Banana's Unholy Union

I’m a big fan of grilled cheese. Hell, I’m a big fan of just about anything that can be put between two pieces of bread, kissed with a little butter and heated to crispy perfection in a hot pan. There is something comforting about a tasty filling folded between two pieces of grilled bread that brings me back to a simpler time in my life.
So I was sitting at home one morning and wasn’t really in a breakfast mood…I’m usually never in a breakfast mood (years of wrestling screwing up my brain). Anyway, protein seemed like the way to go and peanut butter seemed like it should be my protein of choice. I love peanut butter, ever since I was a little kid. But not Skippy or Jif or any of that processed crap. I like Smucker’s, all natural peanut butter; the kind you have to stir with a knife to incorporate the oil that rests on top into the ground peanuts themselves to actually create the peanut butter. Now, the do-it-yourself thing isn’t for everyone and maybe that’s what turns some people off; but I’d rather stir my peanut butter for a minute the first time I open the jar rather than be disappointed every time I open my jar because my peanut butter tastes like peanut flavoured sugar. Anyway, that’s what my mom used to make her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with: Smucker’s Peanut Butter and Goya Guava Jelly on whole wheat bread. The guava jelly brings the sandwich to a whole new level and it has a sweetness and unctuousness that regular old grape jelly could never replicate. It doesn’t taste like sugar between bread, like you may be used to, but the flavour of real peanuts and guava is unmatched.
To that end, I got some bread out of the fridge, grabbed the jar of peanut butter and the jelly. Halfway to the kitchen table I realized I needed some potassium, cause ya’know, its good for ya. Grabbing the banana made me think of the Nutella and banana crêpes I made for my step-father a few weeks back. I was never a fan of the Nutella and banana crêpe when I would go to this awesome little crêpe place on St. Mark’s with this former model friend of mine. Having spent time in Europe, she learned to love Nutella and since she’s moved away from New York I’ve given Nutella a second chance (absence makes the heart grow fonder, eh?).
So there I am; sitting at the kitchen table with two pieces of whole wheat bread, all natural peanut butter, jelly, Nutella and a banana; and it hits me…grill! Assembling my sandwich, my homage not only to Elvis, but also to my Cuban grandmother and to snooty Europeans everywhere, I had to smile. The gooey mess is only enhanced by the banana and the guava jelly makes this decadent amalgam something that should not be missed. And just for the record, I feel a little silly including a recipe. It’s a sandwich, not a Muffaletta. And remember you’re not melting any cheese here; you’re just aiming to brown the bread a bit and slightly warm the filling.

Banana’s Unholy Union

2 Slices Whole Wheat Bread
All Natural Peanut Butter, preferably Smucker’s
Guava Jelly
Nutella
1 Banana, cut into ½ inch slices
1/2 oz. Unsalted Butter

Spread peanut butter on one piece of bread, then spread Nutella on the other piece. On the piece that you have spread the Nutella, spread with the jelly (the Nutella sticks to the bread a little easier and its easier to smooth the jelly over it than it is to smooth over peanut butter) as well. On the other piece, arrange the banana slices so that they nearly touch and cover the entire piece of bread. Press pieces of bread together and melt butter in a sauté pan. When hot, press sandwich into pan and cook until slightly browned, then flip and brown other side. Remove from pan, cut in half and serve.

Tastes Like Spring

Last Monday, I cooked dinner for some friends of mine. It’s been a while since I’ve seen these beautiful ladies, so I was happy enough just to be there; let alone working on something new. Sitting on the train, I thought to myself (and sent the subsequent text message), “I feel like scallops.” The responses told me that scallops were the way to go, and every guy out there knows better than to promise a woman, let alone two, scallops and show up with krill. So as my train hurtled towards Union Square, I racked my brain as to what I was going to pair my scallops with. I still had no idea what I was going to do about a main course, but it was going to seven, I had two hungry ladies waiting and hadn’t even looked at a scallop.
The day was warm and I was thinking about Spring…and I was also thinking about a dish I’d had with a grilled quail served over a crunchy salad. My only lament was that seeing as it was quail and I had to lift out the tiny bones during my meal. I wondered if I could recreate the same dish, but with seafood and a nice contrast between the tart crunch of the salad and the sweet softness of the scallops. I got to Whole Foods and checked out the scallop situation. They didn’t have any Diver Scallops, but had some nice Bay Scallops that even though they looked a little small for my liking, still looked fresh. I had a lot of fun while I pointed at individual mollusks for the fishmonger to pick out for me. At one point, I turned around to look at the two people waiting on line behind me; they both had the same look on their face: “who is this asshole with the knives on his back?” I finished up, got the rest of my things (I decided on Carbonara as our main course, by the way) and went to make dinner. I made the scallops, I put them in front of my two lady-friends and waited. They both dug in, and declared it delicious, and then one of them took another bite, closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair; she paused and then she said, “mmm, tastes like Spring.”

Pan-Seared Sea Scallops, with a Bitter Orange Sauce served over a salad of Cucumber, Red Onion, Fennel & Crispy Potatoes

12 Diver Scallops
1 Medium Cucumber
1 Medium Red Onion
1 Bulb Fennel, fronds reserved
2 Medium Red Bliss Potatoes
4 oz. Wheatberry
4 oz. Barley
1 oz. White Wine
4 oz. Orange Juice
4 oz. Butter
Red Wine Vinegar
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper, to taste
Sugar, to taste

Small dice cucumber, red onion, fennel and combine with the wheatberry and barley to form the salad. Scrub potatoes and cut them into medium dice. Par boil potatoes, drain and dry them on a sheet tray. Pour two ounces of oil in a sauté pan and cook potatoes over medium-high heat until golden brown, reserve separate from salad.
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a clean sauté pan. Season scallops with salt and pepper and place in hot pan. Sear scallops on both sides until golden brown, then place pan in oven and roast scallops for approximately seven minutes, or until cooked through. Remove scallops from pan and allow to rest on a plate. Deglaze pan with white wine, then pour in orange juice. Season with salt and sugar and allow to reduce until just before nappe.
While sauce reduces, season salad with salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil to taste; salad should be sweet and tart. Spoon salad into a small bowl and scatter potatoes around outer rim. Place scallops on top of salad and spoon sauce over them. Garnish with a fennel frond and serve.
Serves four.

Beware, the Little Birds…

You can file this under the category of: Kitchen Stories My Buddies Told Me.
As you know, I have a love and interest in all foods…if it can be cooked (or in some cases, not cooked), I will eat it. I don’t think we need to rehash the bull penis story or the time I ate crickets and grasshoppers (oh yeah, they’re different), but I’ve been trying to get my hands on some Ortolan, to no avail. If you’re curious, the Ortolan Bunting is a very small bird in the Finch family, primarily found in Europe and Western Asia. Now when I say very small, I mean they’re tiny and as legend would have it can be eaten whole…bones and all. Sadly, they are now illegal to sell, but not to consume, in most parts of Europe; and I am met with mostly shock and horror in my inquiries around New York City. So a couple weeks back, I was talking to this Chef about Ortolan’s and he told me this story.
His buddy, let’s call him Matty, is taking some time away from the kitchen and decides to head out to Italy to spend time at the nicely appointed Tuscan Villa of a “Countess,” overlooking the Tyrrhenian (cough, Mediterranean) Sea. Now, Matty’s a bit of a tough guy, maybe a little rough around the edges, thick Boston accent, tries to never miss “the Sawx;” the kind of guy who brings Southie to you, but I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call him uncouth. Anyway, Matty’s got this hookup at the Villa and nobody knows how he pulled it off, but he’s going to see the Countess. Incidentally, word is he needed to take some time off; changing jobs, sleeping with his buddy’s wife, lost out on those choice Green Monster seats at Fenway, hiding from the mob; all were plausible explanations.
So Matty gets to the Villa and spends a couple days with the Countess, just the two of them and her servants or whatever, eating and drinking and; to hear him tell it; going at it like Spider Monkey’s. Although word on the street is that any girl who would willingly sleep with Matty has lost more than her self-respect. I’m off topic. Back to the story at hand.
The French would call it a Salon, a gathering of like-minded people eating and drinking and resting and eating and drinking some more. Matty probably called it a “rager” and got a pat on the head from the Countess. Well, whatever it was, the she was having one at end of the week. The day of the Salon, Matty and the Countess slept in and then spent the early afternoon lounging in the Tuscan countryside before making their way back to the Villa to rest before things got out of hand.
Around late afternoon, the Salon begins and course after course is paraded out for Matty, the Countess and her guests. There are cheeses and Prosciutto Toscano and White Truffles and Osso Buco and crispy-fatty ducks and a suckling pig and steaming breads and panna cotta’s and custards and something on fire in the corner and pig, but this one is stuffed with deliciousness and more and more and more.
Later in the evening, the servants come out with trays laden with small golden-brown lumps. Matty, who has been eating and drinking most of the day is feeling no pain and sets his sights upon an unsuspecting servant toting a tray. He walks over and surveys the tray. Sitting on it are tiny bird carcasses, tiny to the point of making a Cornish Hen look like a Christmas Goose. Matty asks what they are, but due to Italian and Boston-Southie-English being in no way similar; some things are probably lost in translation. All he is able to understand is something that sounds like, “fino” or “fico,” and that was good enough for him. He reached for a small glistening bird and just as he did, the Countess swept past him like an apparition and whispered to him, “beware of the little birds, they can be a bit much for some people.” Matty turned to her and simply said, or slurred, “K’mwon!” as she floated away to talk to one of her lounging guests.
He put the tiny bird in his mouth and bit down, a little surprised by the bones still inside; but he ate the whole thing and washed it down with a half a glass of wine. He wandered around some more, but his mind kept coming back to those delicious tiny birds and eventually he came back to the table where they were and ate a second and then a third and then a forth…and then he lost count. Winded from his gastronomic sprint, he slumped down in a chair nursing a bottle of wine to ease the pain in his swollen throat. The Salon wore on and things slipped into a kind of grey area for Matty and he found himself wandering the upper floors of the Villa. He stumbled from room to room, toting his wine bottle like a five year-old would a lunchbox, and saw many party goers in various stages of coital activity.
A short time later, tired of making the upper floors his own personal National Geographic Channel, he endeavored to go back downstairs…but something was wrong. It didn’t take long for him to know what that telltale warm sensation radiating from the pit of his stomach meant. He made his way to the balcony to get some fresh air, leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette and finished his bottle of wine. “K’mwon, Matty, ya beddah den dis. Keep it tagedah,” he told himself. He took a couple of long deep drags and started to feel a little bit better. He closed his eyes and tried to fight it, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Then he heard the voice of the Countess from somewhere behind him and thought to himself, oh please no. He felt the cigarette drop from his hand and started lurching forward until he made his way to the edge of the balcony. Leaning over the edge, his vision blurry, his mouth acrid, he heard the Countesses footsteps behind him; and she reached him just as he erupted like Vesuvius onto the few terrified party-goers who had decided to take their cigarettes on the patio. Like a clown car, it just kept coming and coming until Matty collapsed in a heap, practically convulsing. He wanted to speak, but there were little bits of bone stuck to his tongue. Through his watery eyes, he could see the Countess was still standing next to him. He looked up at her, and she smiled. Then she bent over and patted him on the head and said, “I told you to be careful of the little birds…”

Chocolate by the Rip-Off Artist

This originally appeared as a review in Yelp, and while I suppose I could use the actual name of the (and I use the term in the loosest possible sense) restaurant; since you could just get on Yelp and look through my reviews; it’s probably just easier if we go with an alias.
This story takes place over a year ago when I was still dating “that girl everyone hated,” we’ll call her: Cindy. Seriously, not a single one of my friends liked her; but she was hot and she was tiny and I’ve been known to be somewhat superficial from time to time, so that was fine with me.
Anyway, this takes place when she and I went to Ben Miller, Chocolate by the Curly Haired Rip-Off Artist. We went twice and the second time was even worse.
So the first time around, Cindy and I went in shortly after they’d first opened their Union Square location. We waited to talk to a hostess for about five minutes and then were told if we wanted a table, we were looking at about a twenty minute wait. We figured, okay fine; your restaurant just opened, you serve all things chocolaty, its nice outside, there are tons of couples here, my girlfriend and I will go smoke a butt and make fun of skateboarding hippies in Union Square Park for a little while.
When we got back to the restaurant and were finally seated Cindy and I sat there taking in the scene and staring at the menu...the full menu and we both decided on some drinks...ones with alcohol in them. The only problem, our waiter informed us, was the Curly Haired Rip-Off Artist hadn't been given his liquor license yet (maybe the kind of thing he'd want to put on his menu or notify people of when the walk in the door); so our options were smoothies or non-alcoholic beverages. Yeah, that’s what I want when I come to a restaurant looking for chocolate…is a smoothie! So then she and I decide, okay we’re not total alcoholics, we don’t need to have drinks to have a good time; we'll just split the chocolate fondue. Problem #2, our waiter informs us, “actually, we don't have the stuff to make our chocolate fondue yet.” Excuse me? You don’t have the stuff to make chocolate fondue? Forgive me for asking a seemingly obvious question but there is chocolate as far as the eye can see; and beyond that all you need is a bowl above pot of boiling water, and something to keep it warm. Our waiter shrugged at me and it was at that point Cindy and I decided to leave.
We went back several months later, after we’d broken up and in fairly quick succession gotten back together; much to the respective joy and chagrin of all my friends. We were going to see a movie at the Union Square Stadium 14 and had about an hour to kill, maybe a little more. We walked across the street and stood outside for a minute, the two of us looking at each other with the unsaid, “remember what happened here the last time,” passing between us. But we checked our watches and figured we had plenty of time to get a drink and share some fondue, right? Well, maybe not. We waited about fifteen minutes for a table, were seated and didn't even SEE our waiter for at least another ten minutes. Cindy and I decided we’d order exactly what we attempted to order our first time around: a Sergeant Peppermint Chocolate Martini for me, a Falling in Love Martini for her (we were so cute) and a Chocolate Fondue to share. Then we sat around and waited for our waiter…and waited and waited. When he finally showed up, and we ordered our drinks...with alcohol in them this time…and our chocolate fondue; it was at least twenty minutes before we got our drinks (if you're keeping score at home that's forty-five minutes gone when we originally had about an hour and change to spare and nothing to show for it but a drink we hadn't even started).
We inquired as to the status of our chocolate fondue, considering it doesn't take all that long to melt some chocolate in some milk or cream or whatever and cut up some fruit. He told us he'd check and by “check” he must’ve meant stand by the kitchen door and wait until it was ready because about ten minutes later, with our movie starting in another ten minutes, our fondue finally showed up. We tasted our Chocolate Fondue…the Chocolate Fondue we had waited months to taste and how do I put this besides simply saying that it sucked and we left? Ah yes, our Chocolate Fondue was more tasteless than your friend of five years waiting less than 24 hours before he jumps into bed with the girl who’s just broken your heart.
So Cindy and I dropped some money on the table and walked across the street to the theatre. Oh, and because it took so long for us to get our drinks and awful food we got to the movie after the previews had already started and had to sit on the stairs.