GASTRONORMOUS

In these first crisp days of Fall, there is nothing more satisfying for dinner than pasta made using the last of this season’s tomatoes, roasted in the oven to eke out every last bit of sweetness.

I had planned on using plum tomatoes for this recipe, but when I got to the store, all they had were hothouse tomatoes from Holland and some grape tomatoes from the USA. I went for the grape tomatoes; I often find hothouse tomatoes to be tasteless, plus these were shipped so much farther. The grape tomatoes ended up working surprisingly well here.

In addition to being easy and scrumptious, this recipe is pretty recession-proof: the tomatoes aren’t too expensive, and everything else is probably already in your pantry. If you want to splurge on fresh herbs, or if you grow your own, go for it. But especially in roasting, I find dried herbs work perfectly well.

Roasted Grape Tomato Pasta

4-6 cloves garlic, sliced very thin
2 T olive oil
2 pints grape tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise
2 tsp dried rosemary, rubbed between your palms
1 tsp ground dried red pepper
1/2 tsp dried parsley flakes
1 tsp salt
more olive oil to finish

10 oz penne pasta

parmesan cheese, shredded, to taste

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Put garlic and oil in a 9×13 glass baking dish (using something along the lines of a pyrex dish, not a cookie sheet). Stir it around gently with a wooden spoon to ensure all the garlic slices are separated. Put this in the oven while you wash and slice the grape tomatoes. (I find the garlic needs a few more minutes cooking than the tomatoes do.) Take dish out of the oven and put tomatoes in, being sure to scrape any juices from the cutting board into the dish to (be careful, there might be splatter!). Add seasonings and stir it all up. Roast for 20 minutes. Toward the end of the roasting process check to see how dry the tomatoes are. If they haven’t given up much juice, add another splash of olive oil.

In the meantime, cook the pasta in salted water until barely al dente. Add the pasta and a ladleful of pasta water directly to the Pyrex dish. Stir to incorporate, and while you are at it, scrape up some of the caramelized bits sticking to the bottom of the baking dish.

Top with some shredded parmesan cheese and serve!

Serves 3 or 4.

Obama beats McCain! In a “hotly” contested battle, 60% of 7-11 coffee customers chose the Obama cup in their quadrennial 7-Election. You laugh, and sure there are no 7-11 stores in 20 of our 50 states, but the 7-Election has correctly predicted the results of the last two presidential elections (Bush cups beating Gore’s in 2000 by a mere 1%).

Oh. My. Gawd. Spicy white chocolate. I don’t fancy myself a baker or sweet-maker. I don’t own a food thermometer. But I need to try this recipe. Need to. Thanks, Food Mayhem!

“Chris Chen looks like the freakin’ Mona Lisa…” It almost dosn’t matter who Chris Chen is (but he’s the propieter fo the Dessert Truck if you must know), but that opener, paired with the photo, is priceless. According to this post by Midtown Lunch, the Dessert Truck shot an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay in Union Square this week. I used to not like Bobby Flay, but after watching him be so graciously annihilated episode after episode on this show, my admiration for him has grown. Just putting that out there.

Hey, have you heard about Vegetarian Restaurant Week? Nobody else has either. Apparently vegetarians aren’t good with marketing. But it ain’t over yet. You have until October 25th to dine green. [via Grub Street]

I bought a bottle of chenin blanc last week. I don’t know what possessed me. I am not a fan of wines that are sweet, as chenin blanc has a reputation for being. And I hadn’t had tried a chenin blanc in, I don’t even know how long. Years, maybe a decade. But it was great. Definitely off-dry, but not too sweet; incredibly fruity nose; full-bodied; and smooth. It was a very enjoyable white wine, though I felt almost ashamed to admit it. Chenin blanc just somehow conjures up the worst of ’80′s taste, doesn’t it? It feels mere steps from the insult to wine that is Bartles & Jaymes. I felt vindicated when I read Eric Asimov’s defense of the varietal. If the NY Times wine critic can like it, so can I. I suggest you celebrate the end of summer by popping Journey’s Greatest Hits into the 8-track and drinking some yourself.

The Hubs went out to walk the dog last Saturday morning and came back in carrying a big butternut squash. Before I could be all like, “wha…?” he explained that he had stopped by the farmer’s market, where he spotted the beaut’ and bought it on a whim. As he beamed at his purchase, I admit the corners of my mouth turned down just a tad.

I have mixed feelings about this vegetable. I mean, not this particular one, but in general. I love to eat butternut squash, but I loathe to cook it.  Most people, of course, have their vegetable banes. For many it is the onion or hot pepper, which can cause physical discomfort. For others it is mushrooms, which need to be cleaned finickily (no, that isn’t actually a word, but you know what I mean). For some others there are things like the celery root, which are so intimidating and ugly they look like no possible good can come of them. But for me, it is the butternut (and other hard-shelled) squash.

First, there is the death-defying process of cutting that sucker open: you need a huge sharp knife and all the brute force you can muster to cut through this gourd as it rolls around on your chopping board. Then you need to clean out the slimy seeds and stringy bits that refuse to detach from the squash meat. Then you need to peel it, and I will take this moment to remind you that the butternut is not only really thick-skinned, but also shaped like a giant peanut, factors which do not make for easy peeling. From there on, it isn’t too bad: roast it (or you could roast it in the skin, I suppose), sautée it, boil it in a soup…. But it is the prep that daunts me. That said, there is definitely a sense of accomplishment I experience after cooking this squash that I don’t get from cooking, say, zucchini.

And so I persevered…well, I procrastinated until Wednesday, when I persevered. I must have been feeling particularly plucky because I decided to make up a recipe, rather than follow a recipe from my cookbook library or from my favorite online recipe resource, Epicurious. Hubs called me on his way home to ask if I needed anything from the store. Put on the spot, I extemporaneously asked for fresh sage and blue cheese. My thought was to make a roasted butternut squash and sage pasta topped with crumbled blue cheese. Sounds delish, no?

I decided to cube the squash before roasting. This way it would roast faster, but also there would be a higher proportion of caramelization in each bite of squash in the dish. Half the squash made about 5 cups of cubes, which was enough, so I left the other half whole and decided to roast it to use some other day evening the road. I tossed the cubes with some fresh sage, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, which I thought would add more sticky, rich, sweetness without adding sugar. Then I roasted the heck out of it.

In the meantime, I changed my mind about the base of the dish, opting for red quinoa rather than pasta. I cooked that using vegetable broth rather than water to add a little more flavor, but otherwise cooked according to package directions.

About halfway through the roasting process, I basted the squash with some leftover vegetable stock (trying to recreate the effect this technique had on some great roasted vegetables the Hubs once made), and then added in some dried cranberries and pecans. When the squash was almost done, I tasted it to see if it needed salt. It didn’t (the broth provided enough), but I did grind a little black pepper over it.

Once the squash was done, I plated the quinoa, put some squash on top, then topped it all with some more fresh sage and a little sprinkling of blue cheese. The result of all this effort was a little…underwhelming. The flavors just didn’t work well together, unfortunately. In theory, they really should: earthy quinoa, sweet butternut squash, crunchy pecans, fresh sage, sharp, creamy blue cheese. It sounds like a winsome combination, but it just wasn’t. Sigh! I guess not every dish can be a winner.

A silver lining: the butternut squash on its own was truly delicious. With the sage, cranberries, and pecans, it tasted of the essence of the Thanksgiving meal. And then it dawned on me: this recipe (sans quinoa and cheese), mixed with cubed bread, would make an awesome stuffing!

This Aha! moment alone made the trouble of preparing and the near-mediocrity in eating this meal more than worth it. I am not cooking for Thanksgiving this year, but who says you have to wait until then to make stuffing? Look at me: I am actually inviting, indeed, hastening towards, a new butternut-squash cooking experience! Call me an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a steel-hard, peanut-shaped shell. Or: A hard (butter)nut to crack.

My fiancée Tara and I had planned a wonderful fall outing Saturday before last. We would bike over to Prospect Park, and then head over to the 10th anniversary Target First Saturday party at the Brooklyn Museum.

On the way over to the park, our stomachs insisted we take a detour. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was now nearing three o’clock. As I contemplated that eternal question, “Should I eat now and spoil my dinner?” Tara made an executive decision: we’d get some baguettes and soup for an impromptu picnic in the park.

As we closed in on Prospect Park, I scanned for options. There were some small bodegas that didn’t look like they would have the goods and some restaurants that mocked me with the smell of delicious—but slow—food. Luckily, when we hit 7th Ave and 13th street, I spotted our savior, Union Market.

Upon entering I was greeted with a gorgeous display of red ripe tomatoes, yellow corn and greens. A few steps further and I saw the most diverse offering of mushrooms I had ever seen in Brooklyn. Around the corner were dizzying towers of even more colorful and exotic food items.

I had clearly found a gourmand’s funhouse. I quickly lost Tara in the tight maze-like aisles of the market. Turning a right at a display of specialty oil, I found myself face to face with a trove of olives and other oil-cured delicacies, along with a cache of toothpicks. I am not an olive lover, but the sun-dried tomatoes beckoned. I speared one, popped it my mouth and was rewarded with a burst of intense sweetness. Yummy.

Union Market had more fantastic distractions from the task at hand. I next found mounds upon mounds of cheese, glorious cheese, which entranced me. A noise broke my reverie and I noticed the cheese monger, whistling to himself while cutting thick wedges from an enormous wheel of cheese. In front of the counter were samples of his wares: sharp parmesan slivers, and a creamy goat cheese spread on some fresh French bread. Before I knew it, cheese samples had also found their way into my mouth. I asked the man about the goat cheese. He helpfully stopped his work and retrieved a small package from the display.

“You like it? It’s on sale for $5.99.”

I thanked him, but declined the cheese; it wouldn’t last the hours before I returned home. Turning the corner, I found Tara plucking some gourmet potato chips out of a barrel.

“These are good,” she said as she fed me one.

We walked past a deli counter stocked with a tantalizing display of salads and prepared foods, and found two bubbling soup pots. I had my heart set on some clam chowder, but all they had was vegetable and chicken soups. Luckily, Union Market offers many non-soup, picnic-ready options. We decided upon some house made roasted red pepper hummus. I led Tara back through the maze, jostling customers and white-coated employees, in a quest to reach the fresh bread to go with it. Along the way, I was gracious enough to show Tara the samples she had missed.

We wanted the focaccia but felt it was too expensive for its size. So we grabbed a large round loaf of golden crusted bread and paid for our late-afternoon snack. Though at this point we almost didn’t need it–as we walked out of the store, I patted my sample-satisfied belly.

Though Union Market is a bit expensive for weekly trips to stock up on basic groceries, it is a great place to get gourmet items for special occasions at home or a picnic in the park. For those readers participating in the Brooklyn Making Strides walk this Sunday, which will be near this stretch of 7th Avenue, I encourage you to stop by and sample.

Note: Anyone interested in making donations to Making Strides and/or sponsoring my team, The Pink Crusaders, please visit pinkcrusaders.org or the team donation page. All donations go to the American Cancer Society, the nation’s largest source of private, nonprofit cancer research funds.

Union Market
402 7th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 499-4026

I love this unusual beautiful wooden wine rack. It is wall-mounted, so it is out of the way, allows for storage of six side-stored bottles of wine, and two shelves that display upright bottles. It reminds me in concept of the stainless steel IKEA rack we have to hold our wine, except this looks much more luxurious. It has a much more luxurious price, too. Maybe someday when we are buying expensive wine, we’ll buy a storage solution worthy of it. But putting bottles of three-buck Chuck on such a nice wine rack seems sort of ridiculous! [$160 at Greener Grass Design; $9.99 at IKEA]

Cake Man Raven is a store in my neighborhood that, more often than not, sells just one type of cake: red velvet. if you don’t like red velvet, you might as well walk on by. Their website actually lists several different cake flavors (and cookies, too), presumably for sale by special order, but when I asked the guy behind the counter at the shop if they ever were going to offer other flavors in the shop, he launched into a long-winded response ultimately saying that they have a hard time keeping red velvet in stock so they aren’t offering other flavors right now. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I mean, so you aren’t going to sell other flavors until the red velvet isn’t selling well? One flavor selling well doesn’t seem like it should preclude the sale of other flavors. I don’t have an MBA, and they have been in business for 8 years, so what do I know, maybe this makes business sense. I admit these complaints are self-serving—I am just desperate to try their other flavors after tasting the great red velvet.

In any case, the Hubs and I visited the shop and got a slice to go (they also offered cupcakes, but the frosting-to-cake ratio appeared higher in the slice, so we naturally went that direction). The slice was huge–more than enough for two. It was really decadent and delicious. The cake wasn’t terribly chocolately (red velvet is supposed to be chocolate, right?), but it almost didn’t matter because the frosting was the star. It was a fluffy, rich, slightly cream-cheesey frosting. It was truly spectacular. It didn’t have that weird artificial, mouth-coating, Crisco-ish texture that many frostings suffer from. the sweetness is cut a bit by the nuts, and also, ingeniously, the cake itself. You see, if you took a bite of cake on it’s own, sans frosting, it was a bit on the salty side, in a not unpleasant way. The cake had great texture, and wasn’t oily like some other red velvet cakes I have had, but really sings when combined with the frosting.

Overall, the cake was a winner. I just hope some day Cake Man Raven decides to grace the public with other flavors. Soon.

708-a Fulton St.
Brooklyn New York 11217
(718) 694-2253

I have previously reported on our window box’s bounty of two yellow tomatoes and two jalapeños. Well, we were terribly surprised recently, after a month of more or less neglecting the white-fly-and-aphid-ravaged plants, to find a late summer yield of a three, count-em, three(!), habañeros emerging! We have already picked one, a bit before its time (it was still pale celadon in color), and it had plenty of heat. We know this because the Hubs brazenly took a small bite of it–and paid the price. The part he didn’t chomp I minced fine and tossed it with some fresh tomatoes and green onions to make a lazy-man’s salsa to go on some burritos we made for dinner one night.

We have should have a few more days this week before the mercury falls below 70, so I will let the little hotties hang on until then. Stay tuned to find what fate awaits the two remaining peppers!

Last weekend we had dinner at Epoca, an Italian joint in our neighborhood that we had never been to before for no reason in particular. Based on that dining experience, I rue that we took so long to visit it, especially as it is superior to the other nearby Italian restaurants. It was a funky place with good service, delicious food, and a wacky owner to boot!

The delicious caprese salad (left) is conceived with a slight twist: the fresh mozzarella is smoked, and there is a sprinkling of dried oregano, and smoked paprika around the edge of the plate, along with the fresh basil. These departures from tradition provided a nice earthy edge to the bright tomatoes and seemed appropriate to the newly autumnal weather.

The spinach-ricotta ravioli (below) with a butter and sage sauce was another winner. The pasta was homemade and cooked al dente. The filling was fluffy and flavorful. I would have preferred a butter sauce that was less thick and creamy–this was almost like an oily cream sauce–a thinner sauce would allow the butter flavor to sing. But still, I can’t say we didn’t gobble the whole plate up!

In addition to the traditional Italian fare, Epoca also offers grilled specialties–from beef to mozzarella–served with a choice of a sauce and two sides. We had the calamari steaks, which on the plate resembled little legless calamari bodies, but were in fact actual large steaks that had been rolled and grilled. Frankly, not the most attractive dish, but it was delicious. The calamari was perfectly cooked, not at all tough as it can be if not cooked for the precisely correct amount of time. We chose the red wine sauce, which was good, though perhaps not the best choice to go with the calamari (for the record, the waiter had recommended the mint-lime sauce for this dish, but the Hubs doesn’t like mint in savory dishes–a fact I didn’t know until that moment. In addition to a good meal, our marriage grew through communication! Thanks, Epoca!). The sides of a salad and mashed potatoes were, due to their nature, nothing spectacular, but plenty good.

The wait service was pleasant and unobtrusive. Bread was brought, water was re-filled. We had a bottle of dry Lambrusco, and glasses were filled often enough, but not too often. (And by the way, I had never had this particular Lambrusco before and it was delicious. Look out for Toccacielo, Carafoli 2007 on your next visit to the wine store).

This wasn’t exactly part of the service, but the afore-mentioned wacky owner (I presumed him to be the owner, he was very proprietary) walked by once when I was quietly taking a close-up of my food and said, “Oh take a macro! I love macro!!” Later when I was struggling to take pictures of our entrees sans flash (so as not to disturb fellow diners), he appeared with a flashlight to shine over our table so that I could get good shots. I sort of appreciated it because I was able to get better pictures because of it, but also I was a little mortified because I was the entertainment in the restaurant for about 20 seconds. When I take photos at restaurants, I try to do it surreptitiously. I don’t like to call attention to myself or inconvenience other diners, and I can say that both of these things probably happened in that instance. But, it was entertaining anyway, and the owner was very gregarious and sweet about it. But next time, I think I’ll ask for a table in the farthest corner of the restaurant.

Epoca Ristorante
773 Fulton St
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(718) 596-9070

Sure, you probably have in your drawer some of those little tricked-out rings you are supposed to put around your guests’ wine glass stems. But, personally—I don’t know about you—whenever I am called upon to use the ring-y drink identifiers, I am always like, “Wait, was I the tiny green grapes on the purple ring or purple grapes on green ring? Wait, maybe I was red grapes on yellow ring….”

I fear I am hopelessly condemned to losing track of my glass no matter what the charm attached to my glass stem. But! If I had a bright red sticker that read “goddess,” “oops,” or, perhaps more appropriately, “mess” on my glass, that I could remember. Plus, these drink identifiers can be attached to any type of glass, not just stemmed ones. These conversation starters can also can be used on plastic cups, which might not be as personalized as the ol’ standby sharpie-on-Solo tumbler, but so much cooler in a slightly obtuse, post-modern kind of way. [$8 for 90 stickers at Greener Grass Design]

Please join me in welcoming Esteban Rodriguez, whose first story is posted below. Esteban lives in the Sunset Park/Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. He will report for Gastornormous on restaurants, specialty food stores, and food events from that and other areas of Brooklyn, as well as Manhattan, where he works. I don’t know if any of you have been to Bay Ridge, but opportunities for good eatin’ abound there, so look for much more good food reporting to come!