Service Extraordinaire: Are you Being Gouged?

I love Google mashup maps. This morning I found some that compare the cost of a head of lettuce, a quart of milk, and six-pack of beer around the five boroughs of Manhattan (and some neighboring locales). The purple lettuces in the picture above indicate heads of iceburg lettuce with a cost greater than $1.75, and the green ones indicate a price of $1.25 or less. The beer map is a bit more shocking.

It's something everybody knows about (the $2.80 box of Kashi at Trader Joes and the ludicrous $6 package of the same Kashi on Central Park South) but it's always interesting (and useful) to have all of that information in one place.

The Crowdsourcing project from which this map (and the others) came asked Brian Lehrer show watchers to find the local prices and upload them to the WNYC website. That's pretty awesome.

Cold reboot (and how)

I can hardly believe it's been over a month since my last post. It hasn't been for lack of eating. I've done some of the best eating in my life, let me tell you. Babbo is an ultimate gustatory experience. Eat at Babbo. If you have to wait for three hours, it's still worth it. Nothing has tasted the same since. No joke.

But this post isn't about Babbo. I know you'd all like to hear about the sardines with lobster reduction oil, linguine with clams, the roasted octopus salad, the beef cheek ravioli with crushed squab liver, or the saffron panna cotta (but not the rabbit), but that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

That's because I'm no longer in New York City. And while Birmingham, Alabama does have its culinary high points, Babbo's not in the cards. My Gourmetro writing is returning to my nearly counterless kitchen. It's for the best. Y'all have lots of people writing about New York restaurants anyway.

So, last night was the first time I'd cooked for myself since I left Apple Fifth Avenue (August 8). I was really busy packing, saying goodbye, driving 1200 miles, unpacking and beginning a new life for myself in the Deep South. It's been an interesting transition.

Since I arrived here on the 22nd I'd felt no desire to cook for myself. In the beginning it was natural, since all of my supplies were either in boxes or still in-transit, but it didn't abate as I settled down. It worked out, in a way, since I got to [heavily] patronize the local establishments and learn about the neighborhood, but I knew that I couldn't make such a habit of eating out. And why would I want to? After one and a half years of Gourmetro, I am confident that I can make very decent food at a fraction of the restaurant prices.

For the occasion, I gave my new Cooking Light All-New Complete cookbook a try with their curried chicken salad and vegetable couscous. It's really hot down here (92 degrees at night), so I opted for the Whole Foods rotisserie chicken. It was a good choice, I think, because one 3-pound bird was enough to double the recipe (to about four servings, as far as I can tell).

When I finally sat down to eat the salad, I was let down. And a bit pissed. In my three or four years of cooking, I can think of only a few times when I'd been completely dissatisfied with something I'd prepared (the $80 scallop dinner for two is still probably the most disappointing). Bland, sticky and sweet.

In addition to the chicken, the recipe calls for pineapple, grapes, apples, and currents. The grapes completely overpowered everything else and I could hardly detect any curry. Lame. I'd omit the grapes next time, and up the curry. Hell, I might double the curry. And the currents -- a good idea -- were much too chewy. Not so distracting that I'd leave them out, though.

As a postscript, I had the chicken salad again today for lunch as a wrap with lettuce. It was much, much better. The grapeyness was mellowed out by the lettuce/radicchio and the whole wheat wrap. Perhaps the salad belongs in a wrap.

The couscous salad was another story. Really excellent. It came together quickly, seems healthful, and tasted quite good. The one real issue I had with the recipe was that it called for a packet of 'Italian Dressing Mix,' and that, I couldn't abide. I converted the .6 ounce package details to 3.6 teaspoons (which I upped to 4) of dried basil, oregano, rosemary, and parsley. It worked out quite well, I think. (and when am I ever going to use up those dried parsley flakes...) The end result was moist and just tender enough, though next time I may bring the boiling water down from 1 1/2 cups to 1 1/4 (as it recommends on the box).

We'll see how the couscous fares tomorrow at lunch, but I expect it'll only get better.

**pre-post update**
So as I wrote this post, I hadn't realized that I'd forgotten to add the feta. So I added it, and today at lunch I was quite disappointed to discover that it made the salad worse. Yes, adding cheese made the couscous worse. It's bizarre. Try it without the feta first.

The Afterglow: Dirty Bird to Go

Ok, NY Mag. You all had a number of solid picks in the 2007 Cheap Eats issue, but I've got a bone to pick about the Dirty Bird omission. Seven dollars a hauntingly tender organic chicken 2-piece plus a side is a deal if I've ever heard one. And if DB's omission weren't bad enough, S'Mac's presence was an added insult. That insipid, gloppy goop is novel, for sure, but not among the city's best.

When Joanie and I stopped by last weekend, I was excited to see if the quality had remained the same since my last visit. She'd never been there before and was a bit skeptical while I raved about the chicken.

Last year, pretty much everybody ( Eater, Augieland (now defunct? It hasn't updated since April), Ed Levine, Egulleters, NY Times, NY Mag, etc.) put their two cents in about the Bird, but the press died shortly thereafter. There have been some very positive notes on Yelp but little else.

I agreed (and agree) with Ganda from Eat Drink One Woman on the fact that while the chicken totally rocks, the sides are lackluster. Last year I got the napa cabbage cole slaw (mushy, nondescript) and the bone-dry corn bread. Yeah. Not the best. This year I tried some new ones, and while they were better, they still weren't great. The mac 'n cheese was actually quite good (take that S'Mac); neither too runny nor too salty. The dirty rice on the other hand, was boring.
Give me some spice.

If it weren't for the included features on street venders, I'd have thought lack of seating (four stools on two bars) kept it from its rightful place in Cheap Eats 07. Or it could have been the whole Korean fried chicken thing. Gah.

Eat this chicken. Each piece may take minutes off your life, but it's totally worth it; the crisp, salty buttermilk-dipped skin will stay with you.

The Afterglow is a reoccurring feature where Gourmetros visit buzzworthy spots a bit after the buzz. Call us lazy if you must, but we just want to find out for ourselves if the places were ever worth it.

Banana v. Vanilla: Twinkie Battle Royal

The most difficult thing about the Banana Twinkie is finding one. Yesterday, my friend James and I scoured midtown Manhattan for about an hour, stopping at every deli and grocery store we passed. Twinkies, to start off with, have become a rarity in New York. The Banana Twinkie is an even rarer animal. Luckily for me, I don’t live in Manhattan, and in Brooklyn, there are still delis that have a hostess shelf.

So, this morning, on my way into work, I shelled out two bucks and bought two delightful packages of Hostess products: a package of “NEW!” Banana Twinkies, and for comparison, a normal package of Vanilla Twinkies.

The first thing that you notice is that they actually do look a little different. The regular vanilla Twinkies are a paler shade of yellow, just a couple shades darker than an off white. The Banana Twinkies, on the other hand, are a true gold. They even look a little bit bigger, though this could just be because my banana Twinkies are sitting side by side on their little piece of waxed white cardboard while for some reason, my vanilla Twinkies are askew of each other. Quality Assurance seems to have faded at the Hostess Factory. (I’d show you pictures, but I’m too poor for digital camera ownership.)

The vanilla Twinkie cake is very spongy. It doesn’t taste like “vanilla” so much as like “sugar”, or more accurately, like “corn syrup”. There’s a distinctive after taste, sort of bitter and in the back of my throat. It comes on pretty quickly, I think it’s in the cake. That flavor is in the Banana Twinkie as well, but definitely lessened. Actually, the Banana Twinkie has a surprisingly strong banana flavor on top of the flavor of corn syrup, and frankly, it is not unpleasant. It’s there enough that you can definitely tell that it’s not the normal Twinkie, but light enough that it’s not overpowering. What’s more, although it’s the same cake itself, the proximity to the filling has managed to infuse the Banana Twinkie’s cake with some of its flavor. The cake itself seems moister than the regular Twinkie, but this could simply be that because the Banana Twinkie is so new, there really isn’t as much time for it to sit around in factories (or the deli shelves). The banana flavor is definitely artificial though, which is kind of funny.

See, the Twinkie was originally a banana flavored treat. That’s the reason that it’s tube like and sort of, you know, phallic. It’s supposed to look like a cuter banana. (The shape is actually due to the shortcake tins that they’re baked in, but they chose those shortcake tins for a reason!) Twinkies stayed banana from their inception until World War II, when a national banana shortage forced Hostess to replace their banana filling with Vanilla (no, not a joke). The fact that they’ve been brought back without any real banana in them is a loving testament to our boys fighting Adolf. (The banana Twinkies do contain less than 1% of banana puree, meaning that for every batch of 100,000 Twinkies, there are about three bananas – we can’t give those boys everything or else what’ll they want to come home for?)

For the health conscious out there: though I’ve heard people think that the Banana Twinkies are healthier than the regular, they aren’t by any stretch of the imagination. The Banana Twinkies have another 5 calories per cake, plus another gram of fat and have a small amount of trans-fatty acids, which the Vanilla Twinkies do not. However, the Banana Twinkies do have slightly less sodium (maybe responsible for the fainter aftertaste?), cholesterol, and carbohydrates than the vanilla, and a couple fewer grams of sugar. I know that few people are eating Twinkies for their health anymore, but I still thought you might like to know.

All in all, I’d consider the Banana Twinkies to be a bit better than the regular. The banana flavor really helps you forget that you’re basically eating a stick of sugar and saturated fat, and helps to cover up that horrible aftertaste that you get from the Vanilla Twinkies. Prepare for indigestion and, if you’re like me, a sugar headache. Still, if you’re a dedicated junk foody, the Banana Twinkie will form a nice new addition to your sweet repertoire.

My world is (somewhat) shattered

So there I was, catching up on my blogs with my trusty rss reader (something I haven't done in months) only to discover that (1) a new, improved version of The Joy of Cooking hits shelves today and (2) I have the most unloved version.

Apparently this new one is truer to the original than the "popular" 1975 edition and less "esoteric" than the 1997 rewrite. For a moment I thought about getting them all, but then decided against it. I might get the new one, but I'd rather get The Gourmet Cookbook or Cook's Illustrated's The New Best Recipe.

Well thank you New York Times for ruining my day. (And a preemptive thanks to Cook's and Southern Living for potentially saving it with the delicious dinner I have planned: penne alla vodka and apple/cranberry pie - not entirely congruous, but whatever, I think they'll rock)

CHOW news

I am so emotionally torn and confused at CHOW's recent news of its departure from print. I was an early reader and supporter (and they are another reason The Gourmetro exists).

Should I be upset with advertisers for not believing in them or the 20-somethings the mag was aimed at (I'm sure it could be our fault somehow)? It was such an awesome outlet for people who love to cook but don't have money, time, or highly-tuned skills.

It's more likely that I will be happy that Jane Goldman, editor, will continue spreading the good word on the forthcoming chow.com (this September) when CHOW will merge with Chowhound. It's good to get confirmation, because I knew something was up once I'd heard that Chowhound was bought by CNet and their logo changed to the CHOWish font.

I got to meet the CHOW gang last winter and they were awesome and I wish them the best.

< /gushing >