The Maltese Bacon

Bunnies, Magic and Matzoh

This week, my friend Brian Patchett, will be guest blogging about a party that he threw, which was one of the most delightful events that I have had the pleasure of participating in. Can't describe exactly what it was that transpired that night. It was a performance, it was theater, it was dinner. Whatever it was, it was all-inclusive fun, full of surprises. I'll just let him explain it in his own words:

For the last few years I've been dreaming about creating a new holiday, to take place on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. It would poach the best elements from my favorite holidays, with an emphasis on Halloween and Passover. The idea is that No Lords Day is the one day of the year when there are No Lords watching, and you can do whatever you want with impunity.

This year I decided to finally do it. I sent out the invitations, devised the ceremony, made some artwork, and commissioned some performances. Naturally, I asked Mme. Bacon to brainstorm some ideas for the meal. We settled on an African theme as our point of departure.

Miss B. spent Friday before the party shopping, and I came over to her place that night to check in. I was far too deferential to be of any real help; but even so I was trusted with, amongst other things, the saffron. We enjoyed making fun of the small onions for the tagine, which the recipe asked to be "so tender you can crush them with your tongue." When all five pounds of lamb were in the pot, M. Bacon recorded some backing vocals for the dance-pop song I had written for the next evening: "No Lords Day (Way Back In Gideon's Time)."

On party day, I went down to Maltese Bacon Kitchen Headquarters to help bring the stews to my apartment in northern Brooklyn. I admit being slightly panicked by what I saw. With two hours to go until party
time, nothing had been packed, certain dishes had yet to be assembled, and the Maltese Bacon was warbling about some phantom cucumber salad for which there was no call, no evidence and no time. I believe she had gone slightly delirious in her own attempt to not totally freak out, and had come around the other side to a sleepy panic-coma. When we arrived back at my place, we were aided by the early arrival of my friend Alexis, who helped that cucumber salad materialize out of nothingness.

With all seventeen guests packed in my cramped apartment, we got seated for the ceremony. The table was packed with wine, dates, nuts and olives from Emily's Pork Store in Williamsburg. I gave a small introduction No Lords Day, and then performed the song:

I then began the ritual story of Gideon -- a prince in ancient times who serves his people well, but then goes bad, and gets greedy. This part of the story was interpreted in dance:

At the end of the dance, the Black Egg was held aloft. Whoever ends up with the Black Egg at the end of the holiday will have Gideon come to their home and HIDE one object until next No Lords Day. I talked about the three things that Gideon likes to hide most: eggs, matzoh, and bibles. I then told the story of Gideon's punitive imprisonment inside a giant chocolate rabbit. This too was interpreted in dance:

I read a biblical-style poem that I wrote, after which my friend Tom gave a joyful performance that was wildly applauded, and involved real magic. Definitely a highlight of the evening:

Finally, I connected Gideon's narrative to the holiday itself. Every year on No Lords Day, Gideon escapes from his chocolate prison, to grab and hide things with his grabby, grabby hands. And ever year the Great Hare (the Champion of the Amalekites, whom Gideon oppressed) must hunt Gideon down, bop him on the head, and send him back. This was hilariously interpreted in dance by Katie and Melina:

The ceremony ended with the "Splitting of the Hare," in which a giant
chocolate rabbit was split open, symbolically releasing Gideon from
his prison, and formally "beginning" No Lords Day. This was performed
with a scary knife by my friend Cara.

At this point, I would classify the tone of the party as "just slightly totally out of control" -- several people nearly lit my room on fire trying to melt the bunny into the fondue pot. Eventually a queue was formed and food was served. DELICIOUS! The Moroccan lamb tagine with apricots and tongue-crushable onion was a hit, as was the "South African Malay chicken curry amalgamation" and the cucumber salad. Everyone ate like a host wants to see, and there were the most insubstantial of leftovers.

The Black Egg was passed around -- sometimes obviously, sometimes clandestinely. I was shocked when it appeared on my plate, as if by magic. I slipped it into my friend Samantha's coat pocket when she wasn't looking. After she had left the apartment, she RETURNED after finding the Black Egg . She was under no circumstances going to be the victim of Gideon's perverted machinations.

With the tables cleared, I brought out the chocolate hare fondue, which Hilary had melted safely on the stove. At this point, people were in my room drawing all over the novelty Santa Claus that Cara brought:

After dessert the floor was cleared for dancing, which is how I like to end any evening. And the next morning, I found the Black Egg in my jacket.

-- Brian P.
Guest Blogger

For more awesomely fun pictures of the First Ever No Lords Day, go here.

RECIPE FOR NO LORDS DAY

No Lords Day is a non-proprietary holiday. You are encouraged to hold
your own, with the awesomest people you know, on the day between Good
Friday and Easter.

PHASE ONE: Ceremony
These mandatory elements can be performed in any order you choose. If
you'd like to look at a sample script for a "possible" No Lords Day,
please contact me. Improvisation is encouraged.

1) Tell the story of Gideon, his grabby grabby hands, and the prison shaped like a giant chocolate rabbit

2) Explain that Gideon escapes from his prison each year on No Lords Day, and covets and hides things (especially eggs, matzoh, and bibles).

3) Explain how Gideon is returned to his prison each year by the Hare, who bops him on the head (optionally, with a mallet).

4) Introduce the Black Egg (the "Jerub Ball" -- that's a bible joke, because I am a nerd) to the table. Remind everyone that whoever ends up with the Black Egg at the end of the night will receive a visit from Gideon, who will hide one of their possessions for a full year.

5) Compulsive wine-drinking, snackable appetizers

6) Pepper with dances, songs, sing-alongs, magic, poetry, storytelling, etc., to your liking.

7) End the ceremony with the Splitting of the Hare. The Hare can be melted into a fondue (you should spring for quality chocolate if you do this) or eating out of hand as a dessert. You may use supplemental or replacement desserts.

PHASE TWO: Meal
1) Tons of awesome food, in any genre
2) More wine-drinking

PHASE THREE: Dancing
1) Danceable wine-drinking
2) Digestive dancing

Note From M. Bacon: The chicken curry amalgamation was a riff on South African Malay curry and the Moroccan amb tagine was from Claudia Roden's wonderful Arabesque.

Urgent: Please Sign Here to Save the LA Taco Truck

From the NY Times:

Under the new (county) ordinance, trucks in a commercial zone will have an hour to sit; those in a residential area will still have to leave after 30 minutes, but in much of East Los Angeles, commercial and residential are one. After the allotted time, a vendor would have to move at least one half mile from the location, and not return for three hours. The district attorney may also charge taco flouters with a misdemeanor, and fines will increase from $60 to $100 dollars for first violation, increasing to a cap of $500.

This is a travesty! Taco trucks are a living, breathing cultural insitution in LA that provide a lot of good, cheap food to all kinds of people. Please sign here to oppose this.

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

Sunday nights can go two ways. They can hang rather dull, tinged with the anticipation of another work week. On the other hand, they can be perfectly cozy like putzing around in your striped socks with a cuppa tea when it's cold outside. Yesterday fell into the second variety - a nice and easy cooking party/potluck dinner at Joanna and Horaci’s sweet new place. They had just moved to Park Slope to get ready for the arrival of a baby girl.

The potluck was a free for all but not as crazily incoherent as one might expect from a group that represented a cracked U.N. cafeteria of America, Australia, Spain, India, China and Vietnam.

On the menu:
Cold Vichysoisse (Joanna)
Cod Brandade (Horaci)
Cilantro chicken (Pooja and Harshad)
Plantain cakes (me)
Fried eggplant (Yogeeta and Hrishi)
Tofu & avocado salad and ganache icing cupcakes (John)

I’ve never had a vichysoisse cold. Very refreshing. Horaci made a yummy cod brandade to eat with bread. He usually makes it with salt cod, like a good Catalan would do, but he couldn’t find salt cod being a newbie in the neighborhood, so he used fresh fish. He was telling me about a more traditional Catalan version that uses mashed potatoes instead of béchamel which sounds intriguing.

Here is his recipe for last night’s dish in his words:

Brandada de bacallà
With the fresh cod (1 pound yesterday), you just have to boil it. Put it in cold water, and when the water starts rippling, remove and let cool. Then mush it with the blender.
On the side, make a béchamel with olive oil instead of butter. Yesterday’s had half a wine glass of olive oil and a full water glass of milk, plus 4 soup spoons of flour (sorry for the weird Spanish units of measure.)
While the cod and the béchamel are warm, mix them well and add the cream (to your taste, I forgot how many soup spoons it was, but I ignored it anyway).
Add parsley and serve on thin slices of fried bread.

The Best Black Eyed Peas

It is 10am and Pooja presents to me a container of black eyed peas that she made the night before. The dish is made with coconut oil and is so rich and flavorful, I am savoring each bean as slowly as I can. The recipe is courtesy of her mom, Mrs. Rao, who had delivered a knock-out blow dinner one night when she was visiting here from Bombay. I still need to get the recipe for her chicken curry.

Black Eye Peas in Spicy Coconut Curry (Adapted from Mrs. Rao)

The recipe was originally intended for masoor dal but Pooja made it with black eyed peas.

3 cups black eyed peas (soaked and cooked so that they are still a little firm) or 2 cans
1 tablespoons of coriander seeds
6 dried red chilies
2-3 grains fenugreek seeds
2 teaspoons of coconut oil
2 cans unsweetened coconut milk
1 tablespoon of tamarind
¾ teaspoon mustard seeds
5 curry leaves (torn into smaller pieces, for more flavor)
A pinch of asafoetida
coconut oil (if you don't have coconut oil, which can be found at an Indian grocery store, you can use olive oil)

Saute one onion in some olive oil . Set aside. Add 2 teaspoons of coconut oil to the pan, set to medium heat. Wait for the oil to heat up and add 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds, 6 dried red chilies and 2-3 grains of fenugreek seeds. Pour the spices into a blender along with the coconut milk and the tamarind. Blend to a fine paste. Then in a pan put 1 teaspoon coconut oil and add the mustard seeds, curry leaves and a pinch of asafoetida. When it splutters add the black eyed peas and the coconut milk paste. Bring it to a boil. Serve with rice or chappati. (Note from Mrs. Rao: Dad would have added a small piece of jaggery to make it tastier. Jaggery should always be preferred to sugar - good for health.)

...

I'm sorry I haven't been around this week. I won't have anything for you until hopefully next week. Sayonara!

Zurich is dead, but steak ain't.

What happens when family comes to visit? Lombardi’s is planned for Thursday. Saturday dim sum is planned by Tuesday. Reservations for a steakhouse are made for the night before, without your knowledge (thank you Tina). Basically, the food blogger, who is usually asked “Where should we eat?” to exhaustion is no longer asked this question. She is taken on a tour of food and force fed, to her delight. By Sunday, with my cousin Chi Thu and her husband Steve safely in the air, I was just hoping for a serving of cantaloupe and some cottage cheese.

The steakhouse in question was Del Frisco’s Double Eagle, a reputable chain that started in Dallas. I’ve never been to a steak house in New York so I was super excited. The place is dramatic - soaring ceilings and windows overlooking 6th Avenue in Rockefeller Center. It was not as packed as I would have thought. (Was subprime tamping down the Amex action?) On the menu, it says they are not responsible for steaks ordered well done. Good for them. I ordered the bone in rib eye steak, medium. The rib-eye is the fattiest and most delicious cut. Vroom vroom vroom, it was good. It had a nice salt and pepper crust to it, and it was very tender. We ordered the gnocchi (too big and creamy), the creamed corn (v. good) and the asparagus side (whatevs). The steak was the star and that was okay. I took the 2 bites that I had left home and gnawed on the bone in the morning before I left for dim sum.

On Saturday, the cousins wanted Italian food. I decided to meddle this time. Try making reservations at an Italian restaurant downtown on a Saturday night, hours beforehand. I called a handful of places in the West and East Village. Every place was booked to the gills, unless I wanted to eat at 6:30pm or 10:30pm. And then I dug up a name from long ago, Via Emilia, a quaint place that I hadn’t revisited since I worked in Gramercy. They didn’t take reservations. Perfect! They had gotten a nice makeover since I last went. Specializing in the food of Modena, they offer tigelle, a flat bread shaped into discs that you eat with prosciutto, coppa, salami and cheese. Most of the pastas there are lovingly handmade. There was a beautiful corn and tuna soup. A non-boring bruschetta.They keep the prices modest, so they don’t take credit card.

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House
1221 Sixth Ave., New York, NY 10020
at 49th St.
212-575-5129

Via Emilia
47 E 21st St. New York 10010
Btwn Bway & Park Ave.
212-505-3072

Per Se, My Love: A Maltese Bacon Original Song

Can spring just happen already? It's still a tepid 47 degrees in New York. So tired of looking at sweaters in the morning. And very envious of my 8 year old niece who writes to me from Newport Beach, complaining about how hot it is there right now. I must admit though, I always have a little ennui with the first blush of spring...some strange dull feeling comes over me. Betty Carter knows what I'm talking about. She sang the truest version of "Spring Can Really Hang you Up the Most." So, I am actually dreading the spring while enjoying complaining about the winter. I assure you the feeling is always temporary and comes in small gusts, like the occasional onslaught of New York debris when you are walking down the street in April. After that, I will happily put on my tee shirt and canvas jacket and traipse around town, trying to scan the mental map of outdoor cafes. "Uh, isn't there a backyard restaurant on Avenue C, somewhere?!" The cost of real estate here has made for dang sure that the number of outdoor places where one may procure a cold drink is a paltry few.

For me, spring got to a promising start this past weekend, with a joyous dinner party/theater/performance/holiday concocted by Brian. I had the pleasure of cooking for this event. More to come on that later, when I get the pictures from Ben (forgot my camera in the harried move of the food from my kitchen's to Brian's.) Sunday was a nice relaxing comedown - got to listen to see some jazz in a small, East Village church.

Anyways, here is a song that I made recently for the blog-album-in-progress "Sad Songs for Food Lovers":

Download per_se_my_love.mp3

A Good Sunday: Lard, Plantain Cakes and Rugelach

So, my friend Brian went to the grocery store in Williamsburg last Saturday and sends me this e-mail shortly afterward:

Hello --

I just went crazy with groceries. Wanna come over for dinner today or
breakfast tomorrow?

I have

DESAYUNO TIPICO DOMINICANO:

eggs
dominican salami
dominican frying cheese
1 plantano
1 maduro
corn tortillas
black beans
short-grained white rice
spanish onions
limes
smoked herring
2 sm red potatoes

OTHER:
2 sm beets
2 shallots
dandelion greens
pretty dry rosemary
bok choy
crimini mushrooms
weird little baby sweet peppers
nothing to drink

I love this because I am a big sucker for lists. Not making my own, mind you, but reading other people's. We arrange to meet for noontime breakfast the next day. I have eaten many sweet plantains and tostones in my life (mostly at Los Pollitos) but had never prepared them. I know it doesn’t sound complicated, but the green, the yellow and the black plantain have always befuddled my little brain. Well, of course it’s not hard to grasp. They are all the same plantain just in varying degrees of ripeness, just like regular bananas, except that plantains have a lower sugar content than bananas, making them great for cooking in different ways.

Brian was in charge of the cheese, eggs, salami and merguez sausage. He fried the cheese in lard. Delicious! There wasn’t any kind of lard film on the cheese, so you wouldn’t really know from whence it had come, and therefore able to enjoy it in good conscience.

I was in charge of the plantains. I boiled the plantains, mixed them up with some onions, garlic, small sweet peppers and butter. Katie, Brian’s sister, had fun forming them into cakes. Then I pan fried them and stuck a fried egg on top, like a plantain eggs benedict. Having both the sweet yellow plantain and the green plantain in the patty made it only slightly sweet, a good, starchy foil for the savory of all the other things on our plate.

After we ate, we decided to take a walk, before we fell into food induced REM. We walked around the Hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg. Brian picked up a bag of very good rugelach at a bakery. We snooped around a deli that had an extensive pickle bar and wandered around a toy store that sold small plastic figurines of Hasidic children. There also was a confederate soldier kid’s costume for sale – disturbing and totally weird.

Plantain Cakes
1 green plantain
1 yellow plantain
1 clove of garlic
½ small onion
½ red bell pepper or equivalent other sweet peppers
butter
olive oil
salt/pepper
½ chopped jalapeño (no seeds)

Chop one green and one yellow plantain into 2 inch pieces with skin on. Peel off skin. Boil the green plantain for 5 minutes, then drop in the yellow plantain into the water. Boil for 15 minutes more. While this is boiling, sauté the red pepper, jalapeño, garlic and half a small onion in butter until onions just turn translucent. Strain the plantains and mash with a potato masher. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add garlic/onion/butter mixture and mix well. Shape the plantains into the size of discs with diameter of 3-4 inches and height of ¾ inch (more or less.) It should look vaguely like a hamburger patty. Pan fry the cakes in olive oil on medium heat, until they brown on each side. Serve with a sunny side egg on top.

"I love New York!!! Today I had Chinese food, then falafel and then pizza!"

- as said from a singer from Atlanta before he launched into a song at Lit Lounge. That is what I leave you with to close out this Friday. I had something to post, but then all week I kept shuttling my memory card for my photos in my jeans, back and forth, back and forth, procrastinating the post, until I left the card in the wrong place. Now I can't post. But I will tell you about my dream the other night. I was in a man's house who ran a little restaurant right out of his home. His specialty was mutton curry. I was salivating at the thought of this curry but it was a Sunday and I was trying to remember if the markets were open on Saturday and if not, should I eat the mutton, because it might have been mutton from Friday. And then I was getting really annoyed with myself about how neurotic I had become with meat spoilage.

So, I should be back early next week, mutton-less but with photos. Have a good weekend!

I am reading “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert right now, which I believe every woman in American is reading. Every woman on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan, every woman that worships Oprah, every woman who dabbles in yoga. Despite all intentions to avoid this book, I was given it as a gift. I finally picked it up off my desk and have been enjoying it considerably ever since, on the drab commute to work.

The book is a memoir of Gilbert’s messy divorce and subsequent travels through Italy, India and Indonesia in search for self redemption through food, spirituality and love. She received the book advance for the novel before she set off on her travels. Sound hokey? It did to me. But Gilbert has a very fetching style of writing, which makes you feel like she is talking to you personally, her smart and empathetic friend.

There certainly are times when this book makes me cringe, in all its gung ho spirituality and relentless cuteness. For example, when she is sitting in a meditation cave in India, she has a breakthrough and a voice comes through to her saying “YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS!!!!!!!!!!!” These moments made the dial on my cynic meter go red.

But for every time that happened, there was an alternate moment when I felt charmed and nourished by her stories, when I couldn’t help but try and filter my experiences through hers. Hey, I may even try the meditation she learned from her Indonesian medicine man friend: “Sit in silence and smile.”

One thing is for sure – she made me want to hop on a plane to Naples and beeline it to Pizzeria Da Michele (est. 1880?!) Here is an excerpt from the book, which I have condensed with all those ellipses:

By 1:00 PM, the streets outside the pizzeria have become jammed with Neopolitans trying to get a space on the lifeboat. There’s not a menu. They have only two varieties of pizza here- regular and extra cheese…The dough, it takes half my meal to figure out, tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I’ve ever tried. It’s soft and chewy and yielding, but incredibly thin pizza crust-thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known that there could be a crust in this world that was thick and doughy? …On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one sprig of basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance…It’s technically impossible to eat this pizza, of course. You try to take a bite off your slice and the gummy crust folds, and the hot cheese runs away like topsoil in a landslide, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it.