Brandon Eats

Cracking the Pie

Fuck crack pie.

Although I shouldn’t have been surprised, Christina Tosi’s recipe is one of the most time-consuming, odd ingredient-demanding culinary enterprises I’ve embarked upon lately.

Probably the most frustrating thing about it is that I knew it would be like this before I began. All you have to do is read the recipe, which is, in fact, three recipes nested within one.

David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook is exactly the same — filled with recipes that involve making at least two or three other things and that send you to several different stores to obtain all of the different ingredients before you can even start making it. I once made kimchi soup (first I made my own kimchi two weeks before) which involved visits to the Korean market across the river, Belmont Butchery, and the regular old grocery store. It then took two days — and my family said it was “fine.” Same with Chang’s fried chicken; they liked it okay, but they liked regular fried chicken much better, they said.

I knew this starting out. But I was dying to try Milkbar’s crack pie.

More after the jump. Lots more.

Maybe Magical Meals?

Desperate, desperate nights. Nights when dinner seems impossible but everyone's hungry. Half the family wants to go out and the other half thinks that it's a crazy idea. Rifling through the cupboards and rummaging through the freezer. Can you make dinner out of frozen corn and that jar of black bean garlic sauce you bought at the Asian market? No? Are you sure?

This seems to be every night at our house, especially since I went back to work. I kept thinking that I would magically figure out how to work AND provide my family with meals and clean clothes but I still haven't gotten the hang of it. Pete Wells, editor of the New York Times Dining section wrote a wonderful piece about a similar inability to magically make meals happen every, single night at home.

I can't believe it's true — I love to cook but I don't want to cook because I'm too tired.

More after the jump

Virtuously Vegan

Mark Bittman could tell me to how to eat worms and I'd probably follow his instructions to the letter. Fortunately, all he wants me to do, in Food Matters, is veganize my menu before 6:00 pm, and then he cuts me loose after that.

I can mostly follow that. I've got a weakness for dairy--oh, the siren song of yogurt at 4:00 in the afternoon--but I'm getting along pretty nicely. Helpful in my transition to a lesser-meat lifestyle is a book about which I can never say enough nice things. Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, created in their book, Veganomicon, a meatless compendium even the most dedicated of carnivores can love. Really.

Along with Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, you can revolutionize the way you eat and not even notice it. There's more chopping to do, yes, and granted, I still bitch about that and probably always will. However, a lot of my complaining in the past has been because the pay-off never seemed worth it in the end. My lackluster, tamari-laced meal,* the result of at least a solid hour of chopping and sauteing, rarely felt like the effort involved was rewarded.

Not so with Veganomicon (or Bittman). Below you'll find a recipe that my entire family ate without a blink, without a shudder, without even a tiny, sad sigh. Shock ensued when I informed them that it was vegan. This was clearly and definitively a success, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I don't know if it's your three names each that make you so magical with the culinary plant life, but I have to hand it to you--you've won me heart and stomach.

*Vegetarians sometimes seem to think that if they pump up the umami with a little tamari, anything will be palatable.

Recipe after the jump

Goodbye, Sheila Lukins

The news of Sheila Lukins' death on Sunday from brain cancer (Michael Y. Park wrote a lovely appreciation on the Epi-Log at Epicurious this morning) has left all of us without one of the most influential cooks of the later half of the 20th century. With her book, The Silver Palate Cookbook, co-written with Julee Rosso, Lukins inspired legions of home cooks in the 1980's to re-imagine the way that they think about food and the way that they make it.

Influences could come from all over the world and the boring fare of the nightly dinner could instead blast out the flavor and transform the ordinary with just the addition of a couple of "exotic" (garlic, saffron, herbs) ingredients. Freshness--fresh vegetables, fresh herbs and a fresh approach--provided the new foundation Lukins wanted all of us to build upon.

I wrote an appreciation of The Silver Palate a few years ago (here's a link), and to this day, she remains, along with Julia Child, one of the most important reasons that I do what I do: cook, eat and write about the food I love.

Food, Inc. Give-Away Contest

Food, Inc. opens today in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and on July 10th here in Richmond (at Movieland).

It's a movie I think everyone should see, and as an added incentive, I'm giving away the companion book (featuring thirteen essays written by Eric Schlosser, Robert Kenner (director), Marion Nestle, Anna Lappe, Michael Pollan, Muhammad Yunus, Joel Salatin,  and Gary Hirshberg), AS WELL AS a copy of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Just send an email to brandoneats AT comcast.net and all names will go in a hat, or maybe a bucket, but probably a mixing bowl and will definitely be drawn by a 10-year-old or possibly a 13-year-old. The lucky winner will be announced Monday, June 15th!

Wake Up and Smell the Garlic

My taste buds must be catatonic most of the time. You have to whack them with garlic and shock them with lemon to get them to wake up. Subtlety is frequently lost on me. In fact, I think the word "subtle" generally means bland. Don't you? Or is that just me?

Imagine how excited I became when I found Andrew Carmellini's new book, Urban Italian. The combination of garlic, lemon, and chopped red onion is hardly new, but I'd forgotten all about it until I started flipping through his book. And I was flipping through his book because I had a pound of shrimp, not much else, and no ideas. 

I did have the aforementioned shrimp, a can of beans, and some salad. Although technically an antipasti, this recipe is perfect for two, with a few of the shrimp dispersed among the children who are willing to eat them. Add a lovely, crisp Pinot Grigio (for authenticity) and you have a meal that can be whipped up in fifteen minutes or less. Because the only cooking involved is a moment of garlic sauteing and a quick sear of the shrimp, it's perfect for an unexpectedly unbearable hot May evening.

I made a few alterations--children demand to be accommodated, after all (and although you're supposed to ignore that kind of thing, after all these years I'm too, too exhausted to fight that endless fight. My line in the sand is that they must eat what we eat--with a few, um, accccommodations).

Andrew Carmellini's Rock Shrimp with Cannellini Bean, amended

Bean salad:

1 15-ounce can cannellini beans (I actually used Great Northern beans because that's what I had)

1/4 cup red onion, minced within an inch of its life

1 large garlic clove, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

Freshly ground pepper

Splash of hot sauce

Drain and rinse the beans; mix all of the ingredients together and let sit while you make the shrimp.

Carmelli says you can add a little pesto (actually, I think it would be nice drizzled underneath or around the perimeter of the plate--unfortunately, I didn't have any).

Shrimp:

1 lb. shrimp (brined)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons fresh rosemary or more (I didn't want to kill my fledgling rosemary plants by completely denuding them)

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon parsley or more, chopped

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt (if you didn't brine)

Freshly ground pepper

Sprinkle of red pepper flakes (Carmelli suggests 1/2 teaspoon and I would have used this if I hadn't had children hungrily staring at me. As it was, I put this little bit in when they weren't looking).

Blot the shrimp thoroughly and in a wide skillet, heat the 2 tablespoons of oil over high-ish heat. Add the shrimp and cook until pink and white. Turn down the heat immediately.

Pull your pan off the heat to avoid burning the garlic (which it's now time to add), add a little more oil, plus the red pepper flakes. Put the pan back on a medium-low flame and saute of for a minute or two and remove from the heat again. Add the last two tablespoons of oil, thyme, rosemary, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Spoon the beans on two plates and arrange the shrimp on top, remembering to toss a few on another plate so your children won't starve. Naturally, if your children eat beans, double the above bean recipe. Mine don't, so I made a little pasta with butter--the default--on the side. Drizzle it all with a little more olive, if you like.

Ahhhhhhh. So easy and so wonderful!