FORK PLAY November 16, 2010
Christmas Fever. Porter House. Brooklyn Bowl. Mesa Grill. Holiday Desserts. Gifts for Collectors.
Dear Friends and Family,
Before the Devil or Al Gore or whoever invented the Internet, Twitter and the poisonous wisdom that one is  nothing without a blog, I had a carefree life and a House Beautiful Christmas. I trimmed a ten-foot tree my husband cut down himself on a tree farm, with ornaments from antique shops and a United Nations of airport shops. I wrapped dozens of gifts in maps and posters and photographs cut from Vogue and "W" with velvet ribbons I bought at Hyman Hendler & Sons on West 38th Street. I baked Almond Crescents to pack in old tins and My Ex-Sister-In-Law's Orange Pour Cake to give friends on round antique bread boards. I stewed plum rum conserve in jars labeled, "Mrs. Forst's Old Procrastination Brand." My then husband, the Kultur Maven, and I hand churned Apple Chestnut Ice Cream for Christmas dinner. (Want recipes? Click on dishes in bold face.)
In short, I was gaga over Christmas. I made lists and  checked everything twice. I drove myself and the KM crazy. But I did it and he let me because we knew it was right, it was stylish, it was American.
Now for the past three years I've let my guy Steven, the Road Food Warrior, talk me out of a tree. "Darling, we're going away in January. You don't have time." Not even a runty little bush? And I don't entertain since our dining table became his office.
There are only two or three people I still give actual objects wrapped in maps from our latest travels, Lima and Tunis. Mostly I give checks to those I love and those I fear (the super, the stupid guy at the desk who might let my ice  cream shipment defrost). It makes me uncomfortable when a restaurateur sends a gift. Sometimes I send it back. I'll never forget the time I sent back caviar and a silver Petrossian caviar server and mother-of-pearl spoons. "Are you insane?" Steven asked. "At least keep the caviar. It's only going to spoil." Sometimes I reciprocate. Sometimes I just give up trying to find a gift for a restaurateur I know and I violate my code of ethics. So sue me. I can no sooner persuade Michael Tong to stop sending that poinsettia - it gets bushier every year, maybe it's the same poinsettia a year older. I gave up trying to pick out a tie or a sweater he would wear.
But that Christmas elf or embryonic Martha Stewart still lives inside me, feeling guilty and deprived. I'm sure that's why I get so much pleasure from Betty Crocker's  Christmas Cookbook (Wylie $19.95). I am still that little girl from Detroit, Michigan, who believes there is a Betty Crocker and she knows best. She knows almost as much as Aunt Jemima or James Beard. She'll let you use a refrigerated pie crust for her "divine, divine, divine" Bacon and Swiss Quiche. What I hunger for is the Upside Down Turtle Muffins. What you might love if you were rash enough to have children (or can borrow some) are cookies and pancakes and bird feeder treats to make with the kids. Click here to buy Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook on Amazon.
The unsentimental bean-counters who murdered Gourmet magazine hope to exploit its hold on us by churning out cookbooks with the brand name. In this case, the photographs are uninspired, unworthy of the Gourmet food porn that fired our fantasies, but you might want to buy "Single Best Cookie Recipe from Each Year 1941-2009" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) anyway. It's an appealing concept. Cajun Macaroons, Date Bars and Scotch Oat Crunchies from the 40s. Benne Wafers and Sugar Shuttles from the 50s. Apricot Chews and Florentines from the 60s. Dutch Caramel Cashew Cookies, Greek Butter Cookies and Linzer Bars from the 70s. Skibo Castle Ginger Crunch, 1999. Are your eyes tearing up a little too? Click here to buy The Gourmet Cookie Book on Amazon.
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Our Thanksgiving colors today are pumpkin and cranberry. Please keep in mind that for all of November the colorful Devi restaurant will be giving 5% of every lunch and dinner check to Citymeals-on-Wheels.
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My House Porter House
I'm a gadfly when it comes to restaurants. That's my job. But I keep coming back to Porter House. I've been a champion of chef-owner Michael Lamonoco since his days cooking in the sky at Wild Blue in Windows-on-the-World. Our companions tonight are fond of him too. Michael walks in a magical aura, alive because taking time to drop his son at school and stopping at the optometrist in the concourse of the World Trade Center made him late to work on that nightmare morning of 9/11.
Porter House is comfortable too, a little dark but not noisy, tables spaced far apart here on the level that looks out toward Columbus Circle from the Time Warner Center.
We can actually see right into the kitchen of Jean-Georges, whose steakhouse with its bawdy design and  deconstructed menu idiocy didn't make it here, before the more traditional Porter House proved to be what carnivores wanted. My friend and I are splitting a sirloin on the bone. A selection of sides is perfect for his vegetarian wife. Half an acorn squash, mushrooms, and a deep fried onion ring or two will suit her minimalistic needs.
Suddenly a tower of seafood plows toward us, big as a cruise ship, piled high with crab, giant shrimp and lobster, bordered with oysters and clams, gift of the chef, muffling all discussion of starters. I can imagine two of us making a late supper of just this $88 seafood quadrille after a movie or the theater, with a side or a Caesar and a dessert.
It had not occurred to us to order the giant platter, but now we are absorbed in its riches, with a rainbow of sauces to dip them in and a bouquet of wonderful seaweed.
The sirloin is perfect for sharing, meaty and chewy, parts of it tender, part of it less so, not nearly as flavorful as Steven's bistro-style flank steak. Hashed browns come in a crusty frisbee of smashed potatoes. I prefer my hash  browns cut in cubes with bits of onion and sautéed till crisp. But it doesn't matter anyway since I'm eating most of the macaroni and cheese. Dorothy shares the Brussels sprouts. A mix of halves (not quite cooked) and quarters (properly tender).
Don't let sanity or Weight Watcher's keep you from pastry chef Wayne Harley Brachman's desserts. His focus on old fashioned American dessert classics: the root beer float with caramel liqueur, an Amish cream cheese cheesecake with warm berries, South Carolina coconut cake or a crumb-topped Dutch apple pie have survived evolving dessert chichi over the years. His chocolate-hazelnut truffle tart will always triumph over tiramisu tsunamis and tiny trifectas of tortured sweets with drips and swirls. Tonight his old school ice cream sundae - with coffee ice cream (instead of vanilla at our request), hot fudge, caramel nuts, cherries and whipped cream is deeply reassuring. Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 4th floor.
A Brooklyn Detour
I had no clue I would be carded at the door of Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg and experience the thrill of the decade. "You must be joking," I said to the sturdy bruiser blocking my entrance.
"I gotta card everyone," he answered, as if to say, "even the undead."
 I gave him my senior MTA subway card as a photo ID. He didn't even smile. Just wished me a "bon appétit."
The real reason I persuaded my friends to go back to this sprawling disco/dining/bowling/live music warehouse was because I wanted a jolt of that Saturday night fever and another go at the house's oozy and satisfying macaroni and cheese. (Am I a little blue lately? I do seem to be eating a lot of macaroni.) The Blue Ribbon Bromberg brothers, consultants here, chose giant elbows where the excellent mix of aged cheddar and aged provolone mingle and hide. Should you hit the Bridge? Click here to read more. 6l Wythe Street, Williamsburg.
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Mesa Grill Homecoming
Staying on top of restaurants popping up in the city that eats in its sleep, I don't often get back to favorites except in my neighborhood. But I was impressed when I read that matinee idol Bobby Flay, possibly the Food Network's  busiest super chef, was in the kitchen at Mesa Grill working on the fall menu. I remembered how excited I was to discover his spicy, delicious mostly imagined Southwest cooking notions in 1991. Click here to read "The Corn Is Blue."
I wonder if the youngish crowd clustered near the bar waiting for tables to turn on a Saturday night expect to see the Jalapeno God himself. Or if buying one of his 68 cookbooks on display at the maître d's stand and nibbling a spicy biscuit is sufficient contact. Or maybe they just come for the richly savory Southwestern riffs: the shrimp and roasted garlic corn tamale, Sophie's chopped salad (named for his daughter) and rough cut tuna nachos with mango-habanero hot sauce. Or the crispy fried quail with hot mustard and ancho chile. Want to know the hit of the evening for me? Click here to read my blog, Mesa Grill Throwdown, on my website.
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Great Cooks Holiday Desserts
I asked a handful of cookbook writer friends to send me a favorite holiday dessert. As I might have guessed, my pals were mostly inspired by piles of apples of every variety in farmers' markets and urban supermarkets. Dorie Greenspan sent a lush apple cake by a Parisian friend from her new book, Around My French Table. Rose Levy Beranbaum chose an easy Apple Crisp recipe from The Pie and Pastry Bible that she especially likes because it doesn't require any thickener. Rozanne Gold's Apples to the Third Power, a toss of fruit, apple butter and cider from her new Radically Simple, is in the Gold tradition, so easy even a dedicated sloth might be inspired to try it. Need a dish to bring to a holiday potluck? Click here.
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Gifts for Collectors
Like a museum that has outgrown its storage area, I am forced to de-accession the overflow of my treasured collections. For more than forty years, wherever I traveled I sniffed out the best places to eat and never missed a flea market. "Why are you buying American jewelry in Rome?" an incredulous Steven once asked.
 "Because it's Josef of Hollywood and I've never seen it anywhere else," I said, borrowing a handful of big lira notes from him.
I can't quite believe I am willing to part with these vintage cooking tools, the pewter platter, the painted pig soup tureen, or the whimsical grocery store tins I simply had to have, or the vintage costume jewelry and the serious American folk art, a transfer painting, a rooster weathervane and a ship's figurehead of an Indian woman. But now that the Road Food Warrior and I have moved out of the house in Aspen and sold the little church on the hill  outside Woodstock, there just isn't room. Even the precious eight foot by eight foot Russian Amur Raccoon rug-bedcover backed with brown velvet has to go. Email me if you want to do some Christmas shopping or indulge your own insatiability in my storeroom.
I am also selling 151 vintage issues of New York Magazine beginning with February 16, 1970 "Love in the Age of Options" by Gail Sheehy, Gloria Steinem, Pete Hamill, et al.
 September 27, 1971 "China Comes to NY" Tom Wolfe on Bok Choy. Underground Gourmet on Dim Sum, my "High Rent Chinese Restaurants."
December 20, 1971 New York magazine introduces Ms - the first issue of MS inserts inside.
September 25, 1972 "The Kitchen as Erogenous Zone," with George Lang kissing one of his wives on the cover.
April 30, 1973 "The New York Bedroom Revealed," my "Perfect Breakfast in Bed."
July 15, 1974 "Kissing Is Up on New York Streets" by  William H. Whyte, Richard Reeves on the Impeachment Stall. "How Solid are the Banks?" by Andrew Tobias.
I see back issues advertised at $22 each on the magazine's website. But I will sell them for $17 each, $15 each plus shipping for a minimum of 10, or make me an offer for all of them. Email me.
Photographs of seafood platter and skirt steak at Porter House, burger from Brooklyn Bowl, Mesa Grill's quesadilla, the antique rooster, the strange pasta cutter, the irrestible pig terrine, and the watermelon in rusted iron may not be used without permission from Steven Richter.
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