Images from New York, recent visits to the MoMA edition.

From the entrance of Inventing Abstraction.

One of the things I miss most about living in Manhattan is being able to go to the Museum of Modern Art whenever I felt like it. Getting the single membership was one of the most frugal things we did when we lived in the city; between Michael’s free access to the Met through his Columbia post-doc and this membership, we could partake in a magnitude of art without having to spend a ton of money on admission fees every time we had the inclination. Keeping the membership following the move was my way to maintain a tie to the city, to give us a concrete reason to return again and again.

So we go with some regularity these days, though not at the same clip we previously did. I’ve been able to catch most, if not all of the special exhibitions that have caught my eye: from Century of the Child to Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen to Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art, to Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914. Recently opened is Inventing Abstraction, an impressive survey of artists from Kandinsky to Mondrian to Duchamp who all through their various connections to each other took the early lessons of Cubism and turned it into what we would call abstract art. There’s a lovely playlist that accompanies the exhibit that you can listen to in a special room off the main exhibit, but you can also access it here if you’re unable to make it to New York before April. 

04.14.20: pickled ramps.

 

The end of winter/beginning of spring is a rough time to have blog friends who live in places like California. They torture you with their tales of how amazing the weather is and with their gorgeous photos of Meyer lemon trees and budding strawberries, telegraphing tales of warmth to us suckers from the Rockies to the East who have to suffer through the indignities of the winter-spring transition that usually means lackluster fruits without an end in sight. Even with the relatively mild winter we had here, this can be a rather frustrating process while we wait for spring produce and weather warm enough to finally start planting things. One benefit we do get this time of year, however, is ramp season, but because we aren’t allowed nice things for very long, that season is cruelly short.

It’s been almost a year ago to the day since I’ve last had my hands on some ramps: having taken the day off to catch the Copa del Rey final between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, I headed down to Union Square that morning to get what I figured would be the last of the ramps of the season and to finally try the pizza at Eataly. I think I ended up taking a good $12 worth home and we made salsa and pesto and all kinds of good things. (That was also the day that Michael told me that the job he wanted and eventually got was available once more, but it’s best not to get into that particular memory.) With us no longer being a mere two subway rides away from my favorite greenmarket, I had resigned myself to having a ramp-less spring this year, as Google searches came up with a lot of ways to build a ramp, but not to buy wild leeks locally. This, to be honest, didn’t surprise me all that much.

Jamon, jamon, or: the story of the sex ham.

Jamón Ibérico de Bellota

Do you have those foods that you never, ever purchase (usually due to some combination of expense, availability, and no idea what to do with it) but long for anyway? Or foods that you have reserved in your mind to only indulge in for a very specific, very celebratory reason, regardless of whether you’ve ever tasted it or not? The image of sitting down at a fine steakhouse and ordering the Wagyu ribeye along with a glass of 80-dollar scotch comes to mind, if just a tad on the extreme side. To get to my point: it’s the treat that you know you can only indulge in as a treat maybe once a  year at most, or something you’d only buy for very, very special reasons.

I have a few things on that list like mozzarella di bufala and a really good bottle of champagne, but my biggest obsession that I never indulged in was getting some jamón ibérico de bellota either from Fairway or Despaña. While no cured ham could be considered a bargain, ibérico is the platinum standard, widely considered the apex of cured ham deliciousness and usually it can only be had for, at minimum, 100 bucks a pound. When you live in a place like New York, ephemeral luxuries like this feel far too outrageous to indulge in without knowing exactly what you’re getting, so I  told myself that I would figure out a really good reason to get some eventually. I’d see the hock of it at Fairway when it would be my turn to wait in line at the deli, but I always managed to resist an impulse to purchase it.

12.27.11: dinner (rib roast and Tom Colicchio’s orecchiette with artichoke, cabbage, and cranberry beans)

Bone-In Ribeye Steak, aka the best damn roast beef we ever had.

One of the downsides in traveling to celebrate the holidays is not having a reason to buy any of the special holiday-only products that are usually in one’s supermarket meat department. At Fairway this is particularly difficult when you see such fascinating things like goose or capon or the crown roasts of lamb and pork that are on special and look absolutely delicious, but are far too large for two people to reasonably consume on their own. The week before Christmas tested our resistance to not hauling home a huge hunk of meat when Fairway was sampling its standing choice rib roasts: two bites of the medium-rare beef had us both sorely tempted,  but it felt a little too over-indulgent, even for us. Cut to a few days later when a gift card to my favorite store fell into my lap and it took all of five seconds for me to offer to use it to procure a couple of bones of rib roast. We purchased it the evening before we were heading to Pennsylvania for the holiday weekend, and the following morning it was in the fridge, dry-aging to perfection.

07.09.11: home-curing salmon (Copper River sockeye gravlax with goat cheese over a bagel)

Copper River Sockeye Gravlax with Goat Cheese on a a Pumpernickel Bagel

Much like any supermarket around the country, ordering anything from the deli department at Fairway can require a wait of some duration on the weekends, and you just have to roll with the punches and try not to shoot too many death glares at the hapless dad ordering half the case’s contents a quarter pound at a time. Being a New York supermarket, though, Fairway also has a smoked fish counter right next to the deli where you don’t have to take a number and usually it’s a very simple in-and-out process…until you get stuck behind the mom ordering two pounds of smoked salmon for her brunch that day, and they don’t bring in another person to help alleviate the growing line behind her as the slicer stands there methodically making her way through the enormous salmon fillet (and then another fillet because one was not enough). I guess it was to be expected–it was Saturday morning on the Upper West Side, after all–but when you only need someone to spoon some alici into a plastic dish and hand it over to you, your patience wears ever thinner as each expertly-cut slice of pink fish is added to the pile.

The mom turned to us with an apologetic smile on her face–at least she waited with us, I suppose–and remarked that maybe she should have just gotten some pizzas or sandwiches after all. I silently grumbled that Fairway has a catering office so she could have at least called ahead, but by then it was a  cow’s opinion so it didn’t matter either way. (Incidentally, one way I entertain myself while waiting for such things is mentally flipping through my internal encyclopedia of pop-culture references. That leads me to giggle for no reason, but at least that ‘s better than giving strangers the stink-eye, right?)

That particular shopping trip came to mind when I was slicing through our little piece of gravlax last week, as I was only trying to slice enough to top half a bagel each for Michael and I as a mid-afternoon snack. Getting those gorgeous slices is not nearly as easy as it looks–no wonder the pros slice at the pace they do.

Reflections on leaving New York and my daily bus commute.

125th and Morningside

They took down the signs for the M&G Diner last Monday morning. I caught a glimpse of them unhooking the corner sign as well as dismantling the beautiful “ol’ fashion’ but Good!” sign from the front of the building while my cab was stopped at Morningside Drive. I was brought back to my first few bus rides to and from the train station, looking for landmarks to let me know I was near either end of the trip, and I still remember seeing the soul food restaurant from the pilot of 30 Rock for the first time ever, in real life and being completely floored that I passed this place that was on a show that I loved on a daily basis. That the building has been stripped of its iconic yellow paint and more iconic, beautiful signs…well, it’s not difficult to throw around the phrase “the end of an era.” Also, I wanted to yell “Yo! Get me ten beers!” really, really badly.

04.02.11: a night at the James Beard House with Barcelona Wine Bar

Red Wine Sorbet, prior to the addition of Coca-Cola. Flashes were going off everywhere, leading to this blue light.

In a city overflowing with unique fine dining options, deciding on which ones are worth the splurge can make for a daunting task. While ideally you’d treat it as some sort of culinary bucket list, checking each location off with glee as you lean back into your chair satisfied and smiling, unless you have a fairly generous budget it’s generally not prudent to be spending triple digits (or more) on a single meal on a regular basis. This is why the list of marquee places we’ve been is relatively short–and most of the visits were made when we still lived in New Haven, and since we’ve moved here we’ve made the conscious decision to mainly focus on home cooking.

But as much as both Michael and I enjoy cooking, we do enjoy a break from the kitchen and a chance to let off some steam now and again. We tend to prefer the laid-back ease of a Dinosaur Barbecue over one of the fussy white tablecloth establishments found all over the Upper West Side, but there is something to be said to getting dressed up a bit and going someplace nice for a knockout dinner. So when an email turned up in my inbox a few weeks ago inviting us to the James Beard House for a special dinner being prepared by the Barcelona Wine Bar team, it took all of a few hours of debate and a few perusals of the menu before I was calling them up the next day to place our reservations for April 2nd. As friends of the restaurant we were generously given the member rate which made the justification a bit easier in the end, as was the knowledge that we’d be getting a fair amount of food paired with top-notch wines.

In the end we enjoyed 15 dishes (plus five or six passed appetizers)–even served tapas-style, it was a substantial feast that certainly deserved the analogy to “marathon” that was being tossed around at the end of the evening. We don’t want to bore you with the details of absolutely every dish we enjoyed, but we do want to offer both our perspectives. Continue with us (and forgive us for some blurry photos) after the jump.

Images from New York, random ramblings edition.

Outside the Time & Life Building, 50th Street and 6th Ave

On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.

Frank O’Hara, “A Step Away from Them“

Saturday was a day that required to be spent outside. Despite the unseasonal coolness the sun was out in force, and I had an itinerary that was to take me all over the city. As I mentioned yesterday and last week (and endlessly last Friday to all of my coworkers who were probably sick hearing me yap about it), Michael is off gallivanting at a conference all week, leaving me to my own devices and plans, both those of a culinary and non-culinary sort.

Images from New York; MoMA, NYU and the West Village

Detail from Marcel Duchamp's "Network of Stoppages"

Springtime is almost here. After the winter we’ve had, it can’t come quickly enough–I’m longing for warm days and sandals and photographing food in natural light. We had a small taste of it Saturday when my parents came up for a day trip, and given my parents’ penchant for walking the day practically demanded a long stroll around the city.

Shopping in New York: Russ & Daughters on the Lower East Side.

Russ & Daughters

I have a new thing–sitting on benches in front of world-famous stores and glaring at people as they pass by making asinine comments.

Michael

It’s a good thing (for us) that the Lower East Side requires several subway changes to get to it from where we live, mainly because the primary attraction for us is Katz’s Deli. Were it any closer than I’m pretty sure M would be dragging me there any time he had a craving for pastrami to the point where we’d require assistance in getting out of our doors on a daily basis. As it is, we save our trips down there for special treats, maybe only going a few times a year at most. But we now have an additional excuse to visit this neighborhood, which will test my limits of self-restraint whenever I’m craving some smoked nova salmon: Russ & Daughters. I had heard of it prior to going in on Saturday, of course, but never ventured inside because the timing never seemed conducive to shopping there. On Saturday I told Michael that we would be stopping there so I could get brunch provisions for the next day, and my resolve was to the end so steely that I even refrained from ordering my usual lox platter at Katz’s and went for the latkes.