The Bygone Banh Mi
Can you think of a great food that has become overwhelmingly popular, but at the same time managed to hold onto the very things that made it great?
I’m struggling to think of examples. Bottled soda perhaps. But even that was just a perversion of what jerks were doing at fountains, and ultimately would give rise to our devastating modern soda culture.
Recently, I’ve been concerned with banh mi.
After years of waiting, we’ve finally gotten a place in Albany that is making them. I’ve yet to try their version of this famous Vietnamese sandwich. But I have been talking to people about the form, and I seem to be the only one who is upset with what’s going on here and all over the country.
Hot Bowl of Sunshine
It’s not even November and in Albany the inches of snow have already begun to accumulate. The trees don’t even know it’s winter yet, so many still have their leaves. All the animals are totally freaking out. Our neighbor’s squirrels look even more panicked and frenzied than usual.
Me, I’m happy to be back at the stove and working on some long slow cooking projects. Earlier this week, I made my first chicken stock of the season. Last night was my first soup. Really, it was more of a sweet potato, peanut and garbanzo stew.
But today’s not about soup, it’s about breakfast.
And breakfast can be just as warming and soul satisfying as a hot bowl of soup. One of my favorites is a butter-toasted, slow-simmered, steel-cut oatmeal with brown sugar added at the table. Oats are just one way to warm up in the mornings. Have you ever considered this?
Boo!
What do you call someone who is a Grinch about Halloween? Because that’s me.
It didn’t always used to be this way. I loved the holiday through my college years. In fact, Mrs. Fussy and I met at a college Halloween party. But for over a decade I’ve tried to avoid the holiday as much as possible. And let me tell you, that’s not easy with two young kids.
For the past two years, we’ve been out of town, so that helped. It was a logical argument that we can’t trick-or-treat in a hotel. And to make it up to the kids, I gave Young Master Fussy $10 to spend on candy at Walmart a few days after Halloween. By then the candy was marked down so deeply, he had trouble spending the whole thing. I think he ended up with over ten pounds of his favorite hand-selected candies.
Everyone wins.
This year it’s different. I’ve got to give out candy to the kids who may or may not show up at our door. As much as this annual ritual that is now firmly based in our consumer culture galls me, I’ve decided to play along and actually hand out candy to the local urchin children who parade by my door in search of sugar, artificial colors and flavors, and chocolate harvested by children much like themselves on the other side of the world.
So what’s going to be in my candy bowl?
Ask the Profussor – Not the Professor
Let’s get another thing straight. I hold no advanced degrees. Mrs. Fussy does. She is a professor. Maybe we should call her Dr. Fussy. But that might quickly go to her head, and we wouldn’t want her to become confused with an M.D. Although I bet Young Master Fussy would get a big kick out of seeing her wear a stethoscope around the house.
I’m the proFUSSor. With a U. It’s a meaningless honorific I created just so as to not be confused with Mr. Fussy. Because that guy is a registered trademark, and he kind of looks like a green Hitler. It’s the mustache. But mostly I don’t want to tread on someone else’s intellectual property.
Now that we know who I am, you can cask me anything you want. Just so long as you use a question mark, I have committed to answering all questions. Sometimes the answers come quick, other times they lag behind a bit. The following are the great questions that have been unanswered since the last installment of Ask the Profussor.
Most of the links that follow are simply there to help you see where each new question begins. They all go to the same place. That would be the mystery link of the day. You should click one and see where you end up, just for shits and giggles.
Now without further ado, onto the questions:
The Dissatisfied
This is a dangerous post. Nobody is going to get hurt. But it has the potential to diminish my credibility. After all, how can anyone expect to please a person who is never satisfied? And why should anyone try? What’s the point?
I have been very lucky in that I’ve been able to eat some stunning meals in some amazing restaurants. A few highlights include places overseen by Thomas Keller, Michael Mina, Wolfgang Puck and David Bouley. There are countless others in the country and around the world that I would like to visit, but like most everyone else I’m constrained by time and money.
But never have I had a perfect meal.
Even among the highest of high end restaurants, something is always a bit off. Maybe the entrée wasn’t quite as exciting as the appetizer or dessert. Or the dessert menu didn’t quite measure up to the refinement of the rest of the meal. It could be as simple as a clunky wine glass. More complicated problems involve the unique interplay of personalities and the relationship between waiter and diner. Once upstairs at Chez Panisse the waitress killed a small spider on our table… and left it there.
As it turns out, a perfect meal is never the point.
This Can’t Be TCBY
Frozen yogurt has flittered in and out of my life for almost as long as I can remember.
During my pre-school days in 1970s Brooklyn Heights there was one place just off Henry Street that had a frozen yogurt machine. The name escapes me, but the yogurt was Columbo. Don’t ask me how I remember, I just do. And my parents’ favorite flavor was banana. When the banana was on tap, we would get cones and walk down to the playground in the evening. The memory is surely better than the fro yo.
It was during my adolescence in the 1980s that a TCBY opened in Miami. It was located in the strip mall near our house, and somehow visits there seemed to replace our periodic visits to the Carvel a bit further down the strip. It’s only in retrospect that this produces a deep sense of melancholy. But at the time, my small cups of chocolate and vanilla twist with chocolate sprinkles made me quite happy.
In college I remember some amazing frozen yogurt technology that took unsweetened bricks of frozen plain yogurt, pulverized them together with unsweetened frozen fruit, and extruded the mixture into a cup. Little did I know that this tangy and fresh yogurt was just a bit ahead of its time.
Today, frozen yogurt is back, and completely reformulated with ultra-modern décor, tart yogurt flavors, and a fully customizable experience.
So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that there’s a TCBY opening in Albany.
Pancakes, Waffles and French Toast
Pan cakes. Cakes for breakfast made of a rich buttery batter and cooked golden on a buttered griddle. On the inside, they are tender and moist. Be decadent, and butter them further on the plate, and stack them two or three at a time, so that each bite is a mouthful of warm, succulent, comfort.
Thin waffles with small holes need not apply. In my world there is only one waffle. And it has large deep holes to hold pools of melted butter commingled with warm grade B maple syrup. Cutting into the waffle is a tricky affair that requires a surgeon’s precision. One must cut on the ridges of the waffle to ensure the contents of each well don’t spill on the plate. But there is no better butter and syrup delivery device known to humankind.
Toast can be amazing. French toast can be transcendent. Good bread needs a chance to fully soak in a batter of eggs and dairy so that it’s thoroughly saturated and barely able to hold together. Then it can be gently fried in butter, so that when it is served on warmed plates, the bread itself is more custard than toast.
These three breakfast dishes share more than just my love and their affinity for maple syrup and butter. There is one more thing that binds their fates together.
Sell Out Saturday
Here’s a new idea. Occasionally I get press releases. Rarely do these things make it onto the FLB. It’s not that I don’t want to support the initiatives of businesses that I share some kind of affinity towards. It’s just that I typically just do one post a day of original content, and for the most part, there is no natural link in what I want to write about and what these businesses want to promote.
But wait, I don’t post on Saturdays. And you might be interested in learning about some of this stuff. So maybe I accumulate a bunch of it over the course of the week (or a few weeks in the case of this first installment) and set it to auto-post on Saturday morning. Because I’m lazy, it will consist of the press releases verbatim.
Honestly I can’t tell if this is a great idea or a horrible one. We’ll just see how it goes, and I’ll look carefully at your comments. Today, I bring you news from Chipotle and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
Drink In the Win
Congratulations! I feel like we’ve all won, even thought it’s Miriam Johnson who got the prize.
Last night at the Table Hopping Five-Year Blogiversary Bash, Miriam’s Empire State of Mind cocktail triumphed in a head-to-head mix-off against Zack Hutchins’ Candied Ginger Appletini.
There were three judges, one of whom was beloved local journalist Fred LeBrun. I never quite caught the names of the two other panelists. Well, anyhow, they bestowed the victory on Miriam and her skillful blending of local ingredients from some of my favorite producers.
The best part? Harvest Spirits’ Cornelius Applejack and Fee’s Orange Bitters will be on the menu at Taste in downtown Albany. But really, there is even a better part.
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