Shrinking Violet: Crash Diet
When I realized that I'd paid $0.75 more for the Shake Burger than the Cheeseburger because the Shake Burger comes with a leaf of lettuce and a single slice of tomato, the homesickness kicked in big time. All those trips to the Met on Henry, or the corner stores on Court while trying to avoid the monstrosity of (non-union) expiation marketing monolith Whole Foods were getting me down. When people are telling me, "the good stuff is in Red Hook," lord knows what to think. Besides "I need to get my ass to Red Hook tomorrow," of course.
You see, where I'm from, lettuce and tomatoes went scampering under the tub when I'd flick the lights on. I brushed my teeth with stinky cheese piped onto crusty bread, and rinsed with strong, fresh, bitter coffee. The dust which settled on my windowsill from the Muni buses idling below was fennel pollen. Matsutake mushrooms grew from the bathmat. And the gutters of Market Street were regularly splashed with lavender honey.
Meanwhile, New York is all, "Try our cupcakes!"
Read more...I know there is good food to be had for a price around town. And one can subsist on falafel, bagels, pizza and beer alone for years, which I've verified through careful field experiments. Multiply the unnecessary complications imposed on cupcakes by a few orders of magnitude, and you'll approximate the difficulty of obtaining actual nutrition in New York.
If I've been down on cupcakes here in the past, I admit that it's probably just my general tendency to be the crab in the bucket consistently foiling the escape attempts of the more optimistic crabs (I blame my time in Seattle, where the crab is fucking delicious). And like any of my perverse obsessions, offhand critical remarks are just an early sign that the subject fascinates me.
The most interesting thing I've done over the last two days is trade avant-garde cupcake ideas with a leading expert on the American cultural cupcake landscape. Honestly, I haven't been able to get any real work done. Concepts have included everything from a twist on tradition to a sweet-spicy or even savory cupcake, with in-depth analysis of lemon over orange cake base and whether there's a place for bacon grease and gourmet chocolate, together, in the hallowed "stunt cupcake" pantheon.
A fortune could lie in frozen, microwaveable CupQuiches® (or possibly QuickCakes® -- less frenchy), a breakfast-to-go treat that's a corn muffin with a creamy scrambled egg center, a cheesy "frosting" and your choice of bacon or sausage sprinkled on top. There'd even be a "spicy jalapeño" version (available regionally). Thomas Keller's gone frozen food, mayhaps I could get an endorsement from Anthony Bourdain for a line featuring offal goodness?
See, I'm not immune to pouring my hopes and dreams into a ruffled paper cup and baking for thirty minutes at 325. Even if people heed the divine wisdom of Ed Levine and start curing meats and molding cheeses instead of whipping batter, New York will still suffer from a lack of good, abundant greenstuffs. And the only cure for that kind of culinary constipation is to embrace that inner Babylon and start building the Hanging Gardens 2.0.
You see, where I'm from, lettuce and tomatoes went scampering under the tub when I'd flick the lights on. I brushed my teeth with stinky cheese piped onto crusty bread, and rinsed with strong, fresh, bitter coffee. The dust which settled on my windowsill from the Muni buses idling below was fennel pollen. Matsutake mushrooms grew from the bathmat. And the gutters of Market Street were regularly splashed with lavender honey.
Meanwhile, New York is all, "Try our cupcakes!"
Read more...I know there is good food to be had for a price around town. And one can subsist on falafel, bagels, pizza and beer alone for years, which I've verified through careful field experiments. Multiply the unnecessary complications imposed on cupcakes by a few orders of magnitude, and you'll approximate the difficulty of obtaining actual nutrition in New York.
If I've been down on cupcakes here in the past, I admit that it's probably just my general tendency to be the crab in the bucket consistently foiling the escape attempts of the more optimistic crabs (I blame my time in Seattle, where the crab is fucking delicious). And like any of my perverse obsessions, offhand critical remarks are just an early sign that the subject fascinates me.
The most interesting thing I've done over the last two days is trade avant-garde cupcake ideas with a leading expert on the American cultural cupcake landscape. Honestly, I haven't been able to get any real work done. Concepts have included everything from a twist on tradition to a sweet-spicy or even savory cupcake, with in-depth analysis of lemon over orange cake base and whether there's a place for bacon grease and gourmet chocolate, together, in the hallowed "stunt cupcake" pantheon.
A fortune could lie in frozen, microwaveable CupQuiches® (or possibly QuickCakes® -- less frenchy), a breakfast-to-go treat that's a corn muffin with a creamy scrambled egg center, a cheesy "frosting" and your choice of bacon or sausage sprinkled on top. There'd even be a "spicy jalapeño" version (available regionally). Thomas Keller's gone frozen food, mayhaps I could get an endorsement from Anthony Bourdain for a line featuring offal goodness?
See, I'm not immune to pouring my hopes and dreams into a ruffled paper cup and baking for thirty minutes at 325. Even if people heed the divine wisdom of Ed Levine and start curing meats and molding cheeses instead of whipping batter, New York will still suffer from a lack of good, abundant greenstuffs. And the only cure for that kind of culinary constipation is to embrace that inner Babylon and start building the Hanging Gardens 2.0.
