A Literary Feast

Eating Icons

Posted on March 16th, 2012

About 12-years-ago my sister got married in a torrential downpour in a field in Maine. After a promising day of preparations under threatening skies, the heavens quit procrastinating and really let us have it. That did nothing to stop her from slogging down a torch-lined path through a cornfield in ankle-deep mud to get hitched on the banks of the Kennebec River. The guests, aside from my elderly grandparents, weren’t deterred either, washing along together down to the ceremony, then back to the rented tent for a country potluck like you read about.

Kegs of homebrew stood stacked to the tent flaps and tables bowed under the weight of produce from friends’ farms and gardens, with a spit roasted lamb from my brother’s flock down in Massachusetts keeping an unblinking watch over it all. Nearby a borrowed drum grill seared the fat off chunks of meat on kabobs — enough of them to build a small but sturdy meat cabin, complete with pepper, onion and mushroom trim.

Being from “away” — an interloper in these parts — I didn’t guess that in Maine people serve up game just as casually as my friends’ parents grilled pre-made burger patties from Stop & Shop. Still, something about those kabobs distinguished them from the usual barbecue mystery meat. It was red-hued, more like dark sandstone than raw, bloody bovine pink. The flavor wasn’t far from beef, with maybe a little bit of venison funk, and truth be told, it wasn’t all that remarkable. That’s why I wasn’t totally shocked when I found out after a couple of bites that I was eating the unofficial mascot of Maine: All that meat on the grill was a moose, minus the identifying features, namely antlers and fur.

The fact that Maine eats two of its three most recognized icons — moose, lobster and lighthouses — isn’t much of a surprise. Wild places have a way of rendering even the most unlikely creatures edible, and Maine teems with the stuff. Early settlers arrived to find conveniently packaged, easy to catch protein scurrying along the ocean floor and enough meat to feed a family for an entire winter lumbering around on four awkward legs in the forests beyond. When you’re hungry enough, little details like kinship to insects or the fact that your dinner is connected to a sour disposition and a huge rack of antlers tend to fade into the background.

Unfortunately, t-shirt and postcard designers don’t always look to reality for inspiration in their work. Lobster, which was once so cheap and plentiful that it was considered pauper fodder, grew into its icon status, becoming the ultimate in aspirational cuisine. That a red shell, a butter sidecar and a plastic bib are synonymous with “vacation” and “decadence” to most Americans seems weird to me, but maybe that’s just because I don’t enjoy the stuff. Moose, on the other hand, are kind of fuzzy, and caught in the right setting, majestic. Seen from afar, placidly chewing on pond weeds in the early morning mist, they’re hard not to love in all their graceless glory — sort of like Maine itself. I don’t think I’m alone in associating them with lakes and mountains and wilderness, nor do I think I’m a delicate or sensitive carnivore — I like all the beasts and all their bits. But there, in a candlelit tent next to a cornfield in the middle of the state, at a celebration unsuppressed by a wild storm, I felt a little bit like I was eating a bald eagle on Thanksgiving.

Of course what I didn’t understand was that in Maine, moose have always been known first and foremost as a half-ton of sustenance on four legs. Back in the day the drama of survival left little room for romantic notions of what certain animals might represent, beyond their caloric content. Today things are easier, with more of a safety net for the average family, but the bullets/pound of meat ratio remains unmatched for keeping moose squarely within the crosshairs. When it comes down to it, that’s partly because moose are just what they look like: giant, idiot deer. Emboldened by their own size, they go where they want, when they want, with none of the twitchy paranoia of their cousins. They’re dangerous, sure, and quite fast, but only once they get all four legs moving in the same direction (stepping behind a sizeable tree is a useful evasion technique when confronting a charging bull). Simply put, they’re easy to kill.

Unfortunately, they’re not so easy to eat. The sale of any wild game is illegal in Maine, and the species doesn’t exactly lend itself to domestication. In order to get a hold of the meat you either have to snuff the beast yourself, or ingratiate yourself to someone with a freezerful. The former can be accomplished in one of two ways: obtaining a license via the statewide lottery, or surviving a collision with a moose in your car. Considering the fact that some hunters wait over 10 years to win a permit, taking to the highways in spring might be more productive. Officially, you get to keep the meat if you kill the animal, or even if a state police officer or game warden has to be summoned to “dispatch” it. Remembering to ask for the right ticket to vouch for possession of the meat at the time of the accident might be a bit of a stretch, but then again so is butchering and storing an animal the size of your car.

According to hunters I’ve talked to, Maine’s stringent moose management policies result in a controlled statewide population, limited poaching and fewer highway accidents. The regulations also make moose a rare holdout — a legitimate protein that holds no place in commercial kitchens, with few associated recipes and minimal lore. For the time being, it’s a treat enjoyed only by people who can get it for themselves, assigning romance or meaning to the act as they see fit. Maybe one day the book will be written and we’ll all learn how to cook moose, but for now I’m staying on the lookout for inconspicuous old timers in un-ironic Maine moose tees manning the grill at parties outside of town.

Categories: Uncategorized

Goat

Posted on March 16th, 2012

Inside, two opposing principles create a marbling, an ebb and flow of grey area. One night I chose to move with a certain sobering moral, to flow with a particular darkness that resides in all creatures.

Wavering, drained, I felt the darkness pull a sob from way down deep, as if the night mirrored my heart and my insides. Following the obscurity was meant to recollect ancestral ritual and perhaps with experience, it will.

This first time, however, the black sky wrapped me in cold and ripped away the tension and adrenaline seething through my veins until I felt an unbearably heavy emptiness.

There was nothing left in my hands but the weight of the gun.

Her eyes had shone black before me; they had been deeper and brighter than this night.

That richness was extinguished with the clench of my hand, my fist around the barrel poised at the top of her adorably small skull.

Stale…

Her eyes were suddenly stale but the night was indifferent. It was the same night that had existed since the Beginning.  Gentle gurglings were the only notes that played on the silence as he sliced her throat to let the blood run.

Her tail twitched like a grotesque, comforting reminder that my own fingers brought the swiftest end to what was once wholesome.  I could have disintegrated, atom by atom, into the nothingness of that night, into the emptiness of the universe, and not a star would have noticed. I was wrong about me:

The blackness is everywhere and I am a killer.

Categories: Uncategorized

Hunting For A Woodless Veggie Burger

Posted on March 16th, 2012

Even if you’re not livin’ la vida vegetarian, it’s hard to go wrong with a veggie burger. Despite being invented in the 80s (the decade that brought us poprocks and fried mozzarella sticks), veggie burgers have successfully made the transition from food trend to…well, just food.

I’d love to maintain foodie cred and say, breezily, that I have a fabulous from-scratch recipe that I make with ingredients plucked fresh from the garden. But while the mind is willing, the flesh is weak — and that weakness is named “Boca.” Up until recently, I was totally cool with frying up one of those frozen suckers in olive oil and dropping it on a bun with some ketchup, LT&O for the occasional instant dinner.

So what changed?

In a word, “cellulose.” Cellulose is the organic compound that makes up the tough, indigestible parts of plants. Cellulose can come from a whole bunch of things: from vegetables (like kale) to…(wait for it)
…sawdust.
You heard it here first: there’s probably a little bit of wood in your frozen pizza. Over the last few years, cellulose-based additives have slowly crept into a whole variety of foods — not just my beloved frozen veggie burgers but also lots of breads, cookies, and even ice cream. And because wood is considered a “natural” ingredient, you’ll even find it in plenty of organic processed foods.

Why the cellulose renaissance? In short, it’s an “extender,” or filler, and it’s way cheaper than regular (edible) ingredients. Thanks to extensive chemical processing, wood pulp can be made to mimic a whole bunch of stuff including flour, sugar, and even butter.

Call me crazy, but I draw the line at voluntary xylophagia. As much as I loved them, it’s time to let go of my Boca habit — and begin the hunt for a new veggie burger.

The big game of the veggie burger kingdom is, of course, the kind you make from scratch. In addition to patience, most of the really good recipes require a laundry list of essential ingredients: egg whites, lemon juice, beans, mushrooms, a bunch of spices…etc.

The end result is delicious, but not insignificant in terms of effort. Taking a cue from the lions on the Discovery Channel, I decided to skip the thrill of the hunt and pick off an easy kill with a couple of go-to easy burger(ish) meals… that even I can execute.
TOFU SLEDGE
Sledge is a nickname I gave to my overweight cat, and it seems equally as fitting for a giant slab of jiggly fried tofu.
1) Press out the moisture from a slab of extra-firm tofu. If you’re good at thinking ahead, you can do something fancy like press/drain it over several hours. If you’re like me, you’ll just press it between two plates over the sink. Slice into flat patties.

2) Make a marinade of some savory stuff. Like soy sauce, garlic, and cumin. Or honey and balsamic vinegar. Leave it on there for an hour or so or until you’re too hungry to wait any longer.

3) Add a generous amount of olive oil to a frying pan. Then add some more.

4) Fry the bejeezus out of your tofu, flipping it when it gets a golden crust.

5) Add ketchup and a ciabatta roll. Now it’s a burger!
POST APOCALYPTIC BURGER BLOB
Watching Doomsday Preppers has given me a new appreciation of brown rice and lentils. Dried stores of the stuff can outlast almost any natural disaster and, unlike MREs, it’s something you’d actually want to eat pre-apocalypse. Got some leftover cooked brown rice and lentils in the fridge? Why not retcon it into some tasty Burger Blobs?
1) Assemble a 2:1 ratio of cooked brown rice to cooked lentils. It helps if the lentils are a little bit overcooked (you can pretend you did that on purpose).

2) Saute garlic and some vegetables (celery, onion, carrots, etc.) in olive oil. If you want to get crazy you can roast them in the oven instead.

3) Mix it in with your cooked brown rice and lentils. Throw in a little bit of flour or some breadcrumbs to bind the whole thing together. Add some chili powder, cumin, and paprika.

4) Shape the mixture into Burger Blobs and press them onto a cookie sheet. Bake the whole thing at 350 for about 20 minutes.

5) Slap it on a bun and serve with lettuce, onion, avocado, and tomato. Chichi it up with a fancy aoili of your choice.

Categories: Uncategorized

Notable And Potable Vol. 18: This IS Your Mother’s Bone Luge

Posted on March 16th, 2012

Since becoming verbal at, may I say, a precociously early age, my daughter has thrown down an amazing amount of information as she’s explored her varied and sometimes offbeat interests in life. I’ve routinely served as a sounding board, sometimes an eager participant, and, on rare occasion, a victim. Looking back, I realize that while her interests have seemed to diverge, there is the common thread of experimentation in all of them. The gathered and infused herbs that consumed her in childhood and were often tested on me, regardless of actual need, evolved into the spun sugar tents and perfect crepes I and my dinner guests got to consume as she grew older. These passions have been neither fleeting nor in any way superficial, and have slowly and methodically grown to include the designing, making and tweaking of crafted libations. So yesterday’s phone call was not, at first, out of the ordinary

I learned yesterday from my daughter that there is such a thing as a Bone Luge. I jumped all over this news. It was the two words together, really, that piqued my interest, especially since I was, right then while on the phone, staring at a giant pork shank bone I’d brought home from a friend’s restaurant the previous evening with another meal still left on it. Bone. Luge. One has to admit that these two words, in such close proximity, can foment some conjuring, but what I then learned after firing off a few questions is that we are simply talking about a vessel – a way to get the booze from there to here. Some people think, she tells me, that if the liquid gets to pass by some marrow, it will enhance the whole experience.

The phone call ended and I warmed up my leftover shank for lunch. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get the Bone Luge out of my mind and there I was, hefting this vaguely medieval, Flintstone-sized specimen, thinking Come on, build a luge and they will come. Truth is, my daughter and son-in-law ARE coming next weekend anyway, so my mantra should have been Out of sorts? Trying to avoid the laundry?? Bored??? Build a bone luge!

Several hours later, I was simmering the bone in a pot to get all those little cartilaginous bits off the socket end and checking the other end to see if it could take a beating. It looked sturdy. As I set it out on the cutting board to chill I went looking for my cordless drill. Then there was the bit selection. I’m not familiar with the actual sizes of bits, or, for that matter, much of anything to do with the drilling experience. I usually pick the bit based on my goal. Hanging a picture? Tiny bit. Trying to unscrew a rusted 150-year-old nail out of the baseboard? Bigger bit, and don’t forget to use the Reverse Feature. Making a Bone Luge? Well….I pondered briefly, then chose the most significant bit in my collection – the Big One.

I am presently 5.5 inches into this shank and have paused for further contemplation. For the record, I have unearthed and displaced some matter that is the color of a fine pâté, but crumblier. I’m assuming it is simmered, drying marrow. When you put your nose right up to the hole it smells good in there. Meaty. Earthy. Interesting. Here’s the dilemma…well, one of them. The shank is, like most things, not a straight line from here to there. There’s an attractive but pesky swerve about 5 inches up. If I keep drilling or start somewhere on the other end hoping to join up in the middle, there could be failure. There’s also this nagging thought that what smells pleasant now might take on the scent of a charnel house by next weekend.

While I still have a viable vessel, I’ve decided, for the time being, to change course. Shank as Infuser. I’m pouring a small amount of Woodford Reserve bourbon into the hole. I’ll cork it (somehow) and refrigerate it. If this doesn’t enhance the liquor, it should at least survive as an offbeat soup bone.

*********
Addendum(b) – Oh dear. It leaks. I’ve isolated the breach to a section of non-bone located on the spherical end. It is a Ligament Leak. I cap my bourbon and slink away from the carnage. Days later there is a fur coat on the bone. I leave it and await the guffaws of my offspring.

Categories: Uncategorized

Sea Meat

Posted on March 16th, 2012

My favorite watermelon region is the stratum of tart, crisp, pale pink flesh that starts just above the rind and extends for about an inch. When I was nine I ate my watermelon with a paring knife. My mom would eat the sweet, gritty, seed-filled mouthfuls of the melon’s core and then donate the remains to me, her weird kid. With my trusty blade I would slice off thin strips and hold them up to admire their translucence before munching away on the marvelous texture. One time, a thought popped into my head and I said it out loud after preparing a delicate fillet– “Sea meat!”

That was pretty much it. No one heard me and I was never asked to clarify the term and its relation to watermelon, but I liked it enough to remember it for 20 years. Back when I was calling watermelon “sea meat” I was a horribly picky eater. I would have cried over the concept of sashimi, and I recall forming some kind of twisted mental association between meatloaf and Mr. Snuffelupagus that still makes me think twice. I flayed the cheese off my pizza only to reveal thick smears of sauce speckled with horrible tiny green things which I would then scrape off, thus preparing a moist, beige, triangle that had been infused with all of the things that make pizza great. I wasn’t consciously unhappy about any of it, but I now suspect that my fruity sea meat was a cry for help from my suppressed and stunted palate. Luckily, we knew Italians.

We knew what I categorized as the Nice Italians and the Mean Italians, in terms of whether or not they would cater to my terrified tastebuds. The mother of the Mean Italians would not only ignore my explanations of why I didn’t want to eat something, but would yell at me, openly mocking me, making me feel as lame and obnoxious as I was. The mother of the Nice Italians would graciously serve me bowls of hydrated Lipton soup packets and plain pasta, and I would sit at the table with everyone else around me eating veal saltimbocca. In essence, it was a delicious-smelling form of immersion therapy. After a couple years of picking at bowls of buttered and salted pasta and feeling silent-yet-powerful waves of annoyance radiating from the family’s father, I cracked. I began accepting a thin sheen of red sauce on my pasta. Then a dusting of freshly-grated Parmesan. Still no meatballs though (Snuffy!). In fact, I didn’t eat my first hamburger until the age of 25.

With the help of the Nice Italians, I came to know and love the genuine sea meat of calamari, shrimp, clams, and mussels. Even landbound snails have recently made it onto my list of ingested invertebrates. But like the headstrong little mermaid, Ariel, angsting out in her grotto of treasures: I want more. I want to eat a whole lobster. Crabs, too. I have some catching up to do, so I decided it was time to cross more actual sea meat off my list. Raw oysters. I live right outside of Boston and the Atlantic Ocean, and because cocktail and oyster bars are so in right now, I decided to visit Island Creek Oyster Bar for my first raw bivalve experience.

Before heading out I gave myself a quick Internet Education on the topic of oysters. I learned that oysters don’t have central nervous systems, and so vegans like to argue over whether or not they should eat them. One guy basically compared oysters to plants, saying that in terms of ethical eating the two are almost indistinguishable. Sea meat, indeed. Personally, I think that eating anything with a heart and an anus while it’s still alive should give one pause. Based on the number of online message boards with titles like “when does the oyster die?” I guessed I wasn’t alone. Plants require photons for survival; I just can’t relate to that, but everybody has probably felt like they are little more than a sessile sack of flesh with a hole at each end at some point in their lives. There. I had taken my pause. Time to belly up to the raw bar and have a drink to clear all of those pesky ethics out of my head.

Since ICOB is in the same talented family as Eastern Standard and the Hawthorne, I decided to pair a stereotyped-but-sumptious glass of sparkling wine with my oysters, knowing that I could have delicious cocktails at one (or both) of the other establishments without even having to leave Hotel Commonwealth. I told the bartender, Devin, that these would be my first oysters ever and he started me off in the right direction by pouring me not only the Prosecco that I’d ordered, but also a generous half-pour of the Aubry Brut Premier Cru Jouy-les-Reims. With a sip of the almost flesh-toned wine sparkling on my tongue, I was ready to bring on the bivalves.

I studied the menu and decided to try one of each New England variety to get a taste of some local marine terroir, or “merroir.” My icy plate of oysters arrived and they all looked extremely dead. No little sea hearts were obviously beating, and so I took in their warm grey color scheme, imagining myself laying naked and hungover in a half shell wishing desperately for my central nervous system to die, and tipped back my first oyster– an Island Creek original from Duxbury, MA. I gave the sea meat a few good chews, and was surprised by the burst of tangy salt water. The second oyster, a Rocky Point from Kingston, MA, was noticeably sweeter with a more balanced tartness. Each oyster variety listed on the menu was paired with the names of the oyster farmers who raised them from 5 millimeter spats, and just like that I was charmed. Charmed by mollusks. I went on to eat a Chatham, a Sunken Medow Gem, and a Wild Wellfleet. All different, all delicious and refreshing. Merroir, indeed.

A week later I went back for West Coast oysters, and was delighted by how much smaller and sweeter they were. At this point, I have eaten three different species of oyster from at least 15 varieties. Most of the varieties were local, and now I look forward to sampling the local oyster varieties when I travel. If you get into the spirit of oyster culture and play it right, you can feel more like an ecologist than a snob when you say things like I just said. Get scientific about it; annotate a map, keep a list, plot a graph, eat at least n=3 of each oyster species, etc. Visit an oyster farm. Photograph your plate of oysters. Chat with the bartender or server about the oysters because, like sommeliers of the sea, they will be able to tell you about the main flavor profile of a variety and link it to the oyster’s waters of origin. Oops, starting to sound a little snobby again. Did you know oysters have kidneys?

Now, at the age of 29, I consider learning how to actually eat my most important milestone. Given that we live in a time where people care deeply about their food and drink, and respect the professionals who educate us with their creativity and knowledge, I might have caught up on my own– but I give the Nice Italians all the credit. Look, ma! I’m eating raw oyster meat and sipping mezcal from their empty shells! And maybe I’m also crunching on thinly sliced pale pink watermelon as a palate cleanser between oyster varieties. You never know. Sea meat, meet sea meat.

Categories: Uncategorized

Big Buck Hunter Down Under

Posted on March 16th, 2012

A few years ago, I got to go to Cape Town South Africa to light a theater show. It was friggin great. Once the show was up and running, I had my entire day free to explore. On any one of these days I did everything from walking around the markets, to hiking around Table Mountain, to swimming with penguins on Boulder Beach. Food was only a small problem, as most places were only open for dinner after the show started. HOW WAS I GOING TO GET THE CHANCE TO EAT SOMETHING CRAZY?
I was told to go to a very popular restaurant called “Mama Africa” on my day off where I was told I could sample some local cuisine…and local fauna. It was mainly for tourists, but I spied some locals on a date and at the bar, so I didn’t feel too badly about being there. (Tourist guilt) There was a live band, some dancing and a lot of fun going on…but I couldn’t pay much attention to it because I had just ordered the “Bushmen’s Catch.”

In traditional terms, the “Bushmen’s Catch” is my culinarily conservative mother’s worst nightmare. It was a plate of various carpaccios. The waiter very kindly explained what each one was and pointed to pictures of the animals on the wall.

The first was a Kudu. Kudu is a deer/antelopy creature with big spirally horns which are sometimes used as instrumental horns called Kuduzela (which is the lesser known but more classy version of the notorious vuvuzela.) The horns are also sometimes used as shofars in Judaism for Rosh Hashanah. Anyways. It tasted awesome. It was lightly salted, and was much like venison, which I’ve never had raw, but had dark livery undertones and a lovely texture.

The second was ostrich. I’ve had ostrich burgers and ostrich eggs, but as a general rule I try not to eat any raw poultry, no matter how huge it is. I did so once before, in Japan, and perhaps I’ll have a chance to talk more about that experience later if the Farmer General asks me to write on the subject “The Worst Food Mistake You’ve Ever Made and Immediately After Committing It You Wished You Had Never Been Born.” Maybe next month. Strangely, this carpaccio was the beefiest-tasting thing on the plate. It didn’t taste “gamey.” It reminded me a bit of steak tartare, but with an earthy taste instead of the salty blood taste.

The third, which definitely in my mind still reigns supreme as the strangest thing I’ve eaten, was crocodile.
It was indescribable. I’m going to try though. It was light…and almost colorless? Beige? Taupe? The color of the last car you rented? The flesh made me think a little of pickled herring or kippers, a little striated, a little flaky, and a little oily. It did not taste like chicken. The only way I can describe it is if you’ve had frog legs before, that do sometimes taste like mud chicken, and then take away the mud chicken part. Graciously, it was very salted and I ate it up if only for the reason that I had to keep trying to figure out what it tasted like. The answer is this: reptile. It tasted reptilian, and unfortunately that is the best I can do.

The fourth and last was the springbok. The sprinbok is a gazelle type thing with smaller horns and black and white racing stripes on its flanks. This tasted somewhere in between the kudu and the ostrich–not very livery, but in my mind, closer to venison. They are gorgeous creatures, leaving little doubt as to why they are South Africa’s national animal. That you’re allowed to eat.

This brings me to my last “big game animal” and another national emblem which was eaten on another trip, but in the same hemisphere. My first tour stop with the Pavement reunion was in New Zealand and Australia. When that leg of the tour ended, I stayed on for a few days in Melbourne with my friend Anthony. He was good natured enough to stop the car every time a kangaroo or a wallabee tried to commit suicide into his windshield, and took me to a very touristy Australian Animal Zoo where he patiently allowed me to wonder at the echidnas and creepy donkey-like faces of the kangaroos. During this quiet ponderance, he asked me if I’ve ever eaten any ‘roo. (That’s how they say it there.) I responded that I have never nor had I even known that you can and people do eat ‘roo. I was leaving in two days, so, he promised to throw some ‘roo on the barbie and have some people over. It was St Patrick’s Day, and among the revelry I found myself in Anthony’s backyard having grilled ‘roo dogs and steaks. It was delicious! It was dark, a little bloody, a little beefy, a little gamey, but it was cooked perfectly and wasn’t tough or stringy at all, which is apparently one of the chief complaints about it.

So, that’s all my big game, if you want the story about how my dad shot a 6 point buck with a hunter’s bow (not a compound bow) in the deep woods of Connecticut back in the 60’s, you’ll have to ask him.

Categories: Uncategorized

The Birthday Gift

Posted on March 16th, 2012

I had worked all day making hundreds of loaves of bread by hand. I was tired after driving four hours to Yosemite with overnight backpacks, cigarettes and enough food to last for two days. I was ready for some sleep. We got into our campsite at 11:30pm cranky, hungry and bickering. We rolled out of my pickup, donned our headlamps and set to constructing the tent. We were arguing about which pole should be inserted first (we did it wrong every time, no matter whose idea it was) when we heard a mighty “WHUMP”. We swung our headlamps over to the truck; “my backpack is gone!”. Of course it was MY pack; I carried the food on trips. And now this could only mean one thing – Bear.

We ran to the truck and saw muddy footprints and only one backpack. There! across the camp road – a medium brown bear with my 50lb pack in its mouth looking like a dog that had run way with the string on the Sunday roast. My girlfriend started running at it shouting, “I just bought that fucking pack for her birthday! I paid 400 dollars for that pack!” The bear took off in terror of my girlfriend, and I, rather reluctantly, after them both.

My girlfriend had always coached me that when there is a bear at a campsite that it was good etiquette to let the other campers know of its presence. Therefore, we tore through the entire campsite shouting “BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!” waking up half the Valley with our ruckus at midnight. As we ran through the back edge of the site, we passed some campers who were awake, standing around a fire. Greatly alarmed by our running and shouting, they tried to communicate in broken English mixed in with what sounded like Arabic. Several years before when I was in the military, I had learned enough Modern Standard Arabic to read a newspaper and tell someone a made up story about my brother’s washing machine. I reflexively started answering their terrified questions (“what!? what!?”) in Arabic explaining the situation (there is no translation for bear, but they seemed to get it), and they promptly joined the chase. So we ran shouting in English and Arabic, “HEY BEAR! DROP MY PACK! HEY BEAR! DROP MY FUCKING PACK!”. Through a stream, out of the campsite, throwing rocks and cursing, the bear finally dropped the bag and took off into the night. Panting, exhausted, and soaking wet we retrieved my Fucking Backpack.

The bag was ripped from the bear’s teeth gripping it and covered in a large quantity of slobber mixed with what appeared to be the peanut butter. Gone were the power bars, the apricots, and who knows what else. It smelled like a wet dog; there was no way in hell I was going into the back country smelling like this.

My fellow pursuants then turned to me and we appraised one another; six young Arab men in 80’s fashion wear – stone washed jeans and puffy high top sneakers squishy with creek water. How on Earth did I know Arabic they wanted to know. Well, I had been coached to not reveal how or where I had learned Arabic or why, so I gave them some bullshit answer and began to speak only in English trying to hide a mix of flattery and fear. We separated with many thank yous in both languages.

This was the unanticipated end of my much anticipated birthday hike in Yosemite, but it turned out to be not so bad. We promptly stashed the pack in a bear bin (which should have been the FIRST thing we did upon arrival) and drove off in search of the Yosemite Lodge. I have to say that I wasn’t too upset to be faced with sleeping in a warm bed away from bears and being a tourist for a couple of days instead of hiking and camping in the snow.

Categories: Uncategorized

Stalking The Wild Hungarian Bitters

Posted on March 16th, 2012

In 1790, one Mr. Zwack, court physician to the Habsburgs, presented his latest medicinal concoction – a dark, herbaceous, and probably frightening bitters – to no less prestigious a drinker than Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. Legend has it that after taking one sip, the Emperor said to the expectant Zwack, with superb Old World tact: “It’s very… unique.” (The Emperor died a month later. I imply nothing.)

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but I think there’s no better way to translate the admittedly more dignifying “Das ist ein Unikum!” that named a living legend among digestifs. Unicum, the national drink and perhaps the national pastime of Hungary, is an acquired taste that even seasoned bitters-lovers might find themselves unwilling to acquire. For me it was love at first sip – but I was just a kid at the time, a typical boy priding himself on his impervious palate, and I wasn’t going to let my grandparents see me grimace. (I’m sure my words, less elegant than the Emperor’s, were something along the lines of “Eww, that’s awesome!”)

Now this talk takes a dark turn, dear reader. Several years ago, quietly, probably in the middle of the night, Unicum began to disappear from the U.S. market. It was mysteriously replaced by an unfamiliar product in an uncannily similar bottle, called “Zwack.” If you ask around, you’ll hear at least two explanations for this switcheroo. Some say that the Zwack family, fleeing the iron fist of communist oppression after World War II, took the original Unicum recipe with them into exile, leaving the Soviets with an inferior decoy formula. By this reckoning the new “Zwack” is in fact the old, authentic Unicum, resurrected for a glorious future in the 21st century. Others, however, claim that the Zwack corporation is just trying to increase its U.S. sales by peddling an insipid and saccharine innovation to legions of American frat boys whose idea of continental elegance is a shot of Jägermeister. Every drinker may choose her own truth, but the fact that “Zwack” has appeared only in the U.S. casts a shadow of doubt on the former, more generous theory.

This sort of thing isn’t unusual these days. Have you noticed how ruby-red Campari is now candy-pink? And don’t tell me it tastes the same. It doesn’t. The Campari Recipe Fiasco offends me intellectually; old spirits deserve more respect. But the Unicum ruse – the “Zwack” Gambit, we’ll call it – offends me personally. I love Unicum. And I don’t stand idly by while something I love is destroyed. I go out and find it, and then I horde it.

I’ve never held with those who think Manhattan is the center of the universe. The center of the galaxy, now – I might grant you that, if you’ll let me twist your words to mean “supermassive black hole.” Manhattan is the Great Attractor (yes, I’m mixing cosmological metaphors) – if you can’t find something there, you probably can’t find it anywhere. So, the last time I found myself in the Big Apple with a few hours to kill, I decided to give myself a little mission – a quest, you know, a flirtation with the impossible – to try to find, somewhere amid the treasure and detritus of the metropole, a bottle of the real stuff.

My goose chase starts, conventionally enough, at the nearest upscale liquor store, a wine and spirits specialist at Broadway and 107th. The man behind the counter is friendly, knowledgeable, and when I tell him the sorry tale I’ve just told you, I think he feels a little bit of my pain. He’s a born optimist, I can tell, and he says he’ll give it his best shot. But I’ve heard this line before. It always ends the same way: a voicemail saying my order is in, a trek across town, a moment of skeptical, fluttery hope – and behind the counter a bottle of “Zwack,” which, if it had a nose, would be thumbing it at me. I know his heart’s in the right place, but this time I’m not going to fall for it. I wish him luck and decide to test mine with a little reconnaissance.

Just a few blocks north is a Hungarian bakery, the kind of establishment where you can buy pastries stuffed with poppy seeds and drink black, black coffee. I walk in and give the place a once-over. A lot of men with hats are reading scattered pieces of the morning paper. It’s 1:00 in the afternoon. Perfect. I don’t want to blow my cover too soon so I order a prune Danish. Listen, I say to the waitress who brings it, I’ve got a kind of a funny question. And then I ask: Where can a guy go in this town to get a bottle of Unicum? She gives me a look that says I’ve struck a nerve. Unicum? she asks, like she’s playing for time. Yeah. Unicum. She doesn’t know, but says maybe I should talk to Éva. Behind the counter. The one with the lipstick and the distinctly Eastern European hairstyle.

Éva doesn’t know a thing – or if she does, she’s not telling. You can’t get Unicum anymore, she says. I didn’t walk three blocks and buy a Danish just to hear what I already knew, so I try to keep her talking. I don’t get far. There are places you can drink Unicum, she tells me, but you can’t buy it here. Anywhere.

At least it’s a straight answer. And the Danish wasn’t half bad. I tell her thanks anyway and turn to the door, but before I take two steps I hear the one word you always hope for in these situations: Wait.

I wait. There’s a Hungarian – she hunts for the word – meat store. 5th Avenue and 84th Street. Or somewhere. I’m not sure. You – could try there.

I walk out, hiding a skeptical grin under a third-rate poker face. So this is how it’s going to be. Twenty blocks and a hike across the Park to look for a meat store that might not even be there. I wonder if it’s going to rain. I wonder if Éva’s information was worth the price of the Danish. And I wonder why I feel like Dashiell Hammett is narrating my afternoon.

The meat store isn’t easy to track down. When I finally find it, over on 2nd Avenue, it looks like the real thing, the kind of place you’d go if you needed a boar’s head on short notice. But even from across the street I can tell that something’s not right. No sausages hanging in the window, no silhouettes of meat-hungry customers, and the windows have a grayish tint that I don’t like the looks of. I walk by casually and steal a quick glance at the sign on the door. “Temporarily closed due to fire damage,” it says.

Dammit. Someone got to them before I did.

This looks an awful lot like a dead end, so I walk up 2nd Avenue letting my head hang and trying not to think about the lovely, ghastly bitters in the round, dark bottle. Game over? I’m so low I almost don’t notice that all around are storefronts trying to snap me out of my funk with signs advertising paprika, stuffed cabbage, savory crêpes, winter salami, halászlé, hideg meggyleves, Trappista, Pálpusztai, gulyás and goulash. Finally the obvious finds its way through my thick skull: I’ve stumbled into the heart of Manhattan’s largest Hungarian neighborhood. If there’s a bottle of Unicum anywhere in this city, it’s 50 yards from where I’m standing.

I sidle into André’s Café, a tiny, tidy, tempting restaurant a few blocks further up. The sour cherry soup looks like good men would give their lives for it but I’ve got business to attend to. I lean over the counter and ask the usual questions. This time I get an answer that sets my heart racing and my tongue watering. Try the liquor store on the corner of 80th. Or the one on the corner of 82nd. Or anywhere else, really. It shouldn’t be hard to find.

It shouldn’t be hard to find. No one should ever have to hear those words. Because, of course, it is. I duck into three or four shops where bottles of Bull’s Blood wine and pálinka fruit brandy practically throw themselves off the shelves into your arms, and I grill three or four friendly, willing, helpful shopkeepers who gesture sadly toward the rack of “Zwack” in the corner and tell me, in so many words, Yes – we have no Unicum.

And this time I believe them, even if it breaks my heart a little. If there were any Unicum to be found in America it would be here. It’s the center of the whirlpool, the place where the last five bottles in the world would inevitably drift, find each other, swap stories of the good old days and grow old and dusty together. But I’ll bet some greedy bastard walked in a year ago and bought them all. Some greedy bastard just like me.

I walk back uptown a little sadder and a whole lot wiser. They can’t say I didn’t try. At least I know the truth now, even if the truth is bitterer than the drink itself. And I take some comfort in the thought that somewhere out in the world, maybe in some agency liquor store just across the Canadian border, there’s a bottle of Unicum with my name on it.

Categories: Uncategorized

Caramel Apple, Dulce Filled, Burning Spoon

Posted on February 14th, 2012

Caramel apple, dulce filled, burning spoon,
Dark smell of nori, wrappers dark and bright,
What secret flavor is clasped between your layers?
What primal palate does crab touch with its pincers?
Ai, Love is a journey through all dive bars,
Where closeted air tastes sharply of fermented grain:
Love is a war of lightening
Two recipes ruined by artificial sweetness.
Lick by lick, I drink your tiny infinity,
Your margarine, your almonds slivered, your Maillard villages,
Ribs generate fire, transformed by heat’s bite,
Smoke pink through the marrow channels of blood
To precipitate a nocturnal consummation
To be dinner, eaten by fridge light in the dark.

Categories: Uncategorized

The Best Part, Give Or Take

Posted on February 14th, 2012

February wears a suit of gray. Not the fitted darkness that is December or January. But rather a frayed and abrasive mist which enters the void and hovers. Low. Ghostly, at hip level or lower. Its skin is a clammy blanket that covers open nerves and spring creeks of thick blood. Bone is cold and marrow chilled. Gray is blue if pigment could only trespass, frigid dark. Gray is all. Dark again.

Drip.

The branches underside skew darker than that of their drier sliver top-skins. Damp at midday still, brushing cool surface clay and channeling moisture to hang suspended. Setting sun yields black now, underneath, inhaling earth colorless and dead. Truth reveals this to be the business end of February. Gray forms the shadow to deceive the distracted. Life. Movement. Work.

Late afternoon ushers in gray, a hue of dry tea and old cinnamon. Still harsh now, gray-brown rather than gray-gray. Smoked like whiskey peat and more so resembling chicken-thigh dark. The dark of movement hidden in perpetual work, below cover. Of resident red muscle rather than flight muscle. The difficult and sustaining part.

Drip wanders down the spine of winter. And stops short, lower.

The croupionner, as Julia Frey clarifies for the confused among French-speaking Americans, is the woman who swings her own business end in stride. I wish I had a swing like that in my backyard, all the colored boys say. A croupion roots her tail feathers; otherwise the hanging posterior fatty bit of fowl. The Pope’s Nose. Precisely what His Papacy is doing sniffing around down there is anyone’s guess. Presumably Confirming Catholic Guilt, agrees the parishioner. Either way, it’s pygostyle to ornithologists. Or as the uvula is to the tonsil of an ass cheek.

 

Tho they stay her feet at the dance,

In her is the far romance.

Under the rain of winter falling,

Vine and rose will await recalling.

Tho the dark be cold and blind,

Yet her sea-fog’s touch is kind,

And her mightier caress

Is joy and the pain thereof;

And great is thy tenderness,

O cool, grey city of love!

GEORGE STERLING

 

Just north of the croupion rests an oyster pair, quite near the thigh, but on the lower dorsal. Gray and dark and flanking the ilium bone, or where the small of the back marks two dimples on the lucky lass. Celluloid-captured by Amélie, unabridged in Larousse and referenced by Bittman, they’re le sot-l’y-laisse or that which The Fool Leaves There. The best part, give or take. The foolish far outnumber the bright. Fools lust for the fashionable and the beloved. They want only what they are told to desire and eschew what lies closest to the bone.

Lower still.

The underside stirs the soup of men. Dark thighs of deep reddish black of protein and oxygen; the femoral region hidden by skin. The sun goes down. This is the stuff of comfort, slow and constant. Of work and working girls. At the table and in the yard. Of taut flesh and sinew strung bow-legged and pigeon-toed tentative still, but with purpose. Poking. Scratching. Toned inside and out from shadows formed on hip-wheels and ball joints.

Gray in those dark shadows closest to bone.

Pinkish ’til flame is applied. Smoked, braised and tailored.

Given in to moisture, I rebuke the foolish breast, man.

I love you but I choose dark meat.

Yes, right there. Again.

 

_ _ _ _ _
Chinese Tea-Smoked Chicken
(Adapted slightly from Jennifer Yu’s Use Real Butter)

_ _ _ _ _
INGREDIENTS
8 plump, whole chicken legs (thighs and legs)
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
4 tbsp salt
3 tbsp Lapsang Souchong tea
1 tsp flour
1 tbsp brown sugar

_ _ _ _ _
INSTRUCTIONS
Marinate your chicken (Day 1)
1. In a large bowl, rub legs and thighs and legs with salt and
pepper. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in fridge overnight.

_ _ _ _ _
Prepare your chicken (Day 2)
1. The next day, remove from fridge and wash off the salt and peppercorns.
2. Place chicken pieces in heavy pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil.
3. When water boils, turn off the heat and cover for 10 or so
minutes, or just until juices run clear.
4. Remove chicken and cool on a plate.

_ _ _ _ _
FIND YOUR SMOKER EQUIPMENT
4 clean, wide, stubby metal cans
1 large cooling (or grilling) rack
1 large baking sheet or rack (for transporting to grill)
2 large pieces of aluminum foil

_ _ _ _ _
BUILD YOUR SMOKER
1. Grab four stubby, wide metal cans (about the size of tuna cans). Use a can opener to remove the tops and bottoms of the cans. Remove all labels.
2. Position the baking sheet or largest rack on the counter. This will serve as the transporting base of your smoker.
3. Lay out a large double sheet of tin foil. The foil should be large enough to eventually wrap up the entire affair like a package.
4. Evenly sprinkle the tea, flour, and brown sugar on the tin foil (in an area roughly the size of your cooling rack.
5. Position the cans to support and elevate the cooling rack.
6. Place the rack on top of the cans. Your tea, flour, and brown sugar should be spread out evenly below the rack.
7. Arrange your cooled chicken, skin-side up, on the cooling rack (sitting above the metal cans).
8. Bring the outer areas of the foil together and seal tightly, like
a tent, leaving adequate space above the chicken. Remember, smoke needs room to do its finest magic.
 _ _ _ _ _
NOTE: Don’t crowd the chicken in the smoker or the smoker on the grill. Let it breathe a little.

 _ _ _ _ _
MOVE TO THE GRILL
1. Turn your gas grill on high, or carefully arrange smoker over
a hot charcoal grill.
2. Grill for about 15-20 minutes and check for darkness. It should be a deep reddish-brown.
3. Reduce the heat to medium-low for another 15 minutes (or move to indirect heat source on charcoal grill and check after 10 minutes).
4. Remove from grill and open foil to allow smoke to escape.
5. Season lightly with additional salt and pepper, if necessary.

 

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized