Sugar Smoked Christmas Meats available for Order

I'm doing some runs of smoked meats for Christmas.

These are beautiful high end meats made with love and care and are really something special. All meats are smoked with my special sugar smoke chips that are boiled in sugar and a special blend of Christmas flavors.

Although the prices right here are for conventional meat, I am currently working on some opportunities for free range, pork etc... Which will make the prices higher obviously, but will make the meat even more special. I want to make sure you all have that opportunity. I should have those prices in a few days.

My chips are available by themselves also and are great for gifts. $20.00 for a good sized mason jar full. Instructions will be available here on the blog.

Cut off date for delivery December 23rd.

Cut off date for ham orders December 10th.

Contact me for details at jdgriffo@gmail.com

Old fashioned, home cured, sugar smoked, Vermont style hams

For the spread:

Bone in, show or slicing hams, average 10-12 lbs, tied, decorated and/or glazed with maple-vanilla-brown sugar crust. Comes with extra glace. Nitrate Free.

$12/# averages $125 each

For the table

Boneless, slicing hams, average 5 lbs, great for 10 person tables, also perfect for croque monsieur, composed salads, and jambon persille, except no one makes that dish anymore.

$12/# averages $60 each

Smoked Duck Roulade

Boned, rolled, tied and smoked ducks. Impossible to stop eating. Stuffed with pancetta, dried sugar plums and herbs. Great addition to any spread.

20$/# Averages $35.00 each.

Smoked Quails

Semi-boned quails, marinated and smoked. Styles include, White Wine w/ Herbs de Provence, Chipotle-Epazote, and Ginger-Citrus.

$7 each

Smoked Chickens

Petite chickens, trussed and smoked, customized cuts and styles available.

$8/# Averages $20.00 each

Comfort Foods of New York City

The foods we ate in New York were the foods we came upon. There was no mad rush to acquire anything out of the ordinary. Or any kind of specific trek to find something. The food would just come to us. And it did. We were immediately bombarded with the smells of roasting nuts, mixed with street side grills. Hot dog stands everywhere. More than I ever remember. Sabretts. They are nonexistent in New Mexico. Hot dogs that snap when you bite into them. It's an unequaled overall feeling having a dog on the street in New York City. The buns are fresh fresh. The sauerkraut and mustard tart, slightly stinging. I don't ever opt for the sweet onions, but they are good, if not the most unique thing about them.

We had an eye open for foods we cannot get at all where we are from. Even in Santa Fe there is the normal entourage of high end eateries and fancy food parlors. We are not interested. Now Pastrami, that has been on our minds. 2nd Ave Deli has closed. Katz's has a line around the block all the time from what I hear. But foods can come in strange ways. We had simply walked outside from the hotel. We are in Hells Kitchen. 6th and 56th. This area close to times square churns and grinds with purpose, if not only to speed and push through to the next block, and the next. Even the massiveness that is the skyline, the very monoliths we look upward on have this purpose of movement. This part of the city is un-comprising. Ominous to mere humans. But still, magic can just happen. And it does. We are not two doors down from the New York Hilton and our heads turn upon Carnagies Deli. Serving since 1937. It's incredible that this place is not as famous as Katz's or 2nd Ave. The sandwiches come out piled in the well known Dagwood tower of freshly sliced meat. This Pastrami is if not the greatest in the world. Falling apart, creamy, peppery. Many fresh slices of perfect rye pinned to the sandwich with ten inch skewers. The boy says "Hey Dad, look, the funny part is tryin to get your mouth around it."

He pretends to eat it. The sandwich is of course, impossibly big. He's right. Its a comical sight. But all we want is the meat. And more pickles. By the end of the meal we are just dragging pastrami through puddles of brown mustard with our fingers into our mouths. Somewhere in the name Carnegies is the word carnal. We are unabashed.

And yes the pickles. Six immediately came to the table. Three half sours and three full sours. The full sours more the texture of a bread and butter pickle and the half sours as always snap when bitten. I am crunching them down with a cold Heineken. This most certainly is pickle and beer heaven here. There are times when I am eating something so chaste and special and rare and unattainable that its impossible not to feel uplifted, even exalted by the experience. The nostrils flair. The air is light. My father always calls food like this "fainting stuff". Its not an exaggeration that a meal this good can cause momentary vertigo.

Of course the surroundings are quintessential. Walls plastered with signed autographs. One thing New York likes is to be just exactly like New York. All of us know even if it's because of the movies. Someone is filming someone right in front of us oddly enough as if to compound the issue. We can't eat even hardly everything on the menu, if not one enormous sandwich. We are stuffed. The greatest Matzoh balls known to man whiz by, steaming and massive next to a bowl of crisp consumee. The borscht is pink pink and almost sudsy the way it rocks around and stains the cups it pours over, also hot enough the aroma just quickly rises in to the air. Sausages and cheese hang in the windows, next to a massive plastic pickle mascot people can take their picture with. The salads and cheesecakes in the counter call and call. I want to take the whole place home with me. But we must say goodbye. We have only just arrived in the city. There is so much more coming.

It has turned out that we stay in this hustle bustle for the next couple of days at the Park Central. An old art deco hotel two blocks from Central Park. The decor is out of Gotham City. Even the fixtures are irreplaceable and from a time forgotten. As the whole city is really. Truly there are not many places in America that have the air about it that New York has. One only need look up to reveal a sense of overall asthetic that not only inspires, but looms over us as a rich and antiquated "power that is." The powers that be hidden behind some of these walls. High above our heads there are picture windows revealing private clubs that from the ceilings and chandeliers look as if the ballrooms from an ancient europe aristocracy has been shipped over, so none should do with out. But really it is evidence how this city houses treasures in a way that truly keeps them. For the world eventually. In addition to being a mausoleum for what one might call a dying class, Manhattan is a nesting place for many of the worlds most sacrosanct items. This item-o-logy definitely includes New York bagels.

The subject of bagels cannot be brought up without immediately speaking of the water. Which is of course what we spoke of as we approached the bagel joint we were being led to.

"It's because of the water that new York Bagels are how they are."
"Artesian well water."
"I thought all the water in New York City comes from the Ashokan reservoir."
"I don't know where all the water comes from anymore.
"It's the same way as the pizza dough."
"Best Bagels in the world New York Bagels."

These bagels are from Brooklyn. And all stereotypes aside, they are perfect. To have it explained, most other bagels around the country are stodgy. Heavy, doughy, old. They are not really even worth eating most of them. Real Bagels are light, airy inside. The outside is thin and slightly leathery. They toast up quicker, because of how light they are. Most bagels fill you up awfully when you eat them. But this is the standard and it's impossible to beat, and no one should try. These great, original, sacrosanct bagels could be eaten constantly, on through the week. They seem as light as toasted bread. The water argument gets flimsy here. Sometimes people will attach something on to something great, such as this. Its not the water. These people just know what the hell they are doing.

Everyone thought my bagel was gross and told me so. I said that they didn't understand chopped liver and maybe they shouldn't try and just leave things to the professionals.

It was organized that the boy would get the lox and cream cheese. Which was good for him. I promised to let him taste the chopped liver. (He secretly did not think chopped liver is gross) I made sure he got tomatoes. I was very tempted by the whitefish. But when I could see the fresh hardboiled egg in the pate like concoction I was sold. Real good chopped liver is light, whipped up almost like a mousseline, and against the cream cheese heavenly. Not strong tasting. Aromatic with a little onion. Again mustard. Always mustard.

There were many places we could have gone during our five day stint. Foodwise and otherwise. We thought of getting to the empire state building. Maybe we would have gotten to ground zero to pay some respects. But what turned out to be important was Coney Island. There is a good chance we would not get back here for many years. The truth is Coney Island is mincemeat. The plan to develop the area has started. "The new New York Atlantic City!!!!!!" Whatever it is, it's snuffing out an old beauty. Something that was the visual conquest of all first year new york photography students and almost cliche, has suddenly become a vestige of exatley what it has always been, a beautiful and quirky breathe of the past. Now it begs to be photographed and remembered. My son couldn't understand why we thought it was better all closed down for the winter.

But the original Nathan's is open that day. And certainly Coney Island wouldn't be the same without that famous stand. Just the colors make you feel familiar there. I got a clam roll. Thats another thing you can't get from where I am. Fried clams are the thing here. In fact I forgot how popular clams are in the east. When the park is open there are clams on the halfshell everywhere. A walk on the beach and all around the antique signage brings back a time forgotten.

And afterwards we had Ukrainian food from Cafe Eurasia. Brighton Beach is right next to Coney Island. Russian food. Nothing fancy. Serious waitresses that put the food down in front of you with a bit of a wap on the table. The atmosphere is no frills as evening approaches this urban beach town diner. Pink curtains. Russian TV shows. Locals dining. These are serious peasant dishes. Chicken Keiv. Breaded Pork rolls with mushroom and white sauce. Simple perogi. Soups. Borscht. I did not pass up the borscht this time. A completely different style than the frothy version that came out earlier in the week. This Cafe Eurasia brand was brothey, light, lemony almost, hearty and hot. A great and authentic borscht I have not had in a long time. "Fried" chicken came to the table. It almost looked like a "poussin" it was so small. Delicately marinated with herbs it was pressed down and fried to a fantastic crispy finish. It was my favorite thing at the table. We also had a rather bland kasha of buckwheat. Like a side of rice. On its own it would have been wonderful with some butter for a rustic breakfast. With such a good spread on the table it was hard to make room.

What amounts to comfort food in New York though is fairly simple in its range sometimes. I am sad to say I did not reach the pinnacle of pizza as intended, and I'll again refer to what was years and years ago to me, when I did get to Johns Pizzeria in Greenwich Village. As we left Hells Kitchen one afternoon, happy to escape the building March 17th pandemonium of thousands of green-colored St. Pattys Day drunkards ready to parade and clog midtown, we stopped for a slice at Rays. Rays is funny, if anyone knows, there is an "original" Rays among hundreds, but know one knows where it is. Original or not it is not the best example of New York Pizza. (And in my humble opinion New Jersey Pizza is actually the best example New York Pizza to me. But thats only because I've had countless slices from near every damn micro-region all over the tri-state area.) Rays has a nice crust though, save we start talking about the water again. John's Pizzaria is actually the best. Best anywhere. This is no fooling and that IS the name to remember. Its like the Turkish delight of fables that stuff. Every element is perfect. It's so light and heavy at the same time I can eat a large portion, most of a pie and still not feel full. Its a miracle. Rich and delicious the body receives it as it receives water from the source. It's a total shame we didn't get down there. Another time certainly.

We left the city knowing only the surface was breached. It was a short visit. Just a small glimpse in a place we could eat in for lifetimes. Such is life. The cuisine in New York is absolutely the melting pot for the world, where excellent renditions of hundreds of regional cuisines can be found, in a way there, that no city in the world can equal. I spent years and years in New York and that area as a youth. I can just close my eyes and dream of that food. And much more of it. But regardless of anything I've said here, the truth is. I'm still just dreaming of that pastrami.

A Sweet Old Review

Since its almost Mardi Gras I'll keep the Cresent City stuff coming. I finally found the review of the old restaurant. For some reason City Business made all their archives private until subscription so its unavailable for public linkage. I was lucky I had made a copy, which I finally found. It wasn't a bad review. Tom Fitzmorris is one of the hugely great names in the way of food criticism in New Orleans. He frequented my place more than twice and I was really honored. He did some radio plugs about it as he has a three hour a day radio show all about New Orleans cuisine there. I'm really proud of this review. Sometime in the future I'll write a good story about Vaquero's. For the year I had it many worked to make it a great place.

Dining Out: New Vaqueros owner restores Santa Fe flavors at restaurant

by Tom Fitzmorris

Santa Fe, N.M., has a distinctive regional cuisine history at least as long as New Orleans, and its patrons are as proud of it as we are of ours.

Only one long-term restaurant has managed to bring the flavor of Santa Fe to New Orleans. Vaqueros, which means "cowboy" in Spanish, opened on Prytania and Robert streets in 1994. It was terrific in its early years, not only buying the right ingredients and cooking them authentically, but doing so in an engaging environment resembling Santa Fe itself.

Vaqueros has been spotty in recent years. The original owners are long gone and the place has turned over a couple of times since they sold it.

The Prytania restaurant finally closed a few months ago but not before a new Vaqueros opened on Metairie Road. Its owner is Chef Joseph Griffo, who spent a few years in Santa Fe. He understands the taste and seems intent on restoring greatness to Vaqueros' kitchen.

Griffo has his own dishes and styles. I ordered the wrong thing one night - the shrimp and polenta, which is to be avoided - he told me he's slowly removing some older restaurant dishes to make room for more of his.

Menu keepers start with a pre-appetizer assortment of three salsas with three different shades of chips. You can get it with a fourth dip: guacamole. The two hotter salsas - one a chipotle pepper sauce with corn, the other a spicy but still not overwhelming red chile salsa - are delicious. The mildest is a sort of chunky tomato and green pepper relish that needs some help. But add some of the hot stuff to it and the guacamole to push the flavor where it ought to be.

One must pay $4.50 for the salsas - $7 if you buy the guacamole - but it's enough for a table of four and is great with the good assortment of Mexican beers here.

Like every other ethnic restaurant in New Orleans, Vaqueros cannot get away from the Creole influence, including three that involve oysters. There are not many oysters in Santa Fe but never mind.

What they do with them is eminently edible, starting with the excellent creamy oyster stew, an old Creole soup. A casserole of oysters and crabmeat is a good dish reminiscent of oysters Mosca but with chile peppers. Vaqueros joins the growing list of restaurants copying the char-broiled oysters at Drago's.

But the most unusual and best appetizer of all is a savory bread pudding with smoked shrimp, chorizo sausage and a bit of cheese.

The two entree pages include one for people who think they're eating in a Mexican restaurant. It has tamales, tacos, chimichangas, chiles rellenos, enchiladas and a combo platter. All are in the New Mexican style, which generally means they are a bit more rustic and served with the time-honored choice of red or the hotter green chili.

As good as those things are - and the enchiladas in particular are very well made - the main action is on the left-hand entree page. Most of what's there is at least twice the price of the right-hand stuff.

The unforgettable dish is the strip loin of venison, marinated in some concoction that tenderizes the venison to a pleasant texture. They sear the loin at the exterior, slice it into ovals, and nap it with a sauce made with lime juice and pasilla chiles. It's a delicious taste - red meat that isn't beef. Also on the plate is way too much cucumber-cilantro salad and a few slices of avocado fried tempura style.

The Southwest-style blackened tuna is pure Cajun, dusted with lots of cayenne and salt and rendered crusty while the interior remains red. But everything else on the plate is New Mexican: roasted tomatillos, a red-chili demiglace, and spinach soaking in all this. It seems a touch high at $24 but it's a big slab of nice tuna.

Another Creole-Santa Fe dish is the coq au vin - more like Creole stewed chicken in a roux-based brown sauce. They finish it with chorizo sausage and the hard Spanish cheese Manchego. It's a good plate of food if you feel like eating chicken.

In addition to all the regular menu items, they list a half-dozen specials.

The menu wraps up with a well-made flan with berries and a few other desserts.

If I had a criticism of this restaurant, it's that some parts of even the very good dishes seem to be thrown together. The venison, for example, came out lukewarm though the avocado tempura was very hot.

The service staff is extraordinarily friendly and helpful. The main dining room would be much improved by turning the tables at a diagonal; right now it looks like a cafeteria. The room with the bar is more pleasant with a row of banquettes along the wall opposite the bar.

It's great to have a good version of Vaqueros again. It's another addition to that mighty restaurant row in the 2000 block of Metairie Road.•

Re-reading this makes me want to retort as if it happened yesterday. I want to say Tom!! I know, cooks always put too much of an accompaniment on the plate, and I want to say, Hey, we weren't just copying Drago's! Our Char-grilled oysters had Poblano-chile, Shallots and Manchego cheese on them and many a person remarked it was a welcome addition. Actually it was quite a good review for Tom, he's a tough nut. And to my excuse and to my crew's credit I was off that night, as it was a Monday. I got a call later. It was the first time he came in. The crew told me it went well. Apparently so.

I must say I was really pleased he enjoyed the savory bread pudding. There were lots of savory "crab cheescakes", and things on the menus then and this was my version, which was amazingly decadent. The pan would slow cook on a water bath for 4 hours until the result was a warm, savory, creamy, flan like pudding with chorizo, caramelized onions and perfectly fresh smoked shrimp goodness. I'll have to make that dish soon again.

A Dozen Gumbos; Reminiscing New Orleans

The truth about New Orleans is that I was lucky, so amazingly lucky in the way that I had 14 months to be in that city, and have a restaurant there, before Katrina.

I had the chance to be thoroughly doused in a culture on the verge, that whole last year there, where everything seemed just business as usual, but in reality the city was in a pregnant pause, as if the 300 year old boom town was seeing its life flash before it, and I was a part of it, seeing the city with virgin eyes, noticing every doorknob as well as a beautiful and intricate balance about to be washed away.

When I lived there New Orleans was a beautifully engrained and entrenched infrastructure, sprawling with businesses and buildings and shacks and railroad houses, and junky bars and kitchens, and markets, and alleys, all jammed up next to each other so you didn't know whether anything was coming or going or staying or leaving or outside or inside. It crawled happily, drunkenly, on and on though its own streets lined with smells and dirt and grit and grime and wires and stories that passed and wafted in one door and out another. The city was a complex and seemingly ancient network crowded with panels, and pipes and tiny gas lines, and hand twisted electrical work that hummed deep in its walls, all held together by the very dust of its bustling centuries.

There was a shoal of parrots that had relocated themselves in the city that flew though the shady blocks and perched on the street car cables where I lived. Flashes of chartreuse, a novelty that occasionally would fly in front of one on the red cars that chirr around that part of Canal street. There are black oaks everywhere. The city hangs low in the strong arms of impossibly horizontal limbs that stretch across the streets. There are whats known as resurrection ferns growing on top of thick mossy log-like branches, that shrivel up brown, almost gone, and they look dead, only until it rains and they unfurl, again to a rich crayon green. Everything drips with moisture, every crack is stuffed with moss and mud and algae. Nothing really ever dries there. Even the glasses in the cupboard seem slightly sticky to the touch. Everything is clammy in New Orleans.

Some say they like the moisture. I am not a great fan of the weather there. In fact I find it unbearable and still think what a mystery it is that such a huge culture could erupt in the middle of such a festering hot swamp pit, even with the mouth of the Mississippi right there getting everyone rich. I would have just cashed in my soggy losses, wiped the mud from my thighs and left. The early settlers didn't even have fans for god sakes.This is the kind of heat and humidity that clubs you in the face like a baseball bat when you walk out the door. I barely went outside but did do my own share of sweltering in the heat of the kitchen, as so many kitchens in new Orleans have no AC. 120 to 130 degrees to stand in. My guys showed me how to make ice water rags and hang them around my neck on the line to get through the night.

Immersed in a constant change of plans for the first few months there, I had finally taken over the small restaurant. A turn key operation serving Santa Fe style cuisine. I revamped the menu, added a page of my own dishes, and carved out a crew to make it happen. Many exceptionally sweet guys who worked really hard and were challenged by some very unfamiliar food, not only southwest but a lot of different styles which they would lend themselves to as they would lend themselves to me in my quest for ancient creole kitchen secrets, and ingredients, like fresh soup turtles, or freshly ground sassafras power. But the person who really extended himself to me was Brian, who in addition to being a total cuckoo clock, was a good thorough entertainer, and kindly would have us to his house for nothing less than gargantuan crawfish boils. "Burls", if you speak the native.

We went to a place by Carrolton Avenue, close to where I lived, where Brian had once worked some while back and knew everyone. An old fish market that also had the normal array of lunch plates like catfish poboys and "burled" crawfish, some kind of gumbo, or soft shell crabs.

I still shake my head at the nitty of some of these places we would walk into. It wasn't only because there is no fish in the desert that I would be excited. My eyes would lovingly turn over and over every detail. The shaved wood that packs the icy seafood all over the floors. Even the greasy parchment from the fried oysters is indelible to me. Or the stinky water left over from the days mongering of fresh gulf shrimp. New Orleans is ugly in its comeliness. The broken down signs, and doors, and the smelly back where the fish came in each day. Everything in New Orleans is falling apart and rotting and rusty and gorgeous. Brian used to work at this place, and the sacks of crawfish he would get were, without measure, one the greatest delicacies I saw in that place. Teeming, seething with life he would haul the mammoth sack of mud bugs out from the back of his Torino and drop the lot into the boil pot, a raging propane furnace under a massive aluminum vessel. The DJ would blare soul and funk and brash hip hop beats while the intrepid hot air hung with steam and cigarettes, and boiling spices, and cheap beer, and smoked pork chops, and Phillie blunts.

When the crawfish are done they come up from the hot deep like still and fragrant devils, huge, truly like little lobsters dripping with salty brine, and then butter, corn cobs, new potatoes. These crawfish are bigger than most anything seen in New Orleans. Some eight to ten inches from claw to tail.

Not only a good friend, Brian was a link to this sometimes friendly but elusive town. Here was a man who liked to do some porch sittin', and some Budweiser drinkin'. So hot in the evening we put the fan right on the porch where he'd tell me about the soul food joint he wanted to open one day. On the day he came to interview he told me "he was the man." And he was. Fast and focused,…and funny. And with a modicum of good taste I shan't relay exactly how funny! And he was charming to my little boy all the time no matter how much he would get under his feet. He had a gold tooth and liked to drink Hennessy and he would dance around on the line singing "You can't catch meee…, cause de brown man,…move too faaast…." And he'd wiggle his ass. He was a funny man.

He liked to put out a special sometimes. His cooking was authentic, deeply flavored, and unadorned. While he cooked for me he must have brought me a dozen gumbos to try. Some with shrimp and chicken gizzards,or the crunchy parts of blue crabs, or fat chunks of smoked sausage that would appear in the rich, mysterious broth. He would bring me fried chicken. Smothered pork chops. Red beans. And most importantly stuffed crawfish heads, where the delicious head shells are stuffed with a salty crawfish stuffing, breaded, fried, and baked with a rich and tomato-y creole sauce. Brian was surprised I had read about the dish and I was honored to have it, as it's not common to see the dish in any restaurant.

Before I had made the final move to the city I had spent a long time cooking my way through much traditional creole cooking and soul food favorites. To this day, after seeing many books on the subject, I still think the first I read, Howard Mitchum's, All that Jazz: A Guide to Creole Cooking is one of the all time best books on the subject. His narrarations bring New Orleans to life and the techniques are richly detailed, many versions of the same dish relayed so the reader can see the subtleties and nuances of such age old recipes.

Of course when I got to really digging in I tried everything, only to find bad and good examples of things everywhere. The quarter had some terrible, watery gumbos, and some flavorless Étouffées. After some time the really good stuff, other than Brian's treats, started to show its face. Liuzza's by the Track had some crazy good food. An incredible filé style gumbo heated up with freshly sauteed oysters that became my absolute favorite and a bbq shrimp poboy that was unlike anything in the city. Mandina's was my spot for its most famous version of trout amandine meuniere. I ate dozens of raw and char-grilled oysters, a popular dish where the half shell is dolloped with shallots, garlic, white wine and herbs, and is fire grilled to a bubbly finish. Many incomparable dishes at the multitude of Brennen's establishments if you know anything about that wonderful restaurant dynasty. Countless famous dishes to be eaten and understood. One of the best dishes I had hands down was not in New Orleans but out at "false river" by Baton Rouge. A very brown crawfish étouffée over the top of some fried catfish. Étouffée here can have either a red (tomato), a golden (butter), or a brown (brown roux) composure. Here the rich, nutty flavor of the brown roux and sweet crawfish tails covered a tender and pleasantly metallic flavored filet of catfish. It's an étouffée I am always trying to re-create and with-out any formal recipe has proven an impossible dish to really duplicate.

There were so many little hole in the wall restaurants in New Orleans before the flood that if you started to eat at one side of the city and tried to eat every meal at a different spot I bet you would be dead before you reached the yonder. A virtual wonderland of greasy spoons, dives and soulfood shacks in addition to mazes of fine eateries, and genuine world class grub. I had shrimp and oyster poboys at so many different spots that I had honed things down to five, maybe ten impeccable spots that had my preference and I was only there a little over a year. Just driving down the streets we would point to each place and miss turns and almost get in accidents. I can't imagine its like that anymore. I am reticent to go back, since that horrifying re-entry to salvage my things, because I just can't believe such a wobbly, Rube Goldberg of a place could become anything but some pithy re-invention of itself. I could be wrong.

Out of this plethora of roaring great places I got the chance to frequent one that's impossible not to mention. Jacques-imo's on Oak Street was one of those establishments that grew, piece by piece, into not a circus, but at least small carnival, housed and chunked together by parts of houses strung into three small rooms lit with dim paper lamps leading out to a warm front door with colorful facade. Painted trim and novels of nicknacks everywhere. When I was eating there Jack Leonardi was a brilliant, soused, bigger than life pirate of the restaurant seas and his stormy cramped galley put out plate upon plate of creole and eclectic masterpieces on the spot. Filet minion whizzed past the size of a large fist, towering with oysters and a silky brie velouté, quail stuffed with a dozen things, shrimp, roast tomatoes, andouille, always more and more oysters, soft-shell crabs fried and topped with bacon creole sauces so rich you knew you were in trouble later. And of course the place was filled with lunatics. An ear-muffed boars head hangs on the wall over the bar. In some screw-ball tradition the bottles keep getting smashed under the feet of the bartender as he crunches around a kaleidoscope of broken glass, making jokes, and making me Sazarac after Sazarac. Smoked duck poboys would appear to me without ordering. Baked oysters with Herbsaint and shallots. Fried Rabbit with creole mustard sauce. It just never ended over there. And Jack knew I had a new place I was trying to get off the ground so he would never charge me. He was the nicest guy.

Another place I can't miss bringing up is Angelo Brocato. An old Italian gelato shop also near me on Carrolton. A hundred year old shop that actually had its anniversary for that number just a few weeks before all hell broke loose. This place another classic that makes me truly salivate just thinking and dreaming of it, everything you'd expect from such story of treasures and more. Freshly stuffed cannolis, spumoni served on little paper doilies, sopping rum cakes, and endless fresh baked cookies, florentines and amaretto, all to get washed down with Lavazza espresso and whipped cream. Always always crowded at night, everyone talking to each other as if just simply to express how lucky we felt to go there. Angelo Brocato was going through a big remodel. Lots of space was being added and a huge archway of ice cream shop lights. Months of work and construction leading up the grand centennial party, which they eventually had in the blazing later summer heat, right on the street. A big bash with jazz bands and giant cakes nesting three enormous oversized cannolis, literally the size of fully round logs. The place looked beautiful. No one knew what terror was only a month away.

I talked to Brian just before I left in panic. He was going to Baton Rouge. I thought I would be seeing him again. He put his hand on my little boys shoulder and said. "Now you take care of your Daddy, lil' parnter." Thats what he called him all the time. I talked to him on the phone some weeks afterward. He didn't think he'd ever go back to live. He was thinking of opening up his soul food place in Baton Rouge. After that I lost touch with him.

Its difficult sometimes to tell stories about New Orleans without them becoming sad stories. I'm sure the ghosts of New Orleans would feel well spoken of by seeing its old dishes cooked, and eaten, and talked about. There are sad stories. Many many. Just investigating what of the small, tiny hovels that might still be around, or not, can become gut wrenching. For me at least. But even knowing my friend might even right now may be slinging hash in the adjacent capitol is hope such great culture is just bumped and not wiped out. Angelo Brocato is still there. The great dishes of that region will be cooked no doubt. As I said, I was blessed to see that place, how I got the opportunity to observe such a strong picture of something foreign, as New Orleans was like its own country. Its foods one of the real indigenous cuisines of America and for better, it is a huge joy being able to feel connected to a regions food, and exciting to take part in carrying on the cooking of it.

What really happened about the Yorkshire Pudding.

The plain truth is that we made prime rib the other night and really gave the pudding a go.

What really has happened is the batter recipe has gotten lost. I don't think it was any greatly complex or difficult batter. I asked dad for it and he came over with a folder and it wasn't there.

There is this article in Saveur I have that showcases an English New Years. Miraculously there is a rendition of yorkshire pudding similar to Grandmas in there. In the pan with the batter. The gentleman of the house in the article is an enormous fellow. I said walking around the house "Look at this guy. If I have to trust someone about Yorkshire pudding, I trust this guy!" He really is rotund and looks like a really sweet guy. His recipe doesn't involve putting the pudding under the roast for the final stages of cooking. Actually his recipe is similar to the pop over style, in that the pan is smoking hot and the batter is poured into a half cup of drippings and then its shut into the oven at 425 or so for 20 minutes, so the steam thats created in the batter can make the whole thing rise and crust. The recipe doesn't leave much room for a slowly dripping roast set above.

So I put both techniques together to see what I got.

The result was a horribly embarrassing, all around bad yorkshire pudding, with my father at the table. It was nothing like the chaste side we would eat when I was young. I can barely even describe the results it hurts so desperately inside to relive the experience. But it was so. What I had made resembled a square, grease soaked pancake. Even after apologizing about the mess a number of times, and trying to draw the families attention to the heavenly gravy I had made, my father still, in the midst of complimenting the meal, did say he was "disappointed with the yorkshire pudding". The understatement, and the way he was rubbing it in cut me deeply, and out of crippling shame I would have committed hari kari on the spot, but with my families support I got through the experience even to the point that I might attempt it again, in the short period of a couple of months.

But as great failures in the kitchen go, this was a doozy and of course all the things that went wrong have become so clearly apparent. It was his fault, this enormously fat man with whom i put my trust. He must have done one of those jobs on the recipe where someone is hanging on the telephone line, waiting to finish the article on a thread of this great cooks secret, and in the end he must of made a bad guess when he rattled something off from the top of his head. He must be a busy man. I cannot blame him. 1/2 a cup of drippings though is way to much. His ration of 1 cup of flour to one milk and # eggs, 3/4 tsp salt, is a fine batter but just doesn't have enough mass to correctly mop up the amount of drippings. And with such a smoking hot pan the whole thing cooked in seven minutes and just dried out for the rest of the time.

Grandmas was so under cooked it almost jiggled in the middle, still being crispy on the edges. I'm not too worried about the exact batter. The truth is there was one time even as a boy that I asked grandma about the pudding. She said first you make a batter. I said "a batter?' And she said, yeah, "a batter". I was really a young. I barely knew what she was talking about. But she didn't act like it was any special kind of batter. Anyway, batters are personal kinds of things. There is a good chance she didn't even go by the recipe dad had lost. Not to be sour grapes about the whole thing, but obviously I need to have some leg to stand on. If I am to carry on with this.

Maybe yorkshire pudding is something where, I just need to let go. Let it be my own. "Make it your own!" I used to say over and over to my cooks. I just need to take my own advice. Its not important this be exactly like my grandmothers. If I am going to correctly make this ephemeral, memory laden dish, it is going to have to re-created, re-built from the ground up.

There is an entirely other aspect to my prime rib, that differs from grandmas. There is a good chance that grandmas pudding had really evolved from some of these traditional techniques we see. Nothing can be assumed. I don't remember her getting the pan hot in the traditional sense of the recipes I have seen.

One of my techniques with prime rib that has nothing to do with grandmas, is the gravy making. I take some of the fatty meat that I get from frenching the bones a little bit, and chop it up finely. That with a bed of julienne onions, chopped garlic, seasoning and fresh thyme, all get placed under the rib roast. By the time the roast is done, all that crisped beef and caramelized onion and garlic are just waiting to be turned into the most gorgeous, rich red wine gravy. Here is a series of pictures getting the rib roast in the oven. Notice the nice shape of the meat and the crust of black pepper, granulated garlic and kosher salt thats on top. Thats the way prime rib should be done.

Here are rib roast shots.

>

If someone wants to know more about how to make this gravy, ask. This particular post is about trying to make good yorkshire pudding.

Anyway. The next steps in this:

1. Reduce the amount of dripping for the initial pour.

2. Season batter more.

3. Consider putting some juices in the middle after the pudding is cooked mostly.

4. Much lower cooking temp after a little less hot initial pan, so the batter can catch up with itself, but not too much, but enough, but not too much, but enough…...

Christmas Ham and Christmas Goose

It's important we separate our selves from rote cooking and rote food. Not doing the same thing over, without thinking, without examining a little bit. What we cook, and examining the ingredients. It is important not to let the establishments presentation of what foods are available to us, force us into eating what we don't exactly want to be eating. There is seasonal food. And also there are times that are different from day to day food. Especially during the holidays, where we focus greatly on these grand feasts. The harvest is on parade. These special meals, Thanksgiving, and especially Christmas, which is celebrated in such a worldwide fashion.

The list of great holiday dishes is a long one as it tends to be our best of the best and more. Dishes like these can become monoliths of culture. We gather around some roast beast, with accompaniments. The proper English ritual of Roast Rib Loin, with rich root vegetables swimming in butter, and decadent Yorkshire pudding. Lasagnas and the rustic pasta dishes of an Italian spread. Latin tamale making is a huge tradition for having everyone sit at the table. A Vermont style maple sugar smoked ham did really exist in small town smokehouses, waiting to be covered in fruit for the holiday festivities. An old fashioned Christmas goose with cherries and herbs and trimmings. Luxurious celebration food.

As time for me has gone, the Christmas dinner has become a much better showcase for memorable, holiday cooking. For all its graces, Thanksgiving can become a little mired in traditions that even the most eclectic dinner table might have trouble overcoming. Certain tired dishes, delicious, no doubt. but its a “someone always makes the sweet potatoes” affair.

In my family, Christmas was the time we got a chance to mix it up a little bit.

These are the dishes we love to make.

My wife makes a brilliant Lasagna that we love to have Christmas eve. With sausage and olives and hard boiled egg. She cooks it with unboiled pasta sheets and not too much marinara, so when it's done its almost caky and the ricotta is steamy and fluffed up. My mother made lasagna. Its a sweet tradition that my wife makes it much in the same way.

We do a prime rib usually a week or two before Christmas with my brothers family. Or not. For some reason this year we made indian food. Rich chicken legs. Yellow split pea dahl with black cumin seed. It was a real good dinner. I suspect next year we will go back to prime rib in that particular slot.

My two favorite things to have on Christmas Day are definitely the Christmas Goose, and the Christmas Ham.

Maybe it is the Dickens effect with the goose? The Cratchit household makes it seem like the greatest meal they had the whole year round. Which isn't too far from the truth. Properly cooked a goose is a succulent and satisfying brand of fowl. It's a perfect size to stuff. Unlike a large turkey, which takes so much dressing it can dry out an already parched bird. The goose holds usually an ample five cups of stuffing, which truly drinks up the lush juices of the savory centerpiece. Our's is done in a little roasting pan that's the perfect size for a young goose. Some square aluminum thing of my mothers which gets passed around depending on whose cooking what. After five hours it comes out of the oven, crisp, fragrant and falling apart. The bouquet of sweet herbs and aromatics fills the entire house. First it was rubbed and brined, inside and out with kosher salt, black pepper, white wine, a splash of vinegar, herbs de province, minced garlic, and freshly ground spices such as fennel, coriander seed and cardamom and then, sits in this marinade/brine for a good couple of days. Then it is stuffed and set out to air dry for a while. And finally it is placed on a bed of julienne onions and garlic cloves, and roasted, for the aforementioned amount of time.

Many of the complaints I have heard about goose can all be solved by one important step. Cook this honker like theres no tomorrow. A tough goose is softened by long slow cooking time. A fatty goose gets its fat rendered out of it by the same. Generally 2 and 1/2 hours covered at 350 and 2 and 1/2 hours uncovered at 300 will do the trick. I must admit I baby mine, starting it off hot and then bringing down the temperature slowly so the last hour is on convection at 250 or so, and the last of the fat can properly render from it and the skin can gently brown and crisp. The two inch puddle of fat in the roasting pan has caught all the flavor of the spices and garlic and cooks the legs and thighs "confit", as does the rest of the bird get larded and macerated by this essential pot porre. The meat will be moist and perfumed and should fall off the bone, delicious, rustic and satisfying.

Goose is still available in many supermarkets. A good indication that more than a few still enjoy this grand, and decadent meal.

The ham is a bit of a different story.

One year we were planning and talking about goose and duck, and someone said “why can’t we have ham!?” and we said back, in unison “because we hate ham!” And as I said it, I thought of all the buttercup smelling prosciuttos and the almost glassy Austrian speck hams, and the fully transcendent Spanish Serrano hams, all the hams that makes ones palette gush. And then thought of the spiral cut supermarket ham that was implied. It was at that moment I said "I’ll make ham, I mean I'll really make ham."

Now on Christmas we have good old fashioned, home cured, sugar smoked, vermont style ham. And its a treat like nothing else. Salty, smokey, and tangy with spices. Sometimes it snows while its outside smoking, and the smell of it all, the snow, the wood smoke, and the meat, perfectly redolent as if I could smell a smokehouse off in the distance of a Currier and Ives painting. And sometime afterward it sits on the table, glistening with a maple sugar glaze, still hot from the coals. The crust is broken, and its sliced. Every one has a slice. This is ham. Never has a meat been so charming as this. Smoky, caramelized. So impossibly full of flavor. A real gift.

Smoking ones own ham is something that even amid a fully flourishing american, backyard-bbq practice, is rarely attempted anymore, probably because curing is, and always will be, part and parcel with ham smoking. I don’t think the status quo is very comfortable with curing at home anymore. A symptom of the new modern sterility over common sense tradition. Americans don’t like the idea of letting meat sit around. Plain and simple. And sit around it does with ham. The last ham smoked out of thiss batch was in the curing brine for a solid ten days. Try and tell Betty Crocker how that could be safe. But not even amazingly it is quite, being that nothing kills bacteria naturally better than salt, sugar and smoke. A perfect system for dealing with meat, and in the meantime, fine ham making, sadly, at least in this country, can barely be noticed.

The food conglomerates version of the “Christmas Ham” has gotten quite a hold though. Every year the tower of super pink hams pile up higher in the supermarket, identical looking nitrate pumped lumps, cry-o-vacced, swimming in malto-dexterin and God only knows. And everyone slices this rubbery, gelatinous stuff onto their plates like a pile of warmed up cold cuts covered in corn-syrup and imitation maple flavor. It’s enough to make ones stomach turn. And it should. Real ham making is in the “religious experience” category. And a life's work for the experts as well. There are guilds for sausage and meat curing that go back, far into continental histories. Yet, even a novice can produce a fairly fine specimen of charcuterie by following the correct steps over time.

Harder by far than curing and smoking the piece of meat is acquiring it. Raw pork legs do not abound in the supermarket, nor do most gourmet butcher sections have them. I come up with mine ordering it from a local meat supplier. But please don’t hesitate to ask your local butcher to get one. If they were in the counter maybe more people would start to make ham. It can be so hard to get a raw pork leg sometimes it seems like no one makes ham from scratch anymore. The difference is huge. So much so that it really isn't the same thing. But if you like ham, and try your hand at a little smoking, after you have the leg, its really not all that hard.

A good ham brine is made from 2 cups kosher salt, 2 cups sugar, 2 cups brown sugar, 1 cup maple syrup, 3 TBS pickling spice, 3 cloves garlic, all with 2 gallons filtered water. Most of the time in curing some kind of nitrates, or nitrites are added. Pink salt. Praugue #l, it has different names. I have not found them necessary in the slightest, in ham anyway. Sometimes I go a bit heavier on the sugar and a little less on the salt. It can give the ham that glassy quality. The brine is heated till boiling then cooled to 38 degrees. The raw ham gets submerged and should sit at 38 degrees (a cold winter garage works well) for 5 to ten days. Five being shorter and ten being longer, it you get what I mean.

And then it is smoked for 7 - 8 hours.

I just make a little pile of coals on one side of the grill and add smoking chips. The meat should temp out at 158 when its called done.

I make a special batch of chips for this. Hickory. A couple vanilla cream sodas, sugar. I boil the chips until the syrup is thick.

I can't tell you how to smoke any better than any other book on the subject. Like anything it takes attention and trial and error. One thing I can mention is not to use chips that have any bark mixed in. The bark puts off a rotten acidic flavor. I like doing this sugar smoke I've perfected over the years. The sugar burns and it smells like the ham gets wafted for seven hours with freshly caramelized creme brulee. All the curing sugars and smoke sugars almost crystalize on the ham. Its a sight to behold. And taste and smell.

When its all arranged, and the goose is carved, and the ham is decorated with fruits. We serve the whole dinner with a rich cherry sauce made from goose drippings and giblets, dried and preserved cherries, apple cider, red wine and sherry, its reduced and thickened with roux like any great gravy. Its tart, and colorful and goes with the ham as well as the poultry. Everything is rich. Its our version of the greatest dinner of the year.

I feel adamant in suggesting people take more time with the food. Treating it like something more important than some of the icky stuff thats put off everywhere now. It's important because the greatest indication of our culture is the food. Maybe in this way we can treat the condition by treating the symptom. Get away from rote food by looking at what our immediate cultures have provided for us, first off. What the great dishes are that our families have had for many years. And use the holidays to showcase the best of us, in great cooking that families can center around, and share.

English and Italian

"The Beginning of a Short Cooking History"

My mother was an adequate cook.

She could turn.

The way she wielded a pairing knife was mesmerizing. She could peel an apple or a potato in one long, delicate, thin strand that I would carry around the house to look at, and try not to break.

She liked to cook. But she didn't strive to improve. And much of it was mediocre. Sometimes it seemed as if it were more important that the food be hot, than whether it was good. I never stopped hearing about how food needed to be eaten piping hot. She also would carry on about how raw vegetables could give you a stomach ache. But, on better food days she would order French Onion soup or something like that, to get me something good. Something with a course taste she knew I would really like. She had a taste for brie, and liked to cut up pepperoni with Dad and me in front of Love Boat and Fantasy Island on Wednesday nights.

My Grandmother on my mothers side was proper French and my mother, proper English by birth, as much of her family was in England by the time my mother was born. They were French and Romanian. Jewish. They went to England because of the War. The stories are spotty. My mother grew up in county of Kent. 

Mom did not come from a talented line of cooks is what I've come to know the story as, and I can’t say I saw a lot of French or Romanian cooking at her families table either. I think I saw a lot of burned onions is what I saw. Always these same onions, partly black, nutty, slightly acrid. Not terrible. Onions can sear very well and in some situations these onions could have been charming. But they were everywhere.

No,…most everything I had from that side of the family; a simply awful, atrocious variety of English cooking. Vegetables boiled to death. Meat over seared, under cooked and tough. Not all of it was bad, and she did have her moments.

She made latkes. They weren’t like any latkes I’ve had since. Certainly not like the shredded potato pancakes that latkes are. They we’re made of matzoh meal which is basically crushed up matzoh. A fine, airy breading is what it amounts to. Her latkes were made from whipped egg whites folded into yolks, matzoh meal, a little milk, probably baking soda, that were pressed into hand shaped patties. They were fried in oil and served with powdered sugar and then sprinkled with lemon juice. Very tasty. If I could have her here I’d ask her to make those.

Another odd thing is what she called schnitzel. Real schnitzel is some kind of meat, pork usually, pounded thin, breaded, and fried. Served with lemon. Mom’s Schnitzel were like long burned hamburgers. I think she put Cup-a-Soup powdered onion soup in the mix. They as well as the latkes had that hand shaped, pressed to the edge form. Mom cooked the hell out of those too. I never liked them very much. It could get pretty bad. There was this Weight Watchers dish she made with liver and green peppers that if I really think about it, could be one of the most god awful things I've ever eaten.

Pot Roast was made occasionally, but again for some reason she would select the leanest eye-round or rump she could find, sear it to absolute death, braise it in some icky mixture darkened with Gravy Master and thickened with corn starch. The meat was as tough and dry as a tweed cap. The carrots were so over-cooked all the time that to this day I can't really enjoy cooked carrots very much. I would just pick at the egg noodles.

The pot roast worth going on about came from my fathers side.

Grandma Kate’s Pot Roast.

This perfect rendition of great English cooking stormed the table every once in a while. Creamy, falling apart, moist. This pot roast was so good that you wanted to write stories about it. We would get up from the table so full it would ache. Still we had another helping. A sane man would wish it wasn't so. You didn't get pot roast at Grandma's like this every day at all. It was spectacular.

I don’t know what kind if cut she used. It was something fatty. Probably a cheap as a wooden wheel chuck roast. She didn’t use red wine or anything. Only a little apple cider vinegar, some water, a well built seasoning, onions, garlic. I don’t think she even put in any dry or fresh herbs. There was a bay leaf floating around. She didn’t thicken it with corn starch. It was definitely more of a roux based gravy. She may have even used Wondra for all I know. The recipes have become mostly lost.

Grandma Kate was, simply, an amazingly good cook.

She had her repertoire. It was solid, immovable cooking. Soups, stews, stuffed cabbages she called "galunkie". Potatoes one hundred ways. So many good soups. Chicken neck soup. Bean soup. Pea soup so good. She would make pea soup and we would beg for more and she would say "No, I don't have a ham bone. Next time we have ham I'll make pea soup." And we'd say the same thing the next time she'd make it. And she would say the same thing back. She was a real bacon and eggs grandma.

Katherine Briggs was born in Banbury England!

“Ride a cock horse to Banbury cross,

To see an old lady upon a white horse,

Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes

She shall have music wherever she goes."

”Does anyone remember that? She had five sisters. Here is a picture of them. That’s Grandma Kate in the middle. Everyone called her Kitty. It’s the last time they were all together, in this picture, taken in Banbury of course.

And put aside the roast. Grandma Kate made the best Yorkshire pudding in the world. Truly. The town of Yorkshire must have subcontracted with ladies from Banbury because there is no way theirs could have been as good as this heavenly dish.

I don’t know what kind of Yorkshire pudding anyone else has had, but my Grandma’s Yorkshire pudding was cooked in a roasting pan and never saw a muffin tin. She put about 3/4 of an inch of batter in a smoking hot roasting pan of drippings and stuck the whole thing under the rib roast, propped up on a roasting rack. The drippings and juice slowly fall into the batter as both cook. It sounds simple enough, but since she died the family has been trying to replicate it, and although we’re getting close after a number of years, all of us have admitted it greatly falls short hers. She knew just when to put the pan of batter in, because the pudding takes less time than the roast itself. It was a shuffle of cooking times. When it was done the batter had puffed up around the edges of the pan like a pastry and the middle had the texture of some delicious, magically beefy custard. It got cut into nine square pieces. There were brutal arguments about who was going to get the middle piece. The piece that was directly under the roast. Most people who have had Yorkshire pudding don’t know exactly what I’m talking about. It must be a regional thing. When people talk about Yorkshire pudding, they always seem to talk about these pop-over things. “Yorkies” are the proper. I have had them made skillfully and they accompany a rib roast well, but I'm still trying to perfect grandmas and I never make this other kind.

I never met my Grandfather. He was Sicilian. More of a freemason than any kind of mobster. He had a bar that was also a small restaurant, and loads of friends. Dad waited in the car a lot is what I've heard. The most information on him I have is that he was quite a good cook himself, and in tandem with being a good party thrower he was a great stuffed artichoke maker, probably a pretty gook martini shaker as well, as there are also stories of my dads, about waking up and there being people flopped around everywhere. Sounds like a lot of fun. He died of Parkinson's before I met him. Here is a picture of him covered in parrots.

I ate of that thread when I was really young at Ma mahs house. Accent on the second ma. I think everyone called her Aunt Santa as well. I'll have to check. Her and Uncle Joe lived in another part of Jersey, somewhere close to Garfield. They had some grapes growing up on the porch. Lots of Italians playing cards in the basement. Many many dishes of food came out. Linguine with peas. Zeppoli. Eggplant parmesan. Cannolis. I was tiny. I'm surprised I remember anything at all. There was a red checkered tablecloth. It smelled thick with smells there and my dad told me to eat. Thats all. Since then Dad told me that even then, when I had been to the house, it was nothing like it had been when he was a kid. When ma ma was young. As it goes the story basically is that ma ma, my grandfathers sister, was the best cook of all, which is impressive to hear and everything, and I’m sure the food was incomparable, but, for me its just a little too far back to remember.

In addition to growing some fairly outrageous Jersey tomatoes, my Dad cooks some formidable Italian as well. I remember him sauteing down big piles of red and green peppers with olive oil to have with our eggs. Bread had to have a hard enough crust so it cut the roof of his mouth, and he showed me how to use it to mop up sauce, or the juice from a steak when I was just the size of a pea.. He took me to shop through all of the deli’s around north Jersey. Each one had huge provolones hanging in the windows, and they all had the richest and most pungent smell of sausages and garlicky marinara cooking in the back. Boxes of imported goods that lined the floors, made from the chunky, brown, almost larded floorboards.

When we got home he fed me fresh buffalo mozzarella by hand, dropping the cold milky treat onto my tongue with sprinkles of salt, all the while telling me it was better with tomatoes and basil while we both knew it might be all by itself that is best. The famous dish he makes is the Sunday Sauce. An involved Bolognese really. The red sauce was slaved over for a for a full day and is crowded pork ribs, sweet and hot sausage, little chicken braciole tied up with parmesan and pignoli nuts, and meatballs made with beef, pork, and veal, with enough bread they fall apart, and off the fork on the way to the mouth. The rich sauce is cooked down just enough that it clings to the pasta and the olive oil becomes a dangerous red that coats our lips and ruins our clothes.