass...

This page also features the non-quick, non-mock Welsh Rabbit, which is just white sauce with mustard and cheese, also poured over hot toast. The real prize there is the variations, including English Monkey - in which you use stale breadcrumbs instead of flour in the white sauce. Yum! We won't even discuss the Rum tum tiddy variation.

Bacon candy (candied bacon follow-up)

In December, Mike (Soup's On) posted about how to make candied bacon. December seems like a more natural time of year to make something like candied bacon, but I was invited to a breakfast-themed dinner party in August, not December, and I cannot be blamed for this calendar accident. Kate Flaim commented on the candied bacon post and suggested trying it with maple syrup. I never ignore suggestions involving maple syrup. I own a maple syrup cookbook, after all.

Since I like just the flavor of maple syrup and just the flavor of bacon, I decided not to go complicating things by using any other ingredient at all in my test batch of bacon candy. Instead, I just fried up a pile of bacon (Superartist-style: throw entire package in hot pan in a mangled heap; stir around, unheaping and reheaping carelessly until it reaches desired crispness), removed the bacon temporarily to a paper towel, and drained off I'd say 95% of the grease. Left some blackened bits and a bit of grease in the bottom. Then I added the bacon back to the pan - and here you could either cut or smash it into little bits for easier candy later, or leave the pieces somewhat whole for a more impressive (crazy) presentation. I spread it somewhat evenly around the pan and poured in a whole bottle of maple syrup, brought that to a low boil and then put the lid on the pan and let it cook merrily away, filling my kitchen with the sweet scent. I wish I could be precise about how long I cooked it, but I don't know - I just waited until it looked like it had reduced by maybe 1/3 to 1/2. Then I poured the whole mixture into a greased cookie roll pan (any pan with edges will do), and popped it into the freezer to set. I recommend keeping it in the freezer until about 15 minutes before you are ready to serve it; the water content of crisp, maple-soaked bacon isn't high and it will defrost to the right temp very quickly. The next day I broke the big, dark golden sheet in half, threw each half into a freezer bag and took it to the party. We busted it up with a hammer and sat around eating the bacony maple bits with huge grins on our faces.

Doing what Mark Bittman says

It's the last week of August, and three weeks before Mike (you know him as Soup's On!) and Jen and I fiiiiiinally rock The Nation's Triathlon after what feels like the longest training season ever. That means it is the time for salad - taking advantage of the local produce, and leaving plenty of room in the calorie bank for these crazy oatmeal-honey-raisin-cashew-peanut butter "natural power bars" we've been eating after workouts (and after dinner, and whenever one of us opens the freezer and sees them sitting in there being delicious). But anyway, back to the salads. In July, Mark Bittman of the New York Times published a lovely article of 101 Simple Salads for the Season. You should click on the link just to admire the pretty salad pictures, if nothing else. I'm so taken with this article. It's all arranged by types - vegan or easily veganable, seafood salads, noodle salads. Nothing complicated but a lot of things that make you say "Why didn't I think of that?" (:Grilled cheese sandwich made into croutons.) So this week four out of our five dinners are coming straight from this article, and three of my work lunches as well. Tonight I made # 60: "Ditto on the tuna [referencing # 59: sear tuna or use good canned tuna]. Mix with chopped apples, halved seedless grapes, chopped red onion, olive oil, a bit of cumin and black pepper." What a lovely, refreshing, easy dinner. I cooked blackfin tuna all the way through because we were a bit uncertain about the source and didn't feel comfortable eating it raw, and it was still great that way. For lunch tomorrow, I'm taking taboulleh - the usual parsley, tomatoes, mint, olive oil and lemon juice - but with chickpeas I just pulsed a few times in the food processor instead of bulgur. Up later this week: apple and fennel salad with "mustardy vinaigrette" (#16), quinoa taboulleh for lunch (#94), sweet, fruity quinoa over greens (#95), and a corn, avocado and tomato seafood salad (#68). He suggests crab meat for the last one and I'm sure that would be better than the random white fish we have in the freezer, but I still think it will work.

Staten Island Hot Dog Magic

It's Saturday at midnight and I'm at work, woo-hoo!

Luckily they don't expect me to do much at this hour but listen to punk rock radio stations on the internet and type on the food blog. Nice of them, huh?

What did people do before the internet? Read, I guess? Listen to Ramones covers on a tape deck?

Hot Dogs Kick Ass

Potato chips also kick ass, but I never would have thought to combine the two. Leave that to super-genius Mike Caruso, owner of The Gourmet Dog in Staten Island.

One of the best things about Staten Island is riding the ferry. Besides the view, the best thing about the Staten Island ferry is that The Gourmet Dog is right across the street.

I'd never been there, but I was working with Caruso on Monday. He was waiting for us at the dog shop when we got off the boat. Not realizing how close he was, Shiloh and I ended up in a bar right around the corner, eating so-so ceviche and drinking lukewarm beer.

The so-so ceviche I ordered because I didn't realize there was a hot dog shop right around the corner

The Gourmet Dog has all kinds of offerings: chili, hot wings, fries, baked beans, mini-burgers, spumoni & Italian ices, paninis, pretzels, coleslaw. This is the kind of place that considers a knish a side dish.

And it all looked good, but it's not called The Gourmet Dog for nothing.

The Gourmet Dog, with the first good thing I ate that day: The World Famous Crunchy Dog

The World Famous Crunchy Dog

A split grilled dog prepared in our secret sauce, encrusted with potatoe chips served in you classic bun $2.50

from the menu (verbatim)

I'm the kind of dick that notices the typos, but you could call it a Lipz und Asswholes Dawg wit a phat toasted peeece of bred, these dogs were great. A rose by any other name, right?

The bun was butter toasted and the dog was perfect, taut skin, popping with salty hot dog juice. They refused to reveal the secret of the secret sauce, it was good whatever it was.

But The World Famous Crunchy Dog is all about the chip/dog combo, a meal so good and simple a kindergartner could come up with it. Like playing in sand and 'why can't we all just get along', some things intrinsically make sense. This is one of them. I had mine with a little mustard and a lot of 'oh yeahs' and 'that's goods'.

Then we went and worked all day. Not that hard, but hard enough to be hungry when we were done. Which brings us back to point #2 about the Staten Island ferry, as listed above: The Gourmet Dog is right across the street.

Shiloh loved the chili-cheese dog so much he had two more of them that night. Experimenter that I am, I went with two newbies: The Hawaii 5.0 and The Reuben, another brilliant idea from the super-genius.

The Hawaii 5.0

Grilled dog with teriyaki sauce, turkey bacon, pineapples, and chives, served on our fresh baked panini bread $2.50

The Reuben

A grilled dog wrapped with pastrami, topped with sauerkraut, rye bread crumbs, and finished with melted swiss cheese $2.50

My other favorite dog spot is Crif Dogs, they have a dog called The Tsunami that is similar to The Hawaii 5.0, but I'd never heard of anything like The Reuben. Again, I had mine with spicy mustard.

The Reuben sandwich is one of my favorite things about eating in New York. There are diners here that can't cook many things right, but even most of them do a decent pastrami on rye. Caruso's pastrami is laid on the grill and the Swiss cheese melted over it before it goes on the toasted bun, the perfect dog goes next and then sauerkraut is laid on top.

I enjoyed the Hawaii 5.0, but the Reuben was one of the best hot dogs I've ever had. What a weird, brilliant idea. The dog itself is all beef and grilled to perfection as they say, and the add-ons came out of nowhere. I was prepared for a hot dog, but got a great Reuben with it.

That counts as a success in my book.

Belly But Not Bacon Pt 2

This is the second dish I made out of Pork & Sons, the brilliant book by Stephane Reynaud that was bought for me by the beautiful and talented Ms. E.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've owned this book for over a year but never made anything from it because it made me nervous. It's a little too serious of a book, written by people who are connected to the history of butchering and preserving meat in a way I'm not. It's visually amazing, and the hard cover is slightly padded, giving the book the feel of a picnic table with a nice table cloth on it. I don't know why any of this matters, but the book intimidated me.

This is the second recipe I've made from the book, and both of them went just fine. Just like a part of me always knew they would.

Plain and Simple Rillons

Look at that title, who could be intimidated by a recipe that starts with the words 'plain and simple'?

Of course, since I'm not a French pig farmer I'd never heard of rillons. Clearly I'm not the only one - they included a definition at the bottom of the page:

Rillons are pieces of pork belly that have been cooked slowly in fat (caramelized) in a covered pot. They are often served at breakfast, or as a side dish or with fruit.

So let me get this straight - take pork belly, already a fatty cut of meat, and cook it, in fat.

Why not?

Pork belly, spiced and cooking in LARD

It's really not bad, if you can get past the reasonable mental block you've built up about cooking things in lard.

The recipe, as with most in this book, is very easy. This is the whole thing.

Plain and simple rillons

Marinating time: 24 hours
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 2 1/4 hours

SERVES 4

2 1/4 pounds fresh pork belly
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon Quatre-épices (see recipe below)
2 cups fresh lard
3 tablespoons sugar

Cut the meat into 2-inch cubes. Place them in a bowl, add the salt and spice, mix well, and let marinate in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Melt the lard in a large pan. Add the pork and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned all over. Lower the heat and simmer gently for about 2 hours, until tender. Stir in the sugar and cook, stirring frequently, until the meat is caramelized.

The rillons can be eaten hot or cold.

From Pork & Sons, page 170

Okay, not so bad. Turns out the Quatre-épices is easy too.

Quatre-épices usually includes four or five spices, but here's a blend that includes all five. The recipe is a suggestion only: these proportions are typical but the spice blend can be varied to suit one's own palate. Put all of the following in a spice mill or blender and process until evenly ground. Store in a cool, dark place: 2 tablespoons (1/8 cup) white peppercorns, 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg; 1/2 teaspoon (about 12) whole cloves; 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon; 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger.

First of all, I would put that in almost anything. To think that this spice combination is a suggestion in a pork book makes my little heart flutter.

I marinated the meat and cooked it slow, just like the book said. I thought this dish would be similar to the confit, but the difference in spices and the difference between cooking in lard and cooking in wine were more significant than I originally thought.

The rillons cooking, mostly done

When they were finished I fished out a few pieces and ate them with peaches, like they suggested.

Rillons and peaches

Later we had some with strawberries -

Also tasty

I don't know, I'm not sure how to describe the rillons. They're good and meaty. Like the confit, I immediately noticed how different it was to be eating chunks of belly meat that were mouthful-sized instead of sliced thin like bacon. The rillons aren't as soft as the meat in the confit, but a couple of small chunks goes a long way. They're actually very good served alongside fresh fruit, a little dry/salty with wet/sweet combo that fits my snacking fetish to a T.

Cold rillons in, that's right, an inch deep puddle of lard

The picture in the book shows a few rillons in a basket, obviously cold. And here's the thing - a couple of them are clearly still coated with a little of the lard. What am I supposed to do, it's not like I won't give it a shot.

Final verdict is that a bit of lard on a cold rillon adds a little lubrication, not to mention some flavor. Fuck it right? Considering my attitude toward drinking, drugs, driving fast, biking in Manhattan, and dating, what's a little lard?

Pass the rillons.