Lèse Majesté

Chinese food == Linux ?

The TED conference is always a fascinating mish-mash of stuff. I've stumbled across a rather interesting presentation by NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee on the TED site (apparently recorded at Mondavi's TASTE3 conference, which I must learn more about). She discusses the spread of Chinese food across the U.S. and across the world, noting how vastly it has mutated but also how successful recipes or concepts spread almost virally although she doesn't use that word. Instead, she proposes that Chinese food is analogous to Linux and open software versus McDonald's Microsoft:

Foodie adventures continued

Film, theater, and art were not my only pursuits on this trip to New York. I also went looking for a number of street food vendors I've been following online for quite a while. I found a couple of them...

The Schnitzel Truck has been making news lately as one of the more assertive new players in the growing vendor wars in the city. I was able to catch them on a day they were serving veal schnitzel, and oh my, this takes street food to a whole new level. Huge slab of freshly cooked schnitzel, Austrian potato salad, and braised sauerkraut. I took it a couple blocks to Madison Square Park where I sat out on a lovely day and ate my lunch in the park. Had to fight off some very aggressive squirrels who were determined to share it. This gentleman was sharing my bench. Note the furball who is about to jump on his shoulder to try to get to his food:

 

Another truck I've been trying to find and finally tracked down was Street Sweets. I found them a couple blocks from MoMA after I went to the museum's members' preview of the new Monet Water Lilies exhibit. They had just finished baking a most delicious treat. It was a sandwich cookie made with two flattened coconut macaroons, filled with Nutella. Oh. My. Gawd.

The one vendor I was still unable to meet up with was the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. What a concept. Can you imagine the reaction it would get just about anywhere else in the country? ("Think of the children!") You gotta love a guy who offers free ice cream to anyone who will come perform a particular opera song at the cart. What was the specified tune? Glitter and Be Gay from Bernstein's Candide, of course. This entry was caught on video:

The gal can sing! Can you imagine walking down the sidewalk and stumbling upon that performance? Where else in the world would that happen? I love the reactions from the passersby.

BTW, just to wander off topic a bit, this reminded me of my favorite performance of that song by the amazing Kristin Chenoweth:

Complete with Patti LuPone chewing the scenery at the beginning!

Foodie adventures in NYC

A few days ago I hopped the R train out to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to visit Robicelli's Gourmet Market. I've been reading about the place for months, as it is becoming a legend in the New York cupcake world. Their creations are unbelievable in their creativity. I was hoping to try an Iona, an olive oil and pear cake with blue cheese icing and candied walnuts. OMFG. Unfortunately, they were out of stock.

But I had a great time nonetheless. First I had a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. Three kinds of cheese grilled in ciabatta, with a delicious addition of Berkshire bacon inside. Matt Robicelli, who owns the place with his wife Allison, sliced the bacon off a full slab and grilled it before constructing the sandwich. As I've said before, bacon is the new black, and Matt clearly adheres to that philosophy in his cooking and baking. In fact, he memorialized it on his forearm:

 

(That photo is from the excellent blog Porkchop Express which has a detailed profile of the Robicellis and their market - go read it.)

We chatted throughout my meal and I was surprised to learn he was a St. Paul boy (with family roots in Iowa farming). His dad had been a tenor with the Minnesota Opera before moving to New York to seek out fame and fortune. Matt had been an EMT until he was injured on 9/11 while evacuating people from Tower 7, and after rehab from that he studied pastry at the French Culinary Institute. After working in a bunch of New York kitchens he and his wife decided to open the store.

Getting back to bacon...since I struck out on the Iona, I had one their best-known creations for dessert. That is the Elvis cupcake, conceived from the King's well-known love of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. The Elvis is made of banana cake, peanut buttercream frosting, and crowning touch: carmelized pieces of bacon on top. Yes, it sounds strange. But oh so good. I would be in trouble if I lived anywhere near this place.

Matt spins off wild ideas for cupcakes as you talk with him. He has one in mind now for an upcoming event that I can't wait to see them accomplish. When we spoke it was just a concept, though: chicken and waffles. He isn't sure how to realize it yet. An eggy cake, since waffles are typically eggy, will probably be the start. But the rest remains to be realized.

What is the world coming to?

Apparently, chicken tikka masala is a Scottish creation. Efforts are being made to assign an EU "Protected Designated of Origin" for it to Glasgow. Meanwhile, the news of late is that haggis originated in England, not Scotland. Next you'll be telling me apple pie isn't American...

Julie & Julia: You can never have too much butter

I fell in love with Amy Adams all over again last night. I've loved everything I've seen her do, and her role as Julie Powell in Julie & Julia is no exception. I was invited to a sneak preview of the movie last, almost a month before its August release date, and other than the heavy security it was a very enjoyable experience. Can you believe they were wanding everyone on the way in, and we had to return our cellphones to our cars lest we snap a photo? One woman had to argue at length to keep her old-style pager.

If you haven't seen a trailer for the film yet, it melds two stories. The first is how Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), as a bored diplomatic house wife in Paris, learns to cook French cuisine and writes the cookbook that popularized it for Americans. She and her husband Paul (played by Stanley Tucci) met in Ceylon while working for the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. He later joined the Foreign Service and was posted to Paris, setting the scene for her future career as teacher, writer, chef, and foodie icon.

The second story is about Julie Powell, a frustrated writer working as a clerk in New York City and living in an outer borough with her husband Eric. They hatch a plan for her to try to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year and blog her progress. I remember reading the blog sporadically in 2002 and 2003 on salon.com. The remains of it are still online here, although many links are broken and the navigation is a mess. Hopefully they'll restore it before the movie is released. After she completed her marathon the blog was turned into a book and the combined work inspired Nora Ephron to write and direct this movie. I may be mistaken, but I think this is the first instance of a blog becoming a major film.

Nora Ephron is generally seen as a maker of schmaltzy chick flicks, and this may well be another of that genre. I would guess that 85-90 percent of the audience at the sneak preview were women, but that may be a matter of how they chose who to give the invitations out to. The friend who took me got hers from a radio station booth on the 4th of July, but for all I know most of the audience was recruited at Curves. No matter. I'm a sucker for Ephron's romantic comedies, chick flicks or not. I would be embarrassed to estimate how many timed I've seen Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and You've Got Mail.

The film alternates between scenes in the two main characters' lives, transitioning very nicely, and ends up in Child's actual kitchen. That kitchen, designed with higher than usual counters by her husband (what's not to like about a 6'2" foodie gal?), was the set for her TV programs for quite a while and is now a permanent display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The story is quietly funny throughout, with moments of outright hilarity and little touches like backing Julie's self-described murder of lobsters with the Talking Heads song Psycho Killer. Streep absolutely nails Child - it's like she is channeling her. They must have had to play all kinds of games to make her appear the right height. She's only 5'6". Although casting her against Tucci had to help, since he is only 5'8". Add to the excellent performances a good dollop of food porn, and it's a winner.

It's hard to imagine how they're going to market this movie. It has the feel of an indy film and probably could play well on the art house circuit. But with the big name cast and Ephron at the helm, they may push it as the summer's chick flick alternative to the usual flood of loud crash and boom summer blockbusters. And how will it play abroad? I'm told by friends that Julia Child is not well know in Europe. Maybe Sony just sees it as a huge ad for their Vaio brand of laptops, since they show the logo prominently throughout.

In any case, it's well worth a couple hours of your life to see it. Here's a clip from it:

Violet flight of fancy

Some time ago I had a very tasty cocktail at the Redhead in New York's Lower East Side. Not only tasty, it was also named after an interest/hobby of mine: it was called the Aviation. With the return of hot weather this summer I took an interest in recreating it, so it was time for research.

It turns out to be a rather famous historic drink dating back to the early twentieth century and the early days of flying. Modern recipes all build on three ingredients: gin, fresh lemon juice, and Maraschino liqueur, in various ratios. The latter item is most definitely not associated with maraschino cherries. Rather, it is a distilled liqueur dating back to the 16th century.  It is clear and made from the fruit, including the pits, of Marasca cherries grown in Dalmatia in Croatia, kind of a cherry-based version of grappa. The pits give it almond overtones.

Finding it locally turned out to be a serious quest. The best known brand is Luxardo, and I finally tracked it down last week. It would appear that I can thank someone named Maria, who related in the comments in this blog post how she persuaded Surdyks, a high-end liquor store just across the river from me, to carry it.

With all the ingredients at hand, I tried several different ratios. I was most pleased with the recipe from The Joy of Mixology, a 4:1:1 ratio of:

2.0 oz gin (Tanqueray in my case)
0.5 oz fresh lemon juice
0.5 oz Maraschino

Shake over ice, then pour into a chilled cocktail (martini) glass and savor. Repeat as necessary. The result is dangerously delicious and a close approximation to what I remembered from the Redhead.

Not being one to leave good enough alone I continued to research, however. And it turns out that this modern ingredient list is not complete. The original historic version of the Aviation featured a fourth ingredient, Creme de Violette. This is a liqueur made by macerating violet flowers in grape brandy, sweetened with cane sugar. It carries both the flavor and bouquet of violets and it is a deep purple in color. Creme de Violette was unavailable in the U.S. for decades, which is probably why it disappeared from Aviation recipes.

Well, as you might guess, I tracked down some of this liqueur, an Austrian import from Rothman & Winter. At Surdyks again, no less. And I tried different ratios again. Tonight I must report I have arrived at the true nectar of the gods, using a ratio of 3:1:1:1. That is:

1.5 oz gin
0.5 oz fresh lemon juice
0.5 oz Maraschino
0.5 oz Creme de Violette

Again, shake with ice and pour into a chilled cocktail glass. The result is a pale purple/grey masterpiece which balances the sourness of the lemon juice perfectly and goes down even better than the previous version. Highly recommended.

The rest of the trip

Theater didn't completely occupy me on this most recent trip to New York. The city was enjoying a burst of summer weather, so it seemed like a good opportunity to wander about outdoors, which also saved money...

 After the matinee Saturday, my friend and I went to dinner at one of my favorite places, Brasserie Les Halles on Park Ave. That's Anthony Bourdain's old stomping ground.  Then we walked it off by strolling across the Brooklyn Bridge and back at sunset. A beautiful time to see the city from that perspective:

Sunday was even warmer. A walk through Central Park before the matinee probably brought more sun exposure than was healthy, but it was a perfect day for people watching. Found out later that a new record high of 92 was set in the park. After the show, it was still nearly sweltering, so we cooled off by riding the Staten Island Ferry for a round trip. The sea breeze was definitely cooling - the water hasn't warmed up all that much yet.

I had Monday to myself. I had all kinds of plans, but when I saw it was another gorgeous day after sleeping in way late, I tossed them aside and went out to Coney Island. I don't eat hot dogs as a rule, but every couple years I'll make an exception for the original Nathan's there. A chili cheese dog, bacon cheese fries, and a soda...I rationalized that I was walking my butt off the whole time I was in NY. And then spent a nice time just sitting out on the boardwalk. I don't know what's going on with the amusement park there, but a lot of it seems to have been razed.

Later on I went back to the Redhead for dinner. That's a little neighborhood place I visited maybe a year ago and had good time. It's on 13th between 1st and 2nd Aves  in the East Village. I had a good meal, starting with some bacon peanut brittle. I had the chicken described in this review. Sadly, no biscuits for me either. The starch on this plate was a strange goat cheese and spring onion french toast.

I'd swear Neil Simon was at the bar about four feet away from me. He looked like him. And when he came it, everyone was greeting him and making a fuss. They called him Doc, and the bartender was talking theater stuff with him.

Then I went to a screening of An Englishman in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was its North American premiere. The story is basically a mildly dramatized version of the last years of Quentin Crisp's life. John Hurt had played him in The Naked Civil Servant years ago and reprised the role. Nice little flick. The director and all the lead actors were there for a Q&A afterwards: John Hurt, Swoosie Kurtz, Cynthia Nixon, Denis O'Hare, and Jonathan Tucker.

It was an interesting audience. Crisp's great-niece introduced herself and praised the movie. Someone else asked Nixon whether the woman she played (Penny Arcade) had really just walked into Crisp's apartment as portrayed. She didn't know. The next questioner said, "I can answer that. I'm Philiip Steele." That's the guy that Dennis O'Hare played, the magazine editor who befriended and cared for Crisp in the years in question. They hadn't met and apparently no one knew Steele was there.

Tuesday was theater stuff, as previously noted. I had most of Wednesday to occupy myself. Had a fun day before heading home. There's a Belgian waffle truck that tweets its location every day on Twitter. I had been hoping to catch up with it the whole time I was there, and they set up for the day a couple blocks from MoMA on Wednesday. Perfect! So I had a waffle with fresh strawberries on top for breakfast, then continued on to the museum. Took a bit of negotiation to get in, though. I had my laptop in my daypack. Well, they won't allow packs in the galleries, but they also won't accept laptops at the checkroom. Catch-22. We finally arrived at a compromise which required me to check the pack but carry the laptop around with me.

I hit several special exhibits. One was around printing of photographs, comparing various technologies for reproduction with original prints. Really interesting. A second was drawings for theater - sketches for planning of scenery, etc. Some big names were represented, including Marc Chagall. The last was an architectural themed display of drawings and scale models of a number of big projects showing how they fit into their environments.

Then I grabbed lunch at another rather famous street cart a block away from MoMA at 54th and 5th Ave. This cart, Hallo Berlin, won the first Vendy Award in 2005. Lots of yummy German food, focusing on a wide selection of wursts. They have a daily dictator special where you get no choice, or a democratic one where you can choose your own sausages. I had the dictator, which in this case was a "bowl" of a sliced frank and bratwurst, smothered in fried potatoes, red cabbage, slaw, and some sauces. It came with a crusty roll and a cup of hearty soup for $9.00. It was enough food for a whole day, actually. Certainly got me through the rest of the day, including the delayed flight home.

The end of the road

After visiting the brewery, I continued east towards Port Royal. The road soon turned to dirt and rocks, and it called for a 4WD rather than the tiny Suzuki Alta I had rented for the day:

But what the heck. That's what rentals are for, right? Abuse? So I continued on another 15 km until I reached Camp Bay. It may not be the end of the road, quite yet, but it was for me. With my legs threaded around everything in the cramped driver seat, continuing on with a manual transmission was just too painful. I could barely get the stick shift into first or second gear, seeing as how my right leg wanted to occupy the same space.

Fortunately there was a convenient rest stop awaiting me, since I hadn't had lunch and I was getting pretty thirsty. La Sirena, the siren of Camp Bay:

 

I slipped past the sleeping dogs at the foot of the gangplank and walked out to check it out. Yet another ex-pat American had settled in to run this fine establishment, accompanied by his very young assistant Carmela. You'll find her in his arm as he prepared by lunch, a serving of conch ceviche and crackers. Sharp eyes may note that my beer is a Red Stripe - how could I possibly drink one of the Miller local products right after what I had just heard?

 

After some relaxing conversation, I turned back towards West End. I was seriously concerned about running out of gas on that 15 km stretch as the fuel gauge had suddenly dropped from maybe an eighth of a tank to the red zone. Made it to a gas station, though. After buying a few gallons (at a price equivalent to about $2.85 a gallon), I went into the expansive but largely empty convenience store to get a soda. They must have thought I was quite a threat, as I was shadowed by a security guard carrying both a machete and an automatic pistol.

The rest of the drive back was a real thrill as I navigated what appeared to be island rush hour. Major craziness on the road, and potholes galore to dodge. The most interesting passage came close West End where all of the traffic was detoured around construction. Through a gas station. Literally - you had to drive past the pumps in one lane of traffic moving both directions. Again, security was heavy. This time the guards were walking around with pistol-grip shotguns. Good grief.

(As usual, you can click on any of the thumbnail photos to see a larger one.)

Another victim of Big Brewing

What's the last thing you'd expect to find on an island off the coast of Honduras in the Caribbean? How about a Czech brewery? The innkeepers here at Cocolobo told me there was a local brewer on Roatan, but his beer was hard to find. Aha! A challenge. So yesterday when I rented a car to explore the island, I went looking for the brewery. I found it. Three months too late.

The Bay Islands Brewery sits high atop a hill, next to a couple of telecommunications towers. There is a sign on the road announcing its presence and the fact that it is for sale:

 

I drove up the driveway, ignoring the do not enter sign, hoping they might have a tasting room. The facilities are imposing - a huge stone fortress surrounded by worksheds and guarded by an orange brewery cat:

   

The owner came up to greet me as his worker stayed in the background. The worker looked like John Belushi playing a Mexican bandito, only with a much larger gut. Which was in full display as he appeared to be wearing only underpants. I eventually figured out they were just very dingy Speedos. Still, not a sight for those with a weak stomach. I didn't dare try to photograph either of them.

I ended up having quite a chat with the owner/founder, Jiri Maska. Sadly, the first thing he told me was that there was no more beer. He had distributed his product only in kegs to selected establishments around the island. But he had put out of business by the national big name in beer, Cervecería Hondureña, S.A. They had gone to every one of his customers and offered them large cash payments for exclusivity, ranging up to $50,000, he said. Put him  right out of business, at least for the moment. I've had three of their four beers. They're essentially the same as typical American piss-water beers. Which isn't surprising, as they're owned by Miller. They'll do as a safe cold beverage on a hot day, compared to the tap water here, but that's about all they have to recommend them.

Maska isn't giving up, though. He said, "I'm from the Czech Republic. We had a communist dictator. We got through that, and I'll get through this." He has a bunch of plans. One is to bottle his beer so he can distribute it to a lot more small retailers to beat the monopoly efforts of Miller. Another is to make a local line of sodas and bottle them as well. He has a Honduran trademark for the name Cola Loca and already has it painted on his delivery truck.

The facility was quite an undertaking. He built it to withstand tropical storms and last for generations. He found the rock on a hillside on the island and asked the owner if he could buy some. The owner said sure, but he had no power for tools. So Maska hired a gang of four guys to quarry the rock by hand with pick and shovel. He said he's not looking to sell it. But the sign is there in case some insanely rich person gets off a cruise ship and wants to make him an offer he can't refuse.

And then there are his engineering plans. Another of his challenges was reliable electrical supply to run the operation, since his lager needed chilling for weeks before selling it. The utility on the island has been notoriously unreliable (although not while I'm here) as well as seriously expensive. So he has been trying to make his operation independent of it. He has a row of solar panels as well as wind turbines:

Only one of the turbines is currently functional. A hurricane knocked them all down and he has restored only one of them so far. His big plan, though, is to get into hydrogen. He'll produce it himself, presumably using the wind and solar, and then run generators with the hydrogen.

Pretty ambitious efforts, no doubt. But he did manage to get the first (and perhaps only) microbrewery license in Honduras. He used open fermentation and had a capacity to produce 2000 liters a day when he was operational. Hope he's successful so I can back some day and try his brew.

Things you'd rather not know about

So last night I'm enjoying a very tasty dinner at one of the nicer places on the beach here (meaning there's only one cat and no dogs wandering through, and they have ice supposedly made from a filtered water supply, among other things). Their kitchen has two parts - one indoors with the range, fridge, etc., and a kind of back porch area where a couple guys appear to be doing food prep or the like. I was sitting at a table out on the deck overlooking Half Moon Bay and could see a bit of that back porch area.

One of the guys walks over to edge and executes the maneuver we used to call a farmer's nose blow. That is, put a finger against one nostril and expel the contents of the other towards the ground. Only this time he was left with an 8-10 inch-skein of snot hanging off his nose. So he grabs it with his fingers and tosses it to the sand. Then goes back to work.

This may be the reason I got that Hep C immunization before coming down here...