Author Archives: Shannon

What to Drink If You’re a Knight in Shining Armor

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knight

A fist pump for mead!

You can only watch so many rounds of the Armed Combat League Championships before you start thirsting for a flagon of mead. At least, that was my experience at my first (yes, first!) medieval festival last weekend. This was a totally free one (yes, free!) staged annually at Fort Tryon Park surrounding the reconstructed-monastery-turned-museum, the Cloisters. I cannot express how awesome it is that the city parks department actually goes to great lengths to put on a massive celebration for teenaged enthusiasts of swordplay, accomplished players of the lute and harp, and people who enjoy dressing their dogs up as princesses.

mead lineI did, however, think that the location in a public park would put a definite damper on my mead game. So imagine my surprise, when, after wending my way past armored contenders whacking each other with blunted axes, some slightly long-in-the-tooth Celtic dancers and a juggling performance by Joey the Jester, I came upon a special cordoned-off drinking area, where you could buy a ten-dollar beer or a glass of mead for eight. I think you already know, dear reader, which booth had the longer line.

If you’re a stickler for historical accuracy, this might well have been your favorite part of the festival. Continue reading →

Hello, Hunger, My Old Friend

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The Void

It is not easy to find a visual representation of a lack of something. That is why Sartre book covers are so boring.

I have always been, as they say, a good eater, but I never thought that it was at the core of my being. Now I’m not so sure.

Certainly I have had the flu many times before, and while it’s always awful, I’m usually so nauseous that I don’t have the time to pause and reflect upon my lack of appetite. What happened on Sunday and Monday was different. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach (though that came later—a virus, maybe, or a latent Mexican souvenir), but I simply wasn’t hungry. It was startling. I’m almost always hungry. In the abstract, that doesn’t sound so bad (it sounds more like an ideal diet), but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was completely unsettled by it. I wandered around aimlessly on my lunch break, confused by this sudden non-wanting. It was as though a thrumming engine that is always purring inside of me had dropped away. It was almost a relief when I started feeling ill; a presence rather than an absence.

Perhaps you find it silly or frivolous that I am equating a greedy desire for food with a cherished personality trait. But aren’t we all, to some extent, defined by our wants? They’re the heartbeats beneath our most vital decisions: this person or that person, Cleveland Indians or Cincinnati Reds, drama club or football team, crunchy or creamy. Continue reading →

Mushrooms of Mexico

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mushroomsBefore I saw a man in the middle of the woods cheerfully offering me a fungus called Balls of the Bull on the tip of a machete, I don’t think I’d ever said to myself, “Mexico…that’s that country with all the mushrooms.” But then I actually went to Mexico.

Oaxaca, nestled in the country’s southern mountain ranges, is a wonderland of culinary delicacies: cheese, chocolate, mescal, an entire rainbow spectrum of mole sauces. Plenty has been written about all of these foods, though, and I wasn’t sure I’d be inspired on our recent vacation to add another blog post to the literature. But something I wasn’t expecting to find at the markets around town were the heaps of dried chanterelles and big bags of the delectable corn fungus that Mexicans call huitlacoche. Soon we were in a pleasantly fungal state of mind, so when our friend Joel, whose family we were visiting, suggested we take a guided hike up into the mountains to mushroom hunt, we jumped at the chance.

Our point man for this excursion was a small sinewy man of indeterminate age named Ilario. I told him, in my shaky Spanish, that I liked his hat. He told me, in his shaky English, that he used to live in Indiana. And then we packed into the back of his pickup truck and headed for the hills.

Mushrooming is really less of a hunt and more of a mental game, a slow construction of invisible mushroom goggles in front of your eyes. Continue reading →

I’ll See Your Pesto and Raise You an Arugula

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ASA pesto Every garden, every growing season, has its bumper crops, those wildly successful experiments that you can’t anticipate ahead of time. (Just ask my mother, who has been frantically cooking, freezing and foisting tomatoes upon anyone who comes near her. Actually, maybe you shouldn’t ask her, or even get near her, unless you’re prepared to make gazpacho.) In our household, it’s arugula that keeps growing and growing, almost faster than we can use it. So, to the rescue, comes one of our favorite new easy dinners: arugula pesto.

A delicious pesto is not the territory of basil alone. It’s true that you could substitute arugula for basil in the most familiar of pesto recipes (pine nuts, garlic, parmesan), but why stop there? In fact, pesto means paste, so you should feel free add any manner of deliciousness, blend it to a paste and call it pesto. I’ve come up with a couple of variations to get you started.

A quick word on measurements: one of the real pleasures of pesto is that you just keep dropping things into the food processor until you taste it and become convinced that you are a culinary genius. Far be it from me to rob you of that magical experience. So I’ll give you some very general guidelines for enough pesto for two big portions of pasta, but really, the best thing to do is to taste it frequently throughout until you feel like eating big gobs of it with a spoon. Then you’re done.

A.S.A Pesto (Arugula, Sun-dried Tomatoes, Asiago) Continue reading →

Happy National Farmers Market Week! August 2-8

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taco trio

Squash and okra and mushrooms, oh my!

That’s right, everybody, it’s time for a holiday you probably didn’t know existed but won’t mind celebrating. After all, why shouldn’t we give some props to farmers markets, which bring fresh, healthy, local food to cities, where lots of people need and want it? And if you’re wondering how exactly to celebrate, I’ve got some suggestions.

Why not try out a market you’ve never been to before? This past Sunday, I visited my friend Mignon in D.C. and we hit up the DuPont Circle farmers market, a first trip for both of us. The wealth of samples won me over immediately. It reminded me of when my grandma and I used to form entire lunches out of the samples at Sam’s Club, except here it was oh-so-fresh peaches and cubes of artisan cheese. As if that wasn’t enough, we also indulged in the taco trio at the Chaia booth. Summer squash with dill sauce and goat cheese in a hot-off-the-griddle tortilla? Yes, please! Okay, sure, I was so in love with the market that I almost missed my bus, but if you told me I’d have to sprint through Union Station every time I ate one of those tacos, my decision would remain unchanged. Continue reading →

You’re a Star, Green Bean: Loubieh B’Zeit

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loubieh2Eggplant has eggplant parmesan. Spinach has spanakopita. Even the humble cabbage has cabbage rolls. But green beans too often get cast in only a supporting  role, shuffled off into perpetual side dish territory. And that’s too bad, since beautiful green beans are pouring in these days, from both our CSA and our own garden.

Luckily, there’s a delicious Lebanese dish that gives green beans their moment in the spotlight. It’s called loubieh b’zeit, and you can find many, many versions of it (and almost as many different spellings) on the ol’ Internet.  I used some combination of them to come up with my own. Most recipes call for Lebanese Seven Spice, but if that seems way too exotic for your neighborhood grocery, you can make a pretty good simulacrum from spices that are probably already in your cupboard: equal parts black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, allspice and coriander, all ground up together. (I think the real thing has fenugreek, but this will get you pretty close.)

Another great thing about this dish is that it’s often served cold or room temperature as a mezze, which means it’s practically begging to be a leftover. Stuff some the next day in a pita with some tzatziki sauce and you’ve got yourself a mean sandwich. And you know how I feel about sandwiches.

Loubieh B’Zeit Continue reading →

Shannon’s Guide to NYC’s Best Vegetarian Sandwiches

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parisi

The greasy paper, picnic table majesty of a Parisi sandwich

Recently, I went to a Volume 1 Brooklyn event celebrating the launch of their sandwich-themed essay collection. It’s not hard to surmise why I attended. Just about everyone in the audience had a deep love of sandwiches; you could see it in their eyes. And while I had no complaints about the quality of the writing, I was underwhelmed by the quality of the sandwiches discussed. It felt a little like a group therapy session for those suffering from sandwich guilt, finally airing their dirty secrets about Arby’s, Subway and White Castle.

People! You live in New York City, a veritable cornucopia of beautiful sandwiches! I am a vegetarian, so a large percentage of these sandwiches fall outside of my purview, and STILL I can list a number of sandwiches that are absolutely-cannot-miss experiences. In fact, I think I will do just that.

Parisi Bakery, Little Italy: Early in our relationship, I was reading a manuscript by Jason that had an extended sandwich-eating scene. My comment in the margins was something like, “I don’t really see how this scene moves the plot along,” and he sheepishly admitted that he wrote it mostly because he wanted to describe a Parisi sandwich. Now that I’ve had them, I know why. Parisi is the most old school of Italian bakeries, and when they pile their fresh rolls with loads of fresh mozzarella, pesto, pepperoncini and just about any other topping your heart desires, all for about eight or nine bucks…marone! Now that’s a sandwich.

Noodle Bar, West Village: Most people wouldn’t go searching for sandwiches at a spot that specializes in a very different kind of food, but I can’t get enough of the vegetarian sau bien at this place. Continue reading →

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kohlrabi?

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kohlrabi

It kind of resembles a Muppet, which is another reason to like it.

I hope that when you read that title, you sang it in full-lunged Sound of Music style. But if you Google “kohlrabi” and see the articles that pop up, you may be convinced that this vegetable is even more trouble than a certain spirited chanteuse/nun. No one quite seems to know what to do with the rather starchy, fibrous outcast cousin of the cabbage family.  Should you cut it up and dress it like a salad? Grate it and fry it into fritters? Steam it and puree it into some kind of vichyssoise-like soup?

I am typically too lazy to blend or fry much of anything, so when a couple kohlrabi landed in our CSA haul, I went looking for a different solution. Amidst the online kohlrabi hand-wringing, I found a few sites that mentioned that it’s often used in Indian cooking and pairs well with Indian spices. This struck me as odd, since I have never seen kohlrabi on the menu of any Indian restaurant, nor did I confront it during my very brief visit to India. But maybe the Indian restaurateurs are hiding this delicacy from Western customers, certain that their palates can never fully appreciate the full magic of the kohlrabi. Anyway, it was worth a shot.

curried kohlrabiSo I made up the following kohlrabi recipe, and I have to say that kohlrabi does pair well with Indian spices. I used half pav bhaji masala and half chaat masala, but use whatever mix you can get your hands on, and it will probably turn out just fine. And don’t worry, all you kohlrabi purists out there: the spiciness does not cover up the essential cabbagey complexity. Problem solved.

Curried Kohlrabi and Lentils Continue reading →

Farmer Dwight’s Garden Remedies

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dwight gardenMy father, in between maintaining a grueling pickleball schedule and winning a silver kayaking medal in the Ohio Senior Olympics (Jason: “Wait, there’s actually one person over sixty-five who can beat him?”), manages to grow a pretty bangin’ garden. His zucchini look like zeppelins; his cabbages inspire envy. And if you lay a gardening quandary on Farmer Dwight, he’s quick to come up with a homespun solution. Here, straight from his lips, are some answers to your most pressing vegetable questions:

One: Hungry Critters. This one is the bane of just about every gardener I know, including Jason earlier this season. Farmer Dwight’s first recommendation is to build a better fence. But if you’re in a community garden and you don’t have that luxury, here’s another answer: HAIR! “Barbers just have bags of that stuff lying around,” Farmer Dwight says. So you go to your nearest barber, obtain a bag of hair clippings, and scatter them around the vegetables while trying not to feel like too much of a serial killer. This works because animals don’t like the human scent. Some say that putting little pieces of Irish Spring soap in the garden achieves the same effect, but soap is harder to style into a bouffant.

Hair will work great for little animals, but the small print is that you might need to get even sneakier for deer (who scoff at your hair, collecting it and reassembling it into jaunty wigs that they wear while taunting you). Continue reading →

Chicago: The Culinary Nostalgia Tour

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tapas

Hello again, beautiful.

Which was more essential: Tapas Barcelona or Dave’s Italian Kitchen? What had happened to Giordano’s? And above all, what was the maximum number of meals I could squeeze into a forty-eight-hour period? It was questions like these that tormented me as I worked and reworked our tight schedule.

As some readers may already know, I spent a handful of formative years in Chicago and have had reason to travel there for work lately. But Jason hadn’t been there for many years and he’d never been there with me, which meant that his consumption of cheese in the Windy City was sorely lacking. He decided to join me there for a weekend, but immediately after the plane ticket was purchased, the nail biting began—how to fit six glorious years worth of high-metabolism memories into a single weekend? Tough decisions had to be made. In the end, though, I think I did a good job of picking places that can’t be matched anywhere else (yes, even NYC). Here are a few highlights for the next time you’re in the neighborhood.

Al’s Deli: Yes, I know that “deli” is in the name, but that description doesn’t quite capture the magic of the place. It made me feel oddly at peace when I saw that the two aging brothers who run this place were still at it. One nervously takes the orders; the other, almost invisible to the customers, diligently makes the impeccable sandwiches. We got a Gruyere and a Jarlsberg and took them to a picnic table at a nearby lighthouse. I was so enchanted I forgot to take picture. Continue reading →