Endless Knots

Best fried chicken in Boston? Try Back Bay Station

Vegetarians, avert eyes and try this post. Or this one. Or even this.

But if you're a flexitarian, then I bet you like fried chicken as much as me. Love it.

And so when I stumbled into Boston's Back Bay Station a few years ago starving and about to hop on the train to NY, I was drawn by the redolence of fried chicken. At a food court. Delicious and since then I've tried to procure same again but without luck. I was always there at the wrong time.

However recently (i.e. earlier today) and in the same situation -- and although it was barely 11 AM -- I found myself in front of T.J. Enterprises, talking with T.J. himself, who, once he heard how much I love his fried chicken, was willing to put it on offer earlier than usual. And so I enjoyed an early lunch/late breakfast of fried chicken on the train and learned the following:

1. T.J. is from Laurel, Mississippi, where he learned how to make it.

2. He perfected it via trial and error, a little less of this and a little more of that.

3. He usually serves it from 11:30 on.

4. Much as I dislike nuked chicken, it was absolutely delicious.

5. I should have taken a picture of T.J. but instead have only this to show for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fry it, flexitarians!

I love Mark Bittman. Just in case there's any confusion, I don't know him.

But his practical, flexitarian, a word I hereby proclaim he invented (I have no idea and a quick search isn't giving me first use), approach to eating is the one I favor. I used to call myself an omnivore but I'm not. Case in point: In Japan during one of those marathon dinners (first this restaurant, then that restaurant, then then...), I was offered whale. The year was 1989 so I don't know if it's still on anyone's menu/legal but the hosts were offering a great delicacy and I was appalled. I tried turning it down by saying it was against my religion to eat it. They asked my religion. I said networking.

To prove that I eat (almost) anything (and because I've been hankering to post it), I submit this photo from a lunch we recently served while on vacation in one of the great eating fields of the world. Guess where.

 

It's a long way from Bittman's article in yesterday's The NY Times, "Deep Fried and Good For You," about the glories of fried food. I LOVE fried chicken and fried (not baked) falafel. Not to mention french fries (what my mother called frech frieds, quite deliberately, the English teacher) and clams and calamari and veggies... You get the picture.

Thus I was thrilled to receive this pass from Bittman yesterday. Here's the close, which is worth reading through to just in case you're willing to admit you love fried food too. (There are several recipes with the article as well.)

Take it slow and either eat the food as it comes out of the fat (you can drain on paper towels or, if you want to be fancy, a cloth napkin) or keep it warm for as little time as possible in a low oven. Myself, I like to fry when people are standing around eating the food as fast as I can produce it; that is really fun. And good for you.

Mother's guilt: "No one will trade lunch with us"

 

Of the many things about which I retain motherly regret, none makes me feel quite so conflicted as the lunches I lovingly packed. Whole wheat this and organic that, fruit leather instead of Snickers bars, and a "whole" array of other items that no other kids in my daughters' classes would touch.

From Chef Merito's site -- Thanks

I am relieved to find that a in a recent, apparently highly scientific, Boston Globe poll ("Eating or grading their box lunch, kids can be cruel"), "54 percent of the kids surveyed gave their lunch a grade of C or lower."

Shane (see below) must have been advised by my daughters:

[His mother] says Shane was pretty willing to go the healthy route until recently. “Lately, he’s taken to wanting his lunches to be cool. ‘Don’t just pack the healthy stuff, it’s embarrassing. Can you please pack Oreos and candy — normal stuff?’ ” she says. She has switched from whole-wheat bread to white, and she does throw in the occasional Oreo, “so he’ll fit in and not be scarred for life.”

Well, Shane's Mom, I never switched and today I'm pleased to say that I recently "enjoyed" this conversation from a family near me in regard to the next generation's school ("actually, we're in Pre-K," they correct me) lunch:

Mother: How did you like the scallops [from the farmer's market]?

One of the twin's reply: I liked them but he didn't.

Scallops? Yes. Apparently, they still fly with four-year-olds (in Brooklyn) but what will happen when they're eight?

 

 

"I need something to eat" -- Roland's reflection on the same

Walking the streets of New York is a game of dodgeball. If it isn't a busker in the subway or a homeless vet on the corner or an activist with a clipboard, it's a person, like the one who approached me at the corner of Park Place and Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights last Thursday. I'd just come from a delicious meal with Daughter #2 at Cheryl's Global Soul, an extra-good and reasonably priced family fave; we'd had a lovely time and I was plenty full.

She was probably my age, maybe even 10 years younger, with a makeshift cast on her foot, a cane, a tattered coat, and large gaps between her teeth. I can't remember if she apologized first but however she approached me, it wasn't threatening. Just sad. She said the obvious: "I need something to eat." And because the received wisdom on the streets is that you "shouldn't" just give people money because, of course, they're all junkies and drunks, she was a step ahead. "You can buy it for me." Embarrassed at the wealth of riches in my wallet -- credit cards, Metro cards, and the almighty cash -- I reached right in. My impulse was to give it all to her but I didn't though I gave her the most I've ever handed out in a situation like this: a twenty. 

It happened right here (Google Street View)

She was so diminished that I'm not certain she took in that she could buy a couple of meals with that (in my mother's newly hip hometown, probably 1.5) but thanked me and shuffled off. I wanted to go with her, buy her several meals, find her an apartment and a job, and reform the entire economic system that results in her being where she is and me being where I am. Not to mention the Iraq War vet sitting on 23rd St in Manhattan the next morning with a big sign saying who he was and holding up his Army ID in case anyone would think someone would impersonate such a person. I'm sure it's possible but if ever anyone looked the part...

I didn't drop a dime for him or the half-dozen others I saw; maybe three dozen because at a certain point you have to screen it out or the pathos becomes overwhelming, paralytic. Big cities magnify the divisions and few places render them in greater 3D than New York.

All of which is prelude to Roland Merullo's reporting ("The table of the hungry") on the hornet's nest of greed and stupidity that is going on in Washington at the moment, making many more streets full of people like my friend from last Thursday. And reservations. Here (Boston Globe opinion page) he confronts a similar situation at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Roland says it all so well and with such precision. His lede:

I’ve been thinking lately about an expression I once heard from a Russian friend: “The full to the table of the hungry do not go.” I suppose it’s on my mind because of the news from Washington: the well-fed insisting on political grandstanding they surely know will cause great hardship to the poorest among us. It’s quite a sight, isn’t it, men and women earning six-figure salaries and pontificating about the need for cuts to programs that overwhelmingly give succor to the worst-off — the poor, the ill, the handicapped, the helpless. Then you see these same folks making a public spectacle of kneeling in prayer and asking God to help our nation. Where I come from we have a word for that. It is “hypocrisy.”

200 calories in pictures via wiseGEEK via artFido via Jim Clark

 

Via Jim Clark on Facebook, this photo series from artFido ("fetching art"), which it got from wiseGeek ("clear answers for simple questions") with different 200-calorie plates. Have you ever eaten an entire bunch of celery? And what's with the apricots?

 

From wiseGEEK:

When you consider that an entire plate of broccoli contains the same number of Calories as a small spoonful of peanut butter, you might think twice the next time you decide what to eat. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average adult needs to consume about 2000 - 2500 Calories to maintain their weight. In other words, you have a fixed amount of Calories to "spend" each day; based on the following pictures, which would you eat?

Coffee up!

Latte from my 2009 post on Taste Cafe (now George Howell Coffee)

I knew it. Coffee is my favorite food. Now comes science to support my natural desire. Thank you, Lindsay Abrams, for "The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like" in The Atlantic. She's reporting on research just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (credit due to Harvard School of Public Health Department of Nutrition Research Fellow Shilpa Bhupathiraju, the study's lead author).

As we joe-vistas believed, coffee seems to be right up there with blueberries and broccoli. Some clips from Abrams's article:

• "8 percent decrease in the risk of type 2 diabetes in women. In men, the reduction was 4 percent for regular coffee and 7 percent for decaf."
• "An inverse association between habitual, moderate consumption and risk of heart failure" [the benefit appeared to peak at 10 cups per day]
• "Caffeine might also function as a pain reliever."
• Depression! "While a small study this month found that concentrated amounts of caffeine can increase positivity in the moment, last September the nurses' cohort demonstrated a neat reduction in depression rates among women that became stronger with increased consumption of caffeinated coffee."
• And this: "So aside from caffeine, just what are you getting in a cup, or two, or six? Thousands of mostly understudied chemicals that contribute to flavor and aroma, including plant phenols, chlorogenic acids, and quinides, all of which function as antioxidents. Diterpenoids in unfiltered coffee may raise good cholesterol and lower bad cholesterol. "

Best nutritional news I've heard in a long time. Now I'm waiting for the study proving how beneficial my second most favorite food is: salt.

But excuse me for the moment. I'm going to brew my third cup of the day.

 

 

Carrot dust and heaven in a barn... and a flood... and a festival

It was a gorgeous late August day,
fields abundant with the fruits of summer.

 

Even the goat and pig were friendly.

 

But we had come to eat the best meal of our lives.
First, hors d's (photo by Etienne Frossard) on the patio

 

With the eve's wine in the fine hands of Daniel Johnnes (r)

Fifty people at one very long table in the center of the barn
(photo, Etienne)

with tomatoes for sale along the walls.

With Ray Bradley (left) and his pal (since they were 14 growing up near Storrs, CT) David Bouley cooking in the kitchen, grilling cod in the field.

Six courses, maybe 16 (photo from Bouley Restaurant on Facebook, thanks)

Which then were served to discerning palates (thanks again, Etienne)

Including the piece, the Carrot Dust of the title (Etienne, encore)

 

Course by course until it was over and David and Ray said goodbye
and that they'd do it again -- soon

And that the Annual Festival would take place Sept 25

 

But what we did not know is that just a few days later,
Hurricane Irene would turn Ray's farm into this
and ruin his whole crop

 

As the waters receded, fund-raising arose (everyone loves Ray)
and he continued to go to (Grand Army Plaza and 97th Street Farmers) Market
selling what he could (here on Sept 24)

 

And the next day, we went to the festival, which NY Times reported on here
and where Etienne took this picture of these tractor drivers

And I took this picture of Etienne

And of Heather Marold Thomason, whose company badfeather does Ray's website and who's been reporting on the flood on her blog

And said goodbye to Iris Kimberg, who runs the show

And to the stone pig

Artist alert for Bradley Farm

Further to yesterday's post from the Bradley Farm newsletter, pictures reprinted with permission (and I still promise that post on the heavenly meal served at Bradley Farm on Aug 21):

 

Show Your Support, Design a Bradley Farm T-shirt!

Here's your chance to help support Bradley Farm and show us how creative you can be!

Ray suffered terrible losses from Hurricane Irene. The farm, and with it the fields of crops that would have been harvested to sell at the markets, have all been flooded. We're planning to sell t-shirts as a fundraiser to help Ray recover some of his losses, and we thought it would be a lot more fun to get Ray's loyal customers in on the action.

Bradley Farm T-Shirt Contest
Send us your best idea. The winning t-shirt will be for sale at this year's Annual Farm Festival!

Contest: Email your design by Wednesday, September 14th to [email protected]. We'll choose a favorite and the winner will be announced in the next week's newsletter.

Prize: The winner will receive a t-shirt, a free ticket to this year's farm party and a big hug from Ray. All submissions will be included in a gallery on the website.

Details: Your design must be able to be reproduced in 1 or 2 colors (it will be silkscreened). Send us a jpeg, PDF or other digital file (no Word Docs please) that is at least 150dpi at actual size (email us with any questions about this).

"a dish seemingly made of time and water and sun"

Today's NY Times restaurant review by Sam Sifton has a phrase so lovely (see headline) that it is getting its own post. Here it is in context:

Here are sardines marinated in slick oil and pungent vinegar, with toasted pine nuts for texture and white raisins to bridge the sour and sweet. Iberico ham with grilled pan con tomate — a dish seemingly made of time and water and sun, happy pigs and spitting fires...

The restaurant under review is Boulud Sud near Columbus Circle in NY. I've never been there but that's not the point of this post. It's just the sublime writing. Nice work, Senor Sifton.

110 and it's time for Avocado Gazpacho

I've never made it but I will now. Lucky me: went out to dinner with very good friends at a lovely neighborhood restaurant in Brooklyn recently. The only problem was that it was 110 degrees. Not as in "feels like" 110. It was 110.

 

 

Who wants to eat? Apparently, we did. Miriam is an Israeli restaurant in Park Slope with extremely good food. None presented as well as this cooling soup, however.

And who doesn't like a restaurant that publishes recipes? Check out their site and you'll find some good ones.

Plus, how often do you look up from your table and see power couple Senator Chuck Schumer and CUNY Vice Chancellor Iris Weinshall waiting on line. (They were both wearing green polo-type shirts and looked just like everyone else trying to beat the heat.)