Still so proud!

This blog happened to record the Carpenter's speech, delivered upon his victory. I paste it here in it's entirety. It was a really good speech.

This morning I woke up a regular Brooklynite like all of you. And now I'm standing here with Marty Markowitz and 6 ounces of cheese in my belly. And... I just couldn't be happier.

The Title Belt!

The Most Glorious Day of My Life.

Thanks for the shout out secretary. What an odd arc of a day that takes you to local Brooklyn stardom like a cheese-eating contest. We got to the street fair, where the eat-off was going to take take place, nice and early. I had just polished off the Hungry Man breakfast special at Joe's on Court Street. I knew that I wanted a big breakfast to stretch out the stomach, but I needed to work the food through my system before I could attempt to eat the cheese, for which I had done virtually no preparation. the night before I was at a block party, and I took a slice of cheddar and tried to swallow it whole, just to see if it was possible. I thought about my technique, but I certainly had not sat down to a plate full of cheese to see how much I could eat.

By the time the contest was to begin, the streets had filled with spectators at least 6 rows thick, and I was eyeing the belt. They had created a WWF style belt with wheels of cheese on it, upon which the winner's name would be emblazoned. I had specifically asked to go in the second heat of eaters so I could watch the skills of the first round to get some ideas on how I might win the thing. It turned out I was the last person in the first heat, which was a surprise, which forced me to jump in and eat. As I got to the table I asked a bystander to hold my glasses during the contest. The time was called and the eating began.

The first thing I noticed was the warm, saltiness of the cheese, but with all the eating going on around me, I was panicked into biting off big chunks to get some early headway. My technique involved chomping up the cheese into small enough pieces in my mouth and then taking the water to wash the chunks down in big gulps. It was all pretty gross, because your mind is very much inside your mouth - every crumble of cheese you are thinking "Can I swallow that one without choking?" Then you just throw your head back and swallow. Someone halfway down the table asked for a new piece of cheese a few seconds before I had finished mine, so I shoveled the piece left in my hand into my mouth and tapped my plate for a second. In what seemed like a second later, the crowd started counting down the last 10 seconds at which point I started stuffing cheese into my mouth. Big bites to fill the mouth. I have to say, I felt pretty slow, and I think I even slowed a bit at the end, being pretty sure that I hadn't won it. Good learning for next year, don't lose hope.

The leftover pieces were weighed, and it turned out that I had won the first heat by a slight little bit. And in the second heat, not one person even made it into the second piece of cheese. Then Marty Markowitz announced the winner. Then yesterday became the best day in my life. Almost seriously. Or completely seriously.

You may wonder why carpenter is such an infrequent blogger now. Well it's because carpenter is actually working as a carpenter right now. There are no computers in the carpentry world. In fact he worked as a carpenter today. One day, you're king of Brooklyn, the next you're building roof-decks for Kelly Ripa.

Thanks for keeping this alive secretary. I owe you one.

-carpenter

Brooklyn's Cheese Eating Champ

I am so proud.

Warmest regards,
Secretary

P.S. Great cheese re-cap at Harriett's Tomato.

P.P.S On the front page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle!!

Red Hook Tacos: Check!

. . . and papusas, and quesadillas, horchata, deep fried roll thing, tamales, plantain filled with cheese, and bbq-ed corn. Delicious! And ouch!

We don't really speak Spanish, but made our way through with one key phrase: con todo.
We were there on the very same day that Chuck Schumer was making a speech about how awesome it is there, and please not to let the city ruin it by opening it up to corporate vendors. In fact, there is a very good chance we are on tv standing behind him while he talks, sloppily eating up some delicious corn on a stick. (That's be us eating, and Schumer talking.)

On the way home, we wandered past the projects and into a street festival with some seriously amazing dance/poetry/music being performed. As soon as the performance was done, the DJ called from behind, and everyone ran (I mean RAN) to the other side of the field to have a dance-off. What a perfect Saturday.

Also, we can check arugula off the list: Planted!


Tamale!


Cheese-filled Plantain!


Horchata!!!

Summer Fun Times

These are the fun things that I want to do this summer:

• Bike ride to the Rockaways
• Biker ride to Coney Island
• The Mermaid Parade
• Governor's Island (via water taxi?)
• Red Hook Ball Field Tacos
• Moonshine BBQs
• Plant Arugula
• Get strong for the big 100 mile ride
• Use my gift certificate at The Good Fork
• The Red Hook Pool
• Frozen key lime pie on a stick
• Boozy brunch
• Strawbery Shortcake

What else, Carpenter?

Sourdough Bread Recipe

I've got the bread recipe for you, but Carpenter will have to tell you about how to make the starter. It is as good as any sourdough I've had in San Francisco, and I am crazy about good sourdough. Old experts will tell you that sourdough turns out better on an overcast day, but I haven't made enough to tell the difference.

It's pretty much the same as this one, from The NY Times. I'm pasting it here with my changes for sourdough.

Sourdough Bread

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1 1/2 Cups Water
2 to 4 tablespoons sourdough starter (4 tablespoons = about 1/4 cup)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.


1. In a large bowl combine flour and salt. Add water and starter, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. I usually leave it for 24 hours.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 425 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Lasagna Noodles

Here's the thing they never tell you about lasagna noodles: You never, ever have to boil them. Ever.

I remember my mom making lasagna, and wrestling with a pot full of squirmy, slippery noodles that were just dying to stick together before she got them into the lasagna pan. She is a champion noodle wrestler, and she managed to get most of them in the pan. It involved a lot of olive oil and two pairs of tongs. She did it, but it looked so annoying that to this day, I've never tried to boil a lasagna noodle. If getting the noodles in the pan isn't difficult enough. . . as you may know, one of the key parts in making lasagna is spreading a layer of ricotta (or cottage cheese, if you are a certain southern friend of mine) on top of the layer of noodles. Have you ever tried to spread anything on a cooked noodle? So while my mom does make a delicious lasagna, she does not make it very often.

Anyway, the point is that you never, ever have to do this. And you also do not have to buy whatever kind of "no-boil" fake-o noodles they try to sell you. Let me break down the math for you: It takes 8 to 10 minutes to boil a lasagna noodle to fully cooked. It takes around 45 minutes to bake a lasagna. When the lasagna comes out of the oven the sauce is so boiling hot, that you have to let it sit for at least another 10 minutes before you can even try to eat it. We can assume that the sauce is boiling hot for at least 10 minutes during the baking time. Therefore, the noodles will be boiled to fully cooked during the course of baking time. Yes!

So basically, all you have have to do is make sure you use plenty of sauce, and that the sauce is extra saucy. Assemble the lasagna with uncooked noodles, use plenty of sauce, and bake as usual.

Don't let them lie to you any more. And never try to spread anything on a cooked noodle.

Bread

Since last we spoke, I've been making so much bread!

Got this recipe off the New York Times, and have been making it like crazy. It's really magical that you can stir up a bowl of flour, water and yeast; let it sit for a day; and end up with bread. And it's not bread like a regular loaf of bread. Not like what we made in Sunday School or Girl Scouts. This is fancy bakery, delicous bread in big, crusty, beautiful rounds. I am seriously amazed that I can do this.

In the past when I've tried to make bread, it's always come out terrible. Not rising enough, or the flavor is bad, or I can't figure out the science of the kneading. I remember when we had a bread machine, when I was in high school, there were all kinds of complex formulas you had to do if you were going to use an alternate flour. Making something crazy, like wheat bread, meant you had to balance out the wheat flour with white flour just right or it would end up hard and nasty. You know what else is nasty? The crust on bread-machine-bread, especially the little baked in hole where the stirring paddle was.

Something about the science of long-rise, no-knead makes it nearly impossible to mess up. I've done it with wheat flour. I've done it with white flour. I've never once used the recommended "bread flour". It is always delicious. I've let it rise anywhere from 12 hours to 28 hours and nothing bad has happened. I might even say that the 28 hour bread was one of the most delicious.

That is until the Carpenter figured out how to make sourdough starter. And now we are making sourdough bread! Oh, yes!! OH, YES!!!

Maybe the Carpenter will tell you all about the starter, and the weekly feedings.

It's OK with me if this is some kind of crazy fad; if girls with glasses all over Brooklyn are making loaves of bread like they're jelly shoes and friendship bracelettes. You know why? Because it is sooooo good. Truly the best bread I've ever tasted, every time. And I made it myself.

Gumbo Smells Like Saltines

I was forced to make a gumbo since I had all these leftover okras (all this leftover okra?) from an aspic-making experiment. Let me tell you, when you do all your grocery shopping for a food-based arts and crafts project, you'll end up spending lots of money and a day later you'll still have nothing to make. Cause believe me, you don't want to eat aspic, that stuff is just fun to make.

So I am watching this okra go bad, and I thought I'd get what I needed to put it to good use. The recipe in my brand new Joy of Cooking that secretary's mom got us for Christmas looked good and authentic. One of the ingredients is "File Powder", and I had no idea what that is.

I bought a whole chicken at Staubitz, my local butcher, and by the way, the best Butcher in Brooklyn. They can get you the best cuts of meat, from any animal, any time of the year. And the guys behind the counter are funny, and awesome. I told the guy I was making Gumbo and I needed 3lbs of a whole chicken.

"You need it cut up?"

Yeah I needed it cut up, and I wouldn't have asked out of shyness and embarrassment being a man who doesn't really feel totally confident dismembering a whole chicken.

"You need File Powder?"

Yeah I needed File Powder, and he proceeded to show me where on the shelf it was.
Unfortunately their Chef Prudhomme Brand File Powder was all out, but I appreciated the effort. Walking home with a sack of chicken, minus the powder, still felt like an achievement. Turns out that File Powder is ground sassafras root, and is used as a thickener. When I got home, secretary suggested that I use corn starch instead. Worked great, by the way.
Let me cut to the chase. The best part of making gumbo is making of the roux. You take about equal parts canola oil and flour and you slow roast the flour until it is mahogany brown. The cookbook actually says, "Mahogany Brown." I love that. It takes about a half an hour, but this gelatinous oily mess slowly transforms into a truly decadent slurry. My description can't do justice to the smell that made me hungrier for gumbo than I have ever been. When you slow roast the flour, it starts to smell like the most delicious saltines you have ever tasted. A perfect toasted smell, and this is before you have included the browned chicken, the andouille sausage, and the vegetables. You know that at its very base, Gumbo is made from some delicious stuff. That's why I like gumbo, it has good character.

The recipe gave me the choice to use chorizo or andouille, and I chose the latter. Good choice. Totally spicy, and because I sliced it so thin, every bite had at least 2-3 sausage rounds in it. The sausage was even made in Connecticut, where carpenter is from. As usual, I didn't think that the gumbo would be hot enough, so I added some "After-Death" hot sauce to knock it up a little. I thought it might have been too hot in the long run - after 5 bites it was really kicking. The heat then plateaued magically, and each bite just maintained a nose-running, but totally exhilarating hotness. I believe that the roux had something to do with it, the perfectly toasted flour slurry keeping the balance of flavor and heat in perfect balance.

Gumbo takes a while, but the rewards are worth it.

-carpenter

Buffalo Chicken Dip for Dinner

I went to a crazy birthday party with secretary this weekend and had a killer dip. Reminded all of my friends of the famed Buffalo Zone from our college calzone shop, DP Dough.

Thanks to a friend's research on the internet, we have the recipe. I made it for dinner last night with a white bean hummus to take the edge off of the unhealthiness of having a dip for dinner. Made a few updates to the recipe myself. My changes are in bold.

CHEESY BUFFALO CHICKEN DIP
From Frank's RedHot Co.

• 1 8-ounce package of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup blue cheese salad dressing
• 1/2 cup Frank's RedHot Buffalo Wing Sauce or cayenne pepper sauce (I used Jim Beam Buffalo Hot Sauce)
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese or shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 cups shredded cooked chicken
  

To make shredded chicken, coat 2 medium chicken breasts in canola oil, and chopped fresh garlic. Put in baking dish with a little water, and bake, covered until chicken is done, 30 minutes or so. Use 2 forks to shred the chicken.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place cream cheese in deep-dish 9-inch pie plate. Microwave 1 minute to soften. Whisk in salad dressing, wing sauce and cheese until smooth. Stir in chicken.
Bake 20 minutes or until mixture is heated through. Stir well. Serve with crackers or crudités. Makes 3 cups (about 12 servings).

-carpenter