Docsconz- The Blog

Taste of the Week - November 29th - December 5th

If there was ever a place that looked like a tourist trap, it was the Cameron Trading Post in Cameron, Arizona, a dusty small town located near the eastern entrance to The Grand Canyon National Park. To even get to the restaurant, one had to walk through a shop filled with Indian trade goods of all levels of sophistication and authenticity. Nevertheless, the place was recommended to me by a woman who worked at The El Tovar Hotel in the Park. She said that it was a good trading post and a place to get a lunch on the way back to Phoenix. She described the Navajo Taco and even though it was 6:45 in the morning, just talking about it was making her drool.

She didn't lie. We sat down in a well appointed dining room to friendly serving staff, who immediately asked what we would like to drink. Being that we were in the desert, it was with some trepidation that I asked for water, though when it came, it tasted clean and pure. Before we ordered, we managed to see some plates brought to other diners. They were huge!

 

Navajo Vegetarian Taco

Our waiter was very helpful and accommodating. My wife and son were allowed to split a Vegetarian Navajo Taco, which consisted of Navajo fry bread, topped with "chili beans, mild green chile, cheese, lettuce & tomato." Not wanting to order the same thing, I ordered the Navajo Hot Beef, "Golden Navajo fry bread covered with lean slices of juicy roast beef, homemade gravy, grilled onion and mild green chili." When the plates came out, we were bowled over. It's a good thing my wife and son split the Taco. Each was still served an individual plate with a very ample piece of fry bread topped with all of the ingredients. My own platter was huge as well. The chili advertised as "mild" gave my dish a nice bite to go with the tender and tasty beef, the well-grilled onions and the smooth, beefy gravy. The fry bread was a perfect foil, providing crisp edges for textural contrast while acting as a thirsty sponge for the flavorful gravy. The taco was just as hearty and delicious. Unfortunately, with a lot of driving still in front of us, none of us could completely polish off our plates. Our waiter was even kind enough to give us an additional iced tea for the road.

 

Navajo Hot Beef

My Navajo Hot Beef is my Taste of the Week. A hugely pleasant surprise, it was hearty and delicious, just what one would hope for in a  dish far away from home. It was also quite representative of real local cooking. Between the honestly good food, the reasonable prices and the warm service, I would recommend this place as a stopping point for anyone on the way to The Grand Canyon or to Lake Powell or if one just happened to find oneself in Cameron, Arizona.

Happy Birthday L.J.!

Happy Birthday to my son and occasional assistant! Good luck with Finals!

Montezuma Castle

On the way from Phoenix to The Grand Canyon, the most popular side destination is clearly Sedona and understandably so, as it is the location of a spectacular Southwestern landscape. Less well-known and less spectacular from the perspective of a large vista, but equally fascinating is the Montezuma Castle National Monument. With a useful and informative visitor center, this Mesa Verde like structure was well worth the short detour.

 

Thanks for Old Friends

 

Mingo, Mando, Juice and Sconz

The old adage goes that one can pick one's friends, but not one's family. While I have certainly been extraordinarily lucky with my family, I have been no less fortunate with my friends. My wife, three sons and myself just spent a fabulous long Thanksgiving weekend visiting Phoenix, Arizona for a reunion with my three closest friends from high school and their families, all of us staying at the home of one of those friends. We have periodically met up with our families or sometimes just amongst ourselves either all together or in smaller divisions, but as we are all spread out around the country, not nearly as often as we would like.

Matt's BIG Breakfast - A Breakfast Renaissance in Phoenix

The food is big, the restaurant isn't. Matt's Big Breakfast, located in a relatively nondescript part of downtown Phoenix has no trouble luring diners looking for good, hearty, down home breakfast and lunch cooking into its two small, but very pleasant dining rooms. Fortunately, waiting in front for a table to open up for a small group of six on a Sunday morning was not the least bit unpleasant, after all, this was Phoenix in November. Had it been July, the story may have been different.

Once seated with menus, choosing proved difficult, as there were simply too many mouthwatering choices. To solve that problem, we ordered a few extra dishes for all to taste and share. Prices are reasonable enough that we didn't have to worry about breaking the bank.

Most of us started with a glass of fresh squeezed Arizona red grapefruit juice, possibly the best grapefruit juice I have ever had. Between the delicious citrus fresh from our friends' garden and this juice at Matt's, I have become a believer in the Arizona citrus industry. It may not get as much notice as California, Florida or even Texas, but from my experience those industries don't have anything over what I have tried in Arizona as far as quality.

The food started coming out and quickly filled our two small tables. I am never one for quantity over quality. Matt's offers both. I believe that unless one is a vegan, it is impossible to leave this restaurant hungry or dissatisfied. While there was no lack of quantity (The restaurant is aptly named), the well-trained Matt Pool (formerly of Chris Bianco's Bar Bianco), his family and staff , know their business and how to do it well. They don't source their product from Sysco or other mass suppliers. The restaurant primarily gets its top quality ingredients directly from the best area farms such as McClendon's for citrus and producers such as The Pork Shop the area offers. From the special scrambled eggs with jalapeño, pepper jack cheese and pork tenderloin to the pancakes to the home fries to the sausage to the pesto-marinated pork chop to the hash browns to the chicken sandwich, everything was top notch. The only slightly disappointing dish was the breakfast sandwich with bacon, fried egg, cheese and onions on a roll. Perhaps preferences are different in Phoenix, but this was one dish that in my opinion could have easily been better. It wasn't that the ingredients weren't top notch. They were. As I have it back east, where the breakfast sandwich originated, I would have preferred the roll to have been grilled and the cheese melted. Despite not meeting my preference, the sandwich was still good owing to its quality ingredients.

Matt's Big Breakfast is the kind of place that before the advent of fast food, one would think was common place across the country. Unfortunately, it is not common place any more. To be sure, good breakfasts can still be had almost anywhere, but finding a good straight forward breakfast combining the elevated quality, ambiance and enjoyability of Matt's BB has become all too rare. So rare, in fact, that even in July, I would likely find it worth the wait.

Starchefs 2009 Day One: Pierre Gagnaire's Market Basket

Pierre Gagnaire is one of the giants of cuisine. Love what he puts on the plate or not, he is indisputably a master of his craft. My one meal at his hands at the Restaurant Pierre Gagnaire in Paris in 2005 shortly after his divorce was ultimately disappointing. The food was beautiful and technically flawless. I am sure it was presented exactly as he wanted. The problem was that I did not enjoy the balance of flavors on the plate. It focused on bitterness as the predominant flavor type. Had I been in a different mood that evening or had the bitterness not been so prominent throughout the meal, I might have enjoyed it more. As it was, the bitterness was too much for me that evening. Most restaurants in that price range only get one chance to impress me. His food was interesting enough though that despite that evening's bitterness, this is one restaurant and chef who continues to intrigue me. Watching him work on stage at Starchefs only reinforced that notion.

Culinary improvisation has achieved an unprecedented level of interest in the United States, largely through the popularity of television shows like Iron Chef, Top Chef and Chopped. Though these shows are contrived and not necessarily truly spontaneous, the usefulness of an exercise along these lines reflects a renewed interest in cooking from the market. An ability to cook spontaneously has become increasingly valuable and praiseworthy. This was manifested at the latest Starchefs ICC when Pierre Gagnaire was charged with creating dishes from a market basket that he was introduced to only 30 minutes prior to his demonstration.

Gagnaire's surprise basket included Wisconsin artisanal cheeses, Pennsylvania Asian pears, New Jersey bicolor corn, Long Island kale, New Zealand King salmon, California spot prawns, Rougie magret de canard and Kopert Cress micro-greens, all of the suppliers Congress sponsors, as would be expected for an event like this. In addition to these ingredients, others were also part of his pantry.

Gagnaire, speaking mostly through an interpreter said that he hoped that he would be able to show a couple of things, but this was a “nerve-racking experience.” He thought his first dish was to be a panna cotta with Wisconsin gruyere accompanied by red beets and Asian pears. Through most of his presentation, verbal silence reigned as Gagnaire was busy creating dish after dish, a blur on stage as he raced from ingredient to ingredient and technique after technique with the sounds of cutting, whisking, whirring and cooking predominating. He was truly a marvel to watch as he and his assistants put together various combinations and permutations of the allotted ingredients. At one point, he stopped to explain that he was still figuring out what he was going to do with some of the ingredients and that an additional part of the difficulty of the exercise was determining the right plates and platings of the dishes. He also explained that many of the products he was presented with were new to him, a challenge that he enjoyed. The panna cotta dish was vegetarian, but he told how meat or fish products like scallops could be added to it if desired. It took a while for Gagnaire to figure out precisely what he would do with everything, but once he did, the dishes started appearing quickly.

Additional dishes paired the duck with the prawns, and salmon done several different ways. As he formulated his ideas and began preparing them, even more ideas came to him. At one point he asked if he could have some paprika from any of the purveyors in the marketplace, a request which at least one was happy to oblige.

While preparing his dishes, Gagnaire spoke to his philosophy of cooking in a kitchen on a daily basis. He said “Everything is simplicity, it is all about the flavors.” He went on to add that in the kitchen, “cooking is about emotion... the dishes will always reflect how the day goes, the years goes and everything around it.” I found this statement to be reflective of the meal I had at Gagnaire back in 2005. This sentiment on emotion is not a new one from Gagnaire. I had always heard that the food on his plate reflected the state of his emotions. That year was apparently a difficult one for him, with major change and turmoil in his life from his divorce . His wife had been closely involved with the running of his restaurant and she was no longer there and they were no longer directly involved in each other's lives. While I am not nor should I be privy to the details of that situation, it was obvious from what was on the plate, that he was affected by his circumstances and he had transferred them to the plate. With his statements at the ICC, he essentially confirmed this. It is, however, because life and circumstances change that I would wish to see and taste what he can do in happier and less stressful times.

It was fascinating to watch and listen to Gagnaire cook. The specifics of the dishes and the techniques used were really secondary in importance. They looked and sounded delicious and I am sure they were. The more important element was the process he employed as he viewed his ingredients and assimilated their characteristics in his mind, enabling him to transfer those properties to the plate in an appealing manner. This enthralled the audience. Gagnaire's approach appeared simple, emphasizing flavor as the primary element, building a dish from the ingredients out. Indeed, it may have been simple for him, but for everyone else, it was just plain fun.

Top Three Restaurant Meals - November 2009

While I did not have the same depth of top restaurant dining as I did in September and October, November still provided top notch restaurant dining, from old standbys to new discoveries. I had my usual fine meals at local standbys Cafe Lazio, Max London's and The Chocolate Mill, supplemented by some excellent restaurant food in Arizona. Though not in my top three, The Cameron Trading Post in Cameron, Arizona was outstanding, and a very pleasant surprise. My top three for the month:

1. Noca – Phoenix, Arizona. Noca is owned and run by my good friend, Eliot Wexler. He, Chef Christopher Curtiss and their staff do a tremendous job creating a unique fine dining experience in an otherwise ordinary Phoenix strip mall. Aside from the well conceived, well crafted food using top notch ingredients, the meal was made extra-special by the company, including my wife, my two eldest sons and my three best friends from high school and their spouses. Life is good.

2. Cafe Lazio – Queensbury, N.Y.. Chef Adriano Di Mario's cooking has become a personal favorite and a regular destination for me. My top Lazio meal this month, though was the special crab and clam sauce over pasta that he prepared specially for me. Right up there with that was another occasion at which I had a fabulous old school Veal Piccata.

3. Matt's Big Breakfast – Phoenix, Arizona. The place is tiny, but the food is big in every way, not least so in flavor. This breakfast and lunch restaurant defines good, down home American cooking using top notch ingredients and using them well.

There will be more detail forthcoming on my Arizona meals including a visit to the Grand Canyon and El Tovar Hotel. Stay tuned!

Taste of the Week - November 22nd-28th

With Thanksgiving smack in the center of the week, how could this not have been a great week for eating and drinking. It started with my brother's birthday paella and continued shortly thereafter to Scottsdale, Arizona, where we spent Thanksgiving with my three best friends from High School and our families at the home of one of those friends, Armando and his wife, Suzanne. They put out an outstanding Thanksgiving dinner and the following evening we had a great dinner at Noca, one of the finest restaurants in the Southwest, owned by another close friend, Eliot Wexler. I could pick any number of dishes or beverages from those meals, but there simply is too much to choose from. Instead, I will take a different approach to this week.

We had a great time visiting with friends in Phoenix. Our hosts have a wonderful home, one of the most impressive elements of which (to someone from the Northeast anyway) is the wonderful, fresh citrus growing in their yard. They have tangelos, mineolas, meyer lemons and regular lemons, but the most popular citrus amongst everyone staying at the house including the children were the grapefruits. The grapefruits were huge with thick, very bitter rinds. The pulp inside though, was magnificent – juicy and sweet with a beautiful grapefruit flavor. It was a blast to just simply go outside to pick fresh fruit to just peel and eat, juice or use in other ways. My taste of the week is the fresh citrus direct from their yard.

In honor of our hosts, Armando and Suzanne, I concocted some cocktails based on their citrus that I named for them. Unfortunately, without their trees just outside my door, I cannot hope to reproduce these variants of a Margarita just as I made them.

The Mandito

Tequila 200ml

Cointreau 100ml

fresh tangelo juice 200ml

2 sprigs fresh thyme

angostura bitters

muddle thyme and shake all ingredients in cocktail shaker

pour over grapefruit pulp into martini glass and garnish with tangelo peel

Makes two cocktails

The Suzannita

Tequila 200ml

Triple Sec 50ml

G.E. Massenez Créme de Peche 50ml

fresh tangelo juice 100ml

fresh lemonade 100ml

2 leaves fresh sage

angostura bitters

muddle sage and shake all ingredients in cocktail shaker

pour over grapefruit pulp into martini glass and garnish with tangelo peel

Makes two cocktails

Black Friday

Frankly, I think the holidays have become too commercial with too much of an emphasis on consumption.That being said, this is the biggest shopping day of the year, so if you are going to shop Amazon anyway, I would ask you to consider going through my affiliate site by clicking above. If not, then please ignore this and forgive the intrusion.

Remembrance of Thanksgivings Past

If there is a holiday more focused on family and friends than Thanksgiving, I don't know it. While other holidays including ostensibly religious holidays like Christmas, have strong familial and friendship components,those elements really aren't the central theme. I suppose one can say that family and friends aren't the central theme for Thanksgiving either, but what can people be more thankful for than their family and friends? I guess  there are unfortunate people without either good family or good friends, who hopefully have something else to be thankful for. To me, though, those are the main things I am thankful for. To be sure, I am thankful for many other things as well, but I have been particularly lucky on both counts.

This Thanksgiving will be spent with my three best friends from high school and our families as we come together to celebrate our friendship and our collective 50th birthday year. These three guys, Armando, Dom & John, I have known for thirty-seven years. Together we established a very special bond all those years ago.  We are so close and know each other so well, that we are basically family, though not of the same blood. This, despite the fact that we have spread across the country and don't get to see each other individually or together nearly as much as we would like. Each of us also have close bonds with others from our high school and other years, people like Pete the Greek, for example, who through the wonder of facebook has once again become an important part of our lives. Being able to get together either in person or virtually is wonderful and something special to give thanks for.

I usually spend Thanksgiving with at least a few of my siblings. As readers of this blog know, we have a special relationship and enjoy each others' company immensely. I am especially thankful for that, as I realize that isn't the case for every family. Thanksgiving, though, has an extra dimension and poignancy for my siblings and I, one that makes memories of past Thanksgivings even more special.

Of course, I have plenty of memories of Thanksgivings through the years. Growing up in an Italian-American family, of course we had a roasted turkey on Thanksgiving. It would have been un-American not to! But we always had lasagne on Thanksgiving as well. It would have been un-Italian not to have that or some other pasta delight! Just because we had lasagne, didn't mean we skimped on the sides either or the desserts, my favorite of which was always pumpkin pie. In my household, we really didn't have any bakers in those days. There really wasn't any reason to, because we had all the good bakeries we could have needed in Brooklyn. The Italian bakeries were amazing when it came to pastries and breads. The cannolis and other pastries were (and still are) sensational. When it came to pumpkin pie, though, the best was from Ebinger's, a bakery that sadly closed sometime in the late '60's or early 70's. They couldn't compete with the distribution efficiencies of Entenmann's despite the fact that their quality was far superior to Entenmann's.

Food was of extreme importance and the centerpiece of Thanksgiving, but the other major childhood Thanksgiving tradition that has lived on for me, was something I watched on tv. No, it wasn't the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, though I did usually watch it. It was the day that the local NYC television stations (it varied over the years I believe) showed Laurel & Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers, which owing to this wonderfully positive association, remains one of my favorite films of all time. I still get goose bumps when I watch Oliver and Stan start up the wooden soldiers to the stirring sounds of Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland music. It is always great to see Silas Barnaby get his come-uppance.

Over more recent years, my family and I have spent the bulk of our Thanksgivings at my brother Larry's house, festive with friends, family and outstanding Thanksgiving food. As my childhood Thanksgiving memories stem from my family home in Brooklyn, most of my own children's memories will stem from here.

The most significant Thanksgiving day memory for me, though, happened 17 years ago today, November 26th. That day, Thanksgiving then as it is today and hasn't been until today, is the day that my mother, Irma, passed away. It is never an easy day to lose a parent. It can be particularly difficult on or around a holiday. Thanksgiving, though helped make it a little easier then and now. This was also true back in 1996 when my father passed away shortly before Thanksgiving and again five years ago, when my lovely mother-in-law, Jane White, passed away just prior to Thanksgiving too. The reason why being Thanksgiving helped, is that it forced me to remember and be thankful for all the good things those wonderful people brought into my life. It was still difficult to accept their passing, but being thankful for their making me and my family what we are, is what the holiday is all about.

I wish all of you and your families the happiest of Thanksgivings and a Thanksgiving that you can remember positively and with joy forever.