noodsletter #.0024
I am buried under my book, COVID.
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Actual News
Today marks one year of putting out this little newsletter. Thank you to all who have joined me on this odd little journey!
I have other news as well, two bits. The first is I submitted the manuscript for my cookbook to my editor this week, which was a relief, but also marks the beginning of a process that will require a lot more work. But the bones of the thing are done, erected, grafted with the semblance of a skin.
My family also got COVID this week. I tested positive literally the day I handed in my manuscript, which was a kind of a blessing; I’ve been hit rather hard by the virus, and I doubt I would’ve been able to meet my deadline had I been infected just 24 hours before. My current symptoms include a mild fever and some crazy, crazy back pain, and weirdly on- and off-again nasal congestion. If the future consists of getting COVID every three months, even if you barely leave your house, the future is going to be shit.
All of the above explains why I’ve been neglecting noodsletter recently. I published a for-subscribers-only recap of an odd meal I had at Torishin, a very good yakitori restaurant in Manhattan, but otherwise I’ve been a little remiss in sending out timely updates. Going forward, I plan on getting back to the regular publishing schedule I’d been on before the book deadline crunch, and I hope in this second year to clean things up (I will get a new banner image, I swear), and to do more with it—what exactly that means is tbd.
Book Bit
The window in the brick wall that I could see from my little room was now lit up every night. Through the milk glass window I could make out two shadowy figures in the white light, heads slightly bowed, wearing bonnets or bonnet-like heads of hair, busy hands, unrecognizable objects. They bent down, handed things to each other, their deft arms reaching this way and that, up and down and to and fro. I picut4ed them preparing food. Since there were no restaurants nearby they would probably be selling home-cooked food, with their dishes passed in buckets, baskets and boxes from back door to driver then transported who-knows-where. Or maybe they were just kitchen dogsbodies, peeling, dicing, coring, grating, jointing and mincing what others would roast, boil and bake, a small contribution to the huge amount of food devoured in the city every day and then forgotten. The silhouettes were busy until the early hours of the morning, their movements brisk, their hands occasionally flicking back and forth in front of their faces, as if gesticulating during a lively discussion. One evening I watched one of the figures stretch forward and suddenly raise a large knife: for several seconds the knife hovered between their faces while nothing else in the lit window moved. Then the hand sank with the knife, and shortly afterwards they were both at work again.
-From River by Esther Kinsky, translated by Iain Galbraith.
“News”
Nicole Brown Simpson’s death inspired a restaurateur to become a liquified natural gas mogul.
People got mad at a chef for turning a happy meal into pasta, although this comment about her accomplishment seems to be applicable to all fine dining: ‘I mean great job. You really just blended most of it.’
War in Ukraine is causing a global chickpea shortage.
Also messing with the mustard market.
And, of course, the wheat market.
“The mayor” of NYC’s “Little Tokyo” sure sounds like “a criminal.”
This reminds me of the Superman/Asterisk crossover, which is made possible with a magic mirror.
I watched The Bear. I liked it. Every episode gave me anxiety, which I couldn’t shake for around 12 hours after watching it—and . I thought the ending was ridiculous. The paean to the Italian beef sandwich that ends that review I linked strikes me as being both apt and discordant, since the whole point of the show is the primary characters want to stop serving Italian beef in favor of braised short ribs with risotto with not enough acid? (The “not enough acid” thing is itself a wry bit played straight in the show, which I found odd. The incredibly talented sous doesn’t know it needs acid? Come on.)
Who is this type of New Yorker humor for?
This New Yorker piece on having an alcoholic father who liked to cook is touching in a brutal sort of way, but the reflex to describe people with alcoholism as being pushed to drinking by “something inside them” is not a good one and doesn’t align with alcoholism’s pathology as I understand it.
People love expensive Japanese stuff, New Jersey strawberry edition.
Zendaya can’t cook. (I actually have a near identical, probably worse injury. I can’t cook either.)
A little late, since the heat wave(s) seem to be over for now, but probably useful for the hellscape of the future: How to Stay Hydrated in a Heat Wave. Growing up in India, I drank 10 liters of water a day, at minimum.
The heat wave conversation always reminds me that most places don’t have air-conditioning everywhere, even in places where that should be non-negotiable, like a restaurant kitchen.
I realize a lot of people are sad about Hale & Hearty closing, but one of my inspirations for “getting good” at cooking was buying a mushroom and barley soup from Hale & Hearty when I was broke and thinking I could absolutely make something better.
Doyers Street is car-free! That street has three excellent restaurants: Taiwan Pork Chop House, Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles, and Sanur. Each made more delicious by the fact that you aren’t waiting in line for Nom Wah’s middling options (although Nom Wah has a good pea shoot dumpling.)
Pre-Raphaelite octopod:
Everyone knows the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list is ridiculous, but as with all the exposes of bad behavior at restaurants likely to be included in that list, the clientele don’t give a!
This review’s title says there’s a decent food court at Nordstrom’s, but the review doesn’t seem to reflect that at all?
Why do we keep reinventing spaghetti-cooking? Ctrl+F “mantecare.”
I don’t think Rothko knew his audience?
France to limit nitrites in cured meats. This seems reasonable to me! Better than the odd regulations in the US, where stuff with large amounts of nitrites can be labeled “uncured” because the nitrites come from celery salt.
Never occurred to me that cocktails as a category of drinks are an American export.
An example of the amazing work the NYT sometimes does (and the UX is so cool, and the bilingual functionality is the cherry on top): The Ephemeral Art of Mexico City’s Food Stalls.
The best food writer in history, Dennis Lee, broke the Choco Taco story. (This Milk Street Choco Taco clone idea is fantastic, btw.)
Next time I’m out in Queens I have to swing by this Sri Lankan grocery. Between this write up in the New Yorker, and Tammie Teclemariam’s missive on Staten Island Sri Lankan restaurants, it’s pretty clear New Yorkers have never tried/heard of appams/idiyappams (hoppers/string hoppers)? Is that possible? They’re the best freaking things to eat in the world!
A history of the enemy of millenial home-owners: the avocado.
If I were the editor of a major newspaper’s food section, I’d like to imagine I’d have a thicker skin for criticism (and wouldn’t resort to literally rewriting what the headline says in a tweet of pique!). The chickpeas are literally right there in the photo:
Colonialism in the Americas required viewing Indigenous people as inept at producing food:
NYT: Early Europeans Could Not Tolerate Milk but Drank It Anyway, Study Finds
Me, a half-Asian millenial: Same.
Mushrooms are gonna kick climate change’s butt.
This is what mushrooms see:
Come for the “people fish on the Gowanus??” incredulity, stay for the chart stating safe quantities of consumption for fish fished from the Gowanus.
Hot Ones, Samuel Beckett edition.
Greg Baxtrom continuing his perplexing streak of getting written up by nearly every outlet and garnering generally positive reviews even as reviewers say his food is not good. Perplexing, I say! (Great job to everyone involved, although they just blended most of it.)
“A family feud over drugs, money and fried fish roils the heart of the Texas prison system.”
Somehow the practices of locking up food items at the Duane Reade at Port Authority don’t seem newsworthy to me.
High oil prices have pushed KFC to offer chicken feet on the menu in China. Sounds amazing tbh.
I live for these lists! Congrats on your book and I hope you feel better!