Come Saturday morning, Cavanagh was kicking ass. It had doubled in bulk, was nice and spongey and airy looking, and smelled sweet and floury, as Chad Robertson said it should in Tartine Bread.

Trouble is … once I looked at what we had on the slate for the day, I knew there was no way I’d be making bread.

So I just turned my leaven into my starter and waited….

The reason I’ve been doing this is that Robertson describes wanting to use a “young” starter as the leaven for the bread — this is to catch the starter right as A) it’s vital enough to leaven the bread and B) at the point where it’s sweet and not yet sour and acidic (as it would be in its “mature” state). He describes a “young” starter as occurring at either:

• 2 to 4 hours after feeding where the total inoculating amount is 20 percent
• 4 or more hours after feeding where the inoculating amount is 5 percent starter

Because he places a strong emphasis on getting to know how your starter’s life cycle, I’ve been trying to be careful about amounts and doing the same thing each time. Hence the 20 percent inoculant etc.

If I’ve lost you, oh well, I’m mainly keeping these notes for myself. It makes sense in my own head right now.

With Cavanagh I’ve been a little more lax. My primary concern early on was bringing it back to life. To watch for signs of life, I made sure to feed Cavanagh with a flour-water mixture that was heavier on water — so I could better see bubbles, etc.

I’m now feeding Cavanagh with a 100% hydration feed (equal parts flour-water) but I’ve been using a varying proportion of inoculating starter each morning. This morning I think I used too much of all components, because Cavanagh overflowed its modest jar. Lucky I placed it on a towel in anticipation of this. (The fact that I placed the towel there, I think, shows that I truly am getting to know Cavanagh’s life cycle.)

Anyway, all this is to say that A) I need to start using a larger container for Cavanagh and B) I need to formalize its proportions.

I’ve been growing Francis in Gladware plastic bowls, pouring 20 percent into a clean bowl and mixing in the feed. With Cavanagh, I’ve been using a small glass bowl in conjunction with an IKEA glass crock jar. I might move Cavanagh over to the Gladware method, just so everything’s on the same page. Though for aesthetic reasons I do prefer the glass.

Anyway, that’s my blab for today. Not much else going on. Cavanagh continues to thrive like a mofo. Francis is coming along and probably ready to use in a leaven now.

* At the suggestion of my wife, whose reasoning was, “It’s based on a recipe from a place based in San Francisco.” I’m still not sure if it’s the masculine or feminine version of the name, and I’m happy for that ambiguity to remain.

This morning I tried using a timelapse video app to capture the activity while I was at work. Unfortunately, the app seems to have crashed about 15 minutes into the day. Going to try to set that up again this weekend or Monday.

The Tartine Bread starter has lost the stink, so I think the “bad bacteria” has died off. It’s bubbling here and there but not very vigorously. Could be that the starter is so thick. It’s showing gas formation, though, so that’s good.

I’m thinking of making two loaves Saturday, one with Cavanagh, one with TB stater.

ilcornicione's Tartine Basic Country Bread

That’s Il Cornicione’s Basic Country Bread. He and I (and Caleb Schiff) have been talking on Twitter about this recipe, and Il Cornicione shared this loaf he just made via photo.

Caleb, of the pizzeria Pizzicletta in Flagstaff, Arizona, also was inspired by the Tartine chatter to restart his own Tartine starter.

It’s kind of cool to see the chatter of the internet spin off into real life action.

In other news, Cavanagh appears healthy and will probably star in my Tartine bread on Sunday.

From left: The Tartine Bakery starter and 'Cavanagh,' a starter I made a long time ago.

Again, not much to report on the starter front these days. The Tartine Bread starter is less stinky and shows a small to almost-moderate amount of bubbling after feeding.

The book mentions that it’s supposed to double in bulk a couple hours after feeding. I’ve not seen this to be the case. But, as I said, patience. I’m sure it’ll start eventually. That’s what happened with my “Cavanagh” starter. Speaking of which …

I don't have a 'before' picture to show, but trust me when I say that it has doubled in bulk after I fed it earlier today.

I’ve brought Cavanagh up from off the bench (i.e., the refrigerator) and have revived it after months of neglect. Which is first-hand proof for me that you really can resuscitate a starter you’ve all but left for dead.

I brought Cavanagh back to life a couple days ago, stirring it up, adding some warm water to it and some flour. I’ve fed it regularly the last couple days, and today it doubled in bulk nicely.

'Cavanagh, is crazy bubbly.

What I’m going to do is keep feeding the TB starter and see if I can get it to take, but if not, I’ll use Cavanagh next weekend to make my first loaf of the Basic Country Bread.

Seriously, don’t bother watching this video. Nothing much happens. I got the notion of setting up a time lapse thing so I could see if the starter really was bulking up as part of the feeding cycle, as the book suggests it will.

This is about 3 hours’ worth of time here. I’m thinking I should have at least seem something, as Robertson seems to peg the cycle at about 4 hours.

Not much here but some bubbles, which at least tells me there’s something going on. Just going to have to wait it out before this one gets going.

FWIW, it took my original starter, Cavanagh, about 9 or 10 days before I started seeing vigorous activity — enough to make a leaven with.

(If you watched the video, don’t put it on me. I warned you.)

I love the effects in this video. Colored string and construction paper. High tech.

As I said yesterday, I decided to time-shift my feeding schedule to the mornings. Trouble is, I’m pretty groggy in the mornings. Today, for instance, I almost forgot about tending the starter. But then I went into the kitchen to take my vitamins, and BLAMMO. “What’s that smell?” …

“Oh. Yeah. Gotta feed this thing.”

It’s like it evolved this horrible smell just to remind me it’s there and needs my care. Ingenious.

After getting some advice from Andrew Janjigian in the comments of yesterday’s post and from John Wozniak via Twitter, I realize I just have to wait for the correct balance of bacteria/yeast to flourish. That may take some days. I know from reading along with Donna Currie‘s Sourdough Starter Along on Slice that it can take up to nine or ten days (though YMMV).

I don’t think I’m going to be making bread this weekend.

Photograph: monikahoinkis on Flickr

I fed my starter last night around 9pm. In his book, Tartine Bread, baker Chad Robertson recommends feeding in the morning. Not for any technical reasons. It’s just how he likes to time his day, he says. So he can feed the starter in the morning and use it for bread that’s ready for dinnertime.

That fits in with my own schedule. So I’m not feeding the starter tonight. I’m going to time-shift the feeding cycle to the mornings. That way I can stoke the starter when I get up on the weekends and prep dough for dinnertime baking.

In other starter news, this shit STINKS. Like something you’d smell in a gym locker. It is RIPE. I’m wondering how long my wife is going to put up with this.

A sort of dark crust has formed above the rest of the starter.

It’s Day 3 of my Tartine Bread “journey.” I started the starter on Monday night. The book said it may start bubbling by the second or third day. Here, it did.

Beneath the crust the mixture is very active.

Under the crust that formed on top, the mixture is very active, bubbling before my eyes. And it stinks. Like “a stinky cheese,” as the book says.

So I proceeded as directed — to the first feeding of the starter. I discarded 80 percent of the mixture after giving it a good stir. To the remaining 20 percent (91 grams), I added a 1:1 ratio of my flour mixture and water. I added back the same amount I had discarded.

This is where I will get into this… I had a very interesting Twitter conversation with John Wozniak earlier this evening* about the Tartine Bread method of starting a starter. John uses a different method. I won’t divulge it, because I’m hoping that eventually he’ll write about it on his own website. But basically, John is adamant about using the least amount of flour you need to get the job done.

As he points out, and I as discovered tonight, throwing out 80 percent of the mixture each time you feed starts to get wasteful. And quick.

Yeah, it’s just flour, but I don’t got that kinda dough!

* Via DM, so don’t bother looking at our timelines. Not that you would. Because if you did, you would be kind of lame and have way too much time on your hands.

I picked up Tartine Bread over the weekend after seeing my buddy John Wozniak rave about it on Twitter. I’ve been meaning to find a great book on naturally leavened bread, and this seemed a good candidate. After reading the first chapter and coming to an understanding of the recipe, I felt I could justifiably start the “Basic Country Bread.” To make it, you’ve first got to grow a starter.

King Arthur whole wheat– and white bread flours.

The recipe advises you to mix up 5 pounds of 50-50 white and whole wheat flour. Then fill a small clear bowl halfway with lukewarm water. To that, add flour and mix by hand until you get a thick batter:

Photo: Claire Lui

I’ve read from a bunch of Slice commenters that it’s a bit of a myth that wild yeast just sort of floats from the air into your starter. Yes, some of it does, but most of the yeast that’s going to inoculate your starter is already on the wheat and in the flour. That’s what Tartine Bakery owner (and the book’s author) Chad Robertson echoes in these pages. But he also notes that some of the yeast comes from the baker’s hands. Which is why, I’m guessing, he has you mix this batter by hand. Even though it’s a bit messy and prevented me from personally shooting pics of myself going at it.

I actually used a whisk for most of the mixing — until the batter thickened enough that I wasn’t constantly having to add more flour to the bowl.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Once it was thick enough (top), I covered it with a clean kitchen towel and placed it in a cool, dark place, as advised. As a nod to Tartine Bakery’s location, I used our San Francisco–theme towel. Now it’s a matter of waiting two to three days while the starter comes to life.

The taps for soda water at the Queens Kickshaw.

Claire and I had dinner at the Queens Kickshaw for the first time last night. Preliminary report: great stuff. But what I want to draw your attention to is the fact that they have sparkling water on tap there — and it’s free.

Yes! We hadn’t yet tasted the food and already I loved this place.

Complimentary soda water. On tap. How often have you had that at a restaurant? It’s a small luxury that probably costs the Queens Kickshaw pennies.* Very classy — and smart. That cost is probably recouped a thousand times over from a customer loyalty standpoint.

Wherein I reminisce

I remember when I first started going out to restaurants in NYC that the old “Can I bring you sparkling water or flat?” line tripped me up a bit. Flat, of course, is not the same as tap. Like sparkling water, “flat” is bottled, and you will be paying for it. What you want is tap water, if what you want is free water.

Which is why I was a bit thrown when our waiter (Kickshaw co-owner Ben Sandler) asked, “Still or sparkling water? Both are on tap.” Does that mean what I think it means? I asked Claire. She had picked up on the wording right away and was like, “Yeah. It’s complimentary. Duh. That’s why he said both were on tap.”

So yeah. Anyway. Long story short: Free sparkling water with your meal. A small everyday luxury in Astoria.

See also…
Superb Grilled Cheese at Astoria’s Queens Kickshaw [Serious Eats New York]
The Queens Kickshaw Is Awesome [We Heart Astoria]
The Future is the Past, Queens Kickshaw [Jeffrey Tastes]
Coffee Chronicles: The Queens Kickshaw in Astoria [Serious Drinks]

* Of course, I suppose you could look at it from the point of view that the restaurant is missing out on sales of bottled water. But my guess is that the fancy soda-fountain sodas they serve — mixed with PH & Co. syrups — makes up for it. Artisanal sodas are trendy now and probably garner more sales among hipster clientele, and at a greater mark-up, than bottled water.

The Queens Kickshaw

40-17 Broadway, Astoria NY 11103 (Steinway/41st Street; map)
718-777-0913; thequeenskickshaw.com

From left: Crust not stretched thin enough, and one stretched just about right.

Having finally found a couple dough recipes that yield great at-home pizza with no “hacks,” I kinda don’t need to experiment anymore. But what fun would life be without futzing with something that works?

See, I’ve been using both the Kenji Lopez-Alt NYC-style pizza recipe and the Cook’s Illustrated thin-crust pizza recipe more or less equally at home. Though, truth be told, I turn to the CI version a little more often because it’s not as hydrated and is easier to work with. (I often end up making my doughs around 11 p.m. and put a premium on the nonsticky, easier-to-clean version.)

Anyway, the problem I’ve had with both these doughs is that they call for you to stretch the round out to 13 inches. My (round) pizza stone is … exactly 13 inches in diameter.

So I either have to stretch to 12.5 or 13 inches and be super careful about placing the pizza on the stone or have to make smaller pizzas, which, of course, end up being too thick (left-hand photo, above).

So tonight I made two batches of the Cook’s Illustrated dough. The first batch I prepared and divided as directed — in half to make two rounds.

The second batch, however, I decided to divide in thirds.

Batch 1: Two portions, each 396 grams
Batch 2: Three portions, each 265 grams

I’m going to try a couple things with the smaller portions. First, I’m going to stretch them out to a size I’m comfortable with on the stone — usually around 11 inches.

Second, I’m going to stretch one of them to near 13 inches and see just how thin I can get this pizza. We’ll see.

The nice thing about not having to experiment with the dough (this is pretty much foolproof pizza) is that now I can concentrate on sauce and toppings. I’ve been taking topping requests from the wife now. This coming Pizza Night, we’re going to do brussels sprouts à la Motorino. But I’ll be marinating them in olive oil first; I’m hoping that helps me avoid burning them as I have been. More on that another time.

[This photo is part of my 2011 Picture a Day project »]

I’m trying to perfect my recipe for chile-infused honey before posting it on Slice. Credit where due: It is 100% inspired by Mike’s Hot Honey, which is available online or from the bar at Paulie Gee’s.

I’m playing with the spice levels. The honey on its own is pretty damn hot. But on a recent pizza I drizzled it on, it wasn’t overpowering. The wife, though, said that the honey (again, on its own) was all heat — that it lost any other flavor components. On the pizza, though, I was able to discern the sweetness it added, and the spiciness was a slow burn. So I might be at the right power level. Still, I want to tweak before posting the definitive recipe.

I’m also a bit concerned about food safety issues. My original source for the technique was actually Serious Eats (imagine that!). But the commenters there brought up the possibility of botulism spores growing in the anaerobic environment of the honey.

Mike’s Hot Honey, I suspect, gets around this by using vinegar (you’ll see it listed on the label). From what I’ve read, heating the honey to 185°F for five minutes should be enough to kill any botulism microbes that could later produce botulism spores. To play it safe, I’d say that you should probably consume this honey within a few days of making it and trash any remaining at the end of a week.

My shipment of King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour came in yesterday, so I made pizza dough last night. I’m probably the worst at using the scientific method to find out what’s wrong with my pizza. I don’t really “control” for anything and end up changing the dough recipe, flour, kneading technique, and/or cooking method (any or all of those) from one pizza night to the next. With these ingredients I ended up using the Jeff Varasano dough recipe with KASL flour. I’ll probably do the skillet-broiler method for cooking when the dough is ready (it’s undergoing a 72-hour cold rise in the refrigerator as I type this.

Note, in case the wife is reading this: I did not use our Epices Roellinger sea salt in this dough. The recipe calls for 18 grams (about 1.5 tablespoons) — that’s too much to use such a precious commodity on. (We got it in Cancale, France, on our honeymoon, so it’s got sentimental as well as flavor value.)

* If you’ve noticed that I skipped 1/10/2010, it’s because the photo was pretty lame. I don’t think I’m going to blog every “Year in Photos” photo here on Kublog. My 365 Photos 2011 set on Flickr will serve as the official repository of year-in-photos images.

** Water not pictured.

To say that this is not the most glamorous Date Night would be an understatement, but Claire had a craving for Mexican. We tossed around the idea of doing Taco Night at home with a box-taco mix, but we were slow getting out of the house. So down to the local Chinese Mexican place we went.

That’s a Mexican joint run by Chinese folks. I guess I’ve been in NYC long enough that that does not sound weird. In fact, there are quite a number of these places now. The hallmark of a Chinese-run Mexican joint (besides the unconventional ethnic mashup) is the fresh tortilla machine. All these places have a tortilla press that spits out thin rounds of flour dough onto a griddle, a process you see happen before your eyes after you order.

The first such instance of this now-classic NYC restaurant genre seems to have appeared in 1991, when De Shi Zheng and his wife, Rose, opened the first Fresco Tortilla at 24th and Lexington. The New York Times has a good history of the place in this 1997 story by Anthony Ramirez.* The Zhengs own the original (which appears to be there still) and maybe a couple others (though the one on 42nd Street closed when the B of A building construction razed the block in the mid 2000s). But a legion of imitators has sprung up in the years since. Sounds kind of like the Ray’s/Original/Famous Ray’s pizzeria mystery. (You’ll notice, for instance, that the one near us is Fresca Tortillas whereas the Zhengs’ chain is Fresco Tortillas.)

Anyway, the thing I love about Fresca Tortillas (and the others like it) is that it pretty much tastes like the taco nights my mom used to do. I’m pretty sure they’re just getting a Lawry’s taco-seasoning mix (or, more likely, the industrial food-service equivalent from, say, Sysco) and flavoring the ground beef with that. And the shredded cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce, and flavorless tomato is straight out of the white-Midwesterners-make-tacos playbook. So is the hard-shell taco. Gotta get it in the hard shell.

Once we finally get our house organized and cleaned so we can entertain, we’re going to do Taco Night here at the homestead. I want to serve it on our good china. Until then, we’ll have to be content with Frescas Tortillas.

* It’s somewhat remarkable in and of itself that Fresco/a Tortillas managed to get this much ink — the 1997 story I linked to above, and also a 1991 mention in the “$25 and Under” column by Eric Asimov, which is reprinted on the menus and hangs on the wall of the one I go to. These days, these places are fairly unremarkable and are shunned by “foodies,” but at one point — maybe just because of the unusual ethnic mashup — they warranted coverage. Then again, the Times is often pretty good about noticing quirky offbeat stories.

OK … so I didn’t actually take this photo — but I art-directed it, so I think that counts. (Claire took it.) Plus, I took other photos today that I could have subbed in to this slot, so I’m still within the spirit of the project.

Here, I’m using the mini grater that Claire got me for Christmas from a cool little store in Soho called Kiosk. Here’s the description of the grater from the Kiosk site:

Ah…Italian invention! We were actually introduced to this grater by friends in Berlin. Brilliant. Great for those nights when you have to cook something but can’t even reach for the metal grater. Too much effort! We store our Parmesan inside of it in the fridge so it is always on standby. Our student life would have been saved with this one, it is never too late!

I’ve been doing the same — leaving it in the fridge with a chunk of cheese in it. I use it up fast enough that it doesn’t A) smell up the fridge or B) take on other fridge smells.

Inspired by the semi-dried cherry tomato topping at Di Fara, I did a trial run of semi-dried grape tomatoes (my market didn’t have the former in stock). Lesson learned here? Shoot before-and-after photos under the same lighting conditions. Duh. The top photo is shot under our range’s built-in fluorescent cooktop light, while the photo just above was shot under the incandescent oven bulb. I’ll make these again, at which point I’ll normalize the lighting in both shots.

‘‘I can barely keep up with my friends in Napa,’’ said Alyssa Shelasky, 33, the fiancée of the ‘‘Top Chef’’ contestant Spike Mendelsohn, who blogs about her cooking (mis)adventures at Apronanxiety.com. ‘‘I do the best I can’’ was how she characterized her humble attempts at homemade pasta and herb-garden cultivation, which in another era would’ve been considered super-foodie but now — when some civilians are slaughtering antibiotic-free cattle with their bare hands — seem the bare minimum for entertaining.

Peter Meehan, “Grass Fed: A Few Beefs,” T, November 10, 2010:

With some prodding, the butcher explained that hogget is meat from a sheep that is older than a lamb and younger than the animals that make mutton. It was delicious, this hogget. A concise description of its qualities, so far as I could identify them: it tasted exactly like what has been called “lamb” for the entirety of my 33 years on the planet.

For me, the problem in this scenario isn’t that the butcher wanted to overshare about the specific maturity of the darling woolly creature we ate a few parts of that night, but that my friend was treated like an idiot, then sold exactly what he was asking for, for top dollar.

Frank Bruni, “Loving Coffee Without Being a Drip,” New York Times, November 24, 2010:

How much pinpoint labor do we owe the gods of culinary discernment? In these food-mad times, have the economically privileged among us gone too far in turning simple acts of nourishment into complicated rituals of self-congratulation? Must all shortcuts and conveniences be subject to so much epicurean bullying and such internal shame?

Irv’s Burgers: 8289 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood CA 90046 (at N. Sweetzer Ave.; map); 323-650-2456

Somewhat tasty. Too mushy.

When I worked at Martha Stewart Living magazine, staff members used to get a $20 meal allowance anytime we worked past 8 p.m. Among the places I used to order from was Afghan Kebab House. I’d get this dish called Kabuli palow. A palow is simply a pilaf; Kabuli here is obviously referencing Kabul.

The dish I remember ordering was delicious, spiked with fragrant and zesty orange peel, raisins, and pistachios.

At some point, Afghan Kebab House stopped making its Kabuli palow with orange peel. Maybe it was under new management, because when I asked about it, they claimed they never had such a dish. Or, more likely, the Afghan Kebab House I originally ordered from went out of business. (If I remember correctly, there was an AKH No. 1 and an AKH No. 4 — dunno about numbers 2 and 3, though.)

Anyway, I took the wife to Khyber Pass in the East Village at one point. (She had never had Afghan food until then and wondered why I was raving about it.*) I ordered Kabuli palow thinking it would have the orange-peel awesomeness I remembered. She ordered something called shireen palow.

As it turns out shireen palow is the orange-peel spiked dish. It is awesome. Given that there are only two or three places in town that serve it (according to MenuPages, that is), I figured I’d try to make it at home. I found this recipe from DallasEats.

It calls for 1 1/2 cups of uncooked basmati rice and a whole heckuva lot of liquid (1 quart chicken broth and 1/2 cup orange juice) — seemingly too much for the amount of uncooked rice.

Nevertheless, I always try to follow a recipe as written before modifying it. This one turned out rice that was flavorful and close to what I have eaten in restaurants, but it was way too mushy.

My notes for future makes would be to back way off on the liquid and cook the rice in the rice cooker rather than in the dutch oven, as called for in the recipe. I think I’m going to keep the same proportions of broth-to-juice but use only as much as the rice cooker bowl recommends with its little easy-to-follow bands around its interior. Of course, I’d still sauté the onion and spices before adding them to the rice cooker. (And the wife says to allow those things to cool, since the heat can affect the cooker’s sensors.)

Anyway, not a horrible first attempt, but I know this can be improved upon! (And, DallasEats, if you end up reading this, it’s not an indictment of your recipe! I just may have done something wrong — I’ll experiment with some tweaks and report back here.)

Note: While this is technically my first attempt at shireen palow, I have tried a couple Kabuli palow recipes that included orange peel — both with similar mushy results.

* She has since joined me in admiration of this cuisine.

It should be understood from the onset that within that stand, whatever I say or do is always right and that anyone working for me at that stand within that 12 x 12 foot space must accept that. This includes when I contradict myself from moment to moment. It is never a negotiation.

That said, I am (usually) very nice and tolerant. So long as you do not argue or whine.

* I could probably handle the shut-up and put-up aspect of this gig, but I’ve only ever gotten as far as college-level languages and never became fully fluent in Spanish or German. Anyway, you can read the full text of the ad after the jump.

Work in nature, in the great outdoors, meet and talk with interesting people… learn lots about bees and beekeeping…

Help me sell excellent honey at Union Square on Wednesdays, and maybe other days in other places.

I sell New York City honey, and honey from New York State and Connecticut.

I am looking for someone clean, smart, speaks at least two languages (and speaks them well, not at a middle school level) and is not afraid to be bold and creative in approaches to selling honey and soap.

It should be understood from the onset that within that stand, whatever I say or do is always right and that anyone working for me at that stand within that 12 x 12 foot space must accept that. This includes when I contradict myself from moment to moment. It is never a negotiation.

That said, I am (usually) very nice and tolerant. So long as you do not argue or whine.

Still sound appealing? In fact it is a fun job and if you like people and being outside, and hearing funny and sometimes (often) cutting remarks, you will enjoy yourself.

The ONLY way to apply for this job is to show up in person at Union Square on Wednesday, look for Andrew’s Honey near the corner of 16th and Union Square West.

I would need help between 7AM and 6PM, but not necessarily all of those hours.

Apply in person. Do not e-mail. Bring with you a piece of paper that has

1) Your photo (so I can remember you amongst all of the others)
2) Your full name, address, contact information, and the languages that you speak well.
3) The times you are available on Wednesdays.

That’s it.

- Andrew

All heat. No flavor. Disappointing.

Ramen Setagaya
34 Saint Marks Place, New York NY 10003 (near Second Avenue; map)

Anytime You Go to a Cool Restaurant, Make a Big Show of Documenting It Across Your Entire Social Network — You’ve got to Tweet, status update, Foursquare check-in, Tumblr pic, Flickr share, Yelp review and update your LinkedIn by the end of your meal, otherwise it’s like you were never even there. If you don’t already know what constitutes a ‘cool restaurant’, you need to jack your strat (or just pick up a NY Magazine), but here are a few helpful hints for you entry-levs out there: anywhere with a ‘Tasting Menu’, places where hipster celebrity chefs do really fancy things with pork, crazy ‘Molecular Gastronomy’ places, any meal priced over $100/per person, all Momofukus.

[via Eater]

Photograph: Robyn Lee/Serious Eats

I love chicken sandwiches. And I love Chick-fil-a chicken sandwiches. This sounds heavenly. I think I know where I’m going for lunch today. From Serious Eats New York:

But as solid as the Hill Country classically prepared thighs and drumsticks are, they are surprisingly surpassed by two other items on the menu. The Chickwich is a slightly dressed-up version of the classic Chick-fil-A sandwich. A piece of boneless fried chicken breast and a couple of slices of pickle on a squishy, soft hamburger bun. It’s a perfect sandwich: crispy, crunchy, salty, meaty, and sweet in every bite. In a city like New York, where the only Chick-fil-A is tucked inside an NYU building, this chickwich seems heaven-sent.

Hill Country Chicken
1123 Broadway, New York NY 10010 (25th Street; map)
212-257-6446; hillcountrychicken.com

Photo by A Hamburger Today

Note to Future Self: Do not go back.

Why not? The burger flavor is good. It’s an all-chuck patty that tastes of funky dry-aged beef. However, this burger somehow manages to be both hella juicy and dry as dirt at the same time.

The burger is way too tall. You almost dislocate your jaw trying to take a bite. And when you squeeze it down to fit it in your maw, all the juice squeezes out onto the plate. The resulting patty is dry, dry, dry.

Fries and onion rings are uninspired and undersalted. With rings being undercooked and onion almost raw.

Way too expensive for the quality of burger.

Locations in Hell’s Kitchen and UWS of Manhattan, and Astoria, Queens. This is based only on three various visits to Hell’s Kitchen location and on one visit to Nice Matin, where the same “Five Napkin Burger” there was spun off into this concept.

On Saturday I went to the 2010 Whitney Biennial with my friend Justin and his ol’ lady. I’ll tell you, I was actually more excited about the food options at the museum than the exhibit. I mean, 2008′s biennial sucked a big ol’ donkey’s ass and I vowed not to ever go to another.

Well, that was until Danny Meyer stuck a pop-up sandwich venue in the museum’s basement level. Apparently the cafe space, which formerly housed a Sarabeth’s location, is undergoing renovation. I don’t know what’s coming next there, but I was happy to give Sandwiched a go. I’m a big fan of Danny Meyer’s restaurants, and I love sandwiches. High expectations.

The concept: Mr. Meyer had the chefs from his burgeoning empire each create a sandwich for the cafe. You can read more about that on the Serious Eats New York post that Ed Levine did, where Ed recommends the “Heritage Ham and Sharp Cheddar” and the “Applewood-Smoked Turkey and Gouda” sandwiches (Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern and Kenny Callaghan of Blue Smoke, respectively).

My favorite sandwich is a ham and cheese. Prosaic, I know, but I love them. So I feel I can speak with some authority about them. What I had on Saturday was good but not in my opinion “the perfect sandwich,” as Ed called it in his review. And certainly not for $9.75. Yes, the potato roll was the perfect bread for this sandwich, and it was well balanced in terms of relative ingredient amounts, but it just seemed to lack the flavor of some of the masterful ham sandwiches I’ve had in the city.

Two ham-and-cheese sandwiches I’d much rather have? The ham and gruyère at Dickson’s in the Chelsea Market and, my favorite, the Madrange ham and Emmenthaler cheese at Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center. Those sandwiches are worth the premium prices.

I was set to try the turkey sandwich Ed recommended, but something else caught my eye: the “Knoll Crest Egg”—slab bacon, cheddar curds, Bibb lettuce, and tomato marmalade on pain de mie roll ($7.50). So we went with that instead. Of the two sandwiches that Justin and I split we both liked the egg one a little more. The tomato marmalade was at times a tiny bit much — like ultraconcentrated ketchup — but it had more flavor overall than the ham sandwich. Even then, it reminded me too much of the BLT with egg salad that you can get at Cafe Zaiya — which is about half the price.

All this is disappointing, as most of Mr. Meyer’s restaurants are solid and because his Cafe 2 at the Museum of Modern Art (at a similar price point) is very good.

The funny thing was that I actually enjoyed this year’s biennial. It was not only “better than 2008″ (stepping in a pile of dog shit would be aesthetically superior to that year’s show) but it actually had some pretty strong stuff in it. So in the end, my expectations were reversed. I will be back for the 2012 Biennial but if an overpriced sandwich shop is part of the equation, I’ll take my lunch at the hot dog cart at the museum entrance.

Update (7/28/2011)

First, Sandwiched is no longer at the Whitney. It’s been replaced by another Danny Meyer joint called, playfully, Untitled. I’ve heard good things.

Second, I just had an updated version of this ham and cheese sandwich at the Serious Eats All-Star Sandwich Festival, which took place on Governors Island on July 23, 2011. That ham and cheese was MASTERFUL. The ham was shaved much thinner, almost veering into pulled-pork territory, and it was topped with a just-enough amount of pickled vegetables — julienned carrots and shredded cabbage. It’s damn near perfect. Apparently it’s often available as part of Gramercy Tavern’s soup-and-sandwich lunch special in the bar area.

That is all. Carry on.

For the most part when we’ve done noodles in Chinatown, the ol’ lady and I have gone to Big Wong or Hong Kong Noodle Station.

No more!

Last night we went to Lam Zhou Handmade Noodles & Dumplings in the part of Chinatown just east of the Manhattan Bridge.

Sure, that we were out in a squall and had found a dry refuge probably made the food taste that much better, but I think that only added a small amount of extra goodness to the bowls of deliciousness here.

I think the fact that you’ve got a noodle-puller doing his thing in the sparse dining room also helps. He does your noodles up right there, rolling, elongating, twirling, slapping, and strething them before handing them off to the soup-cooker.

When you get your steaming bowl of noodles, you can add a variety of condiments (above) to them. I added a hesitant drizzle of the hot chile oil at left and loved it. Spicy yet doesn’t change the flavors of the soup that much.

According to this review on Yelp

“this tiny little hole in the wall noodle joint has been escalated to celebrity status [by the foodie blogosphere]. I imagine that the recent influx of Caucasian hipster kids sporting $1000 SLR cams, streaming through the doors and shoving their 100mm f/2.8 macro lenses into $4.50 bowls of soup, must provide a constant source of amusement to the owners of this place.

Indeed, the owners must have taken note, as they now have a menu board in English and Chinese. When Robyn Lee went in November 2008, she had to get her mom to translate the menu for non–Chinese speakers.

Anyway, I think C. and I are putting this place at the top of our noodle-bowl destinations. Even if we do have to brave sideways downpours to do it.

Lam Zhou Handmade Noodles & Dumplings
144 East Broadway
New York‎ NY

Note: This is the first post on Kublog I’ve done entirely on an iPhone. It’s a bit cumbersome but possible.

The recipe? Oh, yes. Simple: orange soda to bourbon at a 2:1 ratio. You can use whatever orange soda you want, from Orange Crush (somewhat appropriate, given the name of the drink) to a fancy-pants orange-flavor “adult soda,” if you’re avoiding HFCS.

This is not the time to use a short little rocks glass. Get out your tall glasses, give it a long pour, and make this drink live up to its name.

* I’m not sure a drink with only two ingredients qualifies as a “cocktail,” especially in the era of “mixologists,” but fuggit, that’s what I’m calling it.

Jeremy concocted it in honor of a friend of ours who had recently returned from a year abroad in the Irish capital. The drink takes its name from the Dublin postal district Dublin 8, which our friend said was a particularly rough part of the city. (Note: This may or may not be the case anymore; this forum thread seems to indicate that Dublin 8 is by all accounts an OK area.)

The Dublin 8

To a heavy pour of Irish whiskey, add the juice of half a small lime, a teaspoon of sugar, a few ounces of orange juice, and a tiny dash of bitters—all followed by a splash of soda. Garnish with a thin lime wheel.

Photo credit: Dave Tamasi

Restaurateur and Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio has introduced several new gimmicks at Craft in recent months. First, in November 2008, it was Tom Tuesday Dinners, in which, as one wag pointed out, (and I’m paraphrasing) “It’s gotten to the point that it’s news when a chef actually cooks at his own restaurant now.” In January, he announced Damon: Frugal Friday, partnering with his executive chef, Damon Wise, in offering an all-$10 menu. The latest bit to come down the pike (in early February) is Halfsteak, which Ed Levine pronounced “half good” on Serious Eats New York (Tom Colicchio’s Halfsteak Is Half Good).

Now that Colicchio has set the precedent and I’ve set the stage for you, I am pleased to announce my own clandestine restaurant concepts (I’m also capitalizing on the “secret dining” trend). Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

Hotplate: Every two weeks, I place a hotplate on top of my stove and cook single-pot meals from it. As at Coliccihio’s Tom Tuesday Dinner, which makes use of Craft’s private dining room, guests of Hotplate will enjoy a separate dining area—the hallway just outside my apartment. The menu will be market-driven and local, featuring ingredients that come exclusively from Key Food market or from the foodshed in the cabinet above the range.
— Market prices —

Fridgidaire Friday: This menu will be constantly in flux and guests are asked to appreciate the omakase nature of the meal, as they will also be eating down my fridge. Watch for menus to rely heavily on milk, orange juice, dairy, bread, wilting produce, and anything else whose expiration date may be approaching. Dining will also occur in the hallway, unless the housekeeping staff is in that day, in which case guests will eat in my bedroom closet.
— $10 a person —

Kuban Stingy Sunday: Guests are locked in the bathroom without dinner. Patrons may avail themselves of the self-serve NYC tap water fountain. (The water here is some of the best in the nation.) One Dixie cup per guest, please.
— $50 —

I went to see a play in preview called Being Audrey on Friday night. My friend Sarah is one of the producers (Transport Group).

Oh so conveniently, it happened that Tonda, one of the many new pizzerias to open in the last week, is just across the street.

I tweeted Kathryn and Dan to see if they wanted to meet up for a quick dinner, as they’re fairly close to Tonda and can always be counted on for food scouting.

The staff turned down the lights right after we sat down, and Kathryn was like, “Um, did they know you were coming and wanted to foil your shots?”

But then she remembered a hack she read about—using an iPhone screen to illuminate the scene.

“It works better with two iPhones,” she said, but the single phone did the trick. Who knew!

As far as Tonda goes, I’ll have to go back a couple more times before really giving it a write-up, but I’m reserving judgment for now.

I’m on a quest to find the best gyro in New York. The Greek Corner was recommended somewhere as not "the best" but at least a good one. It was actually pretty good. It’s conveniently close to the office.

Rafiqi’s street carts are redoing their menus. I caught the guys in action on a photo shoot.

Currently, dishes are pictured on the carts’ menus in Styrofoam containers. The new visual menus will feature plated food instead.

The single cheeseburger at Petey’s Burger. I liked the double cheeseburger there more.

365.66: Maria’s Pizza, originally uploaded by Adam "Slice" Kuban.

Maria’s Pizza is simply awesome. I’ll blog about it on Slice later. It was a comforting end to a depressing day that started with the funeral early this morning. It rained all day and was cold—just above freezing. So capping the day with Maria’s, a pizza I grew up eating, was nice.

365.63: Snickers, originally uploaded by Adam "Slice" Kuban.

I had a better photo for today, but someone didn’t want me to make the photo public, even though it didn’t show her face. Granted, it was more about what else was in the photo than her headless body.

Went here for lunch. Pretty dead on a Tuesday. Easy getting a table at what’s otherwise a pretty crowded place.

I didn’t really want this to be my Project 365 photo, but since it sort of set the tone for the day, I guess it’s appropriate.

I worked from home in the morning and caught the news of this pizza on Eater. At that point, I figured I’d make a detour on my way in to the office to try it. After all, Daniel Krieger, who originally discovered it, had not tried it. I figured I could bring some actual tasting news to Slice readers.

I think Krieger had the right idea. Sometimes there are things that you really don’t need to try. Just knowing they exist is enough.

The interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s is a slow one for most daily and weekly news outlets. So’s the case on Serious Eats. We planned an onslaught of year-in-review posts, but readers grew tired of it before I could post about my favorite new (or new-to-me) food blogs of 2008. So I’ll just do it on Kublog.

Grocery Eats: Serious Eats New York editor Zach Brooks discovered DJ Grocery’s General Tso’s Philly cheesesteak on a message board, posted about it, and not long after, the good DJ was inspired to start a blog documenting his (and, later, his contributors’) insane experiments with extreme food mashups. His first post was titled “Fuck, Yes,” and pretty much set the tone for the site. With plenty of cursing and craziness, it’s a great antidote to all the too-precious food blogs out there.

So Good: Though D.C.-based Jon Eick started his blog in August 2007, it really seemed to blow up in 2008, with his coverage of the Papa John’s/LeBron James/”Crybaby” T-shirt controversy. He was totally one top of crazy food-related current events. Thank you, Jon, for highlighting the Shawn Johnson “Makes My Taco Pop” commercial.

Fast Food Critic: Timothy appeared out of nowhere in March with a concept that seemed easily dismissable—reviews of fast food meals. Who is not familiar with the stuff the major chains put out? I thought. But FFC manages to take a seeingly common subject and find great nuggets of wisdom and humor in it. He’s tempermental and has threatened to quit blogging at least once, but we’re glad he’s back. I’m looking forward to more in 2009, Timothy.

Eat Me Daily: This blog popped on the scene in in October, with a smart, funny, wry take on food culture. Lots of great posts about cookbooks, food-related art, food media, and video snippets from popular TV shows. Too often food sites tend to all go echo-chamber on you, covering the same stories in the same way, but the anonymous staff of Eat Me Daily often finds a great new angle on the stories everyone is talking about.

Yum. I liked my burrito.

There were some burritos on the menu: Regular (rice, bean, meat), Especial (rice, bean, meat, cheese), and Super (rice, bean, meat, cheese, sour cream, guac).

The GF gets the regular saying that’s how real San Franciscans get theirs, but I wanted cheese, so I went for the Especial.

Of course, I wanted to be down with the people, so I asked for “an ess-pess-cee-ahl burrito.”

The woman was like, “WHA?”

Me, sheepishly: “Um, ess-special burrito?”

That worked, and the lady and the customers behind me laughed.

Whatever. That’s how you pronounce it in Spanish.

I started Slice, the blog, in late 2003. It consumed a fair amount of my nonworking life (and, yes, some of my work life, too — whenever I had downtime on the job, I’d answer Slice email or drop in a few lines of copy into drafts of pizzeria reviews). At some point, “Slice” and “Adam Kuban” were pretty much synonymous. Most of what I was doing offline was pizza, and whatever I wanted to say online had to do with pizza, and so the Slice site was just an extension of me and my interests. To the point that I have a certain group of friends who refer to me as “Slice” rather than “Adam.”

But I suppose that changed when Serious Eats bought Slice in late 2006. Still, I registered for Twitter to reserve the Slice username and then started playing around with the service. I Twittered for a bit, then saw no point in it and abandoned it, only to come back to Twitter with a vengeance a few weeks ago.

From the beginning, I had never really Twittered any pizza-related things, and when I came back to Twitter, I still didn’t. And then I started Twittering for Serious Eats, and then set up an A Hamburger Today Twitter account.

It probably made no sense for me to be tweeting personal items on the Slice account, but once SE and AHT were tweeting site-related things, the distinction between the personal and the pizza-blog was even more stark. And then a coworker here pointed out that I probably shouldn’t be tweeting personal items on the Slice account. And that was it. The jig was up. I abandoned the Slice twitter account for akuban, where I can blather pointless things to my heart’s content without fear of confusing new readers who might not be familiar with the Slice blog history.

I was a bit sad to have to let go of that account. As I said, Slice has been a large part of my identity for the last, oh, almost five years. That’s probably a bit pathetic or whatever, but who knows. Having to acknowledge that my baby is all growed up and has left the nest is sort of bittersweet, but the sale of Slice (and Burger) to Serious Eats was seriously good timing for a variety of reasons.

I am not, however, relinquishing my Slice Flickr account. I have way too many photos, comments, and “blogging” invested in that account. Ed Levine will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I usually don’t eat sweet stuff for breakfast. But whenever we go to Wildwood, New Jersey, we start the day at Britton’s Gourmet Bakery, where I get their “world famous apple fritter.”

It’s world famous, I suppose, because Ronald Reagan ordered a batch of them on someone’s recommendation and then wrote a letter to Britton’s thanking them.

Anyway, I never managed to get a good photo of their apple fritters until this year, when I hacked a paper bag into an impromptu light tent:

I missed out on Britton’s this morning and yesterday morning, though. This morning we went to Uncle Bill’s Pancake House because I wanted a “real” breakfast and not junk food. And yesterday, an evil bitchy lady right in front of us in line took the last four fritters.

Britton’s Gourmet Bakery
5600 Pacific Avenue, Wildwood Crest NJ 08260; map »
609-522-5600