Matey! This sailor sweater I’m wearing is accidentally and embarrassingly appropriate for Saltie, the tiny nautical-themed sandwich outpost in Williamsburg where salt is a major player (NYC’s salt war be damned). And my lunch date is wearing a navy pea coat and a wool beanie! Egads.
The lassi: Today it comes with quince and it is salty, sweet and sour (S.S.S.) Satisfying!
The sandwiches: I order “The Captain’s Daughter:” sardines, a pickled egg, parsley, salsa verde and dill and he orders “Scuttlebutt,” an even saltier technicolor combo of pickled beets, capers, squash, olives, feta, a hard-cooked egg and aioli.
Jarmuschian: A seat at the window a very square stool frames a scene of complicated telephone wires from which sneakers precariously hang. There are shadows of pigeons flying overhead. A man heaves flat packs of new pizza boxes into a cellar next door and the music playing reminds me of the Ethiopian jazz in “Broken Flowers.”
A four-shelf minimalist glass and painted steel case: Olive oil loaf, Eccles cakes, a pork and potato slice—it’s a little bit of England-in-Paris a la Rose Bakery, but in Brooklyn.
I am convinced that the appeal of fava beans is the effort, not the result. When I saw them at the farmer’s market last August, my stepmom painted such a tempting vision of summer afternoons in Italy spent dabbing the fresh beans in salt, the perfect late harvest snack. Fava bean dip with mint, a recipe I see from time to time, seems similarly refreshing.
I had never dealt with fava beans before, but because they are one of those items that comes and goes quickly during the season, I felt pressed to buy them last week. After the purchase, I got really busy and forgot about them until yesterday, when I had just finished a project and I needed a mindless-yet-mindful task, and shelling and peeling fava beans is just that. “It makes me feel like we’re villagers whose work is never done,” said my friend as we removed the pale green filmy skins of a handful of beans. We kept our hands busy while we rearranged our minds. Food pairs well with philosophizing.
A hefty bag of beans-in-shell eventually amounted to a paltry pile that hardly covered the bottom of pan, so the cooking part seemed irrelevant, useless. What would it make, a spoonful of mash? A single fava patty? The boiling and blanching only proved that cooked fava beans are actually quite smelly, flavored like dirty socks or rank armpits. I doctored them up with garlic that was too sharp and lemon juice that made the mush too sour. Salt and an avocado had nothing to add to the mix, either. Disappointment and disaster.
Sometimes food, like thought, does not depend on realization to provide satisfaction.
My dad seemed hopeful that I’d suggest an activity for us to do today—a hike on the mesa? Coffee in town, where we’d make fun of dippy Santa Fe types?— except that I was in the midst of some Michael Jackson-related work today. TV was on, Twitter was open to the LA Times and I periodically checked an AP reporter friend’s Facebook updates from the scene at Forest Lawn. He was skeptical of my interest in the media blitz, but, I argued, this was the first newsworthy event since his death nearly two weeks ago. He eventually chilled out and even turned up the volume when Stevie Wonder started to sing. Then, between Al Sharpton’s impassioned speech and Brooke Shield’s teary one, he made us something to eat. The funeral luncheon: Quesadillas filled with sauteed swiss chard with carmelized shallots; a salad of mixed lettuces, radishes, green beans and lemon vinaigrette and seared wild salmon. We ate in silence.
Spending time at my dad and stepmom’s house yields interesting information about food, as they are both passionate cooks. Subsequently, they have a lot of food-related magazines lying around. One of my favorites is Cook’s Illustrated, with its no-nonsense New England-y take on food preparation. It’s what happens when Protestants get their hands on what could otherwise be a very decadent Catholic supper.
The best parts of the magazine are, of course, the delicate illustrations of gadgets, produce, cookware and quick tip how-to (contrast the tiny color photographs on the last page of the issue’s featured recipes, which make the food look very Betty Crocker, in a bad way).
Today’s most fascinating facts and tips involve onions and apples:
#1 Did you know that the way you cut an onion affects its flavor? I did not. Apparently cutting with the grain (pole to pole) makes the onions less pungent than cutting across the equator. Wow! This has to do with odorous substances that are released when the cells of the onion are disrupted. Onions cut against the grain = more disrupted cells. But if you’re dicing them, I guess, all bets are off. (On a related note, I recommend slicing with the grain first when you’re dicing. The onion holds together better when you’re doing your second perpendicular cut).
#2 To keep a cake moist (when it’s underneath a cake dome), place a whole apple alongside the sliced part. The moisture from the apple is like a built-in humidifier.
And one more fact, courtesy my stepmom when I had my “oh wow” moment with the onion, if you chiffonade a basil leaf and want to keep it from going brown when you cut it, slice parallel to the vein instead of across it. This is useful if you’re topping pizza with it, and want maximum decorative effect.
Everything from “beet it” to an observation on how much these beet roots resemble dismembered rat tails, which would then need to be followed by a link to 13-year-old Jackson’s song Ben, about his pet rat.
The pool table is covered with a varnished piece of plywood so that now it functions as a proper table. Or, at least, as proper as a table can be in a place that sells 25 cent hot wings on Wednesdays and has the most flat screen televisions in the whole city. Across the table there are two petite Mexican girls with braces on their teeth. They are either best friends or sisters, and they smile and laugh at whatever their male companions say to them, which is not very much. Mostly, all eyes are glued to one of the many screens, all tuned to ESPN but not all in synch. One side of the bar cheers about five seconds before the other side when a particularly exciting play occurs.
The guys across the table are in t-shirts or sports jerseys, which would be oversized on anyone but these guys, who are oversized themselves. Two pitchers of Bud Light on our side of the table are nothing compared to the two mini-plastic kegs of Budweiser—not light—that they methodically consume, along with buckets of wings and a quesadilla with goopy orange cheese that doesn’t have a chance to spill from the sides of the tortilla, because the guy eating it finishes the triangular piece in two quick bites.
There’s a guy with a closely clipped mohawk wearing clear framed glasses. He’s talking to a dark haired girl with perfect boobs and tanned skin, licking sauce off some wings and wiping his fingers on a napkin. When someone across the table cheers, he raises his hand in a high five to the large man in a maroon jersey sitting to his left, who obliges. Then the guy with the mohawk turns back to the girl, shifting his chair ever so slightly. The large man turns to him, all solidarity gone, and tells him that he needs to move his chair because they are sitting too close to one another. He’s touching his back, he says. The rules of masculine contact have been established: Hard and fast, not soft and slow.
At the end of the night, a french fry pudding of hot wing sauce and cheese congeals in red and white checkered paper trays lit by a blanket of fluorescent bulbs.
One craves dried squid about as often as one craves beef jerky. It’s a novelty snack that only makes sense in a Japanese supermarket, especially when it’s displayed next to sweetened sesame coated roasted baby crabs or other tiny dried fish meant to be consumed like popcorn. Dried squid is meant to be consumed like Big League Chew. In condensing all the chewiness of the sea creature, dried squid eliminates the slimy sensation without compromising the overall toughness in the bite. It pairs perfectly with crunchy coated peanuts, fish flavored crackers, 1950s beach blanket pin-ups and citrus fruits. This is California.
Unfazed by the pickled eggs at Joe Jost and the suggested sausage sandwich, we collected ourselves and drove to the LBC’s premier antique shop, where doll parts, vintage smut and ’80s era Coca-Cola bottles peacefully collided.
The mail had a curious smell, as though it had been laundered in a bath of Natural Instincts shampoo. The offender was not that issue of Modern Bride, but a small padded envelope containing the tiniest vial (vile) of perfume. “Ageless,” it was called, and it proclaimed itself to be the “world’s first anti-aging perfume.” What is the secret of youth, besides a cloying mix of pink grapefruit, mango, pomegranate, jasmine, musk and apple? Make yourself smell like a Jolly Rancher, Teen Spirit deodorant and shampoo. “It smells like a nice air freshener,” said the girl seated next to me.
They claim it will make you “feel 20 again,” that age before the stench of booze legally permeates from the pores of young women, when they’re more apt to smell like whiskey and keg parties. At 30, she will smell like a cosmopolitan, at 40 she will smell like a dirty martini, at 50 she will smell like a martini with a twist and at 60 she will smell like vodka on the rocks with a side of fresh squeezed orange juice. The secret to smelling young? Never grow old.
Instead of bringing flowers to the next dinner party you attend, bring ingredients for sangria. Ask the hosts to provide a clear glass flower vase, or pack your own. Procure four Valencia oranges (the smoothest skin, the juiciest fruit), three apples, two lemons, two bottles of red wine and a flask of brandy. Into the vase, juice two oranges and one lemon. Slice the other oranges and lemon into flat discs and layer in vase. At this point you will need to grab a towel or some napkins, because your work station will be overflowing with juice, rind and pulp. Sop and mop. Now chop the apples into chunks; add those, too. Ask the host to uncork the two bottles of wine, because your own hands will be too sticky. Pour over fruit, being careful not to splash any fellow guests with the glugs. Add half a flask of brandy, or the whole thing if you’re feeling “naughty.” Then stir, and taste it in a coffee mug because you’ll want to avoid dirtying up real glasses, which will be needed for the guests. You will notice that it’s a bit on the dry side, which is fine for adult dinner parties. But if by chance someone has made a pitcher of lemonade, try adding a splash or two of that. While we all like to think we have advanced, sophisticated palates, the truth is a little sugar can go a long way at a dinner party. If there’s no lemonade, go with a few tablespoons of the stuff straight. Sangria is a type of fruit punch, after all. Now put the vase, including the wooden spoon you used to stir with, in the center of the table. Or if the table is quite full already, get the party started with off-center table placement and encourage the person closest to the vase to pour. Two people might be required to handle this type of pitcher, which is not really a pitcher. Sangria not only makes an excellent centerpiece, then; it is a real ice breaker.
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