USDA Says Eat More Vegetables

Aside from that news flash and their general admonishment to eat less, this is my favorite Andrew Bird song, 'Measuring Cups.'

Fresh Pasta This Weekend

Crusty Pie

I have made pie at least a handful of times. When I lived in Memphis, I used the food processor as shown in the video below from the NYT. I now, however, use a pastry cutter because I no longer have a food processor and it works just fine.

I don't make pies often and every time I do, I do feel a bit of panic and a need to do research on how to make an optimal crust. This time around I mixed some new knowledge with some old. I had known to roll out the pastry with plastic wrap. Like the video, I had read about flouring the surface I would roll it out on. I picked up the trick of rotating the pastry dough 1/8 each roll. That is a systematic way to ensure your dough doesn't stick. You'll see Melissa advises another way to do that below.

I found that starting with the plastic covering most of the pastry dough was good, and when the dough was pretty large, opening it up so that the plastic wrap is only on one side of it works really well. Basically when the disk is very small, it is in the center of the plastic wrap with two sides folded over, like a book jacket. As the disk flattens out, you open up the plastic wrap entirely. The plastic wrap makes it very easy to transfer the crust onto the pie pan.

By far the best thing I picked up from my research this time around is to keep everything cold. I mean litterally, put your fat in the freezer for a bit. Chill your tools and bowl, even the flour. It was a great tip that I got from America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. Thanks ATK! They also said to grate the fat, which helped and you can do that very easily when your fat is frozen.

I think that the best tip in this video, is to let the chunks get bigger than pea-sized. I had a bit of a tricky situation gathering it all into a ball b/c the flour and fat were initially not incorporated enough. Lastly, YES! I affirm that the best crust is a pork fat/butter combo, so just do it.

Last Month's Pork Ragu al Maialino!

Affirmative. I was roasting porky at this hour.

Doesn't the rosemary look like seaweed?

You like the look of that pork? I know I do.

This is Joey's plate. I think he liked it!

I got the fabulous idea to make a pork ragu from the New York Times. I did not follow the recipe to the letter, as cooking times varied for me. I had to roast the pork about an extra hour to get the meat to really fall off the bone. I used a small grained Himalayan salt; I believe when you salt the pork, it would be better to use a large grained salt, such as kosher or sea salt. My pork was a bit on the salty side, which in part was due to the salt I used to brine it, but also because I was too zealous when I seasoned the stock. I tend to favor salty foods, so it was still tasty to me, but I will dial back on the salt in the future. Next time I would like to make the pasta too. That would be bad ass!

This Little Piggy Got Roasted

On July 10th of this year the New York Times published an article that has left me dreaming of roasting a whole pig. This past weekend at Atlantic Antic Joey and I shared some pulled pork from Jolie and it was so awesome to see the little roasted piggies all lined up. Over at Gothamist they posted a video of the Fatty 'Cue guys smoking their pigs and it is a thing of beauty. You guys know that Fatty 'Cue made the list, so I hope this entices you to check it out.

How the Pig Gets Smoked at Fatty 'Cue from Gregory Stefano on Vimeo.

Mercadito Cantina, Where They're Gonna Know My Name

I like tacos. They are great. They bring together many things I love, such as citrus, tomatoes, avocado, tortillas, grilled meats, heat, acidity, beer, and the list goes on. When I lived in Memphis my friends and I would travel almost thrity minutes to eat at a taqueria where guys wore real cowboy hats. I'm not sure that makes it the real deal, but it was pretty darn good.

Up until recently I had not had any mind blowing tacos in New York. Then I read about Mercadito Cantina in the New York Times' $25 and Under column. Not only is the place worth a visit, but it's good in the best way a restaurant can be. Every time I go, I am humbled by the fact that I know that I cannot replicate this at home. The caliber of the execution is top notch.

Mercadito strikes the perfect balance between East Village casual cool and delicate, uncompromising culinary delivery. The salsas are not chunky approximations that you can buy in the chips aisle of your supermarket. They are perfectly calibrated in texture without being soupy.

The tacos, as well, are exacting. When I eat their tacos I feel like I've entered the sushi realm of taco making, not because they are playing at fusion, but because each taco comes to the table with a clear nod to aesthetics and balance. Like sushi, each taco comes with sharply defined elements that drape the pallett like a rainbow. You marvel at the clarity of each flavor and how beautifully it blends into the others. Like sushi, too, they are smaller, and so allow one to sample a greater variety of flavors.

I think though, what really makes this place a winner is not just the easy, yet tasteful decor or just the thrilling food, but the combination with a helpful, non-intrusive staff. It is a rare thing to feel so completely taken care of and pampered at a restaurant with so few interruptions. This place is perhaps my favorite discovery of 2008 and I can't wait to go back this year.

Mercadito Cantina
172 Avenue B (Btwn 10th and 11th Street)
New York, NY 10009
212-388-1750

Pairing Protien with Pasta

Today on The Minimalist column of the New York Times, we were told that uncooked beans trump canned. I am personally not sold on this, although I usually agree with Mark. The problem with uncooked beans is that you have to make that time to make them ahead. With canned beans you can just open the can and presto, you've got your protein done. The recipe below contains chickpeas. Try cooking raw dry chickpeas and getting them to be the texture of canned ones. I dare you.

Pasta dressed with Tomatoes and Chickpeas

1/2 box of angel hair pasta
1/2 can of whole stewed tomatoes
2 garlic cloves sliced
1 carrot peeled and finely chopped
1 small bowl of shredded purple cabbage
Italian spices
Salt
Fresh crushed pepper
Olive oil

Begin by heating water. You can prepare vegetables while it is hitting a rolling boil. Open can of beans and dump salty water into the pot of pasta water. Return to a boil. Meanwhile, circle pan on medium high heat with olive oil. After about a minute add garlic and brown. Afterwards add carrot and cabbage; season pan with all spices to taste. Your pot of water should be back to a boil. Dump pasta in pot. Then make sure all flavors are distributed in pan by turning vegetables. Then cover and lower heat a bit. When pasta is cooked drain pot and put back on burner with flame off. Dump the correct portion of tomatoes from can and with a wooden spoon crush each tomato to release its liquid. Next, return your attention to the pan. Add the chickpeas and use spoon to combine with vegetables. Let everything alone for a minute and then dump the contents of the pan into the pot. Stir everything together and taste to make sure seasoning is to your liking. Voila, dinner!

Little Garden in the City

In the past month I have found out that two of my friends have vegetable gardens and neither lives out on a farm. This doesn't just seem novel right now, but almost necessary. I recently picked up Thomas F. Pawlick's The End of Food. If you want to know what the book is about, well, let's just say Pawlick's title is right on point. I actually picked it up, though, because of the sub-title: How the food industry is destroying our food supply--and what you can do about it. 

Personally, I have never been a hardcore environmentalist. I mean, I try to recycle and to reuse and other things of that nature, but it's not a cause I've ever been passionate about. I am trying to be better about it, especially after reading an article in the New York Times about the slow food movement, which Deborah Madison (aka culinary saint) is associated with. In the article a proponent of the movement said that you can't be a foodie and not an environmentalist because if you want the best product to work with you have to make sure the environment gets the best possible chance. I can't argue with that!

Aside from being environmentally responsible, it seems that we need to take matters into our own hands in other respects. For example, you make think that jarred tomatoes and peppers have always been a part of the italian diet, but this is not true. Since Italy has a temperate and hospitable climate for staple crops, such as the tomato, Italians in the Old World did not need to preserve their vegetables, yet once Italian immigrants came to the United States, the different temperature did not allow them to enjoy great produce year round. Consequently, Italian-Americans, distrustful of supermarket canned goods, began to jar their own. Perhaps it is time we kicked it old school--Italian style.

Incidentally, I have tomato on the brain because Pawlick begins his book with said subject. As my dedicated readers will note, I have always had a love affair with the tomato and Pawlick's railings against supper market tomatoes made a lot of sense to me. I've always been shocked by the vast difference between an ordinary super market tomato and what you get from a home garden or a farmer's market. 

Pawlick explains that it's not just a matter of the super market tomato losing taste, but also nutritional value. Basically, living in the capitalist driven market, taste and nutrition don't end up factoring into the bottom line for tomato producers in the United States. The disappointment of super market tomatoes, in fact, is what inspires Pawlick to write the book. After living in Italy, he cannot stand for the rubbery red balls hacked off as tomatoes in the United States. We have a responsibility to save the tomato, especially since it's our native berry--yeah that's right--the Italian's took it from us, well before we were us, sort of like retroactive globalism. Anyway, this is clearly larger than tomatoes. It's about access to good food that will keep us nourished, satisfied, and--dare I say it? Delighted.

I think the best way to start to reclaim our food is one step at time, like actually planting a patch of cucumbers or a tomato plant. When my friend, Sue Ferranti, told me she was growing cucumbers, I asked her how she ate them and she said, "Just like that, just the cucumber." It makes sense to me; when something's awesome it doesn't need much else, which is why that's exactly how I enjoyed Sue's gift.