The Trenchermen

Butternut Squash Soup

trencherman — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:25:25 +0000

The fall is upon us. It’s time to eat squash.

In the spirit of the season, I made myself some butternut squash soup with pumpkin seeds pan-roasted in Lebanese olive oil, sea salt, and fresh black and cayenne pepper. The spot was hit.

NYMag Sandwich List #38: Pork ‘Burger,’ Xi’an Famous Foods

trencherman — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:00:52 +0000

I’ve abandoned my plan to systematically eat and describe all of the sandwiches on the NYMag 101 sandwiches list, but I continue to use the list as a wellspring of culinary discovery. (Someone was kind enough to create a Google Map of the 101 sandwich locations.) With that in mind, eager to break from my PBJ lunch routine, my office-mate and I wandered into the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown — East Broadway, under the Manhattan Bridge — for a taste of Shanxi cuisine at Xi’an Famous Foods. To connect the dots for our readers, it’s a chain of small restaurants that started in Flushing, in the Golden Mall (yes, we’ve eaten there before and blogged and vlogged about it), and has now expanded to Chinatown and the East Village. The highlight of the restaurant’s offering is the “Liang Pi” Cold Noodles. The sandwich featured in the NYTimes is the Lamb “Burger,” which I found to be loaded with far too much cumin. But NYMag loves the Pork “Burger,” so I gave it a shot.

NYMag says this sandwich, which is made of pulled pork stuffed into a bing-like bun, could “rival any Carolina barbecue.” I disagree. Although the smoky, vinegar sauce is nice and less sweet than most Chinese barbecue sauces I’ve tasted and the bun is warm with a nice crunch, the sandwich is altogether unremarkable and familiar. It is incredibly greasy and the pork is stewed into a textureless mush. At least the cumin-loaded Lamb “Burger” offers an unfamiliar and exciting flavor combination.

As for the Carolina comparison: forget it. The best barbecue I ever encountered was in Holly Hill, South Carolina, at a place called Sweatman’s, and it is an act of exceptional generosity even to mention Xi’an Famous Food’s Pork “Burger” in the same paragraph. To say this “Burger” is a “rival” of a place like Sweatman’s is a cruel joke.

Steak ‘n Shake (Springfield, MO)

trencherman — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 16:58:02 +0000

In the recent surge of food enthusiasm, much attention has been focused on the hamburger, America’s favorite food. There are those who praise the fat patty, composed of carefully-calibrated mixes of meat, sometimes filled with flavor-adding ingredients. There are others who prefer a smashed, buttery burger. In New York, Shake Shack is the genre-defining purveyor in the latter category. In California (and elsewhere, now), In-n-Out Burger generally wins. On our recent trip to Missouri, we tried the Midwest’s leading contender, Steak ‘n Shake. In my opinion, it’s better than the rest. (My contacts from Saint Louis agree.)

We visited what I am told is the first Springfield location: a classic diner format with the word “Takhomasak” (take home a sack?) displayed on an awning out front. I ordered the Original Double ‘n Cheese, which comes with two patties, American cheese, and a selection of toppings. The patties are smashed, cooked through, and somewhat flaky. And very greasy. But the meat is delicious; it tastes more fresh and buttery than the grayed-through patties you get in most other fast-food chains. The toppings included the standard fare — ketchup, mustard, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo, etc. — and some exquisite others, most notably mustard relish.

Here is the Double ‘n Cheese in all its towering glory. It is not huge, but densely packed.

One big bite in. The mustard relish really takes it from good to great.

And here’s half of my second Double, with a splash of mustard relish and some zigs of ketchup.

And, finally, a walking shot of the interior, designed to look like a classic American diner. It’s corny, but a lot more appealing than the manufactured feeling of most other fast-food burger chains.

Arthur Bryant’s BBQ (Kansas City, MO)

trencherman — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:37:21 +0000

We recently traveled to the great tornado-whipped state of Missouri for a wedding, a house-cleaning, and some strenuous and significant family time. But all of that was in Springfield, a city that I would imagine to be in a different state from Kansas City if the maps didn’t tell me otherwise. (Actually, that’s kind of a trick, but I digress.) We flew into Kansas City International Airport, which meant that before driving three-and-a-half long flat hours to Springfield, we were able to stop for some world-class barbeque. It was tough to choose our spot, but it came down to Oklahoma Joe’s, which Anthony Bourdain called “one of the 13 places to eat before you die,” Jack’s Stack, a chain that Zagat Survey named the “#1 Barbecue House in the Country,” and Arthur Bryant’s, which is, according to Calvin Trillin in 1974, “…possibly the single best restaurant in the world.” We went with Arthur Bryant’s, because it was most convenient and because I’m a huge Calvin Trillin fan. (Ed. note: Trillin spends his summers less than 5 miles from my parents, in Nova Scota.)

As for the food: delicious, but definitely not the best restaurant in the world. The highlight of the meal was the Beef Sandwich, which was a mountainous stack of fatty smoked brisket piled on pieces of white bread that were clearly overmatched by the meat’s juices. There were several choices of sauce, all varieties of the classic molasses- and tomato-based sauce Kansas City is known for. The rib tips were fairly charred, but the tender pieces of meat hidden beneath the blackened crusts were smoky and sweet. We also had a pork sandwich that was decent, but not memorable.

The restaurant itself was charmingly simple. A big, brick building in a dodgy neighborhood. The interior walls are unevenly covered in a smattering of local sports images, collages of prominent African-American public figures, and autographed photographs of celebrities and politicians. Among the most prominent of the latter category were photographs of Jimmy Carter eating with Arthur Bryant himself, as well as a series of images of John McCain and Sarah Palin enjoying a meal with-the-people while campaigning in 2008. I’d say that speaks to the universal appeal of the place, but who knows.

The Beef Sandwich. Fatty.

Again. Half eaten. Three sauces on the plate for dipping.

The special of the day: rib tips. Burnt.

The sweet, meaty parts.

Iced tea.

Northeast Chinese Food (Flushing, NY)

trencherman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:17:42 +0000

Yesterday, several of us biked up into Flushing to see the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival and to try some food from Northeast China (Dōngběi sìshěng, formerly part of Manchuria). Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a great article about food from this region and the few restaurants in Flushing that produce it. Very appealing stuff.

We chose a restaurant called Rural Restaurant — it is called Hong Yi Shun in the article in the Times — that was small but busy. There were a few families inside and one large group of men drinking from a bottle of bái jiǔ that they kept on the floor under one of their seats: all signs pointing to an authentic experience.

But getting to the point: the food was incredible and, for the most part, unlike any other Chinese food I’ve eaten (except the one time I ate food from this region, at a great and now-defunct restaurant called Dong Bei Ren — literally, East North People — in Shanghai). The best dish was probably the Spicy Cuminy Lamb, which is small chunks of lamb rubbed with star anise and ground cumin and sauteed with spicy peppers.

Here’s a larger picture:

Next up was the dried bean curd “noodles” with medium-spicy green pepper and pork. This was another new experience, with the bean curd sliced into long thin pieces, like papardelle, and cooked with fresh green peppers that gave the dish sharp spice. It was delicious and beautiful.

Another delicious dish was the “Cold Noodles,” which is well-described in the NYTimes article: “One dish found on every table is Dongbei liangpi, the northeastern version of a western Chinese dish that has become a popular street food in Beijing. The base is wide noodles made from mung-bean starch. (The dish is often called something cryptic like “green bean sheet jelly.”) On top may be almost anything: a tangle of cucumber slivers, strands of jellyfish, chunks of garlic, strips of pork and scallion, thinly shredded omelet. The whole affair is tossed with a nose-teasing dressing of soy sauce, sesame paste, sesame oil and two kinds of vinegar — one clear and sweet, the other dark and rounded. The extreme bounce and chew of the noodles makes it deeply satisfying.” Ours had the pork and omelet, plus shredded carrots, thin slices of black mushroom and, somewhat incongruously, parsley leaves.

To cut the spice, we ordered sauteed morning glory, which was cooked in light oil with chunks of garlic. Fresh and not sopping in sauce.

More lamb after that, this time with scallions. This one was less delicious, and more familiar, than the Spicy Cuminy Lamb. Even so, the lamb was well-cooked and tender, and the scallions added great textural variation and spice.

We also had two plates of dumplings. The region is known for its dumplings, which are small and wet. Apparently, some restaurants from this region have lamb dumplings, but Rural Restaurant did not. Alas! Instead, we ordered one plate of pork and scallion dumplings and one plate of leek (with pork) dumplings. They were delicious, especially when dipped in a bowl of vinegar and garlic.

Fried Dumplings (Chinatown, NYC)

trencherman — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:35:26 +0000

As I mentioned in my recent post on PB&J, one of the food categories that thrills me endlessly is the dumpling. I will eat just about anything in dumpling form. While I certainly appreciate the finer, more delicate manifestations of the form, I also love the dumpling because it’s generally cheap. Around Chinatown, you’ll find a number of holes-in-the-wall that serve $1 dumplings, or some variation thereof. Generally, it’s five dumplings or four buns per order. Not bad for $1. The problem is the range in quality.

After years of research, I’ve determined that Chinatown’s finest purveyor of the lowest-brow Chinese pork dumpling and bun is “Fried Dumpling” (how many of these spots have the same name?) on Mosco Street, a narrow side street just off of Mott.

The dumplings and buns are filled with the same mash of minced pork and leek, with occasional bits of shredded black mushroom. The dumpling dough is rubbery and soft, but crisps up nicely when fried. Because so many dumplings are laid on the griddle at the same time, the crisping is uneven, which adds nice textural variation to the plate of greasy, salty crescent-shaped pockets of goodness. The buns are softer and thicker than the dumplings, and only the bottom of the bun gets fried, leaving a cushion of pillowy, white dough to absorb the flavors of the stuffing. This means the buns are less juicy, but equally savory.

The watered-down Sriracha and vinegar sauce that elevate these dumplings from greasy goodness to spicy and salty greatness.

Before . . .

and after!

Buns. Three showing their pan-friend undersides, and one showings its pillowy top.

One delicious bite at a time.

The Peanut Butter & Jelly

trencherman — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:10:12 +0000

While most of the posts on this blog are about fancy food, either exotic in its own right or eaten in a faraway place, this one is about the simplest of foods: the PB&J. There are few foods that so consistently fill me with joy. (Watermelon with salt on a hot summer day; pomegranate seeds; fried pork dumplings.)

But with all the recent focus on elaborate or unexpected sandwiches on the NYMag list, I thought I’d take a minute to meditate on this wondrous creation. The oily, creamy — or crunchy, if you prefer — sweetness of peanut butter (with no sugar added, of course) and the sugar rush of berry jelly on soft doughy bread. I can’t believe I will ever grow tired of it. Of course, I’m not alone in my love of this sandwich. According to Wikipedia, “A 2002 survey showed the average American will have eaten 1,500 of these sandwiches before graduating from high school.” Awesome.

I eat PB&J 2-3 times a week now. Sometimes with coffee, which, as Jay has pointed out, heightens the experience. I’m not a stickler for the proper ratio of PB to J, nor do I get caught up in the variations of J available out there. My only rule is that the PB should have 2 or fewer ingredients. That is just plain peanuts, maybe with a little salt. But no sugar. No JIF or SKIPPY or PETER PAN for me. Nothing with partially hydrogenated oils to keep the oil from separating.

The basic building blocks: 2 pieces of bread. I prefer whole grain wheat bread, deviating from the traditional white bread variety. I think you can do this on any kind of bread, though rye would be weird.

Here are the ingredients du jour. “Bonne Maman” strawberry preserves are smooth and spreadable and delicious, with big chunks of fruit and not too much pectin. Smucker’s “Natural” creamy peanut butter. I suppose the word “Natural” means no sugar or preservatives added. Just peanuts and salt.

This is where the magic happens.

This is my PB&J looking out at Manhattan, with the Empire State Building in central view, and clouds rolling past. Happy sandwich!

And there are the goods.

Social Paraíso (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

trencherman — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:11:36 +0000

Here comes another post from the archives (of my brain and Jenny’s BlackBerry). While we were in Buenos Aires for a week in mid-March, we ate. A lot. Mostly steak. There were several notable meals, including lunch at Mark’s in Palermo and dinners at La Cabrera and Cabaña Las Lilas, which made it onto R.W. Apple’s final list of restaurants. The food was great. But the one meal that stood out from the rest was a late lunch we ate at a little restaurant called Social Paraíso on a shady — as in, tree-lined — street in Palermo Hollywood. We had walked past the restaurant while winding our way through the leafy neighborhood, and its simple, elegant interior and alluringly nostalgic gold-leaf window sign caught our attention. It was closed for the day, but we made it in just before they closed for lunch the following day and had a great meal.

The details are below.

The highlight of this special meal was the wildly inventive dessert (pictured above): Láminas de manzana caramelizadas con mousse de maracuyá y helado de pimienta de sechuan. The literal translation is caramelized apple slices with passion fruit mousse and Sichuan pepper ice cream. But it’s colloquial for: nothing you’ve ever had before and something you’ll never, ever forget. The apples slices seemed as if they had been freeze dried, cracking into pieces under the fork but softening and releasing their sweetness in our mouths. The ice cream was buttery and gritty with hints of the dazzling metallic spice of Sichuan pepper. The light passion fruit mousse was not exceedingly sweet, but perfectly complemented by the sugary raspberry paste used to garnish the plate. Completely unforgettable. It makes me want to go back to Buenos Aires. Immediately.

This salad started the meal. Unfortunately, I was too busy fawning over the food and eating it to take notes. It was a special, too, so it’s not on the menu available on the restaurant’s site.

It is what it looks like. Dried, cured beef wrapped around fresh greens on chick peas and chopped vegetables. Very good.

A very good beer made locally in Santa Fe, Argentina. “Otro Mundo,” which means other world. Golden Ale. Lots of English on the label, either because it is “Export Quality” (as the label suggests) or designed for serving to tourists like myself. Either way, as an Argentine beer, Otro Mundo was a delicious novelty to me. And it was good and cold, which is just how I like my beer.

Bife de chorizo con chimichurri, papa rota, ensalada tibia de morcilla, cherry y verdeo y salchicha parrillera con morrones asados. Translation: Steak with chimichurri, broken potato, warm salad of black pudding, cherry and green onion and barbecue sausage with roasted peppers. (Or something like that.)

This was a special. Rotini with fresh mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes. It was a simple, beautiful dish, flavored with a little salt and olive oil. The mozzarella chunks, which were tossed into the pasta while the noodles were hot, melted into a rich, salty sauce as we ate.

NYMag Sandwich List #99: Sesame Pancake With Beef, Vanessa’s Dumplings

trencherman — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:41:26 +0000

And the final post of the day. Returning once again to the NYMag sandwich list. On my way home from the gym, famished from my first post-Toronto run, it occurred to me that Vanessa’s Dumplings was only a few steps away from the 3rd Avenue L-train station. So I checked it out.

I am a big fan of the filled sesame pancake, having discovered it late one night at my local late night spot, M Noodle Shop (which is, by the way, awesome, open until 6 a.m., and very salty). M Noodle has a sandwich sesame pancake stuffed with pickled vegetables that just knocks me down every time I eat it. Something about the combination of the grease from the pancake, the sweet from the sesame, and sour from the pickled vegetables just hits all the spots. Anyway, back to Vanessa’s…

The sandwich is, as NYMag suggests, a kind of variation on the banh mi. The roast beef, like the cuts that come in pho in cheap vietnamese restaurants, was very thinly-sliced and marbled with chewy, overcooked fat. But the meat was tasty and the grease and saltiness of the pancake was cut effectively by the cool, crisp vegetables (pickled cucumbers, carrots, cilantro) stuffed into the sandwich. I actually preferred this to the last banh mi I had (see post from earlier today). This is a good option, and super cheap (though you have to wonder how this made it onto the NYMag list and other stellar sandwiches like the meatloaf at Rye or the Sage Egg and Cheese at Five Leaves or any of the sandwiches at Hamilton Deli didn’t make it. But that’s another conversation for another day).

The anticipation was overwhelming…

And here it is in all its goodness. Probably 6 inches in diameter.

Getting into it and dousing it in sriracha sauce.

Overall, very salty and greasy but satisfying. And for only a little more than $3, it’s a great deal.

Toronto, for the Very First Time

trencherman — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:24:46 +0000

Here comes the second post from my brain. A few of us went to Toronto last weekend for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the Toronto Island Festival, featuring Pavement, Broken Social Scene, Band of Horses, Beach House, and Timber Timbre (whom we missed). It was a great show. And, much to my satisfaction, it also featured an impressive display of clouds and an astonishing, screen-saver worthy sunset (see photo). We also ate like animals there, but since I have no photos of the food, I’ve included a photo of the sunset. Ah, pretty…

So, I’ll do a quick rundown of the (spectacular) eating we did, but want to start with what was, for me, the clear highlight and the food that calls for a return to Toronto very, very soon. That is the boneless chicken roti from Caribbean Roti Palace, which was featured in a post by jayrhu (our Toronto expert) last year. Oh-my-fucking-god it was good. Just looking at the pictures makes me all antsy. The place clearly gets respect from the locals.

Other culinary highlights from the weekend include:

– Lunch at Rodney’s Oyster House, which was over the top. Amazing, fresh oysters. Some soft-shell crab, some scallops, some fried oysters, some Indian Haida Candy (maple smoked salmon), some solomon gundy (yum!). It was a treat. I also got to drink some delicious Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale, Nova Scotia’s finest. See below. As they say: “‘Tis a proper thing!”

– A double dose of very solid poutine from Poutini’s House of Poutine on Queen West. Seriously.

– An extraordinary meaty italian dinner at a restaurant called Trattoria Giancarlo. I hardly remember it because my brain was shut down and all energy in my body was directed toward the project of shoveling beef carpaccio and ossobucco into my mouth.

– A top notch meal of dim sum, but I can’t remember the name of the restaurant for the life of me. Felt like it was on the second floor of a building in the financial district, but I can’t be sure. What was the name?

– Great pastries (croissants, quiche, etc.) from Pain Perdu. Warrants a post of its own with pictures in the future.

– Sweet street meat. I had heard a lot of good things about the sausages you can buy on the street in Toronto: grilled, not soaked in nasty dog water; scored for better cooking; bigger and meatier and tastier; and tons of choices of topping. It was pretty excellent, but next time I’ll do it right and not eat an ambrosial roti beforehand and wait until I’m plastered late at night, when I’m sure the street meat would be it’s own kind of godsend. Next trip.

– Finally, on our way out of town we swung by Manic Coffee. Good stuff.

Good work, Toronto.