"Japanese Home Cooking" For a Year of Cooking at Home

Anthony Kinik December 11, 2020

Our good friend Joanna Fox has a timely rundown of great cookbooks from this past year in today’s Montreal Gazette, as contributed by a number of local Montreal chefs, food writers, and other tastemakers. Of course, this was a year when home cooking took on increased importance for so many people. Luckily, there were quite a number of new cookbooks that were released in 2020 to help inspire us, in addition to all the newspaper and magazines, the YouTube tutorials, the TikTok videos, the Instagram posts, and all the rest of our contemporary multi-platform culinary universe.

Joanna’s contributors include such luminaries as Meredith Erickson (Alpine Cooking: Recipes and Stories from Europe's Grand Mountaintops, Friuli Food and Wine: Frasca Cooking from Northern Italy's Mountains, the Joe Beef cookbooks, and others), Janice Tiefenbach (Elena), and Jonathan Cheung (Appetite for Books), as well as our very own Michelle (!).

If you’ve had any contact with Michelle over the last 8-9 months, her choice should come as no surprise. She first picked this book up from our local library late in the winter of 2020, and when the pandemic hit and the library was closed for weeks on end, the book was stuck with us for an indefinite length of time. We all got to know each other pretty well! And when the library reopened again, and they asked for all their books back, Michelle promptly made a point of returning this book to the library (what did you think?) and picking up her very own copy. Since then, she’s continued to cook from it with passion and abandon, and she’s talked about it at length with anyone who’ll listen, including Joanna, apparently. That book, of course, is Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors.

Here’s what Michelle had to say about the book in her own words:

This is hands-down the book I have used the most in the past year. It hits the right tone of home cooking without shying away from more technical projects for those looking for a challenge. Every single thing I have made from this book has turned out perfectly. When I suddenly had reams of time, but no ability to focus, I threw myself into hand-making soba noodles. Her method and recipe are spot-on — all you need is practice to get the thickness and cutting right. (Check out her soba noodle-making webinars.) Bonus: the book features a recipe for rustic buckwheat dumplings (sobagaki), which are much easier to make than soba noodles and give you the same great taste when you use fresh sobakoh flour.

And here are some shots of Michelle making Sakai’s soba noodles for the first time, back in late March:

If you’re curious about the method, here it is in Michelle’s own words:

I had ordered specially milled buckwheat flour to make soba noodles before the madness began. My cutting leaves a lot to be desired but believe me when I say that this flour has a texture and flavour absolutely unparalleled by anything I have ever had. In case your self-isolation needs soba noodles, here is the recipe:

200g soba flour
50g all-purpose flour
120g water, more or less
Sift the flours together in a large bowl, add water and mix until dough starts to come together. Add a bit of water if necessary and knead until smooth. Lightly flour your work surface with tapioca starch and roll dough out to 1/8” thick. Sprinkle with more starch, fold, and cut into thin noodles. Not as easy as it sounds!

Boil in salted water about 1-2 minutes and rinse noodles with cold water. Serve.

[The soba flour in question came from Soba Canada, Inc. If you live in the United States, another phenomenal option is the “ni-hachi sobakoh” from Anson Mills.]

So, has Sonoko Sakai largely been responsible for eight or ninth months of particularly inspired Japanese home cooking? You tell me.

Long live the cookbook! Long live home cooking, Japanese and otherwise! Thank you for a great year, Sonoko!

And it should go without saying, but, if at all possible, please support your local bookstores in this period of economic crisis, stores like Appetite for Books, Drawn & Quarterly, and others.

Bread & Tomatoes

Anthony Kinik November 30, 2020

Semolina-Sesame Loaf

20% semolina (preferably semola rimacinata, an extra-fine “re-milled” or twice-milled Italian variety)

80% bread flour

15% levain

85% water

2.5% sea salt

3.0% toasted sesame seeds

This semolina-sesame loaf has been my latest obsession over the last couple of weeks. It was inspired by the semolina loaves that were a specialty of some of the truly old-school Italian-American bakeries of New Jersey back in the day. For a while, I worked in a wine store in Northern Virginia that used to import dozens of loaves of bread from Jersey every Thursday. I got pretty hooked on the flavour at the time. Those loaves tended to have sesame seeds generously sprinkled on top. In this case, I put an especially generous amount of toasted sesame seeds inside the loaf.

Yesterday, I celebrated the arrival of my latest batch of semolina-sesame bread by making a somewhat old-school spaghetti dinner with lots of garlic and a couple of anchovies in the sauce. I wanted to have something that was saucy and savoury, something that would need some sopping up, something that was just begging for a freshly baked loaf of crusty bread.

This time of year, fresh tomatoes that have any flavour to them are a little hard to find, for reasons that should be obvious. Therefore, from the tail end of fall until the early days of summer, I tend to seek out the tastiest canned tomatoes I can find for many of my home cooking projects, including the making of tomato-based pasta sauces. Without being ridiculous, use the best tomatoes you can afford. Spending a few bucks on a can of tomatoes might seem extravagant to some, but, unless you grow your own, the best fresh tomatoes can also be pricey (rightfully so, in most cases), and a good can of tomatoes packs a lot of potential into its tight, tinned confines.

If you happen to be in the States, keep your eyes open for these sweet, delicious Stanislaus 74-40 tomato filets from California. (They’re worth buying for their anti-Brand X propaganda alone!).

If you’re in Montreal, it’s nice to see that Bianco DiNapoli’s phenomenal canned tomatoes—also from California, but this time organic, too!—are readily available.

I like breaking open an extra-large can like the one you see above and then parceling its contents in a variety of ways for a variety of different projects, at least one of which will usually be a pasta sauce of some kind. The one I made yesterday was quick, easy, and super-satisfying:

Simple Umami-Rich Pasta Sauce

1 28-ounce can canned tomatoes (or equivalent), crushed by hand in a bowl

a generous glug of extra-virgin olive oil

1-2 oil-packed anchovies (preferably packed in olive oil)

1-2 medium to large cloves garlic, minced

1 generous pinch crushed chile flakes

salt to taste

Heat your olive oil over medium-low heat. When your olive oil is warm, add the anchovies and stir with spoon until they have broken down and melded with the olive oil. Add the chile flakes and cook 15-30 seconds, until aromatic. Add the garlic and cook for another 15-30 seconds, until the garlic becomes aromatic and it takes on a hint of golden colour. Add the tomatoes with all their juices and simmer for 20-30 minutes over low heat. Season to taste with salt before serving.

Serve over spaghetti, with freshly grated Parmesan, some garlicky homemade breadcrumbs (if you got ‘em!), and some freshly torn basil leaves.

When you serve this sauce with pasta, don’t be stingy. There should be a little sauce left in the bottom of the bowl that’s calling out for a crusty bread.

Of course, crust isn’t everything. There’s also something to be said for structure, and for a tender, flavourful crumb, like these two specimens:

Using semola rimacinata instead of standard semolina is one of the big reasons the crumb on this loaf is particularly tender and fine. Plus, semola rimacinata is a great product to have around the house—it’s fantastic for making homemade pasta.

Anyway, although they’re hard to see, there’s plenty of flavour-packed toasted sesame seeds in this loaf, which only add to the taste sensation. I used to toast my sesame seeds myself, but it was a bit of a hassle, especially because sesame seeds are delicate and easily scorched if you don’t watch them carefully. These days I just buy large bags of Japanese toasted sesame seeds—we use them all the time when we cook Japanese dishes, and they’re perfect for bread baking.

This bread is delicious on its own, phenomenal with butter, and simply crazy with red sauce.

Today's Menu: November 17, 2020

Anthony Kinik November 17, 2020

Sesame & Corn Country Loaf

15% cornmeal

10% whole wheat flour

75% bread flour

15% levain

85% water

2.5% sea salt

2.5% toasted sesame seeds

Today's Menu: October 3, 2020

Anthony Kinik October 3, 2020

Peddler’s Udon Noodles (a.k.a., Japanese-style Dan Dan Noodles) with homemade udon noodles

The Crisp Pilz, Sixpoint Brewery

What We Need Now 2: Plum Cake

Anthony Kinik September 21, 2020

This is an elegant, truly delicious, and unbelievably simple recipe for a “pantry cake” (a fruit-based, crispy/tender slab cake that doesn’t require any obscure ingredients) that Michelle devised for our friends at Elena and the Remember Skin Contact? cookbook they created this spring as a fundraiser for the Montreal Restaurant Workers Relief Fund after the shutdown went into effect. (Great people! Great cause!)

Imagine a luscious, plum-laden European coffee cake, and you kind of get the gist of this cake and the vision behind it.

fig. a: no imagination necessary—here it is!

Imagine a cake that’s incredibly easy to make and knocks it out of the park every time.

Michelle had berries in mind when she first invented the recipe, because it was April, berries were due to begin arriving on the scene by June and early July, and the thought of making this cake with blueberries or blackberries seemed like a natural. But she wanted a recipe that would accommodate other fruit options as well, and one of the variations that she was most interested in trying was with plums. Why plums? Well, we love plums, we love plum desserts and plum dishes, and we often find ourselves dreaming of plums—sugar plums, and otherwise. I mean, we did name our preserves line Švestka, after all.

What we didn’t know at the time was that while 2020 has been an absolutely lousy year for virtually everything, it turned into a pretty good plum year. We have an old plum tree that had never really produced in the time we’d known it, but that exploded with fruit this summer.

And plums at the farm stands, farmers’ markets, and co-ops have been tasty and plentiful. In fact, this latest batch of the plum cake was inspired by these lovely, Italian-style Valor plums that we came across on the weekend. So tiny! So sweet! Plus, they look a lot like the Švestka plum!

So, if Italian plums are in season or available where you live, they’d be perfect for this recipe.

But the genius of this recipe is that it will definitely work like a charm with berries of all kinds, and it could just as easily become a cherry or pear cake (and around here, it has). And if you don’t have any kirsch on hand, you could also use other liquors, like rum or bourbon, depending on the fruit. In other words, it’s an incredibly versatile recipe. Stick to the original “luscious, ____-laden European coffee cake” vision behind the recipe, and you should be in good stead.

We highly, highly recommend the original plum version, though. We’re a little partial, of course, but we both think it’s kind of perfect, and I’m quite sure it’s my favourite variation.

Michelle’s Simply Beautiful Plum Cake

batter:

1/2 cup A.P. flour

1/2 cup semolina flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 generous pinch salt

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp sour cream

1 tbsp (or more!) kirsch

1/2 cup butter, melted

toppings:

a pint of fresh plums, pitted and halved (both tart and sweet varieties can be used—just adjust accordingly [see below])

a handful of sliced almonds

1 tablespoon sugar (a little more if your plums are extra tart)

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Butter 8” x 8” square cake pan. Lay a piece of parchment paper inside that’s large enough to cover the bottom and the sides of the pan. Butter the parchment paper, too.

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.

Whisk eggs with sugar until mixture lightens in colour and becomes creamy. Whisk in sour cream until fully blended. Whisk in kirsch until fully incorporated. Whisk in melted butter until mixture is homogeneous. This whole process should take no more than about 3 minutes.

Add dry ingredients, and whisk once more until just smooth.

Pour batter into parchment-lined cake pan.

Place plums, cut-side down, over the surface of the batter. Sprinkle sliced almonds over top. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar over top almonds and plums.

Place in the oven on the middle rack.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Place on a cooling rack and allow to cool.

Cut into squares, serve, and enjoy. This cake is perfect on its own with a cup of coffee or tea, or an after-dinner drink. But it’s also excellent with vanilla ice cream, or freshly whipped cream.

It’s simple. It’s beautiful. It’s also delicious. What are you waiting for?

What We Need Now 1: Pan Pizza

Anthony Kinik September 17, 2020

I’m definitely not the first person to point this out, but what we need now are simple, satisfying recipes; recipes that don’t require a bunch of obscure ingredients, but instead feature items that can be easily found at your local supermarket, green grocer, or co-op; recipes that actually turn out well (exceptionally well) and that are rewarding to make.

And if these recipes should have a touch of nostalgia to them, all the better.

Enter pan pizza.

So much of the literature on pan pizza—and, believe me, there is a fairly extensive body of literature on the topic—is dripping with nostalgia. Almost literally so. There’s a real obsession with trying to recreate those buttery, decadent crusts of yore, topped with excessive amounts of gooey cheese, and lots of piping-hot, slightly sweet tomato sauce—the ones that you cherished as a child. The ones you may still cherish today.

While my family definitely ate a considerable amount of pizza, I didn’t grow up in a pan pizza household. I never had that powerful association with Pizza Hut and its ilk that so many others had. I wasn’t entirely averse to the pan pizza thing—its charms were pretty obvious to me—but, for better or for worse, other types of pizza exerted a stronger influence on me.

All of which is to say, that when I got interested in making pizza at home a number of years ago, I gravitated toward other styles: mainly Neapolitan (or rather, Neapolitan-esque), New York-style (or what might more accurately be described as New York-ish), some approximation of Bay Area pizzas we’d admired in the past, and sheet pizzas that mimicked those of Sullivan Street Bakery. Even though I often read about pan pizza with interest, it took me years to actually get around to trying one of these new-school, homemade pan pizza recipes out.

Big mistake.

When I began to experiment with pan pizza a couple of years ago I quickly realized that these were among the very easiest, most consistently excellent, and most satisfying home pizza recipes out there. They didn’t require ingredients that were difficult to find, and you didn’t need a pizzaiolo’s touch or a whole lot of fancy equipment. Hell, you didn’t even need a pizza peel (or some kind of substitute for one), you just needed a 10-inch skillet, preferably cast-iron.

My go-to pan pizza recipe is actually a mash-up of two popular recipes that have appeared online in recent years: one from Serious Eats, and the other from The New York Times Magazine.

The dough recipe comes from J. Kenji López-Alt, it’s incredibly easy to make, and, even better, it’s foolproof—or as close to foolproof as a recipe can be. In fact, that’s what it’s called: Foolproof Pan Pizza Recipe. The only investment needed is time. I typically start the process late at night, before I go to bed. This step takes mere minutes. The next morning I form my dough balls. Again, this step takes no more than 10-15 minutes (tops!). And by late afternoon/early evening, my pizza dough is ready to go—the only thing is that you need to allow 2 hours for your dough to temper and come to room temperature. Once your dough has tempered, you’ll find it incredibly easy to handle and stretch. You’ll also find it very much alive. Twenty to twenty-five minutes later, you’ll be pulling piping-hot pan pizza from the oven—quite likely, the lightest, tastiest pan pizza you’ve ever tasted. Sounds do-able, right?

Kenji’s accompanying sauce recipe is perfectly excellent. But even better, in my opinion, is a sweeter, somewhat more decadent sauce developed by Anthony Falco of Roberta’s. It, too, is foolproof—or as close to it as imaginable—and its Bit-o-Honey finish is the ultimate flavour sensation with these crispy, chewy, buttery, and wonderfully gooey pies.

J. Kenji López-Alt’s Seriously Foolproof Pan Pizza

400g bread flour, plus more for dusting

10g kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling

4g instant yeast

275g water

8g extra-virgin olive oil, plus more to coat pans and for drizzling

1 1/2 cups pizza sauce (such as Anthony Falco’s Pan Pizza Sauce [see below])

12 ounces grated full-fat, low moisture (dry) mozzarella cheese

2 ounces grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese

1. Make the pizza dough, keeping in mind that this is a slow-ferment dough that requires over 12 hours to be made properly, and that will benefit from even more time. (My normal schedule has been to mix the dough late at night before I go to bed. Form the pizza doughs the next morning. Wrap them and place them in the fridge to hold all day. Then remove from the fridge two hours before baking so they can temper at room temperature [see details below].)

2. Combine flour, salt, yeast, water, and oil in a large bowl. Mix with hands or a wooden spoon until no dry flour remains. (The bowl should be at least 4 to 6 times the volume of the dough to account for rising.

3. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap, making sure that the edges are well sealed, then let rest at cool room temperature (no warmer than 75°F) for at least 8 hours and up to 24. Dough should rise dramatically and fill bowl. In a hot kitchen, the dough may overproof near the end of that range.

4. Sprinkle top of dough lightly with flour, then transfer it to a well-floured work surface. Divide dough into 2 pieces and form each into a ball by holding it with well-floured hands and tucking the dough underneath itself, rotating it until it forms a tight ball with a smooth surface.

5. If you’re aiming to bake some pies in about 2 hours, skip the next step and move on to Step #7.

6. If you still need some time, place the doughs on a well-floured small rimmed baking tray, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the fridge for several hours (up to 36).

7. Pour 2 tablespoons oil in the bottom of two 10-inch cast iron skillets. Place 1 dough ball in each pan and turn to coat evenly with oil. Using a flat palm, press dough around the pan, flattening it slightly and spreading oil around the entire bottom and edges of the pan. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let dough sit at room temperature for 2 hours (at room temperatures above 75°F, the dough may require less time to rise; at temperatures below 65°F/18°C, it may require more time). After the first hour, adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 550°F (290°C).

8. After 2 hours, dough should be mostly filling the pan up to the edges. Use your fingertips to press it around until it fills in every corner, popping any large bubbles that appear. Lift up one edge of the dough to let any air bubbles underneath escape, then repeat, moving around the dough until there are no air bubbles left underneath and the dough is evenly spread around the pan.

9. Top each round of dough with 3/4 cup sauce, spreading sauce to the very edge with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle evenly with mozzarella cheese, all the way to the edges. Season with salt. Drizzle with olive oil.

10. Transfer pan to oven and bake until top is golden brown and bubbly and bottom is golden brown and crisp when you lift it with a thin spatula, 12 to 15 minutes. Immediately sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese, if using. Using a thin spatula, loosen pizza and peek underneath. If bottom is not as crisp as desired, place pan over a burner on your stove and cook on medium heat, moving the pan around to cook evenly until it is crisp, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove the pizzas and transfer to a cutting board. Cut each pizza into 6 slices and serve immediately.

Now that we’ve learned to make the dough and bake the pizza, it’s time to hit the sauce.

Anthony Falco’s Pan Pizza Sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 clove garlic, peeled and minced

2 tablespoons tomato paste

Pinch of chile flakes, to taste

1 x 28-ounce can whole San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand

2 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

Place a saucepan over medium-low heat, and add to it 2 tablespoons olive oil. When the oil is shimmering, add the minced garlic and cook, stirring, until it is golden and aromatic, approximately 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the tomato paste and a pinch of chile flakes, and raise the heat to medium. Cook, stirring often, until the mixture is glossy and just beginning to caramelize.

Add the tomatoes, bring to a boil, then lower heat and allow to simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Take sauce off the heat, and stir in the honey and salt, to taste, then blend in an immersion blender or allow to cool and use a regular blender.

Use as directed.

Okay, now that we’ve covered the basics, feel free to get creative.

Personally, I like my pan pizza pretty simple and basic: dough + sauce + cheese, with maybe some chili flakes, or some hot sauce, or some hot honey added at the last second, just before I’m about to chomp my still-blistering-hot slice.

Pepperoni is considered by many to be a classic variation, especially by contemporary hot honey enthusiasts, but I never make it at home.

What I will highly recommend is a version that’s still very much possible RIGHT NOW, while you can still find choice local cherry tomatoes around.

It’s super simple. It just involves adding cherry tomato slices to a basic tomato-cheese pie, but if you source the right tomatoes, and you’re the kind of tomato fanatic that I am, they will take your pan pizza into the stratosphere. Plus, it’s got a cute name.

A.J.’s Tomayto-Tomahto Pan Pizza

Additional topping:

4-5 fresh, locally grown, organic cherry tomatoes (the sweetest, tastiest ones you can find) [per pie], sliced

Revised instructions:

Follow instructions 1-9 to a T. At that point follow these steps:

10. Transfer pan to oven and bake until top is golden brown and bubbly and bottom is golden brown and crisp when you lift it with a thin spatula, 12 minutes. Remove from oven. Distribute cherry tomato rounds evenly, pressing them gently into the molten cheese, while being careful not to press too hard, thereby scalding yourself. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese. Return to oven and bake for another 2-3 minutes, until tomatoes are golden-brown and Parmesan or Pecorino is also bubbling wildly. Using a thin spatula, loosen pizza and peek underneath. If bottom is not as crisp as desired, place pan over a burner and cook on medium heat, moving the pan around to cook evenly until it is crisp, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove the pizzas and transfer to a cutting board. Cut each pizza into 6 slices and serve immediately, keeping in mind that this pizza is a hot, molten, delicious, but dangerous mess at the moment. Be careful. Proceed with great anticipation, and an ounce of caution.

You’re all set.

What more do you need?

Hatch: A Plan

Anthony Kinik September 15, 2020

Long-time readers of …an endless banquet will surely recall our deep, deep love for all things green chile. Actually, long-time friends of …an endless banquet might also be familiar with our [ed: well, Michelle’s, actually] deep, deep love of the Chi Peps—Los Angeles’s Red Hot Chili Peppers. But here I want to address those other Chi Peps: New Mexico’s Green Hot Chile Peppers.

Much of that love was first inspired by a game-changing trip I paid to the Land of Enchantment back in the 1990s. That was the first time I experienced the Cult of Green Chile full-on. I had it on eggs, in burritos, smothering home fries, on enchiladas, and in countless other ways, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Green Chile Ritual never grew old for me, and I’ve never really shaken it.

In fact, I’ve been trying to replicate it, thousands of miles from New Mexico, for many years now without the benefit of the very peppers that are the essence of the Cult of Green Chile: genuine Hatch chiles. Not the ones that you can find in the little tin cans in supermarkets across America (although, god bless ‘em—those do come in handy sometimes), but the entire spectrum of green chiles (mild, medium, medium-hot, hot, and extra hot) that are famously grown in and around Hatch, NM—in the southern part of the state—versions of which have been a staple of the regional cuisine for centuries.

The preferred way of preparing these treasured peppers is to roast them over a fire—traditionally, a wood fire, but these days frequently a propane flame—peel them, seed them, and then make a salsa with them. This is the “green chile” that then appears in countless New Mexico specialties, from enchiladas to cheeseburgers, and everything in between.

In New Mexico, in the late summer and early fall, you can find makeshift chile roasting operations scattered all across the state, often in the parking lots of local supermarkets. Your chiles are roasted before your eyes in an oversized tumbler, and a minimum order is 20 pounds of peppers.

I’ve always wanted to visit New Mexico at this time of year to witness this spectacle with my own eyes—I mean, what better time to experience the Green Chile Ritual once again? I became even more fixated on this plan after reading David Tanis’s account of his visit to Hatch and environs at the height of Green Chile Season in Saveur a few years back. Initially 2020 seemed like it might be the year that would bring a return visit to New Mexico, just in time for the Hatch Green Chile Festival—just like Tanis—but then everything about this year changed quite drastically.

However, a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that if you can’t actually go to the festival, maybe you could try to bring the festival (or at least part of it) home. After all, fields had been planted. A crop was due to be harvested. So I did the logical thing and reached out to The Hatch Chile Store, and the next thing I knew I had 25 pounds of freshly picked peppers en route to me via express delivery.

The Hatch Chile Store offers a number of different peppers to choose from—from mild “1904” chiles to extra-hot “Lumbres”—but I opted for their Big Jims. Tanis describes this variety as, “large, fleshy, [and] moderately hot.” I’m not sure how Big Jim feels about that, but I knew this was a popular variety—one that’s got a reputation for being particularly meaty, and particularly easy to peel (win-win).

fig. d: “large, fleshy, [and] moderately hot”

Sure, you could order genuine Hatch chiles (including Big Jims) roasted, peeled, and seeded—either canned in jars, or frozen—but what would be the fun in that? I wanted to smell that “fire-roasted green spirit” Tanis had written about. Plus, I’ve always loved firing up the grill and roasting peppers for my improvised non-Hatch green chile concoctions—why wouldn’t I want to do the same with the real deal?

That box of Big Jims showed on a Thursday afternoon. By that evening, I’d already roasted about twenty of those bad boys, made my first batch of genuine Hatch green Chile salsa, and used it to dress a smoked pork burrito. And by the following afternoon—using a battery of three BBQs—Michelle and I had roasted, peeled, and seeded the remaining 20+ pounds of peppers, and packed them in Ziploc bags to keep in the freezer.

The yield is far less than 25 pounds of green chile fillets and strips, of course—the stems, seeds, and peels all weigh something, and the peppers lose some moisture in the process of being roasted. But the chiles also gain a considerable amount of flavour in the process—and the result is simultaneously sweet, spicy, smoky, bitter, and herbaceous, and utterly addictive.

If ordering chiles online seems like too much of an ordeal (and an expenditure) for the taste of green chile, who knows? Maybe there’s someone in your locale who’s growing some actual New Mexico chiles and bringing them to market. If you happen to be in Montpelier, VT at this time of year, you can always drop by the farmers’ market and visit the LePage Farm stand. You might not find 25 pounds of Hatch peppers, but you will find a basket full.

And if not, as I’ve detailed elsewhere, you can make something approaching a New Mexico green chile salsa with other more readily available peppers: like Anaheims, Poblanos, Cubanelles, Serranos, and Jalapeños. At the very least, you can make use of the wonderful local onions and garlic that are so plentiful in so many parts of North America right now when you do.

Green Chile Salsa

1 medium onion (preferably sweet) chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 cumin seeds, toasted and ground

fire-roasted green chiles

tomatillos (optional)

chicken broth or water

1 tsp masa harina

salt and pepper to taste

Sauté your onions in the olive oil until nice and soft. Add your chopped garlic and some toasted and ground cumin seeds. Add your roasted green chiles, some tomatillos, if you're using them, and your chicken broth. Be judicious with your use of liquid (chicken stock or water). You don't want to add too much, but the idea here is to add enough that you can cook your sauce down, uncovered, reducing it into a thing of beauty. This shouldn't take all that long. No more than about half an hour, if you've added the right proportion of broth/water. And keep in mind that if you’re using tomatillos, they will give off quite a bit of liquid. If you go that route (and it’s a wonderful path to take), it’s up to you to decide what your ratio of green chiles to tomatillos should be, but I would recommend about 3:1 (e.g., 1 1/2 cups of green chile strips and 1/2 cup of tomattilos). Any more and you’re really making a salsa verde, and not a green chile. Add a sprinkle of masa harina toward the end of this process if you'd like to thicken your sauce further and give it a bit of depth. The goal here is to create a fairly thick, chunky sauce that will be ideal for everything from dipping chips into to dressing a burger. And, like I said, it ought to taste like a thing of beauty, too.

This is another absolute classic, and one that was hugely inspired by a recipe from David Tanis’s A Platter of Figs And Other Recipes. Respect is due!

Green Chile Stew

5 pounds well-marbled boneless pork butt, cut into 2-inch cubes
salt and pepper
2 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
2 large onions, finely diced
4 to 6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and finely ground
1/2 cup chopped tomatillos, fresh or canned
6 large carrots, peeled and chunked
1 cup chopped roasted green chiles*
1 tbsp masa harina
8 cups water or chicken broth
chopped cilantro
hot corn or flour tortillas, to serve

Season the pork with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot. Add the meat, in several batches, without crowding, and brown it lightly. Transfer to a platter or tray.

Add the onions to the pot and brown them. Add the garlic, cumin, tomatillos, carrots, and green chiles, then sprinkle the masa harina over and stir. Salt the mixture, then return the browned meat to the pot and stir well. Cover with the broth and bring to a boil.

Cover the pot, turn the heat to low, and simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours—until the pork is tender and shreds easily.

Taste the broth and adjust it, adding salt or more green chile as necessary. The broth should be well seasoned and fairly spicy. Simmer for another 30 minutes or so, until the pork is exceedingly tender. Skim any fat from the surface of the broth.

Let the stew rest for an hour or more. Refrigerate overnight if desired (this allows the flavours to meld even more).

To serve, reheat the stew and ladle into warmed bowls. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and accompany with hot tortillas.

Serves 8 to 10.

* Tanis notes that it takes about 12 large fresh chiles to produce 1 cup of chopped roasted chiles. It's preferable to grill them over an open fire, but you can also blacken them under the broiler or directly over a gas burner, in a pinch.

Green Chile Stew is quite literally a dish that makes people crazy. I’ve seen it happen. People go back for 3, 4, 5 helpings if you’re not careful. Be careful. You’re going to want some leftovers. Trust me.

In Praise of Pegboard

Anthony Kinik September 8, 2020

Our beloved pegboard wall in our place is Vermont is very much inspired by the practical, highly cooked-in kitchens of some of our heroes, like the legendary Judith Jones.

Jones, of course, spent much of her life in Greensboro, Vermont, not far from where our house is. However, here she is in her kitchen in Manhattan, and you can see here, too, her kitchen featured a lovely combination of high and low: Moorish tiles together with pegboard from which to hang her pots, pans, and utensils.

If you watch this video from the Wall Street Journal, you can see Jones working her stove and ruminating on the challenges and pleasures of home cooking.

There’s something about your pots and pans being exposed, about being able to see them on the wall beside you that makes cooking even easier, and even more enjoyable.

Bohèmienne Rhapsody

Anthony Kinik August 31, 2020

Speaking of tomatoes…

If you’re looking for another way to make use of the abundance of peak tomatoes available at the moment, look no further.

This is a show-stopper of a recipe that has been a house staple ever since we first encountered it in Richard Olney’s A Provençal Table: The Exuberant Food and Wine from the Domaine Tempier Vineyard (a.k.a., Lulu’s Provençal Table: The Exuberant Food and Wine from Domaine Tempier’s Vineyard). In fact, in many ways, it was this very dish that began what could safely be labelled a long-term Richard Olney obsession.

As Olney makes clear, this dish is essentially a spread, one made with the finest tomatoes and the most perfect eggplant you can find, it’s versatile—you can serve it hot, warm, tepid, or cold—and it’s a classic part of the Provençal apéro repertoire. It’s a simple dish, but one whose poetic name—Bohèmienne—captures its mysterious transcendental properties.

Olney clearly thought very highly of the Bohèmienne, and it’s a dish whose magic and whose associations with Bandol’s Domaine Tempier vineyard is crucial to an understanding of that Berkeley-Provence connection that brought together the talents and the vision of Olney, Alice Waters, Kermit Lynch, and others.

Just as the tomatoes began to hit their peak this year, we received a letter from our dear friend OM, who recalled encountering this fabled eggplant-tomato dish at a dinner party we threw years and years ago in Montreal, during one of our first attempts to recreate the grandeur of a true Grand Aïoli—one that Olney himself would have been proud of. I’m sure these early stabs at Provençal cuisine in the grand tradition must have been hilarious—they were definitely high on enthusiasm, even if we were mere novices at the time—but apparently the Bohèmienne left an impression. “I remember it being deeply satisfying, salty and pungent, with that lovely creaminess of eggplant at its peak,” was the way OM recalled it, and with a surplus of tomatoes and eggplants on her hands, she asked if we could provide her with the recipe. We were all too happy to help out.

The dish’s pungency—and some of its salt—comes from the addition of salt anchovies. If you don’t have salt anchovies on hand, you should try to find anchovies packed in olive oil. And if you’d prefer a vegetarian version (vegan, even) of the Bohèmienne, you can just omit them—you’ll have to finesse the dish with some extra salt (and maybe a little extra love), but it’s quite possible to make a luscious version that’s entirely anchovy-free. But I really, really recommend the anchovies if you’re not a strict vegetarian. They’re the “secret ingredient” that really makes this dish sing.

And while I’ve placed an emphasis on the eggplant and the tomatoes—with good reason—the third most important component of a Bohèmienne is the garlic, of course. Use the freshest, juiciest hard-neck garlic you can find (preferably local and organic). Your tomatoes and eggplant are bursting with flavour—why shouldn’t your garlic be as well?

Otherwise, making a great Bohèmienne is all about the method. As usual, is Olney is nothing if not precise when it comes to his instructions. Avoid cutting corners and this Bohèmienne will pay you back handsomely.

We were so moved by OM’s letter—and transcribing the recipe for her made me so ravenous for Bohèmienne—that we promptly made a batch a couple of days later. The next day, we brought part of our batch to a small (socially distanced) dinner party, and though the table was loaded with goodies of all kinds, in many ways, it was this rustic eggplant-tomato spread that stole the show. Nobody had had a concoction like it ever before, and everything about the dish spoke SUMMER loud and clear.

Bohémienne

6 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, halved and finely sliced

3 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled

2 pounds eggplant, peeled, sliced into rounds, salted on both sides for 30 minutes and pressed dry between paper towels

2 pounds tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped

3 salt anchovies (or 6 anchovy fillets)

salt and pepper

Warm 4 tbsp of the olive oil in a large, heavy pot [Olney recommends a “wide-surfaced cooking vessel,” one whose surface area will aid with “evaporation and reduction”]. Add the onion and cook over low heat, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon, until softened but not coloured. Add the garlic and eggplant; cook until softened, stirring regularly. Add the tomatoes, turn up the heat, and stir until they begin to disintegrate and the mixture begins to boil. Lower the heat to maintain a simmer, uncovered, for an hour or more. Stir regularly, crushing the contents with the wooden spoon and, after about 45 minutes, crush regularly with a fork to create a coarse purée from which all liquid has evaporated. Toward the end, it should be stirred almost constantly to prevent sticking and the heat should be progressively lowered.

Pour remaining 2 tbsp olive oil into a small pan, lay out the anchovy fillets in the bottom, and hold over very low heat until they begin to disintegrate when touched or when the pan is shaken. Remove the eggplant-tomato purée from the heat and stir in the anchovies and their oil. Taste for salt and grind over pepper. If prepared in advance, transfer the bohémienne to a bowl and leave, uncovered, to cool completely before covering and refrigerating.

serves 8

Serve with crusty bread and a cold, crisp glass of rosé—a beautiful Bandol like Domaine Tempier’s rosé would be wonderful, of course, but the price on these have crept up steadily over the years, and any one of a number of French or Italian rosés or rosatos would also make for an excellent accompaniment. At the moment, we’re particularly fond of an especially ethereal Corsican wine from Domaine de Marquiliani known as “Rosé de Pauline”. On the night we brought the Bohèmienne to that recent dinner party, it was paired with Swick’s lusty “Only Zuul.”

Though we typically serve our Bohèmienne warm, or at room temperature, Olney notes that the dish is sometimes served hot, as a gratin. Just "spread it into a shallow oven dish, sprinkle it with dried bread crumbs and olive oil,” and bake it in the oven.

Make Mine a B.L.T. (or even "just" an L.T.), or In Praise of the B.L.T. (and the L.T.)

Anthony Kinik August 25, 2020

fig. a: Can you see where this is going?

We love sandwiches of all kinds, of course—lobster rolls, hoagies, smoked meat, club, po’ boys, muffulettas, chopped rib, falafel, burgers, even the lowly P.B. & J.—but there’s one sandwich that stands above them all at this time of year, when tomatoes are plentiful and at the peak of perfection, and that’s the B.L.T.

All the constituent elements of the B.L.T. serve their purpose and hold importance—including the bread, mayonnaise, bacon, and lettuce—but as far as we’re concerned the very most crucial ingredient is the tomato. If you don’t have a perfect tomato to start with, really, what’s the point? You could make the most beautiful mayonnaise from scratch, fry up the smokiest, most delicious artisanal bacon, source the sweetest, most tender-crunchy lettuce leaves, and even bake the most perfect sandwich bread imaginable (or find it at your local artisanal bakery), but if the tomato was unripe and tasteless, the whole contraption would fall apart.

Lucky for us, we’ve been able to score loads of beautiful, juicy, ripe local tomatoes recently, we have access to our favourite Northeastern bacon (North Country Smokehouse, out of Claremont, New Hampshire), and we’ve even been able to find local, organic iceberg lettuce—in other words, the B.L.T. trifecta. We’re a little less obsessive when it comes to the bread and mayonnaise. We bake plenty of our own bread and make our own mayonnaise with regularity, but we’re perfectly fine with using supermarket brands when it comes to these two elements. Recently, we’ve been fond of using Hellmann’s mayo and Pepperidge Farm’s Butter Bread or Honey White.

But it’s the tomato we’re most particular about. And right now, my favourite B.L.T. tomato is an heirloom variety known as the Paul Robeson.

fig. b: Paul Robeson puts on quite a show

The Paul Robeson is a variety of Russian origin that was named in honour of the African-American singer, actor, and activist—”a sandwich tomato with a tang, an extraordinary tomato for an extraordinary man,” as the folks at Fedco Seeds put it.

You don’t have to use an heirloom variety, of course, but for a true B.L.T., it’s imperative to use a big, juicy, supremely tasty slicing tomato. Delicious cherry tomatoes will do in a pinch, but for the full effect, it really has to be a slicer that’s just bursting with juicy goodness. All the greatest sandwiches are messy affairs—or at least they should be—and the B.L.T. is no exception. Your plate should be a glorious mess when you’re done. Napkins and paper towels should be an absolute necessity. Possibly even a shower.

Lastly, the bread must be properly toasted. It should be slathered with mayonnaise. (I’m a strong proponent of mayonnaise being slathered on both slices of toast.). And it’s absolutely obligatory that the tomatoes be salted in advance of sandwich construction. Okay, maybe it’s not “obligatory,” especially if you’re using a salty bacon, but, personally, I think the salt really helps release the tomato’s full range of flavours.

Now, as much as I love a true B.L.T. made with excellent bacon, we don’t always have bacon around. In fact, most of the time we don’t. Mostly it’s reserved for “special occasions.” But that’s okay, because if the tomatoes are exceptional, I get nearly as excited about an L.T. sandwich as I do about a B.L.T. And that’s actually the sandwich we have with the greatest frequency during peak tomato season. (If you’re really missing the salt & smoke of those crispy bacon slices, you could always sprinkle a little smoked salt on your tomatoes in place of your usual sea salt or kosher salt. You won’t get quite the same texture, and you won’t have the intoxicating presence of bacon fat adding to the alchemy, but at least you’ll get some of that smoky saltiness.)

And while I’m a big fan of mayonnaise, and I realize it’s almost heretical to say so, I’m also perfectly fine with a mayo-less L.T. sandwich made with a vinaigrette—as long as the tomatoes are excellent.

But the version I love the most is that classic version—the one with the perfect tomatoes, the choice bacon, and the proper lettuce, bread, and mayonnaise combo. Especially if it’s served sliced on the bias.

Preferably with a cold beverage and some potato chips.

One friend who joined us for a socially distanced B.L.T. lunch earlier this summer called the A.E.B. version “the Platonic ideal of the B.L.T.” The last time Michelle finished one, she just said (in typical Michelle fashion), “Man, that was really, really good.”

All I know is that this is the meal that I crave the absolute most right now. I’ve been having at least four B.L.T. and/or L..T. sandwiches per week for the last several weeks now (usually L.T.s, actually), and each and every one has been just as satisfying as the last. Usually more so.

Today's Menu: August 21, 2020

Anthony Kinik August 21, 2020

japanese spread with sparkling wine.jpeg

Braised mushrooms

Sesame green beans

Pickled radishes

Poached shrimp

Seared scallops

Today's Menu: August 16, 2020

Anthony Kinik August 16, 2020

Grilled corn with miso butter, Korean chili threads, and scallions

Today's Menu: August 9, 2020

Anthony Kinik August 9, 2020

Conservas with lemon wedges

Olives

“Only Zuul,” Swick Wines

tunes

Thank you berry much

Anthony Kinik August 5, 2020

If you’re going to have an absolutely bonkers berry year—and we’re definitely experiencing one in our little neck of the woods right now—there are a few crucial recipes you need to go along with it. And in my mind, one of them’s gotta be a proper pancake recipe.

Sure, you can fold berries directly into your batter to make, say, blueberry pancakes—you might even have a favourite blueberry pancake recipe on hand—but I’m talking about a “plain” (but definitely not plain) pancake recipe. One that you can adorn with an unholy combination of butter, syrup, and freshly macerated berries as they come hot off the griddle. One that will serve you well even when fresh, local berries have gone out of season. One that’s truly heavenly.

In this case, the recipe I have in mind is one that first appeared in Canal House Cooking no. 6 (“The Grocery Store”) way back in 2011. But when Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer—the prodigious talents behind Canal House—compiled a year’s worth of their best recipes for their collection Canal House Cooks Everyday the following year, it’s not one that made the cut, strangely. Hamilton & Hirsheimer were generous enough to share Hirsheimer’s family recipe for “Buttermilk Love Cakes” in their book—and that’s a blessing, there’s no doubt about it—but this recipe is similarly phenomenal, and it’s maybe just a tiny bit easier to get exceptional results with, because it’s maybe just a tiny bit easier to source good sour cream (which this recipe calls for) than it is to source good buttermilk (which the “love cakes” call for). (Then again, maybe not—depends on where you live.)

fig. d: these gorgeous pancakes are a delicious part of a complete breakfast

Like virtually all of the very best pancakes, these sour cream pancakes are light as a feather and anything but banal. These are pancakes that turn out beautifully, they’re supremely flavourful, and they marry wonderfully with the mixture of raspberries, blueberries, and black raspberries we’ve been enjoying in recent days.

So without any further ado…

Canal House Cooking’s Sour Cream Pancakes

1 cup sour cream*

3 large eggs, separated

2 tablespoon melted butter

7 tablespoons cake flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Vegetable oil

Whisk the sour cream and egg yolks together in a medium mixing bowl. Whisk in the melted butter. Put the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt into a sieve and sift into the sour cream mixture. Lightly whisk until just mixed [a few lumps won’t hurt anything, according to Hamilton & Hirsheimer].

Put the egg whites into a clean mixing bowl and beat with a whisk until soft peaks form (this takes a bit of elbow grease, but it’s worth it). Use a rubber spatula to fold them into the batter. Please, for the love of god, don’t overwork the batter. Keep it light and fluffy.

Pour a little oil on a nonstick griddle or large skillet. Wipe out the oil with a paper towel, leaving only the thinnest film. Heat the griddle over medium or even medium-low heat [depends on your range] until hot. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter on the griddle. Cook until little holes appear on the surface and the cooked side of the pancake—go ahead and lift the edge to check!—is golden brown, about 1 minute on each side, if your griddle is at the proper temperature. Slather on the butter, a few good glugs of real maple syrup, and and a heap of freshly macerated and/or fresh berries if you have them on hand.

Devour.

{Makes about sixteen 4-inch pancakes.}

[adapted ever so slightly from Melissa Hamilton & Christopher Hirsheimer’s Canal House Cooking, No. 6, 2011]

Keep your berry mixture simple.

Mix together whatever fresh, ripe, local berries you have on hand (as long as they’re nice and sweet—like raspberries, blueberries, black raspberries, red currants, and blackberries**). Depending on the amount of berries, stir in a tablespoon, or two (or three, or four…) of white sugar (the basic formula we use is about one tablespoon of sugar per cup of berries). Crush the berries a little as you stir the sugar in evenly, bruising them so that they release their juices more readily. Don’t overdo it with the sugar, but, if you’re going to sweeten them at all, don’t underdo it either. This berry mix should be an absolute joy to eat and it should produce a fair bit of beautiful berry syrup, too.

If you prefer, do a mixture of macerated berries and entirely fresh berries, like the combination of macerated raspberries and fresh blueberries you see in the accompanying photographs.

And if you’re a purist, go ahead and top your pancakes with the simple pleasures of fresh, raw, unsweetened berries. We won’t judge.

But, please, while berries are at their peak—as they are right now—insist on fresh, local berries if you can—preferably ones you harvested or foraged yourself.

* We prefer Cabot Creamery sour cream whenever we can get our hands on it.

** Basically, you want to avoid things like gooseberries and blackcurrants, which are essentially inedible in their raw state (at least by humans).

Today's Menu: April 25, 2020

Anthony Kinik April 25, 2020

Homemade rigatoni

Rigatoni pomodoro

And here’s how those rigatoni were made:

Today's Menu: March 8, 2020

Anthony Kinik March 8, 2020

sansho pepper cabbage, soy-marinated eggs, salsa macha, Japanese chile crisp, Bellwoods Brewery Jelly King beer

So long, 2019!

Anthony Kinik January 13, 2020

Sounds:

Mdou Moctar, Ilana, The Creator

Sample track: “Kamane Tarhanin”

Mdou Moctar @ Arts Riot, Burlington, VT, July 3, 2019

Lightning Dust, Spectre

Angel Olsen, All Mirrors

You Drive, s/t

Sample track: “Royal Blue”

Weyes Blood, Titanic Rising

Steve Gunn + Bill MacKay + Wildflower, @ Arts Riot, Burlington, VT, July 27, 2019

Steve Gunn, The Unseen in Between

Bill MacKay, Fountain Fire

Wildflower, Part One: Heavy Meadow

Townes Van Zandt, Flyin’ Shoes

Townes Van Zandt, Our Mother the Mountain

Lightnin’ Hopkins, California Mudslide (And Earthquake)

Ahmoudou Madassane, Zerzura (Original Soundtrack Recording)

Andy Shauf + Haley Heyndricks, Tralf Music Hall, Buffalo, NY, February 16, 2019

Haley Heyndricks, I Need to Start a Garden

Sample track: “Show Me a Body”

V/A, Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music

V/A, Heartworn Highways

Tinariwen, Amadjar

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Ghosteen

Sample track: “Bright Horses”

Sharon Van Etten, Remind Me Tomorrow

V/A, Jambú: e os míticos sons da amazônia

Guy Clark, Old No. 1

Endless Boogie, Vol. I, II

Link Wray, Be What You Want to Be

Sample track: “Morning”

Link Wray & Mordicai Jones, Mordicai Jones

Michael Chapman, Fully Qualified Survivor

Dough Rollers, “Mansion on a Hill”

Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road”

Rob, Funky Rob Way

tribute to Rick & Levon, Woodstock, NY, July, 2019

Third Man Records, Nashville, TN

Neil Young, A Letter Home

Lee Hazlewood & Ann-Margret, The Cowboy & the Lady

Sample track: “It’s a Nice World to Visit (But Not to Live In)”

Moving Pictures:

Heartworn Highways (1976), dir. Szalapski

The Lighthouse (2019), dir. Eggers

The Farewell (2019), dir. Wang

The Souvenir (2019), dir. Hogg

BlacKKKlansman (2018), dir. Lee

The Favourite (2018), dir. Lanthimos

Pain & Glory (2019), dir. Almodovar

Les Blank: Always For Pleasure box set (2014)

The Reckless Moment (1949), dir. Ophüls @ The Aero Theatre, Santa Monica, CA

This is Not a Movie (2019), dir. Chang

Mind Hunter, season 2, created by David Fincher

Destroyer (2018), dir. Kusama

Widows (2018), dir. McQueen

Little Women (2019), dir. Gerwig

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), dir. Jenkins

Rolling-Thunder-Revue-A-Bob-Dylan-Story-by-Martin-Scorsese-Featured-1900x560.jpg

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (2019), dir. Scorsese

Shoplifters (2018), dir. Kore-eda

Atlantique (2019), dir. Diop

Cold War (2018), dir. Pawlikowski

When They See Us (2019), dir. DuVernay

Roma (2018), dir. Cuarón @ The North Park Theatre, Buffalo, NY, February 17, 2019

“City Symphonies,” Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY, Jan-March, 2019

”Films For the Fair,” Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY, May, 2019

Salt Fat Acid Heat (2018), dir. Suh

Shampoo (1975), dir. Ashby + Hal (2018), dir. Scott

Halston (2019), dir. Tcheng

Missing (1982), dir. Costa-Gavras

Honeyland (2019), dir. Kotevska & Stefanov

Free Solo (2018), dir. Chin & Vasarhelyi

Still Walking (2008), dir. Kore-eda

Parasite (2019), dir. Bong

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), dir. Ross

Food & Drink:

Gjusta, Los Angeles, CA

Arnold’s, Nashville, TN

Dear John’s, Los Angeles, CA

Bar Melusine, Seattle, WA

Mehuron’s, Waitsfield, VT

Canteen Creemee Co., Waitsfield, VT

Russ & Daughters Cafe, New York, NY

Toshi Sushi, Vancouver, BC

Folk, Nashville, CA

Louisiana Seafood Company, Nashville, TN + crawfish, shrimp, boudin and andouille feast @ J & H’s

Gjelina, Los Angeles, CA

Una Pizza Napoletana, New York, NY

Scarr’s, New York, NY

My Pie, New York, NY

Emmy Squared, Nashville, TN

pan pizza, Detroit-style @ home

Husk, Nashville, TN

Little Uncle, Seattle, WA

Night + Market Sahm, Los Angeles, CA

Bill Bar Tavern, East Aurora, NY

The Roots, Middlesex, VT

Brassneck Brewery, Vancouver, BC

Alambika, Montreal, QC

MTN, Los Angeles, CA

Jarr Bar, Seattle, WA

Frank Gourmet Hot Dogs, Buffalo, NY

Ramen Butcher, Vancouver, BC

Remedy House, Buffalo, NY

Vin on Rose, Los Angeles, CA

Sakai Bar, Toronto, ON

mushroom season, 2019

Falafel Yoni, Montreal, QC

Woodland Wine Merchant, Nashville, TN

Paradise Wine, Buffalo, NY

Empellon Al Pastor, New York, NY

Kiruki, Seattle, WA

The Win-Dow, Los Angeles, CA

Hen of the Wood, Waterbury, VT

donabe madness

Print

Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Jane Mayer, “The Case of Al Franken,” The New Yorker, July 29, 2019

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

John Le Carré, “The Madness of Spies: A Secret Service Secret,” The New Yorker, September 29, 2008

Meredith Erickson, Alpine Cooking: Recipes and Stories From Europe’s Grand Mountaintops

Malcolm Gladwell, “Trust No One: Kim Philby and the Hazards of Mistrust,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2014

Barney Hoskyns, Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock

Sean Brock and Peter Frank Edwards, Heritage: Recipes and Stories

Greg Marley, Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love, Lore and Mystique of Mushrooms

Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow, “Private Mossad for Hire,” The New Yorker, February 18 & 25, 2019

Peggy Barnard, Monkey in the House

Alberto Moravia, Contempt

David Arora, Mushrooms Demystified

Miscellany

Bread & Puppet Museum, Glover, VT

The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles, CA

The Museum of Everyday Life, Glover, VT

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum + RCA Studio B, Nashville, TN

Hatch Show Print, Nashville, TN

Tenshin Juba ceramics show, Chariots on Fire, Venice, CA

Toiro, Los Angeles, CA

Nalata Nalata, New York, NY

New High Mart, Los Angeles, CA

Tortoise General Store, Los Angeles, CA

Allan Tannenbaum, “Punk/Rock,” D-Day, Woodstock, NY

Olivetti-Underwood typewriters

pottery class, A Third Space Pottery Studio, St. Catharines, ON

R.I.P.

Jonas Mekas

Agnès Varda

Robert Frank

Anna Karina