Eat This! Exemplary Apple Fritters, and While You Are There, How About a Slice of Pizza?

So, I like a good donut as much as just about anything. And these days, thanks to a reintroduction by my foodie foraging friend Gabriella, you are just as likely to find me waiting on line at the Donut Plant as you are anyplace else in the city. But in the category of “Old School Fried Dough,” it doesn’t get much better than the glazed apple fritters at D’Aiuto Pastry Corporation (405 8th Ave., between 30th and 31st Sts.)—a high-falutin’ name for an otherwise divy, old-fashioned bakery.

The ur-apple fritters at D'Aiuto's on 8th Ave.

Ignore the signs for the bakery’s Baby Watson cheesecakes. In fact, ignore everything else in the place—the giant, stale cupcakes, the soggy, overly sweet danishes, the insipid, sawdust-textured cookies. Ignore everything but the apple fritters. Weighing in

Travel Log: A Great Lunch at Cochon in New Orleans

I’ve only been in New Orleans for 27 hours and I’ve managed to sample the food of more than 30 chefs. Some 25 of them were at a Friends of James Beard Benefit at Kingsley House organized by JBF trustee Dickie Brennan. More than 500 people braved the chilly weather for the picnic-style, outdoor, walk-around tasting. Tasting highlights included the crawfish and corn boil from Charlie’s Seafood and the sublime seafood gumbo from Stella! Also remarkable were the  little open-face pork sandwiches from Cochon. And today we followed that taste trail (and the dining advice of trusted friends) to Cochon (930 Tchoupitoulas; 504-588-2123) for lunch. I’m glad we did.

What a thoroughly delicious and satisfying meal we had at Cochon. (Okay, so I’m more than satisfied, I’m stuffed to the gills!) Served in a casual, wood-lined restaurant in the Warehouse District—in terms of décor, think Momofuku Ssäm Bar in NYC or Avec and Publican in Chicago—Donald Link’s modern cajun and creole cooking was a revelation. Housemade boudin with a delicate texture and powerful seasoning was steamed in one preparation and rolled into a ball, breaded and fried in another. A mushroom salad with crisp-fried jerky and fresh mint was ethereally woodsy and fresh. We loved the grits casserole with caramelized onions, the baked broccoli raab and rice casserole laced with nutmeg, and the eggplant casserole that had the texture and sage-tinged flavor of the best Thanksgiving stuffing. Oysters roasted on the shell combined the sweet-tart-salty-bitter flavors of the sea, lemon, and char. An unexpected standout was the fried rabbit liver served on toast with pepper jelly, fresh herbs, and pickled vegetables. Our pleasure didn’t stop with these starters.

Roasted oysters on the half shell.

Our groaning table at Cochon.

A cone of housemade pork rinds.

Fried rabbit liver with fresh herbs, pepper jelly, and pickles.

The first shortcake of the strawberry season.

Lemon buttermilk pie

A cone of housemade pork rinds, a wooden plank of charcuterie, a casserole of creamy and buttery lima beans, smothered

Recipe Box: Homemade Matzo, or Why on this day do we call water crackers matzo?

Homemade honey-pepper matzos at our seder last year. The "Oder of the Events" table tent was intended to give the hungry an idea of "Why (and how long) on this night we have to wait to eat dinner."

About a decade ago a brief article by Florence Fabricant in the New York Times presented the concept of making your own matzo with a recipe apparently dated to Medieval Spain. Seasoned with a generous amount of black pepper and sweetened with a touch of honey, these beautiful, crisp, round crackers with a refreshingly complex flavor became an instant Passover tradition. Our family’s chopped liver, which has always elicited raves, is elevated to the sublime on these tasty matzot.

Of course, it isn’t exactly pesadic to be baking your own matzos using regular flour and without rabbinical supervision. For matzos of the shmura or “guarded” kind—that is, the most religious and least delectable matzos made by and for ultra orthodox Jews—the wheat is supervised from the field to the oven to ensure it doesn’t come into contact with any moisture until the moment that the flour is mixed with water to make the matzo. Moisture might activate natural yeasts and start the verboten leavening process. At the precise moment water meets wheat, a stopwatch is set to 18 minutes, the time Talmudic science has determined that it takes for fermentation to begin. According to one matzo-supervising Lubvaticher I asked, the fact that the number of minutes is also the symbolically significant Jewish number of chai is pure coincidence.

The ordered-chaos inside a shmura matzo bakery during those 18 minutes is indescribable. From behind paper walls two disembodied hands come out, one with flour one with water, which they dump into a bowl set between them. The dough is mixed and then balled. The balls are thrown across the room to women banging dowels on the rolling table to indicate they need something to work. They roll out the dough into flat disks. The disks are draped on long dowels and carried across to the wood-burning oven. With a giant peel the matzos are set into the roaring fire of the oven. They bake in seconds and, once lightly charred, are thrown Frisbee-like to another area where they cool completely before being boxed. There is no place to stand in a shmura matzo bakery that isn’t in the line of something that will hit you. At the end of 18 minutes, everything stops. Calm returns. The tables are cleaned. The paper walls are stripped. The dowels are collected. Then everything is replaced to avoid any possibility of contamination by natural yeast or fermentation. And the entire process starts again.

In her original piece, Fabricant provided a pesadic alternative for these homemade matzos, substituting Passover cake meal for flour. But the results are not nearly as gastronomically satisfying, even if they are more Talmudically correct.

Below is the recipe as I have adapted it.

Eat This! “Mini” Pumpernickel Bagels at Brooklyn Bagel

A few years ago I wrote a two-part feature for the Art of Eating on where to eat in New York City. As part of my research I decided to try to find my favorite bagels in Manhattan. This was an arduous task because every time I’d stumble on a contender, I’d have to gather all of my other favorites to make an accurate taste comparison. In the end I settled on the dense, chewy, salty bagels with a crisp crust at the glatt kosher La Bagel on 1st Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets. At the time I was living in Chelsea and I had to travel across town every time I wanted my favorite “donuts dipped in cement,” as my grandfather used to call Big Apple bagels.

Not a lot of style here at Brooklyn Bagels & Coffee Company in Chelsea. Never you mind, the bagels are exemplary.

Then one day, the old-school, everything-you-need-is-somewhere-in-here hardware store around the corner from my West 24th Street apartment morphed into a one-off bagel shop with the dubious name Brooklyn Bagels & Coffee Company (286 8th Avenue at 24th Street) and a clumsy logo that included an illustration of bagels being shaped by hand. I was suspect at first because they seemed to be trying so hard. The shop was modern but nondescript, without half the charm of the Murray’s Bagels shop around the corner, whose undersalted bagels I didn’t care for. But it didn’t take long for me to grow to appreciate the bagels at Brooklyn Bagel. Like my La Bagel faves, they were dense and chewy with just the right

Recipe Box: What the Doctor Ordered—Chicken Soup (And Just in Time for Passover)

Chicken soup. I can’t get it out of my mind. Passover is coming. But more to the point, I’m home sick from work resting to prevent what I hope does not to turn out to be some full-blown flu. And all I can think of is a bowl of rich, flavorful chicken soup. If I could get off the couch, I would make some.

Among my friends, my chicken soup is legendary. And that’s even before there’s a light, fluffy matzo ball in it. I’m not sure why, exactly. What I do is simple: I pack the pot with a lot of vegetables and an old stewing hen—on second thought, maybe that’s the reason; more on the hen later—and then I let it simmer for about 3 hours, just like my mother did. I’m not shy with the vegetables, either. In professional cooking classes they’ll have you make a giant pot of stock with two carrots, a stalk of celery and an onion. That’s water, not soup. I work in pounds.

An old bird, tired of laying eggs, makes for the most flavorful chicken soup. Save your young, pale-skinned, buxom fryers and roasters for dry-heat cooking.

About the chicken. Young fryers or roasters just won’t do for a flavorful pot of soup. You want an old, tough, tired hen or even a rooster, age 3 or 4. A pullet—a yearling who has just started to lay eggs—will work in a pinch. A pullet was my mother’s preference because often she would find unborn eggs inside, like spherical yolks, and they would end up as a garnish for the soup. I supplement my old bird further with the necks and wing tips of other chickens I collect in the freezer and, to my partner’s horror, two or three chicken feet, nails clipped. The feet add flavor and viscosity to the soup. I buy them in a package of 8 or 12, chop off of the claws, and freeze them in little bundles of two or three so I can just dump them in the pot. All of these out-of-the-ordinary chicken soup chicken parts are available at a good butcher shop or in a Latin or Asian grocery store, or at a first-rate farmers market. If you haven’t looked, you might be surprised how easy they can be to find.

About the vegetables.

Tastemaking: Martha Stewart and Pierre Bourdieu

Last night Martha Stewart hosted a party at her Omnimedia headquarters in way-west Chelsea to fête “The Tastemakers” featured in the April 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. Crusty breads by Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery, spicy pickles by Joe McClure of McClure’s Pickles, heady Surryano hams by Sam Edwards III of S. Wallace Edwards & Sons, and rainbow-colored macarons by Florian Bellanger of MadMac were among the artisanal producers and products on offer.

Joe McClure of McClure’s Pickles at Martha Stewart’s Tastemakers Celebration

Josh Applestone of Fleisher’s Grass-Fed and Organic Meats

Florian Bellanger of MadMac

Martha Stewart, host of The Tastemakers Celebration.

Like stepping into the pages of the magazine, the whitewashed setting accented by colorful food and fashion-forward people was sophisticated and urbane. The event space, in the heart of MSL offices, was set off by transparent scrims, the fuzzy outline of cluttered desks and real-life work visible in the distance alluding to the soft-focus of the photographs in the magazine. (I feel sorry for anyone who had to work late.)

And, perhaps because of the enthusiasm and earnestness of the artisans themselves, the atmosphere of the party was open and friendly. You could actually meet these people and chat about their passions. “Your ricotta is amazing, where

Eat This! Twice-Baked Almond Croissants at Madeleine Patisserie

I spent my junior year of college studying abroad in Paris. Between classes at the Université de Paris on philosophy, electronic music, psychology, and other esoteric subjects for a food and beverage major in hotel school, I studied croissants. Of course, I didn’t take a course or anything. I just went from bakery to bakery for a year looking for my favorite croissant au beurre.

Paris blogger David Lebovitz snapped this beauty, a favorite of his from Au Levain du Marais on Boulevard Beaumarchais in the 11th.

A great croissant is a work of art. The challenge is maintaining an ethereal crunch on the outside and a pull-apart chew on the inside. Croissants should be ever-so-sightly salty, with a buttery, melt-in-your-mouth quality and faint after tastes of yeast and wheat. A greasy croissant is a no-no. So is one that is overproofed or underbaked. And one made without butter is unthinkable, but common. I was puzzled to see croissants labeled natures and au beurre in most bakeries, and horrified to learn that natures meant the croissants were made with something other than 100% pure butter.

Unfortunately croissant research conducted more than 20 years ago isn’t very helpful today. I couldn’t tell you where to go in Paris for a perfect croissant any more, though I still know one when I see one.

Boulevard du Montparnasse

One of the revelations of my research was the croissant aux amandes fourés, that is, the twice-baked almond croissant. Filled with almond paste, flattened, baked to a crisp, dark brown, and dusted with icing sugar, this elegant refurbishment of leftover croissants ends up being almost better than the original. I particularly loved the version produced by a small bakery on Boulevard du Montparnasse, dangerously close to the the main office of our study-abroad program.

Coffee Talk

How happy am I that most days I’m never too far from a delicious coffee. Today’s New York Times round-up got me thinking that it wasn’t always this way. Each year while I was co-teaching my course on Italian food culture and the Mediterranean Diet in Italy for NYU, I couldn’t wait to be back in Florence so I could count on every cappuccino or espresso being good, and often great. (I only started teaching there in 2002!) Now, the coffee I drink most of the time in NYC—at Stumptown, at Abraçao, at Grumpy, at Everyman Espresso—is often better than anything I can remember having in Italy.

The beautiful cappuccino and espresso macchiato in this photo were pulled by Gwilym Davies, the 2009 world champion barista from Wales, who happened to be visiting the La Marzocco espresso machine factory in Florence—just up the road from NYU in Florence’s Villa La Pietra campus—the day we were touring with our students in June 2009. Visually, his coffees were beautiful, as you can see. Looking at these pictures I can recall the rich, complex taste and the creamy texture of his exemplary extractions. (The coffee itself came from local Florentine roaster Oke Caffè.)

One thing left out of the Times article was the wait that seems to be required for a good espresso in New York. (Note to NYC baristas: the name “espresso” is not meant to be ironic). Florentine baristas have speed all over their New York counterparts. At one of my favorite cafes, Caffè Libertà on Piazza Libertà, your coffee arrives on the counter before you finish your order, the baristas tuning their ears to the conversation over the cash register to stay on top of their game. Not sure what accounts for the wait here in this city of speed. Stumptown, which works two stunning La Marzocco machines with three heads each ought to be able to pump out hundreds of coffees an hour. Instead they make them one at a time and there’s always a line. Madonna mia! Luckily the coffee is good enough to wait for.

Québec Meets The Lower East Side

Québec Meets The Lower East Side

Originally uploaded by Kitchen Sense

Classic French Canadian fare from T Poutine. Though I never ate poutine—French fries topped with gravy and cheese curds—when I was growing up in Toronto, poutine has become a synecdoche for Canadian food. From Vancouver to New York, restaurants are serving it, I think, as part of the same elevated-junk-food trend that has made hamburgers, fried chicken, and meatballs popular, even among our finest chefs. Poutine dates from the 1950s. Even at its best it isn’t very good. The poutine at T Poutine, opened by a sexy québécois model, is typically unremarkable, which makes it very authentic. Their traditional preparation is in the background of this photo. In the foreground, a hamburger poutine fantasy.

Dim Dim Sum, or Why Dumplings Are Better in Toronto than in New York

Ok, I’ve just come back from Toronto, where I had two dim sum lunches, one at a very high-end Chinese restaurant, the other at a very low-end Chinese restaurant, and both were better than anything I can find in Manhattan. Why?

The dining room at Lai Wah Heen in Toronto's Metropolitan Hotel.

Lai Wah Heen in Toronto’s quirky Metropolitan Hotel has, for many years, been my favorite place to have dim sum. It’s tucked on the second floor of the nondescript hotel. There isn’t even a sign outside. “Where are you taking us,” one food-critic friend I lured away from a food conference we were participating in asked as we walked through the ordinary hotel lobby and started up the stairs.

Lai Wah Heen is an elegant Chinese restaurant that isn’t trying to be “western” or “fancy.” The lunchtime menu offers innovative and traditional dim sum, both equally satisfying. What makes this dim sum worth its elevated price, besides the peaceful environment in which it is served and the exquisite tea that accompanies it, are the quality of the ingredients used and the obvious craft of the kitchen. Lobster, caviar, flying fish eggs, scallops, large shrimp, foie gras, shark’s fin, and other delicacies find their way into the dumplings and other steamed-to-order offerings. No dim sum I’ve had elsewhere can compete with the fineness and texture of the various wrappers and pastries that encase the delicately seasoned fillings. “This one is almost transparent, like glass” another food-writer friend noted about the crystalline wrapper on a steamed duck dumpling. The lobster dumplings come shaped as little lobsters. This is a special place. Dim sum came to about $50 a person, and no one seemed to mind.

Lai Wah Heen's lobster dumpling.

The next day, I joined my tai chi friends after class for lunch at Rol San, an all-day, every-day dim sum place on Spadina, north of Dundas, in Toronto’s original Chinatown. (As in New York City, there are now several Chinatowns in Toronto’s outskirts.) Here, too, the dim sum were steamed to order. But the freshness of the food