food

I’d gotten it in my head I was going to make same salsa fresca with a variety of heirloom tomatoes. This was something I hadn’t really delved into much due to the limited availability of such in my old digs. But, a few months ago I got some crazy heirloom tomatoes as part of a friend’s CSA that we covered while they were out of town. They were the best tomatoes I’d ever had in my life. I’m very lucky to have a very good (if small) and quite affordable (compared to several of the others nearby) farmers market just a mile from my house every Friday. On this last visit I discovered a vendor I’d never noticed before. When I got to Frank Huguenard’s Bountiful Garden stand, I was pretty sure this was the place to get my tomatoes. Frank is a tall and enthusiastic individual who seemed to be creating fresh mountains of salsa at a furious rate behind his booth that was covered with dozens of tomatoes-no two alike-and a large, inviting bowl of salsa mexicana to sample. It was incredibly good stuff with an astoundingly complex flavor. When I asked how many different styles of tomato he used he said, “oh about 30 or 40″. Wow. Surprisingly, when asked how long he’d been making salsa, he told me that the first time was only a couple weeks ago. I guess he had some unexpected surplus then.

I should mention, Frank is a man with a mission. All money received goes directly to disaster relief efforts. More info on the Bountiful Garden site.

So, yeah, two days later (and still photographing things like t-shirts and swords in the garage, so, therefore still all set up with the lights) I started washing and plucking and slicing and dicing and mixing and making all kinds of a mess. Unlike the peanuts from the other day, these taste as good as they look.

The raw ingredients

plucked and washed

Pico de Gallo

Guacamole

Hot out of the oven. Conveniently, I was already set up with the lights and everything to make it look so pretty.

Homemade dough, sauce and mozzarella. A pretty good Neapolitan. Food still is the best thing to eat when you’re hungry.

I’m still trying to figure out what Queens of the Stone Age have to do with Slow Food and why they were on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations tonight… but I am much more excited about Tuesday night’s debut on the Sundance Channel of the film Strange Culture. I’ve been following the strange and tragic case of Steve Kurtz pretty much since day one and have tried to be an outspoken supporter of his case in my limited ability. If you get the channel, I urge you to tune in tomorrow night at 9:30pm. Here’s the description from the Sundance site:

What does it take to fall under suspicion as a terrorist in contemporary America? Experimental filmmaker and artist Lynn Hershman Leeson (CONCEIVING ADA) tells the disturbing Kafkaesque story of Steve Kurtz, a conceptual artist/college professor who was suspected of bioterrorism after FBI agents found harmless microbes in his house. Breaking from documentary convention, Hershman Leeson uses comic strips and actors (Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan and Peter Coyote) to tell the tale. “A scary testament to the power of fear” — Seattle Times.

The details are a bit more bizarre and disturbing. Read the background at the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund site. The American public is only just starting to wake up to the abuses perpetrated since 9/11. The recent revelation of the destruction of torture videotape documentation by the C.I.A. (New York Times story - registration required) and the condemnation of this by Senator Edward Kennedy has set this issue in fresh relief, but the case of Professor Kurtz… so much closer to home… should have the resonance many people need to start giving a shit about the abuses being perpetrated on U.S. citizens in the name of our security.

We were going to eat out tonight… after a trip to the book store… So… totally creeped out by the recent article in Harpers about toxic chemicals in your blood and a report on Trans fat that I read… I ventured out with the rest of the fam… and, even though it was a few more miles drive, I just had to take us to Knoxville’s La Costa, which promised a dedication to local and organic ingredients, and, as learned in many past brunch visits was pretty damn good. So… we’re sitting down and going over the menu. I look up and make eye contact with an incredibly tall person, who was leaving the restroom. I asked my wife if she’d noticed him. “Yeah, that’s the guy who asked them to bring in an extra table from outside”. Oh… did, uh, he have an English accent? So, for the length of our meal I marveled that Stephen Fry was inexplicably in Knoxville… eating dinner… just a few tables down from us. Jeeves. The voice of the Harry Potter books. The voice of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The librarian in MirrorMask. Deitrich in V for Vendetta. And Lord Snot in the Young Ones!

How? Why? In Knoxville, Tennessee?

I pretty much never ask for autographs. I asked Jack Kirby for his once. I absolutely never pose for pictures with celebs I meet. But this was Stephen Fry. The smartest man in Britain. And there he was in Knoxville. He graciously posed with us (It took two takes, maybe if we’d gone for three little boy and me might have looked better. This is seriously the worst photo of him ever), we gabbed a bit about his project of visiting all 50 states. I almost wished he was going somewhere next other than Savannah (he’d never been), so that I didn’t have to gush so much about how pretty it is. (It really is, and I felt for the presumably Knoxvillian folk he was dining with).

It’s no joke that Stephen Fry is smarter that the rest of us, and he has recently started doing a blog. You should read it. He seemed genuinely surprised that I even knew he did such a thing.

Managed to forget about these in my previous posts about quality Scarfing Material and The Best Leather You’ll Ever Know… But, if, for whatever reason, you happen to read this and be in these cities, then you’ll know of a reliable place to eat some good food. OK?

This first one is super useful, as it’s in a less fashionable part of Portland (I guess… I really don’t know), and there is serious danger here of being Lead Down The Wrong Path (i.e., going to what might seem to be a friendly neighborhood pub, or reliable chainraunt). In my limited understanding of the PDX, this place is in the North… Pizza A Go Go had some good pie, a great patio and the kind of friendly surly staff you want out of a pizza joint. If you were up in that part of town and didn’t know otherwise, you might easily skip them. Don’t ask for a salad if they seem even slightly busy, but, if not, I am told they are the absolute shit, and come in insane portions.

If you go to Cleveland, and it is the weekend, you have to get brunch at Fat Fish Blue. It is simply the absolute best. As in, ‘you fucking died and went to goddamn brunch heaven’ good.

I spend too much time on the road. Long crazy drives… It’s way too easy to exist on Combos and Slim Jims on the 12-odd hour drive between Knoxville and Brooklyn (um… yes… I’m in one or the other). Otherwise there’s the too many hours to get to a karate tournament somewhere (yes, also true…) You really have to force yourself sometimes to take a decent break to get some good eats. Chains/franchises are to be avoided at all costs (of course). There’s been some odd ones, like a jews-for-jesus bagel shop in the middle of Virginia.

Lately, tho, I’ve become obsessed with finding really good pizza. In Brooklyn I’m a little spoiled for this… I’ve waited the many long minutes (sometimes more than an hour) for a pie at Grimaldi’s (by the Brooklyn Bridge) or Totonno’s (Coney Island). If you need to ask… yes, it is worth it. I haven’t actually been inside Di Fara yet to order a pie, but I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.

One great find, pretty late at night, on the long drive up to Brooklyn was a little place called Luigi’s in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Harrisonburg is about half way between Knoxville and Brooklyn, but if you’re driving that long ribbon of highway, the I-81, it’s a good place to hit. Fine beer selection, excellent pizza, friendly staff and patrons. Downtown Harrisonburg was disturbingly similar to my home town of Schenectady, New York. A place that had been abandoned by the southern migration of industrialization some time in the 60s or 70s. I got involved in a totally out-of-left field discussion while there about Madonna’s legal ties upon the Bad Brains… Apparently (some super-light Google research revealed) she did actually own their name at one time. I dunno. I really don’t care. I just know that beer and pizza never tasted so good before catching a few Z’s before the next day’s (what proved to be excessively hellish) drive.

A couple of weeks later, I’m fleeing the Hartford/Springfield Airport (sorry… Bradley), headed for the Mohegan Sun Casino for another Karate tournament. Too hungry to cope in the rental, I randomly pulled off of CT Rte. 2 into the outskirts of Glastonbury, Conneticut. There were no music festivals, but there was a great tag sale (more on that in later posts), and a tip to try out Giovanni’s Brick Oven Pizzeria… which we did, and it was well worth the trip.

A footnote or aside… There is a web site called Slice, that is for the serious pizza hound, that has been a pretty good guide in my search for some good pie. I could never rise to the level of their stringent review criteria… and certainly won’t here… but if you are mad for that perfect slice, you might want to see them for guidance.

In Closing. There is good food, it’s usually not in the retailtainment hubs that have polluted this country. They are off to the side, in strange locals you might not normally visit. Restauranteering is possibly second only to bookselling for eccentric professions of the most benefit to the greater society, and it really is worth your extra effort to seek out and support such establishments.