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arazor:

Wild Mushroom Brulée – Maitake and gorgonzola custard with pancetta brulée
This was my favorite adventure of the night. Being a fan of Italian cooking I am frequently enjoy room temperature dishes that you might see served cold or hot and this savory dish was something that I am happy to say was delightful at any temperature.

I know you can say “add bacon and blue cheese to anything and you pretty much have a winner,” but the consistency and creaminess of the savory custard was just delightful and the crack of the spoon on the pancetta was just as satisfying as breaking through a crust of turbinado sugar.

Before the summer was out, I was hoping to do a brief blog post such as: “Listen, there’s this place in Williamsburg where this guy, in his kitchen, and well… you just have to see it really, extraordinary stuff.”

Looks like the New York Times has taken care of it. His quote in the article’s first paragraph is as delicious as what’s pictured above. Congratulations to Michael for hosting a series of incredible culinary adventures at his place on Sundays. You should make it a point to see what he’s up to. 

noraleah:

The Lilypad Project is quite similar to a Highdea(TM) that Michael, Mark, Matt et al thought up at one of Nick’s tea parties, in which Staten Island is unmoored from the seabed and made into a floating pleasure cruiser that winters in Florida.

In a fit of humidity shock/summer insomnia, I whipped up a batch of sci-fi with Nora and the above gentlemen. Imagine if Staten Island went on tour! or something to that effect. When I saw this on Nora’s blog I started an email to her saying she had erroneously attributed the conversation. As I deliberated whether to use “erroneously attributed” or “misattributed,” I remembered that I did indeed participate in this conversation, that it was a good conversation, and was glad to be reminded. I deleted my email unsent.

If I’ve had any other amusing conversations at tea parties or elsewhere, that you feel I should be reminded of, please be so kind as to post them on your blog. 

The actor Richard Widmark died earlier this year. As a tribute, BAM Rose Cinemas is showing three of his best lead performances on three consecutive nights. If you like no-nonsense-slap-across-the-face dialogue, quick witted men in brimmed hats, and characters so sick of it all they just have to look you in the eyes and tell it to you plain, do yourself a favor and check these out. First one is tonight.

• Hell and High Water, directed by Samuel Fuller.
• Night and the City, directed by Jules Dassin
• The Street With No Name, directed by William Keighley

On my return from Panama, I abandoned my beat-up Saucony’s for the above shoe. I’ve run in a number of brands since HS cross country. Here are my thoughts:

• Nike running shoes are not useful for running. You will see them most often on people who do not run. Their shoes have time and again forced me to change my stride. I can hold them in my hand and see how they could benefit me, but on my feet the shoes do everything they can not to.
• Adidas shoes are top heavy, and sometimes because of additional design features are even a bit side heavy. It has been a decade since I’ve known a serious runner who wears them.
• Asics are great for people with thin and slender feet. They make a few great pairs of women’s shoes. The heels are not too thickly padded, which I prefer.  My feet are too wide for them. 
• Saucony I’ve only bought a single pair of these over the years, the last pair I owned. They were their top of the line model, $170. I ran my best per-mile times in 7 years with those shoes. I may not have needed everything the shoe provided for, and over time felt they were too heavy. The heel was thick but firm, which I liked
• Reeboks are inconsistent, but a good pair is invaluable. All of my road races during high school were run in Reeboks. I felt like I’d dipped my feet in rubber everytime I put them on. Their trail shoes are awful.
• New Balance shoes I have run in the most. They are heavy as hell but they keep your ankles from bucking, rolling, and spraining. I think they make great trail running shoes, shoes for muck.
• Mizuno makes thin, long and weirdly shaped running shoes, although I like the lightness of the material. Great for road runners.

The shoe above is made by Brooks. Brooks makes a lot of shoes for people who need maximum cushioning. However, they always have a pair with slightly less heel cushion and mesh all around. This is the pair. They are extremely light, wide, and comfortable. I used the shoe selector at Runner’s World.com and even though I was going to pick these up anyway, based on the info I gave them, they selected this shoe for me.

I should say that I’ve never had issues with pronation, flat feet, weak arches or any of that. I have unbelievably strong feet (I can support my entire body weight on my two big toes) and incredibly high arches. Runner’s World declares this relatively rare. So if you’ve got thin flat feet reverse the above advice and you should be fine.

I’ve been in Panama City for about 36 hours. On a recommendation from Michael, we met up with Miguel in Bella Vista, visited his incredible multi-use “gallery-cafe-boutique” Diablo Rosso and talked over a 10-course meal at Manolo Caracol about hosting 20 of his friends at a W&L dinner in Panama City.

We leave for West Panama tomorrow morning for a drive through the inactive volcano ranges, along the coffee plantation valleys, coming back to the crazy, humid, construction-scarred, car-centric capital of methamphetamine
urban planning… Panama City.

So if you’ve got a mere $450, you can hop a non-stop 5 hour flight from New York to Panama for a $20 six-courses of fresh Panamanian provisions. Thursday, August 21.

When I travel, some simple mantra always develops, either on the road or in a bus station or along the side of the road. Something that comments on the “whatever comes along” spontaneity of going haphazardly from place to place. The cheesy slogan of the current ride:

“Use it to your advantage.”

Saw Nora’s post about the ridiculous Janice Dickinson TV ads smeared all over the subway, and had to comment on this trend of making yesterday’s celebrities look like they’ve farm-raised clones of themselves for immortality’s sake. 

Dana Carvey and I share a birthday. He’s 53. In this picture, he looks younger than me. 

File this under: places to visit lost in central Mississippi.

At 5am yesterday morning I made three BBQ sauces from scratch, in preparation for the Finger On the Pulse DJ BBQ I co-hosted (flyer below). I will post my recipes for those sauces today.

This is a photo of Que Korner in Foxworth, Mississippi. I stopped here because I thought I was at a gas station. But the barbecue joint had taken over the space where the gas station had been. I thought, “Oh. This is a barbecue joint? I could eat some of that.”

Sixty minutes later I’d bought a jar of sauce, had the best barbecue of my life, and left with a menu, stickers, and contact info. The slogan from the sign, “Best BBQ on the Korner,” is a fucking understatement. The Korner? There’s no other BBQ on the corner. There’s nothing else on the corner. There is no corner. Modesty of the absurd. The ribs were amazing. The pulled pork heavenly. The cole slaw (which I have always despised) was so delicious I decided to like cole slaw.

Last year I hosted a BBQ dinner with the W&L, and had Que Korner ship their barbecue sauce up for us to use. I made ribs with their sauce and served it warm, as they do. After a year of trials, I finally perfected their house sauce for last night’s BBQ.

When I last spoke to them, they said, “We have packets for our Secret Cole Slaw recipe.” I said no thanks, wanting to recreate it on my own. Their slaw was a vinegary sugary mustardy cinnamony bright yellow mess that haunts me every time I see a cabbage.