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07/23/2005 Archived Entry: "Two weeks of busy-ness"

It has been a busy, busy couple of weeks, which is why I haven’t written sooner.

Let’s start with the visit of my friend and cooking school/culinary vacation partner Cecilia Barratta, otherwise known (mainly when I and her family want to tease her) as La Baronessa. I mean, Cecilia is a legitimate baronessa (Baronessa Bellelli) but titles in Italy are funny. People use them, but they are not supposed to. Italy is a democratic republic. In any case, Cecilia stayed with me for two weeks, and although she knows New York City very well and can get around on the subway as well as most natives, and always has her museum agenda, and her antique-hunting agenda, and her Bloomingdale’s agenda, I still needed to and wanted to entertain her. If nothing else, we love to sit by my window in the kitchen every morning and have our coffee and a little breakfast together. Let’s face it: I wanted to play with my friend while she was here.

One of the things that amused Cecilia the most – besides, naturally and as always, the 26th St. and Sixth Ave. Sunday flea market – was our walk on the Brooklyn boardwalk. We took the Q train to Coney Island, the last stop – a pleasant jaunt unto itself, as much of the ride from Park Slope to Coney is above ground. The subway deposits you in the restored and rebuilt Coney Island terminal that is now the largest subway station in the world. And it is completely handicap accessible, by the way. The retail stores have yet to open in the terminal but across the street is Nathan’s. We had a hot dog pit stop (don’t forget the fries) -- which is always I feel a good thing to do with a tourist -- then we walked the boardwalk all the way down to Brighton Beach. The people-watching is great. The beach population has become middle class again, after a few decades of being somewhat rough (to put it politely). There seems to be always some kind of street or I should say boardwalk entertainment – I have done the boardwalk several times this summer. And at the end of our walk, we stopped at Tatiana Grill, one of the two Tatiana restaurants on the boardwalk. Sitting at the outdoor café, Cecilia had a cappuccino while I had an iced fruit drink, and we watched the parade go by.

After our walk, we went to M&I International, the huge grocery on Brighton Beach Avenue, where we bought prepared foods to take home for dinner. If you have never been to this store, you owe yourself a visit. It has a vast smoked and otherwise processed meat department – all kinds of sausage and hams, etc. – a vast smoked and pickled fish department, a huge salad section (try the grated beets with walnuts and garlic), a huge dairy section (the bulk sour cream is good, but mild; I think the different flavored pot cheeses are the items to try), groceries (including excellent fruit juices and jarred fruits from Eastern Europe, also many varieties and brands of kvass, the fermented grain drink), a bakery department (I can skip most of this stuff, although the dried fruit strudel is excellent), a department with nothing but several kinds of Eastern European dumplings (pelmeni, vereniki, pierogi, etc.), and more. We bought some beef stroganoff (I boiled some egg noodles to put under it), and some stuffed cabbage and stuffed peppers.

I suppose the big event of Cecilia’s stay was the Fancy Food Show, and, in conjunction with it, the dinner given in my honor by the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Commerce of Naples. I was honored for my contribution to disseminating the good word about the foods and agricultural products of Campania, the region of Naples, and the Italian south in general. Of course, that is largely through my book, Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania, which has apparently become the bible of English-speaking southern Italians, and through my classes here and my trips and classes in Italy.

(By the way, I will be teaching classes based on my Italian program at several metro New York cooking schools – A la Carte in Lynbrook, Classic Thyme in Westfield, and the Kings Cooking Studios in both Hillsdale and Short Hills. Check Maven’s Appearances for more details. Note, however, that the date for A la Carte has been changed to Sept. 1, and the dates for Kings, which are as of this moment not yet posted, are Nov. 28 and Nov. 30).

The honors dinner for about 150 people was held at Paper Moon restaurant on E. 58th St., which is the branch of a restaurant in Milano. Given its Northern Italian roots, Paper Moon did a wonderful job cooking and serving a Neapolitan dinner that included a sformata di macaroni – molded bell-shaped pasta, and a risotto with mussels and beans. Risotto is not a traditional Neapolitan dish, however. Neapolitans eat most of their rice in the form of arancini – fried rice balls – and a fancy dish called Sartu, which is a mold of boiled rice with lots of goodies, like porcini and chicken livers. Everyone in Italy eats risotto today, however, and the Neapolitan taste here is the combination of shellfish with beans. It is only in contemporary times that a cook could combine these two ingredients. Before World War II, beans were a mountain food, shellfish a shore food, and never the twain could meet because it was too difficult and time consuming to get from the mountains to the sea (or vice versa) to put both in the same pot. Nowadays, with the excellent Italian roads, mountain and shore are only an hour apart, so chefs feels its all fair game. I have to say, given that it was cooked for 150 people, the risotto was gorgeous – still firm to the bite, and very creamy.

Along Italian lines, Cecilia and I and some friends also had a lovely dinner at San Domenico, the alta cucina outpost on Central Park South. What is meant by alta cucina? Literally, it means high cooking, as does haute cuisine in French. A long-deceased friend of mine used to say that the difference between regular cooking and high cooking is that when you go to a fancy restaurant all dressed up they have to cut your food in small pieces so you don’t get dirty. It’s the difference between lobster in a shell, and lobster served out of the shell in manageable pieces in a sauce. You get it, I’m sure. So we all got fa-pitzed to go to San Domenico, the décor of which has recently been “refreshed” by restaurant designer Adam Tihany (the best!) and is now hostessed by Marisa May, the charming and adorable daughter of owner Tony May.

Let’s see, what else kept me busy that last two weeks: Deadlines. I had a big restaurant consulting project to write up (it’s a secret), I had a piece for Nation’s Restaurant News to finish (on the foods of the Italian south), and I review Brooklyn restaurants for BKLYN magazine. Besides all the eating out that that last job requires, I am, believe it or not, a very slow writer.

By the way, you can subscribe to BKLYN, which is a quarterly about to go bi-monthly, by going to the magazine’s website: www.bklynmagazine.com. If you live in central Brooklyn or downtown Manhattan, the magazine is free. Otherwise, it costs $15 a year.

Speaking of Brooklyn restaurants, there is a boom going on here in Park Slope that has changed the complexion of Fifth Avenue from Flatbush to 15th Street. It now well exceeds the restaurant prospects on Smith Street, which until recently got all the press, although Smith and neighboring Court Street are still hopping. Among the notable new places in Park Slope is a branch of Greenwich Village’s Mary’s Fish Camp, here called Brooklyn Fish Camp. It’s as sensational as the original – with carefully prepared fish and seafood of all kinds, plus a fabulous gazpacho with chunks of lobster -- but in the Slope it has a large garden. There were long waits for tables as soon as it opened. I had to laugh – the lobster roll is $23, although it varies with the market price. It’s true that lobster is very expensive this season, and this roll is heaped with huge hunks of sweet and tender lobster. I am not complaining about the price. I laugh because only months ago that same location where they are getting $23 for a lobster roll was a down-and-dirty bodega. Or was it the Laundromat?

Park Slope has another hot spot that just opened. Sette, which means “seven” in Italian, is on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Third Street. It also caused a sensation the day it opened, even though the day it opened the kitchen had no gas and it had to feed people sandwiches – okay, let’s call them panini – toasted on an electric grill. Now that the kitchen is in full swing, and chef Amanda Freitag is cooking up her delicious Italian-influenced food, you may want to try it before the weather gets cold. What does weather have to do with it? I love Amanda’s food, particularly her ricotta gnocchi with fresh peas and mint. I also love that owner Giovanni Tafuri has his watchful eye on the room. Still, I can’t stand the noise from the albeit stylish but hard-surfaced room. What could they have been thinking with all those glass, metal, marble, and stone surfaces? For now, however, when the rain and heat allow, you can dine on the patio in the quiet of leafy Third Street.

Since I last wrote, I also gave a slide lecture at the Museum of the City of New York – “Ethnic Identity and Food” – and did a book-signing event (with lecture) at R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut. Both were very nice events, if I am allowed to be so immodest – and it was especially nice meeting all of you who attended. I had full houses for both events. In case you don’t have your book yet, I left behind a stack of autographed copies of Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food at R.J. Julia, and the Museum of the City of New York has copies of the book in their gift shop.

Just one last plug: I have been getting word that Naples at Table is hard to find in the book stores. Remember Amazon.com! Not only is ordering any book from Amazon easy, but they discount as deeply as anyone. If you use the connections to Amazon on my website, The Food Maven, they give me a tiny commission on your purchase. It is those commissions that pay for keeping my website on line.

Oh yes, one more thing: I am about to announce another cruise with Arthur. I will be hosting a cruise next May on the Oceania line. The trip goes from Rome to Barcelona, and there is an optional three-day Rome stay with me. I don’t have all the details now, but I do know that the day we dock in Sorrento we are going to take a trip to my cooking school in Paestum, where, besides my doing a demo, you will visit the mozzarella production, visit Cecilia’s farms, the ancient temples of Paestum, and have a lunch prepared by my friends, local women, in Cecilia’s kitchen. Keep an eye on Maven’s Appearances for details – although I will also email them directly.