Happy New Year loyal readers!!!

I was so excited to prepare a hearty meal for the Mrs. and I when all of a sudden we came down with full blown Bronchitis. Not what I had in mind to ring in 2008.

This was the planned Menu

Remember going to your favorite toy store as a child and being overwhelmed by the plenty of toys that were at your reach.  Running up and down the aisles touching all the action figures and video games and just making believe that they were all yours.  Well adulthood ruined that all for me.  I never thought that I would experience that feeling again until the year 2000 arrived and I was introduced to Korin.  Korin houses the largest selection of Japanese and Japanese western-style knives in New York City (I'm going to go and say this side of the Hemisphere).  They also carry Japanese tableware and restaurant products, but for me, the real jewel is their Knife collection.

The Japanese have been crafting blades for many centuries.  What was mainly a production of Katana blades or traditional Samurai swords, would develop into kitchen knife making after World War II (when General MacArthur completely banned the production of the Samurai sword).  

I was most lucky to attend a knife sharpening class with Master Knife Sharpener Chiharu Sugai.  Mr. Sugai is co-founder of Korin and he learned his traditional knife sharpening techniques in Sakai, Japan. The city of Sakai in Osaka prefecture was once known for it's samurai swords so it's no surprise that it is now known for its high quality chef's knifes and cutlery.

 

 

 

Here are a few do's and don'ts when working with your Japanese and Japanese western-style knives

• Don't use a honing steel on your Japanese style knives
• When using a wet stone/sharpening stone do not over soak your stone. Five minutes is more than enough. You can warp the stone or chemicals can leach out of the stone if it is kept in for too long.
• Instead of using a steel, use a fine grit stone at the end of each day to give your knife an edge. After three to five days sharpen your knife/knives using a medium grit stone and then finishing off with a fine grit.

They recently remodeled their show room.  I cannot wait to stop by and check it out.  Of course I will give you an update as soon as I go.

- Erio

In the month of August 2001  I was promoted to work the hot appetizer station at Veritas restaurant in New York City. One of my duties on that station was to prepare family meal. The first week was a little rough. You have to get your timing right.  You are preparing your station for service and you are doing the prep for and cooking of the infamous family meal.  After a couple of weeks my meals improved and I felt like they were quite successful.  I was  braising pork butt, pasta salads, I created my Asian coleslaw, perfected my chicken roasting skills, chicken breast searing skills, and my Thai curry recipe. 

At that time I was working with someone who would later on become one of my dearest friends (you would never say something like that in the kitchen) his name is Jason.  Jason worked the meat station which was right next to the Hot apps.  Our stations met in the corner of the restaurant and all the heat from his grill, his burners and oven, my burners and oven, the shared convection oven, it all met here in the hottest of dance crazes.

My family meal stories are now legend amongst my inner sanctum. Well, Jason made sure of that Ha!

For the month of August I was rocking and a rolling along when all of a sudden 9/11 arrived. As a result of this terrible attack, the restaurant industry had to issue major cutbacks in staff, hours, and in our case provisions for family meal. For sometime all we had in the walk-in refrigerators were some carrots and zucchini, and, if we were lucky, some chicken to spare for the sacred meal. We also had all the orzo in the world.  I soon began to run out of ideas for family meal and I quickly became the least liked line cook there. By mid to late October we started getting more goodies for family meal but unfortunately Jason had moved on to another job and someone else began preparing the late lunch/early dinner. I was never able to redeem myself. 

Whenever Jason accepts an invitation to Casa Cavalieri, I am most compelled to create a very, very, very flavorful meal.  So I decided to go with a line cook favorite. Braised something.

After walking through the supermarket I found a most beautiful 8lb bone-in leg of lamb and decided to prepare one of my favorites.  What hard core, salty dog, line cook would not enjoy the multi hour braising of my leg of lamb tagine?

A tagine is a North African cooking vessel and a type of food. When cooking in a tagine you would use a very small amount of liquid.  While cooking, the evaporated liquid gets caught at the top of the conical shaped lid and the condensation falls back down to the base where the food product is located.  So it is more of a steaming effect rather than a braise.

I served the tagine with cous cous, and I also prepared three shladas.  Shladas are very simple mini salads that you serve before the meal.   

First was a carrot shlada. The sliced carrots had been slightly blanched, drizzled with olive oil, garlic, cumin, salt and black pepper.  The second shlada had boiled potatoes with olive oil, smoked paprika, salt, pepper and lemon juice with some minced garlic.  The third shlada had sautéed eggplant, plum tomatoes olive oil, garlic, salt and black pepper.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the larger version.

The leg of lamb did not fit in my Le Creuset so I had to break it down

 

Seared leg of lamb with a dry rub

 

Sautéed Onions

 

Dried dates, figs, apricot and cinnamon sticks

 

Seared Leg of Lamb #2

 

Sautéed onions with bay leaves and cinnamon sticks 

Boiled potatoes for shlada #1

 

Carrot Shlada. Shlada #2

 

Eggplant shlada. Shlada #3

 
It just needs some stock

4 hours later 

In the end I was very happy because after reminiscing over my failed family meals we all helped ourselves to seconds and thirds of my lamb tagine.  Nice!

-Erio

I had a long day today (not uncommon for December) and I'm still trying to catch up on my much needed sleep. If you recall I was deprived of this basic human necessity due to the Wednesday through Thursday bar crawl with John Henry.  My work day began at 5 AM and ran until 7PM.  I was working for a client in the SOHO area all day, what  I wanted to do was shlep all the way to the heavenly Port Authority bus terminal to take the lovely (I'm kidding of course) bus ride home. Just as I was leaving the jobsite the Mrs. called me and asked if I could pick up some sour cream for the baked potatoes that she was preparing as a side dish for dinner. I admit that I was not to excited about the request but of course I complied (sucker!).  Well, did you ever think that  freaking sour cream would be so difficult to locate?  I spent about 45 minutes running around looking for it.  I have to tell you that it is much easier to find Foie Gras than sour cream in this area.  I went to Dean and Deluca thinking to myself of course I'm going to find it here.... Wrong!  They had every other type of distant relative (Devonshire, Clotted Cream, Greek Yogurts, aahhhhhh) available but all she wanted was the sour stuff. I went to four or five grocery/deli's and yet again, no dice.

I finally found it at Gourmet Garage.

Honey, I'm coming home. 

If you recall back in June I was invited to the Koto USA Launch party. There, my now wife Laurie bid on a bar crawl for two with John Henry of Pipeline Brands in New York City. Check out some of the spirits his company represents. You know we are going to have a very memorable err hydrating evening.

St Germain Elderflower Liqueur
Rhum Clement
Rhum J.M
Charbay
Dumante Verdenoce
Anchor Beer and Spirits
Beleza Pura
Palm Breweries

Enough Said Huh?

I have been training waiting for this day for many months now. I'd be damned if I didn't go out with out a fight.

So lets begin.

PDT Please Don't Tell 

We started off our night at 6PM. John Henry's email said "meet me at PDT (a speakeasy type bar) you'll figure out how to get in". I did try to go to this very same place 4 months prior so I didn't want to spoil it for Laurie and I won't spoil it for you. Unfortunately at that time there was an hour wait so I never got an opportunity to go in and taste anything . Now I know that to get a seat, you have to show up at 6PM.

To get into PDT you have to go in through Crifdogs located at 113 St. Marks Place in NYC.

Once inside we were greeted by this beautiful bar. I fell in love with the dark room.

I played around with the camera settings for a bit this is the best I could do (for someone with a drink in the other hand).

The Official Drinking List

1. Martinez - Beefeater Gin, Carpano Antica Formula, Luxardo Maraschino, Orange Bitters
2. Arc Angel -  Pymouth Gin, Aperol , Cucumber
3. Vieux Mot - Plymouth Gin, St Germain , Lemon
4. Nouveau Carre - El Tesoro Anejo , Benedictine, Lillet Blanc, Peychaud’s Bitters
5. Harvest Moon
6. 18th Century
7. No. 8 Cocktail
   

The Unofficial Drinking List

Same as above but with an additional comparison tasting of the Harvest Moon with three different base alcohols. Wild Turkey, Glenfiddich and Glenfiddich 18 Year Old.

Thanks to our wonderful mixologist Daniel!

 Angel's Share

We then went to Angel's Share located at 8 Stuyvesant St, NYC.  I walk past this area all the time and I never, never knew about it.  Angel's Share is tucked away above a bookstore and to get to the lounge you have to go up a flight of stairs, which then leads you into a noodle type restaurant and then you go through a non-descriptive door which leads you to this Japanese Lounge/Bar. I'll let you figure it out.  The bar was very busy and the awesome staff was on top of everything.  The servers and mixologists are very serious about their professions so don't expect to chat away at the staff.  It's meant to be a place to unwind and relax.

We tried the Old Oak, Groovy cocktail and the Rhum Clement VSOP.

Special attention goes to the Groovy Cocktail.  I rarely drink Vodka anymore, yes, those days partying out in Long Island and my early College years was enough.  Angel's Share infuses their Vodka with Shiso leaves.  I really love Shiso or as it is also called Perilla. It has a funky minty property about it and you might see it when you go out to eat sushi.  We decided to put some food in our system and ordered  sashimi, fried oysters and Berkshire pork sausages with Dijon mustard. You have to put something in your system to soak up the alcohol.  Be forewarned, they do not seat parties larger than four, and you cannot stand around the bar.

Death and Co.

When we arrived at Death and Co. it was packed and there was a 45 minute wait.  You can have your name placed on the list and once a spot opens up they call you on your mobile phone. We left our name and walked next door to Cherry Tavern.

Cherry Tavern 

Long ago , back when I used to party like a rock star, I would magically appear at this local joint called Cherry Tavern. I never knew how I got there, nor could I ever find it in a normal state of mind. I think the drinks that I had back then opened some sort of worm hole to Cherry Tavern.  You can only imagine my jubilation when I discovered that the Cherry Tavern was  only a few doors down from Death and Co. This was my contribution to the Bar crawl.  I had one over the human rolodex of everything cocktails, bars and mixologist in the tri-state area a.k.a. John Henry.

Allow me to introduce you to the Old Glory Special over at Cherry Tavern. For $4 you get a shot of Old Crow Whiskey and a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

The $4 Old Glory Special at Cherry Tavern

After drinking our medicine at Cherry Tavern we walked over to Death and Co. and tried one more time.  Unfortunately we had missed their phone call and so, lost our place on the waiting list. Oh well, maybe next time.

 

The Pegu Club 

It was close to midnight when we arrived at the Pegu Club on West Houston Street. John Henry Introduced us to Kento-San who would be our bartender for the night.  Audrey Saunders, the Queen of Cocktails and owner of the Pegu Club came out to greet us as well.  Wow!  I met her a long time ago at a special event commemorating the Father of Mixology, Jerry Thomas or the "Professor" as he was known. The cocktail that she prepared at that event was the Tom and Jerry and lucky for us, very lucky for us, she told us that she was going to personally prepare that very same cocktail at the end of our night.

This is Audrey Saunders' Tom and Jerry 

 

 

There are two parts to making a proper Tom and Jerry. 

There is the batter. This consists of beaten egg yolks and whipped egg whites, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and rum.

Then there is the Drink which is Rum, Brandy and hot water

To get the full recipe for Tom and Jerry you should buy Dale Degroff's book The Craft of the Cocktail

According to John Henry we still had 8 more places to visit, hence the title for this posting 12 bars of Christmas.  We all decided that we should end the night at the Pegu Club and quit while we were all ahead.  We were definitely feeling very buzzed by this time. So let me just jump to the official drink list

Official Drink List

1. Old Cubano - Bacardi 8, Lillet, Lime Juice, Mint, Simple Syrup
   
2. Douglas Fir Gimlet
   
3. White Negroni - Plymouth Gin, Suze, Lillet Blanc, St Germin, Grapefruit, Simple Syrup, Lemon Twist
   
4. Earl Grey Martini - Earl Grey Infused Gin, Lemon Juice, Egg White
   
5. Tom and Jerry
   

In Closing 

Kento-San rocked the scene behind the bar. Producing beautifully balanced cocktails.  Thanks!!!

John Henry stayed  out later than he expected and decided to swim home instead of taking the bus home.

Laurie and I spent a half hour calling every car service in NYC to pick us up. We got a car at 2:45 in the morning.

FYI, arrived home at 3:45AM  went to sleep at 4AM  and woke up at 7AM to go to work.

Today, was a very very good day! Stay tuned as there are still 8 more bars to visit. This should happen in February.

Me, Laurie and John Henry at the Cherry Tavern