A Glorious Gastronomic Gala

Every year, at the end of October, The Food Network hosts a four day Food and Wine Festival in New York City to benefit No Child Hungry. Hundreds of restaurants, supporters, vendors, volunteers, and of course, foodies, flock to the events to eat well, drink deep, and meet Food Network personalities. For the past five years, I’ve attended the event, sometimes as a volunteer, sometimes as a ticket holder. For those who have visited my kitchen, you know that I collect pictures with famous food personalities. Many of those signatures and photos came from this event.

I arrived in NYC Saturday morning. After checking in with the volunteer desk, I wrist banded numerous guests to the Chefs + Jets event and the Grand Tasting. Chefs + Jets was on the rooftop of Pier 92. Think of it as the ultimate tailgate. One of the few events where people under 21 could attend, the rooftop was packed with families, beers, BBQ, Jets players, grilled foods, Jets cheerleaders, food served in a bun, a live marching band, and football paraphernalia. The Grand Tasting, an event that lasts both Saturday and Sunday, spanned piers 94 and 95. The picture below only shows about a third of the things to taste and see. Wine from all over the world, cocktails of every spiritual base, grocery stores, and restaurants, everyone had something to hand out, either to consume, or to put in your orange Buick logo’d bag. I wandered the aisles, methodically trying to sample, ensuring that I would be able to taste everything. With, literally, hundreds of different bites to try, there is no way I could recount them all, but there were some highlights that stand out.

To the left of the entrance, rather than a simple booth as you see above, this vendor set up their space like the interior of a European delicatessen. Cheeses, charcuterie, pickles, jams, and mustards were all laid out to try, my favorite being a roasted balsamic fig that paired perfectly with a crumbling blue cheese. Near the middle, a restaurant laid a slice of beef carpaccio on top of field greens, splashed it with herbaceous olive oil, and topped it with a tete de moine (Monk’s head) cheese curl and fresh ground pepper. In the back, liquid sugar was being pumped through tubes to construct blue raspberry flavored, 3D printed candy. Oh yeah, and I also got a picture and a hug from Paula Dean

I walked from the tasting to the Times Building to attend a talk with Rachel Ray and Tom Colicchio. They spoke passionately about solving America’s problems related to child hunger and nutrition. Their main point being that when people are on such a strict budget, they go for cheap food, which also happens to be the unhealthiest. Calories are cheap, nutrition is expensive. Without changes to legislation that currently supports corn and corn products, the problem won’t go away.

Saturday evening, I helped at Tacos and Tequila, hosted by Bobby Flay, again on the roof of pier 92. With the sun down, the chill began to set in, making us all line up for the tortilla wrapped goodness. Pork was most prominent as the filler, but my favorite was a duck confit, complete with crispy cracklings on top. The duck was juicy and rich, lightened by the pickled slaw and garlic aioli.

Sunday, after another round of volunteering at the Grand Tasting, I headed back up to Pier 92’s rooftop for Meatopia X, hosted by Michael Symon. Transformed again from the night before, every booth offered carnivorous treats. 1” square cubes of maple smoked bacon possibly had the longest line, but if you headed to the back, the roasted quail might have been my favorite. Near the front, sitting atop a 10’x10’ grill was a whole cow. The skull on a spit, it was an oddly primordial foreground to a New York City backdrop. As pieces were finished, they were carved and served with truffle mash potatoes and BBQ sauce.

Stuffed to the gills (for about the third time that weekend) I walked to the bus stop for the long ride back to Hartford. Another successful year, both for me and No Child Hungry. Can’t wait till next October.

The High and Low of Silo

Last week, many nights were spent as group dinners. As my team mates know me as the resident foodie, I’m usually entrusted with picking a restaurant. At the suggestion of some locals, I chose Silo. Located a few blocks from the farmer’s market, it sits on a corner in the Germantown area of Nashville. The restaurant is busy, with reservations being enforced and kept. Whiskey bottles are used to serve water, and the lamps are accented with dark reds and yellows, pulling out a natural feel on the wood and cream colored walls.

With a party of five, we were able to get a sizeable selection of dinner options. After a round of cocktails, the table ordered the tasting of the house-made charcuterie. Three separate plates arrived, each with the meat and pairing of pickles, fruit, nuts, and mustard. My favorite was a mousse served in a perfectly shaped dome, and lightly sprinkled with sea salt. It was paired with a whole grain mustard flavored with molasses, the grains popping in your mouth. The plate also featured pistachios and a roasted fig, adding another sweet component, removing any metallic, sour, or gamy flavor that might have been present in the liver-based mousse.

We also ordered were the crispy Brussel sprouts. Roasted and charred, they delivered on the promised crunch. Apple and pickled onion accompanied the dish, sweet and sour complimenting the umami from the char. While the composition, plating, and taste were great, the chef was a bit heavy handed with the salt, to the point of it almost distracting from the flavor.

My entrée was the braised oxtail. Served in a bowl, it was surrounded by roasted vegetation, shitakes, carrots, and potatoes. A poached egg sat atop the bowl, the yolk cascading into the natural jus as it was punctured. I usually eat oxtail at Jamaican restaurants, usually served in a rich curry sauce. This dish highlighted the oxtail on its own, having been removed from the bone. I consider oxtail to be offal, so it usually needs the treatment of something like curry. The meat isn’t as flavorful as other cuts, but I think this dish brought out as much as it could.

Another entrée ordered was the hot chicken, a Nashville staple. This incarnation had thick, juicy, lean chicken breasts, battered and fried. The sauce covering it was spicy, really spicy. I have a decent heat tolerance, but this was hot to the point of being distracting from the rest of the meal. My coworker who ordered it couldn’t finish it.

Sides are served a la carte. We ordered the jalapeño cornbread, which is served in a cast iron skillet. Unlike the hot chicken, the bread was only mildly spicy, crusty on top, and served with a bacon butter. The combination made the side more savory than sweet, which is what I’m used to with cornbread. The other side we ordered was the pot likker greens. The leaves were kept large, rather than chopped, and bathed in their natural juices, flavored with smoked bacon.

Dessert was the highlight of the meal. We ordered the pot de crème, rich and thick, heavily scented with vanilla. It was topped with a salted caramel sauce and served in a mason jar. The jar was surrounded by popcorn, swathed in caramel and speckled with bacon. The salty sweet crunch matched the pot de crème with flavor, but complimented the texture.

“Classic Nashville. Modern Cuisine.”

That is the tagline of Bound’ry, one of the many restaurants in the area surrounding Vanderbilt. A short walk away from many hotels on the west side of Highway 40, it’s far enough away from traffic to be an easy suggestion from the front desk. The interior is an eclectic set of rooms. The left is the bar area, which swoops around in a long arc. The right has a blazing wood fired oven prominent in the corner, where their hand tossed pizzas are made. The deck has mini fire pits at each table, the flames exuding from a basin filled with stones. The back room is a more tradition dining room, the kitchen visible from most tables. The lighting is dark and the art is vibrant and the dinner was about to start.

We begin with two shared appetizers. The pork belly came in four thick cubes. Unlike other belly I’ve had, the layers of meat and fat did not separate easily, and eat bite was better eaten as a whole. The sea salt aioli and hot pepper jam added a nice kick, while the slaw of pea shoots and shaved cabbage cleansed the palate. The other shared dish was the tuna two ways. The seared half was flavored with Chinese five spice and sliced thin, the meat slightly more purple than red. The other half was chopped up and flavored with ginger and sake, the pieces of tuna falling in between sweet potato chips and avocado. All of this sat atop basil painted cucumber.

My salad was the Belgian caesar. Brussel sprouts were shaved mixed with creamy avocado dressing cherry heirloom tomatoes. Asiago cheese, finely shredded and adorned with top along with focaccia crumbs to add crunch. The sprouts were uncooked, so the salad had a slaw-like crunch to it, though it was a tad bitter from the raw vegetation.

The entrée was the highlight of the meal. Always a sucker for novelty, I ordered the antelope. The loin came medium rare, just how I like it seared black on the outside, the interior a purplish red. As often happens, the game was very lean, and tasted meaty and clean, with only a slightly metallic presence. Paired was an ice cream scoop dollop of white truffle scented mash potato. Though delicious, the portion was a little small considering the $30 cost.

If you have to travel to work, and I often do, Nashville is not a bad place to go. Restaurant options are numerous and on most occasions, you can’t go wrong. Bound’ry is no exception.

“What is wrong with you people?!”

Every second Friday of the month, a group of friends and I get together at someone’s house for a cooking fiasco. The meetup group, “Fabulous Foodies,” has been in operation for over four years now. Every month, a new theme is voted upon, and the only rule is that the theme cannot be food or month related. That means no Italian, no grilled, no fall, no 4^th of July. Previous themes have been as random as “suit and tie,” “culture clash,” “if I ran the zoo…” and our most recent installment, “what is wrong with you people?”

In this group, most of the cooking is done on-site, the frantic, home-trained chefs yelling “behind!” as though they were on an episode of Chopped. The wine flows as freely as the socializing, cooking, eating, and drinking, dishes laid out on the buffet table as they are ready. I made many friends through this group, and felt at home in the semi-chaotic, food obsessed atmosphere.

For this month, in both the spirit of the theme and the upcoming holiday, I decided to make a “bloody jack.” Carving out the innards of a pumpkin, I separated the seeds and toasted them (a snack for later). I filled the pumpkin with tomato juice, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, roasted garlic, onion powder, pickles, olives, carrot sticks, celery, a dash of lime, and most importantly, a strong pour of cucumber infused vodka. I made holes just below the liquid line so the spirited concoction would drizzle down a bit. The “face” of the pumpkin I decorated looking upward in horror, as attendees “lobotomize” the pumpkin to fill their glasses.

The other dish we brought was an irreverent take on falafel. The Israeli street food is usually made with chick peas, onion, garlic, and flour, formed into balls, and deep fried, presented on a bed of tahini. Our version had the same basic construction, but we added bacon bits to the dough and fried the balls partially in bacon grease. Instead of tahini, we served the fried garbanzo balls with a homemade tzatziki, but ours had a kick of wasabi to light up your nostrils.

Other cooks brought equally absurd offerings. One dish was a coconut chicken pad thai. The dish contained everything that would usually disqualify it from pleasant company or those with allergies: garlic, raw onion, spicy, cilantro, peanuts, and coconut. It was one of the first dished finished. For dessert, one chef brought all the fixings for ice cream sundaes. However, he dropped a small cube of dry ice into each bowl, making each serving a misting delight. He then poured a shot of 151 proof rum on top, then lit the whole dessert on fire. What is wrong with you people indeed.

The evening, as always, was filled with laughing, friends, and full bellies. As the end of the night drew near, we all gathered around for voting on next month’s theme. The raucous crowed spat out ideas ranging from raunchy to ridiculous, but we decided on “Vote’em off the island” for next month. Cant wait.

So how am I supposed to blow out the candles?

Birthdays come once a year, and as such, I think they should be special. It is a tradition in my family that for your birthday, you can have whatever you want for dinner. This included going out. By the time I was 12, I was already asking for hibachi shows and steak dinners. I carry on this tradition with my girlfriend, who had a birthday this past weekend. Part and parcel to the festivities, she got to dictate the meal and chose to employ our own kitchen for her meal.

The dinner started with a trip to Whole Foods. We headed for the meat department and selected two different animals, bison and lamb. The bison was a lean, long, top sirloin cut. The meat was a ruby red with just a hint of brown. The lamb was a bone-in shoulder cut. It had a little more connective tissue and intravenous fat than I usually prefer, but the “lolichops” that you usually get have so much bone compared to the meat, I was in the mood for something else.

Next stop, cheese department. I have been keeping up with my journal and only have furthered my relationship with the cheese monger there. After telling him of the special occasion and our meat selection, he walked us through a variety of options. In general a cheese plate should only have about three different cheeses, as the palate can be exhausted after they are paired with a variety of accouterments. After sampling an assortment of Spanish cheeses, manchegos ranging in age from three to nine months, a mild mahon (another sheep milk cheese) and a cordobes, with a slightly gamy flavor, we chose the six month manchego. We stayed in Europe but switched animals as we sought a softer cheese. The French Bucherondin is an aged goat cheese, the outer layer slightly gray, the rind tangy, and the inside a crumbly snow white. I suggest getting it cut fresh from the log, as goat cheese loses some of its character the longer it’s oxidized. Finally, we went to a third animal for a cow’s milk blue cheese. Soft, not crumbly, it was well molded but only lightly funky, we didn’t want to overpower our other selections.

The meal began as many good meals have, chopping vegetables. Mushrooms, onions, whole cloves of garlic, carrot, cauliflower, and peppers were all tossed in kosher salt, black pepper, thyme, rosemary and olive oil, then roasted at 450˚ until they just started browning on the outer edges.

While the vegetation was roasting, I tried my hand at risotto. Arborio rice, a short grain, Italian variety, is typically used in the dish. When cooked, the rice becomes firm, creamy, and chewy. After sautéing some wild mushrooms (another find from Whole Foods) and onion, I added the rice to the vegetables and hit it with a little dry white wine. As the rice soaked up the liquid, I continued to add chicken stock, one ladle at a time, never ceasing stirring. After the sixth ladle, I tasted the rice for consistency and once satisfied, added parmesan cheese and a finish of truffle oil.

The meats were seasoned simply with smoked salt, fresh ground pepper, garlic and onion powder. Seared on a 500˚ grill until they reached an internal temperature of 160˚, then rested under foil for five minutes. I believe that if you are going to spend the money on quality meat, let it speak for itself, don’t cover it with spices and sauces. The meal was paired with a 2010 California Zinfandel. Dark, juicy flavors of cherry and plum were deepened with notes of espresso and smoke. It played well with the char of the steak and the uname in the risotto.

Birthday cake was forgone for the above mentioned cheeses. Allowed to come to room temperature and plated with green apple, toasted nuts, honey, quince paste, fig/orange jam, and whole grain crackers. We tarried across flavors and textures, sampling things both combined and individually. For those wondering, we did not eat the entire board pictured (though we might have been able to).

Happy birthday my dear. I hope I was able to make it special.