Ben Cooks Everything

Keeping it short this time. This one is a banger: as delicious as it is easy. There’s not even all that much to say. Put a lot of olive oil, like at least a quarter cup, and heat it up with some garlic in there, til the garlic is golden. Add the shrimp, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika (Bittman says hot paprika, but I just used regular with a little cayenne thrown in), and cook until the shrimp are done.

What you get is a spicy, garlicky, simple yet delicious dish. Exactly as advertised. You get a lot of mileage out of very few seasonings because the taste of shrimp shines through. Truly Minimalist. I bet this is good with squid too. Melanie made some lentils and rice to go with it, and it all went together very nicely.

Pork buns in Chinatown. Lox and whitefish at Russ and Daughters. Smiley face pizza (that’s olive eyes, mushroom nose, and red pepper mouth) at Two Boots. Food = memory.

Two Boots holds a really special place in my heart even among the aforementioned spots. Their original restaurant on Avenue A was a place I grew up in, eating smiley face pizzas, drinking coke out of boot-shaped mugs, and picking songs from their well stocked jukebox. It was a heartbreaking moment when I came back from Boston one spring break and took some friends there to find it was under new ownership. The fried calamari was gone, replaced with an appetizer menu of vegetarian options. The pizza was just not that great. Not long after, it closed down. There’s been a sign about its eminent reopening in the window for what seems like years now, but the place is dead to me.

Now, while I’ll always miss that space, this story isn’t as sad as all that. Two Boots To Go, the slice joint/delivery place across the street still makes the stuff the way I remember, and they deliver to Stuy Town, so I’ve hardly been deprived of Two Boots for the last few years. They’re also littered all over the city. I think most of the others are franchised out, but I’m not sure about all those details, and I don’t really care, as all of them seem to more or less live up to the original. One thing’s for sure: none of them miss the mark as badly as what the new owners refer to in the aforementioned sign as “Re:Boot.” God, I hate them.

Well, last night I found a place that reminded me of the good times I had at Two Boots as a youngster. Two Boots Tavern is on Grand and Suffolk, a neighborhood that seems as random at first glance as Avenue A and 3rd Street must have back in 1987. It’s a bar, it’s an authentic Two Boots experience, and it’s somewhere I’ll be returning to quite a bit in the future. I had a chance to speak to owner Phil Hartman last night, and in between gushing to him about how I was raised on his pizza, he asked me to tell all my friends about the new spot. Well, Phil, that was already the plan: I can’t recommend it enough. This place has a real appeal to it. Sure, that neighborhood doesn’t hurt for lack of bars, but it could use more laid back spots, and that was exactly what we found at the Tavern last night.

So please, everybody reading this in the New York area, check out the Two Boots Tavern. You can drink (full bar plus beer on tap) AND eat delicious pizza. Plus they invented this thing called Cajun Pigs in Blankets that’s a piece of andouille sausage wrapped in pizza crust. And it is GOOD. There’s other bar snacks too, the drinks were reasonably priced, and what’s more, Two Boots is back to its former glory. See you there.

Update: Phil Hartman just emailed me some kind words and corrections about the history of Two Boots:

Thanks for sharing your memories with me, and thanks for spreading the word to your blogsters…I raised three kids in the East Village — and in Two Boots! — and they’ve shared many of the same experiences as you…

Just wanted to clear up some of your misconceptions about Two Boots…

Two Boots was started by Doris Kornish and I in 1987 at 37 Ave. A. A local real estate developer, John Touhey, owned the original space, and we gave John permission to open Two Boots Brooklyn in 1989 — he’s done a fantastic job out there in Park Slope, especially with parents and kids.

Two Boots has grown over the years — we just opened in LA, have a big, beautiful, full-service location in Bridgeport, Conn. with a stage for live music, and are building a small branch in Hell’s Kitchen (9th Ave. & 44th St.)…NONE of the branches are franchises; all are owner-operated, and my office is right here in the EV on East 3rd St.

As for the original location at 37 Ave. A, Doris and I split up several years ago, and while I got Two Boots in the settlement, she received the original restaurant…Doris is a vegetarian, and Re-boot expressed her interests and sensibility. What more can I say? I find it as sad as you that our original location has been lost, but I’m glad you see that the spirit is still alive and well on Grand St. — and at every branch of Two Boots, I think.

So, there you go. Avenue A, still dead to me, other branches, still legit.

What to Eat at Two Boots Tavern [Grub Street]
Picture also lifted from Grub Street.

The Oscars were on, so I thought it’d be a good idea to have some friends over and have a betting pool, along with some potluck snack action. People brought enchiladas, chips, cheeses, lemon bars, cupcakes, and of course booze. I decided to make Caramelized Spiced Nuts, Fresh Tomato Salsa, and Guacamole.

First I made the salsa, which I completely forgot to take pictures of. It’s a hugely adaptable recipe; you can throw in any seasonings you like, up amounts or remove things altogether, and even use fruit (like mangoes) in place of the tomatoes. Take some tomatoes, dice them up, combine with minced garlic, chile (I used jalapeno), cilantro (I left that out) and salt and pepper. I did it all in the food processor. To get the texture I prefer, I rough chopped 2/3 of the tomatoes, and then pureed the remaining 1/3 of the tomatoes along with the garlic and jalapeno, so it wasn’t totally smooth, but not too chunky either. The salsa was delicious, but it’s a recipe that’s going to be infinitely better this summer when the tomatoes are fresh and delicious (and with 90% less indentured servitude…yikes). This was still good, considering the fact that the best tomatoes I could find were still pretty bland.

Next up was the Guac. Now, I don’t like mine with tomatoes in it, so I scratched that. The recipe in How To Cook Everything is a simple one, all the main suspects are there: avocado, garlic, onion (I used shallot), chile (I think I used serrano) or cayenne (I used both), lime juice (I like a little more than Bittman calls for), salt and pepper. I also added some chipotle powder and a teensy bit of pimenton (smoked paprika). What can I say, I like smoky. It was really good. Guacamole is always really good.

It’s a longstanding theory of mine, practically a law, that anything with avocado as a main ingredient is delicious. A related theory I am currently testing is that adding avocados to anything will make them better. Anyway, the guac was delicious. This gathering was actually something of a guac-off, as Clair and Grace both brought their own recipes, which were pretty delicious as well. Clair’s was ultra lemony (or was it limeny?), and Grace’s may have suffered from HAS (Hard Avocado Syndrome) but it was still effing tasty. Like I said, as long as you’re not going with that stuff that comes in a jar (srsly how do they get away with calling that guacamole?) you’re good. One last thing I think needs addressing re: gaucamole. You may notice I didn’t use any cilantro, in the guac or the salsa. While I love the flavor it adds, a lot of people just hate the stuff with a passion. If I’m having friends over, I’m not gonna alienate half of them by using such a polarizing flavor. Let me know how you feel about cilantro in the comments.

Last up were the nuts. These are a revelation, another hugely customizable recipe. Once you make it once, it’s your call to throw in any spices you like. So, you take water and sugar and boil them together til they start to thicken into a syrupy thickness. Then you add some cayenne (I’d up the amount in the book, I wanted these to be spicier), and a couple tablespoons of garam masala, plus some salt. Then in go 2 cups (I doubled though) of any kind of nuts you want. You boil these over medium heat until the liquid’s even thicker (10 minutes give or take), then scoop them out with a slotted spoon onto a preheated baking sheet. Pop ’em in the over for ten more minutes, and you’ve got something much better than a store bought honey roasted nut.

All in all, the Oscars were boring, the betting pool was fun (Sage and I tied and took everyone’s money), and the snacks were killer. What else is there?

OK, commence arguing about cilantro in the comments.

I’m excited about seeing Stephen Colbert nail Mark Bittman this week. Hopefully it leads to the legendary Colbert bump. Actually it looks like a week of bangers for Colbert:

OK, so maybe I’m skipping the Invention of Air guy. But David Byrne, Mark Bittman, and the guy who wrote the least expected book in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series sounds like a helluva run.

Kyle, the designer of this computer based periodical you’re looking at right now, was in town from DC for the weekend. Clearly we had to make dinner. Sometimes it feels cruel making Kyle work on this project about delicious food that he rarely gets to enjoy. Someone please offer him a job here so that he can move to New York and come over for dinner all the time.

Anyway, I sent him a list of things we could make, and we decided on Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices, a curry dish with a yogurt base, and Fried or Grilled Polenta (in this case, fried).

Polenta was something we made a lot back when I lived with Kyle in Cambridge, Mass. Well, we made it once or twice, then stopped, probably because we were buying that kind that comes in a tube. That stuff looks, feels and tastes like rubber, lightly fried.

I’m not sure why we used that stuff, because real polenta is really easy to make, even though it takes some attention (read: constant stirring). Boil water (plus milk, not necessary but recommended by Bittman) with some salt, add the polenta, lower heat, and whisk constantly until it thickens. It should be about as thick as sour cream, says Bittman, but “for Grilled or Fried Polenta, you want something approaching thick oatmeal.”

Then you smooth it out, let it harden up a little bit (this is a very similar technique to a recent Minimalist recipe) and pan fry it. You can also brush it with olive oil and grill it, which I might try in the broiler next time. If you do fry it, though, do yourself a favor and use a nonstick pan, because we started with a regular skillet and could not get a single piece to lift off easily, no matter how much oil we used. Anyway, this was really really delicious stuff, and with some practice, I think it could get even better.

The Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices is a really nice simple curry, where you brown your chicken (breasts and thighs in this case, but use whatever), remove it, sautee some onions in the oil and fat from the chicken, throw in a bunch of garlic along with cumin, coriander, cardamom, turmeric, and cinammon… and maybe some others that I may be forgetting? I think there was cayenne as well. You let the spices cook for a minute or two (your kitchen goes from smelling good to smelling like magic), then stir in the yogurt. Add the chicken back into the pan, cover and let it cook over fairly low heat until it’s done… this was about 20 minutes for me.

What you end up with is a chicken dish that photographs pretty poorly (it’s a very brownish shade of grey) but tastes awesome and leaves a lot of sauce. Next time we’ll need some naan bread or rice or something. Susan made a delicious Israeli salad (cucumbers + tomatoes, no leafy funny business) to go along with it, nothing from the book, but it had Drunken Goat cheese in it. Drool.

Oh, and it was totally Kyle’s fault that all the polenta stuck. You can’t let that guy do anything.

When I was a kid, my favorite holiday was always Presidents’ Day. We’d try to get some sleep, the anticipation too much to overcome. Finally, at the crack of dawn, we’d run downstairs to open our presents under the Lincoln Tree, meticulously decorated with ornaments of each of the presidents (save for the William Henry Harrison ornament, which broke like a month after we got the set, drag). After we opened our presents, we’d let Dad put them together while Mom made frittatas, bacon, and french toast. Sorry, I mean freedom toast. Then we’d watch the parade.

It was with these fond memories in mind that I invited over some friends for what I hope will be a continuation of the tradition. I decided to stick with the same dishes mom used to make. First up, the frittata, which Bittman claims is as good hot, warm, or room temp. Mom always made it by finishing it in the oven, but Bittman just does it all on the stove. It’s pretty damn easy; saute onions (I used scallions) in olive oil, add tomatoes, throw the eggs on top of that, and sprinkle Parmesan over the top.

Let that go over low heat til the eggs are just set, and you’re good to go. This was pretty tasty, but not altogether stunning. I served it pretty much room temperature, and I think I would have preferred it to be warmer. The other thing I can’t put on the recipe or Bittman or even my friendly neighborhood produce guy: fresh tomatoes really suck this time of year. Tomato season just isn’t long enough. These tomatoes just made the omelet a little wetter, a little plainer, whereas if we had some nice in season ones, it would probably make the dish something truly special. As it stood, it was more like the omelets at the dining hall freshman year, before you learn to never, ever ask for the tomatoes.

Next up was the bacon. Bittman says that roasting the stuff is a good way to go for large batches. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but actually it was the best bacon I’ve ever made. I hate pan frying the stuff, it’s messy and it takes forever and I’m just not down with that. From now on, I shall roast. There were a few benefits. For starters, all the bacon is done at once. Much less time consuming. It also takes a lot less effort, and on top of all that, I’ve never been able to get that kind of crunch by frying it. Big success.

Anna the bacoterian was here, and she also seemed pretty psyched on the stuff. Oh, and I think the bacon itself was very good quality, I got it at Fairway, and it tasted a cut above for sure.

Caramelized French Toast was the real highlight of this Presidents Day feast. Great thing to make at brunch because no one orders it when they go out for brunch. It’s likely to be a crowd pleaser. I used challah, the ultimate bread for French toast, dredged it in the milk-egg-vanilla mixture, and cooked it on a grill pan. In this Caramelized variation you sprinkle a bit of sugar over the piece (you can also dredge it in sugar but that sounded too sweet) before you put it in the pan. Gives it a nice brown color, and doesn’t hurt in the flavor department. Easier than you think. Served it with maple syrup, robviously, and the Strawberry Sauce that I made from the Fruit Sauce, Two Ways recipe (cooked fruit method). Basically you just boil some butter and sugar in water, let it thicken, then add the fruit. The recipe says to puree it, but I decided to leave the strawberries in slices. It’s in the dessert section, but it goes pretty well with French toast.

So I’ve cracked the brunch section of How to Cook Everything, and I’m feeling good about what’s to come.

After all the talk of Ginger-Scallion sauce and Scallion-Ginger sauce from the last post, I thought that this weekend would be a good time to try the Ginger-Scallion sauce. One recipe that Bittman suggests with this sauce is the ginger and soy sauce glazed chicken wing variation. I made the Smokey Lime Chile variation before, and have also made the traditional Buffalo-style Chicken Wings with Bleu Cheese sauce (haven’t posted that yet though, it’s on the way). I know, it sounds like I’m trying to make this blog into Ben Cooks EveryWing, but I swear I’m making wings just as much as I used to before the project. They’re the most underrated part of the chicken. Americans are so in love with the bland, flavorless chicken breast that it sells for exorbitant amounts, while the flavor packed wing goes for next to nothing. And yet, the wing has so much more texture, flavor, and versatility. It’s fun to eat and you get those tips that you can save to make stock with later on down the line. I only love them more now that I have Bittman’s six variations to work with.

These wings are the same as the aforementioned Smokey variation: roast the hell out of them in the oven (another benefit of the wing, it doesn’t seem to ever dry out), toss them in the sauce. In this iteration the sauce is rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, a lot of ginger, plus a little Sriracha for a kick which was my addition, and I recommend. Roast another ten minutes or so, and you’re done. And boy, are these good. I liked them even more than the Smoky ones, which I loved. Now, Bittman says that this recipe doesn’t need a dipping sauce, but that the Ginger Scallion sauce will work if you feel you must. Obviously I did, and while I agree with Bittman that they’d be really good on their own, the dipping sauce does add another level of delicious.

Ginger-Scallion sauce, I must say, is very similar but to my taste not as good as Scallion-Ginger sauce, but that’s probably because my mother used to make Scallion-Ginger sauce all the time; nostalgia colors taste, I know this much. But you can’t really lose with either one; they’re both easy and tasty. The Ginger Scallion sauce is faster, as the heat from the oil makes the flavors come together more quickly, where the Scallion Ginger sauce has to hang out and marinate itself for a while. And, uh, I forgot to take pictures of it. My bad. It’s a shame because the stuff was a very pleasing vibrant yellowish-green. Would have been a nice compliment to all this brown food I’ve been making.

Meanwhile, the rice couldn’t be easier: saute some onions, and peppers if you’ve got them, in neutral oil. Add cooked rice (best if its a day or so old, but OK to make some, chill it a couple hours, and then use that) and let it cook til it starts to brown a bit. Then you throw in some soy sauce and sesame oil, and you’re good. It was a little bland, but had a nice subtle flavor to it.

Next time I think I will try the more detailed fried rice, which looks like it has a lot more flavor. All in all though, for the time it took, this was a nice easy way to punch up some rice, and not as greasy as I thought it was going to be.

Mark Bittman: rule breaker. In today’s minimalist, he expands upon the savory oatmeal dish that he took to NPR and the blogs a couple weeks ago. Also featured is breakfast pizza, made on a crust of polenta. Hell yes. Bittman also took the idea to the Today Show, to show an overly sassy Meredith Vieira how the polenta pizza idea works and profess his leftiness. It looks dank. Check out the Today Show clip below, and don’t skip the Times article which has even more recipes for what look like tasty and easy savory breakfasts. There’s also a video with a different savory breakfast recipe on the Times website.

NOTE: If you’re reading this, NYTimes web people, PLEASE make your videos embeddable. Then I could post those instead of the Today clips, and that would make me extremely happy. Alternatively, if the hosts of the Today Show would stop talking to their audience like a bunch of confused toddlers, maybe I wouldn’t have such a problem with sharing their videos. So, there’s two possible solutions.

Your Morning Pizza [nytimes]
Savory Breakfast [ntimes video]
Savor a slice of Mark Bittman’s polenta pizza [todayshow]

Back when I was in middle school (I think) my mother went to see Mark Bittman do a cooking demo at Macy’s Cellar, where he made Steamed Chicken with Scallion-Ginger sauce. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think that this was the recipe that turned into White Cut Chicken, and the Ginger-Scallion sauce that Bittman suggests serving it with. See how he flipped it?

Mom got a ton of mileage out of the Scallion-Ginger sauce recipe. Basically, she used to just steam some chicken breasts (bone-in) and serve them warm or room temp with the real star of the recipe, the dipping sauce. It’s just a mixture of scallions, ginger, a bit of garlic, neutral oil, soy sauce, and a little bit of sesame oil. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a light, clean, complex flavor that actually compliments the blandness of chicken breasts, which are usually not my favorite. There’s no cooking, but the longer you can leave it hanging out before it’s time to eat, the better. Ginger-Scallion sauce, on the other hand, doesn’t have soy sauce or sesame oil in it, and you heat the oil before adding it. How is it? I don’t know, I haven’t made it yet. But Scallion-Ginger sauce, what you see here, is one of the tastiest dips ever, and it goes really well with White Cut Chicken.

Well, on Saturday I decided to use the cut-up chicken I’d bought to make… something. I flipped open the book to find a recipe I had the ingredients for (sidebar: I need to get out of chickenland, but I don’t think I know how). White Cut Chicken jumped out. It’s basically poached chicken, but it leaves you with a really nice broth, because you poach the chicken water flavored with ginger, scallions, salt, and sugar. You boil that, add the chicken, reduce it to a simmer, and then turn off the heat altogether and let it chill for a while.

Then you let it come to room temperature and serve, either with Ginger-Scallion sauce, or Scallion-Ginger sauce, or whatever you like, really.

One question: what should I do with the broth? Any ideas? I don’t think it’s as versatile as regular chicken broth, but it is packed with scalliony, gingery, sweet and salty flavor. Maybe I’ll use it to make some rice. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

We weren’t five minutes into cooking, and Mom was already worried about how she’d be portrayed on the internet. “Are you going to write on your blog that this was my fault?” See, the Jambalaya recipe calls for uncooked shrimp, but my mom grabbed the bag of cooked shrimp in the freezer aisle instead. It’s a common mistake, and I blame not my mother but the companies that make the packaging so hard to distinguish. These packages need to say “RAW” or “COOKED” in bigger letters than they say shrimp. Making one label blue and the other red does not clear anything up. Get it together, seafood distributors of America. Luckily there were so many more goofs to be made during this meal, precooked shrimp was the least of our troubles. Surely it was not enough to derail our meal.

Family dinner! “I’ve been thinking of making the jambalaya from the book,” Mom said when she called me at work. So here was my first chance to take the project on the road, to a whole new (and extremely well lit) kitchen. I came over after work and we got down to business. It’s always fun to cook at my parents’ place, because they have a dishwasher, the aforementioned lighting, a really nice stereo in the kitchen, basically they’ve just got it all figured out. And the company’s not half bad either. The snacks provided while cooking (pictured below) are also far superior to those in our usual digs.

In a perfect world, the recipe works something like this: heat up some oil in a large skillet or pot, throw in diced onions and red peppers and let those brown. Then you add the rice, thyme, cayenne (Mom didn’t have any so we used chili powder, which did the trick) and garlic. Then you add some canned tomatoes, and let that go for another few minutes. Then, you add the stock, and lower the heat a bit. This was where gaff number two came up, which I will take responsibility for (though I really blame a certain high quality supermarket in Red Hook, BK).

Not satisfied with the kosher salt I’d usually use to season such a mixture, I dug out a disposable plastic sea salt grinder from said Red Hook market. Somehow, my fervent grinding twisted the whole top off of the container, and about 1/3 cup of very coarse salt tumbled right into the pan. Kind of not good. I fished out as much as I could, and we decided to dilute with more water and more rice, a cup and a cup and a half at a time (respectively). I think we ended up adding 4-5 more cups of water than the recipe called for. It still tasted a little salty, but not as bad as it had before. So, you let the rice and stock bubble away for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, uncovered (surprising, right?) until there’s just a small amount of stock left. At that point, you add the shrimp. We didn’t, because our shrimp was already cooked. What we did was let the rice absorb the rest of the stock, and then stir in the shrimp after we’d taken it off the heat. This way we figured they wouldn’t get all rubbery, just warmed through. Then we chopped up the parsley, which (gaff #3) we then forgot to actually add to the dish. Which is fine, because as he reminded us during dinner, Jonathan HATES parsley. He was pretty offended we’d thought of putting it in at all.

Anyway, all in all, it was pretty delicious. Yeah, it might have been richer without all the extra rice and water, and it could have been shrimpier if the little guys had actually cooked in the pot instead of just warming up in it. But it was pretty delicious overall, Reva and Steve kept the wine flowing, and, you know, there’s something about a meal with your family that you can’t get anywhere else. Next week, Mom wants to make pizza, so we’ll see how that goes. I can say this: I will be sticking with regular salt (seriously, they don’t have any of that sea salt left anyway).

Oh, and for dessert, we broiled some pineapple. Ever had grilled pineapple? Same idea: just stick it in the broiler until it gets nice and charred. It’s a fruit that’s just totally unleashed when you get a nice char on it. Brush it wish some vegetable oil before you cook it. I never thought to do it under the broiler but I certainly will be doing it again.