food

Pizza Please

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s a food post today, This childhood photo of me at an early birthday party of mine – maybe fifth grade? I am the birthday girl in light blue and to one side of me are twins, Beverly and Beth Bruckmann, the girl standing I believe was named Lisa. I don’t think I can confirm many others – I believe it is my sister Loren’s head we see in the upper left and just below her may have been a neighbor, Sally Jacques. The blonde girl wearing the party hat might be her sister Karen – their other sister Buffy was my bestie at the time but not shown here. Sorry other blond girl seated next to me, I cannot remember even a hint of your name.

This was taken on a wonderful four seasons porch/room my parents added onto the back of this tiny Cape Cod house. It had slate floors and windows all around with a river view. It was the very favorite and most used room in the house except for in the dead of winter or very stormy days when it tended to be chilly.

As evidenced here, pizza has long been a ubiquitous Butler family food and we are selective about it! About a week ago my mom, who can rarely be coaxed into a few mouthfuls of solid food these days, surprised us by consuming a slice fresh out of the box. You can’t take the Italian out of the girl I say.

Mom told a story recently I had never heard before about how as a small girl she was sent down the block from her grandparent’s apartment (and bar on a main drag in the small town of Long Branch) where she could get a very own pizza for lunch from one of the nearby merchants. They were expecting her and would seat her with her pie by the kitchen door. She said she was very pleased with herself and the arrangement and that in retrospect the couple who owned the establishment must have gotten a big kick out of her and her love of their pizza.

This fellow out in front of Red Bank Pizza – hmmm. They do say delivery here, perhaps I was wrong?

In the course of my childhood pizza was most frequently delivered in a thin cardboard box from the likes of places called Red Bank Pizza or Danny’s. It was delivered by a high school or college student, almost always male. It had thin crust and toppings were limited to the most traditional – pepperoni or sausage (before we all became vegetarians), maybe mushroom or peppers. It was, quite frankly, heavenly and a great treat made no less great by how very often we ate it. (Mom did love a night off from cooking.)

In high school I reached some sort of pinnacle of summer jobs making sub sandwiches and warming slices for Aniello’s Pizza. He made an exceptionally good pie with the only disadvantage being that he did not deliver so it lacked in convenience. While I worked there the rule was waitresses could eat as much pizza as you wanted, but in theory had to pay for sandwiches. No need to tell me twice. I happily lived on pizza that summer and even that did not dim my affection for it.

Somewhere along the line my father made a discovery, a place called The Brothers Pizza in Red Bank. Like some of the other top notch establishments they eschewed delivery. My Dad liked to go there with my brother Edward (hey Ed) on the weekend and I would tag along sometimes. I was known to introduce it to a boyfriend or two as well. I must run in that direction this weekend and see if it is still there. I usually stop a block or two short of making it over there, preferring not to cross an especially busy street or two. (Update, I just googled it and it still exists and they deliver – can you say pizza this weekend?)

Brother’s Pizza, Red Bank.

In college we ate a fair amount of bad pizza from Dominoes – a disgrace really. Having grown up with a surfeit of really good pizza I barely knew such things existed. New London, Connecticut was not as well endowed with good pizza and you take what you can get in college and adjust your expectations accordingly. However, sometimes we would drive to a Greek owned pizzeria downtown (which sadly also did not deliver) and eat a memorable moussaka pizza – the only time in my life I have had that.

As you know, life eventually took me to New York City which is an odd and ambitious assortment of pizza. Within a few blocks you can have excellent traditional pies, chains like Dominoes, reasonable slices to go, homemade and gourmet. It is a pizza Mecca in some ways. It took me time and taste testing before I settled on Arturo’s on York Avenue and 85th Street as my pizza joint of choice. It is a street corner take out and delivery hole in the wall that makes a fine pie. I am partial to a well done mushroom, although olives tempt me too. Kim has graciously given up on peppers to fall into line with my mushroom preference. Arturo’s was very loyal to Yorkville during the pandemic and I gave them a shout out at the time in a post that can be found here. When they too close at for a month or so due to illness I really did begin to think things looked bleak indeed.

This comparable but smaller fellow graces Arturo’s Pizza on East 85th Street.

We walk up the, block to Arturo’s to fetch our own pizza – Kim eschews delivery and of course he is right, what is it to walk up the block. It is usually a nice walk as well and on pleasant evenings hanging out on the corner and waiting for our pie, watching folks get bright colored snow cones is good too. We take our pizza home in the more popular hard cardboard box which has mostly replaced the flimsy cardboard one. It has a graphic on it of a street scene in an imaginary Italy which has morphed a bit over time. Kim speculates that they hired someone very inexperienced to draw it and they have improved over time. I am sorry I don’t have a photo of it!

I was sad to realize that most of my childhood pizza places are gone – some as recently as during the pandemic it seems. My mom had scooped out a place called Gianni’s that delivers and is a credible pie. They also do a grandma’s deep dish. (I’ve eaten deep dish pizza in Chicago twice and I’m not sure I will ever eat anything else in Chicago if left up to my own devices.) If I do treat us to a Brother’s Pizza this weekend I will post it as a follow up on Instagram. It is sounding pretty good to me.

Mr. Softee Summer

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: By the time you read this I will be heading to Denver for a conference having left at the crack of dawn. However, I leave this summery post in my place. Today’s ice cream post is a bookend of sorts to last week’s running in the heat. One advantage of running through the summer is it allows for the consumption of a certain amount of ice cream.

Long time Pictorama readers (and well, anyone who knows me) are aware that I have a serious soft spot for ice cream. In my world ice cream has no calories and if ice cream is available it should be eaten. Therefore, I generally do not keep it in the house, although this seems to have only a marginal impact on my consumption.

Ryan’s homemade ice cream. Hard to beat!

My taste preferences are eclective – I am not an ice cream snob in the least – however, if you say salted caramel my ears will perk up. But I like a soft serve cone, a bowl of strawberry from a local creamery or something more exotic at a restaurant making their own all equally.

I appear to have inherited my love of ice cream from my father and his affection for it was documented in a very popular post which can be found here. Dad was always up for a trip to the local Dairy Queen and usually had a container or two tucked into the freezer, especially in his advancing years. He went from being a plain chocolate guy to having a distinct preference for exotic flavors with bits of candy bar or cookie. I started as a vanilla girl and now like, well, more or less all of it.

The New Jersey version of my habit is largely centered around trips to Ryan’s whose homemade ice cream I only discovered several years ago. Their strawberry is epic and when the peaches ripen the peach is just heaven. Although if time does not permit a trip out to Ryan’s I might talk my friend Suzanne into a much closer trip to Carvel. When dad was alive Father’s Day and his birthday were often celebrated with a Carvel, Fudgie the Whale of a Cake. Jolly blue icing bits in the one I remember and yummy chocolate crumbly bits.

Fudgie the Whale. I remember some of the piping as blue though…

For many years there was a Carvel near me here in Manhattan, on the corner of 85th and First Avenue, although sadly there is a Starbucks there now. I would stop in for the occasional cone, but they were too far from the office to grab a party cake there. (I did used to bring ice cream to the office at the Met sometimes, but needed to buy it closer – ice cream sandwiches did surprisingly well for delivery, re-freezing and consumption. I would also occasionally grab one or two other people and go across the street where a Mr. Softee is resident for the summer and buy dripping ice cream treats for whoever was knocking around the office on a summer afternoon.)

Mr. Softee on the corner of 86th and Lex.

Unlike people who might find the Mr. Softee tune (generally Pop Goes the Weasel) or tinkling bells annoying, it fills me only with joy. Having grown up in a wealthy suburb it was unusual for him to make his way to us and we generally drove to the Dairy Queen for ice cream, but I hear it not infrequently in the city.

Lots of interesting options although I seem to be pretty stuck on my usual these days. I used to occasionally like the ice cream bars with a coating of chocolate and nutty bits and a chocolate core.

Soft serve ice cream is still sold in the Rumson spot where Dairy Queen (DQ) was, although it has been renamed Crazees. I have not had the pleasure of trying them. In high school I yearned for a job at Dairy Queen which seemed like the pinnacle of cool. Sadly it was a much sought after job and I lacked the connections it seemed. Instead I had to settle for working at a pizza place serving my second favorite food – and consuming large quantities of it.

Still the same barn shaped building but no longer the telltale red and white. Rumson, NJ.

However, this summer has been the summer of Mr. Softee. The extreme heat and humidity and a calorie margin of error that 7 miles of running 4-5 times a week gives me has allowed me to develop the habit of grabbing Kim on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in search of the ice cream man. A classic vanilla wafer cone with chocolate sprinkles is just right for each of us although on the hottest days you need to eat it with a certain alacrity.

Colorful and somewhat whacky options on the side of the truck.

I understand the while Mr. Softee isn’t suffering from a lack of consumer interest, the rising prices of ice cream and condiments as well as gasoline has made it a difficult living. I can only offer each one I encounter my enthusiastic summer support.

Nestlé

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s a sunny Sunday after a dreadfully rainy sleety snowy Saturday here in New York City. So I sit down to write with the sense of optimism that prevails on a sunny day after a rainy one.

Meanwhile, I have had this item in my possession for months now where it has perched on my desk, waiting to see what role it will play and what it will contain. I spotted it in a background shot of items being sold by @missmollystlantiques and she was willing to sell it to me. I especially like its glass top where the 2 cent price is posted. 2 cents!

Top view of the tin.

Pictorama readers know I cannot resist a good box. My post on a Krak-R-Jak Biscuit (also purchased from Miss Molly, the post can be found here, as I am one of those folks who still mails cards. The appeal of a box is like catnip to me – I’m equally bad about cabinets. (A post on one display case I bought a few years ago can be found here.) Things that can contain things seem like a win-win to me and I can always justify their purchase in my mind. For some reason I am convinced I always have space for them.

Snatched this up from an article about the early expansion in the popularity of chocolate after WWI.

A quick look at the Nestlé history reminded me that it is a Swiss company. Shortly after college I was working in a kitchen at the Drake Swiss Hotel in midtown and little Nestlé bars with the hotel’s logo proliferated so it shouldn’t be news really. I think it was the first time I had considered Swiss chocolate as an export. The company’s history starts with the merger of two makers of condensed milk and baby food in the 1890’s. The chocolate production and a role in the birth of milk chocolate, so says their site, follows in 1904.

Early advertising with kitties interested in the condensed milk product.

While always happy to consume it, as a child I nonetheless admit I found Nestlé a poor relation to my true heart’s desire Hershey; the hard working denizens of Pennsylvania would be glad to know I am sure. I liked the crunch (that model appeared in 1938) added to the Nestlé bars however, but they had a more delicate flavor than the robust explosion of a Hershey bar. I did go through a period of affection for Kit Kat bars, also made by them, while living in England. Again, it was the appeal of the crunch – great with a cup of tea for a pick me up in the afternoon.

This is probably pretty close to the earliest wrapper of my candy bar eating past. I will say that their Quik for making chocolate milk was my top favorite in that food category.

Frankly it has been a very long time since I have eaten either, the chocolate I am more likely to encounter these is a wider variety. Bags of Lindt, both milk and dark chocolate, have come my way as gifts recently; my mother has boxes of sugar-free chocolates at her house (surprisingly good, especially if you stick to the nut filled and caramels), the occasional organic bar from Whole Foods crosses my path. In fairness it should be noted that my diet does not allow for the unabashed eating of chocolate however, having found that eating chocolate leads to ultimately eating more chocolate, leading to more of me.

The best remaining side view of the box.

Despite my childhood loyalties, this tin tickles me. Your 2 cents could buy you a plain or almond “block” of chocolate – two sizes shown on the side of the tin, nuts making the smaller (fatter?) bar. Sadly only one of the painted sides is still in relatively good shape, jolly red and yellow paint. For some reason the magic of reaching into the glass top container and pulling out a chocolate bar is still evoked when I look at it. Perhaps that is why I have had trouble filling it with any of the mundane flotsam and jetsam of my desk. I am thinking I may take it to mom’s house in New Jersey where I am still constructing a home office for the days I am there. The accumulating pens and post-its may take up residence there, but the images on the tin tickling a desire for a treat.

Ode to a Fry Pan

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: On New Year’s Eve I scrubbed my fry pan which had, after a sticky encounter with two Beyond Burgers, been soaking in the sink overnight. To my deep dismay, the handle began to wobble ominously, about to come off. I knew that this ten inch stainless steel friend was, after three and a half decades of virtually daily use, breathing its last.

There are, needless to say, many loses far worse than a fry pan and even I am a bit surprised at the depth of my sadness about its departure. It came to me as a graduation gift from college, part of a set with two sauce pots, a soup pot of a kind of stainless steel pot sets that are sold by department stores like Macy’s. There were lids that the soup pot and fry pan could share and sported a lid for the larger of the two pots. (That lid mysteriously disappeared during our kitchen renovation which I wrote about in a post you can read here. Kim and I really have no idea what could have happened to it and it took us awhile to realize it was really gone.)

My kitchen shortly after renovation in the fall of 2019.

They were a handsome group with reinforced bottoms and they distributed heat nicely. To a large degree I learned to cook with that set of pots. The pots and pans were a gift from my friend Suzanne who I credit with launching me with some early cooking lessons. During last week’s stay with Mom in New Jersey I told Suzanne of the pan’s demise. I’m not sure she remembers giving them to me although she allowed it was possible and certainly understood my sadness at its impending demise.

As someone who was trained as a professional cook I have undeniably put my pots and pans through their paces over the years. Uncomplainingly that fry pan has sauteed endlessly with a high flame under it. Countless piles of chopped onions and garlic have been softened in it, no smell like that few minutes when you start to cook something – perhaps the tang of tomato hitting right after the onion and garlic, or mushrooms piled in, the pan later to be deglazed again and with a bit of wine, scraped with an ever darkening wooden spoon. It will always be the smell of home to me. (I always remember one of the chefs I cooked with saying that you should never deglaze or use wine in a sauce you wouldn’t drink.) The pan is blackened on the bottom from high heat and flame, although the inside remains shiny.

Overgrown dumplings in a root veggie stew.

Pictorama readers know that Deitch Studio is resident in a glorified single room, perched high in a building in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. The small space devoted to the kitchen, an area that is by my own account generally fairly topsy turvy, but where I manage to spew out a series of soups, stews, pan roasted vegetables and even the occasional bit of baked goods daily. (Some posts complete with recipes can be found here, here and here.) These pandemic years have resulted in even more meals made and the pots have stood nobly by.

The tiny quarters of the kitchen has kept my toolkit of implements tight however and, other than a roster of sheet pans as I seem to just kill those off every few years, I have only added a small, lidded sauce pan and a much smaller skillet I acquired over the years – the small skillet was a wedding gift as I remember. (There also is a non-stick pan made of a mysterious material that arrived on our shores, black with white flecks. Works well, but I wouldn’t subject it to high temperatures.) The sauce pan was purchased after one of the two from this original set was left on a burner and damaged, although it has as it turns out, remained in rotation despite that. There is no pot storage in this kitchen and therefore the few pots and pans generally remain piled on the back of the stove, waiting their turn at use, as seen above.

The pan was designed with a handle at the front, to help heft a heavy pan full, perhaps lifting it from the oven. Oven friendly, it has done its time roasting food in the oven too – there was even a time, decades ago now, when I still ate chicken and would occasionally roast a small one or parts in it, adorned by carrots, small potatoes, maybe green beans, onions and garlic. (I believe it housed fried chicken once or twice too, my grandmother’s recipe which involved flouring it in a paper bag. I was just discussing that recipe with my now vegan mother the other day.) The front handle popped off while scrubbing it about a year ago. It seems it was a warning sign over the bow, alas.

I have known this pan longer than I have known my husband Kim and it has been a quiet companion of my entire adult life. Unstinting in its service first to single me and then to us; in it I can see my twenty-two year old self, setting up my first apartment and cooking my nascent solo meals. Still, practically speaking a skillet with a loose handle is an accident waiting to happen. I considered my options for speedy replacement as this pan is in service everyday. Remarkably similar sets appear to be available online, but fewer where an individual pan could be purchased and it is hard to trust the heft of a pan to an online purchase. (A recent purchase of a coffee pot resulted in one with metal so thin I cut myself badly on it the first time I cleaned it.)

The All-Clad replacement pan.

In the end I chose an All-Clad ten incher. The two most recent additions mentioned above were both an All-Clad pot and pan and they are well made without question. It is a magnificent pan, and if treated well these few guys will probably outlive me. The New York Times Wirecutter named the 12-inch the best fry pan a week later, further cementing my certainty that was a good choice. Still, I know cooking with it will be different, sloping sides containing less and different heating time. It will take some adapting. The fry pan arrived via William Sonoma yesterday – handle poking assertively and somewhat comically out of the side of the cardboard box, itching to get out.

Meanwhile, I just thought the fry pan of my youth deserved some recognition today. It has served admirably and owes us nothing, and it will be missed.

Boo!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: A happy Halloween to all! I am wrapping up my series of seasonal posts with a final nod to Halloween today. These tiny jack-o-lantern style candy cups are paper mache and may have sported handles and paper inserts – one still contains an insert. I assume they would have been filled with candy corn and the like, although frankly I am a bit unsure precisely what small candies would have been offered when these might have been new.

Pam’s Pictorama.com collection

These candy containers are miniatures of the larger ones kids carried to collect candy in. Like my cat version below, they would have paper inserts for eyes. (A post about that acquisition can be found here.) Until recently I thought these were meant solely for decoration, but recently I have seen period photos of kids carrying them for candy filling purposes.

Pam’s Pictorama.com collection

I have long desired possession of some of these Halloween wonders for my own and I have not yet gotten my hands on a large pumpkin to complete my collection. I would happily accept another cat if it had the right expression – twist my arm, you know?

My introduction to these paper mache decorations was a shop in Cold Spring, New York. A couple of hours from Manhattan on a Metro-North train will deliver you to the heart of this lovely little town on the Hudson. I used to make the pilgrimage each fall to look at the changing leaves along the river on the train north and then spend the day wandering around antique shops. One store had an amazing collection of these early Halloween decorations, all being sold for much more money than I could hope to amass at the time. It whetted my desire for them however and it is only getting sated now – this opportunity provided by my new provider in the middle of the country and due to a certain amount of internet trolling I did not previously indulge in.

Meanwhile, when I consider candy from this period I am going to guess that a fair amount of it was probably still homemade when these pumpkins were new, perhaps in the 1920’s. I just finished reading a book from 1915, Miss Pat and Her Sisters, where the author Pemberton Ginther indulges in a lengthy description of homemade candy preparation. Although I understand that somehow it was brightly colored and lots of sugar was involved I really know no more than I did when I started and don’t see it in my mind’s eye at all. Did it look like homemade Necco Wafers?

While I have certain bone fides in the kitchen and can hold my own in the world of soups, pastas, stews and even baking to some degree, candy has long failed me. (Some of my cooking related posts, cheesy olive bread and a one-bowl chocolate cake can be found here and here.) My childhood reading of early juvenile novels (which Pictorama readers know continues today) inspired me with fantasies about homemade candy making, at least pulling taffy or making fudge. However, it was a miserable failure each and every time we attempted it.

Cheesy Olive Loaf is a favorite here at Deitch Studio.

My sister Loren was usually a part of these culinary explorations which is notable because after a certain age we didn’t indulge in a lot of mutual activities. Loren ultimately became a good cook in her own right – leaning towards success with breads, another area I have not achieved too highly in – but she could get a bit experimental and was known to throw random ingredients in if you didn’t keep an eye on her – but it wasn’t her fault we failed. Our fudge, regardless of recipe, never hardened and our taffy was a sticky monstrous disaster. (May I add, candy thermometers have always seemed extremely exotic – coated in sticky, hot sugar on the stove. Why doesn’t the heat make them explode? I have always wanted to own one but I suspect it would be disappointing.)

In retrospect, I assume there are some tricks to pulling taffy we just didn’t have in our repertoire, but I will never understand where we consistently went wrong with fudge. It is my understanding that fudge should be easy – children should be able to make fudge. After multiple attempts over a long period of time we gave up on it. To this day I cannot eat fudge without duly noting our failure, tugging at a corner of my mind though.

Like many American children of the mid-twentieth century, my imagination was kindled by the concept of Turkish Delight in the C.S. Lewis book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Perhaps this candy was well-known by the British children of a previous generation, but I have to admit this kid from New Jersey was well into adulthood before coming across Turkish Delight in person. It turns out that I like it, although admittedly it was never good enough that I imagined being inspired by it to sell my siblings into witch-dominated servitude. (However, it goes without saying that sometimes just living with siblings would have you ship them off without so much as a Mary Jane in exchange.)

I believe I was actually in London the first time I had Turkish Delight, although I think that was just by chance as I have subsequently had it here on many occasions. A plate of it came with bitter black coffee at the end of an excellent meal in a Greek restaurant. I also remember that my friend Don turned my cup over when I was done, sludgy grounds sliding onto the saucer, and then proceeded to read my future from the designs made by the grounds on the inside the cup. That was a first too – maybe the only time I have had my coffee grounds read. Anyway, Turkish Delight was the rare candy event that successfully survived the leap from the literary world to the real one.

Meanwhile, a quick search reminds me that licorice was popular at the beginning of the 20th century. (Mom and Loren were fans, I never was and would eat the red version only, if pressed. If Dad and Edward had a preference I cannot recall it. Ed?) In the day when these pumpkin containers would have been stuffed, candy corn was indeed already around, as were Tootsie Rolls and Hershey’s chocolate.

On the more homemade side there were sugarplums (also called cream filberts and later, yikes, were known as mothballs – um, talk about a fall from grace), potato candy (a homemade Depression era treat made with potatoes and peanut butter – really?), and my favorite, toffee. (I opine a bit on the delights of toffee when celebrating the purchase of this Felix toffee container below. Read that post here.)

Pams-Pictorama.com collection

Strangely it turns out that candy cigarettes have been around since the late 1800’s. I was fascinated by them as a kid and only ever saw them if they turned up in my Halloween haul. As I remember them, in addition to chocolate ones, there were ones made with white sugar and those came in lovely red and blue plastic “cases” – the candy cigs had little bright pink ends like you were smoking with lipstick on – who can make things like that up?

Glorious Food

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I have generally always had a good relationship with food. Despite a few allergies in early childhood, eventually resolved on their own – horrifyingly chocolate was briefly among them, followed by a reaction to animal fat triggered by a vaccine as a toddler. However, I was never an especially picky eater (it should be noted that I did have an odd and specific loathing of meatloaf, to my family a well-known aversion), although the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in suburban New Jersey did not exactly encourage fearless experimentation. During my college years, I eventually wandered toward eating only fish and dairy on the animal side of things.

I did grow up around good cooking (some of my posts about my ancestors, their restaurants and cooking here and here), and despite coming of age in an era of tv dinners and frozen vegetables, the local bounty of the Garden State plied us, at least seasonally, with fresh vegetables (nothing like a sun warmed Jersey tomato or corn right off the vine), and locally fished seafood right off the boat.

Even the sandy soil of our backyard, not immune to fall and winter’s hurricane flooding of salt water, still managed to provide us with a not insignificant annual bounty of tomatoes and herbs at a minimum. Strawberry vines grew wild and these were generally tiny, but sweet – however, you had to beat the bunnies and birds to them and in later years we surrendered them to that cause. Sunflowers grew even taller than my father and there was often a strange annual surplus of squash. Corn and cucumbers would not grew there, despite my periodic attempts. We Butlers were casual farmers at best however – our interest waning as the summer grew longer and hotter, however by that point everything pretty much ticked along as long as you were attentive about watering during the long hot days.

My mother reduced her efforts largely to containers in later years and even then the luxury of fresh herbs from the garden, only picking what you needed, spoiled me when I was visiting and cooking there. By that time I had already had a (albeit brief) career cooking professionally. However, despite having been around it plenty as a kid, I really learned to cook by doing it with friends who knew more about it than me – eventually fueled by a very real interest in cookbooks which at one point in my life I read on my long daily subway commute during an internship while living in London.

If I have a talent for cooking (and I would volunteer mine is modest at best really) it is that having grasped the fundamentals of a recipe I can then riff on it and make it my own with variations on a theme. (For me this is less true in baking which I approach as alchemy and a science not to be messed with – although there are people who are amazing at this, I have long recognized that I am not one of those magicians.)

My interest in cooking has long been submerged and drastically subdued over the years by long hours and travel for my job in fundraising. Without really being aware, our food needs were increasingly being met by a variety of easily made or semi-assembled meals. Kim is not a fan of eating out (and back in normal days I ate out a lot for work), and we generally limit even our take-out eating to Friday night. Until recently that was Mexican food. Taco Today, owned by a Korean family and less than a block away, was our Friday night destination after a long week. I would sometimes meet Kim there after working out at the gym, although gym after work not happening in the past year or so as my hours at work grew ever longer.

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View of First Avenue from inside Taco Today, waiting for our Friday night order last year.

 

Those were of course the sylvan pre-pandemic days. Taco Today closed for renovation in early March and therefore avoided the dilemma of deciding whether they could stay in business. We have stuck to our Friday night take-out and supported our local pizza place (love you Arturo’s!) and first one and now another Mexican establishment somewhat further afield. There was briefly a sandwich shop on First, just opened pre-Covid, owned by an Indian man who would occasionally slip some native Indian fare into the offerings. He closed sometime in late March, but I just noticed yesterday they seem to have re-opened.

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Arturo’s Pizza is the best and we are very grateful for their effort to remain open during the Pandemic. This fellow greets us each time at this tiny hole-in-the-wall Yorkville establishment.

 

Working from home has involved even longer hours, but well, at home. I have already written some about the beehive of activity here in this one small room we call Deitch Studio and home. (I outlined some of the details in my recent post, We Work Each Day: Clivette Cont. which can be found here.) Thankfully our kitchen renovation (which still gives me horrors, the details can be found in a few posts that start here) was completed last fall. It has been put to excellent use.

It should be noted that I have always indulged in eating copious fruit and working from home during a pandemic I have allowed an unfettered consumption of oranges, apples and berries. Meanwhile, slowly the cooking memory muscle has begun to grind back to life. First a renewed interest in how to use leftovers, then wandering over to pastas. Fish fillets now enjoy blankets of sauce and dinner rarely has fewer than two vegetables. I replaced my broken food processor. Kim’s birthday saw the production of an actual, if simple, chocolate cake (recently documented here) and suddenly the itch to bake and cook is beckoning. (And yes, for those of you who are paying attention, I really only have one size of loaf Pyrex so everything is uniformly coming out the same size and shape!) I think I feel gazpacho coming on next.

The ever present worry about health living in quarantine during a pandemic has presumably fueled this interest beyond the additional time spent at home. What greater defense has there ever been against falling ill than eating right? Concerns about dieting seem absurd when considered in the context of pandemic, people falling ill and dying all around. While I have controlled a nagging desire to let loose with a barrage of baking (visions of chocolate chip cookies lurk in the corners of my mind), I made a decision early on that if I was going to be in quarantine I was doing it with dark chocolate and good ice cream. (Other folks thought this way and for a time ice cream was hard to find here.)

Frankly, if you are going to be marooned somewhere for several months, having continued access to excellent bagels (shout out to Bagel Bob’s on York Avenue) and pizza (another huzzah for Arturo’s, also on York) goes a long way to making up for the lack of access to outdoor space and well, space in general. Yay Manhattan!

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Messy crowded counter which I did not have time to clear off when the urge to make this cheesy olive loaf yesterday. 

 

Meanwhile, this week the desire manifested itself in another recipe from The New York Times, this time for an olive cheese bread. Bread in general presents a problem for me as I have arthritis in my hands and kneading has been out of the question for decades already. I more experienced baker might be able to substitute some aspect of the Cuisinart for this activity. (If you are one of those folks and want to enlighten me, please do.) I have not figured it out. This sort of faux bread skips that step and requires only a firm hand with a spatula mixing.

I have long thought that if I had stayed in the professional cooking business I might have moved into baking and not fancy pastry, but more down to earth things like bread, muffins and loaf cakes. I have never had a significant sweet tooth really and it is those savory items I might have spent my time concocting in another life. These are more forgiving than the French pastry of my training as well and allow even my somewhat ham-handed invention and variation.

Back to the cheesy olive bread. It is very simple and it is really delightful. Somehow it reminds me of my grandmother’s somewhat cake-y loaves. Kim is not a fan of eggs so I replaced them by doubling the buttermilk (I could have done the same by using yogurt and doubling it, but I couldn’t find yogurt I liked at the market) and it worked just fine, better than expected. (Now I have half of a container of buttermilk to use – any ideas out there?) I went the route of rosemary for herbs and included the suggested fresh ground pepper.

The smell while cooking was heavenly and a bonus is that you experience it all over again if you heat your slice before consuming which I also recommend – although oddly it doesn’t seem to actually toast. Might be my lack of eggs in the recipe but not sure. Meanwhile, mmmm! I am looking forward to slicing up some tomatoes, perhaps with some fresh basil, to put atop of slabs of this.

The recipe can be found on the NYT site here or as below. Thank you Melissa Clark!

Savory Olive and Cheese Loaf by Melissa Clark

2½ cups/320 grams all-purpose flour (or a combination of all-purpose and some whole-wheat or rye flour) 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1½ teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ cup/60 ml olive oil 1 cup/240 ml fermented dairy product (buttermilk or plain yogurt) 2 eggs ¾ cup/110 gr sliced pitted olives 1 cup/8 ounces grated cheese cup/8 ounces grated cheese (Gruyère, Cheddar or other hard grating cheese), divided (7 ounces & 1 ounce) 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, oregano, marjoram or rosemary OR 1 teaspoon dried herbes de Provence ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.

DIRECTIONS: Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch loaf pan (or line it with parchment). In a large bowl, whisk together dey ingredients. In a large measuring cup, whisk together olive oil and buttermilk/yogurt. (If using thick Greek yogurt, thin it down with a little water, milk, or whey from yogurt-making.) Whisk in the eggs. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry to form a heavy, thick batter. Use a rubber spatula to fold in the pitted olives and ¾ cup/7 ounces grated cheese. Finally, add the herbs and seasonings. Spread the batter in the pan and scatter the remaining ¼ cup/1 ounce grated cheese on top. Bake until the cheese is browned and the top of the loaf springs back when lightly pressed, 45 to 55 minutes. Serve warm as soon as you can unmold it (about 30 minutes after baking).

On Stuff

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: As we remain packed (and dusty) during our renovation stint I find myself reluctant to go digging among my collections so today I am reflecting on that which I have recently packed up in the process. Life in our apartment is about maintaining status quo right now, with hopes of all returning to its rightful place in about ten days. The process of packing up was by necessity much quicker than I would have liked (tucked in after the window replacement packing and unpacking a few days prior) and unfortunately the thinning out of unnecessary items will have to occur on the unpacking side.

As I have opined – it is a very small kitchen and in general a compact, tiny really, apartment. Having said that I was amazed by how much I had managed to store in the kitchen cabinets. Like a clown car at the circus, it just kept coming and filling more (and yet more) boxes. I had honestly thought I could pack the kitchen in two hours and instead found myself searching frantically for additional boxes and packing well into the night. Boxes were piled higher and claimed more space in the living room until there was only a path through it.

What I found interesting was that in some ways it was like excavating through the layers of my life back to my much younger self, setting up my first apartment in New York City. As I measure the reality of my life against the sort of adult existence I imagined for myself, the difference can be divined through dishes rarely or never used.

I was launched from my home in New Jersey with access to generations of dishes and a certain wonderful excess of antique furniture. (As a result I have a truly unusual number of antique rocking chairs in a very small space, but we’ll discuss my family’s mania for chairs another time.) As I packed up wine decanters and covered serving dishes well into that evening I realized I had envisioned a life where I would entertain more, one where I would actually cook. I was unable to peer into a future where at most we would grab some pizza or take-out from the Mexican place across the street (run by a Korean family which makes for not quite authentic, but perfectly satisfying cuisine), move some piles of books and call it a meal.

In addition to the aforementioned decanters and covered dishes, I am in possession of a full set of sterling silver – I think it is service for at least eight. I had tucked away serving bowls, luncheon plates and some fairly esoteric baking devices such as a gram scale, which had not seen the light of day in decades. I will certainly send much of this on its way to a thrift store in hopes that it finds a home where it is trotted out and used more frequently and I am touched in some ways with gratitude that I was launched into adulthood with such largess. Nonetheless, I am also confronted with a ghost memory of a younger me, imaging a different sort of future where I would cook and bake and have a need for serving dishes. One that has never really reached fruition.

It isn’t like I have never cooked for friends, although admittedly it has not happened in recent years. I am a good cook – professionally trained as I thought that was how I would make my living at one time. It is a muscle I rarely exercise beyond weekend meals for Kim and I however and those more about dietary exactitude and convenience than creative cooking endeavors. (However, Pictorama readers might remember when I was seized with a desire for my grandmother’s poor man’s cake over the holidays last year and I recreated it with the help of the internet. I posted about it here. Incidentally I found the Pyrex baking dishes I knew I owned and could not find and which I ultimately replaced with a purchase from ebay.)

In part it isn’t just me but the world that has changed and I dare say there aren’t many people in New York apartments who are making much use of decanters or cake plates these days, even in larger abodes. Perhaps it happens in the houses in other parts of the country where HDTV home renovation television thrives – but even there the days of formal dining rooms seem to have faded away.

The question remains, how much of this will I keep out of a sense of nostalgia and perhaps promise. By this I mean, will our entirely new kitchen mean a renaissance of baking and cooking? It seems unlikely given my current job and priorities. Still, with the holidays on the horizon there is an itch for another poor man’s cake and perhaps even some of my grandmother’s spice cookies if I can locate the recipe.

Smooth

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am writing this today, drafting it a few weeks in advance, with the intention of sharing it with you all as I sit endlessly idle on a plane heading for a stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in Johannesburg, South Africa. While that 15 or so hour flight might provide me with some blog scribbling time, posting from an airplane is more than my experience with shoddy internet leads me to believe I should endeavor to do. So instead, I write in late August, knowing that the few short weeks until my departure will dissolve before my eyes as soon as I am back to work after Labor Day.

The specter of long distance travel and time away from home has me pondering, among other things, the interruption of my daily intake of green smoothies. Upwards of five or six years ago my mother became a green smoothie enthusiast. She began extolling their virtues and since she is a vegan this was not especially surprising. I took note but did not feel compelled to follow her down this path – that is until she sent me a book about them and a blender. I did feel that if someone goes to the trouble of sending you a blender (and a book) the least you can do is give something like green smoothies a try. So I did.

To my surprise I not only liked them, but attributed some things like a boost in energy and better sleep to a daily dose of them almost immediately. In turn, I quickly converted Kim. (Kim is never one to ignore a health improving opportunity – he is extremely open to these self-improvement paths I head down and has, most notably, followed me into yoga and more recently working out with my trainer, Harris. One day Harris will get his own post.)

My smoothie recipe contains mostly greens (bok choy, salad greens, chard, sometimes broccoli but excluding kale – which makes my tummy hurt – skirting all the heavy greens like spinach which Kim’s body takes exception with) and in my case topped off with a half a banana, a couple of strawberries. At some point I added gogi berries (as someone who is always looking for a shot in the arm for my liver which is inclined to be sad about some mediation I take) and there the recipe, give or take, stands to date.

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Kim is all-green for his, eschewing fruit entirely and being very virtuous. At some point, after several years, my place at the helm of smoothie making was handed over to Kim who makes them on a more dependable schedule than I do – two, made every other day and providing a daily dose. He does a splendid job.

I have illustrated today’s post with a photo from a site call cookingclassy.com and chose it for its shade of green, a good approximation of the one I drink. The lurid color is, for me, part of the appeal.

Until my vacation this year I had avoided fruit smoothies entirely. I found myself with a meagre handful of strawberries and two very small and over-ripe nectarines that needed a plan however. I whipped out a container of yogurt, added a touch of milk and the fruit and wowza! I was in love! I have subsequently replaced that bit of milk with water to much the same effect. While it can be a pow-o sort of amount of fruit one can keep it to a reasonable amount and still have a lovely treat. (It is, I should note, a rather electric pink which is quite cheerful as well.)

Our devotion to smoothies has turned us into blender experts. We generally burn the motor out on a blender in the 18-24 month (on average) period. For a very long time I had Oster blenders and was able to acquire replacement parts for everything but the motor. Therefore, with replacement carafes, blades, etc. I was able to extend the life of one or two blenders across several years. After that came a series of Cuisinart ones – meh. Bad designs that made leaking possible and ended with a recent catastrophe of smoothie spillage. (It should be noted that green smoothie is hard to clean up and stains tenaciously. Rinse glasses and carafe from blender immediately. This goes for teeth too – my dentist does not love them.) So committed am I that we generally keep a spare blender in anticipation of breakage. We try never to be without.

This brings me back, alas, to travel. On my longer trips I find myself missing my daily smoothie. Some upscale hotels, especially in Los Angeles although one memorable hotel with a spa in Florida, have come through with credible replacements for my smoothie. They tend to use apple instead of banana (I like the texture of banana as well as the taste, but nothing against apples – my mother’s go-to fruit for them.) Generally speaking however, my trips are smoothie droughts. Like many other daily aspects of home which I will miss (Kim, cat petting) smoothies are generally a casualty of my business travel. I have no particular reason to think South Africa will prove differently, although you never know.