Entries tagged with “food” from Patell and Waterman's History of New York

The last time I checked our official Cambridge Companion page I was delighted to see that we officially have a cover. Even more delighted to see that they used the painting we recommended, by the Czech painter T. F. Simon:



The volume's due out in March. We just received proofs and think it looks pretty fantastic.

Some other highlights of the week ... via Stupefaction, a preview for a new film exploring the idea of "downtown" in the late 70s and early 80s. Narrated by Debbie Harry, Downtown Calling seems to have a special interest in exploring hip hop and underground dance. It premieres later this month in Austin.

Friends from LA are in town for a few days playing some shows. I caught them last night at Mercury Lounge and they're playing again at Union Hall in Brooklyn tomorrow. Not a lot of huge NYC content in this entry, if it weren't for the lovely and talented Sara Lov, the member of this tour I know best, who has a sweet little song called "New York":
 


Sara, who formerly fronted the band Devics, plays her set backed by a turntable that plays the instrumental tracks to her songs while she sings. I thought the trick worked quite well. Another LA band, Sea Wolf, headlines: friends of friends, they play perfectly pleasant indie rock. They had a nice crowd last night. My daughters have listened to them for the last few years and I took one of them, the 8th grader, to yesterday's sound check, since the show was 21+. Thanks to Sara and Tim for being so sweet to her while we were there.

And now? I think I'm going to go check out the much written about lobster rolls at Luke's. They're half the price of my favorites, at Ed's. I wonder if they'll only be half as good? Half the lobster? I'll report back.

Although it kicked off last fall, I've only recently become aware of the Tenement Museum's blog, which, like the museum itself, promises to be a great resource for New York history -- especially as it relates to immigrants and the LES (the blog seems to focus a lot of attention on immigrant and neighborhood foodways in particular). I'll be sure to add it to my daily reads.

Check out this recent post on foodstuff discovered while doing repair work on the 97 Orchard tenement, the museum's centerpiece.

I'm setting about making a white bean and ham soup, with leftovers from yesterday's Christmas dinner.

This year's ham came, I'm afraid to confess, from Whole Foods on the Bowery, a store with which I have an increasingly conflicted relationship (meaning I use it more than I should). The little pig was was tasty enough -- I glazed it with brown sugar, dijon mustard, and fig preserves -- and I'm sure the remains will make for a lovely soup. But I did feel a little guilty about the Whole Foods thing. While I was throwing about online for ideas about preparing what I'd bought, I made the realization (via this piece from the Times a couple years back) that I should have made my purchase at the East Village Meat Market or another local butcher. Oh, well. Next year. Or maybe I'll actually go for the traditional goose.



For more on how ham became a favored American food, see this recent piece by the cultural historian and literary critic David Shields.

And what was on your holiday table?

Several years ago at a friend's house in DC, we kicked off an annual habit of martinis and oysters before the big Thanksgiving meal. He and I shucked them ourselves -- my first time to wield an oyster knife -- and in spite of the fact that said friend sliced the side of his hand open that afternoon, we've repeated the habit every year since.

This year, for a much smaller dinner party, I ordered three dozen oysters from Wild Edibles: a dozen each of Wellfleets, Piper Coves, and Kumomotos (the former being hard to tell from one another, I thought, and the latter being almost a desert oyster -- a tiny little pocket of oystery goodness -- and a surefire crowd pleaser). The majority martini: a Plymouth Gibson.

Maybe it was the fact that we lived at the seaport when we first moved to New York, or maybe it was hanging out with a group of friends who occasionally got hankerings, around 2 a.m., to catch a cab up to Blue Ribbon in SoHo before they closed at 4. (Okay, we only did that once. More frequently we've stopped in at Shaffer City or, in our new neighborhood, Ed's Lobster Bar, which has the best lobster roll in the city, hands down.) Maybe it was reading Joseph Mitchell essays about the seafood-fueled adventures of Old Mr. Flood one too many times, but we've made it a habit to acquaint ourselves with local and imported varieties, differences of East vs. West Coast, and to order them in other parts of the world: Amsterdam, the south of France, or imported from New Zealand when we're in California. We've often lamented the days when New York's own oyster beds ruled the local roost.

In spite of having read and even taught sections of Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster -- his entertaining and informative history of New York City from the bi-valve's perspective -- I didn't realize that our current Thanksgiving tradition was merely resuming a long-standing tradition in New York and New England. Especially during the heyday of New York's oyster production (during the late 19th and early 20th centuries the city's waters produced around 700 million oysters a year) East Coast cookbooks unanimously and prominently featured oysters on the T-day menu.

Take this example from a turn-of-the-century cookbook, for instance:

Thanksgiving Dinner.

Like Christmas, Thanskgiving has its own bill of fare which has not been varied for many generations. Roasted turkey, pumpkin, mince and apple custard pies are served in almost all parts of the United States. A heavy breakfast, with chicken pie, and a late dinner are common rules. If shell-fish are in good condition, serve oysters on the half-shell or oyster cocktails as first course; if not, serve a clear soup. The turkey may be stuffed with oysters, or oyster sauce may be used in place of giblet sauce, or scalloped oysters may be served as a side dish. Oysters seem to be a part of the Thanksgiving dinner. Pumpkins, corn, nuts, fruits and bitter-sweet are the choice decorations.

Oysters on the Half-shell
Consomme a la Royal
Celery, Olives
Roasted Turkey, Oyster Sauce
Cranberry Jelly
Potato Croquettes, Cauliflower
Chicken Pie, Scalloped Oysters
Lettuce and Apple Salad, Water Thins
Toasted Crackers, Cheese
Coffee.

The food history timeline from which I took this menu first associates oysters with the Thanksgiving meal in 1620s, though the trend seems to have taken a real upswing in the Gilded Age and endured -- at least in the cookbooks sampled -- until around WWII. What happened then? They probably became too much of a luxury, I suppose, and in the city, the local beds were long since polluted and harvested into depletion.

At the moment, the reseeded beds in New York's harbor are good for cleaning up the water only: we probably won't see these beds yield edible oysters in our lifetimes. But as for me and my house, we're doing our part to bring the oyster back to its traditional place on the Thanksgiving menu, even if it means expending a little fuel to get them there. 

Did you know that New Yorkers love hot dogs so much that they spend over $100 million a year consuming them? That's what Padma Lakshmi (above, center) told us while introducing the "quickfire" challenge at the start of the second episode of Top Chef last week. I take it this figure includes store-bought hot dogs as well as hot dogs bought in restaurants, stands, and ballparks. An NPR story from May 2007 cited the $100 million dollar figure, but wasn't any more specific.

Who has the best hot dogs in the city? According to Top Chef, one of the contenders would be the world-famous Dominicks and D'Angelo's hot dog stand in Queens," and they brought out Angelina D'Angelo (above, right) to set the standard against which the fifteen remaining chefs would compete. According to a 2005 New York Times article, D'Angelo "serves a terrific steamed natural-casing Sabrett with sautéed onions. (Her husband, Gary, makes an estimable grilled skinless Sabrett dog with great grilled onions and peppers at another truck, D'Angelo's, about 100 yards south on Woodhaven Boulevard.)"

This week's guest judge was New York restaurateur Donnatella Arpaia (above, left). The winner? An Indian reinterpretation of the hot dog by chef Radihka Desai, who created a kabob-style lamb sausage with caramelized onions, cucumbers, and tomato jam.

I may have to make a pilgrimmage to Woodhaven Boulevard one of these days ... 

 

I blogged this elsewhere last year, but this afternoon I'm leading an annual Sweets and Cheap Eats on the LES walking tour for students returning to the Residential College where I live as faculty in residence.

If you were to add something to this tour, what would it be?