We Made a Blog

We Made a Blog writes a lot about food (and drink) we’ve consumed that’s been prepared by others. But we do actually cook – pretty well and with feeling. So we whiled away a few winter (ah, winter) and spring evenings this year in the kitchen – Brooklyn Kitchen Labs, that is – taking classes to expand our home-based culinary ventures.

The Brooklyn Kitchen cohabitates with carnivore paradise The Meat Hook. The shop flaunts vintage finds (if I ever need to recreate my grandmother’s kitchen – from harvest gold Tupperware to blue wheat-stamped CorningWare – I know where to go) and the latest in kitchen gadgets. On the day of class, you get a 10% discount on any of their wares (excluding meat and dairy) and the staff is friendly and helpful (we sought their advice more than once in a goat cheese project we undertook). The labs consist of one warmly lit spacious brick-walled kitchen on the lower level and one smaller bright one lofted above it. On our first visit we wandered into the wrong kitchen and were sent, prosecco-filled, to the proper one. It was an auspicious start.

We embarked on Oysters 101, given by the incredibly knowledgeable Nellie Wu and Michael Kidera of W&T Seafood. They take oysters very seriously and that passion translated into an enjoyable and information-packed two hours. We spent the first hour learning the biology and culture of the oyster and then got around to sort of destroying both by learning how to shuck. The second part of the class was devoted to cooking; mignonette sauce, oysters Rockefeller and oyster chowder were more than enough to count as that evening’s meal.

We had high hopes for our next class, Japanese Takeout, with Cathy Erway of the blog Not Eating Out in New York. We have an obvious bias toward bloggers and we wouldn’t want to dissuade anyone from taking a cooking class given by someone with only that credit in the experience column but this is the only class we can’t wholeheartedly endorse. The description foretold of an evening filled with miso soup, ginger dressing, katsu and sushi. We did gain some expertise in the miso/ginger arena but sushi skills were what we were really there for. We assumed we would be learning about how to select and slice fish but fish was nowhere to be seen. It was explained away quickly with something about mercury and something about overfishing and we spent a good amount of time making hand rolls that were free of the sea. Katsu was also not in attendance.

Now any time I think about baking bread, I picture Nicolas Cage in one of my favorite movies of all time, “Moonstruck.” Glinting with sweat and anger in the fiery subterranean of the bakery he owns, he reflects on his profession. “They say bread is life,” he starts out but it’s soon clear that he holds the opposite view. Matt Tilden of SCRATCHbread, our instructor for our foray into focaccia, seems like he would be more than happy to take up the issue with him. As enthusiastic as his blissed-out state would allow, Matt delved into the chemistry behind perfect loaves and the more alchemical ingredient of love. He did some light iPod DJing, kept up the patter, served some Brooklyn Lager and generally made the class forget that we weren’t tasting our delicious endeavors until about four hours had passed. When we did, it was well worth it. We’d created simultaneously fluffy and dense squares embedded with our selections from the available fennel seeds, gray salt, sweet red onions, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, cracked pepper, lemon zest, parmagiano reggiano, coarsely ground mustard, thick-cut bacon and speck. As a bonus, we took home some dough that made every effort to burst out of its wrappings, fresh yeast and gray salt so that we could wake up to fresh focaccia in the morning.

There is no way to describe just how profound Knife Skills was. Taught by Chef Brendan McDermott, it goes way beyond merely conquering the performance anxiety induced by having someone watch you cook. Brendan handled the class as well as he handled the knife. Funny and charming, he managed to even deal with a small crisis of a fainting student (a bit of kitchen heat, not any knife-related injury, was the culprit) in a way that comforted the student and didn’t disrupt the lesson. The slicing (chopping is only for herbs, as we learned) technique was brilliantly simple to master and the tips given for specific vegetables were nothing short of a revelation. If you take the class you will have to often repress your urge to show off your one-stroke cauliflower decapitation trick. With the exception of a chicken deboning demonstration, the class was hands-on. It’s bring your own knife, so be prepared to wander the streets of Brooklyn as we did, knife handle sticking out of a purse for me, poorly disguised knife wrapped in newspaper for Hillel.

The last class we tried is one of the quickest to fill up – Pickling. McClure’s Pickles is well-known for its pickling pickings, and Bob McClure, one half of the sibling duo behind the brand, set up a bubbling, boiling pickling central in one of the labs. Most of the class was observation of the procedures behind preserving (in this case, of asparagus) with the opportunity to pack a small Mason jar with as much or as little spice as you can handle and a fresh handful of spears. You then wait it out a week (or more; pickling preserves fairly indefinitely) to try your treat and can reuse the brine once to do a simple refrigerator pickle.

We Made a Blog now makes a lot of new dishes. But if you see any class at Brooklyn Kitchen called We Made a Blog Makes Goat Cheese, I advise you to steer clear because all you will learn is how to make hot goat’s milk spiked with rennet that 24 hours later will be room temperature goat’s milk spiked with rennet. Trust me on this one.

While scanning the Whole Foods cold beverage display for some illy issimo, I came across a dark brew wrapped in a gold label with a Soviet-ish font and a pretty illustration of a field of wheat and a bird.  Krushka & Bochka Kvass – a fermented soda from the motherland.

Now we’ve all learned a lot about the Russians lately. That they’re still trying to gather secrets about how we live (even though there are no real travel restrictions and, you know, there’s the internet if they’re really lazy); that they have a town that’s an exact replica of Chevy Chase, Md., to train spies in (did they choose Chevy Chase because they’re fans of “Spies Like Us”?); and that no matter how much cleavage she shows, you shouldn’t trust a woman who dyes her hair red every week and sounds slightly foreign after a few glasses of vodka.

What hasn’t been very well publicized is that they seem to be very fond of a soda made of wort concentrate. Or that’s what the label of Kvass would have you believe. “Kvass has been a Russian staple of refreshment for centuries, enjoyed by czars and peasants alike. Pushkin describes how Russians believed they needed Kvass like the air for living.” When not composing thousand-page literary works or fomenting revolution, Pushkin kicked back and enjoyed a nice cold glass of fermented soda. You can’t buy an endorsement like that.

Back to the wort concentrate. It’s rye flour, fermented rye malt and barley flour. To that they add some sugar. And that’s pretty much it. Kvass is described as “[m]alty with a sweet finish and light sparkle, Kvass is truly a thirst quencher like no other.” The reality? A soda that tastes like the raisins that get stuck at the bottom of a box formed a collective that meant to work toward the common good but somehow they’ve just grown hardened and weary.

Na zdorovye!

There’s not really a more perfect time for a cup of tea than a rainy Sunday afternoon. The Lower East Side prepared for just this circumstance with days-old Jujomukti Tea Lounge.

Serving hot (in three categories – classic, challenger and premium) and iced varieties, Jujomukti is strictly about the tea; there’s nothing to  nibble on and concessions to coffee lovers extend only to flagging robust, super-caffeinated blends.

The teas are delicately fragrant with a taste that does not, thankfully, translate into liquid potpourri, even with the fruity Asian Treasures. If you desire to up the taste or healtfulness of your selection, there’s a list of natural extracts and tinctures.

The staff goes out of their way to be helpful to patrons (a bit sparse on this visit) and passersby alike and they were eager to note that Jujomukti will soon be host to a variety of events, including Bollywood movie nights.

Like the apartment of a recent college graduate, Jujomukti is furnished with some mismatched hand-me-downs, items from those DIY Swedes and lighting from Urban Outfitters. Brick walls and a little bronze paint and curtains help the charm factor. Like the grads it emulates, Jujomukti aspires to “liberation” and “universal freedom” (the meaning behind its name) and also like them, its future holds lots of promise.

Jujomukti Tea Lounge
211 E 4th St (near Avenue A)
New York, NY 10009
(212) 533-4075

A solid 100 degrees Fahrenheit on any given New York thermometer on Wednesday, and We Made a Blog made an after-work beeline for a nice, cold…thimbleful of sake. Really.

Semi-secret underground sake bar (and now you see why we couldn’t think of anything cooler) Sakagura celebrated the Japanese Tanabata festival with a sake tasting. The usual astronomical fairytale of parted lovers meeting only under an alignment of stars (with an extra flight of fancy in the form of magpies, represented at Sakagura by bird-shaped cookies), Tanabata is celebrated, like many festivals, with alcohol.

Sponsored by Hakkaisan Brewery (a boutique outfit located in a snowy outskirt of Tokyo), four sakes were proferred, including one, Daiginjo, not available in the United States. It was flown in along with guest of honor and president of Hakkaisan, Jiro Nagumo.

Friend of Sakagura and the brewery, Tim Sullivan (Tim-san) wore a dove-grey yukata (summer kimono) that seemed as impervious to wrinkling or wilting in the damp heat as his smile and friendly demeanor as he poured the sakes into the commemorative cups provided to the guests. He first poured us Honjozo, a fortified sake that had a bolder taste than most. After our tentative sips turned into appreciative gulps, we inquired what it was fortified with. A heartier grain of rice? Wheat? More alcohol, as it turned out. Fortified, we moved on to Tokubestu Junmai. Created from the melted snow that slips off Mount Hakkai, it was the closest to sparkling sake can be without actually being, well, sparkling. Separate flavor profiles announced themselves simultaneously on the tongue.

We took a sake break to sample the appetizers. Finger-friendly edamame were popular with the milling cocktail-hour crowd. Crudite had a Japanese bent with the addition of okra and daikon to the usual batonnet of vegetables and a sesame seed-dressed dip comprised of red snapper and miso paste, redolent with umami. Plump, flaky smoked salmon was snapped up as fast as the chopsticks necessary to eat it were and chunks of savory chicken were so moist they barely withstood the skewers they were served on.

After an official greeting and toast, Nagumo-san began doling out the Daiginjo from a squat cobalt bottle. It was exactly of the transcendent quality you’d expect would cause the country to hoard it from export.

We closed out our sake sampling with a delicate sensation of Junmai Ginjo on our palates. Turned out into the heart of the hot, hot city, we were braver for being saked and sated.

Food writing is at the mercy of the same vagaries automotive writing is – the writer often has to be forgiven an emotional bias. This is appropriately the case with Goods, a restaurant whose kitchen is housed in a refurbished and repurposed Spartan trailer. Just as you might give a biased review of a Ferrari’s handling because you are so overwhelmed by the attractiveness of its exterior, a proper review requires a second, harder look. So it is with Goods.

Parked at the corner of Metropolitan and Lorimer in Williamsburg, it’s damn charming, right down to the woman taking your order, curly hair held up by a bandanna a la Lucy, who interacts with customers in a way that has you considering if she was transported in time along with the trailer. Order your dish off the simple menu, wait for your number to be called  and relax in the wood and pebble garden around back.

The lunch/dinner menu has seven items on it, but all you need to know about are two – the biscuit and the fried green tomato sandwich. The biscuit is a delicate, properly sized platform for the addition of eggs, an organic sausage patty and fresh local cheese. It’s very cool to order an egg sandwich and see a rind on the cheese. The assembled sandwich is a thing of beauty, not surprising considering the same talent behind 3rd Ward is responsible.

I once was a vegetarian and often made the argument that my meat-free meals were just as satisfying as the dishes my non-vegetarian friends enjoyed. When I started eating meat again, I understood why they found the concept silly. But the fried-green-tomato sandwich – all thick-fried tomato goodness and spicy relish topping – is not to be trifled with. It stomps on lesser, meat-filled concoctions.

Of note is that they have fried-chicken Sundays, which I have yet to try, but when I do, it will be held to the standard of Pies ‘n’ Thighs.

Go to Goods for their dedication to preparing delicious, comforting food. While it seems destined to be the next fashionable hipster eatery (take that to mean what you will), there is substance behind the facade that’s so pretty it could have been the place’s undoing. Thankfully, they really do have the goods.

Asia Dog teamed up with Trophy Bar this past Wednesday to help promote their Asian-inspired hot dog creations. Many know of them from their stand at Brooklyn Flea and their meanderings through Brooklyn and NYC. All eight varieties of Asia Dogs were in attendance, with beef-, chicken- or veggie-stuffed casings (sadly, no pork).

Asia Dog took what they’ve learned from working the Brooklyn Flea to make an event that ran smoothly. Show your ID at the door step, get a beer at the bar, wait on line for your dogs in the backyard. You were allowed two at a time and, considering some of these dogs come with a full Vietnamese sandwich piled on top, no one complained about the restriction. Most people came in pairs and simply ordered four different dogs and shared.

Then the rain came. Once again, Asia Dog’s flea-market chops came to the rescue as they were prepared with a tarp and only lost a few orders in the process. There was a definite pause in the flow but the open bar tempered any angst. Friendly staff and friendly food is always a good combo.

Wherever you happen to make their acquaintance, be sure you order the “Vinh,” the Vietnamese sandwich-inspired dog; the “Mash,” full of spicy kechup, jalapeno and mustard; and the “Wangding,” a dog piled with barbecued pork belly. Like anything good, an Asia Dog stands the test of time; the ones we carried home were still tasty cold.