Take Me To The River
When I got the invitation to attend a media event at Angelo’s Tavolo, I was amused to think that someone considers me to be a member of the media. But I was also interested in checking out their new casual summer setup for Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
I thought since I’m now a member of the media, this might be a good chance to mingle with my peers and colleagues.
As it turned out Steve Barnes had dropped in the night before, and neither Ruth nor Cheryl of the Times Union were in attendance. I had thought perhaps someone from Metroland, The Gazette or The Record might be there, but no. Instead, last night I rubbed elbows with some fascinating people involved in local radio and television. I also got to spend a few minutes with Matt Mazone and chef Frank Tardio.
It was very illuminating.
Ask the Profussor – Eat Up Fatty
Summer is supposed to be swimsuit season, but I’m not feeling it. Sure, I was looking great after I had the head cold and dropped a few pounds. But since then there was the trip to San Francisco where I gained about a pound a day, the culinary competition in which I judged 36 dishes in under ninety minutes, and the massive feast at Ala Shanghai which apparently wasn’t over until we washed it all down with soft serve from On the Farm. My pants are tight.
I have no plans to start working out, but if I did, I certainly would not be going here.
I’ve been so busy eating that a bunch of your questions have once again slipped through the cracks. And since I am committed to making sure that every question gets answered (so long as it is accompanied by a question mark), today is dedicated to playing catch up. It’s been a long time coming, so consider this the lightning round. Next time, I’ll try to take the food out of my mouth long enough to answer a few more questions along the way.
Daddy, What’s a Twinkie?
Happy Independence Day! How many of you are feeling particularly independent today? I hate to go against the spirit of the holiday, but I’m feeling more dependent on people and institutions than ever.
Not only do I depend on my wife and my kids, but I also depend on my parents and my in-laws. I depend on my children’s teachers and bus drivers. Let’s not forget how much I depend on my readers and commenters. And yes, I depend on the government. Clearly, I don’t depend on the government to uphold the highest standards of integrity for our food supply. But I would like to.
Speaking of America and our food supply I’ve got a funny story. I can’t even tell you exactly how it happened. Because I was so shocked, that it entirely threw me for a loop. But somehow over dinner the subject of Twinkies was raised either by Mrs. Fussy or myself.
Young Master Fussy looks up at me with is big brown eyes and says, “Daddy, what is a Twinkie?”
Cheap and Bubbly
Greetings from Providence. Here I am back in The Ocean State where the motto is simply, “Hope.” I’m here with the Fussy Little Children and once again Mrs. Fussy has managed to find a way to stay behind in Albany. That means I’m flying without a net, and my commas are free to flow from my fingertips with reckless abandon.
So if this post isn’t quite as polished as what you’ve come to expect from the FLB, feel free to blame her absence.
It’s wine day, and that is a very good thing, because I can take care of two critical issues with one post. One is what wine should you serve for an Independence Day cookout. And the other is about finding a good, but cheap, sparkling wine. Although I suppose by telling you the second topic, you have already guessed the answer to the first. Oh, well.
Failure of Fresh
Let’s talk about creativity for a moment. The title of yesterday’s post touched on it, but I failed to connect the dots as I recounted an easy recipe for savory bread pudding.
Kids can be marvelous artists. The form of their line is unconstrained. Their imaginations run wild. They are not limited by their egos. But invariably, if you give a kid a big box of crayons, they will use every one until their paper becomes nothing but a big muddy mess.
The secret in getting good art out of kids is knowing when to take the paper away.
Unfettered creativity is often disastrous (although in rare instances it is staggeringly brilliant). But putting some limits on one’s own creativity can actually help you achieve better results. This applies to art, as well as cooking and making drinks. Yesterday’s post was supposed to show how you can be creative within the confines of a structure to make a recipe your own.
Riffing off proven ideas is a good place to start. For example, some cocktails call for the inside of a glass to be rinsed with a base spirit to perfume the drink. Maybe there’s another way to achieve that effect. Well at dp Brasserie in Albany, they are actually smoking glasses. I think that is a great idea.
But these kind of things don’t always work out well.
Learning to Cook: Restrained Creativity
When I think about summer foods, savory bread pudding isn’t too high on the list. But really it should be. It is very adaptable and can contain not only a plethora of seasonal vegetables, but it can also hide their less desirable parts. For example, if you’ve made kale chips you probably have thrown away a bunch of perfectly delicious, and very nutritious kale stems. But what the heck do you do with kale stems?
The answer is savory bread pudding.
And it’s not as if you need to slave over a burning hot stove for hours in the sweltering summer heat. Yes, there is a little milk scalding. However most of the cooking happens in a pretty low (300 degree) oven for about forty minutes. Plus the dish doesn’t need to be served hot. It could be cold or room temperature. And it makes a substantial pairing with a large summer salad for a hearty and satisfying meal.
Did I mention it’s super easy? Even a cooking novice can pull this off. If you are a cooking expert, you can bang this out with ease, and have a new staple in your rotation of regular recipes. The version I make is a bit on the healthier side, but you can also make this a super-decadent treat.
Here’s how to do it.
After Pool Snacks
Nostalgia will get you every time. When I was a kid, I went to summer camp with ADS in Miami. It was hot, but the pool was cold. In fact, given the heat, the pool now seems impossibly cold. One of the very best parts of camp was getting out of the freezing pool, and shivering our way over to the snack bar window, to eat a steaming hot pile of freshly made fries.
If memory serves me right, they were only fifty cents. Damn, I feel old.
Well, it’s summer and that means it is time for Young Master Fussy to spend some quality time at the town pool learning how to not drown. For his bravery, more than his skill or effort, I want to reward him with the only positive thing that ever came from my own juvenile swim instruction: French fries.
But in doing so, I’ve discovered something unfortunate. A fundamental fact of French fry lore has been turned on its head.
Order of Operations
If you have ever had a good sandwich, there is no way you could ever vote for Subway as The Best Sandwich in the Capital Region. And part of my mission over the next several months is to remind everyone of great sandwiches they may have had in the past.
These may have been in the vicinity of Albany or perhaps anywhere else around the country. It really doesn’t matter. My feeling is that in the drudgery of everyday life, people forget what is truly great and have learned to be happy with the substandard.
So today I’m going to talk about a great Philadelphia sandwich, and it’s not the cheesesteak. But while you’ve got that on the mind, I need to clear something up once and for all.
You don’t say, “Wit Whiz.”
You say, “Whiz wit.”
The form is [type of cheese], [presence of fried onions]. For the latter, your choices are “wit” or “witout.” Sure, if you say “Wit Whiz” the person behind the counter will understand you. But you are doing it wrong. Depending on where you are in Philly you may just want to skip the cheesesteak entirely and head straight for the Italian pork sandwich.
Cakes and Curds
Some people don’t wait until the last minute to do things. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people. But I’ve been struggling with my own work style since grade school. Luckily it has always seemed to work out. Sure, I may be more tired than most people, since I’m up all hours of the night finishing the next morning’s post. But that’s why God invented coffee.
Last Thursday night I was writing Friday morning’s post, which was about my ten-year wedding anniversary. In those wee early hours between Thursday and Friday is when I hatched a great idea for a surprise anniversary treat.
I would try and get a cake similar to the one we had on our wedding day.
Luckily I know a good bakery [for the record, this will be the last post I write about Crisan and cake for a while…cupcakes on the other hand are still fair game]. But I have to tell you, it wasn’t quite as easy as I had hoped, and it involved some last minute emergency tweeting. It also reveals a level of crazy that I don’t think I’ve yet to share with the class.
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