Glass Castle

{Handmade Christmas, part v}

An empty glass jam jar is the beginning of beautiful things when it comes to handmade giving. If you're a jam jar junkie like me, it's likely you have stash of beauties that just need a quick wash and referesh with a handmade label. I like fluff jars, with their fat belly's and bright red tops, but any old honey jar will do. Stuffed with homemade jams, pickles and preserves, you've got a perfect gift. It's past preserving season, which puts you in quite a pickle, but luckily most markets still have plenty of crispy crispins and plucky pippins for saucing. Name your applesauce something playful, like Pippin Pleasure, Jonagold Royale, or Empire State Sauce {if your apples happen to come from New York} to give away the apple's origins, wrap and give. Here's my recipe.

Great Expectations

chelsea, new york

Tonight when I was leaving Chelsea Market on my way home from work, I spied this young man behind the glass at Dickson's Farmstand Meats carrying a giant roast beef with such a Flinstones meets Dickens quality about it that it stopped me dead in my tracks. Just as he hoisted it up on his shoulder, I popped my head in for a butchery tutorial and learned that this cut, made of a whole hind leg of a cow, is called a steamship round.

From the quick snap I shot, you can't really grasp its girth or why its name is so befitting, but its presence demanded my attention. The gents responsible for this fine butchery were happy to tell me how this cut goes from slaughterhouse to supper table by way of their smoker. When I asked exactly what it would cost me to have this as the centerpiece at my holiday party, they started calculating.

"There is the per pound rate, plus shrinkage, plus the magic that happens in the smoker...roughly $500.

It's not every day you can get magic by the pound at the butcher shop, crafted by noble artisans none-the-less, so it seems like a fair price. But for those of us whose budget is more Bob Crachit than Ebenezer Scrooge, they are slicing it up as roast beef and selling it by the pound all week in their shop. Just in time for a old Fezziwig's Christmas Feast.

New Amsterdam {Pedaling, part ii}

Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, hand and the mouth.

~Lanza del Vasto

South Street Seaport, Manhattan

If you have a bike, and a buddy, one of the best ways to spend a Sunday is pedaling around town bound for your local market, particularly if you local market happens to be the much-lauded New Amsterdam Market in New York’s historic South Street Seaport. Inspired by Paris' Les Halles, and London's Borough Market, the New Amsterdam Market is a collection of savvy, sustainable producers that inspire, educate and sell some of the most thoughtful food products in New England.

Of the dozens of producers at the market, there are as many stories worth telling, and something noteworthy about each and every purveyor at the market, hand chosen for their integrity, their stewardship of the land and waters, and their appreciation for the local commerce and communities their products nourish. I couldn’t possibly name every delight or detail, but in the spirit of awards ceremonies {and high school yearbooks}, here are a few of my favorites.

Best in Show: Those who know New York food know that Queens has the best bakers, and Brooklyn has the best brewers. In my opinion, the top baker’s toque in town is Pain D’Avignon. Their Cranberry Walnut Bread {baked down the street from us in Long Island City}, like all their breads, is an instant portal to yeasted utopia.

Best Educator: Nova Kim, of Wild Gourmet Food, lover of all wild edibles, won my heart when I told her I’ve been foraging all summer, to which she said, “Repeat after me. I do not forage. I wild craft, I collect, I gather.” Foraging implies scavenging. Gathering edibles in the wild requires knowledge and a skill set, along with the respect that one should leave the area in better shape than one found it. Got it. Go forth, and gather. Or let Nova and partner Les Hook gather for you, and join their Wild Foods CSA {Community Supported Agriculture}.

Best Cult Following: Tie between Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea and Mother In Law's Kimchi.

First to Sell Out: Nordic Breads’ Finnish Ruis Bread, also baked in Long Island City, was gone well before we arrived. So, I’m guessing it was good. What did I tell ya’ about those Queens bakeries?

Most Popular Guy: Luke’s Lobster rolls, perhaps the city’s most talked about lobster roll {and that’s saying something}, had folks in a titillated state. I don’t do lines, but I dig their motto: It's the only roll that's traceable from the sea floor to your plate.

Best Dressed: Imagine you have a brother, and both of you have fine taste in clothing and chocolate. So you stir up a little handcrafted chocolate business in Brooklyn, wrap your bars in handsome vintage paper and sell, sell, sell. Because people love them {not just for the paper, the chocolate is really, really good.} That’s Mast Brothers Chocolate.

Best Innovation: Brooklyn Oenology owner Alie Shaper blends wines in Long Island, christens them with clever names like Motley Cru, then commissions local artist to design their labels. None of those details would be worth mentioning if her wine wasn’t also wonderful. Even more impressive? Those labels peel right off, for us nostalgics. Finally.

Best Nickname: The Piggery, from Trumansburg, NY. But actually, that’s not a nickname. That’s their real name. Local, old-world style charcuterie. Enough said.

Most Incestuous Local-Love-Fest: Liddabit Sweets, caramels, candy bars, lollies and jellies made from the best little bits from a handful of local, artisanal producers like Brooklyn Brewery, Martin’s Pretzels, and Salvatore Bklyn. But you don’t have to be local to try a liddabit. Get some here.

Best Historical use of Space: W&T Seafood, and Stella, like New Amsterdam’s original market vendors, shuck oysters as fast as folks can swallow them, making mountains out of oyster shells, which, for the record, is far, far more delicious than making mountains out of mole hills.

Best Free Sample: Wild-caught crab claws from Port Clyde Fresh Catch, who used them to lure me in to their Community Supported Fishery club {think, Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, for fish}. I’m in.

Biggest Head Turner: Louisa Shafia’s new book, Lucid Food, had me at hello. The seductive cover photography {of rhubarb, a personal fave}, its tagline, “Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life,” and Louisa’s 80 alluring recipes speak my language. And if her pumpkin bread {or the success of her catering company} is any indication, the gal can cook. The book hits stores this week.

Best Find: Hudson Valley Seed Library, a collection of local, heirloom seeds cultivated in the Hudson Valley, is sold in packets featuring commissioned artwork worth holding on to after the seeds hit the soil.

Best Service: Valet bike check, by Bowery Lane Bikes. Covetable bikes too, with a rear rack and wooden crate big enough to tote home all your loot.

Best Story: When I asked James Andela of Krugerrand Farms how many goats he had, after I tasted his mildly sweet 90-day-aged raw-milk goat cheese, he told me a story. “This is a 4-H project that got out of hand,” he said. “When my girls went to college, they told me I could sell their goats. They pictured the goats grazing on a dairy farm, I pictured them becoming a one-night stand at a bad Indian restaurant, so I kept them.” Good move. 10 years later he and his wife run a sustainable farm and produce four memorable artisan cheeses.

That is exactly why I shop at local markets. I want the 4-H story. I want to know the names of the goats who give milk for my cheese, or the brothers that handcraft my chocolate. I want food with heart, with history. Food that for the miles it has not traveled, and the care with which it was crafted, tastes so much better than everything else.

Applesauce, in the Spirit of Discipline

lic, ny

Yesterday was marathon Sunday in New York, a day when over 40,000 people gather from around the world to run their hearts out along the 26.2 mile route that weaves through New York’s five boroughs...while the rest of us gather to show our support, most commonly over brunch.

The easiest thing in the world is to stand on the sidelines of a marathon with a full belly, hoping to absorb some of the tenacity and perseverence it takes each runner to pound the pavement for three to four {and sometimes five and six} hours on end. Having never attempted such a feat, I’m struck with emotion over the effort of hundreds of people running side by side for country or cause, pushing through the pain at the 14-mile marker where András and I stood with our bikes around the corner from home. There is both hope and heartache in the sight of people being pushed on by the sound of their name called out by strangers, read from jerseys to inspire them to keep going just a few miles more. Go Dave! Go Karen! You can do it Juan! Keep going Susan!

András leads the voices. He knows the rules of a marathon intimately, having run dozens of them, six of them in New York, once finishing 176^th out of over 38,000 runners. He narrates the scene—the mile markers, the time charts, the water stations, the volunteers standing by with Vaseline to rub on chapped skin. I’m mesmerized by his knowledge of the scene, his stories of crossing the Queensboro Bridge separated from the nearest runner by a minute split.

I ask him his best Marathon time.

2:41:15.

I try to think of something amazing I’ve done with two hours and forty-one minutes, and suddenly I think of the 30 pounds of apples sitting in our kitchen that we lugged home from the farmer’s market on Wednesday morning.

“I bet I could make a winter’s worth of applesauce in two hours and forty one minutes,” I say.

We roll home on our bikes and set to work, side by side, washing and coring Mutsu, Macoun, Pippen and Cameo apples, cutting them in chunks and toss them in our biggest pots with a touch of sugar, cider and Saigon cinnamon from my last trip to The Spice House in Chicago. While the house smells of simmering sauce, we set to work on the bookshelf, reorganizing and arranging piles of books that we ransacked during a busy summer.

When the sauce is finished and cooled, I transfer it into jars, make list of friends we’d be sharing it with and create lovely labels with names like Saigon Sweet {for the cinnamon}, Gala Royale and Empire State Sauce.

“It’s not worth putting on those labels for just one or two days,” András says. Left in his reach,the 12 jars we made will most likely be gone within the week, a feat requiring the kind of dedication András has mastered through years of training. So, in the spirit of discipline, we each curl up with a jar of sauce, a spoon and a favorite book, rest our weary legs and celebrate our winnings.

I’d like to think that a marathon applesauce making requires sacrifice, tenacity, perseverance but the truth is, it is about the simplest thing, requiring no discipline at all. Here’s how:

Ferry Building Fantasia

san francisco, ca

I know, I promised you recipes. I promise, they’re coming. But András and I just returned from 72 delicious hours in Northern California in honor of our one-year anniversary, and I wouldn't dare keep such delicious discoveries from you.

A trip to see the California redwoods was a childhood dream for András, and since I’m happy to be included on the grown-up version of his dreams, we decided it was the perfect place to celebrate our first year as husband and wife. As we flew over Grand Canyon, playing footsie under our tray tables, András read about our national parks in National Geographic Adventure, and I flipped open the American Way. I tried to imagine us frolicking among the giant trees of Humbolt Park, when an advertisement of a young couple glistening beachside at a Sandals interrupted me.

Spend your first anniversary in luxury

I suddenly wondered if we shouldn't be heading to relax on a beach, get a massage, sleep in a big bed with fluffy duvets. I squeezed András hand.

He set down his magazine and kissed me. “We should make it a tradition to spend every anniversary at a National Park,” he said.

“Every anniversary?” I said. “I was just thinking maybe we should be going somewhere a little more, I don’t know, luxurious. Somewhere with feather duvets.”

“Luxury make people soft.” He said.

“I’m a girl, I like soft.” I said.

Being soft isn't such a bad thing, particularly because it also includes eating stinky cheeses and cupcakes, both of which can be found in abundance at the legendary Ferry Building and its epic farmer's market in San Francisco, our first stop when we landed. András found us a parking spot a few blocks away with a 1-hour limit, giving my enthusiastic appreciation for the culinary potpourri of the marketplace an unrealistic deadline. I tried to explain that this was like telling Carrie Bradshaw she has only 15 minutes at Manolo Blahnik. It didn’t register.

Undeterred, I clicked my heels on over to the market by which time we had 49 minutes, exactly enough time to discover homemade pop tarts with fruits grown on Frog Hollow Farm, chocolate persimmons, black mission figs, tasty, salted pig parts from Boccalone Artisan Meats, Vanilla Tomboy Cake from Miette Patisserie and Harvest Whoopee Pies from Recchiuti chocolates. The foods of the Ferry Building are poetic, charmingly arranged and packaged to perfection, rendering decision-making harder than the aged Mimolette at the Cowgirl Creamy stand. So we tasted and took photos, juggling between our cameras and wallets in rapid succession.

And then, like clock work, András signaled our time was up. He ran to get the car, while I snuck in a final stop at the stunning Boulette's Larder, a labyrinthine of delights where tiny fresh eggs and delicate pastries were displayed on pedestals like jewels. Every detail was so thoughtfully arranged, and each and every person standing in the eternal line was the picture of Northern Californian prosperity. I took my place behind the elegant mammas feeding their rosy wee ones concord grapes and fresh figs, and breathed in the bliss.

Just as I approached the front of the line and reached for one of the handsome pastries pictured here, my phone rang. András was waiting outside in the car and I had to come, immediately. I took their card, letterpress on recycled paper {naturally}, and plugged their details into my iphone as we whizzed north toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Online, I found out the namesake of their restaurant is their beloved Puli, or Hungarian Sheepdog, called Boulette {which in French, means little meatball}, making their stylish sensibilities all the more lovable. I met my first Puli on the night András proposed to me in Hungary, and it sat at our feet as I ate a plate of goose and saurkraut in a local Csarda {inn}. The pup, and Boulette's Larder, will forever hold a special place in my soft little heart.

Innocent

l.i.c, ny

This little slice of melon is the reason I’ve been having trouble getting to work on time, this gentle flesh that gives beneath my teeth and spoils my mouth with honey sweet juice, this melon that I wake up dreaming of and loose track of minutes and hours just for the simple slicing and savoring of it.

I’d like to tell you I grew this melon, a Sycamore Honeydew, but the truth is we just got lucky. It arrived in our grocery delivery. I can confirm that it was grown in the USA. Its little sticker told me so. It turns out you can find out a lot from those little stickers, like that the Smith family, who grew my melon, have been growing melons in Turlock, CA for over 80 years. I think I’ll just have to put some of their shiny seeds into my soil too.

So, I’m late for work again. Blame it on the melon, or the fact that Gerard Butler has been filming The Bounty outside our bedroom window. Either way, I’m innocent.