I guess this needs a title...? How about (the wildly uncreative): List #1

Listen, I know I already posted earlier today, but, seeing as I'm up in the country, in between deadlines, it's in the 40s outside (the 40s! It was 90 here two weeks ago!), Trouble is off at work (and, honestly, I don't quite have enough to do with myself these days. I can only check on the chicks so many times before they start following me around and getting underfoot). So I thought I'd take a few minutes to write a list. A list, that is, of the fabulous springy things I've been eating recently. I mean, allegedly, this is something of a food blog. At least I think it should be, given that food-- reading about it, writing about it, studying it, thinking about it, interviewing people around it, cooking it, selling it, eating it-- takes up the vast majority of my waking hours.

Ramps got their own shout out, but other than that, I've been sorely neglecting the early bounty of the Northeast. So, in no particular order, a list of 10 memorable eats of late (some local, some not so much so).

1. The ramps. Oh, the ramps. First, I had them up here at our friends' house (see the ramps post). Then there was a simple dinner at my friend's house in Millerton, New York, for which I made a lovely side of simple Asian mushrooms (I didn't think to look at the name on the packages, but they're the kind that are sold in clumps, the ones that look like, excuse me but it can't be helped, tiny penises) sautéed over high heat, with a handful of ramp leaves thrown in at the last minute and a few drops of tamari. Yum!
2. Maybe it doesn't count as a gourmet meal, but I've been making green smoothies with early spring kale, yogurt, fruit and honey every morning. Kale is soooo sweet this time of year, especially if you buy it when the leaves are still small and tender.
3. We had a beautiful meal with our friends Tim and Caroline of The Kitchen Garden Farm, along with a few other food and farm pals. Tim, a pretty extraordinary self-trained cook, made a riff on green papaya salad by subbing green cabbage for the papaya, and grilled up perfectly spicy chicken thighs. I remember chiles and lemongrass and fish sauce... the rest is lost with the rest of the rosé-blurred memories. 
4. I've been consuming insane quantities of a particularly beautiful red-veined spinach that our friend Kristin grows up here in Western MA. Simply wilted down over a pan full of garlic lightly browned in a few glugs of olive oil-- yum!
5. Tons of granola from Trouble's bakery, El Jardin, in South Deerfield. I keep a bag in the car for the schlep between Brooklyn and The Valley
6. When the weather turned cold again this week, I started craving heartier fare rather than light salads and slaws. Like Trouble's frijoles magicos (well, that's what I dubbed them). They're simple-- black beans that have been pureed, cooked down with a bit of manteca (that's lard for you vegetarians and vegans-- BEWARE!... that you're missing out on something really, really delicious), lots of garlic, a whole chili or two and (the secret ingredient) singed avocado leaves. They changed my world the first time he served them to me. They have, since, become my happy food.
7. Asparagus. Need I say more? Grilled, roasted, steamed, eaten raw right off the stalk... I mean, come on.
8. Red ale (do I get to count beer?). The medium body and only so-so hoppiness seems just right for this mercurial weather-- big enough for chilly evenings, but refreshing enough to take edge off after a hot early spring afternoon of gardening.
9. This morning, when hunger struck before the lunch hour, I used a few tender young hakurei turnips to scoop up garlicky homemade hummus from...
10. ... another amazing meal with the Kitchen Garden folks-- their spring lamb roast farm dinner. Oh god, it was so good. A spread of olives (that I toted up from Titan Foods in Astoria-- another "falling back in love with New York" experience early this past Saturday morning), Greek spreads, hard boiled eggs, wild greens dandelions and ramps, spanikopita made with a whole mess of greens  (my favorite of which was the stinging nettles), and a delectable spit-roasted whole lamb. Tons of crisp white and mellow red added a warm continuity to the evening, and we capped it all off with a delicious baklava made by my enormously talented best friend/college housemate, Anna Feldman (who I desperately wish had a website so I could link it here!)

When I think about the fact that it's only the second day of May, and the eating's already this good, I shudder with pleasure thinking about May, June and July. The glory of Indian summer and October (my favorite eating month)? Don't even get me started!

Longings for a Land Where Grilled Cheese is Just Grilled Cheese

I woke up this morning staring at a brick wall. It took me a few minutes to acclimate, as the birds have found their way back to the scraggly courtyard behind my Prospect Heights apartment. But the sound of them always makes me think I'm in Western Massachusetts or, even stranger, there are mornings where I wake up convinced I'm in my childhood bedroom in suburban New York, with the green green lawn and the white snowdrops in bloom in the backyard on those early earth-smellling days of spring. But no, I'm in Brooklyn, tucked into my bright (albeit internally facing") apartment, alone, just wishing I was in the country.

I'm in a  particularly city-grouchy mood today. Spring is springing everywhere, and I feel like I'm missing it! There is a garden, and a chicken coop too, that need my tending in Western Massachusetts. I've just come off a five day whirlwind of a conference called the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professional) that happened to be held smack dab in the middle of Times Square, a blaring, unholy, practically seizure inducing mix of lights, tourists, traffic, litter and noise. 

I've never been a fan of Times Square. As a kid, I remember my dad, a city boy by birth, squeezing my hand tight while he pulled me through the crowd as we walked to a Broadway show once or twice a year. And when I moved to Brooklyn in my early twenties, despite having landed an office job in the (almost) equally awful land of the West 30s, I avoided walking north through Times Square as if it was a room full of kids with whooping cough. I don't use the word hate lightly, but I vehemently hate Times Square.

I'm pretty sure I spent more time in Times Square over the past week than I have in my past three years spend (mostly) in New York altogether. And I'm not happy about it. I feel ragged and edgy, exhausted just from playing the "dodge the tourist" game. 

But more than anything, I've been thinking about something else these past few days. The theme of IACP this year was "The Fashion of Food", something I find rather irritating, given that my personal interest in food is more about history and legacy (thus the book I'm working on at the moment, along with the extraordinary Rio de Janeiro-based chef and activist, Teresa Corção, who owns the renowned downtown restaurant, O Navegador ). In particular, there was an opening panel session that included the editor  editor in chief of a certain food magazine (which I'll refrain from naming here) that talked about the real importance of trends in food today and blah blah blah. And then, when the who's who in the food writing world got up for Q&A and asked him where the space is for enduring food stories-- ones with history, identity and place-- he brushed aside the question, telling them there is plenty of room for long-form writing on the subject (not true) and that, bottom line is, he has to sell his magazine, and trends--face bacon, kale, Nashville hipsters-- equal dollar signs. Okay, I'll hand it to him. That's true. But I don't have to like it. And I don't have to agree with it being all that sells, either. Not when the grand dame of African American southern food, Edna Lewis, and classicist Jacques Pepin, are still among the best-selling food authors in America. 

This morning, lying in bed (where I still currently am), staring out at my brick wall, listening to the confused birds chirp out back, I was pushed over the edge by an article in today's Times whose headline read: "Rethinking Grilled Cheese: A tour of artisanal grilled-cheese shops, a culinary sub genre that has boomed in New York in the last year."  Now, I'm sorry, but no. This is not okay. The best reputed newspaper in America, and indeed in the world is paying a freelancer to go out and tour food trucks to eat cheese pressed between two pieces of bread? I mean, come on. You can (and should) make the stuff at home. It's not rocket science, especially now that you can buy whatever manner of artisanally, humanely, and (admittedly) deliciously crafted ingredients you like for your homemade grilled cheese sandwich. You can even find pretty good bread in most places these days (though I'm partial to the wood-fired sourdoughs my boyfriend-- for whom I haven't yet figured out a clever name for this blog's purposes, and the only fish in my seas of both bread and men--bakes out of his shop in Western MA). So come on, do we really have to get all Twitter-y about this? Is this really what sells these newspapers? Because I'm having a hard time believing anyone is getting all that jazzed about artisanal grilled cheese. Well, maybe in Williamsburg, but they're automatically counted as outliers in my book.

After seeing that headline (no, I did not read the article all the way through), all I want to do is hop in the car, roll down the windows, and head up to my other home in Western Massachusetts-- the one that trends barely touch, where making an "artisanal" grilled cheese involves my boyfriend's perfect rosemary or 8-grain bread, a couple thick slabs of bacon, lots of butter, and our everyday (and plenty good, may I add) Cabot cheddar.  Up there, it doesn't have to be in fashion to be good. It's just lunch.