Spring Cooking
Eight days. It’s not quite so desperate that I’m counting the hours. But in eight days I’ll finally have air conditioning.
This wasn’t a part of apartment living I had expected, although it makes sense. The IAS member housing all runs off a central heating and cooling system. Apparently, there are still people out there who find the chilly nights more uncomfortable than the warmer days. My hunch is that these folks have no interest in tackling extended cooking projects.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I prefer the cold to the heat. One of my favorite things is to be in the kitchen attending to some slow cooked dish, and filling the house with the warmth and aroma of good food.
The transition from winter into spring is always a tricky one for me. It’s hard to get out of the habit of spending hours by the stove. I do not do well in the heat. And if you think I’m grumpy now, you should see me when I start to sweat. It’s not pretty.
Lately, I’ve been in a real fix.
The Best Part of the Banh Mi
Something horrible happened yesterday. All Over Albany ran an Eat This! that suggested its readers go out to the newly reimagined Reel Seafood and order the impossible: a banh mi wrap.
“Don’t you mean ‘improbable’? Because I can see quite clearly from the picture, it exists.”
No. No, I don’t. As Deanna points out in her story, “banh mi” means bread. Trying to make a banh mi without bread is like making an omelette without eggs or risotto without rice. Calling it a banh mi wrap would simply imply that you’ve taken bread and encased it within a tortilla, and that’s not what is happening here.
For what it’s worth, you also can’t have a muffaletta taco. That sandwich is also named after the bread on which its served.
If any of this is sounding familiar, it’s because I wrote a full post on the evils of wraps just last month. It even detailed the ingredients of the dreaded “spinach” tortilla similar to the one shown in the AOA story. So I don’t want to rehash that or pick apart the dish in yesterday’s story ingredient by ingredient. That hardly seems productive. And Deanna has good taste, so I’m sure–wrap aside–the thing is truly delicious.
But I do want to take this chance to clear up a key point about the classic Vietnamese sandwich.
The Golden Rule of Slices
New York style pizza is only supreme in the overall pizza hierarchy because of the slice. It’s a bold statement, I know. And I’m ready to defend it to the pain.
The real pizza geeks go gaga for Neapolitan pies. Those hand crafted, quickly cooked, blistered rounds of incredible but simple ingredients are amazing. But they aren’t portable, and they aren’t cheap. The iconoclasts may opt for the coal fired pies found in New Haven, and while they are delicious, these charred monsters can be a real mess to eat. Also no slices. And any attempt to eat a piece of Chicago style deep dish with your hands is as ridiculous as pants on a trout.
In pie form, NY style thin crust has some very serious competition.
Now I’ve written in the past about the supremacy of NY style slices, but it’s been a while. Back then, I only touched on what may be the single most important thing about ordering your slice from the person behind the counter. Because even good slice shops sometimes like to think that they are pie shops. And that can lead to disastrous results.
Fat Tubs
We’ve got crops rotting on farms and in transit, supermarkets dumping massive quantities of still usable food, restaurants tossing heaping piles of unwanted leftovers, and consumers ditching whatever goes past some arbitrary date stamped on a box.
There isn’t a lot you can do about the waste inherent in the system, but that doesn’t get you off the hook. Stop wasting food dammit. If you eat meat, respect the life that was taken and consume every last morsel with joy and appreciation. If you eat vegetables, respect the farmer’s labor and eat the roots, the leaves and the stalks. Should you need ideas of what to do with your leftover bits of food, don’t forget I’m always here to help.
Personally, I always try to save my kale and chard stems. The intent is to saute them with bacon and make a savory bread pudding. But somehow Mrs. Fussy keeps throwing them away. Grr. On the subject of things that Mrs. Fussy hates, have I ever told you about my fat tubs?
How Mothers Do It
Our kids have finally worn Mrs. Fussy down, or maybe she has simply forgotten the travails of eating breakfast in bed. Regardless, I’ll be helping them prepare a thankfully simple morning repast that we’ll bring to her bedchamber.
All Mrs. Fussy wanted was nutty granola with some special yogurt and some frozen raspberries. Thankfully Whole Foods was open late last night so that I could get the necessary ingredients. If you want a staggering variety of high quality yogurt and granola to choose from, it’s really the only game in town. Although in Albany, I’m sure the Honest Weight Food Co-op would give them a run for the money. Still, I was amazed at how reasonably priced these staple items were at Whole Foods, but that’s a post for another time.
You may have noticed from the paragraph above, that I went shopping for Mother’s Day breakfast just last night. Like many human beings, I have the terrible habit of putting things off to the very last minute.
That’s the main reason my own mother isn’t getting flowers or any other sweet or thoughtful gift delivered to her door today.
So instead, just like my kids are doing for their mom, I’m making a card of sorts (this post is made with my own hands and will have to do). My mom may also get the better deal today because she won’t be subjected to an after breakfast scavenger hunt to find the craft projects hidden throughout the house.
Be forewarned, what follows has precious little to do with food.
Fed Up with Rhetoric
Documentaries about food are my kind of movies. And as it just so happens, there is a new one that’s coming to theaters tomorrow. It’s called Fed Up and you can watch the trailer below.
Based on the trailer, it seems to be largely about America’s eating problem, our national weight gain, and the ubiquity of sugar in the foods we eat. We eat a lot of processed crap, thanks in part to government subsidies that encourage the production of corn and soy, which then flood the market with inexpensive sugar and fat.
I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment on their specific arguments, but one of their promotional tweets last week got me all hot under the collar. You can see the full tweet and my reaction here, however the relevant text is below.
The answer to today’s trivia is $2.86. Do you think this is enough to provide students w/ a healthy meal? #FedUpMovie
How can I say this gently…
AskTP – Eight Weeks
Technically, I have just over seven full weeks left in New Jersey. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be back in Albany at the start of July. Now don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to be up there briefly for a bar mitzvah in just a few weeks.
There are always a small handful of people who wish I would just leave the Capital Region, and that’s fine. Technically, they got their wish for the past several months. Although, as some of you may have noticed, I never really let go of the place.
But regardless of where I am, questions continue to flow into the blog via the comments section. And long ago I made the commitment to answer every question that was submitted, just so long as it was asked using proper punctuation. Sure, I may not answer the question quickly. I also don’t guarantee the veracity of the answer. But it’s an answer nonetheless.
In an ideal world, I’d answer all of these questions when they were first posted. The problem is that I don’t want to junk up the comment threads with my face. Really that’s there for you all to hash it out. I’ll step in periodically as I must. So instead, all questions are rounded up and answered in this semi-regular feature we call Ask the Profussor.
Now without further ado, on to the questions.
The FroYo Favorites
Almost two years ago, the Albany Times Union had a roundup of the Capital Region’s frozen yogurt shops. I’m pleased to announce that the FroYo crash has still not come to Albany, and all of these places are still open and doing well. Some have even expanded. Plus, new shops still seem to be opening all the time.
Instead of getting just one person’s opinion on what are the best foodstuffs in the region, the FLB started organizing tours to come up with these difficult answers. And most people will swear up and down that the things we evaluate are practically commodities: one is just as good as the next.
It was said of soft serve. People believed that to be true of apple cider donuts. Mini hot dogs with meat sauce look identical to the untrained eye. Fish fry, mozzarella sticks, egg and cheese sandwiches, and the list goes on.
So recently Maeve McEneny, on my behalf, led a bunch of eaters into the wilderness to taste the difference among the five most established FroYo brands in the marketplace. To these brave souls, I offer my thanks and a debt of gratitude. Because of their hard work, we now have a clear top dog in the local FroYo scene, and a few other findings that I think are particularly interesting.
New Voices
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning. I don’t know about you, but I kind of hate the onward marching of time.
Sure, it’s great to have the change of seasons and all. As winter starts to relent maple syrup starts to flow. Then come the ramps, fiddleheads, and chives. Soon, real vegetables like asparagus dart out of the ground. Before you know it, there are spring peas and the first tender beets and carrots of the season (to replace the woody ones from winter storage). Perhaps the climax is sweet corn, summer fruit and tomatoes before the chilly nights start rolling in. Then it’s autumn squashes and apples until we start loading up on winter storage vegetables to get us through the next eight months of mud and ice.
But as time lurches forward, things change. The Capital Region food blogosphere today does not resemble what it did when I first started this project. Some people left the region, others took more demanding jobs which cut into their free time, a handful just burned out, while most just faded away.
That’s why it’s always refreshing to see some new voices join the chorus. It’s also great to see older blogs revitalized with a renewed energy. With that in mind, I’m hoping you will check out the following.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 