Chef Marcus Samuelsson Reading the Dining Section at His Favorite Harlem Haunt (& Proving That Print’s Not Dead Yet, To Boot). Photograph by Francine Daveta.
In case you couldn’t tell from the story in our current issue how much we liked Marcus Samuelsson’s new cookbook–New American Table was inspired by his exploration of New York’s immigrant dives and delights–we decided we’d get a few copies in to give away. Samuelsson (that’s him looking smashing in Patisserie Des Ambassades, a Franco-Senegalese spot he frequents) moved here in 1991, and was immediately smitten with the culinary diversity of the city: everything from East Village Ukrainian delis and Curry Hill’s Indian groceries to four-star spots and soul food in Harlem.
It’s places like those that inspired the chef–himself an immigrant–to put together the dishes (trout pierogi, nettle-shrimp soup, almond chicken with avocado salsa and radish salad, jerk-spiced catfish, lamb stew with dill sauce and roasted parsley root) in the book. And all you have to do to score your own copy is tell us about your favorite immigrant-ingredient inspired idea or recipe–maybe something you concocted at home after buying wiri-wiri hot sauce at a Guyanese deli or tasting Malaysian noodles flavored with pandan leaf in Chinatown. Just send an email to info AT ediblemanhattan.com with New American Table Contest in the subject line. We’ll pick the best story and post it here.
I usually have dumplings on the brain, a fetish heightened recently as the Chinese New Year passed, as I was teased by consecutive dumpling spreads in the first and second issues of Edible Queens (damn you, law hong jai). And also since I received a review copy of The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide by Wai Hon Chu and Connie Lovatt, a beautiful, user-friendly guide to making dumplings from around the world–from Hungarian potato dumplings to Mexican tamales to a rainbow of bao and buns and mandu from the Orient.
(In fact Nach Waxman, the owner of the Upper East Side’s Kitchen Arts & Letters, lauded it in this issue of Edible Manhattan.) READ MORE »
Last week Edible Manhattan publisher Brian Halweil wrote about his hope for the future of food writing: Which as he saw it is pretty bright considering that more than ever, we’re looking at food less as filler for newspaper lifestyle sections and more as lens into topics like culture, politics, policy, agriculture, history or poverty.
Granted, we still geek out over a great dish like anybody else — say, did you check those Texas breakfast tacos in today’s Times yet? — it’s the stories about food that go deep that drive what we do at Edible Manhattan. And in fact, that taco story does too: Written by the excellent Southern writer John T. Edge, who we toured Koreatown fried chicken joints with just a few issues back, it puts Texas breakfast tacos squarely in context in terms of tradition and city cultural history. We approve! READ MORE »
She’s a beauty, that bagel, right? Baked just for the fourth-generation folks who run Russ & Daughters–our brand new cover girl–and topped with their hand-whipped cream cheese and that famous hand-sliced salmon. It’s the perfect alchemy of smoke and fat, if we do say so ourselves right here in issue No. 10.
You can read all about Russ (and his daughters) in the March-April edition of the magazine, now found in restaurants and bookshops citywide. (Unless you subscribe, which is always appreciated.) But be sure to take a gander at the online version, where we’ve alsogot a piece about a party at Mark Russ Federman’s Brooklyn home (he’s Russ’s grandson) where the finest minds in Jewish food discuss the history and the practice of appetizing; AND a video of the three-decades-old caviar-packing technique of José Reyes — his hands should be insured by Lloyd’s of London, says Mark — the only Russ & Daughters employee allowed to pack fish eggs.
Beyond the smoked fish, this issue also includes a a few words from Holden Caufield, a peek into the kitchens of Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz; a profile of food policy matriarch Joan Gussow, an award-winning New York winemaker, the last commercial mushroom farm in the Hudson Valley and the nuttiness of Peanut Butter & Co.; a piece on Marcus Samuelsson’s early city foraging trips and their role in his most recent cookbook, and last but not least, one of Midtown’s secret snack spots. Hint: Like Samuelsson, it’s also Swedish.
We don’t know about you, but we’re fairly bummed Food Inc. didn’t win last night’s Oscar for best documentary feature. (It lost out to The Cove.) For starters, getting a movie about food policy, public health, commercial food production and American agricultural issues so far into the mainstream means, well, food policy, public health, commercial food production and American agricultural issues are now in the mainstream. Enough said.
But we also just like this movie, which is a joint effort from Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser: There have been plenty of flicks in the past few years that touch on food issues (and, like Food Inc., plenty that feature the wise words of folks like reporter Michael Pollan and Polyface Farm head Joel Salatin) but few have such an eerie opening scene as this one, complete with creepy music and hyper-colored supermarket aisles that strike fear into every farmers’ market lover’s heart and should send even the staunchest frozen food fanatic into deep, deep thought.
If you missed it when it came through Manhattan, we recommend you fix up a sustainable-minded feast–you can buy local popcorn from Oak Grove Plantation’s Union Square farmstand–rent the DVD and invite over the masses to change their minds.
Happy Birthday, Dad: Photograph by Michael Harlan Turkell.
“The specials today are pastrami and roast beef”.
“Wait, stop right there,” my father said after an eager glance at the menu. Often the mention of these (mostly mass-produced) cold cuts can leave people cold. But Prime Meats, the Germanic-influenced spin-off of Frankies Spuntino (profiled in Edible Brooklyn’s Summer 2007 issue) on the corner of Court Street and Luquer Street, had just unleashed a lunchmeat program that is utmost prime! This comes on top of its already well-known revivalist sausages (bratwurst, knockwurst and weisswurst) and sauerbraten. READ MORE »
Steamed Milk Slideshow: By Amber Benham. Having trouble viewing this video? Try zooming out of your browser window.
Last week Dean & Deluca, with help from Counter Culture Coffee, hosted its first ever arte latte competition in its Midtown cafe. The soon-to-be-annual event brought talented baristas from near and far (seriously, they hailed from Soho, Seattle and Kansas) to see who could pour the best latte art. Unlike your average cup of joe, arte latte requires the skills of both an artist and a scientist. And according to Counter Culture’s Erin Meister, espresso diva extraordinaire and one of several city employees who train local cafes on using the North Carolina roaster’s beans, the secret is in the milk. It must be the perfect temperature, bubbly enough, but not too bubbly, and poured just so to produce the detailed designs judges will appreciate. READ MORE »
Are You Hip Enough to Buy This Brooklyn-Made Wheelhouse Pickle? The New Yorker Wants to Know. Photo courtesy Wheelhouse Pickles.
Because our brethren over at Edible Brooklyn aren’t blogging — yet! — we’d thought we’d mention the big play the borough just received in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, courtesy the shopping column by Patricia Marx.
She explores the antique stores, boutiques and other shops of Kings County, and declares that “if Brooklyn were a country, its chief exports would include artisanal pickles, eco-friendly yoga wear, Red Hook Saipua soap, and books written by men named Jonathan.”
She’s referring, of course, to Lethem, Safran Foer and to the sour barrel cucumbers sold citywide and created by Wheelhouse. A company run, funnily enough, by another Jonathan, and written up by Edible Brooklyn ages ago. As Marx notes, “in Brooklyn, material goods matter, but other things matter more.” Like pickles.
Last night as we were gallavanting around with Edible Brooklyn in Williamsburg–at the grand opening of Pies-N-Thighs, naturally–we ran into craft beer connoisseur Josh Schaffner, the extremely motivated 25-year-old who launched the city-wide fall beer fest called NY Craft Beer Week three years ago. (We wrote about the series of beer dinners, bar crawls and craft beer specials last fall.)
Schaffner was on the not-quite-so-tail end of a 20-hour day hitting beer bars like the Blind Tiger in the West Village and Burp Castle in the East Village and Spuyten Duyvil in Williamsburg, which is where we ran into him over a $5 Reccesionator direct from Brooklyn’s Kelso Brewery. READ MORE »
When Cathy Erway (the author of the brand-new book, The Art of Eating In: How I learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove), Jimmy Carbone (of Jimmy’s No. 43), and Shelly Rogers (the director of What’s Organic About Organic?) teamed up to draw awareness to food issues through film, they chose to curate an ongoing series that would focus on snippets of works in progress followed by a talkback with the talent.
Last week six Hungry Filmmakers took to the screen at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village for a second round of sneak peeks at indie flicks that aim to tell the stories of the American food system. Think of the nights, if you will, as a cinematic call to culinary action. READ MORE »
She’s a beauty, that bagel, right? Baked just for the fourth-generation folks who run Russ & Daughters–our brand new cover girl–and topped with their hand-whipped cream cheese and that famous hand-sliced salmon. It’s the perfect alchemy of smoke and fat, if we do say so ourselves 
Are You Hip Enough to Buy This Brooklyn-Made Wheelhouse Pickle? The New Yorker Wants to Know. Photo courtesy Wheelhouse Pickles.
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