Macaron Parlour - May 7, 2011

Eating is the quintessential sensual experience because it simultaneously engages the five senses: the visual, the gustatory, the olfactory, the tactile and the auditory– and perhaps, even the sixth. The audition is more often than not ignored and forgotten, and yet, it is important, albeit not as crucial, perception in terms of the action called eating. Imagine, if you will, the sonic pleasure of a barbeque, hearing the meat, searing shut its juice, on the hot iron or of a fish being grilled directly on an open fire, dripping and sizzling globulets of fat onto the wood: How the pleasure of anticipation would pale, if it were not accompanied by and accentuated by the sound. Indeed, why do you think movies are filled with music? Sometimes, a sound – i.e. the miniscule shatter of a macaron shell – is so small and private that it is almost secretive, which binds the eater to the food by sharing in this little secret rite of sound.

It is difficult for even one element, which corresponds to one perception, to be perfect; but for all the elements, which as felt by the five senses, to be perfect at the same moment, such sheer perfection seems at most abstract and near impossibility in this imperfect world, although I can just barely conceive such true perfection. At least, the more attainable perfection I can conceive is a small round disk of crumbling delicacy, filled with the sweet nectar of flavor – a macaron.* A macaron is simple: sugar, almond meal and egg whites, sandwiching ganache, butter cream or jam. Thus, for its simplicity, a perfect macaron is comparatively more achievable for us, the fallible humans.

*Emotionally, I would like to believe in the ontological argument, but intellectually, and more empirically, I must join the league of Gaunilo, Kant and Aquinas in opposing this silly argument.

La Maison de la Truffe

Risotto aux Truffes d’Été

 

I was saving this for a rainy day, but I suppose today was the rainy day. Therefore, I had finally made up my mind and broke the seal to this jar of French happiness. Rest assured, despite the common myth, the French can cook pasta, rice and gnocchi, yes, they can and very well, too. Nonetheless, La Maison de la Truffe had delegated the making of this luxurious, almost instant – approximately 12 minutes – risotto with summer truffles to the professionals: Product of Italy.

Bottega Falai (Macarons) - April 27, 2011

Mr. Falai is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, when it comes to macarons.

Debauve & Gallais - April 3, 2011

The proud pharmacist-turned-chocolatier seems to suffer from a dissociative identity disorder: One is the haughty and lofty purist; the other a self-aggrandizing megalomania, with a secret desire for the sweet and bitter world domination. To prove this point, Debauve & Gallais even have two websites (see below).

Delaware Delicacies Smoke House - March 19, 2011

Now, what has started this fall down the rabbit hole? Was it the Victorian detective novel, in which a policeman, hungry and frozen to his post (figuratively and physiologically), buys some jellied eel at a street corner? Jellied eel seemed certainly quaint enough to be pursued, but somehow and somewhere, it morphed into smoked eel, thanks to the beautiful working of human brain - the free association (can HAL do that?) - and voila, I was calling Mr. Ray Turner upstate.

The entire box - including the styrofoam and the receipt - smelled of smoke.

Bouchon Bakery - March 24, 2011

This must be a joke played on the King’s New Clothes Syndrome.

The Best Chocolate Cake in the World - March 20, 2011

Even in a city full of megalomanias and egoists with a united goal of self-promotion, no one has exactly come out and brazenly declared to be the absolute best, until now.

Bittersweet

Pastrami Queen - March 12, 2011

Their sign said the best pastrami, and I took upon the challenge. Since I was still freshly stuffed with dissected and grilled chicken and various poultry parts from Tori Shin, I asked for a quarter pound of pastrami and a sweet potato knish to go, which were later patted down, looked over and coolly escorted out of the Metropolitan Museum (I suppose they do not care for this particular kind of art).

Little Brown - March 12, 2011

Life is full of pitfalls. With my stomach stuffed with enough body parts to almost reconstruct an entire galline anatomy (thanks to Tori Shin), well, to be quite honest, a whole bird with some leftovers (unless this particular Frankenstein chicken has two hearts, no head, four buttocks, etc…), I might have shortchanged my brain for that small avian one in the process. Why else would I have mistakenly walked into this Ozian trap of artificial and superfluous gaiety reined over by the bald wizard?

Castella from Ukeian (烏鶏庵) – February 6, 2011

Castella is a Japanese cake, usually in the shape of a long rectangle with deeply browned top and bottom; and between the “burned” brown skins lies the golden sponge. Its origin traces back to Portugal in the form of pão de ló or alternatively, to Spain, bizcocho (yes, I think biscotti shares the root of this word - "baked twice").  Either way, it was brought to Japan by the zealous missionaries, who battled the ocean to travel half the world to spread the word of god; sweets apparently did not hurt in this endeavor even in this holy pursuit. What is this cake with such a complex lineage, not to mention a very long one? It is a simple cake made of sugar, eggs, flour and starch syrup – mind you, but no oil. The defining characteristics of this cake are the ultra rich egg-ness and the crunchy torbinado sugar crystals at the bottom, intentionally left by incompletely dissolved sugar.

Shilla Bakery - December 11, 2010

Mochi bread

Posthumously, I was informed of the Korean mochi bread craze that swept through the small island of Taiwan four years after its demise. To be exact, it was only the “craze” that died down, but not the mochi bread itself as it had quietly found a place among the staples on the shelves of Taiwanese bakeries. In a similar vein, another type of chewy bread became fashionable in Japan decades ago (and, for once, I was there to be on it real-time): Pão de Queijo – the cheesy balls from Brazil. The Asians are obsessed with the texture of this type of particular and distinct chewiness, expressed as QQ in Taiwanese or mochi mochi in Japanese. By the way, the Japanese version of mochi bead has existed for a quite while, which seems to differ from the Korean version in the choice of the key ingredient – the QQ or mochi mochi factor: The former primarily uses glutinous rice flour, while the latter tapioca starch.

Max Brenner - November 6, 2010

Many things in life are not that complicated, including a hot chocolate. All you need are a bit of patience and a dedicated hand – a tried-and-true formula to overcome many adversities in life – for whisking. Laziness has never fared very well in any success story, and it definitely will not get you the desired cup of hot chocolate. How hard is it to shave some good dark chocolate – by the way, Hershey’s is not considered “good” not matter from which angle you look at it due to the peculiar soured milk taste (except perhaps in conjunction with marshmallow for s’more) – or heating up some water and/or milk?

Spong Cake Redux: New Kam Hing Coffee Shop - January 17, 2011

The euphoria of the first date is, more often than not, misleading; otherwise, we would have gotten married a hundred times over.  Say thanks to our instinctive skepticism. Therefore, when the second date comes around, without the element of surprise and under the broad day light, the former allure usually seems to have toned down a shade or two. However, such will not be the case when the person, or a cake, is made of true ingenuity.

Levain Bakery - December 31, 2010

In the good old days at the end of the twentieth century, half way around the globe in the capital of food and fashion, the ultra-thin models allowed themselves to indulge in an occasional treat: the chocolate baguette sandwich. Since they could not possibly consume a pan au chocolat, or God forbid, a chocolate croissant, these deprived souls invented a substitution as a solution to their gnawing hunger. The result was a piece of a dark chocolate sandwiched between the crunchy, salty and fragrant baguette – a complete harmony of sweet and salty.

Yuan Yang (Ho Won Bake Shoppe & XO Kitchen) - December 28, 2010

Sometimes things are more than they appear. – Shrek

The excitement from the sponge cakes at New Kam Hing had so stimulated the brain that my fellow crusader to Chinatown remembered having a terrific yuan yang in Chinatown: Yuan yang (literally meaning “Chinese ducks,” which are believed to stay as a pair throughout their lives) is a quintessentially Hong Kong drink – a blend of coffee and Hong Kong-style milk tea. Why Hong Kong? Because Hong Kong milk tea is made of seriously and lengthily boiled tea, against the better esteemed English method; furthermore, it is enhanced with condensed milk. My only trial of this potent caffeine elixir, yuan yang, was in the form of a tapioca milk tea, well, tapioca coffee and tea, and my memory of it is colored by a disdainful unpleasantness.

New Kam Hing Coffee Shop - December 28, 2010

Why do they bother calling themselves a coffee shop? Their coffee is only an afterthought or a preventive forethought – take your pick – provided for customers who cannot wait to swallow a dozen sponge cakes until they get to a safe haven; in either case, it is a mere convenient lubricant to facilitate the transfer of their criminally addictive sponge cakes from their plastic Target containers to people’s extending and expanding holiday girths.

Cocoa V - December 16, 2010

Exuberance makes you blind. Let this be a lesson to you so that I did not wholly suffer in vain.

Sigmund Pretzel Shop (Bryant Park) - November 6, 2010

The popularity of pretzels in New York is mystifying, considering that the most common form emerges from a metal pit blowing burned smoke and thus contaminating the sidewalks, salted enough to last 10 years and hard enough to substitute for Frisbees.  Who actually eats them, except the guileless tourists with impoverished wallets?  The alternative to this is the mass-produced and rolled Auntie Anne's:  Yes, I did eat them when mired in towns - especially the one containing more cacti then humans - where the only available and remotely enjoyable and edible food item were their Almond pretzels, closely followed by Sesame and Cinnamon.  There was a paradigm shift, however, due to a trip to Germany, affecting not only pretzels but also wursts, sauerkraut and many other food, which I had previously labeled as "peasantry."  All in all, being not overly keen on the European baking tradition east of France, I had been ignorant of the Sigmund Pretzel Shop until I stumbled upon it in Bryant Park.  Fate is like this:  If you do not go and find it on your own volition, it will come to you.

Eataly - November 4, 2010

Paninoteca

So, it has come to this: Mario Batali's already over-blown ego has blown up to the size of one city block.  Eataly is a Disneyland for - obviously not the chefs as they have better sources for Italian necessities, for example, as in flown from Italy in the morning and arriving at JFK at 4PM - for the lazy gourmets, misguided foodie wannabes, blind Mario-Batali worshippers, harmless Bastianichi followers, starry-eyed tourists, recession-free investment bankers and a handful of wary OCDs* toward novelties; all these people susceptible to the lure of a nougat with a $25 price tag.  *Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Cafe Au Lait (Puerto Rico Importing Company & Roasting Plant) - November 6, 2010



Cafe au lait at
Roasting Plant

 Cafe au lait, an often neglected relative of cappuccino in a city infested by Starbuck's and myriad other self-deluded coffee shops, seems to be finally gaining some recognition, perhaps as a part of the efforts by the coffee shop industry to differentiate and to offer more varieties without venturing into the vulgarity of, for instance, gingerbread latte.  However, just as most of the cappuccinos are distasteful, if not downright offensive (with only one exception - Fika), cafe au lait suffers the same sad mistreatment in New York. I suppose as long as the New Yorkers are getting high and mighty on venti latte and frappecino for the caffeine and sugar, little attention will be paid to the taste. Mind you, I am not saying Starbuck's does not have its merits:  I prefer Starbuck's to most of the other establishments on offer if I am in need of a shot of caffeine up my blood stream for they are at least the lesser evil and relatively consistent in quality - the only benefit of mass-branching.  I do also feel a certain degree of sympathy toward Starbuck's:  They did have a high corporate philosophy and ideal, at least in the early stage of its growth, as I had once wet my hands behind the barista machine in the bygone days.