HILR hard-core foodies unite!

This is the blog of the HILR hard-core foodies. If you’re hard-core and not on my list, email me. Hard-core means that you are an enthusiastic cook as well as eater. We frown on the notion of food as medicine so you won’t find anything here about so-called “healthy food.” (All food is inherently healthy consumed in moderation.)  We expect every member to be an active contributor: the whole point is to have a good time learning from one another.

If you’d like to organize an outing to a restaurant, have a shopping tip, a favorite recipe (preferably with photo), would like to post on this blog, etc., just email me with the details.

What to do with left-over turkey

This one’s easy: of course, one makes a turkey sandwich (and turkey soup, and turkey pot pie, etc., etc.). I thought other foodies might take inspiration from my long-standing search for the perfect turkey sandwich.

Reading from the bottom: Pepperidge Farm seeded rye lightly toasted and sliced in half while warm (resulting in two slices each half the original thickness) spread with gravy, stuffing toasted in the toaster-oven until crisp on the outside, thinly-sliced white meat, emmenthal (swiss) cheese, crisp bacon, jellied cranberry sauce, hard-boiled egg, and mayonnaise.

A tradition of boned duck

Paul Royce explains his recent pursuit of a boned duck:

A Short History of Boned Fowl

According to culinary historians the introduction of boned fowl to haute cuisine began during the reign of Henry VIII of England. That monarch, as famous for his carnivorous propensities as for those carnal, choked on the drumstick of a duck during a bout of speed eating. He was rescued by Sir Thomas More who stood behind him, clasped his hands together and with an upward motion squeezed the King’s abdomen just below the rib cage causing the drumstick to come free of his windpipe, fly from his mouth, and land in the bosom of a young woman sitting opposite the King. This first known use of the Heimlich maneuver saved the King’s life but resulted in a riot as courtiers fought to determine who would dislodge the drumstick from the damsel’s cleavage. From that time on the King ate only boned fowl and some time later he showed his gratitude to the inventive More by executing him.

Julia Child brought boned duck preparation to the attention of American foodies with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961. A guide for boning a duck can be found on page 570. I have never tried the en croute recipe that follows.

I leave the duck meat in situ and do not cut it into cubes as she recommends. With the duck skin side down, I stuff it with sweet Italian sausage augmented with shelled pistachios, dried fruit, and a generous splash of cognac. Do not suture the roast too tightly because the skin will shrink and the stuffing may expand resulting in a ruptured duck. The somewhat limp, but not too limp, preparation is baked at 400 degrees until the internal temperature reaches 180 degrees.

With a little luck you will rewarded with a preparation similar to the one pictured. I prepare the roast a day or two before serving and refrigerate it when it has cooled. Serve it at room temperature.

A trip to New York City!!

If you follow that sort of thing, then you know that this fall is a particularly rich one for museum shows: Vermeer (review) and Robert Frank (review) at the Met , O’Keefe at the Whitney (review), Kandinsky at the Guggenheim (review), and so on.  If you saw this morning’s (Sept 18) Times Arts section you also saw the very favorable reviews of the latter two (do we need someone to tell us whether Vermeer is worthwhile? I can speak for Frank).

This suggests that it’s a good time to head down to Manhattan for a visit.  And, since we’re foodies, it means looking out for those obscure little restaurants which have so impressed the local foodies that they’ve become destination restaurants, humble as they may be.

I’ll be guiding a group of foodies to NYC with an emphasis on “value travel” (I’m not exactly cheap, but I learned my travel habits from Europe on $5 a Day). We would leave on Friday morning October 30th around 8am, returning Sunday November 1st to arrive in Boston around 8:30p. The choice between bus or car is a draw in terms of cost; the decision will be made later. Our headquarters will be the LaQuinta hotel on Queens Blvd, Queens (on the 7 subway) because it’s the cheapest one I know with a normal level of accommodation and amenities ($135/night/double room booked today).  We’ll spend a majority of our time at the museums but also hit the obligatory foodie stops in Soho (Balthazar, Dean and Deluca, MoMA design store) and elsewhere (Zabar’s).  Our two dinners will be in Queens at Sripraphai (Frank Bruni’s review in 2004 in the Times) and Spicy and Tasty (no website!; Bruni again from 2006: review).  I will do my best to be near other worthy places  when mealtimes arrive (Lupa in the Village for Saturday lunch, EAT on Madison at 80th, near the Met, for Sunday lunch).

Here’s a tentative (but likely) schedule:

Friday

1:15pm Grand Central Oyster Bar for lunch
2:15pm 57th Street & Madison galleries (Pace, Greenbery, Benrubi); Robuchon;
3:15pm Guggenheim (Kandinsky)
5:15pm Metropolitan (Frank, Vermeer)
7:00pm Zabar’s
8:30pm Sripraphai (Thai)
10:00pm Good Night

Saturday

9:00am walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan
10:30am Balthazar for breakfast
11:15am MoMA design store, Sur La Table, Dean & Deluca, galleries
12:20pm Lupa (Mario Battali) or Mercer Kitchen (George Vongerichten) for lunch
to Chelsea for galleries; to Brooklyn to walk across the bridge;
8pm Spicy and Tasty (Szechuan)
9:30pm Good Night

Sunday

9:45am Metropolitan (Frank, Vermeer)
12N Whitney (O’Keefe)
1:15pm EAT for lunch
perhaps PS1;

Tentative budget: lodgings: $150; bus/subway: $30; museum admissions: $60; Friday lunch and dinner: $55; Saturday breakfast, lunch and dinner: $90; Sunday lunch: $30; add Boston-NYC transportation;

More to come . . . (email me with expressions of interest)

Cooking Pizza

Some foodies gathered last Saturday at the home of Len and Judith Inker to put together a wide-range of “unusual” pizzas: not a tomato in the bunch!

Len started us off with some very unusual potato chips.  Sliced on a mandoline, a pair of chips is pressed around a sage leaf and then fried.  Very tasty!

Then Ann Oppenheimer whipped up a cream cheese and wild smoked salmon pizza:

Deb and I countered with mascarpone, speck and arugula, one of our all time favorites:

Heidi Vernon upped the topping quotient with her roasted squash and cheeses:

Kitty Selfridge and Pat Ruopp came forward with fig jam, proscuitto, cheese and arugula:

And Len closed out the parade with portobella mushrooms and goat cheese on a flour tortilla:

Thanks to Len and Judith for their hospitality and to Len for many batches of fine pizza dough!

Lunch at Cafe Boulud in Manhattan

If you should find yourself near 76th and Madison (a block above the Whitney) around lunchtime, there is only one reasonable thing to do. That’s to drop in at Cafe Boulud (as annoying a website as I’ve ever encountered) for a top-drawer French meal for $24.  Now you may have heard that NY restaurants were taming down their prices in response to the financial crisis, but you probably didn’t think that someone like Daniel Boulud would have to react so decisively.  Not only can you have a splendid 3-course meal for $24, you can have a bottle of wine for the same $24.  Here’s the prix fixe menu:

 

So, what does it look like when it gets to the table?  Here’s the amuse bouche (the 4th course?), a slice of fresh date with something-or-other plus a sorrel leaf on top (and a cayenne dusted toasted almond on the side):

Here’s the duck terrine entrée (the French version of appetizer) which was so appealing that we both ordered it:

Then we had jointly selected (Deb and I always agree on our order because each eats half of every dish) as plats the hanger steak on celery root purée with Tuscan chard and cannelini beans.  The celery root purée has since become a staple of our what-to-have-with-the-steak repertoire:

Along with a very French version of potato gnocchi with spring vegetables:

As expected, the desserts were standard issue high-end (not a thrill for us): a carrot cake (note the terrific carrot chip garnish):

and a chocolate brownie:

The pièce de résistance, however, was the basket of miniature madeleines in place of petits fours:

Finally, the most  pleasant dénouement imaginable:

Needless to say, we’ll be back on every trip down.

Review of 51 Lincoln

51 Lincoln Restaurant, 51 Lincoln Street, Newton Highlands, MA; 617-965-3100; website

review by Heidi Vernon

I called for reservations a week in advance of this past Saturday evening. It was my husband Jerry’s birthday dinner with our youngest daughter and her husband as our guests.  I wanted this to be low key consistent with Jerry’s wishes but still a festive occasion. I made sure the restaurant knew it was his birthday and that we wanted a dessert to share after the meal.  We arrived five minutes early, were warmly greeted, and immediately seated while we waited for our daughter and son-in-law who arrived shortly after.  The owner brought us menus, and took drink orders. Our son-in-law knows the owner and we were treated like important guests. This is a restaurant that takes its drinks seriously. The bartender came over to introduce himself and brought a complimentary homemade hibiscus liqueur with a dark sweet, slightly tart, complex flavor that should not be missed. Our son-in-law had a sloe gin fizz (my high school choice of drink that I have not had in 55 years) made with imported English sloe berries. Jerry who loved Budweiser beer was happy with Narragansett beer as a substitute. The delicious breadbasket included cornbread, ciabatta, and French bread slices with a deeply flavorful olive oil and whipped sweet butter   

   We shared the following appetizers: crispy Szechuan calamari with lemon, smoked tomato aioli and tomato chili jam (a paper-lined bowl full of perfectly fried calamari bodies and tentacles with slightly spicy creamy aioli and a tart chili jam), charcuterie plate of house made selection, cornichons and pommery mustard (two rounds of cured salami, a chunk of country paté, and paper thin slices of smoked turkey. Hot crispy grilled batons of bread accompanied this offering. The chef sent over a complimentary half order of rigatoni Bolognese that we devoured. It was a perfectly-sized blend of pasta, meat, sauce, and cheese. 

   My main dish was pan roasted all natural chicken on salsify and golden beet purée and a scallion hydrocress salad (a very generous boned crispy golden skinned chicken breast on a smoothly unctuous vegetable puree. The cress salad was a perfect foil).

Jerry had the miso marinated salmon with spring vegetable stir fry, sushi rice, and mirin soy reduction (perfectly cooked fresh salmon filet with delicious rice and vegetables). Our son-in-law Marc had the seared Wolfe’s Neck Farm skirt steak, queso fresco arepa stack, jalepeno jam, saffron pickled egg) The steak was done perfectly medium rare, the arepa is a Latin American corn cake with fresh cheese. Marc took one bite of the pickled egg and quickly handed it over to our daughter Jennifer. Jen, who said they had been eating non-stop on their recent trip to Florida had the signature appetizer of pan seared watermelon steak in a curried potato stick nest. Along with a side dish of spring vegetable stir fry, it was a light but ample meal. 

   We shared a wedge of spice cake with caramel that had a candle for the birthday boy. We had wonderfully friendly and expert service. We felt completely welcome and that this was a special dinner in a neighborhood bistro. We live in Newton and it is clear that the management is committed to making locals feel at home. Prices are entirely reasonable considering the very high quality of the food and lovely presentation. Hope you enjoy it too.

World’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

Pierre Herme is a master of chocolate. When asked to come up with a chocolate cookie for a friend’s Paris restaurant, he invented this:

The truc is the fleur de sel in the dough and on top.  Here’s the recipe.

Heidi’s Cookies

Heidi has kindly sent this cookie cookbook with a large number of tempting recipes. We tasted the chocolate cookies from Maida Heatter at our meeting yesterday!

Smorrebrod and sangria

Mary Lee sends this tempting photo of her spread of “old family favorites” for the summer solstice last summer: