STIR THE POTS

How's that spelt?

Spelt is grain that is the  current rage in some baking circles. That mystifies me.This bronze age cousin of wheat has peculiar profiles that deem it healthy but is very difficult to handle. First, it has a weak gluten structure and doesn't rise into a lofty and airy loaves unless you're an amazing baker. Next it needs less water; say about 10-to 15 percent less than a normal wheat bread. Oh, yeah, don't over knead! Do I need to say that again with another exclamation point? Sorry, but over kneading kills it. Truth is, you need to handle it particularly gently. Three to four minutes is sufficient to get the flour mixed to use. For directions, let me suggest Dan Lepard's method of short 10 second kneads with some two folds, perhaps even Jim Lahey's no knead. Judge for yourself, but I stray away from using a mixer because of the danger of high speeds.

I first started using spelt flour with my sister at her home in Switzerland, a place  where watches, chocolate and  spelt are king. Why? Well, because spelt is less disease prone and utilizes less fertilizer, as well it is easier to digest for people who suffer with wheat allergies.When baking at her house I'd usually turn out bread that resembled a clay object, flat and unappealing. That said, it's mysteriously sweet nutty taste made up for the aesthetic flaws. It's safe to say the Swiss are on to something.

Last year on vacation, one of the wonderful things  I did on my various "bread adventures" was visit the mill at Maisprach a 6th generation family owned business. The bakers at Australian site Sourdough have been baking lots of loaves. One especially nice loaf was a recent entry from my friend Dom, who mixed the Dan Lepard and Jim Lahey techniques. Wise strategy. Personally, when I tried, my timing was off, and the loaf was slightly past its peak. Still, the result was a nice tasting loaf, somewhat of uneven shape, but still totally satisfying. Soooo... I won't give up on this spelt. Instead I will explore trying some mixed flourspelt breads like those I have seen on some of the German bread forums. Time to get out my translator!

The way you go for Wagyu

Last Tuesday, while removing pin bones from trout fillets for a large party at the club where I chef, my manager introduced me to two gentlemen, Paul Dojo and Yasuo Iba. Both are salesmen from ADIRECT USA INC, importers of Ohmi Premium Wagyu Beef.  After a sales pitch with intermittent translation, business cards exchanged, some waist bending, and an offer of a rib eye cut that was heavily marbled with fat, I cut off a piece to try sometime after the party. The salesman warned me that the beef had a low melting point. "Like chocolate," I said half jokingly. They laughed, then told me that they would be doing a demonstration with their steaks across the river in Edgewater, New Jersey at Matsuwa market on Saturday morning.

The following day, my sous chef and I finally tasted the very "phat" beef. Whew. Call my cardiologist! My first impression chewing the flash seared piece of marbled meat, (hardly your average USDA dry aged cut)  this specimen has just a deceptively light taste of beef with airy, silky fat resonant on your lips and tongue. Safe to say you might want to take a couple extra Omega 6 pills immediately! When my boss squealed disgust, commenting that he didn't like the beef's fatty nature, I thought "fine by me cause it tastes very good to me!"  And so I marked my calender Saturday morning for the demo at Matsuwa Market in Edgewater.

Matsuwa is a Japanese food emporium with all sorts of goodies, from beer, sake, rice, sushi,etc.. Like Mitsuwa market, which I wrote about yesterday, Matsuwa is located in New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Manhattan. It sits  in a large mall complex with a number of different stores selling kitchenware, perfume to books. As well there is a large riverfront Japanese Steakhouse, if you're not inclined to eat in the market's busy food court. When I arrived we were greeted by sales reps for a baking company who offered long cookie sticks covered in chocolate. Hardly Japanese I thought, but my mind was swimming with visions of shabu-shabu pieces of Ohmi beef shimmering in water speckled with fat. We were directed to the back of the store where I located Paul, salesman for Ohmi.  He welcomed me and we started to taste and talk Wagyu. After some introductions to Kazuko Nagao publisher of Pecopeco, a cool web foodzine, according to Kazuko's card, for "hungry Japanese." All the while people were crowding around the Wagyu table, and I even made a friend with an elderly gentleman who kept commenting that  the beef was so good while he tapped my stomach. Was he trying to tell me something? Anyway, Paul says he will talk with us about Wagyu in depth when he returns from the West coast. Stay tuned!

Mitsuwa Market

Think Japanese food around New York City, and most of us would first think of sushi, probably in mid-town. But within a 10 minute bus ride from 42nd Street, Edgewater, New Jersey has attracted a growing Japanese population, creating some great food opportunities. Below are are a few pictures I took at the really interesting Mitsuwa Market. Just across the Hudson, it's a great place to visit.  When I went, my first focus was the food court. For $14.00, I had pork cutlet with rice and egg, some pickles, and a salad with a sesame dressing. Not your typical fast meal at a food court. No indigestion or fumes from some greasy paper wrapped gray burger or deep fat fried fries! But the main show is the grocery that is stocked with some great quality food products from Japan, including a huge beer and sake section. Don't forget to get some gyoza while your shopping or maybe some sushi?

Here's the address and more details, along with photos.
595   River Road, Edgewater, NJ 07020, (201) 941-9113, newjersey@mitsuwa.com

Levain de pomme de terre au travail

Susan at wild yeast is making me painfully aware of some of my lazy baking habits. She inspires and cajoles some marvelous examples of bread some make me...hmmm... envious or just has me drooling uncontrollably on my keyboard! Her bread baking is well plain fabulous, so I was aiming to see if I could follow her rendition of a Jeffrey Hamelman Norwich levain. Above all I especially have been dying to perfect Susan's amazing Couronne Bordelaise. I even went as far as to order a banneton from France. 

I mention Susan because she reminds me of something that happened last week. It was inspired by a recent forum discussion on Graham Prichard's site, about terms in baking. Bread is basically three elements; water, flour and salt generally speaking, and in this mish mash world with all sorts of European baking terms thrown into Americas baking renaissance there is a whole bunch of anxious home bakers kinda following a myriad of methods and techniques like a bad diet! This of course includes yours truly, not because I don't know how to bake. It's just that I want to bake all the time and all kinds of flours,starters and formulas are racing in my head. This brings up adding fruits, vegetables or what other matter into the mix of creating a leaven.

So later in the week, ignoring orthodoxy, (John Downes, cursing me!) I started a loaf by following standard equal 1.1 flour-water, except I threw in a patate! (Potato), grated 5 oz and topped off the rest with water to make 8 oz total and added to it 8 oz flour, let sit 24 hours, and waited....Next day not a lot of movement but I persevered and fed the beast, removing 3/4 of the leaven, adding in the same amount of flour and water...this time the leaven sat over a two day period as we were closed on the weekend. On Monday I looked at the blob bubbling in my bucket, thinking "it's alive!" My breakfast cook looked at me like I was nuts and made a face at the gooey looking monster. I fed it again, and then again that evening. I figured if I am working all these hours and my breads have been less than perfect let me see what I can do while at work, monitoring and gaining my baking prowess again!

The next morning I went on the net to look for a dough to make, Nils my Aachen baking friend, had one of Dan Lepard's breads on view, a friendly oat and apple bread. With minimal range in flour, I set to task and realized it was going to be tricky to perform this baking feat with service looming! What came out of this first attempt wasn't the cleanest of breads, but it made me consider feeding the leaven a bit more so it could get some strength, yesterday I looked up the Norwich levain and proceeded to knead, rise, and fold all in between lunch service. Realizing a problem of baking the same day I proceeded to shape and leave the dough to proof about 1.5 hours and retarded it over night. Et voila! Success, at last, tasty and well felt marvelous about not having to rush home during an afternoon break to see if I can make a decent loaf work then get back for another dinner rush. Thanks Susan, Nils, Graham, for making me less lazy and appreciate baking like I really know how!

Berlauch=Ramps

If you're like me spring is the season of renewal. Even though I love root vegetables and cooking stews in winter,  there isn't anything more delicious than...  berlauch!  You know berlauch? No you say? Well then berlauch are ramps, those green leafy white and burgundy tipped stemed plants that grow in the woods up and down the east coast. When I got my first seasons batch I quickly matched them with morels and scallops, then used them for Passover. This latest batch I served with creamed corn and black sea bass. Last weekend my sister in Switzerland called and told me she had eaten at a fine restaurant where they served them in ravioli. In Germany they use them in bread. I wonder what Alex and Aki at ideas in food would do with them?

 

Ashkinaz-me! (a Passover tale)

Pesach or Passover is the time for Jews around the world to reflect on their history through a ritual rife with symbolic foods, like Matzo. It's the telling of the exodus from Egypt. Shapiro is my surname. It is derived from the town of Speyer in Germany, the country of my birth. It was also one of the major centers of Ashkenazi culture in Germany. Honestly, I am not really a man of faith. And even though my mother is a Borgia, (you know Ceasare, Lucrezia, Alexander and Julian), which by ancient Hebraic law makes me less than genuinely 100 percent Jewish, that doesn't mean I am not a kindred spirit does it?

Okay, now that my name and religion are figured out, the menu is what I love. Though my tendency would be to follow a more Mediterranean line of food, highlighting the Ashkenazi delicacies though would show some sort of chutzpah. Then again, leaving them out would make some people verklempt! I didn't have a bubbe to teach me traditional Jewish culinary heritage, so some of this meal is borrowed from different sources. Lets say it's sort of instinctual for me as a cook to make this meal. Oye, so what are we having?

                   Pesach at Shapiro’s
   

                                         Canapes

         Chopped chicken livers with Bibb lettuce and radishes on spelt matzo

                                       Appetizers

                                Matzoh ball soup

                 Gefilte fish with horseradish and beets

    Wine: Salomon Undhof  Hochterrassen 2004 Gruner Vetliner

                                   Kremstal,Austria

                                   Main course

      Braised beef brisket, sautéed ramps with potato latkes and applesauce

  Wine:  Sharecropper's  2006 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
                Owen Rowe of Saint Paul, Oregon

                                     Dessert

Assorted petit fours, from Payard’s, they didn’t have macaroons so I made some rochers, (French coconut macaroons, and my wife being the consummate food snob loves Payard!).

 

Joe Ades, Union Square's Peeler Man

When I went to Union Squares green market Saturday to do some food shopping, I ran into a familiar figure on the corner of 15th and Broadway. Joe Ades is a fellow with a dapper suit whose equally charming spiel, spoken in fine Cockney meter, sells  a five dollar Swiss-made peeler. Joe has the routine of a quality English street barker, which makes sense as he's originally from Manchester in Great Britain. 

Actually, he likes to describe himself as a "grafter," a British term for someone "who works hard." And that he does, or at least he works hard at capturing and entertaining a crowd. He's awfully good. The man has has been written about frequently, from profiles in Vanity Fair to articles in the New York Daily News, the latter about which he boasts, in between his sales of peelers. Having caught his speech in the past, initially I was about to forgo it on this visit. But then his Carey Grant demeanor, as well his  banter with kids in strollers, and chatting with the parents pushing them, captured my attention.

In Howard Kaplan's Vanity Fair article, he talked about days of fine meals and sipping Veuve Cliquot at fancy city restaurants, and his pleasure when other glamorous diners asked him how he spent his days, he'd tell them "I sell peelers." Apparently, the handsome old Mancunian (apparently, the terminology for folks from Manchester), he lives with his wife in an apartment on Park Avenue. The peelers, according to Joe, are all stored in the room once reserved for maids. Times change but Joe Ades remains to deliver New Yorkers his words, charm and peelers.

H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa

Chef Alex Talbot and Chef Aki Kamozawa are the innovative team behind the blog, Ideas In Food. On the site, they share techniques and pictures to inspire, many sending the light bulbs in this chef (moi!) to light up in good ways.  Honestly, at first glance, some of the varied pairings have seemed like curve balls. Take Dr. Pepper marinated pork butt with kimchee. What to call it, nouveau cuisine re-visited? I don't know. I don't care. It hooked my interest. So instead of clicking Google to find some traditional recipe, consider the possibilities on Idea on Food. By utilizing new techniques that are designed to make a meal an experience defined by flavors and textures, these two chefs don't just provoke, they deliver some solid thinking around food.

Podcast Click to listen

 

Jean-Benoit Hugues

Provençe is where my mother was born. So I have a sweet spot for anything that comes from that area, such as the fine quality huile d' olive, or olive oil. For thousands of years the region's ancient trees have given up a green liquid that is rich with taste. Surprisingly,in comparison to Italy and Spain, France's harvest is small. What sets French olive oils apart are the intense but delicious flavors - an experience that remind me of those sunny, fragrant stories told in Marcel Pagnol's lovely film, Jean de Florette.

Jean-Benoit Hugues and his wife Catherine, two purveyors of fine French olive oil, remind me of those characters in that wonderful Provençal tale of drought, hard work and love of terroir.  When I first met Jean, it was on a surprising visit to Williams Sonoma, a store that usually only surprises me for their high prices. If it hadn't been for my wife’s urging to join her for a quick impromptu peek as walked by, I would have missed out on meeting Jean, who was giving out samples of his oil. I grabbed a cup and swirled it, then let it trickle down to taste the bouquet. He mentioned that it was rare for him to see an American do that, as most of his customers just were happy to experience it using a fast dunk with the ubiquitous sliced bread. I told him that I was a chef who likes to get the virgin oil to tickle my palate like wine! And it worked, the first sensation a heady dive into the flavors of artichoke and pepper.

Jean turned out to be a friendly and interesting man. Suddenly I found myself enjoying Williams Sonoma in ways I'd never imagined, standing there talking to a food pro who was happy to share stories about his business.  While traveling last year in Europe, I wanted to visit him in Castela's, dreaming of an adventurous cycling trip down the Rhone from Lyon to Provençe. Besides visiting him, it would give me the chance to commune with the land of my maternal ancestors. But it didn't happen. Instead I hurt my back riding a bike on treacherous Swiss country route, which laid me out with sciatica. No visit to my mother's country or a visit to Jean-Benoit’s oil orchards.

Fast forward to today. Rather than wait for my next vacation (not till August!) I invited Jean-Benoit to talk to me via the telephone about his wonderful oil. He obliged, making for a fun afternoon talking about his business and life in it. For the future, we made a rain check to actually meet in person, maybe this time depending on the train rather than bicycle.  After talking with him by phone, I now look forward to that visit, perhaps ending up in his kitchen cooking up some artichaut barigoule so I can soak up those intoxicating lipids, extra vierge s'il vous plait!

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Saul Zabar

Who hasn't heard of Zabars? The shop that sells food from around the world: smoked fish, caviar, cheese and… nothing but wonderful stuff! After having written a post on shopping adventures at this family owned food store, a New York institution, I decided it would be great to interview the folks who run it. My co-producer, Jonathan, thought it would even be greater to actually get the man behind the operation, Saul Zabar. Easy for Jonathan to say. He wasn’t the guy asking for the interview. But luckily, Saul Zabar turned out to be one of the sweetest, as well as smartest pros I’ve ever met, inviting me meet him at his office above the fabled store of his family’s name.

One of the reasons I chose this place was its connection with the Jewish businesses which once thrived in the city, but as with the mom and pop stores of other European ethnic groups like Italians and Germans, seem to be disappearing from New York. Granted, there are some great new immigrant food stores taking their place, but the food, as well as the history, of these older players is something to treasure. Today, there aren’t many of the legendary Kosher delis left. Zabars, Russ & Daughters, Katz's are still here. But sometimes I wonder, given Manhattan’s astronomical rents, how much longer can they last? Well, after talking with Saul, I have faith in the staying power of Zabar’s, a business that for decades has managed to keep masses of highly discriminating customers very, very happy.

Saul Zabar is a man who likes telling stories. And having been in the food business in New York since 1950, he has great stories to tell. Saul paints a great picture of old New York, the family business, and his education in the smoked fish and coffee markets. At the end, honestly, I felt lucky to get the chance to have the chance to listen. Listening to him made me think a lot of my paternal grandfather, also a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe. In the interview, Saul recounted the Zabar family’s struggles coming from a Ukranian shtetl, sharing the history of his relationships with partner Murray Klein, telling stories of their different food businesses, coffee on the docks of the city’s once vibrant port, even tales about some of the competitors who he admires. 

Walking away, Saul left me thinking he's the best type of businessman in this tough business of food, someone who respects his customers, but also takes real pride in his employees, knowing their value as workers but also human beings. Whether it's devoting the resources it takes to train them, keep them, and make sure that they feel part of the business, he's a man who serves as nourishment to several important communities. And so if I initially worried that Zabar’s might not defy the gravity of Manhattan’s massive gentrification, and though his daughter has left the business, (don't worry, Saul, knowing food and knowing family, I say she will be back!), anyone visiting the upper West Side can count that this deeply rooted icon will be alive for many generations, nurtured by his cousins, his son and all of his loyal New Yorker patrons who form crowded lines every day, happy to take home some of his goodies.

So come on in. Click to listen

 

 

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