pig roast fest: truss and verify

Ever since we acquired a place in the Adirondacks, we have dreamed of hosting festive parties under the trees with family, neighbors and friends enjoying the cool breeze from the lake with food and conversation. The centerpiece of such a bucolic scene would always be an old fashioned in-ground roasting pit with a whole lamb or pig slowly turning on the spit and wafting delicious smells as the skin turned golden crisp and the meat cooked over hours, to be sliced and consumed on the spot when the sun started its path toward sunset. Of course, there is enormous distance between fantasy and realization. We enjoyed the idea of a spit roast for several years and kept putting the making of one off every time we were at the lake for way too short a time to get our act together. We kept talking about it though and, at some point, our neighbor Sherm heard our musings and decided to beat us to it. During one visit, he proudly showed us the roasting pit he had installed in his own place with a thick layer of insulating dirt and with large tree trunks sawed in half and made into sturdy benches on which to sit and monitor the roasting. Having accomplished the process for himself, he vowed to help us build our own roasting pit any time we were ready. Sherm does not give up even when his grateful beneficiaries are wallowing in inertia and indecision. Last summer then, he announced that he had enough dirt to start creating our pit and the adventure was set in motion.

We identified a reasonably open and flat area between the house and the lake and Sherm started to offload masses of sandy dirt from his Kubota tractor until we had a pile big enough to spread a ten foot square shield between the ashes and the ground soil; this precaution is, we were informed, critical to prevent the intense heat from seeping into the small tree roots underneath and starting a ground fire. The “look” of the roasting area had already become a topic of significant discussion and contention. I was imagining a relatively structured, tame appearance with something of a wind-shielding wall made of small stones that we could pick from the lake and put up by our own hands much like Peter Mayle’s wall. Joe had a manlier view of the thing, more like a small scale Stonehenge with boulders surrounding the pit such that one could sit on and mind the roast; he had his way and started selecting massive rocks from the back of the driveway. He and Sherm undertook to maneuver the Kubota and slowly transported enough boulders to form an oval around the pit making sure that several were flat enough to sit on. Sherm also had the idea to make for us large benches from tree trunks much like he had around his pit. I was not at all sure about that style and we were able to put it off for awhile. The winter and the long snow cover served to season the pit base and make it flat and dense enough to protect the ground.

Meanwhile, we had begun to search for a suitable spit apparatus by visiting BBQ places and by searching the Internet. For almost a year we tried to figure out how to put together a motorized spit on that location without spending a fortune for an adventure that remained elusive at best. At some point we found a site that offered a long and sturdy steel spit with a motor capable of handling 50 pounds of meat and we ordered it on line and had it shipped to the lake. As we were imagining the process we thought it would be fitting to have a rustic and rugged looking frame and asked Dan the blacksmith to make one for us. He worked on it during the winter and installed it on the pit the following summer during one of my short visits. A month later, we both went up for two weeks with grand plans for an inaugural pig roast. We created a cute invitation and sent it to the people we knew on and off the lake. We had more regrets than acceptances but we were determined to try out the contraption and were undeterred. No sooner had we arrived and contacted Sherm than there he was with our other neighbor Chuck, also invited and planning to attend, and the Kubota in addition to a great big chain saw. We were reminded of the offer to make benches as soon as we reached the house because two large tree trunks had been saved from the tree-felling of the previous summer and were sitting by the side of the driveway. During one of the first days we were there, we returned home after town errands to find the trees split into huge pieces, the guys waiting for the lady of the house to instruct them where exactly to place the two benches and the massive six foot long table made out of the center section of one trunk. I really was not at all sure I liked the plan but had no tactful way to avert it. Ultimately, the furniture proved quite a-propos the rural setting and the location, naturally natural and immortally solid. The table actually quickly proved an excellent and perhaps necessary piece for handling a big, hot and slippery roasted pig.

Procuring the animal proved exceptionally difficult out in the country despite the heartwarming accounts of local farming and the inroads of the locovore movement. Already a couple of years earlier we had begun to frequent the local farmers’ market and to search the local papers and the Internet for accessible sources of local, organically grown meat. On a rare occasion we ha been able to find some piece of meat but it certainly was a great deal more elusive than what we could get our hands on in Houston. One meat guy had already told us that raising pigs was much too expensive; they ate too much and fetched too little money to make the effort worthwhile. As for lambs, they were too expensive and usually went to higher-end venues or to the members of the co-operatives. The one place that was organized enough to get foodstuffs not locally available on special order was Shaheen’s grocery store. That is, for example, where Sherm got his 50 pound bags of clams for his annual clamfests every summer. I approached the butcher, therefore, a month earlier and asked if he could get a lamb or a pig for us. No luck on the lamb; he could not think of any available source. As for the pig, there was one possibility: order it frozen from North Carolina and thaw it for us in his cold room. The animals were as a rule closer to 100 pounds than fifty but he could promise something under 50 pounds; we had bought a spit fit to handle that weight and no other choice so I told him to go ahead and order us a frozen pig under 50 pounds. True to his reputation, and without accepting a down payment, he ordered the beast. Our first stop in Tupper Lake was to the grocery store to purchase eating supplies and to inspect the pig. With a measuring tape we ascertained that this 49 pound carcass would fit the length of our spit and went back on line to refresh ourselves with the technologies of mounting a pig on a spit, trussing, basting, determining cooking time, needed inner temperature etc.

On the party weekend, we welcomed Marj and Isaac who drove up from New York late Friday night and went to collect the pig from the grocery store. We reviewed the mounting and trussing instructions and purchased metal string since we did not have and had not been able to find a trussing needle in the local stores. We calculated the cooking time and added an hour to be safe and started the process after the morning coffee. We pulled the pig out of its box and installed it on the solid table that Sherm had made for us. Then we started the arduous process of fitting in on the spit and trussing it with the metal string. It is critical, apparently, to approximate the spine as closely as ossible with spit and to bind the legs tightly in order to create a cylindrical mass to facilitate the torque on the motor. A few prior successful roasts in Houston had given us unearned confidence that quickly gave way to frustration. Piercing the skin was extremelydifficult. Once we had a sharp knife slit on it, the slender metal wire was unwilling to go through. We spent an hour approximating the spine to the spit and semi-securing the ends with the metal prongs. Once we had it, we discovered that the motor side of the spit was too far out to fit the motor. There then ensued a ridiculous battle to slide the pig to the correct position on the spit, by the end of which the metal wire had broken and the spit was hanging at the bottom of the abdominal cavity, the spine too many inches away from it, and Shem had arrived unable to stay away from what he correctly assumed would be our fruitless efforts. He left for his home and returned with thick wire and pliers and strong metal needles and we re-trussed for another hour. He also re-fashioned the motor bracket and the motor finally fit onto the spit. The next disappointment was that the motor was not strong enough to turn the pig and a potentially moving piece of the spit apparatus began to uncoil as the motor tried to turn. Rather than risk having the pig fall off onto the fire, we decided that pigs had been successfully roasted with manual turning and got a thick pair of garden gloves and proceeded to quarter-turn the pig by hand every 15-20 minutes.

The next fiasco was the fire itself. We have successfully cooked all manners of food in all kinds of settings for decades and have a healthy confidence about charcoal. Chuck our neighbor insisted that we needed to roast the pig with firewood so vehemently that it became almost a dare to succeed with charcoal. In addition to being unfamiliar with the heat and speed of a wood fire we were also concerned that it raises more flame than charcoal and were afraid of loose sparks onto the grass especially during a day when the oppressive heat was increasingly being eased by a gusty breeze from the lake. And that turned out to be the real problem. No sooner the heat rose from the blistering hot charcoal bed above the metal frame of the roaster, it was deflected away from the meat above it by the constant gusty wind which created a cool insulating sheet of air between the fire and the meat. We probably used twice the prescribed amount of charcoal and the bottom of the roasting platform was as hot as any we have created in prior endeavors. Yet, hour after hour we stuck the thermometer into different parts of the pig and the temperature refused to budge above one hundred degrees, one hundred and fifteen at the most. Enter Chuck, vindicated and ever helpful: all we had to do was ask for his help, he said and went to work amassing piles of fire wood and stacking it over the coals. Soon we had a blazing fire such that would warm anyone’s heart and feet on a freezing winter night. I was again afraid of loose sparks and had the hose on standby; the flames lapped and roared inside the metal pan but the wind kept them from making contact with the meat just the same. The guests arrived, they gathered around the fire and admired our fortitude and spirit of adventure and eventually lost interest and gathered on the porch near the beer and the snacks and started munching as we turned the pig and checked the temperature and watched the clock advance and the sun lower itself in the west. At eight o’clock we declared the war over and took the pig off the fire.

Here is where Sherm’s table proved its mettle and made a believer of me. The tabletop was as solid as the hemlock it came from and held the pig steady for the removal of the wires and the prongs. It held the pig steady for the hammering that was required to start separating the joints and the head. I sliced it superficially like a loaf of gyro and took off peels of crackling skin and warm, properly cooked slivers of meat and plated enough for the guests to finally experience the luscious food we had promised. When I reached pink flesh I stopped. Before the evening was over, we hacked the pig in a few manageable pieces and transferred it inside wrapped in large plastic garbage bags which we stuffed in the refrigerator. The bulk was made lighter because Aidan, the Sayles’ grandson had expressed the wish to take the eyes to his home for dissection and seeing the amount of stuff on the table and the degree of rawness of the head, I offered that he could take the whole head and his eyes sparkled and he said that would be great! So before the party was over, Joe took cleaver and hammer, he cut the head off and stuffed it in another plastic garbage bag which Aidan proudly slung over his shoulder before leaving for his home. After the guests left, we started collecting all residuals that could be of interest to a bear as a black sheet spread over the sky and thunder rumblings competed with the loons. We made a mad dash to the dock and brought the John boat out of the water in the lick of time before a torrential rain came along and took care of the smoldering embers.

The next day, after Marj and Isaac left we put the pig in the oven in two batches and cooked if for several more hours before it reached an FDA acceptable temperature. We had delicious bits and pieces for breakfast and lunch and snacks and allotted portions to take to Houston and to leave behind for our next visit. Luck eluded us again, however, and on Saturday morning, the day before our departure the freezer melted and we had to hurry the still frozen containers to safety in Sherm’s freezer. The problem corrected itself for some unexplained reason but it was too late to retrieve the leftovers; maybe there will be something for us in October, maybe Sherm and his family will have enjoyed every last bite. This undertaking proved a real battle and / but taught us quite a lot about our set-up. For the next trip, this fall we will purchase and whip ahead good trussing needles, trussing twine and sturdy kebab skewers. We also plan to carry frozen lamb or goat from Houston and have another practice run of the bucolic in-the-ground-spit roasting so we can refine both technique and equipment for future celebrations.

Enjoying a roast has proved much harder in the country than in our Houston backyard contrary to our expectation. When we first started putting together the makings of the lake pit, we mentioned our exploits to Marcelo and Staci Vela who brought to our attention the technology of the Caja China. After reviewing the on-line information we purchased it, assembled it and have used it on two delightful occasions. It is a very backyard-friendly process with reliable cooking times and outcomes and it will be the subject of a separate account. Of course, it lacks the visual drama of the open air in-the ground roasting, the smells, the sizzle and the opportunity to sit around the fire watching the meat slowly turn to ambrosia.

Girona Dining: El Celler de Can Roca

The one hour train ride took us out of bustling Barcelona, across small town countryside to Girona, an attractive provincial town of 90,000 with mature neighborhoods and ample squares surrounded by cafes and restaurants. After walking through the streets for an hour or so, we found a taxi and drove across town to the restaurant. The Rocca brothers own several very successful restaurants in Barcelona proper. El Celler is their 3 Michelin star country kitchen, in the European tradition of travelling far for the perfect meal. There was nothing “country” about the setting of El Celler. Behind a wooden fence and door we walked into a sleek lobby with granite, marble, steel and glass. More like a high end health spa than a country inn.

The dining room was flush with natural light streaming in from the large floor to ceiling windows and the skylights. A central courtyard defined the center of the room, a triangular glass enclosure with three white-barked tree trunks rising to the sky. All the lines were clean and symmetrical; a serving station stood next to each table and a dedicated waiter ministered to our needs during the meal. As we sat, the waiter appeared with an unopened bottle of El Celler Cava for our consideration. It seemed too hot and too early for alcohol on an empty stomach; also I have grown weary of restaurant offerings that come without a price and a menu and I declined in favor of cold bubbly water which was arrived promptly and kept coming throughout the meal. The other two diners also did not go for the Cava. In retrospect, this was part of the amuse-bouche and was gratis for the table.

Joe asked for the wine list and in rolled a large book stand with two oversized tomes one for white and one for red wines. We have never seen the likes of this wine list in all our prior adventures in good dining. Even more unexpected was the large variety of wines offered at incredibly modest prices. We ended up tasting a bottle of Zarate El Palomar 2006 and a bottle of Baron de Lay 2007 F. Monasterio both delightful. I don’t recall if the pre-lunch freebies started coming before or after we selected the first wine; the parade was as delicious as it was spectacular. The waiter brought to the table a small bonsai tree; hanging from its branches were caramelized green olives stuffed with white anchovies “take it with your hand” he said, how clever! This was followed by a “bellini bombon” with a cocoa butter shell filled with Campari and grapefruit. A white porcelain platter adorned with seaweed sprigs was topped with skinned, filleted and grilled anchovies, lightly crispy and salty and playfully delicious the “anchovy bones”. The next sampling was labeled a chicken cracker, the least interesting of the procession. An “essence” of Russian salad was perhaps the most molecular taste the ingredients reduced to their gustatory essence (this potato salad appears to be a regional preference because we ran into it at the first luncheonette we lunched the very first day desperate for calories and a place to sit out of the sun). The “calamar adaptation” was a thimbleful of calamari carpachio and micro corn also sitting pretty on a clean porcelain platter; one mouthful of light pleasure.

Already this was more than a normal lunch in calories and taste if not in volume and we had not yet tackled the menu. As the appetizers ended, so did our white wine; transitioning to the main courses also meant moving to more classic flavors and ingredients. The bottle of red that followed proved immensely satisfying with a deep, rich personality so much better suited to the line-up of the meats that came to the table. As is our tradition, we order different things and rotate the plates around so everyone can have a taste of all the dishes.

So, here is the meal:

Truffled brioche and pot-au-feu broth
Timbale of apple and duck liver with vanilla oil
European lobster parmentier with black truffle mushrooms
Sierra Mayor suckling pig, grilled baby onions, melon and beet root
Steak Tartare with mustard ice cream consisting of spiced tomato, caper compote, pickles and lemon, hazelnut praline, meat béarnaise sauce, Oloroso-sherry raisin, chives, Sichuan pepper, Pimenton de La Vera, smoked paprika and curry all minced together and served as a log topped with mustard ice cream and mustard leaves; what a hamburger!!
Warm duck liver with roses, lychees and Gewurztraminer sorbet; a sensational composite
Oysters with Cava, ginger, pineapple, lemon confit and spices
And the grand prize of the meal: lightly smoked pigeon with anchovies, truffle and blackberries
Each dish was balanced, surprising and harmonious despite the often disparate contents
The milk desert was a diaphanous symphony in white: ice-cream, foam and flan. Following desert, came the après-bouche tray of sweets with three each little chocolate bombons of praline, palet d’or, Yuzu, Mont-Blanc and raspberry drops of chocolate goodness.

We lingered a bit longer with coffee and the remainder of our wine and rolled out into the humid afternoon sun blissfully full and in no condition to handle anything beyond a taxi ride to the station and the digestive one return train trip back to Barcelona. It was a long satisfying day, our last in Spain. We walked off the lunch slowly strolling down the Rambla, looking and taking a last set of pictures in the street market and selecting for dinner a prosciutto baguette from Mark Bittman’s “best sandwich in the world” eatery.

There are memorable dining experiences that linger and perhaps expand in significance over the years.
Sometimes it is the element of the “first”: for us, Le Negre with the theatricality of the room, the Versaillean lard sculptures in the shape of each course; for Jonathan, L’Arpege with the maple syrup in the eggshell and the ethereal asparagus soup. Sometimes it is the magic of the setting and the moment: “L’Hostelerie de Beaumaniere” with the Provencal room with Jean Cocteau menu cover and the perfect moonlight under the giant bauxite rocks of Les Beaux, or the rooftop terrace of the medieval castle in San Gimigniano with the succulent suckling pig. Other times it is the absolutely unexpected circumstance like picking mussels off the rock and making an omelet on the roadside in the north of Italy.

And, invariably, some memories come together around one food. For us it has been pigeon: first on a dusty, sun-baked rooftop in Luxor, then in a cavernous old cathedral-turned-restaurant in Assissi, years later in small Italian towns or Saint-Emilion and most recently in Brussels at Come-chez-Soi. The pigeon we had in Girona stood exceedingly well to the memories of meals past and was the best, if not the most molecular or creative of the dishes we had that day. Then, there are the ratings of restaurants: who has how many stars and how well do they deserve the accolade. To what extent is the honor related to an ethnocentric predilection or a temporal food-faddism. We have our list of starred meals over the years. El Celler de Can Rocca clearly well deserves their stars and stripes.

Smoking Wood Chips

Precious little smells or tastes as luscious as grilled meat. Health gurus’ and cardiologists’ admonitions notwithstanding, we have sizzled beef, poultry, pork and lamb for 40 years.
First we charcoaled broiled chuck steaks squatting over this little Hibachi grill no more than a few inches tall in the driveway of our Bronx apartment downstairs from the Golds. Moving on to Chicago, we installed a taller and somewhat bigger grill on the cement-covered back yard of our brownstone and challenged our guests (and some of us) on the rawest, thickest sirloin steaks we could prepare. Through the 1970s it was always charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid, careful to store it away from flammable harm and to limit the smell of gasoline on the food. Our home in Houston came with an installed gas grill in the gangway between the house and the garage and we became “liberated” from the restrictions of weather on our menu planning. We grilled everything outside rain or shine; in fact, for a number of years the kitchen oven did not work but we did not miss it and did not bother to repair it until the kitchen remodeling in the late 1980s. At first the gas grill produced a hot and steady fire but over the years, and despite buying a new grill, we started to feel that the flame was not hot enough for the lean, fast cooking cuts and that the taste was tamer than what one could get in a real steakhouse. Truth is, we gradually forgot what a strip steak should taste like and got used to the acceptable gas version so handy and convenient just outside the door.
Then we ventured to our second home in the Adirondacks. The cabin came with a Weber grill left in the garage by the Scotts, with a wide open outdoors so inviting for early evening preparations and with plenty of time to sit around, ventilate the lighter fluid and watch over the fire as it got ready for the food. Of course, the weather did not always cooperate; we have pictures of Joe standing over the Weber with a large umbrella in the rain tending over the fire, braving against the elements all in the name of a good proper meal. Then we visited Jerry and Kass in their Lexington home and learned about charcoal chimneys. A chimney is a metal cylinder with an inverted wire funnel at the bottom. It requires 3 double newspaper sheets stuffed under the funnel, a supply of charcoal over the top of the cylinder and a lighter to ignite the paper. The fire goes up through the charcoal which turns to red hot embers within 20 minutes; no need for lighter fluid, no variation in the technique or timetable. A rare “aha” realization and technology that changed our grilling habits forever. We bought our first chimney at Bering’s and shipped it to Tupper Lake but quickly chimneys became available everywhere including the local Fortune’s hardware store. We failed to obtain a fire only once when we bought generic charcoal from the Save-a-Lot store and learned our lesson.
Still, we continued to gas grill in Houston for the convenience of predictable, weather and hassle-free dinner at the end of a long day at work. After a few sessions with the Weber at the lake, however, and with our daily routine a bit relaxed once the kids grew up and life became a bit simpler, we realized that there was no longer need to miss out on the superior flavor of a charcoal-fired grill. We bought a classic, black, round Weber grill and added it to our cooking armamentarium. Since then, we have charcoal grilled everything at the lake and reserved it for beef in Houston. We still use the gas grill for chicken and sausage or other fatty and slower cooking foods including fish and vegetables. Then, we discovered smoking wood chips.
In truth, we discovered meat-smoking 30 years ago when we first bought a meat smoker. The process was a bit cumbersome and prolonged. We had to pull the cars back, haul the smoker out into the driveway, load it up and wait for several hours before the low-level heat could cook a reasonable size piece of meat. Plus, the embers remained hot for over a day and the clean-up was fairly messy with all the fat drippings in the water pan. It generally seemed excessive to put it all together for a casual dinner or for a small piece of food. Over time, the smoker became a signature activity earmarking holidays, parties and special celebrations. Every thanksgiving we bought a medium size turkey; Joe and Jonathan were generally in charge of this culinary activity. Around ten in the morning, they spiced the bird, (almost always some honey was involved), took out and loaded the smoker and tended to it periodically checking and adding water until 4-5 in the afternoon when the bronze, glistening bird emerged from the smoker and plopped into a large baking pan to rest for a few minutes and then get carved onto the cowboy platter, ready for transfer onto the dinner table. We also smoked a turkey or a brisket for large outdoor parties and for Xmas sometimes. One refinement to the routine was to also “gravlax” a slab of salmon on the top rack of the smoker. Unlike the usual fairly understated smell and texture of a restaurant version, this fish was dusky and strong with thick tones of smoke and oiliness; it is hard to describe it there was so much depth to our smoked salmon than anything we have tried commercially. Of course, it was something to either love or leave alone and, at least Joe and I loved it; I would have to ask the kids if they even remember what they thought of it so many years ago.
Ironically, the first time we considered having a quick, weeknight meal of smoked food happened in Galveston in our high rise apartment where grilling of any kind was impossible. In order to add some variety to the dining options, we bought a stove top smoker; we poured small aromatic wood chips on the bottom of the pan, covered them with a second metal sheet on which we placed the meat with seasoning; then the top lid slid over to seal the cooking space. After the stove was on for a few minutes a faint smoky smell wafted out from around the pan edges. As the pan heated up, the wood chip essence rose through the meat to flavor it with a delicate, subtle smoked taste. Also ironically, we almost always smoked a fillet of fish which was our staple animal protein on the island. We left the stove-top smoker for the next owners when we sold the apartment and did not do much about weeknight smoking until we somehow noticed bags of mesquite and hickory wood chips in the BBQ supermarket aisle over the bags of charcoal. This discovery, made decades later that it had to be made, once more changed our dining options and added a wonderful and lasting nuance to dinner.
It is a remarkably simple procedure: in a small bowl, we drop a handful of chips and soak them in water for an hour or so before the fire is started; when the charcoal is ready, we drain the extra water and simply drop the chips on top of the charcoal, set the grill up normally put the meat on and close the Weber lid. The aroma is phenomenal while the food is cooking filling the yard with rich, smoky air much like the old-fashioned smoker to Thanksgiving memories. The meat is also richly infused with the smoke and emerges a very different texture, color and taste from the normal grill charcoal. We have decided that this additional treatment overwhelms good quality marbled beef while it enhances the richness of chicken and transforms a thick slam of pork into an amazing experience. Smoking charcoal chips are very commonplace in Houston; most grocery stores have two or three varieties, while more specialty stores like Academy carry several types of wood chips. There are recommendations for pairing the fight wood to the appropriate meat and suggestions for variations on the theme. We quickly thought to add charcoal smoking to our dining menu at the lake. The obvious presumption was that the raw material would also be available anywhere charcoal was sold just the way we found things in Houston and no need to pack and transport bags of wood in the airplane.
Wrong again; in this era of globalization where every mall looks the same as every other mall in every other Us and even European city, there still are pockets of unexpected regional character. You cannot presume that the states recognize the superior importance of something as obvious as smoking wood chips just because they are a staple in Texas, as basic and necessary as toilet paper and Palmolive soap. And so, the final chapter of the quest that gave this essay its title began in earnest during the summer of 2009. I traveled to Boston for the annual endocrine Society meeting and in addition to spending some time with Kass and Jerry in town and at Becket, Kass and I went to lake together for part on the following week. The original plan to fly to Saranac got nixed because Kass has a strong aversion to small planes so we resolved to drive from Boston. It therefore seemed silly to pack woodchips and I deferred to buying what I needed locally… While surveying the goods in the supermarket I told Kass that I was especially interested in buying a couple of bags of smoking woodchips for the lake. She gave me a puzzled look, surprising already coming from such a charcoal-savvy lady; after all, if it were not for her household, we would have never discovered the charcoal chimney in the first place……. We made several stops wherever it seemed remotely possible that I would find wood chips. We looked in Boston proper, the suburbs, along the way while driving across the state. We even stopped at the Tail of the Pup, a self-professed smokehouse, for goodness sake and came up completely empty handed. I believe Kass got more than a little exasperated with the fruitless search by the time we got to the lake house chipless (and without simple syrup, another story altogether).
We resolved to respect the differences of the land and shipped woodchips to the lake as we were able, and packed bags of the aromatic scraps when we travelled and safely stocked the lake workshop with a nice variety and were finally able to enjoy smoked chicken and pork by the water. The following spring I returned to Boston and felt it my duty to carry a bag of hickory wood chips and introduce my friends to the pleasures of smoke grilling. Then regional individuality gave in to industrial globalization for wood chips as it has for so many other aspects of our lives. We travelled to New York for Jonathan’s medical school graduation and made our usual pilgrimage to Zabar’s on Broadway and 81st. We wondered about, marveled at the cheeses and the olives and mostly the incredibly thick crowd and narrow aisles and the feeling of New York and then walked up to the second floor to look for potato chip bag clips, a quest that had begun unsuccessfully back in Houston months earlier. Zabar’s failed us on this point as well and bag clips seemed delegated to an era past of incredibly useful common-sense inventions that somehow fickly fell out of favor like the table top crumber or the small, inexpensive camera card reader. Disappointed, we started to leave and then, right there in the middle of the floor was a bright display of Weber accessories for your grilling pleasure, including…….. yes, exactly right: several varieties of smoking wood chips in crisp colorful plastic bags. The last time we went to the lake in the summer of 2010 smoking wood chips were available for purchase at Fortune’s the local Tupper Lake hardware store. For the foreseeable future we will continue to buy things local up there and will now be able to add hickory and mesquite wood chips to our list. We still have to hand carry cherry and alder chips but that may also change in time.

Brussels dining

It is said that Brussels is a culinary destination but we cannot agree.

During a recent trip, we had several competent meals and found the reputation overstated and the typical Belgian dishes rather bland.

At Francois, a pleasing small restaurant in the old fish market section of St Catherine, we sampled:
a bouillabaise that was just plain
a large rabbit hind leg braised in the traditional beer sauce that was very tasteful
a lamb tongue appetizer, quite nice
the biggest and nicest surprise was the amuse bouche: half a dozen snails stuffed with green peppercorns presented with a metal gadget something like the old sardine can opener which was stuck in a wine cork and which the waiter insisted of calling " a snail spoon" quite a contraption. The snails were very nice indeed the peppercorn adding a lovely punch

At Aux Armes de Bruxelles, we found a large bustling restaurant, a little full of themselves, and we had:
Moules/Frites: a filling bucket of mussels in white wine sauce, tasty but no match for Caraba's, my standard for mussels. The Frites sure looked like they came out of a big frozen Oreida bag, though the waiter insisted that they were hand cut on the premises. Duck breast in a light tomato sauce with hints of rose petals, very very nice. Shrimp croquettes with a mushy texture and little virtue or taste

The Dames Tartines was a lovely surprise: a small restaurant near the Botanical Gardens, tastefully decorated with white walls and modern paintings (for sale). The lady who ran the room looked frazzled the entire time, perhaps overwhelmed by having a full house that evening, but capable and helpful with a no-nonsense air about her. The menu was focused of seafood: we had a Dorado and a Bra, both fillets wiht skin on delicately poached and served simply with vegetables. Although it is listed as serving belgian quisine, the menu did not include any of the traditional dishes including no moules/frites. The evening was particularly pleasant because we shared the meal with other members of our working group and got to chat outside the conference environment. Although we did not order an elaborate menu, the meal lasted almost 3 hours thanks to the lone lady caretaker of the house.


for our experience at La Taverne du Passage and Comme Chez Soi, see separate blog entries.

Brussels dining: comme chez soi

The restaurant now holds 2 Michelin stars and continues to be considered the premier dinning establishment in Brussels; well deserved!!

We celebrated Joe's 62nd birthday there one windy, crisp evening. The space is ornate and festive with stained glass and dark paneling, formal but not ostentatious. With the right table one can see into the kitchen through a glass window. The tables are snuggly set near one another as is usual in Europe. The service is gracious and friendly; still relatively few waitstaff taking care of serving, pouring and picking up throughout the meal.

To start we chose a roll of oxtail and lamb tongues with coriander and a young leek terrine (mouthwateringly delicious) and pan fried Dublin bay prawns over a mount of crispy vegetables with a light parmesan creamy sauce (the taste like langoustines and the sauce with a wonderful gentle punch). The main course was one of those "aha" experiences that makes Comme Chez Soi clearly worth a trip. Pigeon breasts with green carraway, black radish canneloni with chinese cabbage served for 2 persons. This detail violated our decades long rule of sharing but we could not resist the selection (also most offerings on the menu are for 2 persons as well). The boneless meat was a dark burgundy color, soft as liver in texture and sublimely tasty. It is quite difficult to describe the gustatory sensation of food; this pigeon swirled into the mouth releasing pleasure with every squeeze on the teeth. There was a bit of sausage and the delicate sides to complement it, though overshadowed by the excellence of the pigeon itself. We ate slowly savoring each bite of the well measured portion on our plates wanting it to last as long as possible. Just as we were sorrowfully reaching the end..... the waiter came around with a copper pot and asked: would you like seconds? What an amazing surprise! The seconds, all pigeon, were just about as much meat as the firsts and so we had another delightful round of exquisite taste. The concluding coffee came with a small silver tray of sweet mouthfuls of chocolates just the right amount of sugar to end a most unforgettable meal. clearly one of the best meals we have had in some time and well worth a return visit.

Brussels dining: La Taverne de Passage

We reached Brussels on a cold, windy and rainy Sunday morning after the transatlantic flight form the States. Mercifully, our hotel room was available and we rested, regrouped and ventured out into the grey morning in search of Culture. We tucked into the fine arts museum and enjoyed the Magritte exhibit and the other offerings of the museum. We walked the cobble stone streets of the old town, ventured briefly to the Grande Place thinly crowded with visitors mostly local and it was time to have our first Belgian meal.



Unfortunately, many restaurants are closed both Sundays and Mondays in Brussels. Fortunately, La Taverne de Passage was open all day, every day within walking distance from the Grande Place and our hotel. Located inside an old covered mall with a tall glass, vaulted ceiling lined with chocolateries, antique shops and cafes, it was a classic restaurant with white linen and men waitors, dark panelling and tiled floors. The wait staff were having their meal and despite the unfashionably early hour of 6pm there were a few other diners in the middle of their meal. We selected a waterzooi, typical Belgian fare " a creamy, comforting dish of chicken or fish in broth" (we had the chicken), and an order of veal kidneys cooked in beer. The chicken arrived in a large metal pot filled with broth; two pieces of chicken, leeks and potatoes, a "poulet avec ses legumes" of Lyons memory. It was nice and bland, good for chasing away a cold or soothing an upset stomach; certainly not worth carrying home for our future enjoyment. The kidneys were also nice, the sauce jestier and the texture chewy and very satisfying; no sides, no extras. We shared a small carafe of house wine, the most reasonable selection among an overpriced list of wines. Surprisingly, both in this and all other restaurants the beer choices were particulary slim; one light ale, one darker beer and one non-alcoholic beverage.



On the way home we walked along Rue des Bouchers a narrow street lined with restaurants serving prix-fixe dinners of moules / frites, sparsely populated with waiters standing at the door tryingto entice customers. We did not visit Chez Leon on this trip having earlier ascertatined that it is an over advertized, mediocre place serving mediocre food. We cruised along Rue Neuve, lined with the ubiquitous brand stores now selling in most malls anywhere, bustling with relatively young people, many scarved women and a Mc Donald's, the most crowded of all the establishments. At the hotel, across the Place Rogiers we retreated for our first night in Brussels tired and ready to call it a night.

Belgium: are all frites frozen?

Belgium prides itself on lace, chocolate, beer, mussels and "pommes frites", french fries.

On our recent visit to the country, we sampled frites in several restaurants both casual and of higher prestige. Frites was on the menu almost always accompanying meat and seafood fare. We were expecting something special: hand cut, deliciously fried morsels to set their merits apart from industrial, precut potatoes that make a mother's dinner preparation easy and fast in the States. Alas, quite the opposite.

In all cases the fries arrived in bowls or plates absolutely uniform in shape, tepidly fried, almost wilted and remarkably like what we have learned to expect from the Oreida food processing giant. Almost all were thickly cut affairs with a pale yellow color, uncrisp, healthfully cooked in vegetable oil. Nothing to justify their calories or to fullfill the well deserved sin of eating something worthwhile just .. once in a while. At the Armes de Bruxelles we were served the thick cut variety and another Mc Donald like slender cut specifically designed to accompany a different dish; both servings had the same industrial uniformity of shape and texture. We asked the waiter about this and he looked indignant and said "mais, non madam" of course they were all cut by hand on the premises and lovingly prepared especially for each serving. How we could not believe him!