El Jefe of the Weiss

To feed the in-laws the other day, I thought of goulash, and not just because there's some Hungarian in that Gerencher family. I wanted to reprise the knockout dish I made for some Canadian friends of Kristen a couple of years ago, a great kitchen success that included the salad of wilted red cabbage, all off recipes from Wallsé, which is a fave of New York musician and gourmand James Roe, whom I met through Paul Festa and is how I'm a few degrees off Kevin Bacon.

Quick highlights before I bump off to bed: It was a little different this time, and it probably was because I added the juice of half a lemon at the end, as directed. (Don't remember adding that the first time around.) Or was it the can of beef stock? Though I'm still thinking about that slight sourness, almost everyone went back for more. Nuking it the second day, I finished it with a small, small corner of butter, and for me that did the trick.

Some impromptu shopping at the New World Market on Geary brought out the perfect pairing for the goulash: a dark wheat beer from Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephaner. Cloudy, yeasty, caramelly and from the world's oldest brewery to boot. So it says right there on the label, "seit 1040." Maybe I'll get one during tax time.

Tainted

Well, it happened to us: I put out some burgers in the afternoon for an evening meal, and as I pull in and zip down the cowhide, Kristen says: "Check out the Gate and see if we've got bad beef." Something like that.

I look, and there it is. On my patty pack from Trader Joe's Butcher Shop, the "freeze-by" date is April 20, on the edge of the envelope. It looks like there's another date, "0422," but it's not clear what that number is. The Web site is confusing too.

Another pound of beef goes to the dump. What to do, go back for more?

Product Placement: TJ's Dry Rub

Da Fanch and I have been devoted to making our own dry rub -- for food, dammit! Come on. This is a family blog. We found a recipe for "Iraqi spice mix" in a Middle Eastern cookbook that required the purchase of many different powders and other things that need to be pulverized. The result is an excellent, pungent rub for all kinds of meats, and I recommend it to anyone with time and a mortar and pestle. A Cuisinart will also do.

Second best: the TJ's "Steak & Chop Grill & Broil" mix, found in the spice rack. It's damn good, it's not too salty, and it has dried lemon zest, a nice touch. Start with it, then doctor it as you see fit. I like to add a little cinammon, especially for pork and chicken served with a couscous sprinkled with walnuts and raisins. Allahu akbar!

Signs of the Coming Gastro-Apocalypse

Sheesh! This was supposed to be a good-food, good-news blog. Now all this:

First, as Michael Pollan said at a food symposium at Berkeley a few years ago (E.L.M., thanks for driving), all the country’s bees are sick. So what do we do to pollinate crops? Breed more selectively to make more of the little fellas, even though that can make colonies more vulnerable to disease. Then what? Import some other buzzers from elsewhere, which inevitably leads to the spread of diseases that makes all the bees sick. Mmmk.

Out-of-control growth isn’t only on the producer side. Frigging
Whole Foods is struggling so hard to keep up with a sector it helped create, as well as the customers it carved out for itself against TJ’s and even Safeway that it’s stocking rotten produce at premium prices. You can say the same thing about Home Depot: Piss off enough people and it’ll be painful bringing them back. I’ll take on the five aisles of holistic health crap another day.

At least Frank B had a good time tossing salad in his swanky New York steak-house tour.

UPDATE: The grain market's abuzz, so to speak, over the bee thing.

A Hint of Mint

Welcome back to the occasional series, Sugo on Hugo. It's been at least a year since returning to the cozy, rainy-night basics of a sugo sauce ladeled over a toothsome pasta. The idea behind sugo is just minced meat. No veggies, no music, no veggies, no veggies, except for the onion and garlic chopped extremely fine. Tonight we chose lean ground beef, 5% fat, with the longer threads of the grind broken up with a wooden spoon as it was sauteeing. Don't give me no lumpy sugo, pal.

A large handful of red pepper flakes and a generous pinch of brown sugar later, it still needed something. Ah-ha: dried mint leaves, pulled from the stalks, ripped into small pieces but not pulverized. The more the better: I didn't really measure.

Fabulous. Beef and mint and dried red pepper, just what the doctor ordered as the hailstorms pinged the kitchen window and the thunder shook the fusilli.

King and Chief Probably Had a Big Beef

There's a running food fight between N.Y. Times food critic Frank Bruni and restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, whose new Manhattan steakhouse, Kobe Club, Bruni skewered recently.

Chodorow responded with a $40,000 ad in the Times, forcing Bruni to actually go out and buy the paper instead of reading it online. (Hey, shouldn't he get a free subscription?)

Best quote from another star chef: "If Frank Bruni had poorly reviewed one of my restaurants, I might have pulled a Tonya Harding and broken his kneecaps. I’d have thought, Dude, I’ve gotta do something."

Did I just write "star chef"? I apologize. You may now slap me across the face with a raw turbot fillet 39-foot Colossal Squid.