Fette Sau, 354 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn,NY

Close to the corner of Havermeyer St. & Metropolitan Ave. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you ought simply to turn at the squiggly, welcoming glow of the piggy pink neon sign in front of Fette Sau's long, alley-like exterior dining area. During busy hours, you can simply follow the people and smell of ridiculous smoked meat. This place smells good from the street. You may be able to see the back half of the line through the large front windows. It's there for good reason. Yes, there is a wait during regular dining hours. But there's probably a wait most every where else, even for something douche-y. And this is decidedly non-douche-y food.

The line may be long, but the actual wait here is longer. It can be REALLY long when it's super-busy, which is reputably often. The process of actually ordering takes each person as long as a few minutes, even if they knew what they were ordering before they placed the order, since like everyplace in Williamsburg it's louder than a roomful of wailing banshees when it's busy. This Saturday evening around 7 PM it took us around twenty-five minutes to get our food, and we came in when there was almost no line at all. Shortly after we arrived until we left the line was about twice as long, though it felt to me sitting there with savory meat juices collecting on my hard-working fingers like it started moving faster once we sat down. No doubt the result of hallucinatory animal flesh vapors.

Kitchenwise, they are operating on what is essentially a multiple chafing-dish, heat lamp operation serving up various hot, smoked meats weighed by the pound in true Texas fashion, along with sides* and beverages**. Sodas and the like you can buy with your meats. There is a separate bar (without much of a wait) for alcohol. The dining format is what I've come to think of either as Texas Vietnamese or Medieval Style dining, with long communal tables (heavy wood this time) and communal sauces and communal getting squished and jabbed and poked and communal being interrogated by people waiting in the line re: what you've eaten. All in a good-natured fashion, of course, and ably tolerated by the folks who actually have to work here. God bless them. I wouldn't have lasted a lunch shift.

The menu is a chalk board, which may not list all the items actually in the hot food case. The menu will change while you wait. We got the last of the pork jowl. That's right, it was us. Also on offer when we went were brisket (which I hear they usually have), pulled pork, goose (whole and looking mighty fine), lamb breast, pork ribs, spicy sausage, and pork jowl. We opted for brisket, which was butter-soft and excellent for this area (though it would be merely very very good if we were trolling through the smoke pits of central Texas, sorry loves). The jowl was outstanding, though we got the very fatty end, so it mainly consisted of achingly-tender meat, fat and satisfyingly–blackened crispy nobbly bits. The goose, which I'm kicking myself for not having ordered just a leg of, looked amazing.

Sauces were middling-to-good. A spicy ketchup might have just been ketchup. The dark, red sauce was decently hot and suitable to be used in small amounts. The mustard found favor with others in our party, but to me it was too nose-clearingly hot to do anything but overwhelm the lusty, complex flavors of meltingly-soft dry rub meats. Not so the pickles and kraut, which are from the great Guss' Pickles, and are typically well-balanced, the half-sours in particular going great with the pork.

Prices were respectably fair for this kind of well-reared lovingly prepared meat, especially in the second most expensive city in America. $18/lb for brisket, pork, lamb, etc. Sausages were $4/a link, not terrible, but I'm thinking $3, guys. Goose was $32, but looked so intense a quarter-pound would likely suffice with other meats. Three of us split a half-pound of brisket, a half-pound of jowl, 2 sausages, and large sides of pickles and kraut and we were easily defeated, though we valiantly tried, packing in way more in than we truly needed. I even left with a paper-towel wrapped pickle which did not prove as hilarious later as I'd promised/hoped.

Total for food: ~ $37 dollars, not bad for this area and extremely reasonable when the quality of the meal is taken into account.

In the end, is it trendy? Yes. Is it overpriced? For the food and location, no. For the prestige whisky list? Yes. Should you care? Not really. The people always have need for well smoked meats!

Is it worth it?

Hell yeah. Do yourself a favor and avoid spending twice or three times as much for quality meat when in Williamsburg and hunker down before smoky flavor as honest and unpretentious as any classic barbecue shack in the South, doled out by a bare bones crew as friendly one you'd expect at same.

*On sides : Skip fattening, gullet-stuffing potato salad (I'm sure it's good, but who cares?) and likewise filling and overpriced-to-boot burnt ends baked beans (they're good, but you ought not to charge $5 and a quarter for what is essentially a trendy chef's trick, just make your own at home). Skip also crisps, which are somehow bagged chips (ours got left in the entrance to Barcade). Just pile on that meat, grab a few rolls and don't forget pickles and kraut.

**On beverages : boasting what they claim in great swirly letters as "the Best American Whisky list in New York City" (caps theirs, note also spelling of whisky), You can expect to pay about a quarter to half the price of a bottle of a glass of these whiskeys, which is some wine-level markup nonsense. Opt instead for pints, which cost much closer to normal, human levels, and gallons, which, well you know the score. Whisky or whiskey doesn't really agree with barbecue (or barbeque) anyway, it's meant to be drunk before and after. Stick to water or beer. Or get one of those syrupy sodas people swear by (although I noticed a suspicious, almost blasphemous lack of Big Red on what is essentially a Texas barbecue menu gussied up with a handful of contemporary and extra-regional variations).

Oh, and pictures will be posted next time we go. Camera died.

Damn You Anthony Bourdain You Stole Our Bar!

I too, have been bewitched by its frosty glare…

First of all, I really like Bourdain. I can't stress that enough. Kitchen Confidential came along at exactly the right moment in pop culture, and since then, this guy has had a career just going around and eating stuff, constantly amazed he still has a show. And we should be likewise amazed, likewise thankful. Honestly, there should be a hundred shows like No Reservations by now. There aren't.

Well, now there are two. I wanted to write a lot about how The Layover both is and isn't No Reservations 2 after watching the first two episodes of the first, and maybe I will, but the third episode just aired.

It was set in Rome.

And Anthony Bourdain, you have stolen our favorite pizzeria from us. But that is forgivable. Even if you ate some dessert nonsense instead of good old tongue-and-green-tomato. Of course, they probably didn't have that when you went. Because they never have anything more than a few times and they always have at least twenty-seven things you want to eat. But you got to hug that guy. And for that we will never forgive you.


Some dessert nonsense.

But there is one thing we will DEFINITELY never forgive you for :

You stole our goddamn bar.

Freni E Frizoni, just across the Ponte Sisto in Trastevere, is only a short walk from the Campo de Fiori, and it has been awesome for ages. Yes, their negroni is excellent, as Mr. Bourdain affirmed. What's also divine is any cocktail from their specials list, especially one made with their home-made cucumber, basil, or ginger infusions. It's a modest, unassuming kind of place that doesn't really hit you over the head with how awesome it is. Ditto the free buffet of mostly-vegan and mostly excellent cold salads and goodies during the aperitivo hours. Ditto the friendly bartenders and patrons (one of our regular hooch-slingers is featured quite heavily in the episode. We forget his name but he's aces).

But damn you! In this or any city, this is one of the first bars we've really enjoyed, really come to think of as our own. We lived in Houston for over four years before finally finding one. So, forgive me if I'm a little miffed.



Yep, that's the place. Good f**king luck now, though.

Thank God he didn't steal our gelato joint…

Pizzarium, well, it was probably about to be impossible as it was. Oh, and for the record, it's not really in Prati. It's technically on what constitutes the border of the Trionfale neighborhood…home of several other excellent spots. Just by circumnavigating the large piazza Pizzarium is on the southern edge of, you will find one of Rome's best delis, one of her finest bakeries, and an excellent cafe with the best and strongest corretto for miles around.

(Oh, and we have another bar, it's in the Tridente and the key is "look down." That's all we'll say for now.)

X-posted with So Hot, So Upset.

The Garden In September

Mostly I remember rain. Rain and bugs.

Variantes!

Variantes!

More of a technique of preparation than a recipe, variantes are a pretty typical way to elevate a great regional (or, in most of our cases, imported) product with the personal taste and style of the server. And the better the original product, the better the result. But even mediocre olives can get a kick in the flavor department or even become something much much greater than you could have imagined.

Variantes :

1) Get some olives, by any means necessary. They should be great olives, because things like olives should always be the best. But if they aren't, this approach will not only work but improve them.

2) Lightly rinse off the marinade or brine (if any) that the olives were previously in. In the case of oil-packed olives (such as the Morrocan black olives I'm so fond of) that were packed seperately, you should omit this step.

3) Toss the olives in olive oil to coat.

4) Lightly and separately boil raw vegetables such as carrots, spring onions, garlic cloves, celery slices, fresh beans, asparagus, quartered artichoke bottoms, etc. Drain, cool, and add to the olives. Add more olive oil if necessary. (If you're like me, you'll have added too much other stuff

5) Add spices, herbs and other seasonings to taste. (The most typical include thyme, mint, paprika sweet or hot, chile flakes or powder, garlic, black pepper, etc.)

6) Allow to sit for a few hours or a half a day. Serve at room temperature, garnished with fresh chopped parsley, citrus zest, tiny minced bits of garlic or red pepper, or whatever your fancy.

7) These keep well, but perhaps not so well as you might think. Before serving, always remove from the fridge and let sit for at least an hour or so. Stir them up good again after they've sat and redistribute the oil. I recommend adding any raw garnish suggested in (6) to each batch of the olives once you've sat them and stirred them.

Tapas/Bar Food Barcelona-Style, 9.3.11

Just a lovely end-of-summer day by the pool. And in the pool! Thanks to everyone involved for a great day, especially my able assistant Robin, without whom etc. etc…

Our Menu :

Variantes (marinated olives)
Serrano y Manchego (serrano ham & raw milk manchego cheese)
Pa Amb Tamaquet (catalan tomato bread)
Trempó (majorcan summer salad)
Pincho Moruno (moorish pork kebab)
Gambas A La Planxa (garlic shrimp)


Variantes! (separate entry here)


Jamon Y Manchego : Easy enough, just buy quality from a trusted vendor and slice quite thin.


Pa Amb Tamaquet : Catalunya's beloved tomato bread is as simple as it is pleasing. Grill slices of country bread or baguette. Rub with a cut garlic clove and a cut tomato half while still hot. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper while still hot. Serve, while still hot.


Trempó : Trempó is equally simple, and equally delicious at this time of year. Coming from the Catalan-dominated Balearic island of Majorca, it is nothing more than a combination of equal parts thin sliced onion, bell pepper and apple or pear to two parts tomato. Add a little olive oil and salt and let marry for an hour or two. We veered a bit from the authentic here and went for fully-ripe tomatoes. In the original, taken from Colman Andrews' classic Catalan Cuisine, semi-ripe tomatoes are used, as they are used in many Mediterranean composed salads. And while I heartily endorse this style in general, we're in the middle of Jersey tomato season, so ripe it is gonna haveta be.


Pincho Moruno : Adapted from a recipe in Penelope Casas' The Foods & Wines of Spain, this captures a street kebab I ate while near-penniless in Barcelona. (I know, poor me.) It's best with pork loin cut off the bone into inch pieces, marinated overnight in about 4-6 tbsp olive oil per pound of pork. The spice mix, also per pound, is 1/2 tsp of paprika, 1/2 tsp of thyme, 3/4 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp red pepper flakes, a handful of chopped parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. She has you add a bay leaf, crumbled, which I omitted as I was out of them. (And still am, bulk spices are not easy to come by in Western NJ.)


Perhaps the mother of all tapas (barring maybe the olive) : Gambas Al Ajillo, the griddled garlic shrimp of the Spanish coastal regions. It pops up even inland, and has a million names, but in its simplest form it is pure class. Grill oil-drizzled, salt & peppered raw shrimp on a hot metal plate, over a coal fire. Turn once. When very nearly done, add chopped garlic and parsley. Turn again, then turn onto a plate. Eat.

Accompanied with grilled eggplant, spring onions & zucchini and a Romesco sauce.




Drunk with Estrella Damm beer & this excellent and readily available Mionetto Prosecco:


& somehow followed by dueling desserts! (The fruit tart was my favorite, and no, I can't believe I tried both either.)


Also, we promise no endangered yellow dinosaur was served at this meal. No, no, we're quite sure of it, really.

Calliope's Po-Boy, 2130 Jefferson St., Houston, TX

Right down the street from our beloved Huynh is another one of our Houston favorites, Calliope's Po-Boy.

OK, so I've been to New Orleans, didn't exactly have the best time there, but I chalk that up to circumstances beyond anyone's control, including being forced to make the obligatory pilgrimage to that giant unsavory frat party known as Bourbon St. The food I ate and the local folks I met, though, were all pretty spot-on. Still, I don't believe I had a po-boy as good as the many I've devoured right here.

Look, any fool can fry seafood, and most fools will figure out after the first few times to err on the side of under, rather than over-cooked. (Granted there are many fools, especially in this country, who still continue to be given a fry basket after many failed opportunities to learn the latter.) But, truthfully, the secret to a drop-dead po-boy is the bread. It has to possess that consummate combination of crusty (but not too crusty) exterior and chewy (but not too chewy) interior that balances so well with well-sauced, nicely textured meats and crispy, spicy aquatica.


The people at Calliope's, let me confide in you, are no fools. They know how to turn achingly-fresh seafood into masterpieces of the deep-fryer. They know that different spice and batter mixes for different fish and seafood are both needful and enjoyable. They know how to make smackingly-good gravy. But most of all, they know how to make the quintessential po-boy loaf and then elevate it with whatever gets stuffed in the middle.

Our favorite is almost definitely crawfish. When in season, crawfish is as delicious as any seafood out there. Also recommended if you're going gastro-splurge is the "Surf N' Turf," combining crispy shrimp with roast beef and smothered in gravy. Just eat it quick! And share! And don't forget to bring a towel! Oyster, catfish, soft-shells, shrimp are all excellent to outstanding, each given a subtly different spice and batter mix to play off different natural flavors.


OK, see, now I'm looking back and thinking I somehow underrated what Calliope's does with a deep fryer, and that ain't so. The mixed fry platter (known here as "Fisherman's Paradise," sample victim photoed above) is a great way to enjoy lots of catfish (perfectly done with a light batter and buttery soft inside) and oysters (crumby, spicy but spicy-savory not spicy-hot) and shrimp (slightly more spicy, perfectly cooked) and (my favorite) soft-shell crab, like crunch aquatic butter.

And the fries! Did we neglect to mention those? You've heard of twice-frying, sure, it's all the rage but I am pretty convinced this guy is figuring out some way to fry these damn things three times. They have a batter coating that turns them into some mad elongated tater tot that's been somehow fried inside and out simultaneously. Or something. Anyway, they're damn good and especially decadent, when smothered in cheese and gravy! Hey, if you're going to do it (and you should, just not very often!), at least do it right.

What'd we miss? Gumbo is excellent, with a deep, smoky roux but a little light on the shrimp, oysters & sausage when we got it. Onion rings and jalapeno hush puppies both kick ass, even regular old hush puppies are well-done and don't feel just like stomach filler. Presumably, things like ham and chicken po-boys are good as well, but why bother, nothing here is break-the-bank expensive, apart from things it would probably take a soccer team to eat. As for me, I'm desperately craving that crawfish… that bread… might actually be worth driving 30 hours or whatever to eat it…

It's almost frustrating, you know. The place gives you so many encouraging options to eliminate bread, thus making room for more things that have been deep-fried. But you just keep thinking… that bread… that bread…


…those po-boys…those po-boys…

The Garden, August 2011, Second Half

The second half of August in the garden was not so happy a time as the first–pests and diseases began to take their toll, and a promising tomato harvest was interrupted by the ultimately fairly minor impact (garden-wise of Hurricane Irene.


But there are more tomatoes to come… until mid-October, if climate maps can be believed.


"Mister Stripey" is an inquisitive sort. Here two different plants start creeping onto the cage of a Roma one row away. Speaking of Romas…


…this one was in the shadiest, weediest corner of the garden and shot off the heaviest fruit-producing branches the quickest, and staved off the stem rot the longest. What do you make of that?




One thing that can be counted on, though, is those sturdy peppers, just starting to enter their second wave. Here come the Hungarians, Pasillas and Hot Cherries.


Sage!


Tiny mites love eggplant!


These dicks (cross-striped cabbageworms) are all kinds of up on my Brussels sprouts and broccoli…


…diiiickkks…


…but they didn't reckon with Serpentor! (Sadly, Serpentor, after nearly two decades of loyal service, perished shortly after this photo was taken.)


All the sadness in the garden isn't necessarily due to invasive insects, though. Some losses are just seasonal. The final bush of basil to be sacrificed before the nights get too cool…


…and damn near the end of the squashes & cukes.



Several of these have popped up through the fencing and around the perimeter of the garden. I'm still not sure what they are. Butterflies seem to like them, however.


Overview from shortly before nightfall, late August…



…and just before Irene came to town, necessitating the measures of…


…an herbchest…


…and a forced harvest of precious tomatoes…


…not to mention a #$@^#$ post-storm harvest of loose or fallen fruits. The hammer? Don't ask.


Here's hoping our fall plantings will fare better!