→ November 23, 2009
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Macaroni & Cheese with Gruyère and Thyme.

Before I get to the recipe, I wanted to point out that Amazon.com is selling a one-year subscription to ESPN the Magazine for $5 this week. I believe that this will also get you a year of Insider.

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This is my reboot of this recipe; since I can’t abide cheddar cheese, I decided to make it with Gruyère, a milder cheese that’s also one of the best melting cheeses I’ve ever used.

Gruyère also happens to be the classic cheese at the heart of a sauce mornay, and mac and cheese is little more than cooked pasta covered in a sauce mornay with extra cheese and baked till semi-firm and golden brown on down. A sauce mornay is built on a sauce Béchamel*, one of the “mother sauces” and a somewhat secret ingredient in dishes like lasagna. A Béchamel starts with a flour-butter roux to which one adds milk (the traditional method is to steep an onion studded with a bay leaf and a few cloves in the milk first) and then simmers very gently until thickened. Add Gruyère and Parmiggiano-Reggiano to a Béchamel and you have a mornay.

*So one of the Food and Wine pavilions at Epcot this year had some dish served in a Béchamel sauce, and while I was walking by, I overheard a female tourist from somewhere in the northeast yell to her family that the dish was in a “buh-KAM-el” sauce. Granted, not everyone knows what a Béchamel is or how to say it, but if you saw that word and didn’t know it, how far down the list of potential pronunciations would “buh-KAM-el” be? Twentieth? Eightieth? A hundred and twelfth?

Since Gruyère is a French and Swiss-French cheese I went for one of the Frenchiest herbs I could think of, thyme, which pairs very well with Gruyère, and added parsley for some background music. Tarragon is probably the other herb I most associate with French cooking, but it’s too assertive for this dish in my opinion, and it’s more of a spring herb than a fall/winter comfort food flavor. Chives might work. I guess what I’m saying is that you can and should play with the herbs in this dish, just bearing in mind that the cheese flavor is on the soft side and you don’t want the finished product to taste like grass or licorice.

I’ve tried the dish with and without bread crumbs in the topping and I prefer it without, but it’s just a matter of taste. I also cut the mustard (!) in half to keep it in the background; it’s also a very French flavor but not everyone likes a mustardy smack in the mouth.

Whole Foods has organic whole wheat elbows under the 365 label for $1.99. I found a Swiss Gruyère at Trader Joes for $9.99 a pound; a roughly 10-11 ounce brick should give you enough for two batches.

1 1/2 cups elbow-shaped pasta (whole wheat works fine; you can try other shapes but it may alter the cooking time in the oven)
3 T unsalted butter
3 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp dry mustard
2 cups milk, anything but skim
1 1/2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 cups (about 5 ounces) grated Gruyère cheese (nothing too fancy like “cave aged for 20 years” or anything)
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp Parmiggiano-Reggiano
salt/pepper to tastes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a saucier (if you have one) or deep skillet or sauté pan, melt the butter and allow to foam but not brown. Add the flour and whisk constantly until a small paste forms. Add the mustard.
3. Gradually add the milk (you may choose to heat it first for faster cooking), still whisking constantly to create a smooth liquid.
4. Allow the mixture to simmer gently for 5-7 minutes until it’s visibly thickened and coats the back of a spoon. Add the herbs, then begin adding the Gruyère in small handfuls, whisking each addition into the sauce until it’s fully integrated. (If you add it all at once and whisk, you will end up with a big congealed clump in the center of your whisk – a hot mess if ever there was one.) Add 1/2 cup of the Parmiggiano-Reggiano and kill the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper (white pepper works well here for aesthetic reasons).
5. Cook the pasta in several quarts of salted water and drain. You don’t want the pasta sitting and waiting for the sauce, so I usually put a small pot of water on high heat when I start the roux.
6. Grease a casserole dish and add the pasta. Pour the sauce over the pasta and toss to coat. Spread the remaining Parmiggiano-Reggiano over the top and bake until the top is golden, brown, and delicious and the center is slightly firm, 20-25 minutes, 30 if you want to be able to cut firm, stable wedges of the dish.

UPDATE: Reader Steve asked about adding leeks and/or bacon. I haven’t tried this variation, but here’s how I’d approach it:
* Chop the bacon finely and crisp in a skillet, rendering out as much fat as possible. Remove the bacon to a paper towel, then add to the casserole right before it goes in the oven.
* Pour out all but maybe 1 Tbsp of the fat from the skillet and use that to sweat the leeks. Slightly browning them is optional but would add more flavor – just don’t burn them. Add with the bacon to the mix right before baking.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
→ October 29, 2009
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Sear-roasted chicken breasts with orange-brandy sauce.

Chat today at 1 pm. Yesterday’s hit on the Herd is now online (and already out of date!).

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I’ve adapted this recipe from the February 2009 issue of Fine Cooking – my favorite cooking magazine, and the only one I’ve received over the last five years – with a few tweaks and fixes, although the core concept is the same. It helps to brine the chicken ahead of time, but I don’t think that’s strictly necessary, since the sauce itself has so much flavor. The dish is excellent over couscous (we use whole wheat), which soaks up any excess sauce on the chicken. With about five minutes to go in the oven, I’ll throw some asparagus spears, sliced into two-inch lengths, into the pan and toss to coat in the pan juices and rendered chicken fat, then let the asparagus finish roasting with the chicken.

The recipe would also work great with salmon; skip the brine, sear 3 minutes on the flesh side, then flip and roast until cooked through.

1 whole bone-in, skin-on chicken breast, split into two halves*
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (navel or Valencia)
3 Tbsp salt
1 cup water

1 medium shallot, minced (about 1/4 cup total)
3 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp brandy or cognac
1 (more) cup orange juice
1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 orange, peeled and sliced into segments

*Yes, your butcher can split this for you, but if you own a chef’s knife, just flip the whole breast over and do it yourself to save a few dimes.

1. Combine 1 cup orange juice, 1 cup water, and salt, stirring until dissolved. (You can also heat 1/2 cup of water, dissolve the salt in it, then cool it down with ice to end up with a cup of water.) Place the chicken breasts in the brine for one to two hours.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the chicken breasts from the brine and pat dry. Season with salt and black pepper. In an oven-safe skillet or saute pan, heat about 1 Tbsp olive oil until hot but not smoking, and sear the chicken, skin side down, until well browned, 4-5 minutes. Flip and sear on the second side until lightly browned, 2-3 minutes. Place entire skillet in the oven and roast until 160 degrees in the center, 15-20 minutes.

3. Remove the skillet from the oven and place on a stove burner. Take the chicken out of the pan and place on a plate, under tented foil, to rest. Drain all fat from the pan and add 2 Tbsp butter and the shallot to the pan. Cook over medium heat, scraping the bottom of the pan (I use a wooden spatula) to remove all browned bits.

4. When the shallots have softened, turn off the heat and add the brandy. Return to medium heat and cook until most of the brandy has disappeared from the pan. Add 1 cup orange juice and cook over medium-high at a brisk simmer until thickened and reduced by half, then add the chicken broth and cook until thickened again.

5. Turn off the heat and add the parsley, 1 Tbsp butter, and orange segments, swirling to mount the butter in the sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve sauce over sliced chicken.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , ,
→ October 8, 2009
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Washington DC eats.

Chat today at 1 pm EDT. Baseball Tonight on ESPN Radio at 10:27 pm EDT (if your local affiliate isn’t carrying the late game).

All right, I’ve been promising this for two weeks but playoff writing took precedence. I had two full days in DC plus a half-day, which turned into five different restaurants plus what I ate at the ballpark. All of these places but one are in the McPherson Square/Farragut area.

Breakfast both mornings was at Teaism, a tea salon that serves a full breakfast with a limited menu, although it was diverse enough for me. The best item – besides the tea, which is loose-leaf and served in ceramic pots – is the ginger scones, crumbly and faintly sweet with chunks of crystallized ginger in the scone and castor sugar on top. Two of those plus the cilantro scrambled eggs – cilantro and diced green bell pepper in eggs, little light on the salt and probably cooked 30 seconds past perfect – was more than enough food, since the egg platter comes with a small fruit salad and triangles of grilled whole-wheat naan. I also tried the tea-cured salmon, which had great flavor (a little sweet, a little savory, like a cup of a mild Indian black tea with a half teaspoon of sugar) and was obviously very fresh (they say they do the curing themselves) but had a chewier texture than good smoked salmon. Teaism’s only real drawback is that it’s not cheap, running $15+ each day including tip.

Worst meal of the trip, by far, was at Kaz Sushi Bistro, an overpriced Japanese restaurant where the focus is definitely not on the food. The fish itself was completely tasteless; the seaweed salad came with a mayonnaise-based dressing; everything was overpriced; and the two people serving as hosts were rude to each other and to at least one group of customers.

Casa Blanca is a small Peruvian (or Peruvian-plus) place on Vermont Ave that is an anti-Kaz in that the focus is on the food and definitely not on the decor or ambience. I ordered chicharrones (fried chunks of pork shoulder) with fried yucca, which was, of course, a bit on the heavy side but crispy and salty with a little bit of a peppery kick. Their homemade tamarind juice is good, a little too sweet for me but given the tangy taste of tamarind, I imagine this is how most people prefer the drink. They apparently also make great empanadas, although those appeared to be for takeout customers and weren’t on the menu. Service is a bit indifferent, and remained so even when I ordered in Spanish. Cash only.

I left the area once for lunch and headed over to Eastern Market to try Market Lunch, where folks apparently line up in great numbers on weekend mornings for pancakes. I had read that Market Lunch had one of the top crab cake sandwiches in the city, and their fries are hand-cut, which sold me. The crab cake was above-average, mostly crab, all lump, lightly seasoned so that the primary taste is of the crab meat, but the crab cake itself wasn’t fresh or even hot, just lukewarm, as if it had been sitting for five minutes. I understand they’re trying to keep people moving, but crab cakes should, at worst, be kept hot if they have to be held at all. The fries were on the greasy side. I suppose if you work in the area and need something fast, this is a great option, but I’m not sure it was worth the Metro* trip.

*Seriously, another city with a crappy subway system. Philly’s system is cash-only and is filthier than Rome’s. Washington’s takes credit cards, but the cost of your ride depends on exactly where you’re boarding and exiting, instead of the single-price system used, oh, everywhere else in the country. And is there a reason the stations are all so dark? You could grow white asparagus down there.

As for Nationals Park, it’s nice, clean, big, and kind of boring. It has forced character, not actual charm. And I’m sorry, you don’t get to put up posters of great players who didn’t play for your franchise – you can take the Senators’ history, by all means, but Honus Wagner is not yours. They get big props for Teddy’s Q stand out in right field. They smoke the meat right there, in a smoker that’s at the edge of the tent, and both items I had were solid. The pulled pork sandwich wasn’t too dry and only needed a little sauce for flavor, while the beef (short) rib was perfectly smoked with plenty of well-browned edges. I’m not sure what’s in the beef rub, but it’s sweet without any heat – a little pepper would balance out the sweetness well. Two quibbles: At $14, the rib should come with something on the side, even the tiny cole slaw that comes with the sandwich; and it seems odd that you have to go to another stand to get a starch like French fries. The Nats also get props for the kosher-food cart across the aisle from the Q. The knish was excellent, smoking hot (not just made, but they had the sense to keep it hot), and the three people working at the cart are animals – everything moved quickly, and when the line started to build up, they moved faster. I saw a little gelato stand up the first base line and wanted to try it, but I was so full from the Q each night that I never had the chance.

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→ October 3, 2009
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Everyday Drinking.

My introduction to Kingsley Amis came through his comic novel Lucky Jim, but Amis was also a prolific columnist on the subject of alcoholic beverages. Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis combines two previous anthologies of Amis essays on drink (1973’s primer On Drink and 1983’s collection of newspaper columns Everyday Drinking) with a series of ten-question quizzes, originally published under the title How’s Your Glass?. Although there’s a bit of repetition – mostly of information but occasionally of jokes – between the first and second sections, the volume is educational and extremely witty, plenty to hold the attention of an occasional drinker like myself.

Each essay or column is built around a specific topic, usually a specific drink or class of drink, with digressions on topics like how to drink without getting a hangover, how to stock a liquor cabinet, or the decline of the English pub (so strongly felt that he delivers the same rant twice). Amis’s chief skill in writing these essays, aside from an apparently indefatigable liver, is blending strident opinion with direct advice so that his lectures don’t become shrill or dull.

His essay on liqueurs, for example, starts with an explanation of where that class of beverage originated (from preserving fruits in spirits) to discussions of a few major types to a digression on Southern Comfort, including his discussion of a drink called a Champagne Comfort:

Champagne Comfort is not a difficult drink to imagine, or to make, or to drink. My advice is to stop after the first one unless you have the rest of the day free.

Amis lays into any practice of which he disapproves, referring to lager and lime as “an exit application from the human race if ever there was one” (it’s listed in the index under “lager and lime, unsuitability for higher primates of, 170”) or as a Harvey Wallbanger as a “famous or infamous cocktail … named after some reeling idiot in California.” He expounds on Champagne as “only half a drink. The rest is a name on a label, an inflated price tag, a bit of tradition and a good deal of showing off.” There are several columns and one section on how to stiff your guests by shorting their drinks or by fawning over their wives so the women will defend you to their grousing husbands on the drives home.

While Amis is busy amusing you, he’s educating you on the history and processes of drink as well as offering suggestions and recommendations, even on wine, a beverage he professes to dislike. Understanding drink means understanding ingredients, processes, industrial practices, and accumulated wisdom of old sots like Amis. He writes that it’s best to keep seltzer or sparkling water outside the fridge, as refrigeration kills the bubbles. Why isn’t Jack Daniel’s technically considered a bourbon? (Because it’s made in Tennessee, not in Bourbon County, Kentucky.) What do (or did) winemakers in Bordeaux do in poor harvest years? (Import grapes from Rioja, a region in Spain that’s a major producer of red wines, particularly from the Tempranillo grape.) And he won points with me with several mentions of Tokaj azsu, the sweet wines of Hungary made from grapes affected with the “noble rot” fungus.

He also includes numerous drink recipes, including a few of his own making, one of which is, in fact, named “The Lucky Jim,” a dry martini with cucumber juice. I’ll trust one of you to give that a shot and report back to me.

Next book: Hangover Square, a novel by Patrick Hamilton, author of Rope, a play that became one of Alfred Hitchcock’s more famous films.

Filed Under: Food, Nonfiction Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
→ September 21, 2009
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Monday TV, article, and two links.

I’ll be on ESPNEWS today at 2:40 pm EDT, talking Tigers/Twins, a few playoff-bound teams, and maybe Milton Bradley.

New column on the Team USA 18U trials last week, and a quick comment in Rumor Central on Buster Posey’s outlook for 2010.

I have never been a big cola drinker, and only seldom drink soda of any sort (although I do love Thomas Kemper’s vanilla cream soda), but I hate the idea of a government tax on soft drinks or any other foods that the Food Police deem bad for me. What’s next – bacon? Butterfat? I maintain a healthy weight and have low cholesterol despite consuming both of those items. I can make my own food choices, thanks, Sam.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen Kseniya Simonova, the sand artist who won Ukraine’s Got Talent this year, she’s pretty impressive.

Filed Under: Appearances, Food Tagged With: ,
→ September 11, 2009
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Milwaukee eats, 2009.

I was on Mike and Mike this morning and apparently made Scott Feldman a left-hander. Good times. The moral of this story, since I was thinking about Feldman’s cutter as a weapon against lefties, is not to think when talking on the radio. I did 90-minute chat and believe I got everyone’s handedness right, so there’s that.

Joe Posnanski mentions me in his new column for Sports Illustrated, which means I’ll probably hear from a whole new group of people from my childhood who had no idea I was a sportswriter.

I didn’t do much new in Milwaukee from my last trip, revisiting Cempazuchi (and ordering the same stuff) and Beans & Barley (going for the whole wheat pancakes, which were very good but very wheaty). I finally visited Kopp’s for frozen custard, and it was very good, particularly the texture, which was probably an 80 on the 20-80 scale – you’re not likely to find smoother custard on the planet. Their chocolate isn’t very chocolatey, but the only place I hit last year that had a strong chocolate custard had the worst texture.

I had breakfast at Hotch-a-Do, across the street from Beans & Barley, a really funky, very local place that unfortunately only opens at 9 am. The blueberry and banana pancakes were a little rich and mildly flavored but generally good, although I’d probably give something else on the menu a shot next time around. They do serve Alterra coffee, which I tried the next day at the Alterra stand at the Milwaukee airport. I’ve largely given up drip coffee, but Matthew Leach at mlb.com swears by Alterra, and he didn’t lie – that is some Damn Fine Coffee, dark but not overroasted, with plenty of character of the bean (Nicaraguan, mildly acidic but well-rounded with good body), and brewed at the right strength.

Matthew and I also had dinner at Elsa’s on the Park after I found out that Sobelman’s was closed for dinner on Labor Day (but open in the afternoon … that makes, well, no sense). He raved about his burger, but mine was cooked enough to serve as a coaster despite the fact that I ordered it medium. They also lose points for having no beer on tap and almost nothing local, but I did enjoy a Chicago beer, Goose Island Matilda, a “strong Belgian pale ale” that was a rich amber with great body and a pronounced note of good-quality honey.

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→ September 5, 2009
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Philadelphia eats.

Before I get to Philly, a few of you have asked about the restaurant where my cousin is the pastry chef. It’s called City Limits Diner, and there are two locations, one on the edge of White Plains near Yonkers, the other in Stamford, Connecticut. My cousin is the pastry chef and her husband is the executive chef. I wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t genuinely like the food. If you do go, make sure you have dessert, and tell your server that Tracy’s cousin Keith sent you (not that it will get you anything, but it’ll score me some points).

I ate all of my non-ballpark meals in Philly at Reading Terminal Market, an eating paradise on Filbert between 11th and 12th streets, right across from the Market East train station. I could have stayed a week and still had places there I wanted to try.

For breakfast, I hit the Dutch Eating Place – Dutch as in Pennsylvania Dutch, a community responsible for at least ten of the stands around the market. They’re best known for their blueberry pancakes, which were solid average or a bit above, and for their cured meats, which were a mixed bag – the pork sausage was meaty and peppery and the portion was beyond generous, but the turkey bacon was gamey and greasy. I also tried their “apple” french toast, which as far as I can tell, was just some whole or multi-grain sandwich bread, dipped in egg batter, fried, and topped with too much cheap cinnamon, with no evidence whatsoever of apples. The pancakes were worth a trip, though. Cash only, cost $10 including tea and tip both days.

DiNic’s serves hot Italian sandwiches in just a few varieties, but everyone recommended the roast pork, thinly sliced, served on fresh crusty Italian bread, with just a few possible toppings – sharp provolone, roasted peppers (sweet or hot), broccoli rabe, or spinach. I went with the rabe and sweet peppers. The sandwich was about a foot long, so I barely got halfway through it, and the inside of the bread was soaked with the juice of the pork (that’s a good thing). For about $8 it’s a bargain and was the best thing I ate on the trip.

Delilah’s Soul Food had some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten. Even though the chicken was more warm than hot when I got it, the crust was still crispy, not greasy, and was well seasoned with salt and pepper without having too much of either. For $8.50 or so you get chicken, cornbread (the sweet kind, unfortunately), and one side; I chose collard greens and got a big bowl that I got maybe halfway through and then poured the juice at the bottom over the cornbread. It’s one of the few places in RTM with table service.

The Famous Fourth Street Cookie Company had a long line around lunch time on my first trip there; the cookies are constantly coming out of the oven, so you can get something hot at that hour, although I found that at room temperature a few hours later, they were just average cookies. They’re a good four inches or so in diameter and cost about $2 apiece. The “double chocolate chip” is just a chocolate chip cookie with a lot of chips, and the chocolate chip with pecans didn’t skimp on the nuts.

I grabbed a pumpkin muffin from Le Bus Bakery for the flight home; it was a bit greasy, staining the paper bag, but it didn’t have the usual pumpkin muffin flavor of stale pumpkin pie spice mix, and it wasn’t overly sweet. There was a faint spicy note, almost like cardamom, but otherwise the pumpkin was allowed to take its place at the center of the muffin.

Leaving RTM, La Colombe is a small cafe best known for its coffee-roasting operation, as they apparently supply many of the best restaurants in town. I found their espresso to be far too watery with no body, but it did have a defined flavor, with strong notes of cocoa beans and a pleasant acidity. My guess is that the beans were from Africa, although I’m no expert on varietals since I always use blends to make espresso at home.

I learned about Capogiro Gelato a few years ago on the short-lived Food Network show, The Hungry Detective, a good concept dressed up with a few too many gimmicks but with plenty of emphasis on the actual food. They have at least one more location now, at 13th and Walnut, very close to my hotel and the RTM. The gelato is very expensive – a medium, roughly 3/4 cup of gelato, cost $6.15 with tax – but outstanding quality. I got three flavors, figuring that was almost an obligation to my readers: dark chocolate, coconut, and toasted almond. The almond was a waste, as the gelato itself had almost no flavor; it comes with toasted slivered almonds, but the flavor needs to be in the gelato, not on it. The coconut was ultra-smooth with a strong, clean coconut flavor. The dark chocolate stole the show, probably the darkest, richest chocolate ice cream I’ve ever had, with a thick consistency more like cocoa pudding ice cream than a typical chocolate gelato; a medium cup of that might be overkill, but I’m willing to risk it.

I didn’t eat at any concessions at CBP, but it’s worth mentioning that the press box food was, by press box food standards, impressive. The worst part of eating while traveling is how hard it is to eat fruits and vegetables while sticking to quick, inexpensive places, and the CBP press box had cups of fresh fruit, a basic salad mix that wasn’t brown or wilted or dried out, and a few vegetable side dishes each night. I know this isn’t of much use to the majority of you, but I wanted to give credit to the Phillies for doing a nice job.

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→ September 2, 2009
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Yankee Stadium eats.

I’ll be on ESPN 710 in LA at 1:12 pm PDT today, and on Mike & Mike tomorrow morning at 9:25 am EDT. I posted a piece on five interesting prospects recalled on Tuesday. I also appeared on AllNight on ESPN Radio last night.

I am not impressed by the food at Yankee Stadium. You build a $1 billion ballpark in the greatest eating city in the country – at taxpayer expense, of course – and you put in Johnny Rockets and Nathan’s and Famiglia Pizza? There’s virtually nothing local. The breadth of cuisines represented in the city where you can find food from any country where they eat food is dismal. And I only found one item there there I’d actually recommend*, the steamed dumplings at the noodle bar in the third base food court. They were superb, not heavy, not over-gingered (I like ginger, but a lot of restaurants go a little berserk in the dumplings), and steamed perfectly. You get four for $6, which wasn’t quite enough for lunch, but two servings would have been overkill.

*Okay, I lied, they have Carvel, which, for those of you outside the northeast, is frozen custard that rivals anything I’ve had in Wisconsin. It’s overpriced, and you can get it just as easily outside the Stadium, but yes, I had some, and you probably should too.

I went to the Lobel’s stand for a $15 steak sandwich, which seems to be the consensus “best food item in Yankee Stadium.” I don’t really have a problem with paying $15 for good beef; beef is expensive, and it should be, because cheap beef is nasty to eat, bad for the environment, and really bad for the cows*. But this sandwich was boring as hell – the steak had absolutely no flavor of its own, it was drowned in some undefined sauce, and, worst of all, it was tough. I’m no aficionado of steak, but one thing I know is that good steak should not be tough. Either it wasn’t cooked right, or it wasn’t carved right, not that I could tell under the tsunami of brown stuff on top.

* Okay, beef production in general is bad for cows. Just go with it.

That’s the good and the bad; here’s the ugly. Zeppole are the Italian version of fried dough – thick blobs of yeast-raised dough deep-fried until crispy on the outside but soft and chewy on the inside, and then doused with powdered sugar. If you grew up in New York and ever went to an Italian feast, you probably love them as I do. What they serve at Yankee Stadium and call zeppole should get the concessions people arrested. They’re tiny, tasteless, and, worst of all, fried before the game. It’s a ballpark. You have deep fryers at full blast all around the place. You can’t fry a few zeppole to order? If they’re not going to do it right, they should just take it off the menu entirely.

I did have one meal in Manhattan on this trip, breakfast at Good Enough to Eat at 83rd and Amsterdam, recommended by a few readers, including a couple of NYC sportswriters. I asked the girl behind the bar what I should get, and she suggested the four-grain blueberry pancakes, which sounded good since 1) I like pancakes 2) I like blueberries 3) “four grain” makes it sound all healthy-like. They were fine, nothing special, and including a few stray blackberries, which I’m assuming was an accident rather than a gift from a Keith Law fanboy in the kitchen. The pancakes themselves had a faint cardboard-y taste of whole wheat – common, but avoidable – and they were a little overdone and dry, and probably shouldn’t have left the kitchen like that, although it takes a lot more to get me to send a dish back and waste the food.

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→ August 24, 2009
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Denver eats.

There’s a short blog entry on Troy Tulowitzki’s surge from Saturday night on my ESPN blog, with another just filed this morning.

I’ll be on ESPNEWS today at 2 and 2:30 pm EDT and possibly on 710 AM in Los Angeles around 12:40 pm PDT.

Denver rocks. What a great downtown – I probably walked six or seven miles in the three days, hopped the free shuttle on 16th a few times, and had a few good meals. I love downtown ballparks where there’s an actual downtown around the park, and Coors Field has a lot going on in the area. (The presence of many clubs nearby meant quite a bit of postgame eye candy walking the other way up Blake Street, a nice bonus.)

I got four different breakfast suggestions from readers but only one was really walkable from the hotel (I didn’t rent a car) – Snooze, on Larimer, very close to the stadium. Three of you recommended it and I can see why, as their food is very fresh and they make some excellent, funky pancakes.

I went twice, and the pancakes are clearly the main attraction. The first day, I got the ginger-peach pancakes, which had diced local peaches and crystallized ginger in the batter and a topping of streusel (just a little) and ginger butter. The second day, I went with eggs, chorizo sausage, hashbrowns, plus one whole wheat-blueberry pancake with sunflower seeds, maple syrup, and blueberry butter. Both types of pancakes had a great, light texture, with lots of big air pockets and a complex flavor. The whole wheat ones were either from a mild sourdough batter or made with buttermilk, probably the latter. The peaches, unfortunately, weren’t fully ripe and ended up bitter after cooking, but I imagine on a better day they’re pretty outstanding. They also do a pancake of the day; Sunday’s had white chocolate chips in the batter, which sounded too much like dessert to me.

My first meal at Snooze came with a bit of entertainment. I was seated in one of the five chairs at the counter, and the seat to my right opened up, at which point a woman asked me if anyone was sitting there and I told her no. She proceeded to sit there to make a call on her cell phone but didn’t actually order anything, so after five minutes or so, the host told her she couldn’t sit there. A little while later, she sat down to eat in the chair to my left, and before she’d finished the process of sitting she asked me which pancakes I had gotten. It was downhill from there:

Me: The ginger-peach pancakes.

Her: What kind of peaches are they?

Me: (reaching over, opening her menu, and pointing to the entry for the ginger-peach pancakes.) It’s all right there.

Her: Yeah, but I want to know what kind of peaches they are.

Me: I don’t know. Why don’t you check the menu?

Her: But are they canned peaches?

Me: I don’t know.

Her: I just want to know if they’re canned peaches.

Me: Ma’am, I did not actually make the pancakes. I’m only eating them. Perhaps you should ask someone who works here?

Her: How could you be in such a bad mood? It’s too early to be in a bad mood.

Oh, it gets better. She had already ordered breakfast to go, but then, just as it was coming out, she decided to sit at the counter and made them take the pancakes she ordered out of the portable container and put them on a plate, which seemed petty and wasteful. Then she ordered a sampler of two or three other kinds of pancakes – like I said, these are huge – and tried the one she originally ordered, the whole-wheat blueberry pancakes, which come with maple syrup already on them. And that set her off again.

Her: Why does it come with the syrup already on the pancakes?

Server: That’s how we serve that pancake here, ma’am.

Her: But the pancakes get soaked. The syrup makes it too sweet. You know that maple syrup is mostly sugar!

Server: Ma’am, it says on the menu that it comes with maple syrup on it. [To be fair, the menu wasn’t explicit about this.]

Her: You should never serve it on the pancakes already. You should serve it on the side.

Server: Well, that’s how we do it … here.

When I went back on Sunday and sat at the counter, the server (a different one), asked if I’d been there before, and I said yes, the previous morning, and I was sitting next to a crazy woman. At which point he said, “Oh, you must have been sitting in that same chair, and she was there (pointing to her seat).” Apparently, she’s a regular, and she’s always batty.

That day-two server actually tried to coax me out of my EMP + a pancake order, saying, “You can get three eggs anywhere. I think what you really need is a benedict,” and he’s right in that they do have a half-dozen options of eggs and hollandaise. I’m not a big hollandaise guy anyway – I respect any chef willing to make it because it’s time-consuming and finicky, but I find it extremely heavy – and Snooze’s hollandaises all contained either cream cheese (which I don’t care for) or smoked cheddar (which I despise), so while a few of those options looked great (like the one with smoked pork), I didn’t see the point of getting a benedict-hold-the-hollandaise. He was right, though – the eggs etc. were on the boring side and the hashbrowns were undercooked, with nowhere near enough crispy brown parts.

When I went to Long Beach earlier this month, I had sushi at Koi over in Seal Beach and sat at the sushi bar. A guy sat down next to me and clearly had been there a few times, so I asked if he was a regular, and he said he had been for years but had since moved to Denver. So we chatted for a while, and I told him I was there on business, I was a sportswriter, loved food, etc., and he said, “Wait, what’s your name?” Turns out he’s not a reader, but a friend of his is, so I pointed Gabe (the guy I was sitting next to) here and asked him to shoot me a note with some Denver food rec’s. He suggested Sushi Sasa, which turned out to be one of the best sushi places I have ever been to. It was a solid 20-minute walk from the hotel, but I got a spectacular view of the river as I crossed over the bridge to get to Platte St, and the food was well worth it.

Sushi Sasa is kind of trendy-looking inside and they do plenty of gussied-up rolls and overwrought appetizers, but if you go there for nigiri or sashimi, the fish is amazingly fresh, easily rivaling that of good West Coast or NYC joints. Sasa’s daily specials menu mentioned that two of the fish had been flown in from some specific market in Japan that day, and they make their own unagi (barbecued fresh-water eel), which I’m told (by some of you, I believe) is unusual, as most places buy it already cooked and just reheat it for service. The maguro tuna was the best I’ve ever tasted and the salmon was close. The seaweed salad was a bit of a rip at $8 and came with some very fresh but unnecessary vegetables on top (e.g., one asparagus spear, cut into 2″ lengths), but it was interesting to see three different kinds of seaweed instead of the standard one, including a burgundy variety I’ve never had before that was slightly bitter and didn’t have the tooth of the more typical, green-and-clear kind. (Sorry, I’m not up on my seaweed terminology.) Even the green tea was good.

(By the way, I’m a piker in the kitchen compared to Gabe, who chronicles some of his cooking exploits on his blog, including making his own duck prosciutto.)

My one other stop was a minor indulgence, as I am a bit of a sucker for local fast-food burger joints and saw one called Good Times across the street from my hotel. It’s not Five Guys or In-n-Out, with a bigger menu and fries that aren’t hand-cut, but for a fast-food option it was two or three steps above the McDonald’s/BK class of “only if I’m desperate and even then I’ll think twice” establishments. The toppings at Good Times were also very fresh – bright green lettuce that still crunched, thick slices of juicy and faintly sweet tomatoes – and the beef (100% all natural Coleman … do I even want to know what 80% natural beef has as its other 20%?) was better than the bland, generic fast-food burgers forced down our throa… Sorry again, CSPI just hacked my blog, but I’m back. It’s a solid fast-food burger. The fries are coated, which I don’t really like, but they’re seasoned and not over-salted; skip the “wild sauce,” which is just barbecue sauce mixed with mayonnaise and is the color of terra cotta. Good Times also serves frozen custard, which I tried the night before, although they only do two flavors a day, vanilla and a special flavor, which was strawberry on Saturday. The vanilla had a good custard texture, and the mild flavor was nothing a little hot fudge couldn’t fix.

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→ June 21, 2009
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Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp.

I’ve got a short piece up on Georgia Tech infielder Derek Dietrich, who’ll be a consideration for the first round next year..

My recipes are usually precise based on multiple attempts to make a dish, but this one is an exception, since I threw it together based in part on what I had left of ten pounds of strawberries and about a pound of rhubarb. The amounts in the fruit base are approximate, and the quantity of sugar you use is going to depend on how sweet your strawberries are. The result was a huge hit, and I thought it was better than the damn good strawberry-rhubarb pie I made on Thursday morning. Next time I do this, I’ll weigh the topping ingredients and I’ll revise it.

Fruit base:
1 pound strawberries, hulled and sliced in half
1/3-1/2 pound rhubarb, chopped into inch-long pieces
Roughly 1/2 cup sugar, depending on the sweetness of your strawberries
1 Tbsp rum, preferably black or dark
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp fresh lemon juice
3-4 tsp arrowroot or corn starch
Pinch salt

Crisp topping:
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, softened
3/4 cups flour
3/4 cups dark brown sugar, packed*
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp rolled oats
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch freshly ground cloves
1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable/canola oil**
1/4 tsp salt

* I used half muscovado, a natural dark brown sugar that has a pronounced molasses taste, and half standard brown sugar.
** Anything that’s neutral in flavor would work here. Ergo, not olive oil.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

1. Toss all fruit base ingredients together in a large bowl or directly in the baking dish and set aside for 10-15 minutes. This is really a pie filling, although most strawberry-rhubarb pies go for a 1:1 ratio of fruits, while I prefer a 3:1 ratio here, so that the strawberries are the star and the rhubarb is justa backup player.

2. Cut the butter into 1/2″ pieces and combine all crisp topping ingredients together in a large bowl. With your fingertips – or, if you’re a complete wuss, a pastry-cutter or two knives – work the butter into the remaining ingredients until it’s combined but not homogenous, with large clumps of dry ingredients around pieces of butter.

3. Move the fruit mixture into the baking dish of your choice – I used an 11x9x2 corningware dish – and top with the crumb mixture, covering the entire surface. (The fruit mixture will bubble through and submerge parts of the topping, creating a pan-dowdy-like effect.) Bake for about 30 minutes and check the dish. You’re looking for a nicely browned top and thick juices bubbling up from the fruit mixture. If you don’t have those two things happening, drop the temperature to 325 degrees and bake until it’s done. (Mine was done at 30 minutes.) Allow to cool to room temperature or close to it so that the starch/liquid mixture can set, after which you can reheat it if you want to eat it warm.

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