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Good Good Things

Friday Fridge Check

Dear Abby,

I hope you're enjoying your trip to Arizona. It sounds like the food there so far has been really tasty—Jamaican Smoked Mussels, Fried Plantains, Rum and all.

This week, as you saw, I was at several events. The beer and cheese pairing at Artisanal on Monday yielded a take-home bottle of Double IPA and a thick wedge of funky bleu. I shaved a little bit of the latter onto my salad earlier of arugula (I just can't quit you!), radicchio, and salted cashews. But don't freak out. I haven't become a COMPLETE health nutter or anything. In fact, for lunch I went full-on comfort mode with a cup of Stelline mixed with Pecorino Romano, salt and pepper. Star-shaped pasta always inspires me to keep shooting for 'em.

Ba-dum bum!

Anyway, I still have a lot of different butters in my fridge leftover from recent baking adventures. And frankly, they are beginning to piss me off. These magic sticks stand up straight like the middle finger every time I open the door, practically defying me not to make cookies for someone. Tomorrow. If he's lucky.

But, I mean, it's Friday night for crying out loud... Do I really want to spend it chilling dough balls or do I want to dance till the breakabreakadawn? Cliffhanger, I know.

xx

Comment Te Dire Adieu

Sometimes, even after a highly productive, utterly positive day, you can find yourself getting a little bummed out in the middle of the night about the one thing that didn't go your way.

And when moments like that arrive, I find it very satisfying to take a large cleaver and hack at the block of chocolate-covered toffee that patiently waits for me in the freezer.

Memories Can't Wait

Attention: Will Work For Food! Or at least, I will when it comes to helping out a good friend. After editing some materials for stylist extraodinaire ConroyLand recently, she offered to make me dinner and I immediately accepted. On the menu: Eggplant Fries with Tzatziki; a heaping Greek salad filled with cucumbers, tomatoes, kalamata olives, chickpeas, and feta cheese; dolmades (rice-stuffed grape leaves); and miniature baked pita chips for dragging through any leftover dipping sauce. She also picked up a bottle of bright Tempranillo from the local wine shop. We cracked it open and toasted our mutual awesomeness before starting to cook.

The Eggplant Fries couldn't have been easier to prepare. I lined a tray with parchment paper while Sarah sliced up the sticks and tossed them with olive oil. Then, while she finished composing the accompanying salad, I dredged the sticks of eggplant through a combination of breadcrumbs, Parmesan and other seasonings and lined them up in a single layer across the baking pan. Doneski. After 12 minutes, they were golden brown and ready to be devoured.

I don't mind telling you there were no leftovers.

Knocking At Your Back Door

Monday night I attended a press event at Artisanal Premium Cheese on 10th Avenue to learn about pairing beer with fromage.

Let me know when you've stopped drooling. Ok? Still there? On we go: There were five beers and seven cheeses... but only one fwords—so many sips of water and bites of baguette in between.

Beginning with the soft white cream-cheese-esque glob at six o'clock, we enjoyed Grassias (an American blend of fresh cow and goat milk wrapped in lemongrass leaves for an herbal tart but creamy flavor), Garrotxa (a Catalonian goat's milk cheese that is semi-soft and nutty), Ocooch Mountain (an American sheep's milk semi-soft cheese produced in Wisconsin that contains more protein than an egg), Kuntener (a Swiss barnyardy-smelling reblochon-style runner made from cow's milk), Windsordale (a pressed cow cheese from Vermont that pays homage to a traditional British Wensleydale—super flaky and buttery), Scharfe Maxx (a Swiss hard cheese made from thermalized milk, washed in brine, and aged for a minimum of six months to achieve a tangy, meaty, manly flavor) and Berkshire Blue (a Stilton-ish blue from Great Barrington, Mass.)

Holy heck. They were all incredible, but my favorite was the Scharfe Maxx bar none. So much umami in one cheese... the mind wandered.

The beers (chosen by Christian DeBenedetti, author of The Great American Ale Trail and new editorial director of The Weekly Pint) were also exceedingly special, including (l-r) Foret Blanche (a Belgian white), Castelain (a French bubbly beer than can best be compared to Champagne), Hop Ruiter (a Belgian Strong Pale Ale designed with the American hop-obsessed palate in mind), Lambickx (a Belgian sour ale blended without fruit, surprising) and the Scaldis Prestige (a barrel-aged strong ale, super fruity and complex).

My personal favorite of all the beers was the Lambickx, which naturally is only sold in large-format bottles, is expensive and hard to find here in the states. JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE I LOVE. A close second would be the Prestige, because it revealed so many different layers throughout the evening...and because I am nothing if not earnestly trendy: DeBenedetti noted that barrel-aged beers are due to be the next big thing in beer brewing and drinking. For more fun tidbits, sign up for The Weekly Pint.

Anyone can set up their own beer and cheese pairing at home. There were no hard and fast rules; we tried all of the cheeses against all of the sips and scored which we preferred most on a little grid chart, discussing flavors and textures. Best to select a range of soft and hard, mild and stinky cheeses as well as light and strong beers. You will likely find that the more intense cheeses require a more assertive pairing...but really, it's all subjective.

The most important thing before embarking, Max McCalman of Artisanal told us, is to be hungry and thirsty. Love it.

If I Ever Lose My Faith In You

I wasn't invited to any viewing parties for the State of the Union last night (whomp-WHOMP). So instead I streamed it live from BarackObama.com on my MacBook Air and made out with a bar of Mast Brothers Chocolate.

The red, white and blue wrapping was purely coincidental. The almond shards, dusting of sea salt and creamy dark chocolate—moan-worthy. Seriously. Everything about this bar was superior, from the cracking sound it made with each successive square I broke off, to the slow-melting mouthfeel that lingered like a well-planted kiss.

Delicious as it was, however, it was hard-pressed to combat the bitter taste left after our President suggested fracking as an alternative to energy dependency on other nations. "Clean" fracking doesn't really exist, sir.

 

Close Range

I'm skipping the Friday Fridge Check this week for two reasons. The first is because it looks a little too wild and crazy in there to make public. The second is that... Ok, no, reason No. 1 is completely fictitious. I just want to see if anyone cares and comments. In the past, some of you have said you love FFC. But it's been all quiet on the Webtern Front, lately. So maybe I need to shake things up again in order to grab your attention back?

For now I am posting this pic of my breakfast. I usually have oatmeal. But two bagels I'd been gifted were in my fridge going stale all week, so I decided to salvage them with a little lox scramble. After Googling "how to save a stale bagel," the Internet rewarded me with two tips I shall share here for your own future MacGyvering:

1. Never store bagels in the fridge. Duh, Joanna. They will go stale six times faster than if you'd stored them in the freezer or in a paper bag on the counter. Jeez.

2. If you didn't know about the aforementioned Tip either and want to rescuscitate a bagel on the verge of death, warm it in an oven set to 350ºF for a few minutes. Et voila! Not perfect, no. But surprisingly good for being forgotten for four days.

There is a 50% chance I will order this same dish tomorrow at Mile End and pay 90% more for it.

Upside Down

Earlier this week, I was reminded of one of my many nicknames in undergrad: Disco Prisco. It occurs to me that this moniker has probably been a common handle for anyone in my family who was out in public after the year 1972. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun with it for a while. Later in the week, I came across this beer by Swedish brewing company Evil Twin at Brooklyn Larder. I've never tried it, so I can't attest to whether it will turn you upside down, inside out, round and round. But I appreciate the clever nicknames the company chose for its other products... Molotov Cocktail; Yin & Yang (two different beers to be combined for a sort of black and tan); Freudian Slip; and more.

We Take Care Of Our Own

In retrospect, I think I've consumed more red velvet-flavored foods in the past 12 months than I have in my entire life. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and point the finger at Mom. She unofficially launched the program at Prisco North known as "No Frosting Left Behind."

One For You, One For Me

The thing about nachos that kills me (like, literally, physically) is the cheese and sour cream.

But I think we all know by now that I would never let a little discomofort get in the way of a good time. And so I zeroed in on the Mexican appetizer as soon as I stepped in line for the cashier at Grey Dog cafe. I was there spending time with Philzie on his last day in New York before jetting back to Singapore. He was trying to consume as many bagels and slices of pizza as he could before boarding.

As we lingered, chatting about film, writing, travel and dating, I was pleased to find that my nachos never got soggy. You know how that goes. It's the biggest buzzkill to excavate the center of a pile of tortilla chips, beans and chili only to find the center has disintegrated into mushy cornmeal, am I right? ¡Ay, caramba!

But these nachos had beeen structured in such a way as to prevent textural disappointments. For one, they were arranged on the plate in a single layer, so that the bottom chip was also the top. And, while the cheese was plentiful enough to bind the tortilla to middle layers of jalapeño and black beans, someone had thoughtfully sprinkled chopped tomato on top instead of in between—and left the tomatillo salsa and sour cream on the side—so there was less overall water damage.

Whoever was the architect of that dish deserves a design award. It remained crispy down to the very last bite.

When I'm 64

Yesterday at Prisco North, the phone assumed near-church bell frequency, ringing all day with birthday wishes for my father.

At his request, we enjoyed a turkey dinner and my mother's famous eggplant Parmesan. Because we can't help ourselves, there was spinach dip and antipasto before, followed by cheesecake and Italian rainbow cookie cake with almond and raspberry filling after.

I might have had an extra neon slice with my coffee for breakfast this morning.

You only live once.