Christian Slater in Pump up the Volume

There are a few ferociously smart women in food writing, and I was lucky enough to have a kaffeeklatsch with two of them on the airwaves recently. Along with Rebecca Flint Marx (a blogger for the Village Voice site Fork in the Road) and Edible Manhattan deputy editor Rachel Wharton (an indie rock foodie who knew the right Weezer song to play during the first episode's battle about The City Vegetarian), and emboldened by a pitcher of Captain Lawrence beer, we went a little nuts talking about dieting. You can listen, and judge us, today at 5pm—or play it later.

It's a topic I feel strongly about. One of the reasons I found co-writing this book so interesting was because I am not, necessarily, a "healthy" person. Like many food nerds, I don't count calories and I love sugar, butter, beer and pork. My co-author's position on dieting was liberal enough—he sees room for meat and fat in moderation—to make me comfortable working with him, and the book taught me a number of things: Now I add agave to my coffee instead of sugar, and try (emphasis on "try") to incorporate more dark greens into my diet. Most importantly, I learned of the mood-saving properties of vitamin D-3 during the crazy-long northeast winter. But I have my own theories on when moderation is appropriate, and when it is not, and we three women had a lot to say about weight, food and gender, so give us a listen.

Also, though I try to keep up this site with weekly accounts of my to-ings and fro-ings (or recent articles), I have been off my game a bit. I've been busy writing about Cookie Takedowns here, writing tiny restaurant briefs there, and writing commercial copy for a swell specialty food company. Oh, and I've been editing a cookbook for these great folks! It's been a blast. More to come about that, a small nonprofit I'm starting, and all sorts of tasty tidbits in the coming months.

        

I'm a bit ashamed that I absorbed myself so thoroughly in food news and the discovery of a great new café yesterday that I nearly missed an entire, awful crisis unfolding to our south. (If you want to donate, go here and be sure to earmark your money for Haiti).

And it's sobering. I could go on and on about how even though we New Yorkers are supposedly the unhappiest people in the country we live in the lap of luxury and should be grateful every day, but y'all know that stuff, and this is not that sort of blog. This is a food blog, and it's my job to alert you — against my better judgment — to the birth of the best café in Brooklyn. I'm not even posting the prettiest photos, which is how torn I am about reporting on it. This is the view from the window of Iris Café, and it is where I will be spending all my money this spring if the rest of the neighborhood doesn't take it over.

What's it got? Oh, you know. Stumptown coffee. Sunshine. Stamped silvery tin ceilings. Mottled brick walls. Caputo salami sandwiches. An indie rock soundtrack punctuated with Caetano Veloso and Simon & Garfunkel — so much the songs of my life that I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at one point.

Sure, the gauzy mosquito netting curtains by the windows are quaint to the point of fey, tied with off-white yarn. Sure, that red holly in a rustic wooden bucket in the window nook is so cute it's absurd. This is Brooklyn exercising its now-notorious sleight of hand: Brooklyn Charm. The food is "as local as possible," a staffer tells me. A hard-boiled Featheridge farm egg set me back $.75. The milk swirled into your coffee hails from Battenkill Creamery (and you can buy eggs and milk to-go). House-made pastries — like a sultry sticky bun and the best biscuit I've had in New York, spiked with fat sticks of Surryano ham and feathery melted cheddar — are so plush you will swoon.

And the customers of both genders are gorgeous, excepting myself. (My hair is doing something weird these days: It is in Crazy Art Teacher Mode. I'm working on it). Anyways, I do believe in these tiny luxuries, and am posting about this place so it doesn't go out of business. Because that would make me crazy.

Speaking of crazy, my food writer buddies Pervaiz Shallwani and Rebecca Marx will be joining yours truly and the brilliant Rachel Wharton for Brooklyn Eats, the Edible Brooklyn radio show hosted by Heritage. We'll be on the air at 5pm debating the putative death of vegetarianism. Give us a shout!

        

Everybody has a tender side.

Because it's the holidays, and because as of 2010 I'll have lived in this crazy town for a full decade and this realization has put me in a good mood, here's an el sensitivo shot of my friend Eric (aka "faux Joe"). He is not remotely affiliated with Trader Joe's. He just happens to own a glorious assortment of tropical shirts and award-winning facial hair.

His visage and those carnations are my little gift to the internet. Happy holidays.

        

A very unhappy woman somewhere in New England. At least she has those donuts.

Let's discuss for a moment this presumption people have about New Englanders.

Yes, we grew up where it was cold, but we do not all "love" winter, as we are often told we should. My family knew nothing about outdoorsy clothing. We did not ski. REI was not part of our reality. To "winterize" your children was to double-bag their sock-clad feet in plastic before pulling on their rubber boots. This mad science produced the effect that the snow caked at the top of the boots where they met the rubber bags, producing a delightful ring-of-ice-around-shin effect. While my brother happily constructed snow forts, I would press my nose to the window and watch mom working at her desk by the fire after tossing us out. In her defense, we were maniacs as kids, but all I wanted was to join her. Drinking cocoa. Reading Jane Eyre. Maybe nursing a pipe, like Thoreau.

I had an argument with a Massachusetts-born gentleman recently. He is under the mistaken impression that long, cold New England winters hardened our characters "in a way that well prepares us for the real world." I dispute this. I am not well-prepared for the real world in general and winter in particular. Every year it swings around, and even in my 30s I greet it with a “Seriously? Again?”

Which is why I nearly clonked my head on the glass of my bodega's beer section last night upon spying this sprightly young thing clutching her gloveless hands close to her body in the midst of a blizzard. When I read the copy on the Smuttynose Winter Ale six-pack, I shook with rage.

Here’s to winter in New England: short days & long, cold nights; scratchy wool mufflers & soggy, wet boots; getting up early to dig your car out from under two feet of heavy, damp snow. Why do we do it? Hell, what else can we do? After all, the summer fun is over & the autumn leaves have fallen, winter draws out the best in our character & makes us long for something really strong & tasty to drink.

Your honor. First: "What else can we do?" A: Move South. Second: "Winter draws out the best in our character. A: O RLY? What New Englander have you met of whom this is true? The one shoveling out her car and cursing at 6am before her commute to Boston? The small child quaking in a 3-foot snowdrift? Find me a New Englander whose character is "best" this time of year and I will eat my fuzzy winter hat.

And let’s talk about this lass. Her car is buried in snow. The trees are covered. She has no mittens. Her sibling or husband has forced her to stand in the cold holding what look like to be delicious donuts or maybe pies but let's not get distracted here. “Hold still for the photo! Smile!"

The beer? Of course I had to buy one. I'm not a huge Smuttynose fan, and this brew did not change that fact. It's aiming to be a spicier version of Newcastle Brown, somewhere in the neighborhood of a Belgian dubbel. It’s a fairly innocuous brown ale, with a slight maltiness and a touch of cloves right at the end. There's zero hoppiness (and I'll admit to a bias towards hoppy ales), but at least the Smuttynose is way less “jazz hands” than its Harpoon counterpart, which has so much going on it is like sipping a potpourri shop.

But seriously. This poor woman. No gloves. And now I want donuts. The other day I was walking through the New Jersey PATH terminal, spied a Dunkin' Donuts, completely forgot where I was and zombied over in its direction. Do not wear neon-pink or orange gloves around me. I’d either bite your hand or try to dunk it in some coffee. Some things, they stay with you.

        

Don't come at me with that Mega Bunch and bag of avocados, "T.J."

6. He's inconsistent. His saag paneer? Terrible. Chicken sausages? Gross. Organic dip chips? Terrific. But you never know what to expect from the Trader, which is like showing up to your local one night to find your boyfriend beaming at you from the bar with a dozen roses ... and the next to find him sobbing on the shoulder of a hooker.



5. He's pushy. You know how sometimes on a date you throw out your best impressive bit of trivia, like, "I loved Barbara Stanwyck in 'Ball of Fire'!" and he comes back with, "Are you familiar with the rest of her early 1940s oeuvre?" The answer is no. I just threw out my one bit of awesomeness, you jackass. Checkout Joes do the same thing: They peer at your box of Flax Plus Multigrain cereal under the fluorescent lights and say, "Wow, good choice, I love this! Have you tried our enchiladas?" A staffer reveals that this sort of small talk is "encouraged," not "enforced." Still. Bite me, Joe.

4. He's schizoid. Joe? José? Giotto? Ming? Seriously? Choose who you want to be in this world, man. It is a hard world, and you can't be everyone at once. You are like that ex pairing his pearlescent button cowboy shirt (yes!) with brown leather pants (huh?) and a silver-studded black punk belt (what?!).



3. He's cheap. 



2. He overdoes it. Sometimes, man, I don't want the whole bag of unripe avocados, not like that. Don't tell me about your ex-fiancée or your mom issues on the first date. Sell me a single goddamn avocado.



1. He is horrible perky in the morning. When I wake up, I want coffee until the lights come on in my brain, and that is it. This is the bounce-out-of-bed guy, the "what borough are we traveling to in the next ten minutes?" guy. We hate him. 



One morning I was standing in TJ's at 8am with a $3.99 12-pack of toilet paper clutched to my chest. My bangs were on sideways and the rings under my eyes would have made a panda's look tame. And lo was I not snapped to attention by a front-of-the-line-Joe who shouted, "HOW'S YOUR MORNING GOING, MA'AM?" and when I moused, "Fine," followed with, "ARE YOU OK?"

"Yup, just haven't had my coffee yet." 

He beamed. A solution! "WE HAVE FREE COFFEE RIGHT OVER THERE IF YOU WANT TO GO GET SOME." Yes, because I am going to leave the line I have been standing in for 10 minutes to go back and get an ounce of your bad coffee in a tiny paper cup when I have Stumptown at home.


Please, Joe, please. Your tropical shirt looks great today. Someone is raising a flag in the air.

        

(c) Bailey Doesn't Bark

I have been working like a madwoman, thus the silence on this site, but promise you something entertaining for Thursday afternoon.

Meantime, that materialistic side I always claim I don't have? Yeah, it's still there. It came roaring back with a vengeance when I spied this Griffin & Sabine-esque mug & plate duo from Bailey Doesn't Bark (via the Times). I feel that if I was able to have my morning coffee in this baby, every day would have that sort of shimmer.

        

Photo by the talented Ms. Jennifer Causey

So the lovely folks at Design*Sponge contacted me recently about sharing a recipe for a dish I love. I chose this mint panna cotta with strawberries balsamico, adapted from Mario Batali and Epicurious. It's easy, it's dead sexy, and it will impress the bejesus out of your friends. The full photo shoot is here, and my Shun santoku blade looks awesome in it. Thanks to Jenene Chesbrough for also taking a patently ridiculous photo of yours truly.

        

"Mad Men" may have wrapped for the season, but 60s fashion and retro cuisine are going nowhere fast. My friends have been throwing big-eyeliner-wearing, casserole-eating parties to watch the show, and I hope that the era's adorable dresses and rad suits stick around for a while.

If you're not current on your granma's cuisine, Katie Lee Joel can give you a hand. I interviewed her for the December issue of InStyle (page 390) about how to throw an awesome 60s holiday party, and can attest that her deviled eggs are among the best I've ever eaten. So pick up a copy (the story includes recipes!) when you have a chance; turns out Katie Lee believes in yard sales, Don Draper crushes and champagne cocktails — a gal after my own heart.

        

Anton Walbrook as Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes.

Do you remember your first encounter with sugar cubes, as a kid? They were magic, right? Perfectly square and glowing white, they could be stacked like Legos or popped on the tongue, one at a time, until the corners fuzzed and they broke.

In our house, sugar was nearly verboten. We'd go to friends' homes, pull open their cabinets and gaze adoringly at bags of Oreos, like sweet-toothed, big-eyed basset hounds. So I remember quite clearly when my elder sister had to make an Egyptian pyramid. Out of sugar cubes. For class. This struck me as a project very much in need of a supervisor. I gallantly took upon the role of producer, assistant director and grip. Anyplace that pyramid was, I was, delivering structural advice and stealing as many cubes as would fit into my little pockets.

You forget about sugar cubes as an adult until you see them in some Euro-style café, and it's so lovely when you do. (These days I use agave for my coffee since it doesn't make my blood sugar go racing, which I learned while working on this book). But I miss the luxury of them, which is why I so appreciated an early scene in "The Red Shoes," currently playing at Film Forum in New York. It's a gorgeous movie — ostensibly about ballet, but really about obsession — with enough color, punch and chutzpah to make Fellini blush. Film critics are calling the new Technicolor print "sumptuous," "delirious" and "life-changing." For critics, they're not mincing words. Though I'm a purely amateur filmgoer, I was for the first time in my life that obnoxious theatergoer who said, "Wow," aloud, at a poppingly blue dress.

One of my favorite scenes was, naturally, centered around food. We've just met the French ballet director, Lermontov. We know he's a snob and that he's a man of few words, but we don't know much more. Then we witness him calmly interviewing — in his dressing gown, natch — a tremulous undergraduate music student over his Continental breakfast.

Lermontov has his cup of black coffee in one hand, a solitary sugar cube in the other. While speaking to the student, maintaining eye contact all the while, he dips the corner of the cube into the coffee. We see it change color, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. It doesn't burst. He delivers his final line, the student walks out, and he pops the soaked cube in his mouth, finally taking a sip of coffee. It is the height of audacity that he thought the cube would not crumble without his permission — and the best bit of foreshadowing I've seen in a long time.

The flick ends on November 19th. If you're local, go see it before it does.

        

City Bakery. Photo by Michael Harlan Turkell.

Keep an eye out for the new Edible Manhattan, which always makes for good subway reading, en route to happy hours and rock shows this weekend. Look for the one with marshmallows on its cover and try not to run over to City Bakery for its famous hot chocolate immediately after reading the profile penned by yours truly and editor Gabrielle Langholtz.

It's a neat piece in part because Rubin is an interesting character, and partly because it's a rare style collaboration between two pretty different journalists. Gabrielle layered her snap-crackle pop-punk voice on to the chill, lyrical motif I've been trying on for size lately, and I think it works. It's like getting a makeover at Macy's — different, but somehow awesome: "Gold eyeshadow! Who knew?"

If cocoa-n-marshmallows does not provide enough of a comfort food fix as the mercury drops, Jimmy's No. 43, the dimly-lit gastropub in the East Village, has a steal of a sandwich right now. It's a super-tender beef brisket sandwich braised in stout and served on hearty French bread, for $9. It's like a glammed up version of pulled pork (from a totally different animal). Good times. The menu changes constantly, so call first to make sure it's there (it is tonight)! Jimmy very kindly let my party of three hang out, drink beer and pore over our, um, Catullus translations last night before busting out some Latin of his own, earning him this nerd's stamp of approval.