New York Stories 3

Enough already. No need to drag this "saga" out any longer.

Ain't that the truth? Especially since Day 3 was our wind-down day in the Big Oyster. "What, winding down already? After only two days and 200 blocks?" Yeah, I know. Kind of slack, huh? The thing is, we knew we had dinner plans on Sunday night--R and M, our hosts, were throwing a small dinner party. Plus, the temperature had been dropping like a stone all weekend. By Sunday things in New York had gotten frosty, blustery, and downright Canadian. So we opted for a relatively easy day, one that involved a considerable amount of time indoors.

1. Coney Island?

We'd been thinking of spending the day at Coney Island, checking out its weatherbeaten off-season splendor before the Coney Island Strategic Development Plan goes into full effect, Thor Equities and co. get their way, and we get stuck with this freak show:



But, frankly, Coney Island seemed just a little too exposed.

2. NYPL

So we grabbed an "everything" bagel and a schmear from a local bagel shop, cut over to Fifth Ave. and walked down to the grandeur that is the New York Public Library to do a little research.



We both had some hard-to-find titles that we wanted to take a look at, and we were happy to see that they had a couple of great shows up--the inspirational "Where Do We Go From Here?: The Photo League and Its Legacy, 1936-2006" and the smart,



playful, and, well, cheeky "A Rakish History of Men's Wear"



--but we were especially excited to dig up some exotic recipes. In the end, though, the best recipe we discovered that afternoon came from one of Michelle's hard-to-find books, a copy of Dieter Roth's (a.k.a. Diter Rot, a.k.a. Dieter Rot) 1968 Something Else Press title, 246 Little Clouds. There, quite by chance, Michelle found Roth's recipe for a, uh, Hot Futz Sundae:



When we'd finished jotting down our notes we were ready for another walk, and if there was snack potential at the end of that walk, all the better. So we crossed another "must-see" off our list:

3. Kalustyan's

Speaking of hard-to-find... The store itself is easy to find, but their specialty has shifted somewhat over the years from spices and imports to spice, imports, and the otherwise-impossible-to-find (both domestic and imported). Whenever you come across some obscure ingredient in a recipe in one of the big food magazines or in some international cookbook aimed at a North American audience, there's a pretty good chance the source listed will be Kalustyan's. It's almost to the point that we don't have to check any more when we come across such recipes. We just turn to one another and say, "Let me guess: Kalustyan's?" Anyway, we certainly wanted to get a sense of their completely overwhelming selection of spices,



but we're perfectly happy with the spice selection we have here in Montreal, so we were more interested in things like their encyclopedic collection of beans and pulses, especially since discovering after our Vermont trip what a huge difference a good bean can make to what you thought was your iron-clad baked beans recipe (more on this soon). We'd been looking for Jacobs Cattle beans, Steuben Yellow beans, and the like all weekend long as we traveled back and forth across town--at Kalustyan's we hit the mother lode. Michelle also found the Guyanese Pride Brand Artificial Mix and Guyanese Pride Brand West Indian Style Burnt Sugar (Caramel Colour) that she'd been needing to finally be able to make this Trinidadian Black Cake recipe that appeared in Saveur a while back. She knew Kalustyan's carried the stuff because that was the source that had been listed at the back of the magazine, but she couldn't actually find either ingredient on the shelf, so she asked one of the employees who, in turn, asked the manager. He listened to the query and gave us this "Here we go again" look, like he'd been fielding the exact same question from the exact same types for months. Apparently it's not easy being "A Landmark for Fine Specialty Foods." We finished off our purchases with two more items that we can't find in Montreal, and, as it turns out, are both excellent, but which we bought primarily for the packaging:



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Who says there's no good design left in America?

4. J.P.?

On our way back uptown we swung by The Morgan Library, hoping for a Great Libraries of New York double-bill, but it was already late afternoon and the library wasn't going to open long enough to make a visit worthwhile, so we did the next best thing: we headed back to Grand Central Station to take a closer look at the Grand Central Market.

There, we were happy to run into a familiar face:

5. Murray's

Murray's Greenwich Village store was also on The List. We spent time in the Village, too, as you well know, but the one time we made a point of walking by Murray's they were already closed for the day. By Sunday afternoon, we'd glumly crossed Murray's off The List. So, you can imagine our delight at finding Murray's one and only annex right there in the Grand Central Market. The main reason we were so intent on going to Murray's was in order to find Jasper Hill Farm's impossibly difficult to find Aspenhurst (of course, mistakenly calling it "Alpenhurst," as Michelle had been doing for months, only increases your handicap), most of which is bought up by the likes of Thomas Keller (with good reason, as we found out). We'd tried and loved all the rest of Jasper Hill's raw milk masterpieces--this was the only one left for completists such as ourselves. Michelle thought for sure that this tiny little market branch wouldn't actually be blessed with any of Murray's small quota of Aspenhurst, but thankfully she was wrong. We bought a quarter pound of this lovely Leicester-style cheese--



the likes of which I haven't tasted since my last visit to Neal's Yard Dairy in London--some beautiful Spanish Marcona almonds, and took off before we came across any other temptations.

6. Top Chef

Back on the Upper East Side, little did we know that we had a rendez-vous with a rising star of the New American Cuisine in store for us. We knew there was going to be good food awaiting us--R and M have never let us down in that department (or any other), and they kept up that tradition this time around, too. Everything from the ribs to the mac and cheese to the sticky toffee pudding was a knockout--the perfect comfort meal to bring the weekend to a close, the perfect comfort meal to take in the madness that was Super Bowl XLI. But at the top of our personal AEB highlights reel that night were a couple of the guests, S and C. Rarely have we seen such cute, bright, well-behaved kids (and, at our age, we're definitely part of that circuit). But when C trotted out her homemade cupcakes, well, forget about Prince and his formidable halftime heroics, forget about Peyton Manning, Tony Dungy, Devin Hester, this year's crop of "edgy' advertising, and all the rest of that jazz--that stole the show.

New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Libary, Fifth Avenue & 42nd, (212) 930-0830

Kalustyan's, 123 Lexington Avenue, (212) 685-3451

Murray's Cheese, 254 Bleecker St., (212) 243-3289, and 43rd & Lexington (Grand Central Market), (212) 922-1540

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In Praise of Cross-Border Grocery Shopping

Growing up in Canada, cross-border shopping meant going to huge big-box stores and stocking up on the latest cereals and snacks. People always came back from those trips proud of how much money they'd saved, and how many things they'd bought. My family never once took such a trip, though. Must have been something having to do with the fact that my parents grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain. That and a certain distrust they had for the ways of our neighbors to the south. This weekend, though, found me crossing the border to go out for brunch, stroll around, and, yes, pick up a few groceries in Burlington, Vermont. I have to say, it was not without a pang of guilt that I did so. And I certainly didn't tell my parents. So what do they have that we don't have? What would prompt someone like myself to give in to this most Canadian of pastimes?

For one, an amazing selection of Anglo-American-style cheeses. Milk in glass bottles. Artisanal flour. Butter. And, yes, a few snacks that we can't get up here. (Peanut-butter flavoured Chex anyone?)

When it came to cheese, I stocked up on two tried and true brands: Jasper Hill Farm's Bayley Hazen Blue, and Grafton Village's 5-Star Cheddar. In addition to these, I threw in another Jasper Hill cheese, their Constant Bliss [which, contrary to what you might think, is not named after a state of being, but rather after a soldier who guarded the Bayley Hazen road in 1781 and died there alongside his compatriot, Moses Sleeper], and Shelburne Farm's 3-Year Cheddar. All of these cheeses have blown our minds. The cheddars especially are unlike anything we can find up here. Anthony says he hasn't tasted such cheeses since living in England.

When I saw a shelf of milk in glass bottles, I knew I had to bring some home. I chose the whole milk, thinking it was the most versatile, and we've enjoyed it solo, as well as with our tea and coffee. I regret not picking up some cream, though. And maybe even some chocolate milk. Next time.

One of my missions on this trip down to America was to find some King Arthur flour. And find it I did. Every store seemed to have their entire line of flours. (Vermont being King Arthur's home state, I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.) I chose the traditional whole wheat, as I had no whole wheat flour at home. Thank God I did, because on the back of the package they'd printed a recipe for whole wheat bread, which looked so good that I made it less than 24 hours after returning. I can't tell you how glad I am that I did. It's the best loaf of whole wheat bread I've ever had. It's also easy to make: start to finish in less than 3 hours (!). Perfect for a Saturday afternoon. Even perfect for a Monday afternoon. This bread is so good, so naturally sweet (partly from the honey, but also partly from the flour itself), all you need on it (all you want on it) is some butter. Vermont butter, if possible.

King Arthur Flour's Classic Whole Wheat Bread

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey, molasses or maple syrup (I used honey)
1/4 cup nonfat dried milk
1 1/4 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. instant yeast

Mix all of your ingredients together until the dough forms a ball. Turn out onto an oiled surface and knead with oiled hands until dough is smooth. Place in an oiled bowl, cover, and let rise 1 hour. Place on an oiled surface and shape into a loaf. Cover and let rise 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the loaf for 20 min. then tent with foil and bake another 20 min. Let it cool on a rack and enjoy with butter and honey.

In one of Burlington's used book stores, I found a re-issue of Wallace Nutting's 1922 classic Vermont Beautiful. A picture book with prose, it is one in a series he did on the American East which includes New Hampshire Beautiful, Maine Beautiful, Connecticut Beautiful, Virginia Beautiful, Massachusetts Beautiful, Pennsylvania Beautiful, and New York Beautiful that I have slowly been collecting for a number of years now. I snatched it up, of course, and came across a passage in it which I thought fitting somehow and which is worth quoting at length.

...the farmer, more than eighty years old, has drawn off to one side, waiting for the "auto" to pass. The old and the new generations have clashed very sharply in our age. The patient oxen, long the willing helpers of the farmer, useful all their lives and useful in their deaths, must now stand to one side... Perhaps the "auto" will pass for good. The demand for fuel in all forms is beginning to sharpen until we may all take to the woods and chop our own and let the "auto" go. The sources of coal and oil supply have only to become a little less, and civilization's wheel will take another turn; the rural life will be a necessity, the oxen will come back.

I haven't seen any oxen teams on any of my recent trips to Vermont, and "civilization's wheel" may not have taken the turn Nutting expected, but all across The Green Mountain State you find signs that people haven't completely let go of the old world. Let's hope they hold on a little bit longer.

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Bayley Hazen Blue

Vermont blue and figs
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

A few years ago, I came across a cheese map of Quebec which detailed where the fromageries were and what they had to offer. We used this map a lot to find amazing local cheeses, and it became one of our main excuses for our weekend trips across the province. Quebec, like some other parts of North America, has been experiencing a renaissance in artisanal cheesemaking so you can find dozens and dozens of small cheesemakers scattered across the countryside. Thank God! There are so many incredible local cheeses right now in Quebec, such as Riopelle, Athonyte, Le Pizy, Valbert, Victor et Bertholde, and hundreds more, and so many of them are made with raw milk, too. Clearly there's a lot to be excited about, but there's still room for improvement. For reasons that might seem obvious, the cheeses that have emerged as part of this renaissance have tended to be French in style, rather than English, or Italian, or anything else. This is both a blessing and a curse. It means we have some very impressive high cream content cow's and goat's milk cheeses, but it also means that we're short on artisanal versions of the English-style cheeses that were staples here earlier. Another one of our weaknesses is in the area of artisanal butter production. To be rolling in French-style cheeses but to be lacking in French-style, fresh-churned butter is simply absurd.

Meanwhile, just south of the border, a parallel dairy renaissance has been underway. It's not that Vermont produces any more cheeses than Quebec, but step into nearly any general store in Vermont (and nearly every small town has one) and you'll find lovely local cheese, butter, milk and cream readily available. So, for instance, the blue cheese pictured above is something we bought at a little general store in Greensboro. We stopped in there looking for directions to Jasper Hill Farm, which is also in Greensboro and which we'd heard rave reviews of, but we were told that the farm didn't have a retail outlet. And, in any case, the woman at the store wasn't exactly sure where Jasper Hill Farm was located anyway. Lucky for us, they happened to stock Jasper Hill Farm's cheeses, so we picked one up. It's called Bayley Hazen Blue, and it is simply amazing, a perfect cheese. It might well be the best blue I have ever had in my life. We ate it with an apple-quince chutney and were blown away by its flavour.

Jasper Hill Farm makes only five different cheeses, and they are much sought-after by restaurants and boutiques in America. They have the aforementioned blue, Bayley Hazen, Aspenhurst, a Leicester-style cheese which is aged for one year--this year's vintage is sold out already, Constant Bliss, a soft-ripened cheese, washed-rind Winnemere, and another blue called Bartlett.

Our Jasper Hill experience was so good that plans are definitely in the works to make a trip to Vermont to pick up whatever else we can find of theirs, since their cheeses are unavailable in Montreal. * If anyone is interested in going in on a whole wheel of cheese, let me know. I can think of no better Christmas present...

If you want to plan your own Vermont cheese tour check out the Vermont Cheese Council's site. You'll find everything you need to know about Vermont goat's milk, sheep's milk, and cow's milk cheeses, recipes, and your very own spiffy Vermont cheese map.

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* For those of our lucky readers in NYC or SF, Murray's ** and The Cheese Board regularly carry Jasper Hill Farm's cheeses.

** Did you know that the Murray's crew have a blog?