Nova Clutch

RIP Macallan 18 Years Old

It happened last Thursday at our usual gathering over at Gina and Stefan's place. A low key evening as evenings go at this weekly event. We had already been through some difficult times over the past two weeks, the passing of Gina's grandmother, the Leeloo tumbling down the stairs at Garrison, head swelling and blackened eyes still visible. We needed a little something, something to remind us of the good things that life had brought to us all, and the fact that life had brought us all together.

But it was a sorrowed joy that we would poured that night. As Stefan crossed the room sheepishly, hand placed gently around Macallan's shoulder, there was a look on his face that bore the words he could not speak. It was almost over for Macallan, a friend that we had only been introduced to about this time last year. The kind of friend that you felt you knew forever, the kind of friend that made you feel content and omnipotent.

Why is it that the good ones always leave us too soon? Sounds trite and flippant I know, but when it hits home, this kind of sentiment hits hard and all to fast. Macallan, eighteen, gone. Some may find solace in saying, "Oh, you have such good memories, let's speak of the good times, Macallan would want it that way" or "Don't worry, there will be others, 10's become 12's and 12's become 18's", but we all know that it doesn't happen in a sherry oaken world .

So now Macallan, I walk away from the empty vessel knowing that your ghost has crossed over the River Speywill to walk the Easter Elchiesonly with kin that has come and gone before you. We sing your praise, a song with no regret, no what ifs, only longing and memory that teases the palate and warms the heart. Good bye Macallan 18, so young, so old, so good.

Nigella Lawson's Nutella Cake

This isn't as disgusting as it sounds. Actually, it's really rather good. Ground up hazelnuts replace any flour, so the result is a rich but light, very chocolatey, very hazelnutty cake. And there's a whole jar of Nutella in it. You can't go wrong with that.

Download 20080626_dess_nutellacake.pdf

Homemade baguettes

I've been practicing, not only for those tomato sandwiches of summer, but for Dan's birthday – a sandwich dinner, complete with homemade bread. Quite an audacious commitment for someone that has never made bread before.

But I was determined. I mean how difficult could it be? Well, I've learned that bread making is a craft. It takes nurturing, patience and practice. And patience is a virtue I was not born with. Hey, I could have worse faults. And I seem to have the nurturing and practicing down.

I had recommended the book Dough to my old roommate Charlie who lives across the pond and works in the same office space on Flood Street that I used to work in, all those years ago. His glowing reports (and instant messaged instructions) made me have a go. I can't tell you how rewarding it was.

I didn't cook the first batch for long enough and didn't have enough mist in the oven for a good, crusty crust. With amendments, the second batch tasted like baguettes "from a bakery" (quote). Result! Those skinny jeans are well and truly out of the window.

Click on for the sandwich menu. I'm also working on getting the recipe into "American" form (volume as opposed to weight, although weight may be better with something as precise as bread making).

Tomato Sandwich Dreams

As if they knew the official start of summer began must a mere four days ago, our little tomato plants have decided to kick into a high gear growth spurt that is producing strong vines, and yes, flowers! Encouraged by almost daily rain showers, diligent watering and the warmth of the Brooklyn sun, these little babies will be churning out lovely lunchtime treats in no time in another month. Damn. Anyway, by that time Natasha will have her baguette recipe down to a crusty science.

Until then I will be dreaming of full-flavored Cherokee Purples, sweet Sweeties, juicy Purple Calabash and the oh-so exotic Ceylon.

Homemade hamburger buns

Yup, you heard correctly. Now we can't take credit for this – it only entered my mind because this recipe was part of the pulled pork menu devised by Gourmet magazine. And we faithfully made each part of this menu (and might again on July 4th, if we can get up at 4am to start the pork), but the best thing was not the 10 hour meat, it was these buns. I'm serious. Amazing, buttery, light, fluffy – make these and you will never go Wonder again.

Here's the step-by-step:

Roll out your raised dough. Doesn't it look podgy? I couldn't resist poking it with my finger.

Use a cookie cutter to make the rounds:

Put each cut-out bun on a greased baking tray.

Bake for 14-20 minutes and there you go! These make me positively weak at the knees.

Stinky Brooklyn Weekend

As Natasha ran off this morning to contribute to a struggling American economy and the need to put food on our personal table, I was left here at my computer to contemplate our weekend. Or as voiced in a more simple directive from Natasha, "Isn't it about time you did a post for the blog?"

I sit here now, well into my second cup of tea, attempting to pen an ever-so-brief and compelling documentation of our weekend together, I begin to wonder why we write these posts at all. Where do we find the value in throwing out photos and snippets of our lives and experiences into the flotsam and jetsom of a self-important and indulgent sea of blogs? Are we modern day Samuel Pepys or pathetic individuals tossing out keywords and topics into the void in hopes of finding ourselves on the top five listing of someone's Google search, or at the receiving end of a reader's comment?

By creating content, do we create meaning for others, or even ourselves? By showing our person do we create friendships or only networks that offer our art and opinion as just another way of creating commerce? When does sharing become a labor, and not a love?

Anyway, here is something I did love this weekend, a treat well-deserving of my labors in the form of pictures from "Stink Fest 08" that took place yesterday on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. Plenty of New York City-style street fair crap, but also some rather good eats offered up by The JakeWalk on the second day of summer. Fish tacos, fried cheese curds, fresh coleslaw and pickles and even Raclette served up by a guy Jen thinks is hotter than the strange iron that heats up the cheese into a bubbling goo.

Darren's North Carolina Style BBQ Pulled Pork Birthday Bash

Far be it for me and and Natasha to give our friend Darren something that isn't pork related for his birthday. Last year it was Stéphane-Reynaud's Pork and Sons, along with The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson, hard cover of course. What can I say, the man loves his cloven-hoofed non-ruminating swine. And what does his devil-may-care dietary regimen desire most? Pulled pork, of course.

Thanks to a timely special grilling issue from our good friends at Gourmet magazine (yeah, we wish) we were provided with a number of recipes to create an amazing Sunday dinner featuring North Carolina style pulled pork with all the fixins'.

After a bit of a late night out with my friend Marc Dennis that went into Sunday morning, Natasha got me up at 8am to fire up the charcoal grill and get things moving. After ten hours of indirect grilling, basting and turning of the pork we had meat falling off the bone and a table full of freshly squeezed watermelonade with vodka and mint, okra and cornmeal fritters, fresh creamed corn and black eyed pea and bean salad. However, the pièce de résistance, or rebel yell in this case, was the pulled pork with a spicy hot pepper and vinegar sauce piled on a home made hamburger bun and topped with creamy coleslaw. It was all washed down with gushing words of praise from our birthday boy and beer from Boréale that I pick up on our trip back from last weeks Canadian Grand Prix.

We ended the evening with a wonderful red velvet cake that put us all over the edge and into a food coma. Hell, it was one long day of cooking and running around, but frankly my dear, we gave a damn. Happy birthday Darren.

Quoddy Boat Shoes

Quoddy Trail Moccasin Company is a family run business that was established in Maine in the early 1900's. They still use the same shoe making techniques that they did back in the day & each process is executed by hand using the finest most durable leather - this results in a really special shoe with lovely hand made feel - if you order directly from them there is a 4-6 week lead time as each pair is made to order.
Quoddy rightfully has been picked up by quite a few traditional & independent retailers in the UK, Japan & the USA, whilst also making shoes under the guise of various menswear labels.
I purchased this pair of Quoddy boat shoes from O'Connells clothing - a family owned traditional womens & menswear retailer, established in 1959 & based in Buffallo, New York. Although the shoes have a slightly hand made look, the construction is solid, with padding & arch support on the footbed & a crisp white non slip sole that contrasts nicely against the leather.

Au revoir Florent!

It was 1985, Reagan and Bush were in power, the yuppie scene was exploding, there were million dollar restaurants, and the “design of the year” was passé six months later. I was appalled by it all.

I decided to open a restaurant that if possible didn’t need any design; a place that was already in existence, and looked as though it had been, and would be, there forever. Somewhere that was not on a main street. If you tell people that you know a restaurant on, say, Broadway, they won’t really listen. But if you say that you know a restaurant that’s impossible to find, that‘s in the weirdest place, people will be curious: “What? Where?” The more difficult it is to find, the more a certain clientele will be tempted to go, and in another way it stops the wrong people coming. So it’s a way of having an invisible velvet rope with bouncers, and choosing your customers.

The diner that I found fulfilled all my dreams. It was unpretentious and out of the way, in an eccentric neighborhood—New York’s meat district (like les Halles, in Paris—though I left Paris because it was too pretentious, and not eccentric enough). The American diner was a perfect setting, because it made people feel very comfortable, in the same way that a bistro makes people feel very comfortable in Paris. The only thing I did to the place was put a banquette with a mirror along the wall, which is very French, so people facing the wall could see the rest of the world and not feel like they were in purgatory. I kept the counter, the Formica tables, the stools, the fluorescent lights and that was pretty much it.

The most important ingredient of a successful restaurant is that the food is good, and worth the price. the second most important thing is that the place has a feeling of being a home, an environment where you feel comfortable as soon as you set foot inside the door. here, it’s the decor and the politics. People know that Florent is a bastion of liberal ideas. It’s a place you know you’re not going to be judged, whatever race you are or sexual preferences you have. It’s a place where you go to take a bus to demonstrate in Washington. It’s the physical and the abstract place, the ideas behind it, the mirth and the glow. Some restaurants have it, and some don’t.

The graphic design very much fit with spreading the message of the restaurant’s environment. Tibor and I hit it off very well; he was smart, and good at pushing me. For a restaurant my size the amount of advertising that was done was absurd. I was M&Co’s wild account and in return we fed them four days a week, from 1985 to 1993. Since then I’ve worked with other people but there has never been nothing like that relationship.

—Florent Morellet, from Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, edited by Peter Hall and Michael Bierut

We went to Florent last night to say goodbye to a place that not only represents history in many New Yorkers' lives, but one whose iconic design/food relationship stands true today, and outshines a lot of the work I see still. At the counter we sang our hearts out with the waiters to Spandau Ballet, ate our chocolate mousses and stumbled out, a little drunk, one last time. New York is steadily becoming like London – there's no room for the small institutions that make up a city's fabric and history. As Muji, Topshop, Mango and Zara take over Broadway, our city center is becoming a mirror image of our European counterpart. First CBGB's, now Florent, what's next before we lose our character entirely?

Albam Carpenter Shirt

Our friend Tommy told me about Albam sometime last year & I finally got round to ordering some pieces from them a few weeks ago. A British company with a shop on Beak Street in London, their philosophy is to make simple clothes that can be worn everyday using great fabrics, whilst also striving to be affordable. Producing as much as they can in the UK, with shirts being made in Portugal & some of the fine knitwear in Italy. Obviously they have been approached by many other retailers wanting to sell their product but have so far stood firm as this would affect the retail price greatly.
I picked up 5 pieces, this black & white check shirt being my favorite. Made in Portugal from 100% cotton, the shirt has 2 chest pockets, reinforced elbows, a placket that runs half way down the front with contrasting white buttons & the collars are also a really nice crisp shape.

*If you fill out their questionnaire, they'll give you 20% off the first order, which is what tipped me over the edge.