Serious Eats

Posted by Ed Levine, September 5, 2007

Lots to chew on in the New York Times food section today.

Harold McGee on using gelatin to concentrate the flavors of nearly anything into consommé-like essences: "It’s ingenious. As the jelly freezes, the water in it begins to form solid ice crystals, while the gelatin, the solid food particles, the droplets of fat and the flavors are concentrated in the remaining liquid. The long gelatin molecules bond to each other to form an invisibly fine net that traps everything else in its crevices."

A poignant and pointed take on the difficulties of opening a restaurant in the Big Apple: "Murphy's Law rules the insane world of New York City restaurants. Community boards can kill a liquor license. City codes must be met. Chefs and investors fall out and money just disppears." I just wish that writer Joe Drape had explained the vagaries of obtaining a liquor license in New York. But can anyone? Is obtaining a liquor license in other cities just as difficult?

The section's main package, Florence Fabricant's restaurant preview, is exhaustively comprehensive and informative, with a slew of openings in New York and noted newcomers across the country, but is it really news that the order of the day in new restaurants is informality?

Fledgling Rhys Vineyard's output "among the best American pinot noirs," says Eric Asimov. "To call [Kevin] Harvey a wine lover is a little like calling Thomas Keller a cook. It’s not wrong, but it doesn’t begin to get at the fanatical drive within."

Melissa Clark gets tired of corn on the cob, waxes poetic about the merits of decobbed kernels. With a recipe for Brown Buttered Corn.

The Minimalist, Mark Bittman, on an easy tomato paella. Recipe: Paella with Tomatoes

Fabricant on the book Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews, by Poopa Dweck: "The intriguing recipes inspired me to head for my kitchen, but the story the author tells kept me in my chair, riveted." Recipe: Sweet Cherry-Stewed Meatballs

Frank Bruni liked the food at Soto as much as I did but found the service lacking. That he calls the restaurant out for being expensive doesn't make much sense to me. Compared to Masa or Bar Masa? I don't think so.

I loved Peter Meehan's "review" of Go! Go! Curry. Consider his description of the restaurant's dark curry sauce: "There's a meaty, beany quality to its flavor, and sweetness around the periphery of it. It tastes much more like something that is reconstituted than something that is cooked. Beguiling might be the way to describe it: it bewitches with its inscrutable foreignness, its unapologetic Japanese-ness, its 'I guess fried food does taste good covered in this sticky stuff'-ness."

I've been to Go! Go! Curry, and I find its appeal baffling as well. Maybe it's the guy in the furry gorilla suit.

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