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Food
The Magnificent Cheeses of Neal’s Yard Dairy @ Whole Foods
January 22nd – 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm $20 (Lecture & Tasting )
Founded in 1979, Neal’s Yard Dairy has steadily become London’s premiere artisanal cheese purveyor. Favoring a traditional approach to small, independent British cheesemakers, their premises are packed with cheeses whose names evoke the countryside, such as Shropshire Blue, Lincolnshire Poacher, and Sussex Golden Cross. Join Head Cheesemonger Paul Price and special Neal’s Yard Dairy guests as they walk you through the superlative selections they have made possible on our shores (and in our stores).
Alton Brown’s ‘City Ham’ Recipe
This is on the table tonight to see us into the New Year. I think it’s the second year we’ve tried the recipe, so I still don’t know what I’m doing!
Ingredients
- 1 city style (brined) ham, hock end
* - 1/4 cup brown mustard
- 2 cups dark brown sugar
- 1-ounce bourbon (poured into a spritz bottle)
- 2 cups crushed ginger snap cookies
Directions
Heat oven to 250 degrees F.
Remove ham from bag, rinse and drain thoroughly. Place ham, cut side down, in a roasting pan. Using a small paring knife or clean utility knife set to the smallest blade setting, score the ham from bottom to top, spiraling clockwise as you cut. (If you’re using a paring knife, be careful to only cut through the skin and first few layers of fat). Rotate the ham after each cut so that the scores are no more than 2-inches across. Once you’ve made it all the way around, move the knife to the other hand and repeat, spiraling counter clockwise. The aim is to create a diamond pattern all over the ham. (Don’t worry too much about precision here.)
Tent the ham with heavy duty foil, insert a thermometer, and cook for 3 to 4 hours or until the internal temperature at the deepest part of the meat registers 130 degrees F.
Remove and use tongs to pull away the diamonds of skin and any sheets of fat that come off with them.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Dab dry with paper towels, then brush on a liberal coat of mustard, using either a basting brush or a clean paint brush (clean as in never-touched paint). Sprinkle on brown sugar, packing loosely as you go until the ham is coated. Spritz this layer lightly with bourbon, then loosely pack on as much of the crushed cookies as you can.
Insert the thermometer (don’t use the old hole) and return to the oven (uncovered). Cook until interior temperature reaches 140 degrees F, approximately 1 hour.
Let the roast rest for 1/2 hour before carving.
*Cook’s note: A city ham is basically any brined ham that’s packed in a plastic bag, held in a refrigerated case and marked “ready to cook”, “partially cooked” or “ready to serve”. Better city hams are also labeled “ham in natural juices”.
It’s gonna be a better X-Mas…
…especially as I won’t be able to buy any while attending Sundance this year. I found this bottle of High West Rye in a store in San Francisco. It was promoted last year at Chefdance during Sundance Film Festival 2008, and I haven’t found it anywhere in NY that carries it yet! I keep contacting the owner and suggesting liquor stores.
Tom Colicchio’s Steak Restaurant
If anyone feels like buying me dinner, I think we should go to Tom Colicchio’s “Craft Steak House.” I know what I’ll be ordering!
wagyu
New York Strip (gold) 12 oz. 102.
Strube Ranch, Texas
Filet Mignon (grade 9) 10 oz. 90.
Sher Ranch, Australia
Skirt Steak (gold) 10 oz. 75.
Snake River Farm, Idaho
Tony Bennett, John Mayer, Jerry Seinfeld at Cipriani
Tony Bennett hosted a charity event at the Cipriani on Wall Street today where I was editing for Larry Busacca and posting the images to Wireimage. It was generally a good event, by which I mean I got an actual office to work in and the internet was working. John Mayer, Terrence Howard, Jerry Seinfeld and Tony Bennett performed during the dinner. I was pretty impressed by John Mayer as I had no idea he could actually play the guitar, and he seemed like a clued in person. However when he plays, he does have a bottom lip version of the ‘Eric Clapton leg’ though. Tony Bennett busted out a few numbers, and even turned all the microphones off at one point and just sang. It’s quite something to see someone manage to pull that off (even if the classless woman next to me didn’t stop yacking on her cell phone).
The only real disappointment of the night was the food. I guess I’d heard that Cipriani’s had a great reputation, but when it came down to it, the food was’t amazing. I had a plain tomato and mozzarella salad and then veal with roast potatoes. Now don’t get me wrong, free food is always the best kind of food, but to be critical, it didn’t blow me away.
“Om Nom Nom Nom Nom”
There is something that makes me giggle about this website that turns seemingly normal pictures into hungry monsters. I am not sure that it is as much the idea, and certainly not the quality of the images, but more this statement posted below every photo and what that sounds like when sitting at your desk in an office at 1am.
“If you’re not saying ‘Om Nom Nom Nom’ out loud at the same time as looking at these pictures then you’re doing it wrong.”
Gimme! Coffee
We love having friends who work at this amazing coffee shop which is based in Ithaca but has two stores in NYC now. They have good email promotions where they give you a big discount, the last one gave us 50% off, and we ordered 10lbs of coffee. This month (expires July 4) they are offering 25% off any internet order if you type in JUN0825 at the end of the order. The “Cup of Excellence” coffees are normally my favorites, but they are all good. The manager of the Brooklyn branch, Mike White, has a blog here. Generally all of the reviews of the place have been amazing, although they have got the occasional bad review based on service at the Brooklyn branch, which I have to admit is often deserved. Service aside, the coffee is excellent and we often order their amazing cappuccino’s or the old drink a “mad cupid” which is espresso, half and half and some ‘lovin’ syrup (an undisclosed flavor of Monin syrup).
Peter Luger and James Frey
I didn’t remember taking this photo on June 10 at Peter Luger’s. I took Amanda there on our first anniversary dinner. We had to book 2 months early to secure a table which gave me plenty of time in India to dream about the night. It is the brightest steakhouse I have ever been in and sometimes has the worst service. We had an amazing time, ordering the bacon appetizer and having steak, creamed spinach and homefries with our porterhouse steak. I’ve just read an older James Frey book, “My Friend Leonard” where they feast on a similar meal throughout the book. Not an amazing read, but a good follow up to his first novel/autobiography “A million little pieces.”
Peter Luger
We booked Peter Luger Steakhouse a few months ago, and I was dreaming about the steak for my entire trip. It was a great meal and a really nice (maybe not romantic) place to celebrate our first year of marriage.
Amanda eating a Porterhouse at Peter Luger
Stella enjoying the bone
Louise enjoying the bone
Food – Part V
Varanasi had little to offer in good local food. I did have the best Tuna sandwich I have had for a while and an amazing ‘English Breakfast’ both at the Open Hand Cafe. The temperature was so high that my appetite wasn’t in full force, and the few nice restaurants were shut due to the lack of foreigners. It presented a good opportunity to dive into some street food (or more aptly, the Indian Railway food). The only safe food to eat on the street is deep fried and tends to be made of potatoes and lots of chili and pepper. Below are what they call Pakora, a word used to describe any deep fried vegetable (or meat if it is Non-Veg Pakora – definitely not safe street food!)
I didn’t eat dinner on the train, partly due to the heat, but also because I was reading so much, and the vile ‘burpfart’ family around me put me off my food. When breakfast came, the cunning food-wallah handed me two packets and charged me for both, I didn’t know they would both be the same, so didn’t say anything. They came neatly wrapped and consisted of two slices of the most pathetic bread (as most of Indias sliced bread is) and two fried, peppery potato products. The heartburn came on a tad slower than the pakora.
To prove my environmental awareness and true concern for the pollution of the wonderful mother Ganga, I made sure that my water consumption was moderate over the 3 days.
News in Asia
Of course, everyone reads the news paper differently. My friend Hunty would always read the Times of India backwards, starting at sports. I tend to skip through most of the national politics to the international section. Now that I am in a hotel with air conditioning and a TV, I have been jumping between CNN and BBC. Three stories caught my attention today and are influenced by the jobs I have had and where I am from.
My Wireimage and Tibetan interest led me to Sharon Stone’s comments this week at Amfar in Cannes. It seems that she thinks that due to the Chinese human rights violation in Tibet, she thinks that the eathquake in Chengdu is due to bad karma. I especially liked how she called H.H. the Dalai Lama a “very good friend.” The full story can be read here. To simplify how people feel about the situation in Tibet she is quoted as saying “I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else.” If only a little kindness could solve all the worlds problems!
To show some interests a little closer to home and also with a more serious Getty slant, I have been following the Gujjar protests that now have seeped into New Delhi. I have missed any travel through the affected region, and hopefully will continue to do so. Interestingly, the Gujjars actually want to have their caste lowered so that they can have access to more government jobs. It seems that the Indian government offers certain amounts of these jobs to lower castes, and the Gujjars current status excludes them from those possibilities. The Times of India article adds some more details here.
Finally, as I have met a few Koreans this trip, and also know a few back in New York, I followed the US beef story in Korea. South Korea had banned US beef 5 years ago due to the export of some beef infected with ‘mad cow.’ The South Korean government has lifted the ban even though continued protests have been held. The BBC tells more here. What I enjoyed the most about this story, is that although the government has confirmed a lift of the ban sue to the safety of the meat, the Koreans continue protesting due to the safety of street food. The report on CCN said that in fact the peoples main concern was with the parts of the animal that Americans don’t eat that carry more of the disease. If Koreans would just stop eating the intestines, then a large part of the risk would disappear. As a solution to this, many road side vendors have turned to pig intestines instead. Having seen how many pigs in Asia sit at the base of toilets to eat human excrement, I can’t imagine that their intestines are much cleaner than a cows (especially as they never proven there to be any link between BSE and CJD).
Food Part IV
Asif (Royal Asian Arts, McLeod Ganj) invited me over to his new house for dinner. It turned into lunch, much internet and computer training, endless talks about the prophet Mohammad and an excellent chicken dinner. I don’t actually have any pictures of the meal itself, as I ate with my hands and didn’t want to slime my camera, but I did go to the chicken hut to get our Halal chickens. I would not recommend doing this directly before eating them, as I personally needed some time to forget about the ordeal before I chowed down on the tasty beasts. My favourite part of the meals were the raw onions with salt and chili paste that accompanied both lunch and dinner. The kids seemed to enjoy watching me gasp for air between the spices and eating so clumsily with my fingers.
Here I am with Asif and his family before dinner。His wife Iffat was alot friendlier than she looks in this photo
After the break, there are more gruesome images, but here is the butcher and his cheeky little grin. This was after the first chicken and before the second.
Here are the more gruesome images after the break