Roving Gastronome: The Blog

When he was little, my brother called lobsters “lahspers.” I’m not sure why he was even talking about them, though, because we lived in New Mexico, where there are no sea critters to be found. There was a Long John Silver’s, and that was it.

But I had the real thing over New Year’s, and maybe it’s due to my landlocked upbringing, but damn, those fuckers are delicious.

And I do say “fuckers” because my hands are still covered with tiny, painful nicks and jabs from where the shell gouged into them. But maybe that’s my fault for eating in a frenzied whirl, like a starved maniac? Maybe, also, the melted butter all over my fingers made me a little clumsy.

This was the first year I got to participate in what is now Karine’s NYE tradition in Vermont, but she’s been doing it for several years, after being faced with the challenge of a turkey deep-fryer: a big ol’ stainless-steel pot, with a temperature regulator, just begging for something to be cooked in it. She appreciated the theater of a deep-fried turkey, but wisely saw that all that dirty oil was not something she wanted to face with a hangover the next day.

Thus, the lobsters were summoned, from the northern reaches.

As a way of celebrating the new year, the lobsters seem perfect. On a superficial level, they’re the logical complement to champagne, and due to price and difficulty of eating, they have the suitable just-once-a-year feeling about them that good holiday food should have. (I know, New Englanders are scoffing right now. But for me, lobsters average out almost to once-a-decade.) They’re also a lovely bright red, the importance of which can’t be overstated in the middle of winter.

And this year, when Karine had chosen a dinner theme of “The American Apocalypto,” well, those little beasts looked just right on our plates, burnt-red as Satan’s hide, with waggly eye stalks, wiggly legs and other demonic details.

Which brings me back to the gashes all over my hands. I wouldn’t normally say getting wounded in the course of dinner is good, but this seemed like a suitable kind of penance for the utter sweetness and perfect texture of the meat.

Or maybe it’s proof that working hard for something makes you appreciate it more–which is a lesson I have to say I never internalized. While most people’s parents told them this, mine in fact told me the opposite: that just skating through is the way to go, as it makes you feel exceedingly clever. Perhaps if we’d had lobsters when I was little, I might’ve had a stronger work ethic? Perhaps if I’d eaten lobsters at every new year, I’d be inspired to actually make resolutions.

At any rate, as with the crabs in Maryland and the sea urchins in Greece, I was also reminded just how much some things don’t want to be eaten. And yet we are such ingenious humans that we now have dedicated tools for doing so: giant pots, tiny pokers, silver-plated claw-crackers, even little bibs to protect us as we gouge out the livers, like so many ancient Greek oracles. (My liver augured well for the coming year, I’m sure.)

Wait, I’m getting carried away, the music is swelling for the dramatic finale–and I didn’t even mention Julia Child! We spent all day watching old episodes of the French Chef, which, like the Muppet Show, has aged very well.

As fortune would have it, there was a lobster episode, which was sort of like Faces of Death, but for crustaceans. Luckily you’re spared the vision of 20-pound “Big Bertha” drawing her last on camera, but you do get to see Julia cheerfully put a brick (or was it an old-fashioned iron?) on top of the lid to make sure the smaller critters don’t escape their boiling torment.

So, dinner at the gates of Hell, welcomed by Julia Child–a mighty fine way to start the new year. I feel like I can handle anything now.

I knew crabs were a big part of Baltimore, but apparently, they are so important that you get an automatic pardon for taking the Lord’s name in vain in a church basement.

See, there’d been a lull in crab delivery in Hour Three of the S.F.A. Crab Feast 2006, and one of our party had been moved to bellow, “More crabs, God damn it!” while pounding on the Kraft-paper-covered table with his little mallet. The monsignor, it so happened, was sitting behind him, but he only beamed and said, “Keep yelling!”

Not that we were going hungry or anything. Peter knew his way around this feast, as he’d attended one back right after he’d been down here as part of the PO-lice (he still keeps the entrance sticker from the last one in his old wallet with his badge). When we arrived, he took me first to the buffet line in the back of the drop-ceiling basement, where we could load up on tomato slices, corn, three mayo-based salads, hot dogs, pulled-pork sandwiches, and crab soup.

Peter’s old colleagues, his former sergeant and others, scoffed at this lighweight approach, which would surely ruin his appetite for the main attraction. They held out for the first wave of crabs–which were already 15 minutes behind schedule. Peter’s sergeant’s 12-year-old daughter was working the feast, though, so we were guaranteed to get served first.

Also at our table was a partially toothless woman who perhaps had not actually paid for a ticket, but had won an entrance badge simply by plopping down and insisting. The fact that she was a black bag lady made it pretty obvious she wasn’t with our party full of conservative, ghetto-hating cops, but she didn’t seem bothered. And really, neither did the cops. She happily sipped her beer, and smiled vaguely.

When the crabs finally came, she started slipping them into her purse. Eventually it became clear that she actually didn’t know how to clean a crab–unheard-of in these circles–so Peter’s sergeant cracked one open for her in about eight seconds. I was glad not to be the only crab novice at the table, and I felt better getting to watch a second demo, as the one Curtis had given me, the 30-second version specially tailored to Crab Retards, hadn’t exactly stuck.

Another interesting element to the meal, aside from the novelty of finally experiencing a Real Live and Legendary Baltimore Crab Feast, was that this was only the second time I’d met these people, who are from a chapter of Peter’s life I don’t know that much about. They call him “Pete” and heckle him for being a liberal and try to get him to move back to Baltimore. The first time I’d met them had been under very unfortunate circumstances, back when I was getting really sick last fall. We went to another B’more food tradition, a bull roast to celebrate some cop-related thing, and I’d spent the night feeling queasy and mentally calculating the distance to the bathroom or a potted plant, and I was also coughing horribly and worrying about the fact that my ankle was swelling to the size of a baseball. Plus the music was loud and there were tons of people. Oh yeah, and all these people had really, really loved Peter’s old fiancee. So that didn’t go very well.

This time, on a Sunday afternoon in a fluorescent-lit room, with the musical stylings of the Zim Zemelman band (accompanied by the monsignor on trombone) and the alluring tick-tick-tick of the Wheel of Fortune in the background, the social pressure was a little bit less. It was also aided by the simple communion of picking crabs. It kind of reminded me of that part in Moby-Dick when Ishmael is sitting around working the lumps out the whale sperm (not that kind of sperm–read the book!) with his pals, where he gets all loving and affectionate because the stuff is so lovely and they’re all working together as a team:

“I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.”

OK, so it wasn’t exactly like that. (And let me just add, it’s a testimony to how much I love Moby-Dick that it didn’t even occur to me to snicker at this scene until just now.) It was a little harder and prickly, but it was certainly chummy, being up to our elbows in Old Bay, and making massive piles of discarded shells and little spindly legs, and passing the beer up and down. (I guess now that we don’t hunt whales anymore, beer is the new social lubricant.) And I did have that great feeling of all-powerful omnivorousness, where you get to feel so proud for being a clever human with opposable thumbs and sharp teeth and tool-making skills (except the head of my mallet flew off the first time I tried to whack a crab leg with it).

Also, because we had an almost-endless stream of crabs, plus the buffet, the actual dining pressure was off, making it much easier to just talk to people. Slurping and cracking and reaching for beer, we were a sloppy, merry bunch, united in our dedication to sucking as much sweet meat as possible out of these recalcitrant sea creatures–and ocasionally checking our raffle tickets to see if we’d won at the liquor table. It was also just enlightening to hang out with Republicans, since of course in New York these are feared and loathed people swathed in legend and lore, but rarely seen in the flesh.

Despite the grousing about perceived crab scarcity, and the price of tickets, we all went away satisfied. I had managed to finesse my picking skills with each new crab, I’d argued politics a bit (beerily), and I came away feeling like I was no longer just the surprise wife who’d replaced the good fiancee. Thanks, sweet crabs.

Peter reports on our barbecue-rib bonanza last night chez Tamara here: Grizzled Gastronomes Guzzle NYC BBQ. I would write about it myself, but I just sat at home all day doing crossword puzzles, and then showed up just as the ribs were ready for eatin’. They were goo-ood.

Then, from farther afield, Matt Shaw proves that Hawaii Mart kicks U-Mart’s ass: Your Goose Uterus Superstore. But he’s in L.A., so it’s not quite a fair comparison. Still, I’m envious.

I know I don’t get out much, and I’m getting older, but I sure do find myself shaking my head and saying, “Who are these people?” an awful lot these days.

Who are these people who don’t like riding bikes? Who are these people who don’t really care what they eat? Who are these people who like living in back-of-beyond New Mexico?

I sound like I know best, but at least in the case of dinner parties, I do.

Here’s what made me realize: I was composing a glowing little note about myself on the self-promotion machine that is AmazonConnect (have you bought my book? Now I can email you, whether you like it or not!), and there was this tip for how to write a note:

When posting, we suggest observing “dinner party” etiquette. Engage in conversation with your readers using thoughtful, interesting or amusing dialogue while avoiding profanity and insulting comments.

Well, no wonder some people think dinner parties are dull and grownup and a sign of utter lameness! No wonder they don’t realize a good dinner party, like the ones we have at Tamara’s, with 20 peopled wedged in the living room eating all of spring’s green treats and yelling to be heard, is the pinnacle of human interaction. Because if I had to sit and observe any etiquette at all, and not swear, and always be interesting, well, I’d probably rather just go do bong hits too.

Also, I was catching up on New York Times food sections, and I was reading another one of those utterly weird columns that this woman (man?) named Alex Witchel occasionally writes, in which s/he moans about the perils of dining in NYC’s upper stratosphere—in this case, about political discussions at dinner. That was when I started saying, “Who are these people?!” out loud.

(On a side note, I’m not sure why Witchel writes these things. It’s hard to muster sympathy for someone whose whole purpose seems to be complaining about the very thing they spend all of their time doing, which is eating annoying meals with annoying people who are most likely very rich. And why does the Times publish it? It’s this creeping Styles-section-ification of the rest of the paper.)

Anyway, what was particularly gruesome about this essay was…well, lots of things. First, this, describing guests opining on current events:

The men, as a rule, will have Big Opinions to match their Big Jobs: War is bad. War is good. Their wives take a different tack. They read the fine print, those girls, in between Pilates and collagen shots. Their strategy to near the end of every relevant article in the morning papers, memorize a telling quote, then recite it.

If two of these ladies happen to cite the same quote, well, heavens, it’s “the conversational equivalent of wearing the same dress.”

I’m not relating—are you? What’s extra gross about this is the knowing, catty tone in which it’s written, that implies I, the reader, know exactly what Witchel is talking about.

Well, thank god I don’t. Yes, at my dinner parties, there may be some loud guys with opinions, but whatever—they’re drunk. And they’re probably saying something offensive, but so are the “girls,” and we’ve all read the same story in the New Yorker. There are no salad forks or finger bowls (a previous meaty topic of a Witchel column), and seconds and thirds are the norm. Eating great food that we thought a lot about and took the day preparing is part of the conversation, but so are a million other topics. Sharing food can bring together the most disparate group of people, not just as a pretext for meeting, but as a source of pleasure that everyone can have in common. People who don’t get this are missing out.

What also annoys me about Witchel’s essay, and the Amazon advice, and every other commonly accepted rule for dinner-party socializing, is the implication that you shouldn’t be talking about politics at dinner. (Of course, if you know jack about politics, as Witchel implies these would-be wonk socialites do[n't], then I guess you’re screwed any time of day.) Dinner is exactly when you get to know people, and what they think about things, not some enforced period of civility and stultification.

I know not everyone can or wants to dine the way I do, but I’m deeply relieved and grateful that I can. I’d also be happy if I never had to read another Witchel bitch-fest. Maybe the fastest way to that is to get him/her off the social circuit: Hey, Alex, wanna come over to dinner at my place? I promise no one has collagen-injected lips, and there will be lots of profanity.

Maybe I should start a new blog called All Lamb All the Time, because that’s what this is starting to sound like. AV is in Morocco, and Eid al-Adha (lit., “feast of the sacrifice”) is in a few days. AV explains, briefly, what it’s about, and how to buy a live sheep, and how to get it home.

Here’s what the sheep will look like in a bit, and here’s AV’s more detailed description of Eid lamb treatment (scroll down to “News from abroad”), from this time last year, in lunar-calendar terms.

“Joanie, you weren’t kidding–I thought one animal on a spit was funny, but two–wow, that’s even funnier!”

Damn right. If the last post got you all teary-eyed re: flame-cooked meat, you can follow the plot here, which details the second lamb roast; the third lamb roast is detailed here; and the fourth, here.

But wait–I think all that lamb roast talk reminds of something else…and there’s the screen going all wiggly again…you’re getting whooshed back to…

Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Reader, I did not marry him.

The New Year’s meat-fest reaps dividends:

Last week I’m on the Chinatown bus from DC to NYC, and this guy starts chatting me up. My flimsy magazine is not barrier enough to conversation. I’m absolutely terrible at extricating myself from these things. I can’t say no, or as Adrienne, Queen of Reno, puts it, “kill someone’s mojo.” Especially when there’s no bathroom to run off to. But he seems nice enough, and he does dangle some interesting conversational tidbits about how he used to party with Krush Groove and stuff.

But the ride wears on—there’s rush-hour traffic well past Baltimore—and he’s getting more flirtatious, borderline leering. Talking about how he wants a woman to share his life with. How he’d like to see me “get loose” in Miami. How I caught his eye when I first got on the bus.

And it’s already clear this guy is not my dream man: “I’d like to take you out on a date. Have you ever been to Tavern on the Green?” he coos suavely.

No, I haven’t, and I have zero desire to go, and I can’t think of a more terrible idea for a date—all glitz, no substance. This place seats many hundreds, and specializes in rubber chicken and corporate Christmas parties. The kind of place you go if you want to impress someone with your money but have absolutely no sense of good food.

By now the bus is completely dark—I certainly can’t go back to reading my magazine now. The only thing I can do is feign sleep, but I don’t want to close my eyes with this guy around.

So my strategy to cool his affections while still remaining polite is to emphasize our dissimilarities. What are my turnoffs? he asks. Guys who brag about their money—he’s been talking about the Ferrari he’s going to buy. (Remember, we’re on the Chinatown bus, roundtrip NYC-DC for $30.) I don’t “work hard and play hard” (his claim)—I work not very much and play pretty well.

Finally, the greatest opportunity of all arises: “What did you do for New Year’s?” he asks.

We-ell. You saw the bloody pictures. Poor guy had mentioned early on that he’s a vegetarian. I tell him all about buying the lamb, and the fur on its head, and the little chopped-off legs—and of course how delicious it all was. He did keep up his end of the conversation after that, but the dinner invitation was not repeated.

If the carcasses on a spit hadn’t worked, I had only one more piece of ammo (as yet untested, but I suspect it’ll weed out the wrong kind of guy): I was wearing my new thong underwear that said “Live Poultry – Fresh Killed.”

To commemmorate the beginning of the third year of Roving Gastronome, I’m going to run a Best Of series for the next week or so.

It’s just like in the old sitcoms, when all the actors were too burned out to do anything at the end of the season, and they put together this cheesy montage of the most hilarious moments, all stuck awkwardly in some kind of shaky frame story that got all the actors sitting around the same diner table and reminiscing…

“Hey, Chachi, remember the time…that was sooooo funny…”

And then the people at the diner table go all wiggly, and presto, you’re back in some gem of a moment involving striped socks, a case of mistaken identity, and a monkey.

Or, in the case of Roving Gastronome, a hare-brained scheme, a 50-gallon drum, and two animal carcasses:

January 12, 2004:
If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing, or It Takes a Village to Roast a Pig (and a Lamb)

Who knew roasting a whole pig—plus a whole lamb, just for the heck of it—could be so easy? Well, aside from the creeping anxiety of spectacular failure beforehand, and the running around collecting weird bits of metal, and the blinding, acrid mesquite smoke the night of…it was pretty easy.

Perhaps foolishly, I did think it would be easy when Tamara first called to ask if she could delegate the pig-roasting duties for her second-annual overkill New Year’s Eve party, this time bearing a luau theme. Although Astoria has its suburban charms, Tamara doesn’t have a yard where you can dig a pit and pile in a pig, so we would have to rig up something—surely we could find some instructions on the Internet. Tamara is the quintessential hostess, and I can’t think of a better person to have as a patron of such a dodgy, expensive enterprise. “Don’t worry—if it doesn’t work, there’s always booze,” she airily assured me.

Peter was immediately deputized. When I notified him that he’d been tapped for large-animal-roasting duty, he said, “No problem. But if we’re going to all this trouble, we should roast a lamb too. My people have always roasted lambs.” Peter has some wicked strong Greek roots, which seemed irrelevant to a Hawaiian theme party, but as it happens, he does seem genetically predisposed to cranking a spit for five hours.

The other thing, aside from Peter’s Greekness, that made him want to roast a lamb, was our proximity to the not-telling-the-whole-truth Astoria Live Poultry, just down the block from me. This fabulous storefront traffics not just in chickens, capons, geese, quail, turkeys, ducks, guinea hens, pigeon, and rabbits, but also, just lounging casually in a back room, cows, lambs, and goats. It’s like a petting zoo, but not. I’ve gotten all manner of poultry there before, and was just working my way up to rabbits (they weigh everything in front of you, squawking and squirming, so you have to really look them in the eye; and the bag of meat they give you is still warm, which is weirdly comforting). But Peter was all for jumping straight to the head of the class.

But first we put aside the meat details to focus on engineering. Four days later, and plenty of URLs about smokin’ hawgs and trussing little lambies swapped, we really hadn’t decided anything or purchased any materials or even agreed on just how much meat we’d be dealing with. Over lunch, we could only mutter tersely at each other: “Let’s not talk about it.” “OK. Yeah, later.” We had only two days left.

But lo, on Tuesday, the day before Spit-Crankin’ Day, everything fell into place: Peter found a 50-gallon-drum at a scrap yard, as well as a hefty iron I-beam to support the barrel and keep it off the patio surface (which was also the roof of Tamara’s downstairs neighbors’ apartment–a small fire code infraction). We bought about a hundred pounds of mesquite at Home Despot, as charcoal seemed to be out of season. Our metalworking friend Joel made a spit and sawed the barrel in half. And Ali, world’s greatest chef and all-around generous guy, let us borrow his car to haul all the crap around.

Wednesday morning dawned late and too brightly. We’d all been at Ali’s place, the Kabab Cafe, too late, celebrating our triumphant requisition of supplies with buckets of wine. Peter asked if I’d nip down to the corner and order the lamb, but I demurred—my eyes were too bleary to face a little lamb. But it’s a full-service establishment, with delivery, and took him seriously when he requested $120 worth of meat by phone, with no deposit.

Meanwhile, Tamara picked up the pig, which she’d ordered through Prune. It had been boned, so it was like a big sausage with a head–I think it was about 25 or 30 pounds of pure meat. We had to do a mucky but fun maneuver of removing the too-short wooden stake the pig had been trussed on and ramming a longer one in–an operation that took three people and inspired Deb to comment, “This is kind of sexy, actually.”

The lamb required a little more attention. None of our Internet- and Ali-derived information on lamb trussing seemed particularly helpful, and we couldn’t get the spit to lodge tightly anywhere in the lamb, so Peter just resorted to a lot of kitchen twine and plenty of special sliding boat knots. At one point I had to hold the lamb’s head down while Peter tied it in place–its small skull fit nicely in my hand, and there was a little tuft of fur still left on its forehead, which I couldn’t help rubbing a little.

Meanwhile, we’d also gotten our fire going in our spit setup: the I-beam was just long enough to support and stabilize both barrel halves, set next to each other (lucky–we’d been a little optimistic about fitting both animals in one barrel half). Cinder blocks were propped at the ends of each of the barrels, coincidentally just the right height for resting the spits on.

We hoisted the pig into place around 5:30 p.m., and the lamb went on a half-hour later. The pig had been stuffed by the butcher with assorted herbs and prosciutto. The lamb got garlic cloves stuck under its skin and doused in a mixture of citrus juice (mostly lemon, but also grapefruit and several other things Peter had at home) and at least a cup of ground spices–cinnamon, turmeric, pepper, paprika, cayenne, nutmeg, cumin, black pepper. Peter probably added lots more red chile.

Here we parted ways: Peter settled himself into a chair with a big bottle of retsina and a big bunch of dill for swabbing the marinade on periodically. He maintained that the lamb required constant turning, and he was probably right. And he was glad to do it, the picture of Greek village manliness in a long, blood-smeared apron and a big furry hat. As for the pig, Joel and Deb took turns cranking it, but after a while, when the mesquite smoke reached toxic levels and the fun wore off (it was only the manufactured Tom-Sawyer-getting-his-friends-to-whitewash-the-fence kind of fun anyway), I made an executive decision that it didn’t have to be turned constantly, as it was balanced better on its spit and didn’t flop the way the lamb did. I’m really surprised that the neighbors didn’t call the fire department–there was seldom any visible flame, but the smoke was incredibly sharp, thick and almost oily.

After about 4.5 hours, I made another executive decision: the pig was done. I was wrong–or partially. We just chopped it up bit by bit, putting the cooked pieces on a serving platter and chucking the others into a hotel pan to finish in the oven. What made it a little tricky was that the smoke had made a lot of the outer layer of meat turn pink and look (and feel) a little raw, which had to be explained to guests. Nobody really bought my declaration that “trichinosis is sooo over.” The skin had also gotten seriously charred, though we did end up with a few good chunks of crispy chicharron. The meat was delicious, though not mind-blowingly succulent–the fire had been too hot for that, I think, and too much moisture lost. Some guests objected to the display of the head along with the meat, so it was covered with a napkin and sunglasses. Deep apologies, pig—we really meant no disrespect.

About an hour later, the lamb was deemed done, or maybe Peter just got tired of cranking. Again, about half of the meat had to be finished in the oven. But the meat was stupendously delicious—a little smoky, a little tangy, very moist, with no single spice predominating. The strongest endorsement came from Barbara, a surprise guest who really got into the primal fun of breaking down the meat (a business so messy that Tamara wailed, “There’s lamb in my bed!” the next day). With the carcass splayed out on a bench behind her, Barbara happily gnawed on a greasy rib bone and rolled her eyes: “I can’t believe I was a vegetarian for eight years!”

Enterprising young Tamara–here’s her recent Craigslist posting:

Are you planning a party in your home but need a little help with the cooking, plating, presentation, hosting and cleanup? I am your Mrs. Dalloway… without the suicide!

I can help you plan, shop, cook, plate, serve, strategize, host, and/or clean up, so you can enjoy your party. I can be as hands on or off as you wish, depending on your level of comfort. I can also take over the dinner/party entirely if you would like, and cook and/or serve the whole thing for you. (and you can feel free to pass it off as your own genius if you please).

I have excellent references and culinary/cocktail knowledge. Feel free to contact me for further information. Rates are negotiable depending on how much help you need.

Email me if you’re in the NYC area and need her oh-so-capable services, or follow the link for her email address.

Tamara writes:

Yesterday I got up, smelled the lamb fat, brewed some coffee, and sat down with a cup to drink while staring at the computer screen. I went to see what was in the plastic bag next to the computer….. (food someone had forgotten, perhaps?) and discovered….

The head. Smiling at me with its blind little milky eyes.

Ooh. Dear me.

And, oh yeah, after all the typical gluttony of Thanksgiving, we roasted a lamb. This was Sunday, which had allowed a couple of days for digestion, but I still was not all that hungry. Adding to the dilemma was the lavish spread of pot-luck goodies from all over, including some “Nigerian Magic” and some extremely tasty Turkish stuffed grape leaves (the lamb roast was for Peter’s foreign students).

And as I gripe over on Peter’s blog, the lamb didn’t really get seared on the outside, so even when it came off the spit, it wasn’t very appetizing (to me, anyway). I’m sure it was delicious. (Heresy! I don’t think I’ve eaten any of the lamb yet. Well, I ate some of the saffron-pomegranate-molasses-preserved-lemon-stewed shanks. That was wicked good.) But you can picture me, looking a little blase, yawning, in fact, as 50 pounds of lamb are toted into the kitchen on a spit, and Karvin’ Karl is sharpening his knives.

I did find it in my heart/gut to eat quite a lot of these “magic bars,” which didn’t have hash in them, but were filled with sugar, as well as coconut. (Tamara called them Congo bars, which when she says it, sounds very un-PC, somehow.)

But enough of my bad attitude: here are pictures from Peter, and from pumpkin-soup-making, camera-phone-having DJ Prince (who has also managed to capture some of Tamara’s most iconic decorating choices–good eye).