Covered Dish: A Potluck of Ideas is this Wednesday, March 30
6:30PM @ 61 Local Public House in Brooklyn
Tickets have been reduced to $20.00 so get one and come on by!
BUY TICKETS HERE
Believe me, it's a terrific deal- the food will be great, you'll be in excellent company and the beer and wine is fab. 61 Local is really beautiful- if you haven't been there yet, it's worth checking out.
Come talk, listen and eat. Everyone has a potluck, church supper, school picnic, family reunion story..... what's yours?
3.16.2011
Pie²+∞♀(and 1 ♂)= ☺+many Kcal's
together. Welcome to What's Cooking? club. 3.02.2011
the What's Cooking column
Probably the coolest thing I made since the last "What's Cooking" post was apple fruit-leather: un-sweetened apricot applesauce spent 20+ hrs. atop microwave safe plastic-wrap (so it could be easily peeled-off) on a sheetpan, dehydrating in my oven. Turned out really delicious- a bright sweet concentrated flavor... toothsomely chewy- and it would've taken shorter if my oven had better controls... (it's supposed to take 8hrs. @ 140∘ but mine kept shutting off.) This would be a good thing to put in (a better oven than mine) before bed... and then viola! the perfect snack sometime mid-day or next day or whenever- as this is a preservation technique from days-of-yore and the stuff stores well w/o refrigeration.
I brought it to this month's PST (the salon I cook for where different people present a talk each month and the meal relates to the talk.) This month featured Lincoln Bickford, a PhD, MD whose talk (in part) was about his journey across the world seeking healing, and spiritual healing techniques that enhance Western medical practice. Lincoln suggested I look to Taoist or Ayerverdic recipes for inspiration- and I did make Kitchari, a spiced basmati and mung bean "pilaf" recommended for easy digestion, paired with organic chicken broth & matzoh balls (from my own ethnic healing traditions) with a scoop of alphabet noodles to represent the healing power of words. This was served with iron rich sauteed greens, high in antioxidant blueberries and dark chocolate (and the fruit leather.) It was an amusing contrast to last months meal that focused on the fortifying properties of "comfort" foods- that meal was a butter, egg and cheese feast while this months was lightness and simplicity, but both aimed to taste of nurture and well-being.
Another cool thing this week was to lend a hand to friend Mihir Desai, who was preparing a collaborative performance/meal with Natalie Jeremijenko at Postmaster Gallery, focusing on climate change and agriculture. The five course menu was laced with the tastes of smoke, ash and soil. I got to nibble as we sculpted, squirt and scattered ingredients into gorgeous array, but found a number of the tastes overly intense for my palate. Mihir's food is a festival of Modernist cuisine. An engagement with sensation that in ways places sense experience over deliciousness, but the attention to detail and aesthetics are phenomenal. One fantastic dish was a slice of ash coated goat cheese aside a button of pineapple, ginger and caper geleé, paired with a scallop that lay under a smoke filled glass, which when lifted allowed charred applewood and orange peel scent to waft to your nose. Mihir has this great smoke gun that looks like a hot-glue gun, and all sorts of foamers and dehydrators and digital water-bath thermometers.
I'm trying to explore the gap between Mihir's work and Communal Table's, not by way of judgement, but because I want to understand the vastness of food's possibility. Mihir's work, more than many of the chef's working with technologically based cuisine, is content driven, layered equally with theory and narrative- so I'm baffled by how strongly I feel it diverges with ours, though we too try our best to layer these things. There is something about the demand of focus on isolated sensation, something about the technological showmanship, something masculine vs. the feminine focus on commensality and nurturance Deena and I tend towards. Perhaps it's highbrow vs. low/pop, excitement vs. comfort, or perhaps this is hopelessly cliched and the binary hopelessly simplistic. While I was so happy to have been able to see, smell, touch and taste a bit, I admit I was pleased go home and eat a big bowl of pesto noodles and chicken parmesan with my son.
In contrast, this past week Communal Table cooked for the NES conference @CUNY which was also about climate change and agriculture. http://opencuny.org/nature/blog/ The food organizing committee was committed to "walking the walk;" offering a "sustainable" meal to conference participants. We sourced local (Bed Sty. chicken's egg salad sandwiches,) used organics (grain salad with watermelon radishes) and seasonal (homemade beet, carrot and onion pickles.) Offered vegetarian, with vegan and gluten free alternatives, and served everything on recycled or compostable "paper-goods" that were actually brought to a community garden in Queens for composting. There was soup too, and dessert and home steeped herbal iced tea-- The meal was colorful, healthful, tasty and full of love-- everyone was thrilled, yet it was far from sustainable! Why? Because there's no way to charge enough for Deena and I to earn anything even near minimum wage producing such a meal. Mihir's extravaganza served 20 in a fancy Chelsea gallery for a price I couldn't afford-- and his costs and equipment are underwritten by arts grants. Communal Table put out quality food for 125 guests@ under $10 a head, which stressed the Academic's coffer... it's hard making sense.
2.28.2011
Pie-a-palooza
Can't quite remember whether pi measures circumference or diameter or if it helps figure out relationships, but I am thinking about shepherd's pie, pizza pie, and my mom's instant graham cracker My-T-fine pudding pie, and oh yeah, Marcella Hazan's rice pudding pie glazed with apricot jam. Deena's talking about hot water crust meat pies a la the UK except in a vegetarian iteration, which may not sound sexy- but the savories and hand pies Deena's put out in the past, preceed her!
What pie's in your eye?
Never wrestled dough before? We'll teach ya!
Communal Table's What's Cooking club meets next Sunday afternoon 3/13 (as close to 3.14159265 as we could get.)
Remember- cooking club is conceived to be a real club- like: we're all equal participant members who want to cook things together we might not be so willing to attempt alone in our own kitchens! It's a chance to try an ambitious recipe, learn skills from each other, or taste something new. CTW'sC club has set the theme for the next two months- pie, and then 4/10: Bento Fun!, but after that it'll become a collective decision making process. We're thinking rather than Communal Table buying ingredients and charging you, dear reader/eater, we'll all contribute enough to share and nibble and take home a bit to share with family and friends, (ahh, so much for CT becoming a lucrative business-- why not at least create a fantastic community of cohorts!)
Though the theme for pie is set, the specifics of what we'll be cooking are not yet. Details'll come from back and forth emailing as we collectively set a menu and figure out ingredients, who buys what, etc. SOOOO, PLEASSSSE... email if you wanna come. Tell us your ideas, or come and contribute even if you haven't a clue... we'll put you to work!!!!!
hmmm... my techno-saviness is zilch... so email me directly rather than through any other obscure portal: amenyc@earthlink.net RSVP is required so we get enough ingredients, etc.
2.16.2011
Stone Soup
Story reading, crafts, and stirring the pot together....An event for adults and kids alike inspired by variations of the folktale -- Stone Soup. Participants encouraged to bring an ingredient, a favorite family recipe and a story to share. Design a personalized cover and sew the binding for your own 'cook book' of soup recipes. Folks will taste the veggie soup which they helped make as a group.
Sunday February 27 2011
4-6:30PM
61 Local
61 Bergen Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
25.00 Adult ticket
one child admitted with each adult ticket additional child tickets 5.00 each
Ticket price covers food, chef supervision, storyteller, artist-led craft workshop and supplies. Each adult ticket entitles you to one child's admission free. Additional children's tickets will be $5.00 each. Tell us your child's school and we will donate a $1.00 of the ticket price to their school's PTA.Communal Table: Stone Soup is part of "Chautauqua," a series of twenty plus unique food-themed Assemblies curated by Derek Denckla of FarmCity.US and hosted by 61 Local Public House in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, a new establishment dedicated to locally crafted food. Farm City Chautauqua aims to create community through food (and vice versa), assembling a series of innovative and diverse events and exhibitions harking back to historic cultural gatherings held in rural farming communities all over America. Launched in 2010, FarmCity.US is an action-research project exploring social, cultural and financial ways to invest in the growth of urban agriculture.
2.15.2011
the What's Cooking column
The salon suppers stick to their themes- What's Cooking club is about collective cooking projects- but there're all sorts of other food and art related tangents Deena and I engage and would like to share and so increased blog presence will lend Communal Table backstory. We're both constantly cooking- and use bits of this and that to create meals to feed family, frequent guests and catering clients... and then there're lectures, workshops, markets, books-- our food immersed lives. Please too, we're eager to engage you- our reader/eater. Become a voice at our Communal Table rather than chimera consuming unread words!
In my kitchen this week: defrosted Dufour puff pastry dough I'd had too long... was thinking of vol-au-vents because book club is coming for supper (8 - 10 members) and vol-au-vents are mentioned in the book... but it turns out I'll be running around the day of the meeting and have to prepare in advance, so I'll make cheese sticks the night before as they require no last minute futzing. I made bacalao fritters with salt cod that had been languishing in the back of the fridge... guess book club will be tapas-like and I'll get a clean icebox outta the deal. Got some amazing liverwurst from Flying Pig farm (Union Sq. Greenmkt.) to serve w. home pickled turmeric onions and hardy rye, and a jar of Divine Brine beet caviar from the Food Shed farmer's mkt. on Atlantic Ave (great w. goat cheese.) Oh yes- gorgeous red and yellow cippolini onions to baste w. Balsamic, and baby fingerlings to roast and toss w. herbs. Marcona almonds, dried pears and homemade preserved Clementines in cardamon clove simple syrup over ice cream for dessert (tore the recipe from an old Martha Stewart mag I rescued from a dumpster in New Orleans.) Tonight's supper: wiener schnitzel, pan fried zucchini with dill, and egg noodles. The cutlets are from Lancaster Farm Fresh- an organic co-op. The label says "cruelty-free/grass-fed," so once you get past the slaughter of a baby animal... My mom used to make cutlets but I stopped eating veal in the 80's when there were international cruelty protests... then last week at the Park Slope Food Co-op: pink, lean, and my purchase would support an organic farmer's collective...
Food events: The Experimental Cuisine Collective (ECC) meets Wed. 2/16 free and open to whomever's lucy enough to get to an afternoon lecture! http://experimentalcuisine.com
This group from NYU brings science, food and the humanities together in really interesting ways- this time welcoming 'Ideas in Food', collaborators working with 'molecular gastronomy' techniques- hot water baths, pressure cookers, foam... http://www.ideasinfood.com
On my computer: I'm excited to be working on writing a curriculum for art students that uses food as an expressive medium-- am hoping upon hope I'll get an opportunity to teach such a class in the near future!
15th C, illuminated manuscript: Diners in tubs- talk about food as performance!
Also working on the Umami Food and art festival www.umamifestival2010.com fundraiser that's coming up at the Astor Ctr. end of March. We'll be showing an incredible new video by Terri Hanlon about the father of French cuisine, Antonin Carȇme, called "Meringue Diplomacy." I'm looking for folks who might like to make and display fanciful edible architectural wonders à la Carême! Please spread the word. There must be someone who wants to bask in the glory of spending hours creating awesome edible edifices for art and food loving patrons. The gala'll be really fun. Incredible hors d'oeuvres, cocktails, gift bags and sweets.
Still from Terri Hanlon's "Meringue Diplomacy "flying pink meringue and all!
The ASFS listserv http://www.food-culture.org has had a fascinating dialogue analyzing "foodie-ism." Looking at an intersection where food, like fashion, becomes "high culture," Elitism, desire, and status conjoined with necessity and hunger. It's an age old story still relevant- how do we bring eco-consciousness, and connoisseurship into concert with food justice?
Enough all ready except to say-- all of this is totally within Communal Table's scope.
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