Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Oh Sweet, Corn!


When I was growing up, I used to spend my Summer’s in Massachusetts with my dad and because my dad wasn’t one to have his son sitting around the house all day reading books (which was okay for him, but hell, he’d been putting up with snotty college students unable to conjugate their verbs for the previous nine months), it fell on me to get a job. Now, to say I was a lazy little kid might be going a bit too far; but I was definitely a fat little kid. I liked my books, I liked my Devil Dogs, I liked my Tastykakes, I liked hot dogs with ketchup on them and ice cream sundaes from Friendly’s piled high with Reece’s Peanutbutter Cups, hot fudge, peanut butter and whipped cream…yeah, I was a fatty! Anyway, I wasn’t really into things like running around outside, or the joys of salad, and I definitely wasn’t psyched when my dad told me I’d be spending my almost my Summer selling corn by a roadside.
I brought home so much corn that Summer, by dad and step-mom were sick of it by early August and asked my neighbors (my bosses) nicely please stop sending me home with as many ears of corn as my fat little arms could carry…it didn’t work. Looking back, I’m glad they didn’t listen; because I now have an appreciation for what truly good corn is supposed to taste like. And every time I have a really good ear of corn, I remember those Summer’s in Hadley, Massachusetts selling ears of corn by the dozen. Good corn, really damn good corn, can be pulled off the stalk and eaten raw right there in the field; sweet and delicious, with sticky corn-milk running down your chin.
But I digress. A couple weeks ago, after the fun I had with the garlic scapes, I came across an article in the New York Times by Martha Rose Shulman about corn soup, or more pointedly, about fresh corn and finding inventive things to do with it when its in season. Her corn soup recipe was good, but not exactly what I was looking for. She suggested pureeing the corn along with the other ingredients and then adding a small amount of fresh corn to the finished product. My soup varies slightly with the addition of some roasted jalapeno for heat and a lot more corn, turning her soup into slightly more of a stew. But she did make a corn stock with the cobs, which I liked because it added extra corn flavour to the tasty soup. I had to employ a little System D (if you’re not sure, wait and I’ll fill you in) when making my soup because the Robot Coupe and VitaPrep from the restaurant had been spirited away by a good friend who needed it very much.

Incidentally, she owes me after I found the parts to the Robot Coupe in a Sky Vodka box, but that’s also a story for another day. And I’ve simplified this recipe guessing you’ve got a blender at home. So this soup recipe is basically Shulman’s with the addition of some fire-roasted jalapeno for spice and not as much corn pureed into the soup mix. And if I could just add, that when it was all said and done the verdict on the soup was, “you’re the man!” so, ya’know, maybe I know what I’m doing here.

Spicy Corn Soup

For the stock:
The cobs from 3 large ears corn
1 small onion, quartered
1/2 pound carrots, sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 quarts water
Salt to taste

For the soup:
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 small or 1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped
Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste
Kernels from 2 ears corn
1 large jalapeno, fire roasted

For garnish:
Kernels from 2 ears of corn

Make the stock: Combine the corn cobs, quartered onion, carrots, garlic and water in a large soup pot, and bring to a boil. Season with a small amount of salt (you will be reducing this broth, so don’t salt fully at this point). Reduce the heat, cover and simmer one hour. Strain and return to the pot. Bring to a boil, and reduce to 5 cups. (There are 4 cups in a quart, so you’re basically looking to reduce your broth almost by half). Taste and adjust seasoning.
Fire-roast your jalapeno while the broth is reducing, so you can slice it and add it to your soup items.
Heat the oil in a heavy soup pot, and add the onion and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes, and add the corn kernels and jalapeno. Cook gently for about three minutes, stirring, and add the stock. Bring to a simmer, cover and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.
Transfer to a blender in 1 to 1 1/2-cup batches, taking care to cover the top with a towel to avoid hot splashes, and blend the soup until smooth. Put through a medium strainer, pressing the soup through with the bottom of a ladle or with a spatula, and return to the pot and add the remaining raw kernels. Heat through, taste and adjust seasonings.
Ladle in stew, and serve.
Yield: Serves four, or about one quart.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Jowls, Scapes & Crafty Farmers


Last Friday I walked over to the Union Square Greenmarket to clear my head from the countless hours I spend in the restaurant, poke around and possibly pick up some goodies to play around with. I did a quick walk-through, turning North through the park winding my way past the various purveyors and farmers selling their fare and trying to undercut each other while still trying to turn a profit: on this side, Kirby Cucumbers $2.60/lb; down the row from him, Kirby Cucumbers $2.25/lb; and around the corner Kirby’s for a scant $2/lb. My plan was to walk down the Blue Water Grill aisle that runs parallel with Union Square West and then turn down the 17th Street aisle, continuing down to the end of the market.
Most of what I saw was your standard farm fare for mid-July: peaches, cherries, a few berries, corn, the aforementioned Kirby’s, and one vender brashly selling tomatoes…next week maybe (the Rutgers and Ramapo varieties both taking nearly 80 days to reach maturation. Not to mention all the rain from June could lead to a late blight which could wipe out crops across the state. Anyway...). Then there were the few expected surprises such as garlic scapes, some small Summer squashes and herbs of all kinds; Licorice-Basil, anyone…?
As I walked from stall-to-stall and chatted with the farmers, a thought popped into my head: showing up at the Greenmarket in your whites is just ridiculously pretentious. Most people would probably think you looked silly any other chefs would probably curse you under their breath and the farmers don’t produce enough crop to start acting like “purveyors,” supplying restaurants with pounds upon pounds of garlic scapes or culantro to have them falling all over anyone wearing a chefs coat.
Anyway, I didn’t see anyone being pretentious and continued poking around, practically laughing in the face of one farmer who tried to sell me garlic scapes for $8/lb. These might be salt of the earth people, or at least saltier than I am being a cityboy and all, but they’re still business men & women at the end of the day. Two Friday’s ago a buddy of bought garlic scapes at the Greenmarket for $2/lb, last week a magazine apparently published an article (that I’m still trying to locate, by the way) about the “hottest chefs” using garlic scapes at the “hottest restaurants.” And by this Friday, the price had risen by $6/lb, which if my high school math is right, is about a 300% increase in price! Instead of laughing at him, I moved on and found a guy selling tightly spiraled scapes in square pint containers that seemed to weight around ¾ of a pound, for $3 each. I also picked up some of the aforementioned Licorice-Basil, and a small pot of cherry peppers and culantro, cilantro’s more potent Mexican cousin. Then the piece de resistance: a beautiful 2lb piece of Pork Jowl.

I practically skipped back to the kitchen.
So what the hell was I going to do with this stuff? I decided to give the plants some water, bias cut the scapes for something…and then smoke and braise the jowl for empanadas. I set up my smoker

and popped the jowl inside. Then I got my braising liquid going, deciding to first reduce it and then add beer before throwing in the jowl. An hour and a half later, I pulled the jowl out of the smoker

and slid into the water, covering it with beer. Then into the oven it went. When I took the pot out, the jowl was practically falling apart…and my jowls were trembling with anticipation. I pulled a small piece off and popped it in my mouth, my cares and worries melting away as the meat melted in my mouth.
Once the jowl had cooled, I pulled the skin off for cracklins, cut the meat into small pieces and tossed it in a sauté pan with my previously cut garlic scapes. Once crispy, the steaming filling went into my empanada dough and the whole thing went into the oven. My reviews were good. My favourite local drunks and my favourite local drinkery raved about them. My bartender buddy around the corner was less kind, but appreciated the free food.
Since then, the remaining garlic scapes took a trip to my mom’s place in Jersey, then came back to the City with me and are currently going to waste in my fridge…and I’m hating myself a little bit because of that. Hopefully tonight I can do something with them before they turn…I’m a little garlic scaped out at this point, so maybe pickled garlic scapes? We shall see.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Explosions of Beef on the 4th of July…

So it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Over a month, goddamn! Well, I’ve been a busy boy (working on some semi-Top Secret stuff); a very busy boy. How busy you ask? Well, I’ve worked thirty-three of the last thirty-four days…THIRTY-THREE out of THIRTY-FOUR; even as I sit here writing this, I do it from work. To that end, you know what pisses me off to no end? People who can’t perform simple tasks and people who complain about how busy they are, when in all actuality, they have no idea what it means to actually be “busy.”
Maybe I’m taking myself too seriously. Maybe I’m just tired because I’ve been working so damn much. I find myself snapping at people and find that my already somewhat short fuse, has gotten even shorter. Either way, I think I’ve got good reason to want to, “put a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species…to open dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I’d never see…I wanted to breath smoke.”
Let me preface this next statement with something a new friend of mine told me yesterday, “stop being such a burger snob, go to Western Beef and cook some burgers,” now I let you decide whether he’s right or I’m right.
Every year for Independence Day, for maybe the past four years, I’ve gone to a buddy’s place and cooked burgers and wings and whatnot before everyone goes up to his roof and watches the fireworks show in the East River. As my palate has changed and my knowledge has grown, I’ve gotten (shall we say) “fancier,” and tried to be more cognizant of things like: the freshness of my ingredients, the quality of my meat and above all giving the people there an experience they won’t soon forget. Fireworks are nice to look at, but people remember when you make them a Pork and Beef Burger, stuffed with Gorgonzola and Bacon.
As I’ve become more in tune with what I put in my body and what I put into other people’s bodies, I’ve started steering myself away from things like pre-packaged ground beef in grocery stores and prefer to instead buy freshly ground meat; preferably at a place where I can watch a guy in a blood stained apron grind it right before my eyes. Why, you ask? Well, because pre-packaged ground beef gets ground in a meat processing plant in god-knows-where and a single package of beef at a supermarket might contain meat from approximately thirty different cows…if you’re lucky. Why is this a big deal? Well, because in addition to the nasty bits from two dozen cows your package might also contain some really not-so-nice things like: “Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus.” The biggest danger is E. coli, and this is directly from the USDA website:

E. coli O157:H7 can colonize in the intestines of animals, which could contaminate muscle meat at slaughter.
O157:H7 is a strain of E. coli that produces large quantities of a potent toxin that forms in the intestine and causes severe damage to the lining of the intestine. The disease produced by the bacteria is called Hemorrhagic Colitis.


So freshly ground beef might cost a little more, but I have the added benefit of not pissing out my ass from eating shitty beef.

Whew, that was a lot!
So I asked my buddy to drop by Ottomanelli’s, on Bleecker, and have them grind 2 ½ pounds of beef brisket and 1 ½ pounds of chuck steak. I love the Ottomanelli’s guys, they’re super friendly and they always take care of me. Seeing as I wasn’t able to take Thursday or Friday off, and knew that I’d be working today, I asked my buddy to do me one favour…go to Ottomanelli’s and pick up the aforementioned quantities of beef. That’s it, one favour that did not involve the movement of Heaven or Earth. I even offered to call ahead and let them know he would be coming as my proxy. Wednesday, after my e-mail, I started to receive the first bit of blow back: questions about price and the exact location of Ottomanelli’s. Then, all day Thursday goes by, sun rises, sun sets and he hasn’t picked up the meat.

Him: “Why can’t we just use stuff from the supermarket?”
Me: “Because it tastes like shit and has the potential to make you sick.”
Him: “C’mon, can’t be that bad.”
Me: “I’m not risking getting people sick with my reputation on the line. Go to Ottomanelli’s.”

Friday rolls around, sun rises, sun gets high in the sky and there is still massive resistance to picking up meat that won’t make everyone sick. Mind you, by this point I have spent approximately 22 hours inside a restaurant and my patience in the face of this resistance is beginning to seriously wane. I update my facebook status, now full of visceral hatred (five of my friends agree with me, by the way), but like a fool, hold out hope. Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel after all. I am informed there is a problem with his phone and he will be driving into the City to have it looked at; perhaps the meat can be picked up on the drive? This seems reasonable, considering google Maps tells me it’s only 3.9 miles from his place to Ottomanelli’s. I take a deep breath and smile. Calling Ottomanelli’s, for the fourth time in two days to let them know someone is coming by to pick up the meat I have requested. Things; however, take a turn for the worst when I find myself on the phone with him; standing in the bathroom, my head resting against the wall, my eyes closed, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of my nose; resisting the urge to throttle any and everything within reach; as he explains he’s saddened by the present condition of his phone and was unable to make it to Ottomanelli’s. I am saddened by the sheer laziness of a person who can’t undertake a simple fucking task such as picking up four pounds of ground meat, when they have seemingly done NOTHING for the past two days.
I make one final attempt this morning, as I stand in front of the stove, the hood-vents whirring above me, tongs in my hand and a red bell pepper popping, sizzling and whistling at me as the flames lick its surface. I text the address of an Italian butcher shop in downtown Brooklyn, perhaps the meat can be picked up there? “You don’t even need to leave Brooklyn,” I not-so-jokingly add. My phone rings with, first a sob story about the phone (which seems to be working well enough to place phone calls), followed immediately by news that a mutual friend has just arrived from Spain and then more resistance, with a compromise offered in the form of a “butcher shop” in his neighborhood where the meat can “probably” be picked up. I quickly think to myself, “I don’t remember ever seeing a butcher around there, I’m not even sure they’ll have brisket or if they’re even open today; and furthermore my buddy wouldn’t know an actual butcher shop if it sat on his face! And any place he is calling a butcher is probably a shitty-ass deli. Just because they have a meat slicer doesn’t make them a butcher.” I close my phone, not-so-quietly cursing his name, and go back to roasting my pepper. My phone rings again, but this time I am an in the middle slicing a pepper I roasted yesterday into a fine julienne, in preparation for folding said pepper into my Roasted Red Pepper Mayonnaise; not to mention I am in no mood to talk on the phone.

So am I a burger snob or is my buddy a lazy douchebag who can’t perform a single task asked of him? Personally, I think I’ve got every right to be pissed off.