Best Food Writing 2010 (24 page)

The Tasting

The moment of truth took place on Tuesday, January 23, 2007. At first sip, Moxie is reminiscent of a weak root beer. Not bad, but not memorable either. Then the bitterness takes hold. Like medicine. Like the tar on a telephone pole. Like the sludge at the bottom of the barrel that you’re supposed to just throw away. But Moxie is a complex beast, and once the initial shock wears away, the bitterness mellows, and one is left with a bittersweet taste that isn’t so bad and may even qualify as, dare I say it . . . pleasant. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, however, I was eager to get a more representative sample than just myself, so I decided to share a little ice-cold Moxie with my friends. Here are a few opinions:

DON: “It was like nothing I have ever sipped before. That says it all. It was OK, but that aftertaste was . . . ” [he trails off here]

LAURA: “BLECH!”

JEFF: “Since I was a young man, I’ve tried to live my life the ‘right’ way, set my goals and life expectations on the straight and narrow path. Moxie was not the ‘right’ way.”

PHILIP: “It’s different, but I didn’t think it was too bitter. I’d definitely buy a case occasionally if they sold it around here.”

ELIZABETH: “It was awful. At first, you’re like, this is fine, but then the aftertaste kicks in.”

MATT: “I like the bitterness. It’s good.”

VICTORIA: “I don’t think I’ll be drinking the rest of this.”

Overall, Moxie wasn’t the biggest hit in my study group, but comparisons with battery acid and railroad ties may not be quite fair either; some of the group, after all, did enjoy it. My final assessment, therefore, is that Moxie is a soda, and, like other sodas, some people like the taste and some people don’t. The cult of Moxie, however, isn’t so much about taste as it is about history and place. In other words, drinking a soda isn’t just about quenching your thirst and getting a caffeine fix. Just as much as an accent, what a person drinks is a badge of identity. For someone raised on it, sipping a Moxie is a symbolic act, a performance of one’s “Maine-ness.” It’s the Louisianian sucking the head of a crawfish. The debate over the relative merits of Memphis, Texas, and Carolina barbecues. The Tennessean passing on an iced tea in a chain restaurant because it’s not “sweet tea.” I suspect that my trades with these companies were so satisfying because, in addition to swapping Goo Goo for Moxie, sweet for bitter, they were an exchange of two cultures and a recognition that these traditions have an intrinsic value that transcends the monetary values attached to a soda and a candy bar. Paula and Justin had mailed me a small piece of New England, I had offered a taste of my own heritage, and we had found the deal mutually agreeable.

Home Cooking

POTLUCKY

By Sam Sifton From
The New York Times Magazine

Recently anointed as the
Times
’ new chief restaurant critic, Sam Sifton also contributes this occasional food column for the Sunday magazine section—a frank, funny, down-to-earth dissection of one recipe and how to tweak it.

I
was invited to cook dinner for Nora Ephron. This is what happens if you hang around New York long enough, writing about food and editing about movies. You end up at ground zero. The invitation was to a potluck. Guests were meant to bring food inspired by Ephron’s career or by the woman herself. It was essentially high-stakes food charades. My draw was meatloaf. Ruh-roh.

Ephron is famous for her meatloaf, a version of which is on the menu of Graydon Carter’s new restaurant and clubhouse, the Monkey Bar. And cooking plays no small role in her new film, “Julie & Julia,” which opens on Aug. 7. The movie, which Ephron wrote and directed, is an adaptation of Julia Child’s memoir of learning to cook in France and then writing “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”—as well as of Julie Powell’s memoir of learning to cook in Queens and then blogging her way through every recipe in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

Opinions about movies are for film critics; I hazard them at great personal risk. (I work closely with film critics.) But I can say that the food in “Julie & Julia” is beautiful. (Can’t I?) The aesthetic of Ephron’s sole is perfect. She may be to food as Scorsese is to bar fights. Just thinking about cooking for her, I felt sick and wondered if bringing a few bottles of cold Pellegrino or Laurent-Perrier Champagne would do instead. I’ve read widely in the literature. Nora Ephron loves Champagne.

But I got down to cooking. I started to grind. What was borne out by my experience I pass along as gospel: Do not make Nora Ephron’s meatloaf for Nora Ephron. This is a sucker’s play and remains true even if you’re cooking for someone’s aunt on a Saturday night in Fort Myers, Fla.: Don’t make a person’s signature recipe for that person, ever. Instead, take it as a starting point. Move the ball along.

And practice. A couple of years ago, Ruth Reichl edited a huge cookbook that was built out of the recipe files of
Gourmet
, the magazine she has edited since stepping down as the restaurant critic of
The New York Times
in 1999. (How’d you like to cook eggs for her?) In it is a meatloaf recipe that combines beef and veal, pancetta and Parmesan, brightened with lemon zest and white wine. It’s a luxurious feed, and I’d run versions through the oven before deciding to take it on the road.

I made one additional change for Ephron. Instead of chopping a fine dice of pancetta as I generally do, I went to the store and asked for thin-sliced pancetta that I would roll and cut into chiffonade at home. Pancetta-studded meatloaf is delicious, of course. But I wanted the bacon really to melt into the meats; I was aiming for an ethereal loaf.

And I was working fast. So it wasn’t until the meatloaf came out of the oven that I realized the nice fellow who was manning the meat slicer at my local market was also a dangerous and psychotic meal killer who had not removed the plastic wrap from the pancetta before slicing it into paper-thin rounds. I’d cut these rounds into fine ribbons that had cooked into the meat perfectly, except for the plastic parts, which didn’t melt into the meat at all. There was a kind of stubble on my finished loaf—plastic pin bones.

I had two hours until dinner with Ephron. I felt a blaze of panic, the sort that awakens you from that dream in which you’re forced to take an exam in a subject you’ve never studied. I stared at the fuzzy meatloaf for 10 seconds. Then I fed it to the children and started all over again. (It’s all right. I gave them each a set of tweezers for the plastic. It was like a game to them.)

Two new meatloaves resulted from this challenge round of cooking. The
Gourmet
recipe, which I’d come to think of as fancy, was now unlucky, and I thought it wise to have a backup. So in addition to a new, nonplastic version of that, I cooked a huge meatball, drawn from a dish that Mark Ladner used to offer at Lupa, in Greenwich Village, before he went off to be the executive chef at Del Posto: turkey and Italian sausage, cut through with pepper flakes and rosemary, baked in a kind of soffrito.You could make the argument that it’s perhaps more beautiful as a dozen meatballs. But it’s a marvelous single loaf as well: a fine-textured, surprisingly light dinner that pairs excellently with sautéed greens and the smallest portion of fresh pasta in butter and mint.

With 30 minutes on the clock, I put my meats into serving pans and headed north to the Upper West Side, which is obviously where you’d have dinner with Nora Ephron if such a thing were on the docket.

“This is remarkable,” she said in the end, brightly. I went to the hostess’s study to enter the words in my notebook. She might just have easily given a small smile and patted me on the arm. That would have been devastating. But I don’t believe it was that close. These are both excellent dishes to serve friends, and they make for good leftovers. Add a salad, some decent bread, a lot of red wine. Sometimes New York is the greatest city in the world.

Fancy Meatloaf

Adapted from Gourmet.

Serves 6 to 8

½ loaf Italian bread, crust removed, torn into small pieces
(about 2 cups)
1 cup whole milk
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground veal
2 large eggs, scrambled
4 ounces thinly sliced pancetta, chopped
¾ cup grated Parmesan
1 bunch parsley, cleaned and finely chopped (about 1 cup)
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup butter
1 cup dry white wine.

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Soak the bread in the milk for 10 minutes.

2. Mix the beef, veal, eggs, pancetta, Parmesan, parsley and lemon zest in a large bowl. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Squeeze the bread to remove excess milk, then chop and add it to the meat. Mix gently until well combined, but do not overmix. Transfer onto a board and shape into a fine meatloaf, shy of a foot in length and 4 inches across. Loosely cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

3. Heat the oil and butter in a large, ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add the meatloaf and sear without moving it until it is browned, about 5 minutes. Carefully slide a spatula under the meatloaf, then gently use another spatula to help turn it and brown the second side, again without moving it for 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

4. Pour out all but 2 tablespoons of the fat, return the skillet to the stove and raise the heat to high. Add the wine and deglaze the pan, scraping up the browned bits stuck to it with a wooden spoon. Return the meatloaf to the skillet and then transfer to the oven, basting occasionally with the pan juices, until a meat thermometer inserted into the center of the loaf reads 150 degrees, about 25 minutes.

5. Transfer the meatloaf to a platter and let stand, tented with foil, 10 minutes. Slice, pour the pan juices over the top and serve.

Turkey Meatloaf

Adapted from Mark Ladner

Serves 6 to 8

8 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
Red pepper flakes
1 cup fresh bread crumbs of any provenance
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup whole milk
1 pound ground turkey
1 pound sweet Italian pork sausage, casing removed, crum-
bled
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces bacon, chopped
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, preferably San Marzano,
seeds removed
1 cup red wine
¼ bunch mint

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Combine 2/3 of the garlic, the rosemary, pepper flakes, bread crumbs and liberal amounts of salt and pepper. Add the milk and mix. Add the meats and mix once more to combine; don’t overmix. Transfer onto a board and shape into a fine meatloaf, about 9 inches long and 4 inches wide.

2. Place in a baking pan with high sides, drizzle with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and bake for 25 minutes, turning halfway through to brown evenly. Remove from the oven and reduce the heat to 325 degrees.

3. Meanwhile, fry the bacon in the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil until it starts to curl and its fat is rendered. Add the onions and remaining garlic, cooking until the onions are translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the tomatoes and wine and bring to a boil.

4. Pour the sauce over the meatloaf, cover tightly with foil and bake until a meat thermometer inserted at the center reads 150 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes.

5. Transfer the meatloaf to a platter and let stand, tented with foil, for 10 minutes. Cut into thick slices, spoon tomato sauce over the top and scatter with torn mint leaves.