Lunch For Two

Surviving the International Chocolate Show

It's getting late and I should be heading off to bed soon if I hope to be in any shape tomorrow morning to take my six-year old to school.  Instead, I am furtively unwrapping a bar of chocolate I purchased yesterday at the International Chocolate Show.  You'd think that after I rode the F train home clutching my stomach post-event, I'd never want to see another morsel of chocolate again.  Ha, that's where you're wrong.

I have an infinite capacity for good chocolate, a cup that never runneth over when chocolate is deposited in it.  Yes, I will make myself sick eating it.  When I lived in San Francisco I worked in the building where Joseph Schmidt truffles were made.  We used to go down and ask for the seconds, poor truffles whose signature Barbie Doll breast shape was somehow flawed.  I could easily eat eight of them in a row.  Then I'd get this funny feeling at the back of my throat and my jaw would tense up.

So I was a shoo in for the Chocolate Show.  I brought my kids along for good measure, knowing there would be plenty of samples to provide the fuel they needed to slog through and overcome occasional moments of whininess.  They had no cause to be whiny (c'mon, oodles of chocolate) other than that they had a bloody big crowd to contend with.  Despite the crowds, it wasn't hard to muscle up to the displays to partake of samples and boy did we partake.

The kids were happy because Mars had a booth and was handing out dark chocolate plain and peanut M&Ms.  I was happy because a triumvirate of artisanal bean-to-bar chocolate-makers was there.  Bean-to-bar simply means that these companies bring their cocoa beans into the U.S. and then roast them, mill them, conch them and whatever else to make me my chocolate bars.  However, it's anything but simple to do this well and it's mostly done by the biggies like Mars and Hershey.  Dagoba, Theo and Amano.  Remember those names and seek out their chocolate.

The founder of Dagoba, Frederick Schilling, was profiled in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago.  He actually sold Dagoba about a year ago, for $17 million, to Artisan Confections (a subsidiary of Hershey that also owns the aforementioned Joseph Schmidt and Scharffen Berger).  Doesn't matter.  They still make great chocolate and Frederick's mom Mary was in the booth at the Chocolate Show to counter my skepticism when I approached with an arched eyebrow.  Theo is out of Seattle and I took a tour of their factory in June.  They have a young chocolatier named Autumn Martin who I believe to be one of the most talented in the US.  At their booth I sampled a juniper infused salted caramel enrobed in dark chocolate.  Oooooh.  Amano was a name I'd heard, but I hadn't yet tried their bars.  They're into the terroir of chocolate and their head, Art Pollard, travels the world seeking out the best cocoa beans with which to make very limited edition bars that evoke their origin.

Just writing about this is making me woozy again.  I was intoxicated when I left and the kids were bouncing off their heads like a couple of Daffy Ducks.  But I'd do it again tomorrow if I could. 

fashion, fashioned from chocolate

Chocolate has recently been found to be a byproduct of beer.  You're scratching your heads.  Just follow this link.

An Ear of Corn By Any Other Name

What was it Winston Churchill said?  "America and England are two nations divided by a common language."  I travel to England often and have found this to be true, but could not, until now, proffer concrete evidence.  Here, in the form of an exchange of emails between my mother and Nigel Slater, is proof of the truth of Churchill's statement.

Dear Mr. Slater,

Corn grows in ears, not heads.  I know the British have a penchant for calling it sweet corn.  In the US, it is simply corn, but then we don't confuse corn with wheat.  I am delighted to find your corn chowder and corn fritter recipes and equally delighted that corn is now available in the UK.  Perhaps you could alert your readers to the idea that the sweetness of corn is due to its freshness.  In summer, we Americans buy it the day it is picked to eat that very day.  The next day corn's sugars begin to turn to starch and it is less flavorful (US spelling in this context).  Modern varieties of corn are super sweet and keep their sweetness, but have less complex and distinctive flavors than the old varieties.  Corn should always be sold in its husk.  Why ever would someone shuck it and sell it on a plastic tray with plastic wrap?  That's the equivalent of peeling a banana to sell on a styrofoam tray covered in plastic.  Nature supplies perfect packaging for both.

Sincerely,
Barbara Ambrose

Dear Barbara,

Thank you for your email.  I am perplexed and a little amused by your comment "now available in the UK."  We have eaten what we call sweetcorn here for hundreds of years.  It has been available in greengrocers and supermarkets since I was a boy.  (I am now in my fifties.)  I first wrote about it over twenty years ago.  The point of my piece this week was to encourage people to eat their corn with the benefit of smoke, whether from the grill or with the inclusion of some smoked ingredient such as bacon or haddock.  (Most people here tend to boil it.)  Here though, we say heads, not ears.  There is no reason for me to call them 'ears' as it is not the term we use here.  That would be like me emailing an American writer and telling them not to use the term 'fava' beans because they are called 'broad' beans here.  We just have different words for the same thing Barbara.  We don't sell it ready-shucked in plastic wrap here.  (I'm surprised, we seem to take any shortcut sometimes even if it means losing the flavour.  I actually saw sliced courgettes (which you call zucchini) for sale the other day!  Who, I wonder, could be too short of time to slice a zucchini?)  Here, corn mostly comes fresh with the husk on.  (Some of the cheaper supermarkets do sell it without.)  I don't think I need to alert my readers about the fact that corn loses its sweetness from the moment of picking because it is something they would almost certainly know.  Unfortunately, sweetcorn has been getting sweeter lately.  over the last decade or so, we have been getting the Supersweet varieties which are like eating sweets (which I think you call candy).  Sadly, they lack the true corn flavour so I tend to buy mine from the farmers market or the greengrocer, partly for the increased freshness and partly because it is easier to find the traditional varieties (which I think you call heirloom) as the big supermarkets tend to mostly stock the Supersweets.  The good news is that I do feel there is a turn towards the older varieties again now, but that sort of progress (Funny how 'progress' means going backwards now!) can be quite slow.  In ten years time I really hope I can say to you that we have delicious, complex flavoured (sweet)corn back everywhere, not just at the farmers market.  But who knows?

Sincerely, and thank you for getting in touch.
Nigel Slater

P.S. The racy and beautiful Jennie Churchill, who was once described as having "more of the panther than of the woman in her look" and who would eventually become Winston's mum, was born at 197 Amity Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.  Despite being a Brooklyn girl, she is credited with the invention of the "Manhattan" cocktail.

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

This is a recipe I've tripped over numerous times in various cookbooks but had not prepared until a couple of weeks ago.  The slow roasting concentrates the flavor of the tomatoes and renders them little puckered, caramelized gems.  They freeze really well, so on the bleakest days of winter I can recapture summer simply by thawing a batch.  Thus far, I've eaten them atop soup, pizza and pasta and alongside steak and roasted chicken. 

After reviewing all the recipes in my cookbooks, I have settled on this one from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors.  Plum tomatoes, because they are meaty and not very juicy, work best.

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

3 pounds plum tomatoes
4 to 6 Tablespoons olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano, thyme, or marjoram
2 garlic cloves, run through a press

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  Lightly oil a large baking sheet that has a lip.  Slice the tomatoes in half lengthwise.  Set them cut side up on the baking sheet, then brush the tops with the oil, using about 2 Tablespoons in all.  Make a paste with the herbs and garlic, and salt and pepper to taste and put about an 1/8 teaspoon on top of each tomato. The roasting will concentrate the flavors of the herbs, garlic and salt as well, so you don't want to overdo it.

Bake, uncovered for 2 hours.  Check after an hour and drizzle a little more oil over the surfaces if they look dry.  The tomatoes are done when they are well shriveled and browned on their undersides.

Multi Soup

Any recipe of mine that causes my six-year-old to announce, unprompted, "why, this is the tastiest soup I've ever had" is worthy of publication.  That's because she is an exceedingly choosy eater and sticks to proteins and a tiny assortment of vegetables and starches.  She liked my soup so much that she also wanted to name it.  It's a very appropriate name so I stuck with it.

The soup I prepared last night utilized a versatile soup base that I came up with a couple of weeks ago after a trip to my local farmers market in Brooklyn.  I froze it and intend to experiment with several "multi soups."

Soup Base

3 leeks, white part only
1 Tablespoon butter
4 cups chicken stock
3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes
3 ears of corn

Cut leeks down center of stalk to within 1/2" of root end and wash their interiors to remove any sand, then slice in 1/8" rounds.  Melt butter over a low flame in a heavy, Le Creuset type pot and add leeks.  Cover the pot and sweat the leeks for 20 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure the leeks don't scorch.  While leeks are sweating, snap the ears of corn in half and standing them on their cut sides, run a knife down their sides to remove the kernels.  Set the kernels aside.  Uncover the pot, add the chicken stock and then, holding the corn cobs over the top of the pot, run the back of a knife down the cobs to extract all the corn milk.  Add the cobs to the pot, bring stock to a boil and then simmer, partially covered, for 10 minutes.  Add potatoes and simmer another 10 minutes.  Add corn kernels and simmer a final 10 minutes.  Remove corn cobs, cool soup base slightly and puree.  Makes about 6 cups of soup base, enough for two different soup recipes that serve 3 to 6.

For last night's soup I used 3 cups of the base and added 3 chicken Gerhard's Sausages (with basil and pine nuts) that I fried up first, 1/2 teaspoon basil, 1 can of rinsed Progresso canellini beans and salt and pepper to taste.  When I served the soup, I drizzled a little extra virgin olive oil on top.

The soup base would also lend itself to a seafood chowder preparation, or any other chowder for that matter.  Try topping it with an assortment of fresh chopped herbs, fried sage leaves or oven roasted tomatoes.  (I tried it with some roasted tomatoes that I made recently and it was delicious.  Maybe I'll publish a recipe for those next.)

Put a Little English On It

Delta Airlines has risen from the ashes and is entreating us to fly with them again.  It can't hurt that they've enlisted the help of chef Todd English to overhaul their in-flight menu offerings.  Every Wednesday from now until November 7th you can sample his food at Delta's SKY360 lounge.  All you have to do is turn up between noon and 2PM, and it's FREE!  So, to all of you trapped working in midtown offices who are, probably right now, pondering your lunch options and, perhaps, deciding between that ragged looking salad or murky mystery soup, I say get thee to SKY360.

SKY360 is located at 101 West 57th Street (at 6th Avenue)

Arugula Salad with Warm Plums and Fancy Ham

Ok, I admit it.  Martha's not so bad after all.

I have avoided using Martha Stewart's recipes for years, accepting as fact that they are not very well written.  I should have been suspicious as this "fact" was almost always imparted to me with a whisper and a sneer.  Maybe it's some sort of boomerang effect:  She behaves badly and her recipes get a bum rap.

But I've been converted.  Big Daddy recently winnowed his cookbook collection and so I was the recipient of both The Martha Stewart Cookbook and The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook.  It's true that whenever Big Daddy has me over for dinner there is invariably a Martha Stewart dish proferred, but I always just fluffed it off to serendipity.  Then I got the cookbooks and they have become part of my hallowed reference collection.  These are the books I turn to when I've come home from the farmers market with several bags of mismatched produce.  I must say that Martha always has a tasty, and usually pretty simple, sounding recipe for at least a few of the things in my bags.   This recipe is one of those that seduced me before I even tasted it.

Arugula Salad with Warm Plums and Fancy Ham

1 pound (about 8) small plums*
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine*
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 small bunch arugula, stems removed, washed and torn in bite-sized pieces
8 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto, serrano ham or speck

Slice the plums in half, and remove the pits.  Transfer the plum halves to a mixing bowl.  Add the salt, pepper and thyme.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the plum halves, cut-sides down, and cook, shaking the skillet often, until the plums release their juices but still hold together, about 10 minutes.  Add the wine and vinegar; cook until the juice thickens slightly, about 10 minutes more.

Arrange the arugula in a mound on a serving platter.  Drape the ham over the arugula.  Spoon the plums and sauce on top, and serve.

*The plum sauce should be a balanced combination of sweet and sour.  If your plums are particularly sour, use a sweeter white wine.

David Lebovitz in NYC!

David Lebovitz, one of our favorite food bloggers (there's a link to the right) and an absolute authority on all things sweet and creamy, will be in New York this Sunday, September 30th to sign books, chit chat and drink Baileys.   The get-together is happening at the City Bakery from 3PM to 4:30PM.  I know we'll be there, along with all his other googley-eyed fans.

The City Bakery is located at 3 West 18th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues), (212) 366-1414

Sunday Morning Sandwich

If, like me, you had a little too much Saturday night, here's a surefire cureall.  It provides the protein and fat one so craves when one's head feels like a tired party balloon.

Sunday Morning Sandwich

1 egg
olive oil for frying egg
3 slices thinly sliced speck, prosciutto or serrano ham
1 Tablespoon mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon honey mustard
freshly ground black pepper
2 slices pumpernickel, or rye, bread

Coat a nonstick frying pan with olive oil and heat over medium flame.  When oil is sizzling, break egg into pan and fry until brown on underside.  While egg fries, blend mayonnaise and honey mustard in a small bowl.  Toast bread.  Flip egg and lay ham in pan next to egg.  Cook for about 2 minutes, or until the ham is warmed through.  Slather mayo/mustard mixture on both sides of the toast and lay the ham and egg on toast.  Season with pepper and eat.

Bluefish Is Not Yucky

It's actually delicious.  A long time ago, my first husband went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to work on a movie shoot.  I'd speak to him every evening to get the details of his day which always included a rundown of his dinner menu.  Almost always he'd tell me that he'd had bluefish.  Invisible to him on my end of the phone line, I'd wrinkle my nose.  I thought bluefish was an oily, "fishy" fish and therefore yucky.  My husband wasn't eating red meat at the time and when he'd ask the waitress at the local cafe what the fish special was for the day, her response was always bluefish.  "Again?," he'd ask.  "Yup, the bluefish are runnin'."

I never understood what that meant, but I thought it was quite evocative: The bluefish are running.  From what I can gather it refers to the fish's migratory pattern, up the Atlantic Coast in the spring and back down in the fall.  It could also refer to its predatory nature.  Bluefish are voracious eaters and will make short work of any fish smaller than themselves, swimming up from behind and chomping their bodies clean off from their heads. 

I had lunch at Diner in Williamsburg a few weeks ago and my mom ordered the bluefish special.  I picked off her plate and was shocked to discover that bluefish is really quite tasty, especially when it's exquisitely fresh as it is now.  Local bluefish should still be available in New York fish markets for a little while longer and I urge you to try it.  ( I will say, however, that because its not a selective eater, bluefish can be high in toxins ranging from PCBs to mercury.)  The following is a recipe I made up, inspired by the dish I tried at Diner.

Bluefish with Warm Corn Relish

6 smallish bluefish fillets, about 1 pound
corn flour for dredging
butter and oil for frying
3 slices good quality smoked bacon
1 1/3 cups sweet corn (2 ears of corn)
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup diced chives

Fry bacon over medium heat in a large, cast iron if you have it, pan until crispy.  Set aside on paper towels.  In bacon fat remaining in pan, fry tomatoes until they start to soften and are starting to brown in spots.  Add corn to pan and fry for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often.  Place corn and tomatoes in a medium sized bowl, crumble bacon in and add chives.  Stir relish and set aside.

To the same pan, add a teaspoon of butter and a teaspoon of oil and turn up flame to medium high.  Cut fillets in half, if large, and dredge in corn flour.  Place fillets in pan skin side down and fry for 3 to 4 minutes, flip when skin is browned and fry on flesh side for 2 to 3 minutes, adding more fat to the pan if necessary.  Do the dredging and frying in batches: You don't want to crowd the fillets while they are frying.  Serve with wedges of lemon.

Seven Days in Paris