Top Ten #44

1.  Neptune, Boston



2.  Roy Harper, Stormcock


3.  return to Kintaro, Vancouver

4.  Toro, Boston



5.  Revolver, Vancouver

6.  Mystery Train, Gloucester, MA

7.  Meat & Bread, Vancouver

8.  smörgåsbirthday



9.  springtime in Montreal, according to AEB

10.  The Farm House "Lady Jane" cheese + Les Amis du Fromage, Vancouver

aj

* not necessarily on the same day

Boston Notebook

fig. a: You don't know beans...

When M., our friend and Ultimate Boston Authority, titled her extensive run-down of the food scene in Boston "Beans & Tweed," we weren't exactly 100% sure what to make of it.  I mean, yeah, we all know about Boston baked beans, but are they still just as central to the local imagination as they once were to the national imagination?

  fig. b: Uncle Sam + Sitting Bull

And, sure, I guess I can see the tweed connection, but what kind of Boston Tweed are we talking about?

 Ivy League?

fig. c: boss tweed


 fig. d:  bros. tweed

Retrosexual?

   fig. e:  tweed ride

fig. f: tweed rides again

Or this kind?

  fig. g:  Boston tweed cat carrier

Well, in the end, we didn't encounter a whole lot of beans or tweed.  No beans, because we placed our emphasis on scoring some premium seafood.  And no tweed, because it was somewhere close to 85º F when we arrived in Beantown.  But M.'s "Beans & Tweed" guide to Boston was a treasure trove of tasty and tantalizing tips nonetheless.

Unfortunately for us, our trip to Boston (Michelle's first!) was exceedingly short, and the stated purpose of the visit had to do with attending a conference, but we still managed to squeeze in some great outings...

Toro

We were dead set on going to Toro for our first dinner in Boston.  We'd heard great things, we were in the mood for top-notch tapas, we were thirsty for wine, and we were on another one of our crazy cross-border missions.  This time involving a bread delivery (?).

When Michelle's colleague and fellow Twitterer Jeffrey Finkelstein heard that we were heading down to Boston, he asked us if we could do him a favour--drop off a batch of his exceptional Hof Kelsten bread to a friend of his:  Ken Oringer, the owner and one of the co-chefs at Toro.  We told him we'd been thinking about visiting Toro anyway.  He told us that he'd make sure that he got us hooked up if we did.  Right on!

So that's how we wound up hauling an industrial-size bag (literally) of bread from Montreal to Boston.  This time the customs officials didn't even bat an eye.

Dropping off a load of bread didn't help to get us seated at Toro--it was Friday night and that joint was hopping!--but it did score us some attentive service and some lovely extras when we did.

Everything (and I do mean everything) we had was simply outstanding, but the highlights included the cauliflower a la plancha (with pine nuts and golden raisins), the whole salt-encrusted Mediterranean sea bass stuffed with herbs, the griddled garlic shrimp with Romesco, and their house special Latin American-style grilled corn with aioli, aged cheese, and espelette pepper.  I know, I know:  corn in March?  Like Michelle says:  just order it.  It was totally off the hook--the very best grilled corn either of us had ever had.

Verdict:  Olé!

Mr. Bartley's

Mr. Bartley's actually has a rather extensive menu, but their reputation rests on their assortment of "gourmet burgers."  You might think the "gourmet" label might scare some people off, but, no--Mr. Bartley's burgers are unbelievably popular.  The line-up outside stretched down the block at 2:30 in the afternoon.

When we saw the size of this queue, we figured we'd have to come up with a Plan B, but there were only two of us, so we decided to ask how long the wait was anyway.  After all, we were both majorly jonesing for a burger.  When the host told us "about 15 minutes" we thought he was having us on, but we decided to stick around to find out.  Sure enough, 15 minutes later, we were seated, waiting for our gourmet burgers.

Mr. Bartley's isn't exactly a fast food joint--the burgers are much too generous (7 ounces!) for that.  But it's pretty much as fast as it could possibly be, and it's an impressive operation to see in action.  They take your order outside, when you're waiting in line.  When you actually enter the premises, your order is set into motion, and is matched with your seating assignment.  No time is wasted on customers lollygagging over the menu, and the ritual of ordering has been seriously streamlined.  You still have a bit of a wait on your hands after you get seated, because these are big burgers and they're prepared with care, but Mr. Bartley's system allows them to cycle customers through the restaurant highly efficiently (hence, the miraculous "about 15 minutes" wait time).  More importantly, they make a tasty, perfectly cooked burger, and the place has all the character you'd expect of a Harvard Square burger institution of its vintage (since 1960!).  Plus, if it's good enough for the likes of Johnny Cash, Jacqueline Onasis, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bill Belichick, Al Pacino, Adam Sandler, Tom Werner, and Katie Couric, it's good enough for you.  It was definitely good enough for us.

Verdict:  Rah!  Rah!  Rah!

Neptune


 fig. h:  Neptune

Easily the single biggest food highlight of the entire trip.  Neptune was definitely a bit of a splurge, but it was absolutely worth it.  We sat at the raw bar and took our sweet, sweet time, and when everything was said and devoured, Michelle proclaimed the meal one of her Top 5 restaurant meals of all time (!).

One of the reasons the meal was so much fun was because we avoided the main courses, and, instead, placed our focus on the raw bar and on a selection of accompanying appetizers and other side dishes (in retrospect, I guess we were still in tapas mode from the night before).  We ended up doing two platters from the raw bar--both of them à la carte, both of them consisting mainly of New England oysters--and even that wasn't enough:  Michelle ended up having an extra Jonah crab claw "for dessert" at the very end of our meal.

The oysters were simultaneously out of the world, and very much of it.  They were so plump, so juicy, so sweet, and so wonderfully briny.  We ended up having most of Neptune's East Coast offerings, including Cotuits (Cotuit, MA), Island Creeks (Duxbury, MA), and Wellfleets (Wellfleet, MA), but our favourites were the Ninigrets (Ninigret, RI) and the Thatch Islands (Barnstable, MA).  Michelle had never had Jonah crab claws before, so she insisted, and I was all too happy to comply.  I'd never had cracked crab without drawn butter, but those claws were pretty damn fine au naturel, and they were even better with a dab of Neptune's horseradish-laced cocktail sauce.  Finally, I insisted on adding some clams to the mix, and I was pretty glad I did, because their cherrystones were the sweetest, most tender clams I've ever had.

Other delica-seas included the Wellfleet littlenecks steamed in Vermentino wine, with garlic and parsley, the Neptune Caesar, whose combination of lolla rossa lettuce, pecorino, lemon, and boquerones (yes!) may have made it my definitive restaurant Caesar salad, and Neptune's crudo special.  Their crudo-of-the-day was striped bass from Virginia dressed with olive oil, chives, sliced red grapes, and verjus, and it was utterly masterful.  It blew us away, and I'm sure it would have made Dave Pasternack proud.

Next time (and, let me tell you, there will be a next time) we're definitely going to split one of Neptune's lobster rolls, but, otherwise, I'd go about things pretty much exactly the same way.

Verdict:  Ahoy!

Deluxe Town Diner

 fig. g:  deluxe!

Sunday we were in the mood for a deluxe diner breakfast, and a deluxe diner breakfast is what we got. In fact, that was the name of the diner we went to:  Deluxe Town Diner, in nearby Watertown, MA.  New England still has its fair share of authentic early- to mid-20th-century diners, and the Deluxe Town Diner is one of them.  And though the owners are clearly aware of their diner's retro charms, they haven't gone all Wowsville with it.  Instead, the focus is on the food.

We were lured by rumours of honest-to-goodness, homemade Johnny Cakes, and they were truly excellent (especially when drizzled with their 100% pure Vermont maple syrup), but so was everything else:  the corned beef hash, the home fries, the bottomless cups of coffee.

Verdict:  Hubba hubba!

Mystery Train

 fig. h:  all aboard!


On our way back to the Great White North, we made a detour to Cape Anne to eat some more seafood, buy some saltwater taffy, and experience the charms of coastal New England, but the best stop of this jaunt was one of our first:  Mystery Train Records in Gloucester, MA.  (M. didn't steer us wrong [she never does].)  Now that's what I call a record store.  Definitely one of the best I've been to in years. Such a crazy hodge-podge of a collection, such reasonable prices, and such a great shopfront window.  Classic record store dudes, too.

Verdict:  Kick out the jams!




Toro, 1704 Washington St., Boston, MA 02118 (South End), (617) 536-4300


Mr. Bartley's, 1246 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 (Harvard Square), (617) 354-6559


Neptune, 63 Salem St., Boston, MA 02113 (North End), (617) 742-3474


Deluxe Town Diner, 627 Mount Auburn St., Watertown, MA 02472 (617) 926-8400


Mystery Train Records, 21 Main St. Gloucester, MA 01930, (978) 281-8911



aj

The New Orthodoxy, rev. ed.

  fig. a: what he said!

Easter is almost upon us, and, let's be honest--there's a lot more to the paschal season than bunnies and eggs.  To prove this point, Michelle and Seth and the rest of the FoodLab team have put together a Russian Orthodox Easter menu to celebrate this most conflicted of holidays.  Highlights include a battle of the Russian salads (west vs. east, Moscow vs. Siberia), coulibiac (a.k.a., kulebyáka), the classic dish of salmon baked in a puff pastry shell, and paskha, the sweet cheese dessert that's the centrepiece of a Russian Orthodox Easter table (hence the name).

Michelle was so thrilled with the results of her paskha tests that she could barely contain herself. "OMG, the paskha is so beautiful I don't even know what to do!," she found herself Tweeting. Apparently, it tastes divine, too.

The menu lasts for two weeks, April 4-7 and April 11-14.

You can find the FoodLab on the 3rd floor of the Société des arts technologiques (1201 boul. St-Laurent), and you can find the full Russian Orthodox Easter menu here.

Bon appétit!

aj

p.s.  For all those who want to fully get in the mood before checking out the final two days of Michelle and Seth's sensational Russian Orthodox Easter, check out Julia Ioffe's article on "rediscovering Russia's lost culinary heritage" in this week's The New Yorker.  Perfect timing!

April Fool's?

fig. a:  mmm, bbq...

Is this an elaborate April Fool's joke on the part of the British Library?  I mean, check out this headline:  Unicorn Cookbook Found at the British Library.

And read this opening paragraph:

A long-lost medieval cookbook, containing recipes for hedgehogs, blackbirds and even unicorns, has been discovered at the British Library. Professor Brian Trump of the British Medieval Cookbook Project described the find as near-miraculous. "We've been hunting for this book for years. The moment I first set my eyes on it was spine-tingling."

Is it an elaborate April Fool's joke involving high-DPI images and seemingly authentic bibliographic references?

  fig. b:  head on a platter

Not only is the head of the British Medieval Cookbook Project a guy named Professor Trump, but the manuscript is being attributed to a guy named Geoffrey Fule.  And then they have the nerve to include this line:

Professor Trump added that he was tempted to try some of the recipes, but suspected that sourcing ingredients would be challenging. "Unfortunately, they don't stock unicorn in my local branch of Tesco."

Come on!

All I know is that the next time I film a Medieval fantasy/thriller epic, it's definitely going to include a uni-q scene like the one in the picture above.

aj

p.s. TY to VHS for the link!

Springtime in Montreal

fig. a: lamb roast, Mtl

For those of you who're discovering us for the first time thanks to Donna Nebenzahl's profile of "...an endless banquet" in the Spring 2012 issue of Urban Expressions, welcome!

For those of you who haven't seen the article in Urban Expressions, but would like to know more about springtime in Montreal à la AEB, check it out!   You'll find us waxing poetic about a number of our favourite rites of spring, as well as a number of accompanying photographs by Yours Truly.

You'll also find two springtime recipes:  the Hummus Sardwich with fresh chick peas, and the Gin Tonic.

And if you're interested in some related links, here you go:

ramps 1 & 2

snow crab 1 & 2

fresh chick peas

maple water

sugar shacks 1 & 2

artichokes 1 & 2

Spring came early this year.  Let's continue to make the most of it, Montreal.

aj

Crunchy Granola Suite

fig. a: fresh batch

Push it / Push it good / Push it / P-Push it real good
--"Push It," Salt-n-Pepa

For years, my breakfast of champions involved a toasted Montreal bagel and a schmear of cream cheese. Mostly poppy seed, often sesame, and from time to time, when I'd been good, I might treat myself to an "everything." Usually, I'd eat these bagels with just the cream cheese, but on special occasions they might get gussied up with some capers, a slice of fresh tomato (in season), a razor thin slice of red onion, and/or some smoked fish.

That's still my breakfast of champions.  I'll choose it over other options nine times out of ten.  But in the last year or two, as my latent hippieness has become more and more apparent, my morning routine has expanded slightly: it now concludes with a small cup of yogurt topped with some homemade granola and drizzled with a splash of maple syrup.

fig. b: crunchy granola suite*

Truth be told, I've had a taste for that kind of thing for years, but it only became ritual recently, when I started to make my granola myself.

Granola became a more regular part of our homelife right around the time we started "...an endless banquet." Michelle had made granola before, but she experienced a granola epiphany not long after she began working for Patrice Demers.

You wouldn't necessarily expect Patrice to be a granola guru--he doesn't exactly fit the description of a hippie ("a person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair and wearing beads, associated with a subculture involving a rejection of conventional values and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs," is how my dictionary characterizes the type), and his desserts are so refined, so sophisticated, so artful--not exactly "crunchy." They're hallucinant, but not necessarily hallucinogenic.

Yet those who've been paying attention will know that he's not averse to the idea of using a little bit of granola as a textural and flavorsome counterpoint in some of his desserts. So Michelle was regularly making granola à la Patrice, and what she learned is that she'd never cooked her granola long enough. Patrice's granola transcended, and his secret was that he baked his granola slow & low. What she learned was that if you wanted to take granola to a higher realm, you had to push it.

When Michelle made her deeply flavorful granola, things were good; but even though she was the one who'd had the epiphany, I was the one who was the serious convert.  I went through batches in the space of a couple of weeks, and there were times when Michelle couldn't keep up.  I was happy to make it myself, and I kept asking for the recipe, but Michelle can be cagey about her methods from time to time, even with me (professional discretion, and all that jazz).  Anyway, it took six or seven years, but, finally, after years of pleading, she let me in on the secret formula.

First off, like I said, it's more about the method than it is about the ingredients.  It's about taking your time, baking the oats and nuts at a relatively low temperature, attending to them carefully, and achieving a deep golden brown colour, at which point, not only will the granola be fully cooked through and through, but it will have a greatly expanded flavour profile.  Secondly, you can be creative with your fruit/nut/seed combinations, but we like to stick to a palette that's fairly regional: oats, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, cherries.  (If you want to get all exotic with your granola, that's up to you.)  Thirdly, feel free to adjust the sweetness, but keep in mind that when I serve the granola, the ratio of granola to yogurt is fairly small, and I only ever serve it with a premium full-fat, unsweetened yogurt.  And, lastly, people have asked me if my granola is fat free--the short answer is "no."

AEB Crunchy Granola

3 cups rolled oats, preferably organic
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup 100% pure maple syrup
1/2 cup sliced, blanched almonds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1 scant pinch kosher salt
1/4 - 1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup dried cherries (optional, adjusting the amount of raisins accordingly)

Preheat your oven to 300º F.

Pour the oats into a large mixing bowl.  Add oil and mix well.  Add the honey, the maple syrup, the almonds, the pumpkin seeds, and the salt, and mix thoroughly.

Place the mixture in a 11" x 17" baking dish (there's no need to grease it--you've already added oil to the mix).  Bake, uncovered, for 1 1/2 - 2 hours (possibly a bit more), making sure to remove the baking dish every 30 minutes in order to stir the mixture thoroughly.  Bake until the mixture has the desired deep golden brown hue.

Remove the baking dish from the oven and use a spatula to transfer the granola back into your large mixing bowl (cleaned, of course).  Add the dried fruit, stir thoroughly, and let the granola cool.

Transfer granola to clean 1-liter jars.

Makes two 1-liter jars of granola.  

Get it? Got it? Good!

Now you're all ready to have some hippie yogurt for breakfast, or go on a hippie hike. Whatever, man. If it feels good, do it!

aj

* The reference, of course, is to Neil Diamond's song of the same name.  The definitive version, in my humble opinion, is on Hot August Night.

fig. c: Hippie Neil

Smörgåsbirthday

We had every intention of keeping Michelle's birthday low-key this year, but, somehow, things got totally out of hand.



I know. When I look back on it, it just seems crazy. The theatre setting, the band,* the 5,000 guests. Totally ridiculous, right?  It wasn't "endless," exactly, but it was pretty close.

Anyway, the main thing is that we had a great time. And the smörgåsbord theme--complete with a Swedish Princess Cake finale--was a complete hit.

And, get this, if you want experience the smörgåsbord part of the experience in the presence of Michelle herself, you need only make your way to the FoodLab this week. There you'll find the following delicacies on offer, Wednesday through Saturday:

shrimp salad w/ Boston lettuce, celery, radish, apple, mayonnaise, and lemon zest

Swedish meatballs w/ gravy

beef tartare open-faced sandwich on pumpernickel w/ capers, gherkins, pickled onion, and egg yolk

house-smoked arctic char open-faced sandwich on brioche w/ crème fraîche, dill, caviar, and hard-boiled egg

house-smoked cream cheese open-faced sandwich on rye w/ Appenzeller, apple, and chives

Swedish cheesecake with cranberry coulis

and/or

Swedish Princess Cake (!)

Never had the pleasure of experiencing a true Swedish Princess Cake? It's worth a trip down to the FoodLab for that alone. You can find all kinds of crazy images of Swedish Princess Cake on the Internet (most of them suitable for Cake Wrecks), but, basically, it's a multi-layered cake that's domed with a thin layer of marzipan (tinted mint green, as per tradition, and usually decorated with a pink icing rose). The layers vary somewhat, but Michelle's includes whipped cream, genoise brushed with rum, custard, and raspberry jam, and the sum of these parts is one of the top three cakes I've ever had in my entire life. Honestly.

Skål!

aj

* The Band?

Bo Knows

Speaking of wraps, I still remember our first experience of Momofuku, way back in 2006, vividly.

fig. a: Momofuku!

Like virtually everyone else, the dish that first won our hearts was David Chang's now legendary, oft-imitated steamed pork buns, with its supremely succulent braised Berkshire pork. But the dish that left a lasting impression was the ssäm.

At the time, I had the following to say about the experience:

The true revelation of our luncheon, however, was my Ssäm. I have to confess, at the time that I ordered it, I really had little idea what exactly I was ordering. The ingredients--"Berkshire pork, rice, edamame, onions, pickled shiitake, kimchi"--all sounded great to me, but I was expecting some kind of a fried rice dish, or possibly even a rice-based soup.

fig. b: Momofuku ssäm

What we got, instead, was a burrito--a clever Korean-American take on the Mexican-American classic. In general, we're a little skeptical when it comes to "fusion cuisine," but here was another instance of Chang taking chances and finding (not forcing) culinary affinities. The results were brilliant--but, then again, as huge fans of Mission-style burritos and Korean food, we were pretty much an ideal audience for Momofuku's ssäm burrito.

Chang writes about his ssäm burritos with humor and a healthy dose of self-deprecation in Lucky Peach #2. In fact, his opening line baldly states, "In 2005, I thought I had the greatest idea in the world: I was going to serve Korean burritos." And he goes on to explain the logic behind his brainchild:

It wasn't that much of a stretch of the imagination: Koreans wrap up everything. Go to a summer barbecue with enough Koreans and one of them will eat his burger wrapped in a lettuce leaf just because that's how we do it. Bossäm is a traditional dish where you sit around a big plate of pork belly (and sometimes oysters) and wrap up mouthful after mouthful in napa cabbage.

fig. c: ssäm burrito spread

But, overall, Chang's piece reads more like an attempt to restore the reputation of his poor Korean burrito (and poke fun at himself) in the aftermath of the Korean taco phenomenon: "I was such a dumbass... (A year or two later, my good friend Roy Choi started doing Korean Tacos in L.A. Now he's so successful I want to be him instead of me.)"

Now, it's easy to make your own ssäm burritos at home. Chang's Bo ssäm recipe has appeared in Momofuku (the cookbook), in Lucky Peach #1, and elsewhere (such as Sam Sifton's New York Times article on Chang's version, "The Bo Ssam Miracle"). And in Lucky Peach #2, Chang provides a complete recipe for his original ssäm burritos.

But when I finally got around to preparing Chang's Bo Ssäm at home a few weeks ago, it struck me that he had missed out on a golden opportunity. As much as I love tacos, including Korean tacos, I still love burritos enormously. And while tacos might offer more opportunities for variation and innovation, there's one category where burritos have tacos beat hands down: breakfast.

Unless you're feeding a pack of coyotes, you're probably going to have some bo ssäm and some bo ssäm fixings leftover after your next bo ssäm-athon. And you're probably going  to find yourself so ravenous for the taste of bo ssäm again, and, in all likelihood, so incredibly hungover, that you're going to want to dig in to those leftovers sooner rather than later (like, for breakfast, the very next day). Just make sure you have some nice, big flour tortillas on hand, as well as some eggs, when you do. Then you can make yourself some bo ssäm breakfast burritos, or as we like to call them...

Ssäm Bburritos

1 extra-large flour tortilla, steamed or microwaved until warm
roast pork shoulder, Bo ssäm-style, reheated
refried short-grain rice
1 egg, fried, poached, or scrambled (depending on how you like it)
kimchi
quick-pickled cucumbers
quick-pickled radishes
ginger-scallion sauce
ssäm sauce

Pile the ingredients high, but not so high that you can't actually close the burrito.

fig. d: ssäm bburrito 1

Roll and fold the burrito up tightly, and wrap with aluminum foil.

fig. e: ssäm bburrito 2

Devour.

Repeat as needed.

[we'd like to think this recipe is a Momofuku/AEB co-production, but mostly it relies on recipes from Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan]

How did they turn out? Well, they tasted like "the greatest idea in the world."  The very greatest.

aj

Post-Strudel Wrap-Up*

Ever wondered what a strudel-making workshop actually looks like? Well, it's quite a bit more theoretical than you might think.

fig. a: this is Michelle's brain on strudel

At least, it is the way Michelle teaches it. You have to wrap your mind around that magical strudel dough,** before you can set about making it, let alone wrapping anything else with it.

The theory paid off. It was followed up by some intensive strudel praxis, and the results were impressive. The 16 workshop participants learned a lot in just a short period of time, they ate well, and the feedback was glowing.

It's hard to compete with that legendary apple strudel, but Michelle's fresh cheese and herbs strudel gave it a run for its money.

Michelle couldn't have been happier with the entire experience, which she described as "next level."

Will there be more FoodLab workshops? Indubitably. Like I said before, this is just the beginning of the FoodLab's instructional series.

Stay tuned.

aj

*No pun intended.

**Pun intended.

The horror! The horror!

fig. a: icon

Oh, that makes me feel a lot better.

Apparently, René Angelil and Céline Dion are only part of the investment group that has purportedly purchased Montreal's greatest culinary icon: Schwartz's. Bill Brownstein of The Gazette reports, "the kingpin of the operation, according to several sources, is Paul Nakis, who is involved with the Bâton Rouge chain and the Sir Winston Churchill Pub, among other interests."

Any way you slice it, this news makes a mockery of Schwartz's: The Musical (which was based on Brownstein's book Schwartz's Hebrew Delicatessen: The Story) and its "this is Montreal, not Toronto"*/"no sell out" moral.

Save the deli, indeed.

Stay tuned...

aj

* i.e., culture vs. commmerce