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Book Bit
“Woland silently raised his glass and clinked it with Margarita’s. Margarita drank up obediently, thinking that the spirits would be the end of her. But nothing had happened. An enlivening warmth spread through her stomach, there was a soft thump at the nape of her neck, and her strength returned as if she had just awakened from a long, refreshing sleep, and in addition, she felt as hungry as a wolf. her hunger intensified when she recalled that she had not eaten anything since the previous morning. She started to devour the caviar greedily.
Behemoth cut off a slice of pineapple, salted and peppered it, ate it, and then downed a second glass of spirits with such dash that everyone broke into applause.
After Margarita’s second glass of sprits, the candles in the candelabra burned brighter and the flames in the fireplace grew.
Margarita did not feel the least bit drunk. Sinking her white teeth into some meat, she savored its succulent juices as she watched Behemoth spread mustard on an oyster.”
From The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, tr. Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor.
When I was in college, me and one of my pals, also a sad young man with literary pretensions, used to fantasize about opening a bar called Woland’s, with a menu of pickled mushrooms and oysters. Think we just ignored the pineapple bit.
Life Stuff
By way of explanation for how quiet it’s been in noodsletter HQ, I’ve been suffering from some post-viral syndrome cognitive deficiencies in the wake of my last bout of COVID in February. I’ve had to cut back on all sorts of things—exercise, recreational reading (which is why I went to the well for the Bulgakov quote below), bread baking, to name a few—in order to just do my day job passably well. Unfortunately, that has included noodsletter. Until this day! When all is changed.
Instead of just packing this one with all the ideas I’ve got for food stuff, I’m going to split them out for upcoming noodsletters. Look for another to follow this one fairly soon, with one or more of these ideas: darphin trials, chaat-ifying your life, a cucumber salad or two.
Also, right after I got over COVID, but before I realized I shouldn’t be taxing myself at all in my convalescence, I took my brother to Kono for his birthday. (Well, “took” isn’t quite the right word; he graciously paid for himself—on his birthday—because as much as I love him I could barely afford to pay for myself.) I wrote up the experience for paid subscribers, if you’re interested. (I also turned on some kind of preview system for non-paid subscribers to take a look at paid posts—that is the paid post you’d want to take a look at.)
I think it’s a great experience, even if I am take-it-or-leave-it on the non-yakitori elements. And the yakitori offerings, while limited in terms of variety parts and organ meats, are truly the best in the city that I’ve had. I’ll include three of the courses here: A crazy thigh skewer, which I sort of successfully replicated at home (the cut, not the cooking finesse); the morels, which were incredibly good; and the off-menu chicken breast cartilage that the chef skewered up for me after I said it was my favorite part. If you’ve got like 400 bucks to light on fire, might as well get some yakitori.
Work Stuff
Did you hear the news? (You probably heard the news.) There’s a brand new Control Freak coming to town—the Control Freak Home!
We have been working on this launch for months and months, and the Breville engineering team has worked on this product for years and years. And even though I’ve spent countless hours toiling away on copy for this thing, I find it impossible to describe how great it is.
We’ve got a ton of new (and free!) recipes that we’ve developed to work with the machine—so many that I’ll just put ‘em in a list. (They also work on conventional stovetops, of course, but they demonstrate the capabilities of these crazy induction burners.)
If you’ve always wanted the original Control Freak, as I always did, you’ll want to buy the new one. (And you DEFINITELY want to get the Studio Pass discount of $300 off, just for the savings alone. But Studio Pass is also very cool! I swear! Look at these recipes! )
It’s much better for home use, fits better on your counters, and it’s just as crazily powerful. I find myself oddly well-suited to life as a paid shill (harsh, but this is true) for a kitchen appliance company, because it’s easy and stress-free when the appliances are crazy good. Just like the countertop oven, this thing has already effectively replaced my main gas burner.
Precision Hollandaise (you just dump the ingredients in a pot and stir… pure insanity!)
Precision Butter-Poached Lobster (this uses a temperature stable beurre monte! Come on!)
Precision Cantonese-Style Sizzling Steamed Fish (A signature Tim Chin banger.)
Precision Pan-Seared Pork Chops
Precision Pan-Seared Chicken Breast
“News”
Who invented butter chicken? A matter of academic interest to the vast majority of people, but the real star of Moti Mahal is the dal makhani. This was true 30 years ago, when me and my friends would blow our allowance money on butter naan and dal at a location near our high school, and this was true a couple years ago even at the NYC outpost of the chain when I was doing research for my own (pretty good!) recipe for butter chicken. (Also, look at the photo of the tandoori chicken in that article! The Frankenstein monster birds we eat in the US just aren’t as tasty as the scrawny guys used everywhere else.)
Don’t have much to say about fine-dining reviews—talk about academic interest!—but this bit had me scratching my head. “Our sweet waitress confessed, as the dining room emptied and we drained the dregs of our Chenin Blanc, that she commutes an hour each way from Bed-Stuy. Most of her tables gasp at that revelation, aghast. Every spaceship has to land sometime.” They gasp, aghast, at an hour commute to Midtown East? Some kind of performance going on, or maybe multiple competing performances.
In general, I feel like Schneier writes evocatively about everything except the food. In his more recent review of the so-hot-right-now-for-scenesters Korean fried chicken spot Coqodaq, the only judgment on the chicken is, “The quality is clearly higher [than KFC], the seasoning more evenly distributed.” (Very short review, too.)
Ryan Sutton’s review.
On the topic of reviews, Paula Forbes on the dearth of cookbook criticism, inspired by this post by Tim Mazurek on the dearth of negative cookbook criticism. I don’t know if this is hopelessly naïve, but I believe it’s possible to build a successful cookbook review on a subscription model! I disagree with Forbes that you’d have to review the bulk of titles in a season—creating an NYTBR or (from Forbes’s description) Publisher’s Weekly for cookbooks seems impossible, or at least like a goal you’d have to ramp up to. Start small, couple reviews from a couple contributors a month, build a paying audience, and I’m almost certain it could be the start of a sustainable business model. Relying on affiliate revenue or ad sales is at this point a non-starter, I think—look at the wasteland of the internet and specifically food media. (Also, I would love to work at or for a dedicated cookbook review!)
Chefs talking about running restaurants. It seems like such a thankless job, and a lot of these chefs have restaurants that serve people who act surprised their servers have to make a standard-issue commute. Also seems like the issue of class disparities is mostly ignored (although Eric Huang mentions it).
Eric Huang expands on his observation in his newsletter, which is worth signing up for. And his more recent newsletter about opening a restaurant is revealing, too. Sign up for this guy’s newsletter!
Alex Stupak’s $29 hot dog spot has closed. It was very well reviewed.
A top ramen shop in Tokyo that sells ramen that is exponentially better than anything in the US for less than $20 a bowl is considered terribly expensive and a mystifying success story.
High prices are putting ramen shops in Japan out of business.
Obituary for Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill. Seems like a good guy.
An update on the Yuji Haraguchi lawsuit situation against Wegman’s NYC fish counter partner. Definitely seems like, if you shop for fish in downtown Manhattan, you should support Haraguchi’s Osakana shops. (This goes for me, too!)
Ina Garten and the mystery of switching publishers for her memoir.
Review of a novel called The Glutton that, seems to me, adopts an unfair philosophical objection to a focus on the prose.
Food delivery apps as outright worker exploitation. One of the benefits of cooking 99% of my meals is I have only once participated in this specific system of exploitation. (My participation is limited to all the other systems of exploitation!)
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TikTok is mostly cringe millenials.
ADHD as an evolutionary advantage for foraging food.
The daily struggle to find food in Gaza.
Some interesting insight into the Heinz ketchup cap.
Asian-Americans almost twice as likely to shop at Costco. (That’s right.)
I read this and made rice pudding. Unfortunately, rice pudding is… not that great? Been thinking a freekeh pudding could be amazing. Does that sound good?
Cheesemaking technique can turn stripping e-waste of gold profitable!
Quite a few years ago, when I first moved to NYC, one of our first meals was at Patsy's in Brooklyn. Our waiter told us he lived in Jersey and took him 2hrs each way to get to work. We did gasp, and it wasn't even fine dining.
I am originally from Antep, Turkey where firik is a staple. I have never encountered a dessert involving it but since reading your mention of a firik pudding i’ve been thinking about it. Cooking it in milk shouldn’t be too far a stretch since yogurty soups are normal in the area; and pekmez (grape molasses) would be the first sweetener that come to mind. I guess pistachios, the city’s most famous produce, would be overkill (and expensive)- but i think i’ll try a firik puding with pekmez.