The covered market near the Thessaloniki Film Fest is a welcome respite from days of watching movies and filing stories. Here are just a few of my pics.
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Through a glass tile in the sidewalk in front of Murray’s Cheese on Bleecker Street, you can glimpse an underground cave where cheese is aging. Tuesday night I was invited to tour the caves and sample delicious product. A group of us were given red chef’s coats and hair-nets to prepare for a subterranean tour by the store’s affineur* Mike Anderson. There is so much to learn about cheese after it’s made and before it’s sold, that an hour down below was not enough. Upstairs we got to taste the wares, including the most luscious, buttery Sweet Grass Dairy Green Hill and nutty, textured Uplands Cheese Company Pleasant Ridge Reserve.
Here are some of the photos I took, including one from the vantage point from within the cave, looking up to the street. (I know what you’re thinking. No, you can’t see up someone’s skirt from down there.)
08-18-09: Caciocavallo
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I was raised on “Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappé and was a vegetarian for most of my life. “Laurel’s Kitchen” and “The Moosewood Cookbook” had pride of place on our kitchen shelf. There was miso paste in the refrigerator at all times (and there still is, in my home). For personal health reasons, I recently converted to omnivore.
So the food industry has been a topic of interest for me my whole life. I recommend seeing Food, Inc. even if you know a lot about the subject from previous books and films, some of which I mentioned in a previous blog post. The issues need continued support, and there is new information here that’s eye opening.
Why do I think gnarly tomatoes taste better? Uniform, spherical tomatoes, in an unnatural red smack of lab, not farm. So skip those and go for the funniest shape, most mottled color for better odds on a delicious tomato.
Last January I celebrated my birthday at Blue Hill at Stone Barns Farms, the sister restaurant to our own local Blue Hill (in the West Village), where the first couple dined last night before attending an August Wilson play, for a New York City “date night.”
Here’s an excerpt from my previous post on Blue Hill:
....I celebrated my birthday a couple of weeks ago with a multi-course banquet at the Blue Hill farm-to-table restaurant on Stone Barns Farm. (You may recall that I visted the farm last summer.) Every meal is personalized based on your tastes, allergies, etc. and the ingredients come directly from the surrounding farm or local suppliers. That night, the waitstaff was particularly proud of their winter-harvested beets because of the sugars that concentrate at this time of year. My favorite courses included the sunchoke soup and the gnocchi with wild mushrooms and ice spinach, along with a dessert accompaniment of chocolate-mint herbal tea.
Eating local/ organic/ or homemade feels more like self-improvement or even indulgence than it does changing the world. What a simple way to start taking action! Demand it, buy it, serve it, and talk it up….
Not an important film, but a fun one for foodies. A Touch of Spice by Tassos Boulmetis was a hit in Greece and is now playing at New York’s Cinema Village. After seeing it, I rushed out to Kalustyan’s in Curry Hill to refresh my spice collection.
Plot summary from IMDb:
“A Touch of Spice” is a story about a young Greek boy (Fanis) growing up in Istanbul, whose grandfather, a culinary philosopher and mentor, teaches him that both food and life require a little salt to give them flavor; they both require… A Touch of Spice. Fanis grows up to become an excellent cook and uses his cooking skills to spice up the lives of those around him. 35 years later he leaves Athens and travels back to his birthplace of Istanbul to reunite with his grandfather and his first love; he travels back only to realize that he forgot to put a little bit of spice in his own life.
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