Food on Screen: All in This Tea

Les Blank is known for making lighthearted films about food, such as Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. This film, All In This Tea, simply follows an American tea importer as he criss-crosses China in search of the best tea to buy and sell to his clients. He runs into some trouble for wanting to deal directly with the farmers (rather than going through a syndicate) but still comes home with tons of tea, meanwhile trying to get the farmers to go organic.



The film is loosely structured around different kinds of tea (Oolong, Pu-ehr, etc.). It's interesting for someone who has any interest in tea, it's history, and the complex culture that developed around it in China. On Netflix instant!

Dining Out: Cinamoon

Some weeks back I visited Greenpoint, a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn known for having a large Polish population. Immediately out of the subway I saw a large and elegant vodka window display, and further down the block was Cinamoon, where I had lunch with a friend. The food was delightful and pretty exotic for a Texan.

Pierogies: some potato and cheese, some mushroom and potato

Borscht, and a "cutlet," which seemed like a kind of spring roll whose wrapper was made out of a crêpe, and then the whole thing rolled in crumbs and fried.

Brooklyn Home Cooking

So the truism is that New Yorkers don't cook, and I have to admit that having a small kitchen, having to carry my groceries, and being without my own cooking equipment (and sometimes having very little time) has made me more likely to rely on convenience foods, or what I like to think of as the college student diet (tuna-eggs-rice-beans-yogurt, in various combinations).

After I joined the Park Slope Food Coop last fall, though, I started cooking more, or at least eating better at home. Here's a salad I made for Thanksgiving - salad greens and goat cheese that anywhere else I'd consider a luxury are affordable at the coop.

And as with most things, the generalization "people don't cook in NY" must be a bit of an exaggeration for a diverse city of almost 8.5 million people.

Actually, one of my favorite food scenes in a movie takes place in a Brooklyn neighborhood not far from where I live now. Do you remember the egg frying scene in Moonstruck?

Why is it so fun to cut a hole in a piece of bread and crack an egg into it?

Co-op Fight!

Ha ha, no, just kidding. I love both my coops. But I thought it would be fun to do a comparison of them. They're not in any way in competition with each other since they are in different cities.

Park Slope Food Coop

Location: Brooklyn, New York
Year Founded: 1973
Number of Members: I believe I remember hearing that there are 16,000 active members.
Slogan: "Good food at low prices for working members through cooperation since 1973."
Payments accepted: cash and debit only
Do you have to work?: Yes
Open to non-members?: No
Prices: Low (they estimate 20-40% less than you'd pay elsewhere)
Special items: Cheap sushi, cheap and plentiful cheeses, lots of local produce, beer
Bulk: Most of it is pre-packaged by member workers on the "food processing" squad. No bulk liquids.
Bags: No bags offered at checkout; members bring their own or re-use boxes that have been used as packaging for the store's goods
Floor space: Highly competitive
Vibe: Intense, serious, political

Wheatsville Coop

Location: Austin, Texas

Year Founded: 1976
Number of Members: unknown
Slogan: N/A
Payments accepted: all
Do you have to work?: No, but apparently when it was first founded working was a requirement
Open to non-members?: Yes
Prices: Similar to a gourmet grocery store
Special items: Beer and wine, deli counter
Bulk: DIY, including bulk oils, syrups, soaps and shampoos
Bags: BYO, use a cardboard box, or get a paper or plastic bag at checkout
Floor space: Plentiful
Vibe: Concerned but laid-back

From Austin With Love

While in Austin over the holidays, I took advantage of the bountiful options for Tex-Mex which is one thing that money can't buy in NYC. Took my camera along to a couple of the places I hadn't been to before, or hadn't been to recently...

Large breakfast burrito with egg, bean and nopalito
from La Cocina de Consuelo

Sign in front of La Cocina

You know you're nostalgic for Tex-Mex when you
take a picture of chips and salsa

Guacamole at Curra's

Mole enchiladas at Curra's

Fish Tacos at Curra's: thumbs up

Flan (with Kahlua!)

Katz's

Ok, so I went to Katz's way back when I first got to NYC. I went because it's famous, because it was near where I was living, and because I was really hungry.

I was confused by the ordering system (take a number, and then MAYHEM!) and got in the wrong line for latkes, so ended up with a corned beef sandwich which I happily ate, and the hunger subsided. It was good but probably not what she was having.

Quaint water dispenser

Patrons

Aforementioned corned beef, pickles, and matzo ball soup

Viennese Vegetable Orchestra

(I did not take this picture)

I heard about these folks a few weeks ago... Here's a video (after a commercial). I wonder, is a carrot-cucumber-pepper called a ca-cu-pe? Could be the long awaited vegetarian response to turducken!

Tacombi

Well I guess I have to make my "Plan A" work now because someone scooped my "Plan B." You can now get breakfast tacos in Nolita. Tacombi is essentially an indoor taco truck.

COME & TRY A TACO....uh, ok.

Spanish lesson?

The $4 breakfast tacos: this ain't potato & egg time

The truck, which I think opens for lunch and dinner

A remarkably clean kitchen area
(I did just read Kitchen Confidential, after all...)

My breakfast taco, on a homemade tortilla
I nearly cried.

Was curious about the agua de pepino...

But it came in this sustainably compostable cup so I couldn't admire its color while I drank it

Around Little Italy

The "real" Little Italies may have moved off Manhattan (according to the guide books), but I still enjoyed living near Downtown's old Italian quarter, which is by turns touristy and seemingly authentic.

Torrisi Italian Specialties

Ok, so Torrisi is not great for vegetarians, but I got some eggplant, broccolini, and cauliflower treated in various ways, plus some smoked mozzarella from Raffetto's

Delicious pasta salad from Raffetto's

Lasagna from DiPalo's

Tiled floor at one of the million eateries on Mulberry Street

Amazing wild mushroom and olive pizza from Lombardi's

The old-school espresso and sweet shop, Caffe Roma

Cannoli from Caffe Roma

Eating at the Brooklyn Flea

The Brooklyn Flea takes place every weekend and I suppose it's a gathering place of sorts for the hipper types of Northern Brooklyn. The stalls have all kinds of antique clothes and knick knacks that would be finds at garage sales, here sold at a premium. No matter, I was more interested in the food.

This guy was doing all right selling nothing but pork on a roll

And I, sadly, couldn't resist the bbq sausage roll

Food vendors ranged from some faces familiar from the Red Hook ball fields, to Middle Eastern, to wood-oven pizza (they had installed one at the tent!), to this table advertising themselves as Texas barbecue. When I asked if they were from Texas, one of them answered in the affirmative, so I had to give them a shot.

Finally reading Kitchen Confidential...

So I'm finally reading Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain's braggadocio never really appealed to me, but I have to admit his first book is really amusing. As he says in the introduction, it's a book for the cooks. If you've ever worked in the food service industry, you'll probably snicker knowingly at a lot of his descriptions.

What I don't understand is why he is so intent on bad mouthing vegetarians. It must be mostly a publicity stunt. Anyway I think he's lost the debate. Listen to his conversation with Jonathan Safran-Foer (author of Eating Animals) and see what you think.

Food on Screen: Food Beware

The food documentary is not an exclusively US phenomenon - Europe has ventured into the genre with films like Our Daily Bread and the recent French documentary Food Beware.



Despite the terrible English title, this film is worth watching. It's about a small town in the South of France where the mayor decided that all school children and invalids - who are fed through a central municipal kitchen - should eat organic food. This decision was spurred by increasing scientific evidence that pesticides used in the region (which is heavily agricultural and wine-producing) have been responsible for health problems in children and adults.

The cross-cultural difference is what I found particularly interesting about the film. It's really astounding to see French school children sitting at lunch tables, enthusiastically tasting and describing the new foods they are being offered. That, and the class picnic at the base of the Pont du Gard, were enough to bring a tear to my eye.

It's a nicely made film, and set in a beautiful region. Available on Netflix!

Hester Street Market

On a sunny August Saturday I headed to the Hester Street Market, after reading about it in an issue of Time Out. As far as street markets go, this one gets top marks for interesting food. Lots of different vendors that I haven't seen elsewhere in the city.

"Artisanal" pretzel made with cheddar and truffle
+ a cucumber limeade

Bowls of bulk spices and teas...

Japanese pancakes filled with red bean paste

Taïm

The Israeli-Vegetarian restaurant Taïm was recommended to me by a friend when she found out I'd be working on West 14th Street over the summer. When I finally made it I got a date-banana smoothie and this falafel sandwich - though they have some other selections on the menu that look equally tantalizing. The tiny restaurant has a line out the door most of the day, but if you can go at 3pm on a weekday you might get a seat at the window counter....

My falafel sandwich on whole wheat pita

Sorry for the poor picture quality and for the fact I was too busy eating to take a picture of the brilliant green insides of the falafel (they also have red and yellow varieties, with slightly different flavoring). What sets this falafel apart from others, for me, is that all the ingredients are really fresh, including falafels fried "to order." No stomach ache after this one.

Chiyono

Chiyono is a tiny restaurant in the East Village specializing in what they call "Japanese homestyle"cooking. The menu is small and everything seems to be prepared with a lot of care. There are literally only two tables in the restaurant - one long table, where multiple parties can be seated, and one 2-person table in the window.

Dessert:
Sesame pudding, fruit, red bean sauce, and vanilla ice cream

The vegetarian plate:
I don't know what half this stuff was, but it was all delicious and tasted very healthy

Dim Sum Go Go

Careless checking off on an ordering menu led me to order two rounds of dim sum at this Chinatown establishment. Too much of a good thing? Possibly. But it meant I got to sample both their vegetarian and their meat (mostly shrimp) dumplings.

Meat dumplings

Veggie dumplings filled with all kinds of things
+ the same sponge-like thing in the middle - seaweed?

The green sauce, which had ginger, onion and oil in it was
especially tasty (I went through two small bowls of it)

Hot tea and toasted soy beans, also very tasty

Actually the most interesting thing about the whole experience was that I went early, around 5pm, and restaurant was nearly empty. I was seated next to an older lady with a strong European accent who started talking to me when she realized we were both alone. She tipped me in on the green sauce and told me about her experiences in the neighborhood. Who says New Yorkers aren't friendly?