Manhattan Clam Chowder

This is another one of those lovely times when my passions and my job coincide: I'm cooking up Manhattan Clam Chowder over at the pageturn today, inspired by Leslie Connor's middle-grade novel CRUNCH.

Eat, drink, and say hi to me over there!

Playlists: the Comfort Food edition

As I mentioned in my last post, all I really needed this weekend was to feel grounded and sane. That included stirring risotto while belting out some of my favorite "heartswelling" songs. Yes, I have a playlist on my iPod labeled "heartswelling." I would normally feel slightly goofy admitting that...but I'm guessing that most people who read this blog won't be surprised by my unabashed corniess. So here is a sample of what I was listening to last night while stirring and reading:

Eat, drink, and always have a soundtrack for it.

Comfort Food: Risotto

Major changes going on in the Lutz household lately. Here are a few:

• Hell, just a busy week. We rarely ate en famille this past week. Which definitely wears on all of us.
• Bug is starting a new school this Wednesday: The Neighborhood School in the East Village. It's all been somewhat sudden and, while fabulous, still stressful. She'll be starting 4th grade in a new environment and we're hoping it'll be a change for the better. The bad news? Until our lease is up in March 2011, we'll be commuting an hour each way to get her to school. Wow.
• Planning a vacation. I told Adam that I have one goal - and one goal only, really - in 2010: Leave this country. I went to France in 1993, Mexico in 1996...and then haven't left the country since. And I must. The world is calling me. The three of us have passports so what the hell are we waiting for? So Thanksgiving this year. We initially thought Europe (Dublin or London, perhaps) but, post-Hawaii, we're thinking Costa Rica or Turks and Caicos. Readers, weigh in.
• Recommitting ourselves to Frenchness. Thanks to the excellent Wafels and Dinges, Schnitzel and Things, Joyride Truck, and my lack of self-discipline, I'm failing the zipper test. Trés unsexy.

The good news is that we are on the cusp of autumn. And tonight I was finally able to bring some heat into the kitchen: I made risotto. Lemon risotto, specifically. A montage:

As with any recipe, I always recommend getting all ingredients ready ahead of time. (Ignore the oranges in the glass - that was my Lillet on ice)

The thing I love most about risotto is that I can stand there, stirring and stirring, and read. It must've been something unconscious because I "accidentally" left my e-reader full of manuscripts at work on Friday. Which left me free to read David Lebovitz's The Sweet Life in Paris all weekend which, suffice to say, did not quell my wanderlust. It's lovely in every way (the book, that is. Not my wanderlust, which is rather annoying and expensive).

Reference the recipe I linked to above, which I followed almost exactly. However, I didn't have a full two tablespoons of parsley or basil left on my balcony garden. I did have a bunch of sage in my fridge that was about to go bad. So I used 1 tbsp. chopped parsley and 1 tbsp. chopped sage. Then I fried whole sage leaves in 2 tbsp. of butter for garnish:

Lest you think my tastes are too rich (or fattening) for your blood, I didn't add the the butter at the end that the recipe recommended: I figured the butter I used for the fried sage sufficed.

Adam came into the kitchen while I was stirring and reading. He put his arms around me (as all significant others should while someone is cooking an amazing dinner from which they will benefit) and he said, "I could tell you needed this." "Needed what?" I asked. "Needed to just sit in the kitchen with your music playing, stirring. Reading. Glass of wine." And he was right.

Eat, drink, and feel grounded in the kitchen.

Note: In the great Beer vs. Wine battle that goes on in our house, we decided that tonight was a draw. We agreed that the Hermann J. Wiemer 2008 Dry Riesling was exceptional, as was Adam's Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA.

Dinner parties

There is a scene I love in the movie Father of the Bride (1991 version) where Steve Martin sees his wife walking down the stairs and he's remembering their wedding day. He says, "I'll probably never remember what Nina wore that day, but I'll always remember the way she looked." I love that and I often remember that line when I see our table post-dinner-party:

Ten, fifteen years from now I'll probably forget what we ate. But I'll always remember the good friends and good conversation. And the Guitar Hero that was played afterward.

Eat, drink, and enjoy the moment.

Note: For the record, here is what we ate -

Appetizer: Salami with Cucumbers

Main dish: Melon and Prosciutto Panini; Mesclun Salad with Fried Shallots and Gorgonzola

Dessert: Kathryn's fantastic Lemon Cake

Eataly

THIS makes me ridiculously happy to be living in New York City. Hope I get the chance to check it out this Friday!

(Thanks to Publishers Weekly for the link.)

Children's Day at the Four Seasons

I meant to blog this last week but didn't get the chance...

Josh Haner for the New York Times

The Four Seasons has a Children's Day where children eat free. And they're not ordering that chicken-fingers-and-french-fries-TGI Friday's kids' menu crap - this is the real deal. They order off the adult menu.

I have mixed feelings about this so I put it to you. Is this pretentious and precious and yuppy as all hell? Or is this a lovely way to teach our kids a sense of occasion and respect for dining out? A bit of both perhaps?

Eat, drink, and exclude the kids from fine dining?

NOTE: And to tie this all back to children's books, in 2009, Candlewick published Wiggens Learns His Manners at the Four Seasons Restaurant by Leslie McGuirk and Alex von Bidder. (von Bidder is the co-owner of the Four Seasons)

Austrian Riesling

I was embarrassingly late to my wine-tasting date with Jenn this past week. I had never done a wine-tasting where you make a reservation, pay $25...and the wine geek in charge ("Chairman Paul") gives a lecture. So I walked in to a quiet room with all eyes turned to the lecturer...and then all turned to me. Crap.

But bad start aside, Terroir Wine Bar in the East Village (follow them on Twitter: @terroirny) gives an amazing wine-tasting. We started by talking about the important wine-making regions in Austria, which are in the easternmost part of the country. In particular, there's a trifecta of the best of the best regions: Kremstal, Kamptal, and Wachau. Wachau is arguably the bestest of the best. We even had a map of Austria to help us identify all these regions (along with a "Hello, My Name is Summer Of Riesling" sticker and a tattoo). Check out the packet we received:

We tasted 7 Austrian Rieslings - the first two were from the Traisental and Wien regions while the last five were from the trifecta. Here are a few snippets of information I learned (among many):

• Rieslings (or any wine, really) won't smell sweet - that's a taste.
• Sweet wines need acidity for balance - you want some tartness to counteract the sweet.
• A petrol nose is characteristic of Riesling but not always present. Likewise, Rieslings characteristically smell and taste of slate, granite, etc. That's speaks to terroir.
• "The best thing about tasting Riesling is that we don't have to talk about oak!" (This was related to our discussion that some of these wines had Chardonnay-esque qualities: butter, warmth, peach...but no wood! Rieslings are much cleaner and crisper.)

Check out all the notes I took (and there's more on the backside):

I won't get into the details and notes about each wine, but Jenn and I agreed that #4 was our favorite: Riesling Pfaffenberg Rainer Wess 2006 (from the Kremstal region). It was incredibly unusual - our instructor rightly told us that you don't taste the peach fruit, you taste the pit. It was very earthy and metallic (in a good way). One of the reasons we loved it was because it was a rather odd, disconcerting wine...which made you want to keep drinking it to figure it out. It intrigued me more than the others.

Our least favorite? The first wine: Riesling Rothenbart Ludwig Neumayer 2007 (from the Traisental region). It was all Granny Smith tartness and no roundness of flavor to balance it. I could certainly see where it would pair well with sashimi but, for this tasting, I wasn't a fan.

Terroir has a three more wine-tastings left as part of their Summer of Riesling event: here's the schedule. It was $25 well-spent for this:

Word to the wise: you might want to eat a snack before the tasting. Drinking this much wine pre-dinner was a bit of a challenge for Jenn and me...but we held it together admirably. I also want to share that this is a great class for beginners (I'd classify myself as a beginner-intermediate wine taster). I can't say if it's too "easy" for the advanced connoisseur, but I do know there was some schmuck there who kept talking over our instructor, loudly blabbing about his "wine tutor". Wine snobs like that guy are what give people who love wine a bad name. Luckily, I easily ignored him.

Lastly, I leave you with this quote from Chairman Paul:

"There is no conversation about how these wines are made. They're made in the vineyard [...] Wines are made in the vineyard, NOT in a winery. That's terroir."

Eat, drink, and cheers to that!

Wafels and Dinges

How did I spend one of my last summer Fridays*?

I finally went to the Wafels & Dinges truck! And wow. I only wish I had gone AGES ago!

I ordered the liège wafel with spekuloos spread. I had NO idea what the hell spekuloos spread was and I didn't ask - but the board said it was their favorite so I just went with it. Oh, man. The Wafels & Dinges website says "Spekuloos is a spread that looks like peanut butter, but it tastes like traditional Belgian gingerbread-cinnamon cookies. It beats Nutella 10 to 1." And I have to agree with them.

Adding to the experience is how cute and cheeky the guys in the truck are (what is it with gourmet food trucks in the city being operated by incredible flirts?!). When I said I wanted a liège wafel, cutie guy working the truck says, "Avec quoi?" I answered, "Avec spekuloos, bien sûr." Need further proof that these guys are awesome? They hosted a Miss and Mister Wafel competition this past week!

Want to make wafels yourself? The website has the goods.

Can't wait to go again - they're going to give Schnitzel & Things a run for their money in my own personal Favorite Food Truck competition!

Eat, drink, and danke schoen for the excellent wafels!

* Bless publishing and their half-day Fridays in the summer!