The Box of Chocolates
Is the suspense killing you? I’m sorry. The Tour de Egg Sandwich was over three days ago now, there’s been no word on a winner, and today I’m writing about chocolate. That seems needlessly cruel.
I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s bad form.
But won’t it be exciting later today when the victor of the Tour de Egg Sandwich is announced on All Over Albany? The Eat This! feature generally is posted sometime between noon and 2 p.m. Just so you know, the results were incredibly close. It was almost a three-way tie for first place.
In the meantime, hopefully I can distract you with tales of my favorite chocolate maker. After all, tomorrow is the first day of February and that means two things.
1) The day to download the membership forms for the Roxbury Farm CSA is less than 24 hours away.
2) Valentines Day is two weeks away.
So apropos of the default VD present, here is the big question. Where can you get an amazing box of chocolates?
An Open Letter to the Times Union
To the Editors:
Surely there are plenty of people who would like to change the annual Times Union Best of the Capital Region poll. I imagine that many of them are lobbying to include a category that serves their personal self-interest. Given the tenacious, entrepreneurial, and competitive nature of our local cupcake bakers, they must be calling weekly to try and find a way onto the ballot.
Let me begin by saying that I have no horse in this race.
My family moved to the region over four years ago from Berkeley, California. The transition was not easy. But over the years, I have diligently sought out magnificent and wonderful places that make the Capital Region truly special: fantastic restaurants that one would not expect to find in a region outside the top 50 DMAs and unique offerings that cannot be found anywhere else.
And every year when the Best of the Capital Region poll is released, I’m crestfallen to see none of these places even get mentioned. To dismiss this poll as a popularity contest is doing the paper and the community a great disservice. What could be a source of great regional pride has recently only served to reinforce the stereotypes of Albany as a backwater of civilized society.
Furthermore, these feelings are not mine alone. Others have noticed and are similarly discouraged.
To be sure, improving the results will take time. But the first step is fixing the questionnaire. I have three specific suggestions that will help to move the poll in the right direction.
Morning Meat
Tabulating the Tour de Egg Sandwich results is going to take time. Believe it or not, an event that began at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday, which required its participants to eat an unholy number of eggs, drew over twenty people.
I’ll tell you this right now, Stewart’s did not win.
The full results will be up later this week, I promise. But for right now, I can’t even think of eggs, which makes the Sunday breakfast post a bit challenging. Instead, let’s turn our thoughts over to breakfast meat.
Glen over at Rolf’s eats a steak every morning for breakfast. God bless him. I wish I had his genes. Steak is a lot more common breakfast meat than say, smoked pork chops. And while Taylor ham may be common in New Jersey and scrapple is widely available in Pennsylvania, these options rarely make it this far north. In case you were wondering, I consider corned beef hash in a separate category all by itself.
No, most of the country has to choose from the holy trinity of pork: Bacon, ham or sausage. One of these is clearly superior to the other two. And while you can probably guess which one, my reason may surprise you.
Take This With a Dash of Salt
It’s hard to complain about a $20 three-course meal at a nice restaurant. Not to say it can’t be done. I’ve been to a handful of restaurant week dinners in the region and haven’t been terribly impressed with any of them.
My intentions for the FLB have been to keep it separate from restaurant reviews. Those are mostly reserved for Yelp. In a few days I hope to post a review there on the food I ate at MezzaNotte last night. Instead today, I’m going to focus on one larger issue about restaurants that was inspired by my meal.
Overall, I was pleased with the experience. It was a decent value at half the restaurant’s normal prices. But in many ways the food was lacking. Still, I was impressed with the entrée. The chef had the guts to go without a vegetable on the plate, and the confidence to be simple with clean bright flavors. In this town, that’s really notable.
However, the fish along with most everything else I was served, was under seasoned. Fortunately, there was a shaker of salt on the table. But this turns out to be a double-edged sword. Does a shaker of salt belong on the table at a restaurant of this stature? You know, one with white linens where the plurality of entrées cost $24.
From Both Sides Now
My mom is going to love the soundtrack to today’s post.
Screw local food. You know what I just ate? A tangerine. In upstate New York. At the end of January.
And I loved it.
You know what else I love? Coffee. That doesn’t grow here. Neither does chocolate. Nor the olives for my olive oil. For the past month we’ve eaten more rice than I ever thought imaginable, and I don’t know if it’s even possible to cultivate the grain in New York. If Little Miss Fussy had to give up her mango lassi habit, I fear she wouldn’t have the will to get out of bed for a month.
Sure, if one were enterprising, I imagine there is a way of producing a local salt. But pepper is out of the question. We have great local cheeses, but none of them is Parmigiano-Reggiano. If necessary, I could be content with local wine, beer and spirits. However I’m not giving up on the amazing variety of foodstuffs that, while they may come from far away, help to create a global village.
Now that you know I’m no ideologue, I have to tell you something about local food.
Souper Sunday
The year is already off to a rip-roaring start. We’ve already begun the early preparations for the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region, Saturday marks the first Fussy Little Tour of the year, and on Sunday I’m judging a soup making competition.
Yes, it’s Souper Sunday.
Sorry. The Schenectady Greenmarket has too much class to enlist such a cheap pun to promote their event this upcoming weekend. Instead, they are calling it their 3rd annual Market Cook-off. Last year’s theme was Spuds Are Not Duds. This year the theme is Soup!
I wouldn’t be doing this had it not been for Wendalicious who recommended me for the job. Thank you. Judging is one of the things I enjoy most. Seriously. But I’m also excited about this particular showdown for a few other reasons.
Snack Attack
Kids cause problems. When they are small, they can be pretty malleable to a certain extent. You want to feed them beans and guacamole for snack time, they are okay with that. At home, my terribly deprived children gobble up kale chips like they are candy.
But eventually most kids go to school, and there they are exposed to a whole wide world of possibilities. Many of these include some truly awful foods.
I was amazed that Young Master Fussy came back from school singing a song whose only lyrics were fast food restaurant names and being told to buy Sunny-D by his teacher so that the library could earn free books. But those were a lot easier to combat than the newfound desire for the brightly colored foods he saw his classmates enjoying in the cafeteria and at snack time.
So what’s a dad to do? Well, believe it or not, I compromised. A little. There are two snack foods that have made it into a regular rotation. And while they aren’t great, neither makes me feel too uneasy. One happens to be truly surprising.
Fixing the Ballot
Does the Albany Times Union matter? It’s a fair question.
What does it matter what Cheryl Clark says about a restaurant, or Ruth Fantasia, or Steve Barnes? They are just individuals. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, one can call upon Yelp, Urban Spoon, Trip Advisor, Open Table, or simply Google a restaurant to read countless reviews and see how it stacks up.
These online reviews capture multiple dining experiences over many nights from many different perspectives. The information that can be gleaned from these sources is invaluable. Sure, sometimes there may be conflicting reports, but when you find a place that is almost unanimously loved, you know it’s a winner.
Like when you search for the highest rated sandwich under the Delis category Cardona’s Market pops up to the top of the list with 4.5 stars on 36 reviews. That’s phenomenal, and even if your heart belongs to another Italian deli, surely you can agree that Cardona’s is indeed one of the best sandwich makers in the Capital District.
But the newspaper does indeed matter. It matters a lot. Especially when it conducts a broad poll of our populace and makes pronouncements about what things are The Best of The Capital Region. You know, like Subway.
Every year this survey kills me. Instead of instilling a sense of pride, the results widely elicit a feeling of shame. This year I’m being proactive, and I’d like your help.
Kimchi: It’s What’s for Breakfast
Wake up and smell the fermenting cabbage. If that doesn’t shake you from your slumber, go ahead and make a cup of coffee.
But in all seriousness, kimchi fried rice would make a splendid morning meal. You know, if your spouse wasn’t dead set against the stuff. However, despite her protestations, I have a nice little corner of the refrigerator where a giant half-gallon tub of the stuff now resides. And on the lid of that tub sits my new favorite Korean condiment, gochujang.
I don’t know why people get obsessed with kimchi fried rice, but I do know that I have joined their ranks. Maybe it’s the colors, the deep yellow yolk that runs over the red-pepper-burnished rice. Or perhaps it’s the contrast of textures, from the crunchy bits of well-seared rice, to the slippery egg and the snap of the cabbage. It could simply be that the dish is just so damn easy to make, and just so damn delicious.
If you’ve been following my tweets, you may have noticed that I’ve been enjoying this dish a lot over the past few weeks. I’ve been making it for lunch, because that’s the meal I can cook just for myself, without having to consider anyone else’s preferences.
My lifelong friend ADS noticed, and he wanted to know how to make it. I’m happy to oblige.
Drinking Out of Season
I still don’t have a good handle on winter. Recently I bundled up and went for a walk to collect some locally roasted Ethiopian Sidamo beans. It was a cold day, but I was dressed warmly.
Upon stepping into the coffee shop I was suddenly overwhelmed by the heat of it all, and I couldn’t shed my outer layers fast enough. Had someone offered me an iced coffee, I would have gladly used it to help cool down. I might have even started rubbing the ice on my arms.
But that is still the exception and not the rule, because it’s cold here. And really it doesn’t help that Mrs. Fussy and I have a little game we play about who is going to be the first one to crack and turn up the heat. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not going to be me (one of us is hearty and the other one is just plain old stubborn).
Naturally, this makes warming drinks even that more appealing. So what was I doing last night with a fizzy cocktail full of ice?
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