the gathering.

At 7am on a terribly rainy Saturday, I made my way up Broadway through the ultra quiet streets of Soho to The Union Square Greenmarket to meet my friend and fellow gastrophile, Nancy Jo. After much indecision about what to do for Easter this year, I decided to stay in the city and cook with friends.

Nancy and I decided to set some parameters for the meal. We would be inspired by our shared Southern Italian roots and the bounty of Spring. At the market we bought pink oyster mushrooms, ramps, Arucauna and pheasant eggs, dinosaur kale, french radishes,  spicy spring greens, Jerusalem artichokes, carrots, rhubarb, cippolini onions, escarole, baby artichokes, artisan bread, mint and other herbs. Then, over a soft boiled egg at  Le Pan Quotidian, escaping the rain...we plotted our menu.

crostini with ramp

crostini with poached rhubarb, thyme and fresh ricotta

crostini with sauteed pink oyster mushrooms

hard boiled arucauna  and pheasant eggs with sale di cervia and crushed black pepper

 french radishes with sea salt and butter

assorted meat and cheeses, fennel salami and Prosciutto di Parma

homemade ricotta with miele di castagno

frittata de menta

raw kale salad

escarole pie

onion pie with anchovies and black olives

bucatini with ramp pesto

fried baby artichokes with lemon and sea salt inspired by the artichokes at Maiolino

maple cheesecake

and a beautiful cake from Fortunato Brothers 

guests brought Lambrusco and various other wines and drinks!

recipes to come.

gastrophile/ noun.

One who loves good eating and plenty of it.

 photo of IO at window, bottom group middle right, Paola Ammbrosi de Magistris

Copyright © 2011 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved

a moustached chicken.

 

 This morning we made an Easter breakfast of hard boiled eggs, organic brown, Araucana, and pheasant.

It was a beautiful palette; no dye involved.

Note... the Araucana chicken, often confused with the Easter egg chicken, has a of couple distinguishing features...

They lay blue eggs, and they have feather tufts spouting out near their tiny ears giving them a decidedly Brooklyn  moustached  look!

Give this chicken a ten speed and you might see him riding down Bedford...

Happy Easter.

  

Marlow (again)

Last night I had the most delicious hand cut pasta with a smokey pancetta and tomato sauce (with a little kick) at Marlow and Sons in Williamsburg. Marlow is my go-to staple, so it will appear here quite often! We shared the pasta, a baby kale salad with a fried farm fresh egg dressed with lemon and olive oil, sour dough croutons and a shaving of parmesan. We also shared a crostini with ramp cream cheese and poached rhubarb and salad of mustard greens with shaved fennel and red onion... (Unfortunately there is no photo because we just ate it up so quickly!) It was the perfect comfort food for a chilly spring evening. 

Copyright © 2011 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved

fette sau

 

Fette Sau? Translation: "fat pig" in German. Brilliant. Vegetarians this is not for you.

By now most New Yorkers agree that the Brooklyn food scene has been in full swing for some time and is showing no signs of slowing. Though I want to show Manhattan some love, I keep coming back to Brooklyn for the food.

The other evening I met a friend at Fette Sau, the 3 year old smokey barbeque joint in an old automotive shop on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg. It was a spur of the moment decision on a gorgeous spring day. I had always wanted to come but was wary (and for good reason) of the LONG lines and minimal seating. However, this day I was in the neighborhood and the planets aligned and barbecue was in my future. We walked right in at 6:30 and missed the line completely. (By the time I left the line was out to the street, but everyone had a beer in hand and seemed content and committed to the wait.)

We drooled over the case of meats before ordering 1/4 of a pound of four meats; brisket, pork shoulder, pork belly and pulled pork, some sides of baked beans, potato salad and a couple of Guss's half sour pickles. They loaded us up with four soft yellowy rolls that reminded me of school lunch (in a good way). The Craft Beer list is extensive and they try to stick to as much local as possible. They boast the best American whiskey list in New York City, with flights of scotch or whiskey available for the brave at heart, definitely not for me! We stuck to two pints of Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold and Coney Island  Mermaid Pilsner served in mason jars. The beer is available in 1/2 pint, pint,  quart, 1/2 gallon jugs or gallon jugs. The whole place has a bit of a secret moonshine making quality to it. On this particular evening Fette Sau was full of guys sharing a meat/whiskey camaraderie. This is where the bromance and the man dates happen! The crowd was a good mix of hipster to old Brooklyn to young a dad with his newborn baby strapped on Bjorn-style getting his meat fix (or his baby's momma meat fix). I came back on a friday night and the ratio was much more even, there were many more couples, obviously comfortable with eating piles of meat together!

The meat was perfectly cooked, smokey, a little spicy and not at all dry. Our favorite was the peppercorn-crusted brisket. We made sandwiches of the pulled pork and loaded them up with sweet sauce, vinegar sauce and hot sauce. I was partial to the ketchup based sweet sauce, a little spicy and a little sweet. Barbecue is very regional and different from place to place. My friend, a native South Carolininan, was telling me that all the Fette Sau barbeque is dry rubbed and smoked as opposed to South Carolina barbeque which is mustard based, Eastern North Carolina which is vinegar based and Western North Carolina is tomato based. The smoking and the rubbing at Fette Sau takes place out back. They smoke with a blend of Red and White Oak, Maple Beech and Cheery, all locally sourced. The meat is all organic and or small family farmed heritage breed animals. The sides were  deliciously perfect as well, the beans a little smokey and a little sugary and the potato salad was of the German sort with mustard seed and vinegar.

They guys next to us were fighting over the last pickle on their tray as Elvis crooned "It's Now or Never" in the background. "Dude that was mine...get your own damn pickle!" Wow. Pickles and barbeque that bring men to blows... This place is the real deal.

We finished up with a slice of Steves key lime pie, because I am nostalgic and have lived in New York long enough to remember when this guy and the artists were the only thing happening in Red-hook. We used to drive out to his bakery on the pier to buy his pie. If you haven't tried his pie, and you love key lime, you must!

We each left a full half pound or so heavier (and then some!) than when we had arrived, and we we were ok with it. In fact we talked about the next time when we could come back for some ribs!

 

 

 

 

 Copyright © 2011 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved 

354 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211 
nr. Havemeyer St.
718-963-3404 

sugar house

 

New Yorkers are somewhat crazy by nature, but transplanted New Englanders are even crazier... which is why my loft smells like a sugar house long about now. We feel the need to keep all things New England with us, close at heart, and in doing so we tend to cart things all over the place in an attempt to bring the country to the city. When I was younger it was apples, blueberries and flowers by the bucketful from my parent's garden in Massachusetts. We carefully drove said flowers from Massachusetts to New York City, car fully loaded. Then it was vegetables from a farm stand on Long Island. It has at times been old glass and linens (more than is humanly possible!) from the country flea markets in the south of France. Now, it is furniture, vegetables, wild ramp, jam, great huge dogwood branches from upstate New York, and finally, in an effort to not miss the syruping season, it is sap... We tapped our trees in upstate New York before we went to Mexico. When we came back a week later, we drove up to check on the progress. The conditions have been fairly stellar this year. Before we left we ran lines from three Sugar Maples with two taps per tree into large galvanized water troughs. We sealed the top of the trough so no snow or rain could get in. After a week away we had about 30 gallons of sap. We began our well practiced ritual of carting and squirreling back to the city. We filled five 5 gallon recycled plastic water containers with the sap we had collected and brought it back to boil down in our loft. We were committed to doing it this way or we would have missed the season entirely, as we didn't have the time to spare to be upstate outside over a fire 24/7. So far it's been working marvelously, with the exception of the steamy windows. We started boiling down two mornings ago. We have been at it continuously. We started with 25 gallons and are down to about 12. It takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, so if all goes according to plan by tomorrow this time we should have a 1/2 gallon of beautiful grade a maple syrup. You may wonder if all of this work really seems worth it when there are so many great syrup makers out there. For me, making syrup is a nostalgic thing. It is something we did every year when I was kid, sometimes the whole neighborhood got in on he action. Growing up in Massachusetts, we  didn't use plastic  lines like most people seem to do these days. Instead, we drove the same taps we had used year after year into our trees and hung much loved and much used galvanized  buckets and their little hoods from tree to tree. We emptied the buckets before and after school. We prayed secretly for a snow day so we could be there for the final boil down when we would pour the hot syrup over the pristine snow to make long strands of gooey maple candy. We always had enough sypup to last the year, or nearly the year, if the hidden stockpile stayed well out of reach of little hands. I don't hope to make that much at all, but I do hope to create a somewhat nostalgic moment in my own kids lives. I hope wherever they end up, city or country, they become squirrelers too.

SYRUP UPDATE

Day three of the boiling down...

We boiled down at a roiling boil for 12 hours the first day and twelve hours the second day. We turned it off at night. We are now down to the final concentrated pot of sap. The clear liquid has turned a beautiful amber. I am imagining that by this afternoon it will be done. I have to keep a close eye on it now so it doesn't burn or get too thick.

Voila... it is done. I had to strain it through four layers of cheesecloth to get rid of any bits of twigs or sediment.

The syrup tastes AMAZING! A friend told me about a book she read to her daughter called Maple Syrup Season. The book is for children, but goes into great detail about the taste of syrup.The first run often tastes slightly floral and is more delicate than the second or third run which gets progressively darker by nature (hence the syrup grading system) and more intensely maple in flavor.

Week two.

We are now on round three of boiling down. Hopefully by the end we will have two solid gallons of maple syrup!

 

 Copyright © 2011 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved