Thought for Food

What a weekend! Let’s work backwards shall we?

The Saints won the goddamn Super Bowl! Here’s me and (some of) my Tulane girls praisin’ Breesus and all that jazz.

The first half was Estrogen Fest XLIV. Look at all them ladies! M.’s was the sole Y chromosome ‘til after half-time (and he was mostly in the kitchen, cooking — ha!). Then Mark and Petey showed up. Petey trained it all the way from Harlem to catch the end of the game with us. He was there at the play-off game and he thought — rightly — it’d be bad juju for the Saints if he didn’t show.

On a side note: Mark and M. are intellectual gourmands (sorry, no other words for it) who drool over each other’s bookshelves and spent 20 minutes crafting a cocktail around a very serious and very potent bottle of Creme de Violet from Paris. Meanwhile they’re tossing around arcane football terms and commenting on the finer points of the game — and they’re first to admit they haven’t watched football since the last Super Bowl. Where do men pick up this knowledge? Secret Boys’ Club meetings?

Anyway.

Laura was voted Most Team Spirit with her superhot gold leggings and homemade pralines.

INTERCEPTION!!!!!!

When they won we put on “Glory Bound” and “Feel Like Funkin’ It Up” and danced around like we were down in New Orleans. There’s just no dancin’ like the dancin’ we do down there.

Oh and then I think Akiko screamed “Show us your tits!” and M. took his shirt off. We didn’t even have beads to throw him!

He’s always looking for an excuse to take his shirt off.

Yesterday Akiko and I went to Spa Castle in College Point, Queens. It was my first time and OH MY GOD IT IS HEAVEN ON EARTH.

We soaked in the outdoor whirlpools, hopped from sauna to sauna, drank rum punches in a bar in a pool, and I had the best mani-pedi of my life. M. also gave me a certificate for a body scrub and massage, but there were no openings yesterday. I cannot wait to go back for that experience. I saw it being done in the women’s bath area. This small, ripped Korean woman had climbed up onto the massage table to really work down deep into the muscles of her customer. She had buckets of salts, hoses, and special brushes. Mmmm, human silly putty.

Top photo is from an NYT article & slideshow. Best quote, from the owner: Russian guests are welcome to “use their whips, some kind of tree.”

What would Brian Boitano do? Something like this sweet move, probably.

(Tip of the skates to Akiko.)

For the “self-proclaimed foodie” on your list: Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home.

Eat Me Daily writes:

Ad Hoc at Home is a gateway drug to Keller cuisine: accessible, affordable, recognizable, and yet with subtleties in the food and philosophy that give rise to promises of much more to come.

Cirino, Daniel, M., and Akiko et al certainly won’t be doing coast-to-coast dinners partially inspired by this book … but it’s something for the rest of us to sink our baby-teeth into.

Friday night dinner: pork buns to rival those served at a certain chain of hipster restaurants owned by a megalomaniac chef who may or may not know how to cook.

Recipe:

• Spit-roast a whole pig
• Shred pork and marinate in a simple, sweet glaze left over from the ribs your roommates served at the Halloween party
• Steam rice flour buns from an Asian food market until hot (don’t bother making your own, seriously)
• Place a mound of hot pork on each bun
• Add a sprinkling of Akiko’s homemade quick-pickled red cabbage and slices of your Dad’s sweet gherkins (because you ate all of Akiko’s quick-pickled cucumbers … oops)
• Finish with drizzles of kewpie and Akiko’s homemade hot sauce (similar to sriracha)
• Pair with a lovely Spanish rose and a side of braised kale, collards, and beet greens in a sweet wine and vinegar sauce that your boyfriend made
• Voilà

Liz told me yesterday: “I’ve been thinking about those pork buns all weekend!”

Me, too. And they’re virtually effortless! (When your fridge is one of the best-stocked in the city.)

This afternoon Chef Akiko* is roasting an organic, local pig at a Halloween block party on Grand between Lafayette and Clifton in Prospect Heights.

Stop by around 4-5 pm for pulled pork sandwiches w/ spicy mayo and mac & cheese!

Pass it on….

* Recently named NYC’s first Pit Mistress. Also Bobby Flay told her her meat is beautiful. And you know what that means.

Last night, M., Akiko, and I made history.

Let me back up. We went to our CSA’s end-of-harvest potluck dinner in a community center in the East Village (never seen so much vegan food in my life). After dinner, the CSA director announced we’d be playing some “farm games,” starting with an “apple pie relay race.” We had no idea what that was — but apple pies? Competition? Oh, we are SO all over that!

When he asked for volunteers, M., Akiko, and I stepped bravely forward. Together with a woman named Lee we faced Team Squash — a quartet cleverly dressed as “winter squash” and “summer squash” (all carried squash rackets and wore hats and mittens or Hawaiian shirts and shorts). We called ourselves Team Kumquat because kumquats are awesome and so are we.

The goal of the relay race was to make an apple pie as fast possible, with a few extra challenges…

The video is, sadly, quite dark so I’ll talk you through it: first there was a potato sack relay (which M. and I did), then a wheelbarrow race relay (which Lee and Akiko did). M. started off so fast that we left Team Squash in the dust from the get-go.

The next part was the apple pie-making — which started with M. bobbing for five apples. You have never seen anything like that man bobbing for apples (1:00). I mean he stuck his WHOLE HEAD in there and came out with a big ol’ apple in his mouth and water splashing everywhere and running down his beautiful shirt. (“When I take my tie off for something,” he said, “I damn well go for it.”)

“That’s my boyfriend!” I shouted, proud as punch.

The next step — peeling and slicing apples — was really kind of unfair because it was Chef Akiko’s task and the lady has MAD knife skills. She peeled and chopped three apples so damn fast and perfect it was unreal. Skip to 4:00 to see the knife fly.

Then I added brown sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, AND lemon zest (‘cause we’re fancy like that), dumped the apples into a pie crust, and Lee ran with the pie to the oven while Team Squash was still chopping chunks of apple with a meat cleaver.

We finished in under 6 minutes. Seriously, have you ever made an apple pie in 6 minutes? PLUS did a wheelbarrow, potato sack race, and bobbed for apples? That’s right. Didn’t think so. And so you see: history was made.

GO TEAM KUMQUAT!

A few shots from the Loving Day Izahapa fundraiser dinner and party on Saturday (more here). It was held at one of those “Are you kidding me?!” loft apartments in the West Village owned by Jonathan, an artist/DJ/designer/mensch. Chef Akiko rocked it out from 7 am ‘til 3 am (and that’s not including days and days of planning, prep, and take-down work). ‘Course, she had lots of help from Tom and her many friends and fans.

The menu was a hapa interpretation of Japanese izakaya (gastropub) fare: Piman Poppers (deep-fried peppers stuffed with chicken), Chicken Fingers (grilled chicken on sticks flavored with yuku and shiso), pulled pork sliders, succulent spare ribs, duck pot pie, Mozzarella Sticks (mozzarella-stuffed tofu)…. Mmmm food coma.

The party was also a month-late birthday celebration for Ken, the totally awesome founder of Loving Day. (Turns out we share a birthday. Like I said, totally awesome.)

This Saturday, Hapa Kitchen is doing an “Iza-hapa” fundraiser dinner and party for Loving Day, an organization that fights racial prejudice and celebrates multiracial love (YAY MULTIRACIAL LOVE!).

Dinner is $75 and the party is $20. Dinner will feature Akiko’s fine culinary stylings and fine produce and meat from NY’s best farmers; there will be an Asahi open bar and tapas at the party.

I’m sure it’ll sell out, so get your tickets now (don’t say I didn’t warn you).

After 72 hours of drifting through a fog of packing, moving, organizing, compromising, and cat management — punctuated by bouts of insomnia, mild panic attacks, and full-on emotional breakdowns — I am finally ready to join the land of the living.

Akiko gave me this breathtakingly lovely bouquet on Sunday to welcome me to the apartment and it was all I could do not to cry with gratitude.

It’s good to be home.