My Japan Airlines Foot Massage

I haven't flown Japan Airlines in a long time, so had not seen this particular airborne customer perk before. At the back of the plane en route to Tokyo,  where all the parents with jumpy kids and restless adults mill about during the 13-hour flight, this reflexology map of the foot was posted:

Right below it, I found this bamboo segment, upon which you massage the above outlined pressure points.

I had to wait in line for my turn, and when I hopped on the bamboo half-cylinder, found that it can be a challenge to zero in on minute points such as  #4 and #5. I  did my best, though, and my organs and other bodily parts thanked me for my efforts. Since my total travel time to Saga Prefecture, Kyushu was 25 hours, I can only imagine what kind of shape I would have been in at trip's end without this ki-enhancing interlude.

Takashi Inoue: Putting the 'Variety' in Variety Meats

Chef Takashi: Recently featured looking very sharp on the pages of GQ.

 Reporting on and eating horumon--innards and variety meats--at Takashi restaurant in the West Village was my recent fun assignment for Edible Manhattan, resulting in this article. Conceived by Osaka-born chef Takashi Inoue and general manager Saheem Ali, the restaurant specializes in yakiniku (Japanese grilled meat), with the subspecialty of horumon. 

Artist Aya Hasegawa's charming murals, which Takashi commissioned
to make horumon less intimidating to American diners.

As the mural above (created by a friend of Takashi's, Osaka artist Aya Hasegawa) explains, the term horumon, the Japanese rendering of the English word "hormone," connotes stamina and vigor. The mural posits that the name was an effort to re-brand off-cuts, though in many cultures eating organ meats is said to enhance virility. 

Yakiniku arrived in Japan along with the large numbers of Koreans who were conscripted during World War II and has been gaining in popularity ever since, especially after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Takashi is a fourth-generation Korean Japanese whose grandmother ran a small yakiniku restaurant in Osaka. Growing up in his family and in a Korean neighborhood, he says, “My snack was horumon; it’s like a street food.” Today, he says, cow guts have gone so mainstream in Japan, “You can go to any supermarket and buy horumon, already marinated and in a ‘barbecue set.’”

When I arrived, Takashi and crew were in the middle of a photo shoot for a new dish he had come up with: squid ink rice with miso-marinated sweetbeads and spicy yuzu aioli. Preparing and primping the dish before a shoot is like putting it through hair and makeup; here, the lighting technicians and cameraman try to show the model off to best advantage.

Beef heart chili with grilled mochi (rice cake) and cheese. Sounds weird, but it's actually delicious.

Takashi's dishes are fresh and daring, and this is no exception: a combination of housemade smoked beef pancetta, baby whitebait fish and monkfish liver, done Spanish style in olive oil and garlic. It's cooked in a sardine tin.

The main attraction: tetchan, or large intestines, which many people consider the most delicious of the cow innards. Cooked on Takashi's super-hot electric grills, you can get the ideal texture:  crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. Itadakimasu!

The Experimental Cocktail Club Shines

I wasn't expecting a buffet of inventive cocktail wizardry at yesterday's Lucky Rice cocktail event at the Bowery Hotel, but that's just what it turned out to be, with eight establishments shaking and stirring to excess. These were my favorites, from the aptly named Experimental Cocktail Club.

The first was the Kho Tao, a mango-infused Cazadores Reposado tequila, Thai mango sticky rice custard, lime juice and young coconut cordial. A slurpee rethought by a mad mixo-culinary savant.
To read more about the guy behind ECC, Nico de Soto, check out this interesting interview on Heritage Radio.

The next, also from ECC, moved into the territory of alchemy. It was presented in a glass bowl letting off clouds of dry ice smoke, individually packaged in smart little apothecary bottles. This was the Penang Milk Punch, made with pandan-infused Bombay Sapphire East gin (whose product an logo was everywhere), Van Oosten Batavia arrack, Cameron Highland green tea, fresh pineapple juice, fresh lemon juice, clarified milk, Malaysian herb and spice-infused coconut water. Just what the herbalist prescribed, and strangely delicious, too.

Can't wait to see what the Lucky Rice people have in store for us tonight.

Restaurant Gino Lives on in Cupcakeland

The other day I stopped in at the Upper East Side Sprinkles, 780 Lexington Avenue. There, on the north wall of the shop were the famous leaping zebras of the shop's previous tenant, the late, lamented Gino restaurant. Gino was the classic red sauce joint where Gay Talese and Ralph Lauren were regulars, where Woody Allen filmed a scene from Mighty Aphrodite, and where for 65 years generations of Upper East Siders came for their "secret sauce" and spaghetti, osso buco and lasagna.

Actually the original wallpaper was reported to have been taken by Gino co-owner Michael Miele when the restaurant closed in June 2010, to be installed in a successor that never came to life. But it must not have been hard to find a replacement; Scalamandre, the decorative fabric, wallcovering and trim store, still features the wallpaper pattern of leaping zebras (in different colors!) pursued by arrows. The pattern, a nostalgic touchstone for those in the know, was paraded out before a new audience in 2001, when it was featured in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums.

I took in the irony of the situation: Here were the remains of an extinct restaurant exotic, glimpsed at the moment the media was gleefully announcing the demise of its usurper--over-extended cupcake makers. The Wall Street Journal headline: "Forget Gold, the Cupcake Market is Crashing."The helpful Sprinkles server told me that customers still come in and get misty-eyed over the wallpaper, telling her exactly where in the space Gino's phone booth was located, where they always sat, and how much they missed the old place.

Perhaps one day the juice cleanse salon or organic soft serve place that replaces Sprinkles will keep the perpetually airborne zebras aloft and a new generation of customers will wax nostalgic about those great old-fashioned cupcakes they used to get here.

The reports of the cupcake boom's demise may be slightly premature, though: A new branch of Baked by Melissa just opened right across the street from Sprinkles, at 784 Lexington.

Adventures in Fermentation Part II: Shio-koji

Hiroko Shimbo on  shio-koji.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been learning a lot about fermentation, Japanese style. After learning about the healthy properties of miso, I attended a talk by Japanese food expert, chef-instructor, cookbook author and consultant Hiroko Shimbo on the topic of shio-koji, the ingredient Japanese have fallen in love with for its flavor enhancing and tenderizing abilities.

Shio-koji is the miracle marinade, seasoning and tenderizer that’s made from a simple mixture of a substance called koji, sea salt and water It's the enzymes in shio-koji--protease, lipase and amylase—that act as tenderizers.

To understand shio-koji, you first need to understand koji, the mold-innoculated rice integral to making Japan’s favorite fermented grain products: soy sauce, miso, mirin (rice wine vinegar) and saké. Koji plays the key role of breaking down the starch of grains and converting it to glucose, and has been commercially available in Japan since the 14^th century. You can find it at most good Japanese food markets. Even in small doses, koji teams with life; a teaspoon of koji contains about 100 million yeast cells.

Make shio-koji isn’t hard, that is if you don’t mind stirring your batch 100 times a day and letting it develop for five to ten days (it takes longer to ferment in the winter). At the recent International Restaurant and Food Service Show in New York City earlier this month, where she was a featured speaker, Shimbo demonstrated how to do it by mixing together koji  sea salt and water in a ratio of 3:1:5. Check out Shimbo’s shio-koji recipe, for details.  Since New York City has even softer water than Kyoko or Tokyo, she noted, we're lucky to be able to use water straight from the tap.

The possible uses of shio- and shoyu-koji boggle the mind.

If audience members had any doubts that this whole shio-koji thing is for real, Shimbo banished them with a parade of delectable sample dishes made using commercially available shio-koji and shoyu-koji from Marukome (the latter essentially made by substituting soy sauce for the salt and water). While shio-koji is best for fish, chicken and vegetables, shoyu-koji, explained Shimbo, is great with more robust meat or fowl such as pork, beef or chicken.

             

She passed out tender and umami-infused morsels of chicken that had been marinated overnight in shio-koji. Whole chickens should be marinated overnight, but if you’re working with small piece of chicken, a quick 30-minute marinade will do the trick; for white fish, an hour will suffice. Shimbo likes to use three parts shio-koji to one part mirin for her marinade. Since it’s salty, there’s no need for additional seasoning. Shimbo dressed a delicious Brussels sprouts and petit tomatoes salad with a mixture of shio-koji, mustard, rice vinegar, honey, canola oil.

The general rule for marinating, Shimbo instructed, is that the marinade should amount to 10 percent of the total weight of the food you are preparing.

We also tried a salty, thick and creamy tofu-yo, an Okinawan regional specialty that I first tasted at David Bouley’s Brushstroke, in which tofu is marinated in red koji, malt, and a type of local distilled rice alcohol, awamori. Shimbo improvised her version of tofu-yo by keeping it submerged in a  3:1:1 ration of shiokoji, mirin and sake for two weeks. The tofu-yo was the exception to the 10 percent rule, resulting in an umami bomb with the texture of cream cheese and the funky saltiness of blue cheese.

The possible uses of shio-koji boggle the mind: you can use it with olive oil to dress cold pasta, tomato, and red onion, for dipping sauces or in stir frys, Shimbo suggests, or as she did, to tenderize and pump up the flavor of Turkish-style lamb meatballs. Happy experimenting!

Playing House at Fishs Eddy's Vintage Playstation

A set of vintage book plates David owns gave us our color palette.

Yesterday I had the most fun I've had playing with tableware in, well, forever. The occasion grew out of a fun idea from Julie Gaines, who with her husband Dave Lenovitz, owns the Union Square store Fishs Eddy.

Julie, a churning idea factory who needs someone to trail behind her with a pail to collect the overflow, invited a bunch of design people and bloggers, including Todd Oldham, Design Sponge, Susan Brinson and me, to come down to the store, raid its deep stash of vintage tableware (Syracuse, Green Band, Buffalo, Sterling, Jackson, you name it, they've got it) and create a place setting to help inspire customers to mix and match with abandon.

Actually it's not just us, she's invited any and all to try their hand, so I encourage you to make your way down to 19th Street and Broadway soon.

Layering began with a larger charger. We wanted bold colors that would photograph well. 

When Julie and Dave  started out over 25 years ago, the idea of mismatched plates on a table was heresy. Today, it's the matchy-matchy table that looks out of step with how most of us live. Heck, FE is even selling a barrel of unmatched sugar bowl lids and bottoms and showcasing creative ways to use them.

Adding an array of Fishs Eddy's great tchotchkes. 

Anyway, back to the challenge. To vastly increase my table-dressing prowess, I cajoled my good friend David Cobb Craig to join my team. A master of many arts (look at these posts of his to see what I mean), I knew this was right up his alley. Fishs Eddy will be displaying photos of all the Playstation table settings and you can check its blog, Pinterest and Facebook pages for more photos.

Enjoy our table settings!

Everything was Ducky in Jimmy's Back Room

Over the weekend, I had the enviable honor of being a judge for Duck-Off 2013, a Food Systems Network NYC fundraiser held at Jimmy’s No.43, in the East Village. FSNYC is a membership-based non-profit that works to change our food system in a way that will allow universal access to nourishing, affordable food. It’s a subject I feel strongly about. I’m lucky to be able to shop at the greenmarket and eat the best, most nutritious foods daily, and I want everyone to be able to do that.

Since FSNYC raises its entire operating budget on its own, the organization has to get creative; this event was a perfect example of how it does that.

So the idea was that contestants had to wow us with their creative preparation of some beautiful ducks generously donated by Matt Igoe of Hudson Valley Duck Farm.

There were too many great entries to list, so I’m highlighting a few of my favorites here. Keep an eye on FSNYC’s webpage and Facebook page for full recipes, which will be posted soon.

Winners Andrew Gumpel, left, and Micah Mowrey

Micah Mowrey and Andrew Gumpel from Gramercy Tavern walked away with the judges’ first place award for their impeccably constructed Duck Pastrami with Sunchoke’s & Aji Dulce Pepper Jam. It was a little like awarding first to LeBron James amid a cast of NCAA hopefuls, though, so you’ll just have to go to Gramercy Tavern to learn more about what these talented young chefs can do.

Jamie Saurman's duck legs doing their thing.

All the judges loved the flavor combinations of Jamie Saurman’s Cumin-Coriander Duck Leg Confit. It’s no wonder, since his inspiration was his wife Hemali, whose family in Mumbai has been mixing small-batch spices for 75 years.  Using his favorite slow-cooking method, Jamie flavored his duck legs with curry leaves, freshly ground cumin seeds and a turbo-charged coriander powder to highlight the natural savory flavor of the duck. Then he used rendered duck fat and bacon fat to confit his Hudson Valley Farm duck legs in a 250-degree oven.

Hemali, spice muse, and Jamie

 “I love to submerge things in their own fat, or borrow even tastier fat from other sources and slowly cook them,” says Jamie, a Johnson & Wales grad who is preparing to open his own restaurant and brewery in Brooklyn. (The intriguing part of his business plan: DIY beer brewing for restaurant guests.)

 It was the combination of the shredded confit, green mung beans (cooked in a pressure cooker with garlic, cinnamon sticks and bay leaves), fresh pomegranate seeds and crispy lentil papadum that made the dish so alluring. As judges, our only quibble with this delicious dish was that it was hard to scoop up these disparate and truly complementary flavors into one bite amid the scrum of the duck-off. Jamie placed second, after the Gramercy team.

Duck Confit Tart and proud maker, Laura Luciano.

Everyone knew that besides the Gramercy guys, the contender to beat was Laura Luciano, winner of the recent cassoulet cook-off at Jimmy’s No. 43 and a scarily talented cook and blogger from the East End of Long Island.

The confit's close-up.

Sure enough, her Duck Confit Tart did well, taking third place from the judges for its beautiful and complex combination of pâte brisée, brie, and a very duck-y confit mixture. She made and baked her tart shell the night before. The first layer onto the pastry was a slathering of triple-cream brie, which Laura puréed in a food processor with the rind on. For the duck layer, Laura brined and then confit-ed her duck legs in duck fat, roughly chopped them and mixed them with caramelized onions (deglazed with vermouth and cognac) and some fennel and Bosc pears that had been roasted with thyme. She also threw in some garlic confit salvaged from the duck confit-ing process.

 French-Mex? Duck Burrito Pie

Adrian “The Cook-off King of Queens” Ashby describes his Duck Burrito Pie as a cross between a Mexican burrito and an English shepherd’s pie; to me it evoked the tortilla casseroles and tamale pies of my Southern California childhood. Adrian didn't place in the competition in part because judges felt that in a duck-off, the duck had to be front and center, not one note among many.

Still, the dish was appealing and addictive, the way a great chicken pot pie or bowl of mac & cheese is. The layered casserole starts with wall-to-wall overlapping tortillas on the bottom, then a layer of room temperature shredded cheese to act as a binder. Rice (any kind will do, says Adrian) and sofrito form the next strata. Adrian makes his sofrito by sautéing garlic, onion, green peppers, cilantro, and tomato paste in olive oil over medium heat until the onions are transparent.  Other layers involve beans, jalapeno, and the duck meat, which he shredded and seasoned. I couldn’t keep track of the exact ordering of all these layers, but they repeat and add up to something that would be great around a campfire or to feed to a hungry horde of teenagers.

I can’t end the post without a shout-out to Jimmy Carbone, whose generosity is as wide as his craft beer list at Jimmy’s No. 43. He’s a huge supporter of sustainable farming and local purveyors, who always know they have a room for their events in his handy and well-used Back Room—thanks, Jimmy!