A Finger in Every Pie

On Arthur Avenue with the Amateur Gourmet

Cooking is an exercise in communication:  the ingredients communicate their freshness, the recipes communicate their patented formulas, the pans communicate their readiness, and the dish itself communicates the passion of the chef.  What you place down before a loved one is a meaningful gesture, a symbol of your feelings as reflected in the portion size, the placement on the plate, and the thing itself.  What did you cook? Did you microwave a hot-dog, or did you roast a quail? Did you microwave the hot-dog with love and roast the quail with  indifference? These things matter.

         - Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet:  How to Shop, Chop  and Table-hop Like a Pro (Almost)

The email said " Hey Julie! This is Adam The Amateur Gourmet. My book comes out in three weeks! If you're willing, I'd love to send you an early copy and if you're even more willing I'd love to visit your blog on my Virtual Book Tour."

Yes, reader, it really was from Adam, the Amateur Gourmet himself.  I'd been anticipating reading his book.  And now he had asked me and AFIEP to be one of the stops on his Virtual Book Tour.  You can imagine my delighted reply. Six weeks and quite a few emails later, we would set out on a real-time food-crawl afternoon in preparation for this virtual meet-up. 

Adam's blog The Amateur Gourmet has been a favorite read of mine for a couple of years now.  His is the blog I often turn to when I need to lighten up, have a laugh, or find a new idea for something great to cook.  For although I may have been cooking a good bit longer than Adam has, I get a great deal of inspiration from him.  Adam, you see, like most of us food bloggers, is an amateur, in the very best sense of the word.

It’s always been a source of puzzlement to me that the word “amateur” has such a pejorative connotation in our culture.  We tend to use the word to denote a rookie, a neophyte, someone without much experience or expertise. “A rank amateur,” someone will say, dismissing an artist’s life-long body of work.  “Amateurish,” writes a critic, demonstrating his feeling that someone’s chef d’oeuvre should never even have warranted his notice, much less his review.   

What the word really means is that one has passion -- passion enough about a particular art or skill or field or body of knowledge to pursue it without receiving financial gain.  Adam might have described himself in the more negative connotation of "amateur" when he began his food journey  -- when, as detailed in his book, he thought that dining out was going to The Olive Garden; cooking was popping a frozen pie from California Pizza Kitchens into the oven.  With determined self-education, however, he became a dedicated lover of all things delicious. 

Amateur, from the French, meaning "lover;" in turn  from the Latin amare, "to love."  That’s Adam all over:  a person who throws himself headlong into his interest purely for the love of it.  Even now that he's published his first book, Adam staunchly maintains his "amateur" status.  After all, he doesn't earn a living from eating, or even from cooking, but rather from writing about these things.  He's now a writer by trade, who comes to his calling through being an -- or rather, THE -- Amateur Gourmet:  a lover of that which pleases the discriminating palate. 

I had met Adam briefly at a number of food blogger events, but I wouldn't really say that I knew him.  On the surface, we couldn't be much more different.  Aside from the superficial attributes of gender and age, we've had very different upbringings, particularly in regard to food.  Cooking, especially cooking from scratch, with at least some attention to seasonal food, was at the heart of my family's time together; dining out was central to Adam's early family life.  My mother made soups and stews and homemade salad dressing; Adam's glamorous and beautiful mom made reservations. 

So I read Adam's book.  I could see where, despite the differences in our food histories and experiences, we were much alike -- and that I stood to learn much from him.  The Amateur Gourmet:  How to Shop, Chop and Table Hop Like A Pro (Almost) is billed as a book for those who want to become more knowledgeable food enthusiasts.  But it's not just a book for the rookie.  As Shauna says, Adam's book gives more experienced cooks and eaters a chance to go back to beginner's mind.  We can all use a chance to remember where we came from, in order to continue learning.  And now that I've spent an afternoon with him, I think of Adam as the Evolving Gourmet -- in the way that we all should be -- open-minded, curious, continually exploring.

Adam and I decide to have a food adventure together -- to explore Arthur Avenue, known as the Little Italy of the Bronx. The neighborhood, which is actually called Belmont, is well-known to me, since I've consulted for several nearby public schools.  I haven't really spent much time there for a couple of years, so I'm eager to return.  For Adam, it will be completely new terrain.  How does the Amateur Gourmet approach fooding in unfamiliar territory?   

Adam shows up at our home a little after 11:00, where I'm hoping to impress him with a moist, crumbly apple-plum ripple coffee cake ostensibly baked for G, whose love of apple baked goods has been duly documented here.  Such baked goods are also handy to have on hand when other food bloggers drop by to in order to have them admire your baking prowess.  A true food hound, Adam immediately hones in on the baking pan in the kitchen, saying "What's that?"  He has only a small taste, however, since he's cleverly saving his appetite for the delights of Arthur Avenue.  But he further endears himself to me by telling me how much he likes our kitchen and our home -- what I sometimes despair of as havoc and clutter and disorder, he admires as cozy and lived-in.

Dear, long-suffering G is our chauffeur up to Bronx (at this point, I'm going to refrain from telling you my seasonal Rosh Hashanah joke about blowing the shofar).  He drops us right in the center of Belmont, Arthur Avenue and 187th St., and goes off on his own errands.

Like Kevin, I have taken Adam's book along for the ride, but the author himself remains my focus on this tour.  Where to begin?  We go to Casa Della Mozzarella, noting the gourd-shaped scamorza cheeses the size of small asteroids, as well as the guy in the back stretching massive hanks of pliant mozzarella by hand. I point out the Full Moon Pizzeria, one of the spots I used to hit  for lunch.  But I've already recommended that we eat at Mike's Deli in the Arthur Avenue Retail Market; when you're the fooding guide, it's your sacred responsibility to show off all your absolute favorites. 

We pass the butcher shops with entire dead beasts hanging in the window, the seafood and fish emporia that sell freshly opened clams to eat while walking down the street.  I show Adam the Star of David mosaic at the threshold of Teitel Brothers.  It's a shop with a name that seems a bit out of place in this neighborhood of Biancardis and Madonias and Borgattis, but it offers what are probably the city's best prices on Parmigiano Reggiano, prosciutto di Parma, excellent olive oils, and a host of other delicacies. 

The Arthur Avenue Retail Market is really the heart of the neighborhood.  It's the closest thing in NYC's five boroughs to a European-style covered market. At Mike's Deli, where the old LIFE magazine cover of Il Duce glares at us from the back wall, the much more welcoming counterman banters with us for so long we're not sure he's going to let us go eat the sandwiches he's bullied us into having.  He makes us a gorgeous prosciutto/fresh mozzarella creation with roasted peppers, and a delectable veal cutlet with baby peas and minced peppers in a wine-laced sauce.  He insist that we have two glasses of homemade red wine (which we're sure Lenn would say tastes, ummm, well, homemade).  When we demur, he asks if we're driving.  Adam blurts, "No -- her husband is," pointing to me.  "Her HUSBAND!" the counterman snorts in mock outrage.  "So you two are off here having lunch, without her HUSBAND!"  He thinks he's got us figured out.

Almost satiated, we continue on to the dessert portion of the tour.  Everyone has their favorite pastry shop in this neighborhood, but I'm a hold-out for the crisp cannoli at Madonia Brothers, filled with fresh ricotta cream only when you order.  We get large ones to eat as we continue walking down the street.  They're obscenely delicious, and Adam agrees -- by far the best cannoli either of us have ever had.  The lady from the flower shop stops us and we have a long conversation with her as we eat cannoli.  She convinces us that we will both have to go to Sicily -- probably the only place we'll ever find better cannoli.

Incidents like this one are commonplace on Arthur Avenue.  Everyone is friendly, and disposed to chat.  No-one seems to think twice about striking up a conversation with strangers.   It has almost the feeling of a village, but one that's disposed to be open and warm to outsiders rather than the opposite.  The flower lady tells us her life story, and describes how she, recently arrived as a businessperson on this strip, was overwhelmed by the outpouring of holiday gifts for her little daughter from fellow merchants.  "It's like a family here," she says. As we continue our walk, Adam and I agree that there's something wonderful about this neighborhood. Despite the way it attracts tourist and day-trippers like us, it maintains the quality of a place that hasn't been changed all that much by time.

It's a gorgeous day, the last of summer shading into fall, and Adam and I continue our lunch conversation as we walk.  We do have a lot in common, really.  Of course we both love food.  God, do we love food.  But there are other things as well.  We're both romantics at heart, with strong ideas about what make relationships work; we're both very attached to family, but sanguine about the players in our respective family dramas; and we're both strongly pulled toward social responsibility.  When I talk about my dream of reforming NYC public school lunches, Adam says excitedly "Let's do it!  I'll do that with you!"   

Going fooding with Adam, I really do get to know the guy who wrote this charming book.  His enjoyment of the moment, his endless curiosity and boundless enthusiasm would make anyone an amateur of the Amateur Gourmet.  As my own mother would have said, what's not to love? 

 

Transplanted: Cream of Summer Green

I do know how much we all hate those blog posts that begin with the sniveling apologies for the unexcused absences, and yet it's a bit hard to sit here, enveloped in the guilt of three weeks with no posts, and not even mention it.  I am a bad, bad blogger, but I'm hoping to either become a better blogger or quit this game altogether.  The end of the school year was rather grueling for both G and myself, but as of Wednesday last, that's history.

The good news is that I've taken a sabbatical leave.  This means many things, one of which being that for the first time in my adult working life, I will not be tied to a workday schedule, school-mandated vacations, and the schoolmarm slavery of a 5:30 a.m. alarm.  My thoroughly trained internal alarm is another story, but I'd warrant I'm capable of sleeping all the way to 7:00 a.m., or even 7:30, if I give it a shot.  I do love getting up early to bake, however, so I make no promises. 

What am I going to do with my year (14 months, actually, since it's bookended by two summers)?  I have plans for myself, and others apparently have plans for me as well:  helping set up a friend's foundation, "volunteering" at my current school at least one day a week, spending more time with my rapidly aging dad, spending more time with my newborn niece and nephew -- and even more important, spending more time with my very own brand-new husband, and spending more time writing. 

The parameters of my leave demand that I take some coursework, so there will be that.  Nothing fun -- I'm going to turn my administration license into a second masters' degree, which would entitle me to eventually become a system bureaucrat.  This is rather unlikely unless somebody lets me create a new Department of Education job like Czarina of School-Related Urban Sustainability (under which title I would command schools with strong roofs to plant rooftop organic gardens, thus eventually producing at least part of the school's lunch program.  I would create school-to-farm partnerships, where students would see where food came from and small farmers could have guaranteed venues for produce.  Food served at school would be fresh, high-quality and organically produced, as local as possible.  High-fructose corn-syrup would be against the law.  THEN we'd see what would happen to those test scores).

But in the meantime, I'm not allowed to have gainful employment while on sabbatical, although I'm only drawing a percentage of my salary.  It could mean a bit of belt-tightening, but the future may bring all kinds of things our way, so we'll just see about that.  In any case, I do have plans to bake more of my own bread and see what else I can produce on my own.  Someone recently came through with a late wedding gift of the pasta roller attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer, so we'll be giving homemade pasta a whirl, too.  Maybe even cheese, since I recently read the Kingsolver-Hopp family's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is about their year of eating (with only a few exceptions) what they could grow themselves or purchase from local farmers.  Of course, reading this book has caused me to talk avidly and earnestly and with what is apparently quite annoying frequency about eating locally and the Kingsolver-Hopps and what they do and do not buy and do and do not produce at home.  I start babbling about how if everyone in the US made sure that just one of their twenty-one weekly meals was composed of locally raised meat and produce, we could reduce our dependence on oil by over a million barrels every week.   I can tell that all of this is becoming slightly tedious because of the way in which G's eyes have started to roll back up in his head every time he hears the phrase "carbon footprint" or the name "Kingsolver", as in "Well, the Kingsolvers make their own mozzarella cheese..."   

Recently it hit me -- what I'd really like to do with at least some of my time during my sabbatical year.  If I could do as I liked, I'd spend some time volunteering on a local farm.  Even better, I'd spend time with a family that had a big working garden -- big enough for them to actually feed themselves -- if not completely, a pretty fair amount.  I'd like to spend some more time at the Edible Schoolyard.  And during any and all of these endeavors, I'd be trying to learn something about what I might actually need to know in order to help schools create urban gardens and relationships with local farms.  I feel pretty hopeful that I can at least make some of these visits happen, perhaps for a week or so, here and there during the coming year.   Maybe I could be an extra pair of hands during canning season, too.   

In the meantime, I'm working on having us eat even more locally-produced foods, despite the fact that it will probably mean added expense at a time when our income becomes more limited.  I know that others find that they either break even or do better when they make this switchover, but I'm not convinced the price break-down works in our favor here in NYC.  I don't begrudge our local farmers a dime of their hard-earned money, but it does have a pretty big impact on the wallet when you realize that you're paying about $12 a pound for Greenmarket organically-raised local collard greens instead of $2.59 for organic collards from Fairway or Fresh Direct.  This is not necessarily the case in other parts of the country, as our recent trip to Vermont can attest.      

My current mania drove me to search out a restaurant serving local foods in the area of Shelburne, VT, since we were going to hear a favorite band playing nearby.  The band we went to hear was opening for a band in whom we didn't have much interest, so I made dinner reservations for later on, instead of staying for the remainder of the show.  My in-laws decided to drive up from Randolph and join us. One of the nice things about Vermont is that there are a LOT of restaurants that pride themselves on serving locally produced food.  It's not just at the level of a quaint gimmick, which is sometimes how it feels at the few-and-far-between restaurants that do the same in NYC.  Although our meal at the Inn at Shelburne Farms was not inexpensive, it was actually an excellent value.  The setting is extraordinarily beautiful -- a century-old mansion, part of a 1400-acre working model farm with a sustainability ethic and and education mission.  Their gorgeous Brown Swiss cattle, herds of which safely graze as you drive through the grounds to the inn, provide the rich milk for some of Vermont's finest cheddar cheese.  The inn is nestled among breathtaking gardens on the shores of Lake Champlain, with a vista of  the Green Mountains on the far shore.  But of course you want to know what we ate.  It was lovely, lovely food -- salads of varied and artfully arranged produce from the inn's garden, a delectable handmade pasta with tiny spring also-from-the-garden vegetables and herbs, delicious pork confit and fabulous, crisp-skinned lamb from local farms, fish from a sustainable fishery in Maine, and a hauntingly flavorful strawberry sorbet -- something that could only taste that good when with made with seasonal fruit. 

My husband may indeed be getting sick of the word "local."  But that doesn't for a moment impede the immense wellspring of his love for me and his desire to please my every whim.  Good husband, indeed.   This was made manifest early the next morning when, after he told me that he loves me, as indeed he does every morning, he asked me if I wanted to go to the Saturday morning farmers' market in Randolph, the Vermont town where my in-laws live.  His own idea, I swear.  My mother-in-law decided to come along -- it would be her first time at the market this season. 

At first glance, the market was a bit disappointing.  It looked as if there were more baked goods and jams and handcrafts than anything else.  But I walked a bit farther, to see what I could see.  I found quarts of strawberries from a local farm.  And there were eggs, beautiful blue-green Araucana shells among the brown, only $2.50 a dozen for extra-large.  Quite a bargain for hours-old free-range farm eggs, especially when one considers NYC prices for comparable eggs. 

Then I struck gold.  Cool Running Organic Farm announced the sign, flying the bright colors of the Jamaican flag.  "What I can be doing for you, man?" lilted the skinny fellow  behind the table,  glinting a few gold teeth at me.  "Spinach," I said.  "A pound would be good."  "Ah, t'sall good, " said he.  "Me growin' all these t'ings right here, purely organic."  "Great," I said.  "Me from Jamaica, man.  I been transplanted,"  he chortled.  That much I could already tell. "How do you like it in Vermont?" I asked.  "Oh sure, the winters cold here.  But I go one winter Jamaica, one winter stay here."  "What are these greens?" I wanted to know.  "Calaloo, man," he said.  Calaloo!  Something I'd only seen on the menus of West Indian restaurants, and this guy was growing it organically, in Vermont.   As interested as I was, I  forewent it in favor of sugar snap peas, not knowing how calaloo would go over with G -- or with me, for that matter.  I 'd save experimentation for another day, and rejoice in my good and thrifty finds -- organic spinach for $1.50 a pound (which is a lot), and sugar snaps for $3.50 a pound.

After a long day's drive, we hauled our Vermont produce as well as some other pickings from the Lebanon, New Hampshire food coop (I justify it all by thinking that even though we're spending fossil fuel to bring food home from Vermont, we're not increasing our carbon footprint since we were going to make the trip anyway) home to NYC.  And the next day I cooked, inspired by the haul from our Randolph farmers' market visit and the flavors of Shelburne Farms -- as well as by a few things I happened to have in the house.  There were some potatoes and shallots in the closet, and the fridge yielded a big bulb of green garlic from my last Greenmarket trip, as well as a bunch of mint that had survived our days away.  With the greens and a touch of Butterworks Farm cream, a soup that is one of the finest dishes to grace our early summer table became dinner.   "Pass me some more of that nice, local, sustainable, transplanted-from-Vermont, Kingsolver-type soup," G said.  "Oh, you like it?" I asked innocently.  "Well, it doesn't have any beans or meat or cheese in it," he said thoughtfully.  "But considering all that, it's still pretty good." 

Cream of Summer Green
Makes about 12 cups; serves 6 - 8
Most soups made from something like snap peas would have you strain, double-strain, and pass through a chinoise.  I feel that if you blend really, really thoroughly, this is not necessary.  Our preference is for a slight bit of rusticity anyway, which is why I add back some vegetable chunks and spinach leaves at the end.  And besides, the fiber's good for you.  Just blend it up well. 

This soup is good both hot and cold, although G says not as good cold as hot.  But he doesn't believe in cold soup, so don't trust his opinion.

1 pound sugar snap peas
4 large shallots, finely chopped
1 head of green garlic, chopped
1 pound new potatoes, diced or sliced (peeled or unpeeled)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 pound spinach, cleaned, stemmed and roughly chopped
1 quart vegetable or chicken stock, or water (I had a wonderful stock made from leek greens and pea pods)
1/2 to 1 cup cream (heavy sweet or créme fraîche)
handful of fresh mint leaves
grating of nutmeg
whisper of cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Put up a large pot of water to boil.  Snap the ends off the peas, and remove any strings or tough areas on the pods.   Plunge them into the boiling water, and cook until  tender but still bright green -- don't let them turn drab.  Plunge them into cold water to stop cooking, and reserve.

Heat olive oil in a large pot.  Sauté shallots and garlic for a few minutes; add potatoes and cook for a bit longer.  Add enough vegetable broth to cover, and simmer until potatoes are tender.  Scoop a couple of spoonfuls of potatoes out of the pot, and reserve.  Add half of the cooked snap peas and 3/4 of the spinach to the pot.  When everything is hot and the spinach has wilted, turn off the heat.  Add the handful of mint leaves.  Purée directly in the pot with an immersion blender, or put into a regular blender (close tightly; hot soup projectile-spraying itslef out of a blender really hurts).   Add more broth or water if it's too thick.  Stir in cream; add nutmeg, cayenne, salt and pepper.  Add reserved snap peas, potatoes and raw spinach.  Heat gently -- or chill thoroughly.  Taste, adjust seasoning and serve. 

Thanks, Jennifer!

I just received my lovely prize books in the mail -- and what a surprise indeed!  There were two!  I had known that I was one of the five lucky recipients for my entry in the Domestic Goddess' Fond Food Memories contest, but I had only thought to receive the coveted title The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen.  I opened the mailing envelope, and there to my surprise was also a copy of Are You Really Going to Eat That? Reflections of a Culinary Thrill Seeker by Robb Walsh.  I know I'm going to enjoy these -- many thanks to Jennifer and to Anchor/Random House.