Hungry In Hogtown

Caramellow: el Bulli's cream and white coffee caramels

Who among us doesn't fondly recall the sheer joy of a trip to the local convenience store as a child?  Maybe your parents had just handed you a dollar, or maybe you'd found some spare change lying on the sidewalk.  If you were like me, you instantly converted whatever newfound pittance was burning a hole in your pocket into a small brown paper bag of your favourite treats: chips, chocolate bars, Freezies, maybe even licorice.

Forget change, I wanted to leave that store broke.  And that's where penny candy came in handy.  What good is three cents, especially when there are gummi bears, Swedish Berries, and, my personal favourite, Kraft Caramels to be had for just a penny apiece?

My childhood love affair with Kraft Caramels -- light only, thank you very much -- was intense.  This was candy that knew how to entice: the transparent wrapper is genius, the junk food equivalent of a beautiful woman wearing an outfit that reveals just a hint of décolletage.  Giddy with anticipation, I'd remove the wrapper, pop the candy in my mouth, and resist the urge to chew.  Some pleasures must be savoured slowly to be appreciated properly.  Then I'd wait for those sweet, creamy, and vanilla notes to wash over my palate.  With uncharacteristic discipline, I would occasionally consume an entire caramel without so much as a single bite -- the square of caramel would just dissolve away into nothing.  Ordinarily, however, I would abandon self control and rip into the candy with my teeth.

Two memes for the price of one: 5 blogs that make me think and 5 things you didn't know about me

Four people find this blog, which features post titles as erudite as "Miso horny," "Hot for coq," and "Schwepped away," intellectually rigorous enough to merit a Thinking Blogger Award.  Clearly my titles are not yet childish enough.  That, or they really appreciate sophisticated wordplay.

Yes, somehow we've been nominated four times for the Thinking Blogger Award, which is not so much an award as a meme.  The purpose of the meme is to identify five blogs that make you think.  I was first tagged by cookiecrumb, author of I'm Mad and I Eat.  As both a food and politics junkie myself, I love the way she mixes well prepared food, thoughtful analysis, and political dialogue in her blog.  And she owns a dog.

That was just the start, apparently.  In the past two weeks I've been tagged three more times.  First Brilynn -- who has taste so superb she named her blog Jumbo Empanadas, after one of Toronto's best cheap eats -- tagged us.  Kitchen Wench then followed suit.  Her blog is entirely new to me, but she makes profiteroles with vanilla cream and macarons, so my attention is now piqued.  Last, but not least, I was nominated by Danielle of Habeas Brulée, who has earned my eternal devotion by creating an exemplary version of Alinea's creme brulee spheres spiced with cardamom.

So, without further ado, here are five blogs that make me think:
1. Grocery Guy -- Tom and A-Train make me think and laugh, which is about as good as it gets.  Tom's acerbic style is the perfect antidote to the saccharine writing found on some blogs.  I love his series on preparing dishes, like creme brulee, using ingredients purchased exclusively at New York City bodegas, and his side-by-side comparison of grass-fed versus Megamart steak is unadulterated genius.  A-Train's writing is every bit as good.  The first time I read Grocery Guy, I stumbled upon her skewering of Frank Bruni's review of the Penthouse Executive Club (yes, that Penthouse).  I was hooked.

2. Ruhlman -- What's to say, really?  Is it any surprise that a thoughtful, eloquent writer of cookbooks and food literature produces an equally compelling blog?  I became familiar with Michael Ruhlman's writing through The Making of a Chef, Charcuterie, and House, three books I adore.  After reading House, I cannot, to this day, roast a chicken without being reminded of its special significance to him as a potent symbol of family life.  As an added bonus, Ruhlman's blog includes posts from his friends, including Tony Bourdain, who uses a great deal of digital ink excoriating his one-time employers at Food Network.  I'd also like to add that Michael Ruhlman is one of many people who stood by my side during the controversy over deep fried rabbit ears.  For that, I am very grateful.

3. Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour -- I owe my discovery of this blog to Elise, from Simply Recipes.  She steered me to this blog because of a post, video included, about cleaning and butchering wild hares for service in a restaurant.  But not just any restaurant.  This blog is written by a wonderful young chef working at Guy Savoy, a Michelin three star restaurant in Paris.  If you've ever hoped for the inside scoop on life in one of the world's premier kitchens, look no further.

4. A Hunger Artist -- Those of you already familiar with The Making of a Chef or Ruhlman may recognize Bob del Grosso as an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America from the former, or as a part-time contributor to the latter.  I know him as a dedicated teacher and student of food and dining.  I am thrilled to discover that he's now started his own blog, and I wish him much luck and look forward to hearing more from him as he develops his voice in a forum that is uniquely his own.

5. The Wages of Wins -- Man cannot live by bread alone, especially this food blogger.  If I'm to thrive, I need sports, preferably large doses of Toronto Maple Leafs hockey and Toronto Raptors basketball.  When it comes to basketball, there is no blog I enjoy more than The Wages of Wins.  This blog, written by three economists, expands on ideas first elaborated in an eponymous book.  The underlying idea is simple: that the tools of economics can be used to evaluate the performance of professional athletes, particularly basketball players.  Think of it as Moneyball meets Freakonomics.  I think of it as just plain fascinating.

Since I'm already meme-ing, I thought I'd provide some extra bang for your buck by adding five things you didn't know about me.  No one tagged me for it, but I've really enjoyed learning about other bloggers, so I thought I'd share a little something about me.

Miso horny: Nobu's black cod with miso

You know that feeling.  It's that lingering cloud of doubt that hovers over you while preparing a recipe from a cookbook written by one of your favourite chefs.  Maybe it's Batali, maybe Keller, or maybe, as in my case, that chef is Nobu Matsuhisa.  I hate that feeling.

You follow the recipe to the letter.  The finished dish is good, great even.  But no matter how hard you try you can't fully appreciate the dish because you're bugged by that voice in your head constantly feeding that nagging doubt: is this really as good as the dish at the restaurant?

This niggling suspicion attacks in two ways.  First, it casts doubt on whether you've even prepared the dish well.  "Surely," your frazzled brain reasons, "Thomas Keller has some sort of magical knack for roasting a chicken.  I, however, am a rank amateur, and have surely prepared a chicken only slightly better than Swiss Chalet."  There may be some truth to this -- none of us will ever be Thomas Keller -- but such worries are best written off as the culinary equivalent of performance anxiety.

The second cause for suspicion is far less benign, in my opinion, specifically because it's beyond the home cook's control.  I'm speaking of the cookbook recipe that can charitably be described as an "adaptation" of the restaurant dish, but is, of course, presented as "the dish I serve my patrons."  One of the more disturbing lessons of Heat, Bill Buford's chronicle of his time at Babbo (Mario Batali's flagship restaurant) is that Batali's recipes are not faithful reproductions of his astonishing restaurant dishes.  Want to reproduce the fresh egg pasta at Babbo?  Don't use the Babbo cookbook.  Ditto for polenta.  Buford reveals that Batali enriches the pasta at Babbo with extra egg yolks, and that the use of instant polenta, which is a Batali recipe standard, is viewed as a personal failing at the restaurant.

There are times when scrupulously recreating a restaurant dish is impossible, and so the recipe must be adapted to better suit the equipment and ingredients available to the home cook.  I've got no issue with alterations under such circumstances.  It is, however, reprehensible to sell an altered recipe as the original when a home cook could reproduce the original without any specialized equipment or ingredients.

There is hope, though it doesn't come easily or cheaply.  The only surefire way to learn whether a homecooked version of a dish is the real deal is to actually go to the restaurant and eat the original.  Which brings me, finally, to Nobu's black cod with miso.   Many years ago, I made this dish after friends who had tasted it at Nobu London raved about it.  Word spreads quickly, and now Nobu's signature plate seems to be on the menu at pretty much every pan-Asian restaurant in the Western hemisphere.  For good reason, too.  Not only is the recipe (FYI, I use equal amounts of sake and mirin) accessible to even the most novice cook, the finished product is phenomenal.  The key is the fat content of the black cod, which creates a luxurious buttery texture and flavour.  Three days in a sugar-spiked miso marinade adds more umami punch and increases caramelization during cooking.  We fell in love with this dish the first time we made it, and have continued to prepare it frequently ever since.

But how does homemade black cod with miso compare to Nobu's version?  To figure that out, we visited New York and enjoyed a stupendous meal at Nobu.  We chose to eat omakase -- the Japanese equivalent of a tasting menu -- but asked if the chef might make one little exception and include the black cod.  Some things you just have to know, after all.  Nobu's black cod with miso is superb -- it doesn't hurt that they served ours with some seared foie gras -- and I was thrilled to learn that our homemade version, minus the foie gras, is every bit as good.  So much for that anxiety.

There was, unfortunately, one thing I discovered I cannot prepare even a fraction as well.  Our menu included nigiri sushi -- wonderfully fresh slices of raw fish atop sushi rice.  But what rice!  I have never tasted such perfect sushi rice in my life: a fragrant, perfectly cooked, neatly compact bundle in which each grain of rice was still individually discernible on the tongue.  Simple genius: rice free of starchy consequences.

I know I can't make rice like Nobu, but at least I can prepare its black cod with miso secure in the knowledge that it's every bit the equal of what they serve to their customers.