noodsletter #.0026
Fishy business, nuked portobellos, life is a pasta sauce-strewn highway.
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Book Bit
Since I knew by then that she didn’t have any better idea than I did what her mother was saying I went to see about breakfast. But we had eaten the place bare so when she was off the phone I told Eliza to get dressed and took fifty dollars from under the paperweight and we went down to the Piccolo Mondo for a meal then doubled back to the Woolworths on George Street to buy groceries. The glass doors slid open on more rows of packaged goods than Eliza was used to taking in at once. Even the flagship supermarket on George Street was no Roselands but somehow the way she flew up and down the aisles in acquisitive figure eights made it seem like enough forever, a millennial storehouse. What shall we. We bought mineral acids, milk, Cornflakes, Wheatbix, sugar, apple juice, tea, a large bronze packet of Vittoria coffee, a dozen eggs, sprouts, bread with a rising sun on it forget the name, ham Swiss cheese, other cheese, butter, plain flour, jam rolls, ribbons of bacon, shaved turkey, a sack of frozen peas, canned fish, water crackers, peanut butter, popcorn, stuffed olives, garlic, lamb chops, greenish oranges, the biggest iceberg lettuce we could get our hands on, sprouts, onions, potatoes, India rubber, noodles, rice, something resembling spinage, new and pickled cucumbers, button no, yes that’s right button mushrooms, shallots, shamrock, rosemary, fennel, asparagus, cans of Queensland tomatoes from a pyramid of canned Queensland tomatoes, carrots from South Australia, hopefully stoneless sardines in cans, maybe they all are, the lucky dumb animals, an elegant variation on cream buns, Black Forest cuckoo, macadamia nuts, almonds, green and ruby table grapes, kiwi fruit, dates from the U.S.A., Monte Carlo biscuits, sour cream, marmalade, mayonnaise, a whole chicken, canned peaches. Brother. If that doesn’t put me on the syllabus nothing will. I have to foam out my own confusion on the poisoned pastures. We piled what was in fact our carnival into a shopping trolley and rolled it up the street to the flat, then we crammed the trolley into the lift and took the stairs at a gallop to catch the doors before they could close. We had breakfast again. I put the money that was left over back under the paperweight on the writing table and took out the mail.
You know we’re not going to be able to pay for groceries much longer at this rate.
From Dodge Rose by Jack Cox, which is one of the most remarkable novels I’ve ever read.
Fishy Business
I have been a little preoccupied by the fact that I recommended using E-Fish, the online fish selling outfit. It’s not that the quality of the products is not good—they are excellent—nor is it that I’ve discovered or heard about anything wrong with the business. It’s just that I perhaps did not due my full due diligence in exploring alternative options? Or maybe it’s that I simply received stuff for “free” and I consequently feel a little icky about it.
In any case, I realized that while you can order through E-Fish from individual hubs in their network of fisherpeople, you can also order directly from these hubs. Case in point: True Fin, which provides E-Fish with mackerel and pollock, among other fish, has its own online store, and you can order from them directly. I decided to try it, if only to compare both price and quality with the stuff you can order through E-Fish. The selection when you buy directly from the company is a little limited—no squid or skate—but you can get things like mackerel and pollock and cusk, and the price seems a little lower, which is what originally made me feel queasy about recommending E-Fish; you can get the same fish directly from the harvester, but cheaper? Well, I must’ve goofed. I picked up some pollock and some mackerel to make the comparison.
Turns out the price is actually nearly identical, since E-Fish has substantially lower shipping costs. The quality is also pretty similar, since the harvesting method is identical: Fish are caught, then superfrozen pretty speedily after being caught. However, it seemed to me that the products bought from E-Fish—which, remember, claims that it sends out orders as they’re received, so you get in return fish that’s freshly caught, even if it’s superfrozen on the boat and comes to you hard as a rock—were actually superior. Either superfrozen fish is better if it’s thawed relatively soon after it has been superfrozen, or I convinced myself that’s the case. The mackerel in particular seemed to be noticeably superior when I ordered it from E-Fish. The differences here are of tiny degrees, though; the stuff I got directly from True Fin was far superior to any mackerel I’ve purchased at fish markets in the US—just excellent stuff. The pollock is also remarkably good, excellent when battered and fried, but also wonderful braised or pan-roasted.
It was something of a relief to know I wasn’t duped by fancy marketing, and to confirm that E-Fish is actually providing great value even as it’s providing high-quality seafood. But it also makes sense that if these individual outfits have processes that can accommodate E-Fish’s order-than-catch system, then they also are all set up to provide their products in near-pristine condition direct to consumer. Highly recommend using one method or another to get your hands on the mackerel.
If you do pick up some (or a lot!) of mackerel and want some idea of what to do with it, what I do with most of it is fillet it, cure it slightly, then freeze the individually wrapped fillets in a freezer ziptop bag. They keep for a very long while this way, you can throw them under the broiler or on a moderate grill directly from the freezer, and they’re delicious (serve with a little grated daikon and some good soy sauce). You can, of course, cook the fish directly after curing it rather than freezing it.
Cut off the heads, discard the cuts, cut the things into fillets (I will one day do a step-by-step, but I’ll have to wait until it gets cooler; you have to work quick when it’s hot), then give each fillet a light sprinkling of salt on both sides. Let them rest on a paper towel-lined sheet pan wrapped in plastic in the fridge for 1-2 days, then blot them dry and either cook or wrap each one in plastic wrap and freeze them, flat, after which you can dump them in a freezer bag.
I think I grill/broil them (skin-side facing the heat source) for about 3-4 minute on the skin side and then a couple minutes more on the other side (doesn’t matter if they’re fresh or frozen).
Personal News
Started my new job at ChefSteps this week, and it was a blast! Jumped right into working on this burger package (you’ll need a Studio Pass to access most ChefSteps content).
Although the package is about grilled burgers, the portobello burger uses a microwave pre-cook before grilling, and I tried it out when I was doing our weekly smash burger dinner. It was weirdly effective and produced a fantastic burger, even without a grill. You just stem portobellos, drop them in a microwave-safe bowl, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and nuke them for 2-3 minutes on high, depending on the power of your microwave, and they’re fully cooked and ready to get seared/grilled. It’s got me thinking about maybe trying to riff on it with a mushroom smash burger…we’ll see.
I realize a recipe website subscription is a tough sell for a lot of people, particularly when there’s a ton of stuff out there available for free, but we’re working on a bunch of very interesting and exciting stuff—the level of talent at ChefSteps is crazy high. I’m intimidated!
“News”
Dutch dairy farmers are big mad about regulation on nitrogen emissions. They do have a point about cars not being regulated!
Amazing story about a kid reviewing fried chicken places no one else reviewed. Name of his show— “The Pengest Munch” — is also amazing. He’s totally charming.
Alaskan snow crabs just…disappeared! So creepy (not in a climate change way, although that’s probably what’s happening, but in a “snow crab are actually aliens and we’re screwed because now it’s time for revenge” way).
ConEd is dumping hot, fetid, toxic water into the Hudson. I have been mulling fishing in the Hudson since I live right on The Narrows, but the fact that it’s an open question whether you can eat the fish out of there makes it less appealing (saw a guy pull out a decent fluke this weekend from the Bay Ridge NYC Ferry pier).
I agree with this complaint about web design. I feel like we’ve all become inured to the truly terribly designed websites out there, which makes these minor but irritating design flaws easier to ignore.
This new “chophouse” in Park Slope sounds nice but boring, bet it’ll do well. I link to it here because the copy has “like trout cooked on the binchotan,” which is like saying, “like a steak cooked on the charcoal briquettes.” For whatever reason, Japanese grilling remains an abstruse and esoteric area of knowledge for much of food media, too difficult to parse.
Totally bizarre story about whether or not Ken Friedman was involved in setting up some hot LA restaurant.
Do you know what “mouth behavior” group you belong to? Are you a Cruncher, a Chewer, a Sucker, or a Smoosher? You probably don’t know! (I think I’m a Cruncher?)
Usually very admiring of this writer’s work, but this bit on Jiro Ono and sushi and authenticity is a miss for me. The misstep seems to me to be at the beginning, where “simplicity” and “purity” are conflated with “perfection,” which then is conflated with “true.” Goes to show that even ordinarily nimble writers get bogged down by the idea of “authenticity.”
The noodle soup in this piece sounds fantastic, but the piece is very weirdly edited. The first couple paragraphs are bizarre.
Derek Lucci did a kanom jeen recipe for SE. It’s real good. (I hand picked and deboned all that freaking Spanish mackerel for the photos.)
This Heinz marketing effort with ketchup-stained T-shirts is… bizarre. They’re ugly!
Not the biggest fan of Ben Lerner, but this story of his is about choking on steak.
San Francisco Bay is choked with toxic red tide.
What Eater does best (although NYMag could’ve taken a swing at this!): Where Nightlife-Loving Mayor Eric Adams Eats.
From “Mothers in the Hague”:
After court adjourns for the day, they walk to the supermarket wearing winter coats over their saris, boots sinking into the snow. Some remove their gloves to catch snowflakes, licking their palms to see if it’s true, it’s just water, while others concentrate on their wheelchairs and canes.
Under fluorescent lights, the mothers compare different brands of biscuits and squeeze loose tomatoes and onions.
A review of a “Filipino-Japanese izakaya” in The New Yorker. Lots of annoying stuff to unpack here. Why an “izakaya”? (It’s not an izakaya.) Why is there literally zero mention of pulutan? How is inasal “fusion”? (Because it’s cooked on binchotan?) What…is this: “Lengua gyutan, or beef tongue…” (for the record, that’s “[‘tongue’ in Spanish][‘beef tongue’ in Japanese], or beef tongue…” It gives chai tea and naan bread some hefty competition.) What is this bit about being “ladylike”? “In fact, one of the choicest bites of the entire meal was an unladylike gnaw of the generous gristle on a bone followed by a spoonful of marrow-thickened soup, bobbing with cubes of cleansing daikon.” Seems like this is a common bug of NYer restaurant reviews, total incuriosity about the cuisines and some odd language stuff every time.
The Mississippi drinking-water crisis should be a national shame.
An old article, but I can get behind it completely: Cut-resistant gloves are amazing, buy them.
I think the Duke’s Mayo mascot is hilarious.
Ok, so food can hydrate you, too. But…what exactly is wrong with just drinking a bunch of water? Water is delicious!