the underbelly

Yesterday someone searched the words “i ate steak tartare and i am nervous” and found their way to my little site. I just want say, hey guy, it’s gonna be okay. Steak tartare is a beautiful thing. It wants to be loved and enjoyed, not feared. Don’t be nervous, little man. Be happy. Then get some more toast points and whip up another batch.

There are many things in life I fear: heights, cockroaches, flying, sharks, gum, centipedes. No food was ever on that list. As a young child I regularly ate raw hamburger meat off the counter. I am not proud to say that I sampled many a cat food. I ate ants off a Los Angeles sidewalk (I was three at the time and curious). I’ve eaten cheap sushi, cafeteria food, fast food, pizza that sat in a fraternity basement for hours. And I have never gotten food poisoning. Well…had never gotten food poisoning. While on assignment for a certain weekly New York publication I was dining at an Upper East Side establishment (I won’t say where on this blog but if you really want to know leave a comment and I will email you) where I ordered the tuna tartare. The first bite I had I thought, that doesn’t taste right. So, having no fear of food, I took another bite. Nope, I thought, definitely doesn’t taste right. Is it the weird avocado accompaniment? I asked myself and took another bite. No, I answered. That is most definitely not fresh fish. And then I finally stopped eating it. 

Cut to the next morning at the gym when i am collapsed on a mat, feeling like my stomach is trying to rip itself from my body. I spent the rest of the day either in bed or vomiting or on the floor when the bed seemed too far to return to. Damn you, Tuna, I thought. Well at least I’ll get some work done…oh wait! My work entirely revolves around writing about food or booze, the two things that caused my stomach to attempt to jump out the window. So I laid there and watched reruns of Dharma and Greg (the stark differences between them are just so hilarious! She’s a free spirit and he’s  a conservative! Pure creative genius!) and sleeping. The next day I woke up and had a deadline to meet. I wrote about food, but without any joy. I let my blog readings pile up. I tried to eat a pretzel and failed. 

The next day faired a little better. I was able to eat a pretzel. 

Two weeks later I have obviously recovered physically but mentally I’m not sure if I’ll ever be the same fearless eater. Sushi still holds no appeal for me and I love sushi like I love, well….sushi. There’s not many things that top my love of sushi. Street carts make me slightly nervous now. I am also hesitant to order steak tartare. And I love steak tartare more than I love sushi – it’s one of those not many things that tops that love. There is hope for the future, though. I was able to order and enjoy a rare burger (post coming) the other day. Don’t worry, my friends. One day I will eat recklessly again. Or I’ll die from salmonella. Either or.

Steak Tartare – one of the many, many bites of the morning 

Check out my posts over on Time Out New York’s Feed Blog: 

Sunday’s AM grand tasting: 

http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/restaurants-bars/2009/10/nycwff-iron-chef-wannabes-battle-it-out-in-the-dry-tasting-tent/

Tom Colicchio’s confit demo:
http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/restaurants-bars/2009/10/nycwff-tom-colicchio—a-cook-who-cooks-and-confits/

Two of my favorite people abandoned me for better things at the end of last month. So in one last effort to bribe them into staying I took them to one of my favorite New York restaurants: Prune. We started with cocktails: an awesome Pimm’s Cup for me, followed by a really fantastic Sidecar that made me want to invest in some shmancy martini glasses so I could make my own. And then we went on to the best part of the meal, the appetizers. 

First up, bone marrow. 

Oh how I love thee, marrow. I tried to explain bone marrow to a friend this past weekend and the best I could do was say that it was “like butter, but better.” I think that really still doesn’t do it justice. Spread on crusty, thick pieces of toast and topped with coarse sea salt and a sprig of parsley, it’s as close to perfection as a humble meal can get. If my new place had an oven, I would be attempting to make it this coming winter. But alas. No oven. Do you think small bones would work in a toaster oven? hmm….I see an upcoming post in the future…or an upcoming visit from the fire department! 

Along with the bone marrow we ordered some nice sardines, which were tasty but a bit pickly for my taste. And we also had an order of the gods of offal: sweetbreads. 

Fried sweetbreads with bacon, capers and brown butter. They’re the small kind so they were thymus glands (right, Papa?) rather than the pancreas. Regardless of what gland they were, they were delicious. So rich and creamy and crisp. They will be what gives me an inevitable case of gout later in life. 

Alas, my friends were wooed by the food but not enough to stay. Sniff. Ah well, at least I still have Prune.

A while back a few friends and I got together for a dinner party. Because we’re adults, damnit, and adults have dinner parties. There were a few differences between this dinner party and one my parents would have. For one, it was a potluck. Secondly, there were no assigned dishes or courses. So we ended up with a hodgepodge of a feast. I made homemade ravioli and pesto, which was quite an ordeal. I own a pasta maker but seem to have misplaced the crank. This leaves me with what can only be seen as a very large metal paper weight until I replace the crank. Anyway, I had all the ingredients and an entire day ahead of me so I decided to go through with the ravioli. This meant rolling the dough out by hand. Sounds fine…hard but fine. Except I don’t own a rolling pin. I do own a muddler though (I have my priorities straight) so that’s what I used. If you value your palms, don’t do what I did. After rolling out small portions of dough as thinly as possible, the palms of my hands were literally bruised. All worth it though, the raviolis were a hit. As were the dumplings (frozen from ….shoot, Tasty Dumpling? One of those dumpling specialists in Chinatown), the “Asian Tacos,” and crepes. But for me, the best dish was the spam sliders made by our host. 

I had never had spam before. It’s meat in a can. And it’s not even refrigerated. That makes me very nervous. Also there was a girl in college who used to just eat it with a spoon straight from the can, which was an image that haunted me. You shouldn’t be able to eat meat from a can with spoon. But our host is a spam fanatic and foodwise I trust her to the end of the earth. She introduced me to chicken feet and duck feet and all sorts of other dim sum delights. 

And she didn’t steer me wrong this time either. The sliders were awesome. Spam is awesome. It’s like a lean version of scrapple. Paired with cheese (American…of course) and sauteed onions, it was salty and fatty and the texture was only slightly off putting. I can’t say that I’ll be cooking up any for myself any time soon – having to slide meat out of a can is still something I can’t get used to. But I won’t turn down a breakfast of spam and eggs or an onigiri stuffed with spamity spam.

I don’t need to eat another burger ever again. I found my burger soulmate. Unfortunately it’s $26. It’s Minetta Tavern’s Black Label Burger, made with a special blend of meat from Pat LaFrieda. 

I came into the restaurant having read extensively about the burger and honestly believing that it was probably overhyped. It was a burger, how awesome could it be? But then it arrived. I ordered it rare, rare, rare. And that’s how it arrived, which is important. I need for a restaurant to respect my order. I know you’re supposed to order a burger medium rare but I like raw meat. The meat was perfectly charred with a wonderful crust. It’s topped with caramelized onions and nothing else–though I did add tomato, lettuce and, gasp, ketchup. While the burger in no way needed any extra flavor, for me a burger is not a burger without ketchup. But let’s talk about the meat. This was meat at its best. It’s been said that this burger is more like a steak than a burger. I disagree. I just think this is what a burger always longed to be and has only now just become. It was fatty and juicy and you could taste the grassy, bloodiness that is what meat should be. I finished it easily though it was a messy ordeal. And I was utterly satisfied afterwards. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I felt this burger’s deliciousness in my heart. It was like a meaty hug from the inside. I’m sorry, I’m getting a little emotional over this. 

I’m now ruined for all other burgers. 

I don’t have a picture of the burger because the lighting in Minetta was so dim. So instead here’s a picture of one of my cats. 

I think it’s Dieter.

Yup. In honor of a good friend of mine leaving New York forever (boo!) to go to school in DC, we all went out to a lovely dim sum meal and then ended it by sharing the unforgettable and slightly rancid experience of eating durian. It’s big. It’s spiky. It’s illegal to eat on the Hong Kong subways. But, hey, anything goes on the streets of New York’s Chinatown (specifically on the corner of Bowery and Grand). So we took the plunge. 

You have to buy an entire durian when you eat it. The man at the stall chops it up for you – which is more like extracting yellowy egg sacks from the spiky pod. Yum. 

If you can’t read the sign it advertises durian as being the “King of the Fruits.” If that’s the truth then “the fruits” have a very, very stinky king. When the guy first started extracted the gooey fruit I couldn’t smell anything unpleasant. But it was a hot, humid day so it didn’t take too long for me to understand exactly why it’s illegal to eat durian in public places in China. It smells not entirely unlike rancid trash with a hint of cheese. It’s tangy and kind of stings the nose. 

There it is. We dug in, tentatively at first. And then more voraciously if you weren’t me. I am sad to say that I do not like durian. I wanted to so badly. And I’m not saying I won’t give it another chance – possibly when frozen because that mellows it out a bit. But in the moment I couldn’t stomach the fruit. It was creamy and at first taste nutty and cheesy but then it finished with a rancid tang. I couldn’t get over that. But one of us loved it and ended up taking the leftovers home with her. I had the pleasure of riding the train with her and the leftovers. It’s not a ride neither I nor the other patrons of the uptown B train we were in will forget any time soon. It is, to put it mildly, pungent.

I’ve been contributing to Eatmedaily.com for the past few weeks. Start reading that blog if you’re not already. It’s a super neat and alternative way of looking at the food world. Anyway, here’s my latest post. It’s about some deadly or dangerous foods out there (including the above dish: Fried bacon cooked up by my fam, photographed by my pops). Check it out.

Cooking with beets is like cooking with blood. It stains hands…shirts…knives…and then your food comes out the same blood red color. When everything is done it’s like there’s been a very small massacre. A tasty, naturally sweet massacre.

And that about sums up tonight’s dinner

photo from Vio 

Via Slashfood and a bunch of other blogs, Coca Cola will be releasing a fizzy milk-based drink in such flavors as Citrus Burst, Peach Mango, Very Berry and Tropical Colada. Oddly enough I was discussing the idea of fizzy milk with some friends while riding back from a lovely wedding in the Catskills on Sunday. It’s like I’m soda psychic. But mostly we were talking about whether or not it was gross. Immediate reaction: yes. Fizzy. Milk. Gross. But then I thought….what about like…a cream soda? Back in college I had my first cream soda down in Lone Pine Tavern (woo Dartmouth). I ordered it out of curiosity and was shockingly pleased. Then the feeling of pleased turned more into a feeling of oh wow this is delicious. Then a day later I found myself craving the oddly fizzy creaminess. So I’m gonna go ahead and say that these things might be darn good. The only drawback I can see is that they can apparently be drunk at room temperature. Now that’s just gross.