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02/17/2008 Archived Entry: "Cookies on Staten Island, Bob's Mom in the NYT, and more"

Don’t forget that you can now listen to me on Robin Hood Radio’s Monday morning show, Marshall and Mike, live at 7:40 a.m. out of Sharon, Connecticut, WHDD, 1020 AM, 91.9 FM. Or listen any time from anywhere on the internet. My 15-minute segment is archived as a podcast on www.robinhoodradio.com. When you get to the web site, click on “On Demand,” then on “Arthur Schwartz.”

CAUGHT WITH MY HAND IN THE COOKIE JAR

Some of you have asked about my diet. The answer is: Some days I am good. Some days I am bad, or at least not as good as I should be and want and hope to be. Last week, on the day I went to Staten Island to see my friend James “The Cake Chef” Carrozza’s new bakery and café, The Cookie Jar, I was very, very bad. Frankly, I was out of control.

Every day James features a minimum of 60 varieties of freshly baked cookies and miniature pastries. Using the excuse of “research,” I am sure I sampled 30 of them, at least. Okay, maybe only 25. But it wasn’t just one bite out of each. Some of James cookies I simply cannot stop eating. For instance, the macadamia nut cookies. And I am not even that wild about macadamias. In fact, I love all of James’ nut cookies. And all of James’ many, many not-nut cookies. Like his plainer butter cookies, which, even when taking the form of plain butter cookies that every bakery in New York makes, are buttery butter cookies because they are made with real butter, not a commercial substitute as are most others.

And get a load of his jam dot delicacies. If you l love jam dotes with ordinary jam, which is what most are made with, James’ jam dots with great jam will be revelation. And there are many not-so-plain butter cookies, like the ones topped with a nice nugget of either lemon curd or chocolate ganache, the former encased in lemon icing, the later in chocolate icing, made with the best chocolate. Then there are James’ miniature pastries. He gives equal time to Italian ones, such as biscotti Regina, the sesame encrusted cookies, and sfogliatelle, the clam-shaped ricotta-filled pastries, and Jewish ones, such as cheese Danish and rugulach. Obviously, with 60, sometimes 70 different cookies in the cases, I could go on and on. If I haven’t eaten all of them it isn’t because I haven’t tried.

Outside, a repro antique clock has a sign saying “It’s Cookie Time,” which makes you smile even before you walk in and see James’ 12-foot high, 20-something-foot long wall of cookie jars, his personal collection now displayed in respectful black cubbies that make each one look like a museum piece. They’re for sale, too, not just for decoration. Any jar filled with cookies is a mere 50 bucks. A steal. The biggest bargain in New York. Worth a trek over the Verrazano with its $9 toll, especially since James and his wife, the fabulous Maria, Mrs. Cake Chef, will also reward you with a cup of great hot chocolate, a coffee, espresso, or a cappuccino. There are a few tables in the bakery so you can enjoy looking at the cookie jars, eating some cookies, and drinking something before you select a few pounds to take home. The cookies are $10 a pound, for any kind in the store, another steal by the standards of every other borough.

THE COOKIE JAR is at 1226 Forest Ave., in the West Brighton section of Staten Island; 718-448-3500. It is open 7 days a week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It closes at 4 p.m. on Sunday. Tell ‘em Schwartz sent you.

GET A LOAD OF SALLY PHIPPS IN THE NY TIMES: BOB HARNED’S MOM
I know you all know Bob Harned. Besides being my constant companion, he used to sing us in and out of commercials when I was on the radio. (“Candlelight and Wine,” “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee,” etc.) In fact, he has recorded all that food-lyric music on a CD called “Eat, Drink, and Be Singing, available mail order from Pink and Blue Music, www.pinkandbluemusic.com.

What you didn’t know is that Bob’s talent is inherited. His father, Alfred Marion Harned, was a big band musician, composer and arranger. His mother, whose stage name was Sally Phipps, was a child silent-screen star, then an ingénue in Hollywood, then a Broadway actress, then a pin-up fashion plate, then a society hostess married to one of the Gimbel brothers of Philadelphia. Photographs of her and postcards of her in sometimes provocative but always tasteful and stylish poses are now collectibles. Her image is much in demand in Europe.

Perhaps Sally Phipps will be rediscovered in America, too. The New York Times Sunday “T” magazine of February 24 – that’s next Sunday – will be featuring photos of Bob’s beautiful mother, and a story about her life. Make sure to read the paper that day. Although Bob helped with the preparation of the story, and the pictures are all from his extensive collection of movie stills and fashion photos, he hasn’t read it or seen it himself, so we can’t wait.

NEW YORK CITY FOOD IN PAPERBACK

The paperback edition of Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food: An opinionated history is being published this week. I had to update the book slightly. Because of the demise of a historic restaurant or three, I had to put them in the past tense, but otherwise the text is the same. The cover, however, besides being less physically rigid, has been ever-so-slightly redesigned. As you will see by clicking on the above link to Amazon, the cover now has taxi-yellow bands with the checkerboard trim used on the city’s old Checker cabs. Amazon is still listing the paperback as not yet available, although it should be any minute. (Unfortunately, I haven’t yet gotten a picture of it on my website.) Obviously, it costs less than the hardcover, which lists for $45. The paperback has a $27.50 cover price. Amazon discounts it to $18.15, and a bit less, I believe, if you order it now, before they actually get it in stock.

KVETCH OF THE WEEK

I have been reluctant to start a regular feature that requires me to, well, write about anything regularly. Get it? Who needs the pressure? But as I seem to complain regularly, I figure why not make my kvetches a weekly feature? I never seem to be a loss for a kvetch. Kvetching is helpful to the soul, I think, and can be amusing. Harping is something else and leads to lost friends.

Last week, I kvetched about restaurants that don’t have as much as a hook in the wall to hang your coat. Sure enough, the next place I go to doesn’t have a coat hook. I’m glad it was the neighborhood and I wore my crumby coat.

This week, I would like to complain about a U.S. agricultural system that has stripped all the flavor from cauliflower, among other foods, such as, while I am kvetching about lost flavor, the fresh herbs that are sold in supermarkets these days. I just bought some fresh bay leaves and immediately threw them in the garbage. Crushing one in my hand resulted in zippo aroma.

Of course, in regards to cauliflower, I am now totally spoiled by the cauliflower that grows in Paestum, Italy, where I do my cooking classes. The area is known for its cauliflower. It is shipped to northern Europe, where Germans, Poles, and who knows who else dotes on cauliflower.

I remember when cauliflower had too much flavor for some people. Is this why the U.S. crop now tastes like nothing? Or is it just our insistence on quantity over quality. Don’t get me started on supermarket chickens.

I was complaining to a friend about this cauliflower problem the other day, telling her that I remember when our cauliflower (and cabbage) came mainly from Long Island and was worthy of eating regularly, all winter in fact, when nothing much else was available.

“You may be the only person left on earth,” she said, “who even remembers that those vegetables used to be grown on Long Island, much less that they used to taste different than they do now.”

I bet I’m not. Then again, I am frequently told that I am “the first person” to ever complain about something, anything, everything. I should have no trouble finding a kvetch of the week

Over and out.