This post is copied from a blog by Jeremy Parven. It found it through Eric Asimov's New York Times blog. I love it (scratchy, scratch). The fruit identifier thing in wine tasting is difficult to accept. I judge wines on whether I like them. That is not to say there is no analysis of the components and correctness plays a large part. (A pinot noir that tastes and performs and is made like a cabernet does not tend to find favor.) Of course an important part of the tasting criteria to become MS or MW forces the taster to identify three fruit flavors and three non-fruit flavors in both the aroma and the taste of each wine. This identfication is part of the blind tasting regimen and the candidate if judged on the correctness of each. -dw
Jeremy Parzen
dobianchi.wordpress.com
For propriety’s sake, this post must begin with an errata corrige: my recent post on my dinner with Leslie Sbrocco included an erroneous literary attribution (to Eugenio Montale). In fact, it was twentieth-century Italian novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda who wrote: “Pronouns! They’re the lice of thought. When a thought has lice, it scratches, like everyone who has lice…. and they get in the fingernails, then… you find pronouns, the personal pronouns.”
“Ah! the world of ideas! What a fine world! Ah! this, I, I…,” says Gadda’s autobiographical character Gonzalo in Acquainted with Grief, “among the almond blossoms… then among the pears […] I, I… the foulest of all pronouns!”*
gadda.jpg
Above: Carlo Emilio Gadda, the great twentienth-century Italian novelist. We’ve all been “Acquainted with Grief,” haven’t we?
Over the weekend, in speaking with journalist and wine writer Peter Hellman about all of the upcoming tastings and wine events in NYC, we shared our dismay at the state of wine writing today and what I like to call the “lice of wine writing”: tastings notes so impossibly subjective, so beleaguered by the presence of the “I,” that they are bereft of meaning.
An avid reader of wine writing, Peter pointed out the absurdity in a recent promotional email where two very famous wine publications were quoted about the same wine:
Parker: “The 2003 Cornas La Louvee is a blockbuster. Glorious aromas of flowers, blackberries, roasted meats, espresso roast, and white chocolate flow from this full-bodied, concentrated, modern-styled, impressively-endowed, full-throttle Cornas. Drink it now and over the next 15+ years. 93pts”
Wine Spectator: “Tight and structured, with lots of iron and mineral notes framing the black cherry, plum, briar, tar and olive paste flavors. Long finish sports mouthwatering acidity. Very impressive for Cornas in 2003. Best from 2007 through 2015. 800 cases made. 92pts”
As Peter pointed out rightly, the tasting notes in the two passages are “mutually exclusive.” As I’ve asked many times before, how can a wine really taste like so many different things? And, come on, “mouthwatering acidity”? What the hell does that mean?
He also directed me to the website of Château Palmer where a similar discongruous hypertext emerges. Of all the I-can-taste-and-write-more-descriptors-than-you descriptions that I found there, the only one that showed some sanity was the wise Jancis Robinson, who, it seems to me, always takes a much more objective approach to wine writing and tasting notes, a style much more real and accessible to both the expert and the lay person:
Very, very deep crimson. Very intense and nervy - impressive on the nose - but more obviously big and fruity than the more delicate Ch Margaux… Slightly charred and smoky. Round and fresh and very beguiling. Real lift and only the slightest hint of inkiness on the finish. Bravo! Very fine tannins - very suave and polished with good density while still being Margaux. Very sweet. Hints of modern idiom but very gentle. Super silky texture. Sinewy - but polished sinews!
Hers is a more poetical approach and she avoids the subjective virtuosismo of the Parkers, Wine Spectators, and Tanzers, who just can’t resist the “I taste this, I taste that” one-upmanship** (as Peter pointed out, Tanzer is probably the only person in the world who knows what “Vermont granite” tastes like… Next time I go to Vermont, I’ll be sure to eat some).
When will wine writers come to their senses (pun intended) and realize that these overblown descriptors are the lice of wine writing???!!!
When I read “blackberries, roasted meats, espresso roast, and white chocolate” and “black cherry, plum, briar, tar and olive paste,” I scratch my head and like Gadda’s Gonzalo, I find lice in my fingernails — the lice of wine writing.
–
*Gadda, Carlo Emilio, Acquainted with Grief (original title: La cognizione del dolore), translated from the Italian by William Weaver, Braziller, New York, 1969, p. 86.
For the original Italian, see: ibid., La cognizione del dolore, Einaudi, Torino, 1970 (1963), p. 123.
In the passage, Gonzalo (Gadda) tells his doctor that he doesn’t need anyone but himself for a diagnosis of his ills, anyone but his “I.” Then, all of a sudden, a thought bursts from his mouth:
“Ah! the world of ideas! What a fine world! Ah! this, I, I… among the almond blossoms… then among the pears […] I, I… the foulest of all pronouns!”
The doctor smiled at this outburst; he didn’t understand. Still he seized the chance to direct into more serene channels their words, if not the man’s humor and thoughts.
“And why, for God’s sake? [the doctor asks Gonzalo] What have they done wrong, pronouns? When a person thinks something or other, he still has to say, “‘I think…’”
“Pronouns! [Gonzalo answers] They’re the lice of thought. When a thought has lice, it scratches, like everyone who has lice…. and they get in the fingernails, then… you find pronouns, the personal pronouns.”
**I write anti-chauvanistically “one-upmanship” and not “one-up-personship” because I believe that women have finer noses and palates in wine tasting and that they dispense with the ever-present male bravado that accompanies wine enthusiasm and connoisseurship.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Hatch Corn
Probably our favorite summer vegetable has been fresh corn off the cob with hatch green chile's. It couldn't be easier. Amounts aren't measured, just sensible. Dice some onion and green chile and saute in a little butter and olive oil. Cut the corn off the cob and add when onions start to become translucent and saute until done. It cooks fairly quickly. Toss with some chopped fresh basil or cilantro. Optional ingredient would be a diced zucchini added to the onions and cooked for a few minutes before the corn is added.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Hatch Pasta
A day or two ago I received a care package from home consisting of a small book (Floor Games, by H. G. Wells), some junk mail from St. Mark's, and a pretty hefty plastic bag of Hatch green chiles. I was in the middle of a "long day" at the office - about a 48 hour junket - so I spent a couple of meals eating canned tuna fish and bad bread with that bag looming in my thoughts like the light at the end of a very long tunnel. As such, when I finally made it home tonight I was determined to use some of those chiles for my dinner.
The larder was pretty bare, and it was late enough that I'd have had to go into Manhattan to find an open grocery store (and I was DONE travelling). Fortunately, I had just enough material to prepare a pasta dish that's been a pretty common meal at my apartment over the last couple of months. I incorporated the chiles into it, and now I get to brag, because the result was AWESOME.
I diced most of an onion and about 4 chiles, leaving in the skin and most of the seeds (I left out a little of the onion so that the diced chiles out-volumed the onion by about 4 to 3). The veggies went in a pot along with all of my remaining olive oil (not much - a tablespoon or 4) and a tiny bit of shortening to supplement the insufficient oil (somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to remember a reliable source using shortening in their green chile, but that could be pure fiction). Oh, and a pinch or two of salt. I covered it and let it sweat over low heat for a while, until the onions were translucent, then dumped about half a box (8 oz) of dry tri-color rotini on top, covered it back up, and sweated it a little more just for good measure. After a minute or two, I added a can of low-sodium chicken broth and enough extra water to just cover the pasta, brought the liquid to a simmer, put the heat on low, and covered it for about 10 minutes while I called home to thank my parents for the chiles. Then I remembered that maybe the pasta was supposed to cook uncovered, so I uncovered the pot; the pasta was almost done and there was still plenty of liquid. So I upped the heat a bit and stirred constantly until the liquid had pretty much become a thin paste coating the pasta. I folded in a pretty hefty amount of freshly grated parmigian and some black pepper, poured it into a salad bowl, grabbed a bottle of seltzer and some Angostura bitters to drink, and settled in to watch some Dr. Who.
Anyway, the Dr. Who is paused right now, because I finished eating and I was so proud that I had to enter this on the Food Blog right away. TOTAL SUCCESS. The pasta was a tiny bit overcooked because of leaving the lid on, but not really, and the sauce had that same vegetal milkiness that the best green chile has, which dovetailed perfectly with the creaminess from the cheese and starch. The heat was a little less than I'd have liked (next time, more seeds), but the flavor was sensational. I'm supposed to see a man about a pizza tomorrow evening, but I'm definitely cooking this dish again next time I cook a meal at home. Better go fill that larder...
I should give credit where credit is due - the basic cooking technique for this dish, where the pasta in insufficient liquid makes its own sauce, comes from a recipe that the New York Times attributed to Alain Ducasse. The only innovation I'm taking credit for is interpreting "aromatic vegetables" to mean "hatch green chiles", which I don't think is quite what he had in mind. Oh, and just in case it turns out to be the key that makes this whole thing work, that teaspoon or two of shortening, which I'm SURE wasn't part of the original.
The larder was pretty bare, and it was late enough that I'd have had to go into Manhattan to find an open grocery store (and I was DONE travelling). Fortunately, I had just enough material to prepare a pasta dish that's been a pretty common meal at my apartment over the last couple of months. I incorporated the chiles into it, and now I get to brag, because the result was AWESOME.
I diced most of an onion and about 4 chiles, leaving in the skin and most of the seeds (I left out a little of the onion so that the diced chiles out-volumed the onion by about 4 to 3). The veggies went in a pot along with all of my remaining olive oil (not much - a tablespoon or 4) and a tiny bit of shortening to supplement the insufficient oil (somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to remember a reliable source using shortening in their green chile, but that could be pure fiction). Oh, and a pinch or two of salt. I covered it and let it sweat over low heat for a while, until the onions were translucent, then dumped about half a box (8 oz) of dry tri-color rotini on top, covered it back up, and sweated it a little more just for good measure. After a minute or two, I added a can of low-sodium chicken broth and enough extra water to just cover the pasta, brought the liquid to a simmer, put the heat on low, and covered it for about 10 minutes while I called home to thank my parents for the chiles. Then I remembered that maybe the pasta was supposed to cook uncovered, so I uncovered the pot; the pasta was almost done and there was still plenty of liquid. So I upped the heat a bit and stirred constantly until the liquid had pretty much become a thin paste coating the pasta. I folded in a pretty hefty amount of freshly grated parmigian and some black pepper, poured it into a salad bowl, grabbed a bottle of seltzer and some Angostura bitters to drink, and settled in to watch some Dr. Who.
Anyway, the Dr. Who is paused right now, because I finished eating and I was so proud that I had to enter this on the Food Blog right away. TOTAL SUCCESS. The pasta was a tiny bit overcooked because of leaving the lid on, but not really, and the sauce had that same vegetal milkiness that the best green chile has, which dovetailed perfectly with the creaminess from the cheese and starch. The heat was a little less than I'd have liked (next time, more seeds), but the flavor was sensational. I'm supposed to see a man about a pizza tomorrow evening, but I'm definitely cooking this dish again next time I cook a meal at home. Better go fill that larder...
I should give credit where credit is due - the basic cooking technique for this dish, where the pasta in insufficient liquid makes its own sauce, comes from a recipe that the New York Times attributed to Alain Ducasse. The only innovation I'm taking credit for is interpreting "aromatic vegetables" to mean "hatch green chiles", which I don't think is quite what he had in mind. Oh, and just in case it turns out to be the key that makes this whole thing work, that teaspoon or two of shortening, which I'm SURE wasn't part of the original.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
It's all part of the Lattice of Coincidence...
Here's what I just learned:
The source cited is a conversation between David Fox and the authors of "The Brooklyn Cookbook", if anyone cares enough to check it. Frankly, I'm perfectly content to believe this without more rigorous proof.
"The name 'U-Bet' dates from the late-'20s, when Fox's grandfather got wildcatting fever and headed to Texas to drill for oil. 'You bet' was a friendly term the oilmen used. His oil venture a failure, he returned to the old firm, changing Fox's Chocolate Syrup to Fox's U-Bet. He said, 'I came back broke but with a good name for the syrup,' his grandson relates."
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Some Sodas
Just wanted to mention a few sodas that have been on my mind recently.
I'm not sure exactly what the deal is with Bundaberg, but it seems that they have a sarsaparilla made for Australian consumption as well as a root beer made for export. I haven't tasted the two side by side, but I'm pretty sure that they are quite distinct from one another. I have been told by many Australians how sweet everything non-Australian seems to them, and this lines up with my impression that the root beer was sweeter than the sarsaparilla. I also feel like the licorice and vanilla were more noticeable in the root beer than they were in the sarsaparilla, creating a really nice balance of flavors. Unfortunately, I failed to take the opportunity to taste the Aussie-market sarsaparilla side-by-side with the export root beer, and now I don't know how I'll be able to arrange it...
Anyway, assuming my impressions were accurate, neither of the two is a really great sarsaparilla - too much other stuff going on. The sarsaparilla is a pretty good beverage, though, and the root beer ranks right up there amongst my very favorite root beers. Not quite Virgil's, maybe, but I bet it'd make a damn good float.
The other soda I want to talk about is Cricket Cola. Twice now I've been stuck in Chicago Midway long enough to eat, twice I've decided that Potbelly's was probably my best bet, and twice I've gotten a Cricket Cola to wash down my roast beef sandwich. It really is a pretty hefty silver lining to being stuck in an airport. It's made with kola nut, sugar, and green tea, and while I don't necessarily agree with their neo-snake-oil "it's good for you" philosophy, it's a top notch beverage.
For those in Dallas, all of the beverages I mentioned in this post seem to be available at The Soda Gallery, which rose from the ashes of Ifs, Ands, and Buts. It seems like they should be available somewhere in New York, but until I track them down, I'll just have to go back to egg creams.
I'm not sure exactly what the deal is with Bundaberg, but it seems that they have a sarsaparilla made for Australian consumption as well as a root beer made for export. I haven't tasted the two side by side, but I'm pretty sure that they are quite distinct from one another. I have been told by many Australians how sweet everything non-Australian seems to them, and this lines up with my impression that the root beer was sweeter than the sarsaparilla. I also feel like the licorice and vanilla were more noticeable in the root beer than they were in the sarsaparilla, creating a really nice balance of flavors. Unfortunately, I failed to take the opportunity to taste the Aussie-market sarsaparilla side-by-side with the export root beer, and now I don't know how I'll be able to arrange it...
Anyway, assuming my impressions were accurate, neither of the two is a really great sarsaparilla - too much other stuff going on. The sarsaparilla is a pretty good beverage, though, and the root beer ranks right up there amongst my very favorite root beers. Not quite Virgil's, maybe, but I bet it'd make a damn good float.
The other soda I want to talk about is Cricket Cola. Twice now I've been stuck in Chicago Midway long enough to eat, twice I've decided that Potbelly's was probably my best bet, and twice I've gotten a Cricket Cola to wash down my roast beef sandwich. It really is a pretty hefty silver lining to being stuck in an airport. It's made with kola nut, sugar, and green tea, and while I don't necessarily agree with their neo-snake-oil "it's good for you" philosophy, it's a top notch beverage.
For those in Dallas, all of the beverages I mentioned in this post seem to be available at The Soda Gallery, which rose from the ashes of Ifs, Ands, and Buts. It seems like they should be available somewhere in New York, but until I track them down, I'll just have to go back to egg creams.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
and now from Beijing....DUCK!!!
Hello again from the Far East.
We went up to Beijing last weekend, and I took the opportunity to learn about Imperial cuisine, and to do a quick survey of Peking Duck.
Imperial cuisine doesn't have the same unifying characteristics as the other cuisines, because its core values seem to be variety and exoticism. A typical meal for the Emperor consisted of around 100 different dishes, which all had to be different. The Emperor and his wife would each take a single bite, and then move on; one imperial recipe is very famous because the emperor actually ate the whole dish one time. At any rate, the kitchen couldn't keep repeating the same dishes from night to night, so the cuisine necessarily features all sorts of wacky and unusual combinations of obscure or exotic ingredients. It also appropriates highlights from all the other various cuisines across China. We had "8 treasure tea", for instance, 3 of whose treasures are walnuts, dates, and wolfberries, and an eggplant dish with about 3 times more kinds of seeds and nuts thrown in than I could possibly identify. The "Mongolian Lamb" was essentially an upscale version of the Xinjiang meat sticks I mentioned earlier, but carefully prepared with high-quality ingredients and with some sesame seeds added for good measure. We also had some venison strips fried in a sesame seed crust, which I really liked, and a crab-and-pork "Lion's Head" meatball, a Shanghainese specialty that some Emperor liked enough to claim for Imperial cuisine.
The highlight of Imperial cuisine, as far as I'm concerned, is Peking Duck. We were in Beijing for 3 days, and sampled 3 fairly similar ducks in 3 wildly different settings. The first duck, which we ate just after checking into the hotel, came from Quanjude, a huge, bustling duck palace filled with Chinese families. The place we ate was actually an expansion of the old Quanjude restaurant, which has been serving duck since 1864, but which is closed right now for pre-Olympic renovation (this may have been a good thing, because Dev and Summer agree that the duck we ate was better than the ones they've gotten from the old place). The duck we were served was the 400,118th duck they've ever served. I know, because they gave us a certificate of authenticity. It was pretty much perfect: crispy, golden skin; thin, fresh, un-sticky, flavorful pancakes; good scallions and hoisin sauce (you wouldn't think this would be an issue, but it was); a thin but noticeable layer of rich duck fat; and, most importantly, tender, moist, extremely flavorful meat. We were also served boiling-hot cups of opaque, watery duck broth, of which I took a single sip and which Dev and Summer, more experienced than I in such things, avoided altogether.
The second duck we had was at Made In China, a very modern, upscale Imperial restaurant with a distributed open-kitchen design, so that we walked by the duck-kiln on our way to the table, which was wedged between the woks on my left (spectacular flame-ups punctuated the evening), the noodle-chef in front of me, and a full-wall window with a beautiful view of an underlit willow and an old tile roof to my immediate right. The place was incredibly pleasant, and all the food was quite good, cooked with a modern sensibility. But the duck, though good, was probably the worst of the three ducks I had. The main problem was that the meat was neither as flavorful nor as tender and succulent as at the other places, but it didn't help that the pancakes were doughy and that the duck had been cooked until there was very little fat left between the (very) crispy skin and the meat. They served the duck in what I believe is the more traditional Imperial style, which allows a single dish to be eaten in many different ways (presumably, this way the Emperor could eat more than one bite of a given duck). There was one plate of duck slices with skin, one plate of duck slices without skin, and one plate of slices of just skin. Our waitress recommended dipping the skin in a bowl of sugar provided for that purpose; it tasted kind of like eating a slice of butter dusted with sugar, only with an unnerving ducky taste, which is to say way worse. Really, while the skin might be "the best part", eating it without meat just wasn't very good. And, of course, the skinless duck wasn't as good, so I ended up combining the skin and the skinless duck in a number of my pancakes. The Imperial tradition did have a huge upside, though. Apparently, there were traditionally 2 sauces served with Peking duck: hoisin sauce for the women, and a pureed garlic sauce for the men. Hoisin sauce with duck is very good, but the garlic sauce (which I think really was just pureed garlic) fits perfectly together with the fattiness of the duck, combining to form a flavor very reminiscent of the garlic sauce at Zankou Chicken (which I think is pureed garlic with a little butter). In fact, the garlic sauce was so good that it made up for the inferiority of the duck, and the final wrapped pancakes that I had at Made In China may have been the best I had in Beijing.
The third place we went, LiQun, was located in a maze of grey, dusty, run-down shacks, on a street inaccessible to cars. We would have had an impossible time finding it, but Summer fooled a crooked rickshaw driver into thinking that Dev (who was giving me the a lightning tour of the Forbidden City) was an important Chinese factory owner who would call the Beijing police and have him arrested unless he took her there. It was 2PM, and we were the only ones eating there, in an un-airconditioned room next to an open refrigerator full of ducks, while a sullen Chinese girl alternately mopped the floor and swatted at flies. The duck meat itself was very good - moist, tender, and flavorful, not at all chewy. The pancakes reminded me of the thin, flexible rice paper that you sometimes see surrounding vietnamese spring rolls - they weren't quite as good as the ones at Quanjude, but I liked the little bit of stretch and chew that they had, and they certainly weren't doughy like the ones at Made In China. Unfortunately, the duck skin wasn't as crispy as I would have liked, and the thick layer of fat between the skin and the meat overwhelmed the meat and skin. And, shockingly, the hoisin sauce (which I would have assumed would be constant across the board) was kind of grainy and acrid, noticeably inferior to the hoisin sauces at the other two places. We tried to order garlic sauce and ended up with a paste of garlic and sugar, but it was only about 25 cents down the drain.
Now, I'm not one to be put off by a little fat, so for me the duck at LiQun was #2 because the meat was so much better than at Made In China; Dev agreed. Summer, who is one to be put off by a little fat, found the duck at LiQun downright difficult to eat, and far preferred Made in China. But we all agreed that the duck at Quanjude was #1.
In other news, the Hey Song Sarsaparilla was undrinkably foul. The Bundaberg products (root beer, ginger beer, and bitter lemon-lime) were all very good. The root beer has sarsaparilla root and licorice root, as well as actual vanilla and cane sugar, and ranks right up near the top of the root beer list (though I wouldn't really classify it with the traditional sarsaparillas). Today I found Bundaberg sarsaparilla at a different store, and I'm looking forward to trying it and comparing the two. The ginger beer was excellent, with a serious bite to it, but not as strong as, say, Blenheim. The lemon-lime was OK, and combined very nicely with ice-cold gin. Tonight we ate at Bubba's, a BBQ restaurant owned and operated by an expatriate Texan. The brisket was as good as Dickey's on a good day, which makes the place a damn sight better than any BBQ restaurant I've been to in NYC.
This is probably my last post from China; I'll get back to you about the Bundaberg Sarsaparilla when I get back to the States. I know you'll be dying with the suspense.
We went up to Beijing last weekend, and I took the opportunity to learn about Imperial cuisine, and to do a quick survey of Peking Duck.
Imperial cuisine doesn't have the same unifying characteristics as the other cuisines, because its core values seem to be variety and exoticism. A typical meal for the Emperor consisted of around 100 different dishes, which all had to be different. The Emperor and his wife would each take a single bite, and then move on; one imperial recipe is very famous because the emperor actually ate the whole dish one time. At any rate, the kitchen couldn't keep repeating the same dishes from night to night, so the cuisine necessarily features all sorts of wacky and unusual combinations of obscure or exotic ingredients. It also appropriates highlights from all the other various cuisines across China. We had "8 treasure tea", for instance, 3 of whose treasures are walnuts, dates, and wolfberries, and an eggplant dish with about 3 times more kinds of seeds and nuts thrown in than I could possibly identify. The "Mongolian Lamb" was essentially an upscale version of the Xinjiang meat sticks I mentioned earlier, but carefully prepared with high-quality ingredients and with some sesame seeds added for good measure. We also had some venison strips fried in a sesame seed crust, which I really liked, and a crab-and-pork "Lion's Head" meatball, a Shanghainese specialty that some Emperor liked enough to claim for Imperial cuisine.
The highlight of Imperial cuisine, as far as I'm concerned, is Peking Duck. We were in Beijing for 3 days, and sampled 3 fairly similar ducks in 3 wildly different settings. The first duck, which we ate just after checking into the hotel, came from Quanjude, a huge, bustling duck palace filled with Chinese families. The place we ate was actually an expansion of the old Quanjude restaurant, which has been serving duck since 1864, but which is closed right now for pre-Olympic renovation (this may have been a good thing, because Dev and Summer agree that the duck we ate was better than the ones they've gotten from the old place). The duck we were served was the 400,118th duck they've ever served. I know, because they gave us a certificate of authenticity. It was pretty much perfect: crispy, golden skin; thin, fresh, un-sticky, flavorful pancakes; good scallions and hoisin sauce (you wouldn't think this would be an issue, but it was); a thin but noticeable layer of rich duck fat; and, most importantly, tender, moist, extremely flavorful meat. We were also served boiling-hot cups of opaque, watery duck broth, of which I took a single sip and which Dev and Summer, more experienced than I in such things, avoided altogether.
The second duck we had was at Made In China, a very modern, upscale Imperial restaurant with a distributed open-kitchen design, so that we walked by the duck-kiln on our way to the table, which was wedged between the woks on my left (spectacular flame-ups punctuated the evening), the noodle-chef in front of me, and a full-wall window with a beautiful view of an underlit willow and an old tile roof to my immediate right. The place was incredibly pleasant, and all the food was quite good, cooked with a modern sensibility. But the duck, though good, was probably the worst of the three ducks I had. The main problem was that the meat was neither as flavorful nor as tender and succulent as at the other places, but it didn't help that the pancakes were doughy and that the duck had been cooked until there was very little fat left between the (very) crispy skin and the meat. They served the duck in what I believe is the more traditional Imperial style, which allows a single dish to be eaten in many different ways (presumably, this way the Emperor could eat more than one bite of a given duck). There was one plate of duck slices with skin, one plate of duck slices without skin, and one plate of slices of just skin. Our waitress recommended dipping the skin in a bowl of sugar provided for that purpose; it tasted kind of like eating a slice of butter dusted with sugar, only with an unnerving ducky taste, which is to say way worse. Really, while the skin might be "the best part", eating it without meat just wasn't very good. And, of course, the skinless duck wasn't as good, so I ended up combining the skin and the skinless duck in a number of my pancakes. The Imperial tradition did have a huge upside, though. Apparently, there were traditionally 2 sauces served with Peking duck: hoisin sauce for the women, and a pureed garlic sauce for the men. Hoisin sauce with duck is very good, but the garlic sauce (which I think really was just pureed garlic) fits perfectly together with the fattiness of the duck, combining to form a flavor very reminiscent of the garlic sauce at Zankou Chicken (which I think is pureed garlic with a little butter). In fact, the garlic sauce was so good that it made up for the inferiority of the duck, and the final wrapped pancakes that I had at Made In China may have been the best I had in Beijing.
The third place we went, LiQun, was located in a maze of grey, dusty, run-down shacks, on a street inaccessible to cars. We would have had an impossible time finding it, but Summer fooled a crooked rickshaw driver into thinking that Dev (who was giving me the a lightning tour of the Forbidden City) was an important Chinese factory owner who would call the Beijing police and have him arrested unless he took her there. It was 2PM, and we were the only ones eating there, in an un-airconditioned room next to an open refrigerator full of ducks, while a sullen Chinese girl alternately mopped the floor and swatted at flies. The duck meat itself was very good - moist, tender, and flavorful, not at all chewy. The pancakes reminded me of the thin, flexible rice paper that you sometimes see surrounding vietnamese spring rolls - they weren't quite as good as the ones at Quanjude, but I liked the little bit of stretch and chew that they had, and they certainly weren't doughy like the ones at Made In China. Unfortunately, the duck skin wasn't as crispy as I would have liked, and the thick layer of fat between the skin and the meat overwhelmed the meat and skin. And, shockingly, the hoisin sauce (which I would have assumed would be constant across the board) was kind of grainy and acrid, noticeably inferior to the hoisin sauces at the other two places. We tried to order garlic sauce and ended up with a paste of garlic and sugar, but it was only about 25 cents down the drain.
Now, I'm not one to be put off by a little fat, so for me the duck at LiQun was #2 because the meat was so much better than at Made In China; Dev agreed. Summer, who is one to be put off by a little fat, found the duck at LiQun downright difficult to eat, and far preferred Made in China. But we all agreed that the duck at Quanjude was #1.
In other news, the Hey Song Sarsaparilla was undrinkably foul. The Bundaberg products (root beer, ginger beer, and bitter lemon-lime) were all very good. The root beer has sarsaparilla root and licorice root, as well as actual vanilla and cane sugar, and ranks right up near the top of the root beer list (though I wouldn't really classify it with the traditional sarsaparillas). Today I found Bundaberg sarsaparilla at a different store, and I'm looking forward to trying it and comparing the two. The ginger beer was excellent, with a serious bite to it, but not as strong as, say, Blenheim. The lemon-lime was OK, and combined very nicely with ice-cold gin. Tonight we ate at Bubba's, a BBQ restaurant owned and operated by an expatriate Texan. The brisket was as good as Dickey's on a good day, which makes the place a damn sight better than any BBQ restaurant I've been to in NYC.
This is probably my last post from China; I'll get back to you about the Bundaberg Sarsaparilla when I get back to the States. I know you'll be dying with the suspense.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
HPC Re-Opens!!!
The presidential portraits are missing. Not an aesthetic choice, but actually mysteriously missing. A sign asks for any information on the whereabouts of the former pictures or on a source for replacing them. Another non-food change: the presence of a baby grand piano apparently fitted to play the digital equivalent of piano rolls. And no more salad-and-soup bar, which counts as a non-food change in my book. Or blog.
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