GASTRONORMOUS

The 28th annual Atlantic Antic took place last Sunday, and the Hubs and I attended with empty bellies. We took the pooch along–we couldn’t let him pass up a mile-long carpet of dropped people-food scraps!

The food offerings ranged from your standard street fair zeppole and shawarma booths, to some more local Brooklyn specialties, from Caribbean curry goat to Lebanese baklava. The hubs and I shared food from many of the booths. The Hubs can’t pass by a street fair without getting a Mozzarepa (a corn patty stuffed with mozzarella), so he had one of those, of which I took a few bites. We split and sandwich from Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches. The Hubs liked it, but I thought the bites without Siracha lacked flavor. We also split a mini key lime pie from Steve’s Authentic in Red Hook. It was just a delicious as I heard they were. I only wish they were selling their famous frozen, chocolate-dipped key lime pies at the Antic. I love that his pies aren’t bright green as so many places feel they need to be.

The biggest culinary highlight of all was (unexpectedly) the pizza fresh from the portable brick oven at Lunetta’s booth. I ate at their restaurant once and didn’t remember pizza being on the menu, but this pizza was among the better pies I have had in my life. Simple flavors, precicely balanced, on a flavorful, perfectly crispy-chewy crust (not burnt! I am not a fan of the so-called “charred” crusts of many a popular pizza place).

Some other neat things spied: pulled pork on pretzel sandwiches at Building on Bond; a fruit punch purveyor rockin’ an Isaac Hayes look; frisbee-sized fish cakes; “Obama burgers”; and a new gyro poster girl!

See photos of all we ate, and a bunch of other food offerings from the Antic below.

See you all at the Atlantic Antic this Sunday, October 5th from 10am-6pm. There will be lots of food there, so go on out and make Gastronormous proud!

A chile pepper festival? In Brooklyn? It might seem odd for a southwestern staple to be celebrated in a northeastern city-within-a-city, but really it couldn’t be more natural. Brooklyn is home to people who hail from (or are descendants of those who hail from) countries and cultures where the fieriest fruit is a bedrock of cuisine, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden lays at the crossroads of them all.

I am especially looking forward to the cooking demonstrations this Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Garden’s 15th Annual Chile Pepper Fiesta, but the Festival has lots of entertainment to offer, from music and dancing, to chile tattoos and jewelry. Don’t miss Matt Timm’s Chili Takedown (you might remember the fondue takedown I attended) at noon. Well, I might miss it. It’s at noon. That is early in Eastern Saturday Time. But it’ll be great! Nearby there will be Thai fruit and vegetable carving, which sounds fun (intricately carved fruit and veggies freak me out a little for some reason, but still, I am fascinated by it!). And legendary folk musician Pete Seeger is perfoming a rare concert at 4:30 (his name might not be immediately familiar, but trust me, you know at least 90% of his songbook).

See you there!

My friend Sephra Towbin is hosting a fantastic-sounding olive oil tasting dinner at Miel, a Provençal brasserie in the Intercontinental in Boston, this Wednesday, July 30 at 6:30 p.m.

Miel specializes in organic French fare featuring the flavors of Provence–olive oil, honey, and lavender–so it is especially fitting that they team up with olive oil purveyors, O&Co. for a night of food and new-harvest olive oil tasting.

Chef Didier Montarou has developed a special menu for the four-course meal (each course complemented by wine and olive oil pairings), but I hope for your sake that at least one item from their regular menu–Sweet Provençal Soup (sautéed berries and candied olives with lavender ice cream)–is included in this dinner, as it sounds especially intriguing.

$95.00. Seating is limited. Call 617-217-5151 for reservations (required).

Gnarly Vines is a great wine store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. They hold many events, belied by the “events” page on their website, which remains woefully empty.

This week they are sampling eggplant parmigiana made with CSA produce along with a couple wines from wine makers who use sustainable practices (who knew big-time Cline uses sustainable practices?). Eggplant parm sampling in a wine store sounds like a big mess, but a big, fun mess!

Here is the info from their press release:

Community Supported Agriculture Tasting Wednesday, July 16, 4 - 8 pm

Wine tasting with samples of eggplant parmigiana from this week’s vegetable selection. Fort Greene has a new CSA supplied by Nolasco farms in Andover, NJ! Come learn about the CSA and taste some delicious eggplant parmagiana fresh from from this week’s harvest while tasting four wines that represent the best of sustainable winemaking, from Cline Cellars in Sonoma County, CA and from Hermann J. Wiemer in New York’s Finger Lakes region.

GNARLY VINES
350 Myrtle Avenue (between Carlton & Adelphi)
718-797-3183
www.gnarlyvines.com

No, the title does not refer to a hip new restaurant, but backyard barbeque I attended in Maplewood, NJ last weekend. The food and company were wonderful. Some highlights included: these amazing veggie/tofu kabobs. I have no idea how they got the tofu to stay on the skewers, but I am so glad they did because it was amazing. The kabobs had a wonderful flavor that I was surprised to learn was supplied by a jar of marinade from Trader Joes(!). I didn’t imagine a jarred marinade could taste this good.

Also featured were the hostess’ family recipe chicken wings, barbeque chicken, bison burgers, chicken sausages, veggie sausages, New Mexican layered dip and chips, about the best potato salad I have ever had, tasty cucumber salad, and desserts galore, including some to-die-for blondies. Besides the sangria I brought and copious soda, beer, and wine, there was also a delish bourbon slush (supplied by the Predicate).

Thanks Suz and Jen!!! Here are the pics:

The Red Hook ballfields vendors were just granted a six-year permit. Brooklynites can forget their frijoles-focused fretting, the delicioso-ness will return this May!

Here are some photos from our visit last summer. I opted for a papusa (a corn cake stuffed with frijoles y queso), which I was so delicious that I gobbled it all down before I remembered to take a picture. Luckily, I was able to get some snaps of my friends’ baleadas, which are like giant soft tacos, as well as some other offerings at the fields.

A Baleada.

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Charred Corn.

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A Predator and His Prey.

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The Colorful Agua Fresca Stand.

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Another Baleada.

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Mangoes on a Stick.

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Balloons and a Grill.

Last Sunday, February 24th, I attended, along with the Hubs and my friend (and future contributer) who wishes to be referred to, for the purposes of this blog, as The Predicate (what can I say, my friends are nuts for grammar!) the Fondue Takedown, hosted by the inimitable Matt Timms at the Slipper Room, a venue perhaps better known burlesque queens than cheese kings. We arrived about 20 minutes late, hoping we hadn’t missed anything. We hadn’t, and indeed the natives were growing restless. Timms made an announcement right after our arrival that the fondue was taking longer to cook than planned, but that they hoped to get started soon.

I walked over to the long fondue-cooking table and saw the problem: each of the 8 entrants were cooking their fondue in a large aluminum roasting pan over 2 sterno flames! Such are the aggravations of hosting a cooking event at a burlesque bar–no real cooking facilities. I peered wearily at the still-watery offerings and the accompanying signage. Some of the posted recipes were unusual (entry #8-brie and apple brandy, #6 goat cheese and herb), some complex (#1-beer and jalapeño reduction, with gruyere, cheddar, jack, and non-reduced Brooklyn Brewery beer, #7-veggie pizza fondue), some traditional (#3 and #5-gruyere and wine), some mysterious (#2-”magic, secret fondue” and #4-never got beyond the inedible watery-soup stage).

A bit to my amazement, I must admit, all but one of the fondues did get to an acceptable stage of doneness. Timms made the announcement that we could now descend upon the fondue table, with a reminder: no double dipping; plenty of skewers to go around! Dairy-induced pandemonium ensued. Lines formed on each end and both sides of the long table, everyone heading towards the center, and people wielding wooden skewers elbowed their way to the table from the sides as well. It was like cross-town traffic on Fromage Boulevard–nobody was going anywhere. The Predicate and I gave up trying, which was an especial disappointment to me, not only because I paid $10 to get in, but also because I had intended to write about the event for this blog, and not actually getting to taste the fondue would make that difficult.

But, Hubs came to the rescue. He dove into the crowd armed only with a bread-studded skewer and miraculously emerged with it laden in gooey fondue for me to sample. This is the method by which I tasted all of the entries. My hero! My very own Sir Lance-a-lot of fondue! (Sorry, I couldn’t help it. Cheese does this to me.) The Predicate waited until the crowds had thinned, and the fondue had thickened, to sample what was left.

I personally like #3 the best. It was one of the more traditional ones–gruyere, swiss, and white wine–but it had a pleasant, fruity note that I found appealing, plus the texture was great (some of them, notably the veggie pizza fondue, had a grainy texture). However, entry #1, with the beer and jalapeño reduction, won the contest. That fondue was indeed delicious, but I must admit that I didn’t taste the beer or jalapeño, so the reduction, etc., seemed like a bit of wasted effort. For a recipe so complicated, it was funny that it was less nuanced in flavor (in my opinion) than the relatively straightforward one. But who am I to say?

The loser of the event (#4–inedible watery soup fondue–zero votes!) received a fondue cookbook as an appropriate consolation prize. The winner won 50 bucks. Everyone in between got nothing at all except the honor of having participated. In the end, it was a fun event and Matt Timms is a very capable, funny, and irreverent host. I might suggest that the tasting be organized differently in the future (Hubs suggested that perhaps the chefs could stand behind their creation and pass out samples to people as they orderly shuffle down the table, which I thought was a good idea). But maybe the mayhem is part of the challenge of it.

Keep an eye out for Timms’ other events, like the Chili Takedowns.