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.

Marketwatch: Is it spring yet?

Reading Peter Singer and Jim Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat (review) is making me question my gastro-values and it inspired me to go to the Union Square Greenmarket for the first time in a while (perhaps the first time this year...). Hopefully I will write a post after I finish the book.

I popped by the Greenmarket at 8:30 a.m. Monday morning and it was even more barren than I thought it would be. No fewer than three flower stalls, the pretzel guy, two bakers, Red Jacket Orchards, and a small smattering of produce venders. As I mentioned I didn't expect much, since it is still so early, but I was shocked to find only carrots, potatoes, onions, apples/pears, kale, leeks, and rosemary. I thought there would be some leftover fall squashes, you know, things that don't spoil so quickly.

Before I sunk completely into despair, I purchased a lovely goat cheese and strawberry tart from the Buon Pane. Any readers who were around last summer for the awful strawberry-ricotta frittata episode will remember my theoretical affinity for strawberries where they aren't supposed to be.

The tart, unlike my frittata, was everything I'd hoped for: the bread was fresh and chewy, the strawberries retained their sweetness and texture (ie they hadn't become stewed and bland-jammy), and the goat cheese and rosemary added a delightful nip.

And on a somewhat related note, I just found that The Girl Who Ate Everything approves of Buon Pane. Can't have too much positive reinforcement...

I have to imagine more venders showed up during the day, but I certainly hope things start growing soon. I want spring foods.

(Oh, and I bought some kale and leeks. The kale made its way into a pasta salad [post later?] and the leeks are still in a holding pattern. Perhaps a soup.)

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The photo's from our flickr.com site. Check it out for more of the same.

Gourmet's French Macaroons

I don't think I've ranted about my oven before. Since I moved in this past September, I hung a thermometer in there because it always seemed unreliable. We learned it was usually anywhere from 25 to 50 degrees off. And when the stars line up just right, as it turns out, the temperature can get up to 75 degrees hotter in practically no time at all. This was particularly infuriating when I was making these beautiful, delicate Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons.

Before I go into the annoying details about the oven malfunctions, I want to start off by mentioning the difficulties I had making a meringue when I had never made one before. Interpreting the instructions was vexing. "Soft peaks" ok. I can deal with that, but "stiff" "glossy peaks" is much more subjective. How stiff is stiff? How glossy is the perfect gloss? Will it get glossier if I beat it for a little longer, or will it turn to butter. It didn't turn to butter, but I think I was a bit conservative on the whipping times.

The recipe also recommended cutting the corner of an unpleated plastic bag to create a makeshift pastry bag. I'd seen them, I'd read about the best way use them, but I had never actually used a pastry bag before. And I cut the corner a little too large (it was probably about 1/2-inch rather than 1/4).

Filling the buggers was no easy task either. The first time, I spooned it right in and got the batter everywhere. I'm not a fan of sticky things, and let me tell you, it was glue city. Learning from my mistake, I placed the empty paper bag in an empty cup and proceeded to spoon in the filling. Much cleaner. It made the whole thing a lot less stressful.

The meringue was ungainly, possibly because it was under-whipped, but had accepted that I would likely have malformed cookies. Combining the mildly-runny patter with my inexperience with pastry bags and wax paper. There was quite a bit of swearing andmore than a few ugly cookies (see photo), but I still had hope for the final product. The taste was all I cared about.

While I squeezed the future macaroons out, the oven warmed. The temperature was compensated for, so it was about 300 degrees when I put the first sheets in. I walked away for two minutes. Two. And I come back to find smoke billowing out the back of the oven. Open the door. Burnt cookies. 400 degrees. The dial still said 280 (ish). I was pissed. They weren't completely ruined, but they were close.

To make matters worse, since I used wax paper instead of the requested parchment, the burnt macaroons had fused to it. My wont of parchment wasn't for lack of trying, though. I went to four grocery stores, including Fairway, and hardly any of them even had wax paper. Leave it to me to start making cookies during the one time of year everybody makes them. I ate one or two with the paper still on them, just to see if people could notice. They would. Instead of throwing out the bunch, I called my baking-est aunt to see if she had any recommendations for loosing the meringues. She said exposing the sheets to extremes, either hot or cold, might help improve their situation.

Putting them in the freezer didn't help, so I put them on a wire cooling rack above a pot of simmering water. The wax paper (and the burnt bottoms) got full of steam and they came right off, leaving the inedible parts behind, still stuck to the paper. I was pleased.

As the cookies cooled, I made the ganache. Being a equipment-impared cook, I do not have a double boiler. To get around this, I would have sat a pot in a pot of simmering water, but the recipe clearly warned against this, so I tried to work on an alternative. My trusty cooling rack came to the rescue again, when I used it to put distance between the scorching water and the smooth, delicate chocolate. Worked like a charm.

The cookies were a hit. The raspberry-chocolate ganache was a brilliant foil to the mostly-bland cookie. For the second batch, I thought it might work well to make regular chocolate ganache and pair it with raspberry preserves. It wasn't bad but the added sugar from the preserves brought the sweetness level to nearly aching.

And I got to experience the joy of making 4 dozen cookies and eating four. At least everybody liked them (and I actually got to say, "Here's a cookie; but if you're going to rave, please rave quietly because there aren't enough for everyone." And that was worth it).

Technorati Tags: Food, Cookie, Baking, Chocolate
Special thanks to my old camera for the photos.