Midsummer East Coast Tour, The U.S.

File under "offer you can't refuse": my agent, David, asked me what I was doing around the beginning of August. His wife is from Hawaii, and every year they head down that way with their kid and visit the in-laws. Would I be interested in house-sitting for him in Jersey City? Oh: and cat-sitting a ten-year-old cat. How hard could that be? Jersey City is a couple of stops on the PATH rapid-transit system from Manhattan, and although it was August, there'd be stuff to do there. My publisher for The History of Rock & Roll, Vol. 1 was having a typical publishing August -- ie, not doing much -- and wanted to sit down and chat about the book. Playing around with Google Maps with a vague idea of renting a car and going somewhere for a day came up with all kinds of interesting suggestions. And best of all, it'd be free, at least up until the last day, when I'd hop on Amtrak and head to Montreal for a few days.

So I said yes.

David's house is about a mile from the PATH station, Little India, and many other attractions. I was determined not to over-plan anything, except to nail down a lunch with the publisher and explore JC. I'm still planning to leave Austin as soon as it makes sense -- ie, not for a while yet -- and wanted to see what the place was about.

After a conversation with last-minute details (which I should have taken notes on) I went back to the Ramada (the only hotel except for that weird Indian one I stayed in a couple of years ago in that part of town) and crashed. The next morning, I checked out, carefully picked my way down JFK Boulevard, and arrived at the place I'd be occupying for the next ten days. No sooner had I arrived than Maud, the cat who I'd been assured would mostly sleep while I was there, emerged and started yowling, hissing, and spitting at me. No matter that, over the rest of my stay, I would feed and water her and clean her litter box, she didn't ever warm to me. Far from it.

Maud, none too happy

I actually had no clear plan for touristing, except I did want to go to the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum's collage of medieval buildings in Ft. Tryon Park at Manhattan's northernmost point. I hadn't been there since I was a teenager, and by now I've seen lots of stuff of the sort it contains, as well as having visited the church in St. Guilhem le Désert where they got one of their cloisters. Plus, I heard they had a piece by the Master of Cabestany.

My first day, though, was spent finding a grocery store and familiarizing myself with the surrounding neighborhood. There would be a farmer's market the next day at the PATH terminal in Journal Square. Didn't expect much from that, but it'd be worth looking at. I took a quick look around Lincoln Park as the sun set and walked back to the house.

Monument to the early settlers of JC who fled the Irish potato famine, Lincoln Park

There was no doubt where I wanted to eat that night: Deccan Spice in Little India is one of the best Indian restaurants I've ever enjoyed. Thing is, I forgot something important about them: as you approach Newark Avenue from JFK, you see their sign, so naturally you suppose the restaurant on which it hangs is Deccan Spice. It's not. Deccan Spice is two doors down, and if you're walking up Newark Avenue, there's a sign facing your way on the right building. I chose the wrong restaurant, and paid for it: it's called Home Kitchen, although it also has another name, too. The menu is confusing, but not as confusing as something I thought I spotted on the way in: a Bible, a picture of Jesus, and a rosary with a crucifix on it. The chicken dish I had was very ordinary, except for the effect it had on my intestines an hour later. That was impressive.

That farmer's market was also a surprise the next day: only one farmer was represented, along with a Puerto Rican food truck and a bakery, but the vegetables looked top-notch. With the idea of making a salade niçoise, I bought lettuce, a red potato, some green beans, and some black cherry tomatoes. Now all I needed was some good tuna and I was ready to rock. And I knew where to get that: David's printed guide to JC mentioned Carmine's Italian Deli, where he said cops and firefighters went to get sandwiches. It wasn't far.

Not, that is, if you read the address right. Instead, my brain told me it was on a nearby street, albeit a fair walk down that street. So, after walking the mile back to the house and resting up a bit, I started walking down that street. And walking. And walking. Finally, a sign I was looking for came into view, but not Carmine's. Cool Vines was the wine shop David had mentioned, so I went in and looked around. They seem to import everything in the shop themselves, so there was nothing I recognized, which was good and bad. The proprietor was a bit sniffy, but I bought a couple of interesting-sounding bottles and walked all the way back to the house. I sat around until I got hungry and realized there was no vegetable steamer in the house with which to make the salad. I consulted the list again, and started walking down that same street to downtown JC in search of Razza, an upscale pizza joint. For some reason, pizza was just what I wanted, and there was apparently no old-school pizza joint in JC any more. Razza more than fulfilled my expectations. Let's just say that I rarely eat all of the crust. I ate all of the crust. The heirloom tomatoes with a chive vinaitrette was also a perfect opener. And let's face it: after all that walking, I was ravenous. I took a cab back and collapsed into sleep.

JC Astrology #1

I was annoyed enough the next morning that I'd made so many mistakes that I decided to do something I knew how to do: go to the Cloisters. And I did. It was a beautiful day for it, too: the Hudson's palisades were as lovely as I remembered them, and Ft. Tryon, or at least its site (Washington thought he could invade New York City from there and boy was he wrong), a cool and quiet place to spend time.

Note to Founding Father: you can get there from here, but it's not a good idea.

The Cloisters' collection had been added to considerably since I was there last, and I was gratified to see that I could pick out pieces from places I'd spent time, most notably Catalonia, Germany (a bunch of Tilman Riemenschneider wood carvings) and of course the Eastern Languedoc.

And there it is: the cloister from St. Guilhem le Désert!

There was a lot of stuff to see, and yet the place was small enough that I believe I saw it all. One note I made was that the familiar yellow Valencian pottery that had unexpectedly entranced me all those years ago in Castellón was using identical colors to Moorish pottery made in the same vicinity. I found this exciting because I will be in Valencia in a little over a month and am hoping fate steers me into more information about this. I realized after visiting the Cloisters that I seem to have picked up a hobby after all these years: figuring out the three-part society of pre-expulsion Spain, as the Moors, their fellow North Africans the Jews, and the Spanish worked out a way to live together, albeit with some tension. I attribute this to the pieces that clicked into place this spring in Girona.

And here's the Master of Cabestany's piece, considerably larger than I thought.  If he existed, this is by him. 

I left the Cloisters feeling great: between the weather, the views, and all the stuff I'd just seen, I was in a good mood. I pulled out my phone to send the Cabestany picture to a friend in Austin and a grandmotherly black woman with a teen in tow asked me if I were playing Pokémon Go. I told her no, I was trying to send a photo, but had just discovered I couldn't, and also told her that seeing me with my phone was a rare sighting indeed. She clearly approved. I walked a bit further and came upon a setup where a photographer was erecting lighting and tripods and such and a tall, thin black man had a drone in his hand. A couple in full wedding gear were sitting waiting and suddenly I put the pieces together. "If you don't mind," I told the drone pilot, "I'm enough of a geek that I'd like to watch this." "Sure, just stay out of the shot." Easily done from the bench once the couple stood up and too their places. The drone hovered in front of them and then shot out over the Hudson River. Then it hovered a bit and he brought it in, more slowly, as they waved. Man, they don't do wedding videos like they used to.

Bride, groom, drone

Backyard Report

Okay, now I've done it. I've taken another step towards, um, suburbanity. A guy named Joe just deposited this on a concrete slab obviously designed to hold such a thing, just off of my deck in the back yard.

I know it's a good one, because I spent hours researching them on the Internet, particularly at an annoying site called Amazing Ribs.com. Everyone I trust in the world of grilling (as opposed to barbequing, a science I leave to ascended masters) says it's a great site. I say it's annoying because it takes a long time to navigate and after a couple of pages it starts hatching popups urging you to join their Pitmasters' Club, and they follow you around the site: "You've viewed 14 pages. Join the Pitmasters' Club!" Hey, buddy, I haven't even bought a grill yet. They're also annoying because their reviews sound positive even when they're not, a critical disease other sites (like the one I went to before buying the digital camera that just snapped these photos) seem to have. I read through the latest list of best grills and was all set to buy a specific one, but the Lowe's near my house didn't have one in stock, so they told me to go to one of their stores that did have one. It was late enough in the afternoon that I knew I'd be stuck in traffic forever if I went so I put it off for the next day, then went back and read the review again and realized that they may have given it an award, but between the lines were saying it was a cheap piece of shit that would have to have parts replaced in a year or so. So I got an entry-level Weber.

And yes, we'll have no theological debate about gas vs. charcoal here. I know charcoal can (key word) make the food taste better. I also know about fire dangers and disposing of ash, particularly the latter, after living in a coal-oven-heated apartment in Berlin. So gas it was.

Feeeed Meeee!

This grill has a feature I'm not sure I need: there's a round bit of the grate that comes out and can be filled with any number of goodies, including this griddle, which comes with it (and undoubtedly needs seasoning before use, although Weber claims not), and optional things like a wok (mmmm, wok hai!), a pizza stone (but it's kind of small and I could probably just lay a pizza stone on there and get it hotter than my oven gets, meaning excellent pizza), a Korean barbeque (no idea how this works), a poultry roaster (ditto), and of course an ebelskyver (ditto twice, although I think it's some kind of Swedish pancakes).

As the Germans would say, "Mit System!"

I haven't so much as turned it on yet, but I think I know what I'm going to cook first, and that needs an accessory Weber doesn't sell.

"The Secret Is..."

Some years ago, I was in Hawaii doing a story on Hawaiian music for a travel magazine and had to go out to a rather remote part of Oahu to interview the amazing Tau Moe, a steel guitarist who, with his wife Rose (one of the greatest Hawaiian singers ever), and, eventually, their family, was on tour for decades, all over the world. (He once performed for Hitler -- well, he could hardly say no -- and I asked him what that was like. "I was scared," he said with typical economy.) My friend Margaret, who was living in Honolulu with her tattoo artist husband and editing a million of those throwaway tourist magazines that litter hotel lobbies there, told me that if I went out that way I should stop for lunch at this burger joint. "It's the best hamburger you ever had," she said. I personally felt that I hadn't come to Hawaii to eat hamburgers, but once I got out there there wasn't much choice, so I did. And above the counter where you placed your order was a sign that said "The Secret is Vermouth." And, after tasting the burger, I knew I had to learn the application of that secret.

All was made clear, coincidentally enough, when I got back to Texas, and the food section of the daily paper had an interview with Mr. Weber, of Weber Grills, where they said they'd heard he was famous for his hamburgers and he gave the recipe which included...vermouth! Oh, and a couple of other things. But I've experimented with it enough that I think I've got it down as well as the place in Hawaii and tonight, perhaps, we'll find out if I have. I'll still have to buy some more stuff at the supermarket, but we'll see. And such a first meal is, when you consider the source, very appropriate.

Wish me luck.

* * *

Last year, a friend in New Mexico sent me a bunch of seeds. Some were for Sandia chiles, big, green, hot-but-not-insane chiles that can be used for rellenos, enchilada sauce, or salsas that I just love, and some were for their local jalapenos, which she claims aren't nearly as wimpy as the ones here in Texas (although a tip to buy at Mexican markets resulted in some with a bit more firepower). Anyway, I planted them and...nothing. Then someone sent me a webpage that said under no circumstances to plant them in peat pots, which is what I'd done, so I just gave up. 

This year, I had an inspiration, a voice within telling me to get off to a gardening store and score some MiracleGro Organic potting soil, which is what the anti-peat-pot site recommended, so I did, and threw some of my dwindling supply of Sandia seeds into two of them, using the other two to transplant some basil I picked up at the store. Well, as you can see, there are results. 

Modern agriculture: the triumph!

Those two pots on the left are just bursting with Sandia sprouts, and although the rains we've had have left the basil plants next to them a little ratty, I think they'll gain height and more foliage in the weeks to come and turn out all right. The other two plants are more basil plants, which I got for my birthday in November and seem only interested in having sex at this point (well, it's understandable: they were indoors all winter) and a bunch of oregano, which is just going nuts, and which I had a bit of in a spaghetti sauce of roasted cherry tomatoes, garlic, capers, pine nuts and black olives last night, which made me realize that it does, indeed, have its uses. I believe I have a chimichurri sauce recipe which uses it, too. 

Let's look at those Sandias again! The small pots are the future homes of the jalapenos, I hope.

Which is good, because this new machine opens a whole world I've been absent from for the past 20 years. There are some good reasons why grilling is illegal in Europe (can't do it on your balcony because of the neighbors and because of fire danger), and some bad ones (oppressive food-odor laws, which only get enforced on foreigners, and grilling illegal in parks despite low or no fire risk, but, rather, because in Germany it's a way of making Turks feel unwelcome), but the fact is, you can't do it and I didn't. Now I have to learn all over again, but with a much finer instrument than the funky little bullet-shaped smoker I could never get to work right or (even worse) the occasional hibachi. 

Now I have lots of stuff to learn: I have some remarkable Vietnamese, Middle Eastern, and, of course, American recipes to try out, and I'll be learning about marinades and sauces and salsas. Not, I emphasize, barbeque. There are too many places around here where I can just roll up and pay for that, and I will. But first, Mr. Weber's burgers. Tomorrow, the world!

Pizza, The Broke-Not-Poor Staple

It's inevitable: if you're raised within a certain radius of Manhattan, you're going to eat great pizza at a very young age. And if you're someone who likes to cook, you're going to spend countless hours trying to recreate that experience at home.

And you'll fail. You'll fail for a bunch of different reasons: unless you're Francis Ford Coppola, you're not going to have a professional pizza oven in your home kitchen, and temperatures upwards of 700º F, which are necessary to get the dough to rise and the toppings to cook in the amount of time that locks in that flavor, are not going to be possible. You'll fail because you won't be able to get the right kind of char on your crust. You'll fail because some ingredients only come in huge cans available to pizza-shop operators.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Because you can come close, and you can make a very satisfying simulacrum. And the more you do it, the closer you'll get. And yes, you'll get back to New York and have some pizza and get little insights that will improve your next pizza. And yes, I'm going to tell you how I do it.

I didn't get enough pizza when I was in New York in March, mostly, I suspect, because the really good pizza places, like all the other really good ethnic restaurants, have fled Manhattan and gone to places where the rents are kinder to the bottom line. There's a reason that the only good bagels I found were in Brooklyn, after all. But I picked up a good insight one cold, rainy night on 9th Avenue in the 30s somewhere. The pizza itself wasn't very good (note: this isn't the place behind Port Authority Bus Terminal, which was the only other pizza I had in New York, and which was considerably better), but the guy there was kneading the dough in a metal bowl. I tried that last night, and it worked amazingly. Another little trick in the repertoire!

There are also a couple of specialized pieces of equipment you'll need here, but nothing that'll break the bank. First, you need a pizza stone. These are easily found in the U.S. and cheap, but really all you need is unglazed terra-cotta tiles, which are available everywhere. Some "gourmet" company was selling a glazed pizza stone for something like €30 around here last year, which amazed me. I can't imagine it worked. The other thing you need is a peel. This is a device on which you build and top the pizza, then use it to shove it into the oven. Restaurant-supply stores have them, they're not expensive, and they last forever.

Okay, on to the recipe. I apologize in advance for the photos. Not that they're so awful, but because there are some crucial steps here which take both hands, and which I couldn't photograph.

My dough recipe is based on one from the woman who literally wrote the book on pizza, Evelyne Sloman, who also operates a restaurant in Albany, California, called Nizza la Bella, where I've never eaten, but which features her pizzas and an 800-degree oven. You take three cups of flour and a teaspoon of salt and mix them together in a metal bowl. All-purpose flour works, but if you can get what's known as 00 flour, which some Italian groceries have, you'll get a much better crust. You also take a teaspoon of granulated yeast and put it in one cup of hot (but not too hot) water, and wait for it to fizz. Then you mix them together. Start mixing with a wooden spoon, and keep some extra flour and water handy. Depending on the weather, you may find that you need to add more water before all the flour is scooped up. Then, you start with your hands, accumulating it into a single mass. Then you knead, pushing the dough into the bottom of the bowl. You can also, of course, knead on a countertop, or, if you have such a thing, in a food processor with a dough hook. Eventually, the dough will smooth out. It may stick, in which case add some flour. It definitely shouldn't feel dry, and you can wet your hands to add just a touch of water while you're kneading. But eventually, you'll get this:

This isn't quite there yet. When it is, it'll be a bit smoother on the surface, and when you hit it with your open hand, as Evelyne says, "it'll be like smacking a baby's bottom."

And when you've got it right, put it on the counter, wash out the bowl and dry it well, and put some vegetable oil in there, then return the dough and roll it around to cover it in oil thoroughly, cover it with a plastic bag (or plastic wrap, I guess) and let it sit for an hour in a warm place.

Meanwhile, put your stone in the oven and heat it at maximum heat, which for me is around 500º.

(If you look closely, you'll see that my stone broke some time ago and is now in three pieces. Fortunately, they fit together perfectly).

Now it's time to get your sauce going. Last night, I had some leftover pizzaiola sauce, my basic red sauce I've made for 40 years, which I'll demonstrate here some day. It's not as liquid as an ideal pizza sauce would be, so what I usually do is sautee some garlic in olive oil, then add a cup of tomato puree out of a box, some salt, and generous amounts of dried basil and dried oregano, in about a 1-to-2 ratio, more oregano than basil. Cook this carefully over low heat for around 45 minutes, stirring it frequently and making sure it doesn't scorch. It should be about the same consistency as ketchup. If you can do this earlier and let it sit some, it just gets better. Just make sure it's ready by the time you have to assemble the pizza.

And, while I was waiting, I prepared my other topping, slicing some mushrooms

and then sauteeing them in some olive oil, and a little salt to make the juices come out. Nice and brown!

Set these aside. After an hour, check your dough. It's risen. Probably not a great deal, but there's more there than there was. Okay, now, as gently as you can, make two balls out of it, pat one into a disc, and put it in a zip-loc bag and into the freezer: this recipe makes two pizzas, but since each one takes 20 minutes to cook, it doesn't exactly make dinner for two unless you can make the logistics work, which I can't. Anyway, the next step is to take the dough you will be using and cover it with the plastic and put it into the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes. Get out your peel

and sprinkle it with cornmeal. If you live somewhere where good old American cornmeal is like gold, you can, as I do, use semolina, which is cheap and used in Arab recipes.

Now the part I wish I could have photographed. After the dough is cold, take it from the fridge, flatten it into a disc, and shape your pizza shell. There are a bunch of different ways to do this, but this is a little 12" (approximately) shell, so I've found this to be the easiest way:

Grab the disc by the edge and turn it quickly with your hands. Gravity will start stretching it, and you want to keep the center from breaking, but you'll notice that you're getting a ridge around the outside of your disc, which you should squeeze to send more dough into the center. It's probably still pretty small, so at this point, drape it over your two hands and open them slowly, or push them apart. This will stretch the dough, but maintain the ridge. Try like hell not to tear the inside bit: keep it just thick enough that this doesn't happen. Yeah, it takes practice. Yeah, you can repair holes, but they usually leak. With luck, you'll lay down, precisely over the area with the cornmeal or polenta on it, your shell:

Pretty good! Now, lay anything that could burn (in this case, the mushrooms, but also anchovies -- which I meant to add here, but forgot -- or thin slices of salame or cooked Italian sausage) as your first layer.

Next add your sauce, spooning it into the center and spreading it with the bottom of your spoon (you've seen guys in pizza joints do this hundreds of times, it should be easy).

And finally, your cheese (Italian mozzarella here, of course)

and then, open the oven, slide the peel on top of the stone, and with a quick jerk, snap the pizza off of the peel and onto the stone. Not overloading the pizza is a real skill, and it's important to learn it: too much stuff and it can make the bottom soggy, or at least make the stuff fall in your lap as you're trying to eat it!

Much depends on your oven, but please, don't take this out too soon. Uncooked pizza dough can cause nasty reactions a couple of hours after you eat it as the still-living yeast hit your digestive juices. This one maybe got just a tad too brown

but not too badly. It maybe was in there two minutes too long.

You're not through yet. There are two more steps. First, I always put the pizza on the plate, then transfer it to a wooden board, and sweep the cornmeal/semolina off the plate. It's like sand, and you want to get rid of it. Then there's the post-oven dressing. At this point, you'd add fresh basil leaves if you had them (too early here), parmesan cheese (don't cook with parmesan: it'll burn), and a drizzle of fruity olive oil (a must).

And that's it.

One more specialized piece of equipment you'll need at this point: a pizza wheel to cut it into wedges. It's worth investing in a good one: I've had them come off their axles and fly across the room when confronted with a hard crust, and the crust you get with this recipe is usually too hard to cut with a steak knife.

There are a lot of variations you can ring on this, especially when fresh tomato season comes in, which it will in a couple of months, bringing with it eggplants, which also work well on a pizza. But the surprise comes when you figure out how much this costs you. A basic pizza like this costs under €2, and all it takes to make it is time: it's about 2 1/2 hours end to end. And that's €2 in retail cost of the ingredients. Now do you see why there are so many pizza places? At a decent local pizzeria, this'd cost me over ten euros, at least. It's true, it takes a while to learn how to make something as well as I made this (and don't let its ugliness put you off: it tasted just great), but when you can feed yourself a satisfying meal like this for so little (there was also a salad), it makes being broke just a bit easier.