What's for Pudding?

Most meals in the Elliott/Dolan household of my childhood ended with an aura of defeat, followed by cries of “What’s for pudding?” This would confuse any poor non-family members who happened to be present, who had already been confused enough by whatever my mother had put on the table, whether it had been a heap of ungarnished shredded carrots, a pile of baguette cubes with a side of olive oil, or an inconsistently microwaved TV dinner. “What’s for pudding?” must have seemed syntactically jarring, and the thought of being forced to accept a pudding cup in a flavor that my mother found “interesting” was probably almost too much for our pitiable, uninitiated tablemates.

They needn’t have been so worried. “Pudding” is just what the English call the dessert course, and there never was any. Every Christmas, however, my mother would buy a packaged Christmas pudding, a tough, dense dome of dried fruits and stickiness. Years of store-bought Christmas puddings convinced me that I didn’t like them, but my grandmother’s homemade pudding, flambéed and doused in brandy butter, was a real revelation. This year I wanted to try making one myself, and I thought persimmon would be a nice seasonal flavoring. Little did I know, steamed persimmon pudding cake is actually a traditional American dessert, therefore (I thought) perfect for our cross-cultural British-American vegetarian Christmas.

Steaming a cake on the stove is actually no more difficult than baking it, and because my attempt succeeded so well, I’m convinced it’s foolproof. The batter is fairly typical, moistened by persimmon puree and lightly spiced with ginger and cinnamon. I folded in walnuts and raisins at the end, and poured it into a buttered Pyrex dish fitted with a lid. I raised the dish off the bottom of a large pot using the cylindrical part of a jar lid, and then filled the pot with water to halfway up the side of the Pyrex dish. The water should have been added before the dish, since some of it got in through the top, but it didn’t make much of a difference – remember, the whole thing is eventually inverted onto a plate anyway. The pudding took a little over two hours to steam and was ready to be taken out and cooled just before we sat down to dinner. Forty-five minutes later it came out of the dish without incident, a caramel brown color and deliciously moist. It is lovely with heavy cream or ice cream, but we were very fortunate to be able to dunk it in Rob’s homemade eggnog.

The only problem with this pudding was that there weren't nearly enough leftovers. Next time I’ll use a bigger dish, maybe for a fig and honey version. You can find the recipe for the original here.

[Other highlights of our vegetarian Christmas included a stuffed turban squash topped with a forest of romanesco. Unfortunately all of the pictures of it turned out a bit blurry, and don't capture the prismatic spikiness of romanesco.]

Dinosaur Cookies

My earliest career plan was to be a paleontologist when I grew up. That was at about age three, and I’ve changed my mind several times since, most recently upon learning that Sahadi’s was looking for a “full-time cheese person.” But my childhood interest in dinosaurs was rekindled the other week when my current interest in food led me to some stegosaurus-shaped cookie cutters. After coveting them for a few weeks, I was delighted to receive not just a stegosaurus but an entire menagerie of prehistoric creature cut-outs as an early Christmas present.

The problem with cut-out cookies is that while their shapes can be unique and exciting, their flavors usually are not. There’s nothing objectionable about sugar cookies, but they’re never memorable, and if I’m going to make dozens of anything, as one tends to when undertaking a batch of cookies, they had better have a taste that keeps you coming back for more.

Six species of dinosaurs are represented in the set I have, and I took a reasonably scientific approach to using them: as long as each species is consistent, no one can prove what they should look (or taste) like. The stegosaurus, I decided, had a chestnutty brown hide flecked with black specks. This effect was achieved with a buttery dough flavored with coffee grounds. The triceratops, meanwhile, was a golden color with granite-grey freckles (presumably for camouflaging in the mineral-rich rocks prevalent at the time), which I recreated with an orange zest and earl grey tea cookie recipe. It’s also as realistic a conjecture as any that all dinosaurs had vibrant metallic eyes, which conveniently resembled sugar dragées.

Both of the recipes I used had said to roll the dough into a log, chill it, and slice it into rounds, but I was willing to risk going the cookie cutter route. It took some experimentation to find the temperature at which the cookies could be easily cut without either sticking to the cutters or breaking apart, but the effort was worth the reward of non-bland cut-out cookies. The flavors turned out even better than expected, especially the stegosauruses – I added cocoa and black pepper to the original recipe and substituted coffee horchata for the Kahlúa that was called for, and result was an ideal balance of bitter and sweet.

After baking and cooling I had a sizeable Jurassic population. It’s on its way to extinction due to human consumption, but the remaining members look quite happy in the habitat I constructed for them out of the latest Monterey Market produce run.

Original recipes can be found here and here.

Solution to Winter #2: Patience

Dishes that take several hours are never at the top of my list of Things to Make Soon, but because slow-cooking is the sometimes the only way to achieve a certain depth of flavor, they're often at the top of my list of Things to Eat Soon. Fortunately for me, I happen to have a very patient boyfriend, who fortunately happens to have a slow-cooker.

I've been campaigning for beef stew for a few weeks, my technique varying from subtle hints ("So, what are you doing Sunday or Monday or Wednesday night?") to outright demands ("You have to make it before I leave for California on Thursday"). He reported that the process itself, unlike me, was not very demanding at all: place cubes of meat, potatoes, and carrots in the crock pot in the morning, turn it on, go to work, come home to a very stewy apartment. Easy enough for me to consider trying it myself sometime – but it doesn’t bode well that my impatience manifested itself that evening even though I wasn’t doing any of the slow-cooking. I missed the bus, and even though dinner was six hours in the making, I couldn’t stand the idea of waiting ten minutes for the next one to come. Instead, I took off down Atlantic at a furious pace, noticeably frustrated and inelegantly jostling a cast iron skillet, a bottle of wine, and three large oranges. The bus caught up with me seven blocks later, two stops from the apartment, and I got on. Clearly, I’m not cut out for waiting of any kind.

When I finally arrived and put down my bag, I was ready for a hearty meal. I came ready to contribute to it, of course, since I had been so adamant that the stew be prepared for me. I quickly stirred together some cornbread batter, poured it into the skillet and stuck it in the oven, all of which took about four minutes. I then turned to the task of mulling wine, which I’ve heard is how the Finns survive this part of the year – keep a thermos of this stuff on you at all times, and you won’t care how long it’s been since you’ve seen the sun or felt anything in your fingertips. One bottle of Two-Buck Chuck went into a pot along with a halved orange, a few tablespoons of sugar, and some spices from a packet purchased at Canned Foods over a year ago, the pot was placed over low heat, and I stared at it, willing it to hurry up and get steamy.

About half an hour later, everything was piping hot and ready to eat. Piping hot, actually, is too hot to be consumed, but naturally I refused to wait for it to cool down, and I now have severe burns on the inside of my mouth. But the stew was delicious: nothing complicated, just the flavors of tender beef and root vegetables falling apart all over each other in a satisfying mush. Beef stew is the wool sweater of foods – practical and classic, and something your grandmother would suggest. Although a seared steak or a crisp raw carrot are perfect for certain circumstances, there’s no way to achieve the richness that results when their tastes and nutrients mingle and get to know each other without allowing them some time.

I’m hoping that reflecting on this meal will teach me the virtue of patience, because it seems like the only solution to winter may be to just wait it out. It must take more reflection than I’ve had time for, though, since I’m getting on a plane to California tonight.

Solution to Winter #1: Layering

Well, it finally happened, as I suppose it had to. It got cold. We enjoyed an exceptionally mild fall this year, one that lasted so long that I actually started to appreciate the briskness of a 58 degree day that some (weirdos) are so excited about. Usually when the temperature dips below 75 I turn against the environment entirely, seeing any kind of "sweater weather" as a mocking reminder of what is to come. But this year I had time to acclimatize, get to know and understand the fall, and take back my previous dismissal of it.

None of that matters now. It looks like the real cold weather is descending, with the knifey chill that characterizes Real Winter. Last March I swore that I would not tolerate another winter, and declared a plan to move to Argentina in January and beat the system. However, January is fast approaching and I have no tickets booked; it seems the plan will need to be revised. And because I know that with East Coast weather you don't get anything for free, I'm anticipating that the crippling cold will last a while, and I don't expect to go outside without feeling like I'm being stabbed until late June.

So, how to prepare for the worst? I've already dragged boxes of coats and hats from under my bed, and replaced them with swimsuits and inappropriate shoes. It's now time to consider the transition to make in the kitchen. My summer moratorium on warm foods of any kind ended several months ago, but now I'm looking for things that are truly enduringly warm, that act as internal space heaters hours after consumption when you've been forced to leave the warm cocoon of the kitchen. My first solution is what you get when you apply the logic of winter attire to cooking: lasagna.

A description of any well-constructed lasagna sounds like a bed you might want to jump into, and Chase did a very good job constructing one last night. The layers of ground turkey stewed with tomatoes and spinach were made very cozy by pillowy pockets of ricotta and frilly pasta scarves. It was the best comfort food possible on a rainy day - when it came out of the oven bubbling, we were comforted by the knowledge that the heat from the lava-like cheese would keep radiating in our stomachs until at least the next afternoon.

Last night's dessert was also based on the concept of layering, and additionally on the principle of a “whiskey jacket,” although I used rum because it tastes much better. I bought a bag of excitingly affordable pfeffernüse cookies a few weeks ago in the hope that they would taste like mini-lebkuchen, but unfortunately they did not, and instead were unpleasantly stale and chewy. But since they were spiced very nicely with lots of anise, and the only problem was texture, I decided they should be put to use in some kind of liquid-soaked dessert. Because of its alcoholic sting and abundance of raisins, I never liked the elaborate trifle that my grandmother would make every Christmas, but now that my taste buds have matured I enjoy the memory of it retroactively, and the idea of a moist and gingery pfeffernüsse version seemed promising.

Of course, I inevitably simplified things. A food semanticist would probably refuse to call my creation a trifle; it would qualify as a parfait at best. Lacking a trifle dish and the desire to make anything as complicated as custard, I crumbled pfeffernüsse in the bottom of a reusable take-out container and sprinkled them with a few tablespoons of rum. Then I chopped two pears and simmered them in some orange juice and another splash rum, and poured the fruit over the cookies. The dish went in the fridge to cool while we ate lasagna, and when decided to move on from savory things I took it out and topped it with whipped cream (yes, from a can) and a dusting of nutmeg. The pfeffernüsse had melted into a velvety pudding consistency, and their flavor tasted even better without the distracting staleness. Their Christmas-y spices paired perfectly with the pears and cream, and the bite from the rum balanced the sweetness of the rest of the ingredients.

If every night of winter involved such festive spices and dense, cheesy casseroles, the whole thing might be tolerable. Last night certainly gave me the hope and motivation to keep thinking of Solutions to Winter.

Conquering Fears: Bread, Beer, Mayonnaise

A good portion of the country spent the last week preoccupied with tradition as matriarchs, patriarchs, and hosts of all types faced the task of assembling whatever traditions their friends and family require for Thanksgiving. In kitchens from coast to coast, families re-executed perfected recipes for pumpkin pie, followed turkey basting methods passed down for generations, mashed potatoes to the exact lumpiness preferred by the diners present. As with all annual family gatherings, Thanksgiving comes with the spirit of repeating the tried and true, perhaps rearranging the seating at the kids’ table but not changing much else.

But for those of us who don’t go home for the family event and choose to create our own Thanksgiving in our new surroundings, the week involved stressing out over how to do these traditional things by ourselves for the first time. Making sweet potato casserole that doesn’t result in crippling disappointment when compared to memories of Mom’s Perfect Potato Pie can be daunting, to say nothing of the prospect of being responsible for 15 to 20 pounds of poultry tasting good (and not poisoning your closest friends). This was not my first Thanksgiving away from home, but with a few under my belt I dared to try out some of the more intimidating recipes from my favorite childhood Thanksgivings, and conquering fears of difficult recipes turned out to be a theme of the weekend.

This year I was determined to make potato rolls. If I were to make a list of the Best Things I Have Ever Eaten, a lot of those things would have come through the Katovich kitchen on some of the most memorable Thanksgivings of my childhood, and their famous potato rolls would be somewhere close to the top. After last year’s Thanksgiving, I can attest that even though the kitchen has been transplanted in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the potato rolls are just as good. I knew I would be staying in New York this year, but I just couldn’t go more than a year without those rolls, so I begged for the recipe. I was excited when Lisa kindly supplied it, but quickly worried after reading it – it was a two-day process more complicated than my usual three-to-five-ingredient culinary undertakings. And, most terrifyingly, it involved yeast.

But like I said, I had to have those rolls. There were some tense moments surrounding the addition of the yeast (I was extremely unsure of how to tell whether an organism invisible to the naked eye is alive or dead), and there was a considerable amount of hard work. Pushing two large Idaho potatoes through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle in the absence of a potato ricer was not easy, nor was incorporating the required eight and a half cups of flour into the dough. My sister and I felt the kneading in our forearms the next day, but the relief of finding that the dough had risen successfully was comfort enough. The rest of the process was fairly enjoyable: after cutting and shaping the rolls and leaving them for a second rise, we had 48 little corkscrews of dough as silky and light as babies’ fists. The apartment filled with the smell of yeast and rosemary as they baked, and we were proud parents of two warm bags of potato pillows as we carried them in our (sore) arms to Thanksgiving dinner.

On Saturday, Chase and his roommate tackled an even more laborious yeast project: home-brewed beer. Chase made a very successful batch of Weizen a few weeks ago, but an oatmeal stout recipe seemed appropriate for the season this time. Like making bread, beer brewing is not as impossible as it seems before you try it, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Large amounts of water must be boiled, then an enormous bag of grain needs to leach its carbohydrative goodness into that water, different kinds of hops are added at different times, and everything has to be totally sterilized the whole time. The oatmeal stout ingredients produced a vat of opaque black liquid, which we decided “smelled like breakfast,” and is now gurgling vigorously in an upstairs closet. For the next few weeks Chase will agonize over what kinds of bacteria or mis-measurements could have sabotaged his production, but with some luck we will be able to drink the stuff by Christmas.

After witnessing such bravery in brewing, I felt confident enough this afternoon to attempt homemade mayonnaise, which I had been meaning to do for months. Making mayonnaise has scared a lot of people, myself included, I think because of the issue of turning a raw egg in to something edible, and because “emulsification” is such a long word that one assumes the chemistry behind it must be complicated. But it turns out that this daunting recipe as easy as TV chefs always told us it was. I used a food processor (I thought one strenuous culinary task was enough for one weekend) and roughly followed the recipe in How To Cook Everything. I wanted it to use it as a dipping sauce for vegetables rather than a spread, so I kept it fairly thin and added flavor with lemon juice, garlic, and a very peppery olive oil, but in the future I might try a milder and more spreadable version. I imagine this could be done by using more of a regular olive oil and blending it for longer. Of course, I have to get through this jar first, but it shouldn’t be too hard since this stuff seems to work well on everything. Paula Deen always said to put mayonnaise on grilled cheese sandwiches, and I’m glad I had this mayonnaise on hand for the grilled cheddar and fennel pita sandwiches I made for lunch. It was just as good for dipping fennel slices into as I waited impatiently for the cheese to melt. I’ll try it out with asparagus tonight, and maybe mix in a little basil to see what that does.

So the moral of these three stories is, I suppose, dare to do it yourself: search out the secrets to the basics (beer, bread, and mayonnaise being among the most elemental of life’s ingredients) and make an attempt to master them. There will be risks – you may murder an entire population of microorganisms and be punished with flat potato crackers, or inflict food poisoning on yourself and others – but these are worth the potential reward.

The potato roll recipe is classified, but here’s how to make a nice pungent mayonnaise:

One egg
½ cup olive oil plus a few tablespoons (I used the cheapest kind they sell at Trader Joe’s – I think it says “Trader Giotto’s”)
¼ cup very grassy extra virgin olive oil (I used the Extra Virgin California Estate Olive Oil from Trader Joe’s)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Dash of cayenne
Dash of salt and pepper
One clove of garlic, minced

Put ¼ cup of the plainer olive oil in a food processor with the rest of the non-oil ingredients and blend to mix. Then, with the processor running, add the rest of the olive oil in a very slow stream. Taste, adjust seasoning, and add extra olive oil to desired thickness.

The Greatest Possible Sandwich: A Parody of Seasoning

Proving the existence of God has proven tricky. Anselm’s proof is famous for not getting anywhere, but it is nevertheless taught in every intro to philosophy course, which probably has something to do with how funny it sounds.

His reasoning, known as the Ontological Argument, was basically along these lines:

1. God is a being that than which nothing can be greater.
2. Things can exist in the mind or in reality.
3. Things that exist in reality are greater than things that exist only in the mind.
4. Therefore, God must exist in reality.

This is an abridged version, of course, and Anselm elaborates on the argument using the words “that than which” so many times that his writing leaves you feeling somewhat dizzy and not much closer to grasping the nature of God. But apparently it doesn’t really matter, because his argument has been refuted (and then subsequently ridiculed) by a parity of reasoning. If the above argument is valid, then the following must also be sound:

1. The greatest possible sandwich is a sandwich that than which nothing can be greater.
2. Things can exist in the mind or in reality.
   
3. Things that exist in reality are greater than things that exist only in the mind.
   
4. Therefore, the greatest possible sandwich must exist in reality.

But of course, we’re told, there’s no such thing as greatest possible sandwich! So Anselm can’t have proven the existence of God. Right?

That’s the traditional response, but I think another reaction is possible. What if you had a particularly spiritual experience with a tri-tip sandwich from a shack in a parking lot on University and Oxford? What if its proprietor, dressed in white linen, glowing in the sun against the green and orange backdrop of his Brazilian flag-covered establishment, handed you a carton of soft bread filled with steak that than which nothing could be more tender, grilled onions that than which nothing could be more caramelized, and green cilantro dressing that than which nothing could be creamier? You might think that this man had just supplied you with the true Thatthanwich, the greatest possible sandwich, and thus restored the viability of Anselm’s proof of God’s real existence.

There’s a problem with this argument as well, however. The same Brazilian Café’s vegetarian sandwich, a precarious tower of avocado, shredded carrots, ricotta, corn, and other vegetables between two thick slices of sunflower seed bread dripping with cilantro dressing, might cast doubt on the ultimate status of the tri-tip sandwich. One might also recall the three-pork banh-mi at Nicky’s, the Montecristo on French toast at Trident, and the brie and roasted pepper baguette at the Musical Offering, and worry that we cannot, in fact, demonstrate the existence of the greatest possible sandwich, since any attempt to choose between these candidates would be unsuccessful, though enjoyable.

Still, there’s no reason to despair yet – the multitude of great sandwiches out there is an indication that we should be optimistic about the existence of God, after all. Furthermore, it gives us reason to turn to a more Spinozist conception – God can be found everywhere, since everything in existence makes up a part of him. Every tree, human, porpoise, and avocado is an element of the greatest possible being. I would argue, however, that the avocado is particularly essential.

Dark Chocolate and Dark Humor

Håkan Mårtennson crafts chocolate that aims to captivate more senses than simply that of taste: his creations also delight the eyes and nose as much as the tongue, and more often than not, play to the all-important sense of humor. This Swedish chocolatier was recruited by the owner of Fika, a Swedish café in Manhattan, to come to New York and exercise his flair for working with chocolate in a line of confections to be sold in Fika stores. The creative freedom that Fika allows him has led to some truly incredible projects, several of which were on display when I went to see him at the New York Chocolate Show this weekend.

It was the day after Halloween, so the blood sugar levels of the visitors to the expo were primed for chocolate sampling. The crowd filtered through the Metropolitan Pavilion showroom, accepting little cups of bacon-pop rock chocolate, caramelized cacao nibs, chocotinis, and other decadences. But around Fika's display there was more commotion than peaceful nibbling. Next to a gleaming case of truffles, Håkan had set up some of the elaborate chocolate sculptures that have earned him worldwide attention. Cameras flashed from all directions, and the chocolatier had to pause every few seconds to pose for someone who wanted to capture him with his work. Håkan's charm and generosity draw customers to him, but his dry wit keeps them guessing about what he'll come up with next.

Håkan is inspired by mythology and magic, and likes crafting whimsical figures because "no one can tell you what it's supposed to look like." Still, his sculptures are impressively accurate; a small statue of a cowering angel with delicate outstretched wings proves that he doesn't shy away from intricate detail. He has expanded beyond his culinary training in Sweden and invented techniques to make his chosen medium take on a range of special effects, from maintaining the sheen on a carefully furrowed head of hair (on a life-size reproduction of the head of the clown from Evil Dead) to recreating the roughness of gnarled wood (for the chair of a sinister gnome creature). The goal behind all of his work seems to be to defy people's expectations of what can be done with chocolate, and a noticeable competitive streak keeps him working hard to surprise and impress.

It is clear that Håkan has an eye for figures and an aptitude to working with his hands, but I am personally grateful that he has chosen to use his talents in the production of edible chocolate as well. Although his bite-size truffles are less grand than his sculptural works, they are no less visually impressive or imaginative. For his Halloween special, a coffin-like box of truffles each representing one of the seven deadly sins, he ensures that each dome of chocolate exhibits such a sheen that, with their swirls of sin-evoking color (red for lust, green for envy, gold for greed, and so on), they look just like dark marbles.

In choosing the flavors to represent each sin, Håkan again took the opportunity to inject his dark sense of humor into his work. "Gluttony" is an incredibly rich butter truffle with pine nuts, and to add to the effect, you get two of them. "Envy" is flavored with cactus and lime, not just because those ingredients are green, but because Håkan is jealous of the inventors of a Swedish cider infused with cactus juice, for coming up with such a good idea. I'm addicted to "Wrath" (whatever that may say about me psychologically), a blend of tangy raspberry with spicy licorice and black pepper. The more traditional flavors are superb too, but it is Håkan's experimentation with unusual ingredients that sets his work apart.

If only kids across the country could receive Håkan Mårtennson deadly sin truffles in their pillowcases on Halloween, instead of chalky Hershey's bars. Unfortunately, because the taste and appearance of chocolate are so sensitive to temperature, Håkan's chocolates cannot be shipped and are only available at Fika stores in New York (and having made the mistake of sending a box of them to Texas in June, I now accept this reality). But any trip to this city should include a stop at Fika to try some of his confections - and if you're lucky, Håkan will be there, and you'll get to meet the bold personality behind the innovation.

Pet Pumpkin

The other day, after stumbling out of the Barnes and Noble café where I had been torturing myself with hours of GRE practice to the sounds of smooth jazz and other people complaining about their lives, I was cheered up by a collection of pumpkins at the green grocer on Atlantic. The mere sight of their effulgent orange skin helped to stymie the mental wounds of the pernicious vocabulary questions to which I had become almost inured, and made the day seem far less stygian.

So I bought one. One of the smaller sugar pumpkins, streaked with dark turquoise marks that made it look a bit like a magnified zebra tomato, jumped out at me right away. As I picked it up, the name “Cordelia” jumped to mind as well. I don’t remember if I named my Halloween pumpkins as a child, but every year required a meticulous search through the gigantic pumpkin mountain at Monterey Market for one with just the right personality. Picking a pumpkin can be like picking a pet: you choose one that seems friendly, carry it home in your arms, enjoy the certainty of its loyal, albeit subtle, excitement when you get home from work. And then, you remove its innards and use its flesh for various artistic and culinary purposes.

This whole phenomenon reminded me of an ongoing plot in Gordon Ramsay’s show The F Word, in which he raises pigs and sheep in his backyard to educate his children about where meat really comes from. I like the idea of self-sufficiency, and as a committed omnivore I feel that I should be able to face the reality of killing an animal for food. But when it comes down to it, I probably can’t.

That’s where this pumpkin comes in. I’ve devised a plan to bring me slightly closer to shedding my hypocritical stance on meat-eating (but note that no animals will be harmed in the execution of this plan). I’m going to nurture Cordelia for a week, making sure she doesn’t get too dusty, setting her near different windows every once in a while to keep her mind active, keeping her away from any radiators that might cause premature decay. Then, on October 31, she will be sacrificed and used for the most delicious pumpkin-based recipe known to mankind.

I need to find this recipe. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Vietnamese Sandwich on a Chinese Bus

The banh-mi craze has been going on for a while in New York, and with any luck they’ll soon become as ubiquitous across America as bubble tea. Everyone who’s tried one will probably tell you that they’ll eat a Vietnamese sandwich anytime and anywhere, but I sense whispered rivalries building up in this city as more and more banh-mi shops spring up. My first was purchased at Nicky’s in the East Village, and I’ll always be partial to their “Classic” sandwich, a buttery baguette densely stuffed with three kinds of pork, which warmed and filled me up on an otherwise-bleak winter day in 2008. The decadent combination of pate, ground pork, and roasted ham, contrasted with fresh carrots, cilantro, and jalapenos, is what makes the banh-mi a work of genius, in my opinion.

I’ve ordered the same thing at a tiny place on Broome Street, which offers a slightly cheaper and much, much bigger version. I was happy with what I got – like I said, you just don’t say no to a Vietnamese sandwich – but the bread was drier than the Nicky’s baguette, almost dangerously crusty. Not a bad option if you want to spend $3 on lunch and dinner combined, but I’d probably just spend an extra dollar and go to Nicky’s.

It’s very hard, in fact, to convince me to go anywhere but Nicky’s. But Paris Sandwich, a small establishment on Hester Street, has such a fanatical following (on the internet, at least) that I was willing to give it a try, and $4 of my hard-earned money. All reviews gushed about the bread, which is baked on the premises every hour, and I was guardedly hopeful that I would discover a source of fresh baguette that didn’t require a passport and plane ticket.

I planned to take the Chinatown bus to Boston last Friday, and a sandwich seemed like a good thing to bring on a four-hour bus ride that only stops at an Arby’s in New Haven. So before making my way to the Lucky Star pick-up point, I stopped by Paris Sandwich, a small but difficult-to-miss storefront with some very prominent signage. I decided on a shredded chicken bahn-mi, since I was branching out anyway, and it was handed to me promptly by a brisk bahn-mi server.

I made the bus with plenty of time thanks to this efficiency, and tried out the sandwich. Maybe it was the choice of chicken, a fairly unassuming flavor in comparison to a trio of pork, but the baguette was certainly the most memorable component. It was nice and soft on the inside, with a crackly crust that provided the perfect shell the other ingredients. Paris Sandwich has not, I have to say, fulfilled my quest for a real French baguette: the crust did not have the required shellacked sheen, and it was drier and dusted with some kind of cornmeal. But it was delicate and fresh, far from the offensive “Italian loaf” sold at so many delis around here.

The sandwich had the typical organization of a banh-mi: the meat stuffed into the uncut side of the baguette, strips of carrot and daikon and sprigs of cilantro running the length of the thing on the other side, topped unevenly with jalapenos to keep you guessing about how spicy the next bite will be. Eating one of these is always undignified, since unless you have perfectly placed incisors, you will inevitably fail to get a clean bite, and end up with an entire cilantro stalk or string of carrot hanging from your mouth. I was grateful that the bus wasn’t crowded, so there was no one next to me to witness this struggle or be showered by the layer of crumbs that I brushed off my jacket when I had finished.

Paris Sandwich is certainly worth going back to, although it came nowhere near to topping Nicky’s, and I certainly learned from the one I got that there’s no reason to stray away from the pork version. Honestly, I’m more excited about the prospect of buying a bag of mini-baguettes, which they sell for 85 cents, and taking them home to slather with butter and various other condiments.

Autumn Is for Apple

My first year in New York was virtually fruitless. I hardly ate any fruit. At home in Berkeley, our fruit bowl was dependably filled with softball-sized oranges, glowing nectarines, juicy Asian pears, and, on more exciting days, lychees, pomegranates, and starfuit; in New York, all I could find were puny bananas and apples with the taste and texture of packing peanuts. I should mention, however, that my searches didn’t reach beyond the NYU dining halls, which I assume cut costs by accepting shipments of the rest of the city’s reject fruit every few weeks. Eating a piece of cafeteria fruit was such a joyless experience – reaching for the least dusty apple, glancing around to see if you were getting weird looks for removing what was actually part of a month-old counter decoration, biting into the thing and being unable to discern any difference in taste from the soup, bagel, and chocolate cake you had eaten previously – that I rarely put myself through it.

After freshman year I started cooking for myself, and I stocked up on fruits and vegetables weekly at Trader Joe’s, occasionally treating myself to superior produce at Whole Foods. I found the fruit merely adequate; it came nowhere near to producing the transcendent fruit-eating experiences I remembered having in California on a regular basis. Apples and bananas were reliably decent, but it took me three years to eat an orange in New York City. It’s taken me several more years to figure out that those transcendent experiences can be had here, but it takes a little more effort to seek them out, and it really comes down to eating seasonally.

The harvest cycle is immediately apparent at any farmers market. There are always a few sad weeks in early March when the stalls offer nothing but limp carrots and bruised apples; then suddenly the vendors will unload tomatoes in shades of ruby and dark purple, along with mountains of stone fruits and berries. In the moment, at least, the excitement is worth enduring the more unpleasant aspects of the previous season. (Does admitting this make me a real East Coaster?)

I love summer, but fall comes with enough new good things to eat to make up for the dropping temperature. Specifically, apples. Magical things start happening to apples in late September. They go from reliable to remarkable, and they’re available in countless delicious varieties. This fall I’ve been particularly taken by the simple goodness of the apple and the subtle differences between types, and I’ve compiled a short guide to some of the Apples of Our Lives.

Gala: Available year-round at reasonable prices. Not overly sweet, but dense and hardy; excellent for pairing with cheese.

Pink lady: Very juicy but with a good crunch, and extremely sweet. Its sugary taste and flamingo color almost make this variety more candy than apple.

Honeycrisp: A new discovery, and I think I might have discovered the fruit of the gods. These apples have a beautifully dappled skin and glowing yellow flesh, and the mellow sweetness of honey and melon.

Macoun: You can tell these are going to be tart from the bright green that muscles through their ruddy red streaks. The minute I took a bite of one I decided it tasted like a backyard (in a good way). Definitely best eaten outside.

Mutzu: These are a muted pale green, much prettier than electric Granny Smiths. This softness is reflected in their flavor as well: sweet but slightly lemony and herbal (although this might have been the result of sitting in a bag with a bunch of sage for several hours).