Sunday, August 24, 2003

A Morning In Soho, Or: “Mastering the Art of French Cooking Is So Much More Fun When You’ve Got Free Money.” So all you people have been alarmingly generous with donations in the past week. Eric and I decided there was no better use of our ill-gotten gains than buying all the gadgets and fancy foodstuffs we’ve been denying ourselves.  So down we went on Saturday to the Village and Soho to spend lots and lots of money.  First we stopped by the Tompkins Square dog park, our favorite spot to fantasize about having lots of money and the perfect life.  Then it was on to Astor Wine.  This is where I got my first inkling that I’m not as good at spending money as I would have thought.  We had meant to buy another bottle of very expensive wine, but we backed off, buying a fourteen-dollar bottle of Pinot Gris to serve with our crazy duck Sunday night, and nine-dollar bottle of Nuhar for our steak.  Then it was on to Tower Records to buy just one White Stripes album – we really must figure out all these popular music trends.  On our way to a very reasonable, if slightly boring, brunch at Café Colonial.  I found a scarf blowing down a Nolita alleyway that matched the shirt I was wearing eerily.  We haven’t yet decided if this was good or a terrible sign, but I decided to be brave and wear it.  It was all so very Audrey Hepburn or something. Next it was on down to the Gourmet Garage, where we did manage to spend nearly thirty dollars on steak, and the Broadway Panhandler, where I continued to find myself being maddeningly unextravagant – I bought a twenty dollar boning knife instead of an eighty-dollar one, got the cheapest decent sieve, and rejected the cherry red Le Crueset tajine pot, which I covet with an entirely irrational passion, out of hand.  The only real extravagance was Eric’s: he made us buy some ridiculous hot pads, sixteen bucks a piece, assuring me that “they’ll be the last hotpads you ever need.” The Broadway Panhandler is a silly sort of a place, but I’m not going to lie and say I don’t love it. I even failed to spend an outrageous amount of money at Dean & DeDevil, for fuck’s sake.  I marched in there determined to buy a fucking $100 dollar truffle.  But the truffles were only $24 an ounce.  The guy behind the counter gave me one that he said was two ounces, and I figured I’d be satisfied with spending 50 bucks.  He gave me the truffle, in a container full of rice, handing it over with a meaningful wink.  I understood the wink, I thought, when I looked at the price on the bottom and saw that it cost… Eight Dollars!  Oh my god.  I’d been recognized!  I was part of an underground brotherhood!  It was like The Fight Club, only with gourmet foodstuffs! Eric and I ran out of there before we got caught, giggling like mad.  It was only I got home and weighed the truffle that I realized that actually the thing was about half an ounce, not two ounces, and we hadn’t gotten a deal at all.  Besides, I don’t have much experience with truffles, but this one didn’t seem a very good one – it wasn’t overly fragrant.  No dark foodie underground after all.  Very disappointing. So anyway, home at that point – well, after a trip to the Astoria grocery where to buy staples.  I was inexplicably exhausted by my brush with rampant acquisitiveness, and did not feel much like cooking.  I went ahead and, using my brand new sieve, which even though it was relatively cheap at fifteen bucks is pretty fucking cool, made up some Beurre de Crustaces, or Shellfish Butter.  I used the cooked shrimp shells from the shrimp I’d cooked up for our Friday dinner (a night during which I got nothing whatsoever accomplished, except to watch the rest of Ringu and The Tao of Steve, which is a not-very-good movie).  All you do is chop up the shells and throw them in a blender with a stick of melted butter.  Blend it up until you make a paste, then heat it up in the pan, then blend it again, then heat it up in the pan again, then heat it again, then push it through a sieve.  The result is a little pot of bright orange butter, which went in the fridge to cool.  I don’t really know what I’m going to do with it – serve it on bread, I suppose. I also hard boiled some eggs – I would use the yolks to make Beurre a l’Oeuf, Egg Yolk Butter.  I guess I’ll serve that on bread too, with some chives maybe.  Am lacking a tad in the imagination department today. Eric made dinner – Bifteck Saute au Beurre, the first meal that ever we ate for the Project, and Puree de Pommes de Terre a l’Ail, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, which are a pain in the ass but very very good.  I whipped up some Haricots Verts a la Crème – which is a very good treatment for the very shitty green beans available to the consumer in Long Island City.  A lovely dinner, watched in front of the TV while watching The Ring, which is indeed better than the original, in no small part because suicidal racehorses freak me out. This morning Eric is having one of his Blanche days.  Might have something to do with the gimlets and Sicilian red wine, I don’t know.  All I know is he’d better feel the fuck better by tonight, because we’ve got serious eating to do, and it would be a shame if Em and I had to finish the outrageously expensive champagne all by ourselves.  He’s making a good start on his recovery by heading out into the wilds of Queens to get me some more butter and canned pineapple.   I have been weepy and sentimental the last few days.  It must be the imminent end of the Project of course, and also the newly lovely weather, reminiscent of early fall mornings in New England when Eric and I were heartbreakingly young, lounging on futons in seriously filthy dorm rooms, he still blissfully unaware of what a major-league nutcase I am.  Also, our multimedia cups runneth over these days with Julia-related gifts.  In addition to the set of educational videos sent by Bridget, Eric has presented me with a complete DVD collection of “Jacques and Julia” and “Julia Child’s Kitchen Wisdom.”  I keep watching the latter of these and finding myself sobbing.  But I am happy.  What is it that makes me weep with joy and, somehow, loss to hear Martha Stewart describe how Julia took away our fear of food?  If I can get to the bottom of this feeling, and write about it, then the Julie/Julia Project will not have been in vain.   12:01:21 PM    comment []