October 2012

My father was the sole bastion of masculinity in our family. Despite a powerhouse wife and three headstrong daughters, he managed to hold his own witthout being the least bit tyrannical. A relentless tease, he could often convert an estrogen meltdown into a laughing fit. (Though occasionally, I'll admit, it did backfire.) He never expected to be waited on but, with all those women around, he didn't spend much time in the kitchen. In fact, I don't think he ever made anything more complicated than toast. He wasn't picky, though. Pretty much anything you served him, he ate with gratitude. There was just one thing he couldn't stomach: lumps. He balked at cream of wheat. Especially if you forgot to stir and it formed those mealy lumps. He would take a tentative bite and then, quite literally, gag. We all found this hysterical. I only saw it happen a few times, but the memory is vivid. Forty years later, it came to mind as I made a big batch of tapioca pudding. Perhaps not quite my dad's idea of a celebratory dish but I'll eat it for him today, on what would have been his 88th birthday.
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Did you know that October has been rechristened Goatober? As part of Heritage Foods' "No Goat Left Behind" program, the month is now officially dedicated to learning about, loving and, yes, eating these wonderful animals. If you love goat cheese but are appalled by the idea of eating goat meat, I highly recommend you watch this excellent video and get educated about how the world of dairy works. Then get out and eat some delicious, nutritious goat! If you live in New York City, there are 53 participating restaurants that will be putting this undervalued meat on their tables this month (and hopefully on an ongoing basis), including Minetta Tavern, Colicchio and Sons, Momofuku Noodle Bar, Fette Sau, Gran Electrica and Parish Hall. And now, without further ado, some links for you to peruse. I'm having a couple of wisdom teeth yanked today and plan to use that as an excuse to put my feet up in front of the fire and read, snooze and surf the web to my heart's content. I hope you'll do the same (minus the sore jaw, of course).
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The seemingly endless zucchini jokes reached their zenith about a month ago. (When do country folks lock their car doors? In August, for fear someone might slip a bag of zucchini in there.) Gardens were overrun with the stuff and guests wielded big lumpy specimens the size of baseball bats as "hostess gifts." Talk abounded of zucchini bread, zucchini carpaccio, zucchini gazpacho, zucchini pickles, fried zucchini sticks...you get the idea. This chatter has died down, and yet I have only just pulled the last few summer squash from my garden. If you, too, are still searching for quick and delicious ways to dispense with a surfeit of this green goodness, look no further than these crispy, gooey, mint-spiked fritters. Bonus: they can even be frozen for future enjoyment, when summer is just a twinkle in your eye.
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If I lived near the sea, I'd be tempted to cure salmon the way Scandinavian fishermen did in the Middle Ages, by salting it lightly and burying it in the sand above the high-tide line until it was pleasantly fermented. Thus gravlax—from grav, which means "grave," and lax, which means "salmon." The fermented kind is undoubtedly staging its comeback (along with kombucha and kimchi and every other funky thing), but if you're lacking a piece of beachfront property, you can always bury your salmon in a dry marinade of salt, sugar, spices and fresh dill for a few days. The salmon cures by osmosis, and the moisture turns the dry cure into a highly concentrated brine. This method works for most fatty fish, but salmon is the traditional favorite. It has a mild, sweet flavor and a velvety, unctuous mouthfeel that goes nicely with icy cold vodka and heated conversation.

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The trickle-down effect—that notion that high culture eventually makes its way to the masses—is news to none of us, and we've also seen the innovations of the street appropriated by the upper echelons. (The high-low mix is basically something of a cliché at this point.) So it will come as no suprise to you that I've recently been experimenting at home with a phenomenon that originated in the most rarefied kitchens. I've witnessed how even highly creative chefs shamelessly borrow from each other, so I'm not worried that you'll find me pathetically derivative. Take, for instance, that frozen foie gras that David Chang shaves over lychees and pine nuts at Momofuku Ko. Before that, René Redzepi at Noma in Copenhagen was shaving frozen sea urchin over a dish of tiny shrimp and foraged beach mustard. I believe Redzepi was the one who started this whole phenomenon of powders and dusts, serving up reindeer lichen dusted with mushroom powder, and a terrine of baby vegetables covered with a powdered malt "dirt." It's part of Noma's whole ethos of preserving, preserving, preserving—storing up an arsenal of flavors to get through those long Nordic winters. Once you wrap your mind around the idea that you can dehydrate almost anything, then grind or crumble it into a very versatile medium, I think you may jump on this culinary bandwagon (along with the rest of the world).
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