It requires very little effort to find good pork ribs. Unlike prime, aged beef, which requires significant effort and, in many cases, a trust fund. The warehouse stores carry good-quality, untrimmed pork ribs for incredible prices. I am familiar with how efficiently freight moves in this country, but it still impresses me that they can get this stuff all over the country, in good condition, and charge less than $2/lb. I am sure that if you wandered around Pennsylvania or upstate New York or Iowa and found an artisanal hog butcher, he would be happy to sell you gorgeous rib racks — just not for $2. That is what is so impressive about commercial ribs; they are almost always really good. But there is a reason for that, and it is called fat. Ribs are cooked at low temperature for a long time, so most of that fat has a chance to melt away, and as it melts it bastes the meat, keeping it moist. The long cooking times also help tenderize the meat and break down the connective tissue and collagen, all of which contributes to flavor and texture. Read more »

Filed under: Cooking | 3 Comments »

This was my last bottle of Williams Selyem, and I am very pleased that it was not completely over the hill. I waited a few years too long to drink this wine, but it has retained a fair amount of fruit without being overwhelmed by that unpleasant, lean structure that I find in older California Pinot Noirs. This was, obviously, a fully mature wine with nicely integrated tanins. That sounds stupid and pompous, but what it really means is that the tanins blended nicely with the other flavors of the wine. It threw just a bit of sediment, and was a surprisingly dark and thick looking red. The finish was nice, although not particularly long. The fruit was disappearing, but there was enough to make this a very nice wine Read more »

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I was never a big fan of his wines, but Robert Mondavi’s relentless enthusiasm for Northern California wines was an important driver in the region’s rise to the ranks of wine-making greats, on par with Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barossa Valley, Barolo and a few other places on earth.

I remember going wine tasting at his beautiful facility in the Napa Valley and being whisked off to a private tasting by a friend of a friend who happened to work there. We tasted some very nice wines (and one great one), were treated like royalty, and even went skinny-dipping in a local lake.

He will be missed by the wine-making and drinking world, and by the many charities that he supported. But most of all his drive and boundless energy, all focused on making the Napa Valley the best wine-making region in the world, will be difficult to replace.

Filed under: Wine | 1 Comment »

I won’t bore you with a description of a very pleasant evening spent at Mario Batali’s pizza joint in the village. I will rave, but just a little bit, about his simple but delicious pizza dressed with nothing but thin slices of lardo (pig fat), a bit of olive oil and some chopped rosemary. Simple, elegant and very tasty. And don’t get high and mighty about too much animal fat. The slices were quite thin, and just perfect. Tons of flavor but not too rich. Had we ordered a pizza with any kind of meat there would have been considerably more fat on the food.

Okay, one more thing. The service was excellent — professional, relaxed and informed. If you can cage a table (it was packed at 7:00pm), ask to be seated in Lourdes’ area. She made an already fun evening even better.

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The Walrus and The Carpenter

Lewis Carroll

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright–
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.

Read more »

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The bad news is that The Yankees lost. The badder news is that the drinks, in the only publicly accessible bar in the stadium, are so outrageously expensive, for stunningly minuscule portions — in plastic cups — that it was laughable. But the worst news will have to wait for another game and another stadium. The food was actually edible. Not inexpensive, but not bad. Chicken fingers that were actually tender and juicy, a burger that had some real live charcoal grilled flavor, and a stadium hot dog that had a bit of crunch and a pretty good bun. The pizza looked like a cut above the industrial crap that is delivered across the world. I didn’t get to taste any because I was busy watching the Yankees play baseball like it was just another day at the office. It’s going to be a long summer.

Filed under: Food | 4 Comments »

I think that it is important to respect the lives of the animals we eat. They should be raised as humanely as possible, and slaughtered with a minimum of pain and fear. That is not to say that I reject the incredible advances in food production. I love the fact that we spend much less on food then at any other time in history. And that is a tremendous advantage. Not as much to us first-world folk, but to the poor across the world, who have access to food at prices that were just dreams even a few years ago. People on the margins are alive because of our incredibly efficient food production. Can we do better? Of course. Water conservation, runoff of fertilizer and waste, loss of topsoil, and many other problems have yet to be solved. But I will happily tolerate less-than-perfect living conditions of our food animals if it means that even one human being will not starve.

And I draw the line at respecting the dignity of plants. I just don’t care that a corn plant has been violated, its genetic essence destroyed in a cold-blooded attempt at growing more of the stuff at lower cost. Slaughter every broccoli plant on the planet (that actually happens every year!) and I will sleep peacefully.

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David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar is a great little noodle joint that is fun to enjoy on the spur of the moment. It is certainly not a destination unto itself, but then I don’t think that it is intended to be. But Momofuku Ko, Chang’s newest restaurant, is something else entirely. Ignoring for a moment (we’ll get back to it, don’t worry) the interesting, innovative, and ultimately successful Internet-only reservations system, it is perhaps the toughest reservation in New York. Oh, maybe Babbo and a few other restaurants are in the same league, but this one is booked in 4 seconds for the entire evening (one week ahead)! And the reviewers have been almost unanimous in their praise of Ko. Gaele Greene was unimpressed, and Bruni has yet to weigh in, but most love the place. And with an $85 prix fixe you can’t really argue that it isn’t close to the top in the quality/price ratio, at least according to the critics. 

But there is a pretension that irked Greene, and I had a taste of it when I made a reservation for Read more »

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Here is a new food blog that I just came across. The blogger says that he is a chef and restaurant owner and lives in Lambertville, NJ. We have spent several weekends in and around Lambertville, and the food scene there is fun and good, with a few excellent restaurants. So this guy might be a serious chef, although he doesn’t name his restaurant, so I guess it could be a Burger King. Anyway, it’s a fun blog to poke around, and worth a few minutes.

[Update]  He is the chef at Anton’s at the Swan in Lambertville (Thank you Tommy).

Filed under: blog | 2 Comments »

Don’t click on this link unless you want to be irritated. Written by Daniel Gross, the Moneybox columnist for Slate, this is a pompous, elitist, self-important whine about high food costs. But not just any food, or the foods that most people eat, this is a whine about organic eggs and $43 olive oil and $22 Parmigiana Reggiano. And just so he can irritate everyone, he makes a profoundly stupid comment about the politics of most food snobs. He partially redeems himself at the end, but it is still an obnoxious article. And yes, I know that it is, at least in part, tongue-in-cheek. But it isn’t nearly funny enough to get away with being so pretentious.

Filed under: General | 2 Comments »