Posts tagged food

Here’s a recipe I’ve refined over the years.

Prep time 20 minutes, cooking time 40 minutes.

Ingredients:

2 cups brown basmati rice
3 & 1/2 pounds chicken thighs, cut into 2 or 3 inch strips
six cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon ginger, finely chopped
3 or 4 cups brown button (crimini) mushrooms, chopped into halves or thirds depending on their size
12 asparagus stalks, chopped into inch long pieces
2 small red peppers, halved & chopped coarsely into 1/2 inch strips
1 egg
2 cups fresh basil, stalks removed
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 red onion, chopped coarsely into 1/2 inch strips
sesame seeds for garnish
tamari soy sauce

Method:

First bring four cups of water to the boil, then add basmati rice and simmer, covered, for 35-40 minutes.

Then start your food prep, chopping everything that needs chopping.

Once everything’s ready, put the onions in a wok or large fry pan and cook quickly on high heat until they start to soften. Then add the chicken, garlic, and ginger. Once the chicken has browned add the mushroom, capsicum, asparagus and fish sauce. Don’t overcook! The frying should only take ten to fifteen minutes total. As the veges start to soften, crack the egg and scramble it into the mix. Add a handful of fresh basil leaves, wilt for 30 seconds, and remove pan or wok from heat .

Serve over basmati rice, garnish with the cilantro and sesame seeds; lightly drizzle tamari to taste. Serves 4.

Call me strange, but I love critics.

I can feel you rolling your eyes from here, but hear me out. I rely on them all the time to help me decide on whether I want to further investigate music, movies, food, drink, art, restaurants, bars. All sorts. And good critics do that: give you enough information to help you make a good choice.

Bad critics, both professional and amateur, do something else. Bad critics have one thing in common (apart from being unfunny and overly narcissistic) - they always overreach themselves as arbiters of taste.

Let me give an example of which I’m overly familiar, having spent a good decade reviewing music albums and EPs. It goes a little something like this: ‘I don’t understand this music and it leaves me cold, but I’m sure it’s great if you’re into that sort of thing…’.

The whole entire point of criticism is that it needs to be written from the point of view of a fan. Why? Well who do you think is reading that review? It’s people who are really into whatever genre or specific artist it is that you’re reviewing. (This holds true for movies, food, and the other aforementioned fields too). People who don’t have a strong affiliation either way are not the target audience of your review.

So a good critic doesn’t compare a B-movie action thriller to The Remains Of The Day. Fast Five is not literature, and it’s not trying to be. It’s a completely preposterous and absurd movie with some hot chicks, great action sequences, and very high production values that’s aimed at teenage boys, and the teenage boy in all of us. Or at least half of us.

It’s not a good movie - but it’s a really good bad movie.

A good critic will come at their review from the viewpoint of someone who’s really into say, country music, or post-modern literature, or Woody Allen, and take pains to describe their album (or movie or whatever) in the sort of terms and style, and with enough reference points to other comparable artists, that it gives you enough information to decide for yourself if you want to go out and investigate further and/or purchase said product. A good critic shouldn’t even really need to say if something is good or not; just explain if they liked it or not, and why.

Oh, and ideally, do this in a funny and engaging way that exhibits a certain playfulness with language.

If you think I’m wrong, well… everyone’s a critic.

After three weeks here I’m finally starting to feel a little less like a tourist gimp from nowheresville. Our new apartment is a pre-war building in Hell’s Kitchen on a picturesque, tree-lined one way street in Hell’s Kitchen, a couple of blocks from Times Square in the Theatre District.


Times Square is truly spectacular at night, no matter how often you visit

Hell’s Kitchen is so-called because until quite recently it was run by Irish and Italian gangs (the latter of which incidentally, apparently run all the garbage collection for Manhattan). These days it’s better described as a pretty Soddom & Gomorrah, given the prevalent gay population recently ejected upwards from Chelsea and the Meatpacking District by increasingly turgid housing costs.

Our apartment building, Fall 2009

I have so far collected the take-out menus of around 40 different restaurants within a couple of blocks, and I doubt that’s half the joints. There’s heaps of pizza and Mexican of course (praise the gods), including Ethiopian, Indonesian, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, Korean, Italian, French, Japanese, Greek, Dominican, Spanish, Brazilian and more. Incidentally, this week I happened across a tiny Mexican grocery / bodega called Tehuitzingo that reviewers have raved about as serving “the best tacos in Manhattan”. Rest easy that I’ll investigate this claim further for you. All the restaurants deliver for free, including the convenience stores, and almost everyone has lunch specials for less than 10 bucks.


Our entire apartment is the size of an average living room. Comfy though.

In bleak news for my liver, the mom & pop convenience stores on every corner (they’re called Delis here) usually carry a better beer selection than specialty liquor stores back home, and often make custom sandwiches of every description a la Subway, only so much better.


Twilight in Hell’s Kitchen

I’ve also landed next to not one but two phenomenal brewpubs. The Irish pub House of Brews on 46th Street (also known as Restaurant Row) boasts a selection of 80 different craft beers both local and from around the world, while Pony Bar on 10th Avenue has a fairly unique shtick: there’s 20 different American craft beers on tap, and every time a keg runs dry they replace it with a different beer, so the beer menu changes daily. Did I mention that I love American craft beer? Americans have been leading the world in craft beer for a while now so I am busy having nerdgasms every day.


(Pony Bar image www.NYbarfly.com)

To top off this awesomeness there’s also an amazing beer and cheese craft store on the end of my block. Beer. Cheese. Together!

I am so unsophisticated.

I think the thing I love most about Manhattan at the moment is just walking the streets. There are literally people from everywhere here, and from every socioeconomic level. I find the amount of homeless people quite unnerving, but then I also think, ‘hey, you’re a homeless guy in the greatest city in the world. Better than being homeless in Wanganui.’ And because it’s so flat and compact everyone walks, so there’s always a certain frisson. And incredible architecture. It’s a buzz.

I’m also loving the street art and advertising, which is everywhere, and has high production values and / or incredible originality.


Poster hoarding ads for a $1 New York lottery had a certain Kiwi ring


Street art in Greenwich Village

You can do amazing things for free, like go to a live taping of The Daily Show (only a few blocks from chez Mitch), so that’s what I did with a kiwi photographer friend who’s married to a New Yorker. Bit of a fluke as it’s usually booked out a year ahead. You have to queue for about 2 hours and go through pretty heavy airport-style security, but it’s quite fun once you’re in. The only way it could be more fun is if there was free beer. Serena Williams was the guest (full episode here) and Jon Stewart was quite taken with her charms. I’m off to a Colbert Report taping in January after being smiled upon by the ticket reservation gods once again.


Spot the guy who likes beer & cheese outside the Daily Show studio

Incidentally I also had a lot more fun during Halloween than I usually do back home, owing to 4 out 5 New Yorkers dressing up for it, and virtually every store getting into the theme of it as well - it really adds to the atmosphere on the streets. It was incredibly hot and sticky, real sub-tropical weather, and I went as Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Economically I only bought a fake butcher’s knife and some fake blood for my suit to round out the package before setting off for Brooklyn and Queens for a couple of parties; good times.

Needless to say, I highly recommend New York. For everything.