Ethical foie gras

I love the taste of foie gras, hate the cruelty of machine force feeding. Not that fattened liver is worse than most other industrially raised meats, but I'm uncomfortable with them, too.

Have always thought that it must be possible to use geese' and ducks' natural instinct for gorging before migration to produce fat liver. And then my pastry chef sister sends me this link...

A talk - about 20 min. on You Tube - by Blue Hill chef Dan Barber about a visit to Eduardo Sousa in southwestern Spain. His Patería de Sousa produces natural foie gras with free range geese that stock up on figs, olives and a lot of wild plants and herbs.

No gavage, the geese just follow their natural rythym and stuff themselves in the fall. The foie is only produced in season, and preserved by confitering. His family has done it since 1812. Barber says it's the best, he's tasted. Must try.

på dansk

Back on the farm

Home again. It seems like eons ago, I was eating pastrami sandwiches and salted cukes at Katz's with the girl chef and Jonas... gangsta look.

I love being in this space between homes. For a few days, things I take for granted are in motion. The big choices are visible, before I get into the rythym of this part of my life. Movable feast. Deep and refreshing. A kind of being reborn.

See you!

A fond farewell to take out. Corn, pineapple and It's a beautiful morning muffins. Frittatas, veggie quiche.
Sushi, Korean, thin-crust pizza, a half espresso with a shot of chocolate, seaweed salad, porchetta on a roll, braised greens, sushi.Quick, early morning bagel on the highway.Sushi.
Oops, the girl chef shopping.
Even from supermarkets... Really good self-composed salad and spit-roasted lemon chicken from Wegmann's in Ithaca. From Union Square Whole Foods fresh cut fruit, marinated mushrooms, artichoke salad, sesame tofu and buckwheat noodles. I've only cooked 3 or 4 meals the whole time I've been here. And I'm the cook....

Christmas borscht

Mahla and I weren't the only ones New Year's cleansing in the Russian-Turkish baths on 10th Street yesterday afternoon. I'm glad we braved the masses, my skin still feels like satin.We hit Ukrainan Veselka's for a late dinner, braving crowds again with a half hour wait for a table. I was happy, finally got my bowl of Christmas borscht, traditional pre-Mass fare in Eastern Europe. Nice, light, with the right amount of vinegar and mushroom pierogi floating in the bowl.
And their great rasberry blintzes, thick-ish crepes filled with sour cream, for dessert. Two of the things I love in this otherwise bland and rather heavy, sausage and cabbage based cuisine with alarmingly few fresh veggies. My sister and the girl chef got meat and sauerkraut dishes and swore never to set their legs near Eastern European food again. My sympathies...

Happy New Year!

Spent part of New Year's Eve with my Dad at his favorite food market, Cerrado's in Clifton, NJ. Coming from Dk it's just joyously a lot of seriously good food at great prices.
Sets off my I-am-not-a-foodie refrain. We're not in a market created for discerning gourmets - not a bad word about that. This is a food store, where normal Italian-, Middle Eastern-, Asian- and the odd Anglo-Saxon Americans buy their dinner. Fish, meat, pasta and whole aisles of canned tomatoes and olive oil...Mounds of nice, cheap veggies. A big variety of good cheese sold by people, who know what they're doing. My Dad picked up 12 lbs. of curd to make his homemade mozzarella. Don't mind having those genes.

Godt nytaar!

Midtown windows

An evening foray out of our East Village home base, braving the crowds on 5th Ave, catching the gorgeous windows at Bergdorff's. Wouldn't I loved to have created one of those!
Crazy animals, swimming fish and decorated cupcakes, charlottes and wedding cakes.
Loving the Obama effect with brown models at posh Fendi's. Stock up, girls.

Octopus agrodolce

My high quality midwife sister catches homebirthed babies in NYC, leaving a trail of touched, happy parents around town. One of them is a chef at Aliseo, a great little Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.
We dropped in after an afternoon of checking out Dumbo, trend-city under the Manhatten Bridge. Missed Olafur Eliassons waterfall installation, though. It was under the bridge this summer and fall. The salt water mist seemingly killed a lot of the local River Cafe's plants. Oops. Would have liked to see it, though.
At Aliseo we had real food and good wine with roots in Le Marche. Part of this trip is about Food Agency inspiration, this is definitely some.

Home cured salumi, white anchovies in a lemon dressing, scallops in pancetta with great grilled cabbage, braised goat, gnocchi, panna cotta with a super anis sauce, and a winner - Crispy octopus agrodolce. I got a kind of a recipe from the chef:
Boil the octopus tender in water, wine, salt and 'some spices'. Pan fry it crispy and toss with agrodolce. Hmm... Maybe we'll have a try with the monster in my Dad's freezer.

We drank a luscious Rosso Conero from Garofoli. Big producers, still craftsmen.

China street

Kathrine's happy guy

Redfish... lots of fish

Boy with ducks on hooks

Pretzels from the hippo panda

The ultimate golden gulls.

Latkes - the Chanukah worm says mazel tov!

In the best Chanukah spirit, we spent Christmas Eve with an old friend making latkes, enjoying her childhood tradition of eating them fresh from the pan. The ingredients are:

4 lbs. - ca. 1,5 kg - baking potatoes

1 big onion

2 tbsp/spsk matzoh meal, wheat flour is fine, too

2 eggs

salt and peper

The potatoes were peeled and grated along with the onions on the Acme Special Safety Grater. We took turns. Dangerous tool, I was sure somebody'd get bloody knuckles. But no...

Remove some of the water with a few paper towels. Then mix the egg, flour, salt and pepper with the grated potatoes.
Heat up 1 1/2 inches of oil. Drop spoonfulls of the potato mixture into the hot oil and flatten the cakes. Turn them over when they're nicely browned on the first side. When they're finished drain them on some paper towels to absorb some of the fat.

Latkes are best right from the pan. If they make it to a plate, they're good with applesauce. Mott's is a classic, I'd rather have my mom's.

The latkes were delicious, much better - more delicate - than the ones I traveled uptown to get at Zabar's last time I was in this mecca-city of Jewish cuisine. Secrets are minimal amounts of egg and matzoh meal, flattening the cakes when they get on the pan and having the right temperature oil.
Happy Chanukah!

Blue Christmas

'Why don't you stay home today, we'll help out at the bakery tomorrow'. Decorating a big custom order of smurf blue and white snowflake shortbread cookies sounded like a breeze Sunday evening with Barbera in the nose. After hours of diligent piping with The Nutcracker on replay in the background we were definitely in the Christmas spirit.OMG, you actually licked that pastry bag...???

Kind of perfect

Pre-Christmas dinner, we went wild at Wegman's. Irma x 50 plus some well stocked veg, cheese, fish, meat, bakery and take-out departments. Lots of organic. Quali, quali.

Scallop ceviche with lime, horseradish and chives. Beef tenderloin - I was in scaloppini mode, but the available veal is raised nastily, so it's on the boycott list. Mushrooms, green beans, potatoes in phyllo packs. And the wine...

From Sparrow's Fine Wines. I wanted a light red with a smell that does the same thing for me as good pinot noir. David, the owner, gave me a bottle of Barbera d'Asti. Montetusa, 1997 from A. Bertelli. Didn't cost much, I would have paid it for the nose. Uhhh, well... Drank it with the tenderloin. Mami. Food and wine heaven with super company with great palates.

Certain sacrifices

Staying with a high quality baker of a sister, it's easy to get sucked into having to eat her homebaked croissants for breakfast. A couple with discreetly sweetened almond paste. A few plain. And pain au chocolat, one of my all time favorites when they're good.Needless to say...

Mmm...

I've had tears in my eyes plenty of times during the night. One of them was when April Lorraine Young said on TV2 early this morning, that this is the first time the USA really feels like her country. Her tears. My tears. That old wound is in me, too. Something that has been terribly wrong has shifted to something more right. Somewhere deep inside I relaxed, the change is almost imperceptible and yet profound.I laughed when I asked my local pastry chef to decorate the bakery's delicious French chocolate cake with a picture of Obama. Had the pleasure of eating it with a couple of good friends, aware of the history of the moment. Accompanied by... tears... and a nice, red dessert wine - Arturo's Passito di Terre verdiane. Congratulations to us all!

Hey Dad...

I forgot to say so on the phone, but the blackberries in the back are beautiful again this year. Great memories of picking them last summer. At the perfect stage of ripeness, so they were big, sweet and juicy for breakfast.