GASTRONORMOUS

Friday in my office is referred to, IMO sort of offensively, as “Oriental Friday.” This designation for the entire day is in honor of the Friday lunch menu which is almost always Chinese, Japanese, or, more recently, Thai. The Japanese restaurant we order from uses poor quality ingredients (and always seems to get my order wrong), the Chinese place makes just plain miserable food, but the Thai food (from Thai Basil) is sublime. I had wished to end Working Through Lunch Week on a high note with the Thai food, but alas, forces beyond my control chose indeed to betray the “Oriental” tradition of every Friday before this one and order pizza instead. Pizza! On a Friday! Zut!

We ordered from a joint called Planet Pizza. Considering they have dedicated their entire world to the pizza pie, you’d think they would make a half decent one. But no. (I actually ordered a calzone today, but I am familiar enough with their pizza to make this assertion about their pie.)

FRIDAY’s lunch–Planet Pizza, Greenwich, CT
Calzone with broccoli and mushrooms

This calzone is gigantic. That you can say for it. The mushrooms are not canned. That also you can say for it. (An aside: I never understood the canned mushroom concept. If ever there were an H20-unfriendly vegetable, the mushroom is it. What genius thought it would be awesome to drown mushrooms in water and seal them in tin? Now, onward…) The cheese was sort of sour (not sure if it was the mozzarella or the ricotta). The bottom of the calzone was soggy. The crust was flavorless. The sauce on the side was–there is no other word for it–insipid. Sigh! I don’t know about you, but I am totally over Working Through Lunch Week.

Moral of this one-week story: If you are on a road trip and pass through Greenwich around lunchtime. I advise you to keep driving to the next city. There has to be better food on the horizon. I hate to be so negative on the town. It really is lovely here. Quaint streets. Some beautiful residential architecture. A great little museum. And the trees growing bags of cash are almost in bloom this time of year. It has got a lot of things going for it, it really does. Lunch delivery is just not one of them.

They might look like Ore-Ida steak fries (oh, who am I kidding), but in fact they are panisses, or chick pea flour fries. They look breathtakingly delicious. To add insult to injury, while we are sitting at our computers, David Lebovitz is eating these delicious morsels only when taking a break from frolicking in the ocean on the Cote d’Azur. C’est la vie! [photo from davidlebovitz.com]

The Kitchn has a great post on a topic close to my heart: cheap but good wine.

You know when you are on a long-distance flight and a few hours in you smell fresh cookies baking and you get really excited for a moment and then you realize that you are in coach, so you aren’t getting one? Well, the Amateur Gourmet makes his guests feel like they are in first class by preparing cookie dough before guests arrive and baking the cookies only after dinner is finished. Half (well, okay, maybe a quarter) of the enjoyment of a cookie is the aroma during baking, so this is a simple but ingenious way to offer dinner guests a memorable end to a meal.

Ruhlman has a post with a number of intersting food-related book reviews. I never thought I would be tempted to buy a book about knives, but An Edge in the Kitchen sounds informative to the point of being essential reading for food enthusiasts.

Wow. There is no introduction I can provide that can do justice to the sheer ambition and, well, let’s just say it, balls it takes to start a blog that consists of reviews of beef jerky, and nothing but reviews of beef jerky.