arghablog

Summer wanes

August 18, 2008 · 1 Comment

I was reminded tonight that there once existed another arghablog, and that it still moulders out there in the inter-thing, safe from my prying eyes or editing hand. My old web site is still up, but it’s almost a year since I’ve had any of the files at my command. So I’m essentially projecting this horribly unprofessional and out-of-date message to the world, and I just haven’t - all summer long - mustered the strength of will to suck the existing files in somehow, reshape them, rebuild, redesign, and republish. It is the 800 pound gorilla in my life, that old website of mine, and just recently people have been commenting on it, both yay and nay. A few days ago a close family member found this inspired post and was nice enough to leave a comment. But I haven’t checked the comments in months, so it took an honest to goodness phone call to have me go see what the good man had to say. And there - in the “pending moderation” file - I found a good year’s worth of comments. Passersby, family and friends of those eulogized in my space, admirers of Josh Gibson, sellers of odds-and-ends commodities, professional people trying to reach my wife. All these comments awaiting moderation, and I so rudely neglecting them these many months. 

We bloggers - especially those of us with circulations under, say, 40 - toil for love, (and whether by that I mean self-love is for all 39 of you to decide), and are by no means immune to the gentle lauding of kith and kin. So as I sat reading these happy comments on a blog that is in point of fact mouldering, a discernible warmth soothed my breast. I resolved to blog again, furiously if fitfully, with purpose, or even better, without. I stand before you, 39ers, bearing my addled, silly soul. Judge me harshly if you must, I will love you all the same for having just shown up. I am a lousy and unfaithful servant in the blog trade. You can do better than this and it pains me only slightly that you do, day in, day out. But every now and then I promise to keep showing up, whether with Judy Johnson perched atop my head, or with Dewar’s-induced slurred typing, or with contemporary opera (that most awful of phrases) on my brain, and have a hardy spew for your and my benefit. I will blog without photos, without sensical titles, without warning. My blog matters, it’s been here almost 2 and a half years, and doggonit I’m good enough, strange enough, and deluded enough to age it further. 

Was I saying something? Might have been. More next time, faithful readers and friends. Forgive me and accept me, as you know I would you.

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If I am a musical thinker

July 29, 2008 · 5 Comments

I’m having funny days. Bits of opera composing (it goes on and on - I think I finished a scene today though…I mean except for the very end part), then lots of cooking, preparing of food, shakes, protein, weird stuff is afoot. Late nights I finish bottles of wine and practice fingerstyle guitar. I’m getting a feel for it - and I have the best guitar calluses of my life. You could lance these things and I won’t know, I’ll just keep sleeping or petting the pet cat. I’m learning tunes by Pete Seeger and Dave van Ronk and all the other ones. Every tune. I’ll know them all come autumn. It’s so strange for me, because the guitar to me previously had been only about writing. To hold a guitar was to be trying, vainly or otherwise, to write a song. Except for that brief period in college when I studied classical guitar for about 6 months and practiced so hard I gave myself shooting pains and couldn’t even lift a fork. Those were times. Anyway, I’m building chops, gathering a new understanding of my left hand. The plan is kind of twofold. 1) I hope soon to start writing some fingerstyle stuff - I’m trying to expand my thing; 2) I hope to have flashy impressive stuff I can play next time I go to a store to buy a guitar. Because that’s really where it’s at, you know. 

I grilled shrimp tonight on our little habachi. Almost burned the house down - I gotta get a bigger grill. Anyway, I was grillin’ away, the smoke getting right up in my face, crawling around manipulating the too-big charcoal chimney, then grabbing the errant red-hots before they could fully incinerate the old wooden deck. Shrimp is too much trouble, but it still tastes good and I’ve taken to liking rose wine. All this wine, but not really all that much in the scheme of things.

Suddenly it’s morning. What happened?

→ 5 CommentsCategories: food · music · rambling
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I invented a food

July 26, 2008 · No Comments

For reasons that may someday be clear, we in my house have traveled divergent culinary paths. Judy Johnson is the simplest, in that he generally eats complacently from a can or a bag, albeit with the knowledge that he gets a bite of papa’s smoked fish product each morning. Then there are the two humans. I’m a vegetarian and I eat fish but I can’t remember why so don’t ask me. But me loving wife eats the meatballz. So I was jazzing up this whole pot of spaghettis and meatballz and sauce, with some popeye-stylin’ spinach on the side, when I says, I says… Why not blacken a piece of tillapia and create a mess of food for papa hisself? Really. 

So the dish is this: Cook sauce, (homemade, store bought, whateverrrr); set some aside before adding meatballz; blacken some fish comme ca: melt butter; coat both sides of fish - (like say tillapia) - in not too much butter; take out “blackening spice” and just be ridiculous with it. Poor the whole damn bottle on the fish, no-one cares; heat a cast iron skillet just by its lonesome for like 15 minutes, until it looks like touching it would send you and your next of kin to the urgent care center; throw the buttered coated fish onto the skillet and take the battery out of your nearest smoke detector; blacken both sides of the fish, explain the smoke to yer wifey, and then do this: grab some of the lubricated whole grain pasta into a dish, add sauce, sprinkle w/ some parmesan (in this mess store-bought pre-grated works fine) and then throw that slab of blackness right on top. Then add something green like spinach or lacinato kale or just a mound of pesto or carpet or somefin; and then just eat the damn thing and feel the spirit of all Italy and Louisiana course through you like electric current. It’s a Hurricane Katrina of a meal and needs to be accompanied by saloon water at the least. 

hiccup.

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The dump

July 20, 2008 · 1 Comment

The sidewalk sale went the way of the dodo. Ours did anyway, not necessarily the whole genre. The sky was threatening. I carried all the stuff down, and then it started to perspire, and then to outright rain. So we covered up with a tarp, and then I carried everything back up. Then I went and got a free coffee at Hilltop coffee, and since then the day has been a wash.

I am drinking lots of caffeine these days. Most of my blogging has been done during those periods of caffeine hiatus, so I thought I should be up front about that right here, since it seems like this thing might get going again.

Choice drink of the season: the double macchiato. Even though it makes me feel like an asshole to ask for one.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Maine · rambling
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Chance Encounter

July 19, 2008 · 1 Comment

High summer is here. Fans are a-buzzin’, and the going is somewhat sluggish. The thing about Maine when it gets seriously hot is there’s only completely inept institutional air conditioning to be had. The collective BTU power held in check by this northern state is up to the task of almost all the days of the year here - but the four or five moments in the hot season when you most need that department store blast of all encompassing frigidity invariably end in frustration. 

I went to the kitchen, leaning toward the freezer. I was about to pull out a gallon of Breyers vanilla when I remembered there was fresh cut watermelon, so I wholesomely turned my attention there instead. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a sparkle. In the anteroom, just ahead of the laundry hamper and still as a picture, stood Judy Johnson, staring. The heat has been hard on him, but moreso the absolute chaos that reigns in our apartment. We are moving rooms around, having a sidewalk sale, selling stuff on ebay. In short we are in transition, as bold a step as we could take without actually moving, and the cat’s bent out of shape about it. He still manages to find odd corners of unoccupied space in which to assume the strangest paw-dangling contortions, but he’s moody and prone to attack unprovoked. Now here he was staring at me in the kitchen, as I slobbered over watermelon with the kitchen door ajar, juice running down my chin. He stared as if to say “you strange person, tell me how any of the things you do make any sense at all.” I felt found out and guilty, and for one brief moment it seemed the only thing to do would be to offer Johnson a slice, as if that would make me even one ounce less ridiculous in his furry little eyes. 

The encounter passed and neither of us were injured or anything like that. It’s later in the same night and we’re both sweating it out, listening to the whirring fans, and thinking the about other person here - the smartest of us three - who called it a night some hours ago. We all do our part in this little abode. 

Tomorrow bright and early: sidewalk sale! So best be getting some shuteye.

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Guitar love and more

July 12, 2008 · 5 Comments

…yeah

And why I haven’t been here and if not here then where and what have I been doing? Oh dear reader, dear readerZ, I haven’t completely forgotten and forsaken and forsnooken you. Really.

Life is careening along. All sorts of stuff is happening, and I can’t quite be over-specific here but give me a week or two. I can tell some.

1) I made a batch of margaritas that I alone am drinking. I used fresh lime juice and too much of it, so that I pucker with each sip. But the sips are, nonetheless, quite heavenly, and they remind me that summer - all two weeks of it - is in full bloom.

2) I have sold and bought a guitar. I sold my dad’s old Gibson ES-175, a simply gorgeous vintage 1968 instrument that I could stare at for hours but had absolutely no interest in playing. In its place now exists a brand new Martin D-18 Golden Era steel string dreadnought acoustic guitar. It is, to be honest, not quite as majestic and sexy as the Gibson was, but that sound - oh that sound. If you tune the low E string down to D, you can just play a big D chord and that’s essentially all you need to do. Just strum the big D and let your soul rattle. If Stravinsky had this guitar he would have had a great time but Western Music would be the poorer for it, you know?

3) So I bought a book on finger-style guitar and I’m actually practicing stuff. It’s like I’m trying to become worthy of the guitar or something. And here I should explain that I’ve never been one of those guitarists who could play a whole wealth of tunes on the instrument. I never really had much interest in learning other people’s songs, and when I did - for the odd gig or some such thing - I’d practice and perfect for hours, play the gig, and then never touch the song again. But I’ve written enough needlessly difficult guitar tunes in my day to have acquired some agility at the instrument. I dare say my fingers are even nimble, do forgive me. So I went out and bought a book on “Advanced Fingerstyle Guitar” - yes cut right to the advanced, and I’m learning the tunes and playing all the time (when I’m not doing other stuff, that is), and it is a humbling and emboldening experience all at once. And then Big Al comes in and I’m being all suave and seducing her w/ my new found finger style panache and she says “why don’t you just write a song on the thing.” I can’t win.

4) Except I win when I play the open D in drop D tuning, because the world vibrates and the fishes tremble and the mermaids writhe in glee (they’re closer here in Portland).

5) If I hadn’t had the aforementioned margaritas I’d have a photo to support this post. Which is interesting because I might as well use a stock photo, except that I, like every other guitar owner out there, am convinced that my version of the set style and and set finish looks completely different than all the hundreds? thousands? more? other versions out there.

6) I think my cat has gone crazy. Oh wait, no, there really is an insect on the ceiling. Actually two. He is on the dining table w/ me (though I’m only sitting at it) and is filled with a sense of purpose. It’s because he realizes that of the two of us sitting at or on this table, he’s the more qualified for the task at hand. Though actually I don’t think Judy Johnson’s jealous of my career, my wife, even my car. He is well balanced in that way.

7) A couple of weeks ago I played Grand Theft Auto 4 for the first time and instantly loved it deeply. Don’t get me wrong - I wouldn’t let my kids play it - but it felt profoundly good and wholesome to romp around Brooklyn and Queens carjacking Hummers and crashing into streetlights. I was less interested in running the drug missions and buying weapons, but that’s just because I’m an artist type.

8 Kids???

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Remember me?

May 30, 2008 · 3 Comments

Yes, I fell off the face of the earth. It’s heartening and strange to note that in my absence Arghablog has still been getting something like 15-20 hits a day. Who are you strange and lovely people who check in each day to view my orange sneakers?

I can make stories and excuses about what happened, but essentially it’s this: fantasy baseball. Oh god, it’s as bad as it sounds. All my internet time has just gotten sucked over to that ridiculous and evil new American pastime, and a bunch of my non-internet time too. On paper it’s simple, you choose up your team and just wind them up and let them play, accruing the stats for their good deeds on the field. But in point of fact, it requires far more attention. Players need to be monitored for injuries and slumps. Trades need to be considered, forums and “expert blogs” consulted, and as you know there are only so many hours in the day.

Today I am in the midst of a baseball moratorium - no checking  any baseball or fantasy-related info all day. I’m trying to restore this little game to its rightful place in my existence. Wouldn’t you know I’m also managing to get a good amount of work done too.

In part of my quest to make myself back into the better person I once was - you know, the thoughtful, semi-literate, opinionated bloke who occasionally strolled these corridors of cyberspace - I have resolved to resuscitate this blog (whose 2 year anniversary passed unnoticed) and start oiling up the noggen to see if it still runs.

So hopefully your beepers or blog-o-meters or whatever it is you use to stay on top of this stuff are in the red today and you’ve gently tuned back into the undefinable, purposeless little enterprise that is arghablog.

See you real soon!

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The thing about winter in Maine is…

March 12, 2008 · 4 Comments

nb-sneaks.jpgIt will never end. After I finished all those bagels and bialys and herring in cream sauce and whitefish I went to the cardiologist. I shit you not. It was not for cause, mind you - I wasn’t sitting up nights with a racing heartbeat, wasn’t getting dizzy. But the men in my family have historically dropped dead before their time, so even though my cholesterol has routinely been decent (if not exemplary), I figured, edging ever closer to the big four-oh, that I should get the old ticker checked out. Because it is getting to be a sort of old ticker, by the standards of MY family anyway. So I went to the doctor and I got all ready in my running shoes, had my chest shaved, had diodes (if that’s what those are called) stuck all over me, and then I got on the machine with three medical professionals in the room and gradually brought my heart rate up to about 165. Then - and I had rehearsed this part - I hopped off the table, rolled over onto my side, and they ultrasounded my heart. This was to compare it to the earlier ultrasound, the one I watched, that demonstrated that my heart is actually generally carrying its weight. Expanding and contracting regularly, looking perky (if just a touch absolutely terrifying, in a black and white blip blip kind of way). The doc, the head doc, told me that my heart rate came down very fast and I must be in good shape, and he sort of implied why was I there in the first place (I wonder if it’s like being a proofreader - I mean, curses on the perfect document unlittered with human frailty, right? It just makes me (I was once a proofreader) look bad). The doc does however tell me that I could stand to lose a few pounds. The last bagel was but a memory at this point, and I decided it was time for me to diet. Not cause I was in real trouble, but just to find, deep within me, my inner, svelter self. Now I’m completely off bread. None. Very limited dairy (occasional sprinkled feta). No baked goods, no bad carbs. Lots of grains, raw veggies. I do okay with the whole thing - but I find portion control almost hopeless, and if you locked me in a room with a ton of sunflower seeds and a ton of raisins I would eat myself to death before sundown. My better half has no qualms about pointing this out to me either. I’ve also started lifting weights, in addition to my running, and the other day Al and I went out and spent lots of money on workout clothes. We were tired of looking relatively homeless at the gym. The finishing touch? I bought these sneakers - really I did. On my size 14 double E feet they look fantastic and I’ve taken on a veritable strut. I’m thinking I might even wear them about town.

Winter has hit me particularly hard this year - and I guess in part because it’s been a particularly hard winter. I wouldn’t last in one of those Scandinavian countries where it’s dark all winter except for maybe three hours a day. I mean I’d survive for a while, probably by doing a lot of drinking. But my people weren’t ultimately cut out to hold lots of liquor, days on end, and we’re not much good at muttering. In another life - and that life may yet come - I’d be the guy behind the Zabars counter with the long thin fish knife (the one that all the engaged couples in the world stare at in the Williams Sonoma catalog and say “is there any chance we might one day need THAT?) and with simply supreme confidence that no-one can work it like me. It would never be winter. Napster, the real Napster, would still be around, and Judy Johnson would know how to speak. Is that really so much to ask for?

→ 4 CommentsCategories: 1 · Judy Johnson · Maine · New York · rambling

Some thoughts on bialys

February 23, 2008 · 1 Comment

This seems only appropriate. In the old country, Long Island, the bialys were like the sprinkles, or maybe even the cherry, on top of a bag of steaming, varied bagels. In the sweaty bagel shop, when you run out of ideas, turn to the bialy: (e.g. I’ll have 4 poppies, 3 onion, 4 everything, 2 rye, 2 sesame, 2 cinnamon raisin, 3 pumpernickel, 3 egg, and…what, I have 3 more? Okay, just give me 3 bialys.) Yes, they are taken for granted somewhat - they are less chewy, unboiled, less obviously distinguished from your workaday dinner roll. But therein lies the rub. The bialy has a soul. It wears its also-ran hat with dignity, and is a delicate, non-ostentatious emissary from Old Europe. There is absolutely nothing sexy about the bialy, which is why a website like this is absurd. It is almost, almost ordinary - but in that thin hairline of a difference between the bialy and its truly pedestrian kin, the kaiser, the hard, the oval, lies a chasm into which all the universe might fold. The bialy, while almost ordinary, is in fact the most special thing on the earth: it is the Ray Davies of breadstuffs.

My world view allows for at least some variance when it comes to well regarded bagels. I like, for instance, the bagels at Ess-a-Bagel and Absolute Bagels in NYC (the latter joint is better), but will freely acknowledge that they are somewhat bigger and puffier than my platonic bagel ideal (smallish thing, with a sometimes wide hole). Here in Maine there’s a great bakery called 158 Bake Shop. They make much revered local bagels that are in fact, entirely inauthentic - flatter, wider, less chewy - but charming in their boldness nonetheless (who would dare to put fennel on an everything bagel? They do - and it works!) My ethos, my own personal creed, as it were, owns no such tolerance when it comes to the bialy. I think proper, convincing bialys all look exactly the same: 4 inches in diameter, round but misshapen, a careless smattering of dried onions and maybe a grain or two of salt (or some errantly directed grain or seed) concentrated around the center, occasional wisps of flour on the surface, maybe some traces of cornmeal on the bottom - an artifact of the outright practicality that defines these creatures. Of course there is no hole, but there is a serious, uncircular indentation that, at its thinnest point, is nearly paper thin and renders all efforts to cut the thing awkward at best. The perfect bialy appears to have been made with just the right mixture of love and carelessness. It is toothsome, floury, somewhat yeasty, just the slightest touch springy. It has an indefinable oldness to its taste - not staleness - and calls forward imagery of good, authentic people - Poles, perhaps - sharing the local gossip. I like to eat mine late at night - heated (not toasted for goodness sake!) in the oven, shmeared with my beloved and rare chive cream cheese, in bed. Watching television.

Whereas good out-of-NY bagels do exist, all foreign efforts at the bialy that I’ve encountered have been laughable. I have seen a Maine bialy and it’s not a pretty sight. Even in New York, good and true bialys are few and far between (better accuracy and consistency could be had on Long Island, which is also - unbeknownst to most - a bagel mecca). Since the mysterious aura that distinguishes the bialy is so delicate, so wispy and thin and precious, it is - in lesser efforts - all too often absent. Some glop onion mercilessly upon the center, in the American tradition of MORE. In the same tradition, some just get BIG. A big bialy, however pleasingly alliterative, is nothing more, nothing less, than a crime against nature.

Enough preaching from me, I suppose. I’m off to form my Kinks cover band, which, for reasons that may only be clear to readers of this blog, I think I may have to call Big Bialy.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Cultural oddities · Maine · New York · food
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Some thoughts on bagels

February 20, 2008 · 11 Comments

I had the good fortune, this past weekend, to head down to New York City ever so briefly for a performance of this play. I am working under a new operating code that encourages occasional trips to the city for single, isolated cultural events - a play, an opera - that I’m just not going to experience here. So, I was actually in New York City for about 8 hours, during which time, in addition to the play, I made it to Zabar’s, Kossar’s Bialy, the Pickle Guys, and a great Jewish cafe on the lower East Side (I ordered 1 gefilte fish and split pea soup w/ hot sauce - probably not a standard combo). In any case, I’m back in Maine now, and have over the past couple of days been enjoying the spoils of my conquest. I used to do this kind of stocking up all the time when I first moved here, but gradually I began to accept the quality of the local bagels and smoked salmon as, if not definitive, at least a worthy facsimile of the real thing. And it’s true, bagels in Portland, Maine are actually kind of decent - as good as your randomly selected bagel on the street in Manhattan perhaps (but no contenders with the upper echelon bagels of Absolute, Ess-a-Bagel, even H&H (that clip joint). But when it comes to salmon, despite its ubiquitousness here, there’s just no competition. David - the fish cutting genius at Zabars who used to have a pony tail - is without equal, and the difference between fresh cut and pre-sliced packaged salmon is something akin to the difference between the fresh baked morning muffin and the sadly Glad-wrapped afternoon remainder. Anyway, I stocked up and am happy, but supplies are already dwindling.

I achieved my bagel and spread expertise as a child - each Sunday my family would have the most decadent of brunches. Bagels, lox, spreads of every color and consistency (just about all of them involving some sort of smoked fish), herring in cream sauce, baked salmon, the occasional whitefish or sturgeon. I just never understood how good I had it - at all. Oh to be teleported back in time to just one of those Sunday meals, Vivaldi playing on the living room stereo, the Sunday Times sprawled messily amidst the crumbs and spreads and coffees - not to mention the four of us family folk. Just one hour back at that transcendent point in space and time. Here’s some of what I’m left with:

1. A good fresh bagel should never be toasted. The whole point of a hand rolled and dense bagel is its chew. Perhaps a light crunch on the outside, but a voluptuous chewiness that melds with whatever you’ve spread into one paradisaical, globulous orgy of taste and texture. To toast a bagel is to strip it of its fundamental raison d’etre, to reduce it to mere “toast,” that workaday staple. A poor, out-of-state bagel may be toasted only to hide its inferiority. A good one, if truly fresh, should remain unmolested by contemporary heating technologies once it leaves the oven. OR, you may place the whole bagel, uncut, in an oven at about 300F, and wait a little while. The goal here is to bring the bagel back - as closely as is possible - to its original, post-baking state. A light crunch on the outside, and a world of heavenly steam upon the first slice - this is the mark of a properly and lovingly reheated bagel. The world is deeply mixed up about this.

2. I won’t make judgments about variety here. I’m not actually a purist - for a while I liked the jalapeno bagels at Lenny’s on the Upper West Side, until I realized they always gave me a stomachache. Recently my sister turned me on to egg Bagels - which have a hint of challah to them. Sun dried tomato bagels strike me as wrong-headed, but I’ve seen worse and who am I to decide? Pumpernickels are essential. I sympathize with salt bagel fans, though I don’t count myself among their number. Everything bagels are delicious, onion bagels daring, and garlic bagels have to them such a devil-may-care attitude they demand your love. Cinnamon raisin bagels are sublime but inconvenient - they’re no partner to the essential chive cream cheese, for instance - but a good walnut raisin shmear sends these to the stratosphere. Sesame and poppy bagels are proletariat - they don’t excite me, but I’m not fool enough to deny their rightful place on this earth, and also their honorable adaptability. Whole wheat, multigrain, and rye bagels all can be quite splendid. But blueberry bagels are ridiculous.

3. As for spreads: when my sister and I were kids, we maintained that the proper way to eat a Sunday brunch bagel was to gather every possible ingredient on the table within the loving clasp of a single steaming bagel, seal it up, and devour the cacophonous, unholy (literally) wreck. We knew, however, that this was really just a caprice of youth, and enjoyed it while it lasted. As an adult I know that every flavor, combined = vanilla. (As an aside, I can prove this: when I was 14 and had a job at Baskin Robbins (my first), as an experiment I spearheaded an effort to make an “everything shake.” That’s right, using a taster spoon we make a shake that had all 40 or so flavors (31 was just the minimum), and a little bit of all four or five syrups. We blended it up and I swear to you it tasted just like vanilla - I’m not making this stuff up.)

Now I’m an adult and I know better. I know that each spread should be afforded its own special bagel real estate - though occasional combinations are acceptable. The obvious one is shmear (New York deli-language for cream cheese) and lox - and the best flavor of cream cheese for this is chive (when a deli man tells you that chive and scallion cream cheese are the same, that deli man is a fool). Otherwise, I like these:

Whitefish spread (or salad): When I first moved to Portland I walked into Mr. Bagel and asked for a bagel sandwich w/ whitefish salad, lettuce and tomato. I was met with utter speechlessness - the thing doesn’t exist up here. It’s all over in New York, though it can often be too mayonnaisy and runny and gross. At its best, it has a thick, solidish consistency and tastes deeply of the sea (but a sea engulfed in smoke). I can live with or without celery in this. The Zabars version, which I just picked up, is simple - no celery - and maybe the best I’ve ever tasted.

Chopped herring - I’m not sure but you may have to be either a) Jewish or b) Eastern European to stomach this stuff. It tends to be sweet rather than salty, and there’s no sugar-coating it, it looks godawful. I love it. I think Philip Roth mentions it in a late scene in Operation Shylock that takes place at Barney Greengrass on Amsterdam Avenue (I can’t recall if the cafe is explicitly identified as such).

Herring and onions in cream sauce (or wine sauce): This exists in jars up here from various companies. But it is never remotely as good as the fresh item from Zabars or Russ and Daughter or some such place. Even at its best, herring has a slightly vulgar, slightly sexual quality. The jarred varietals, alas, have added to this an element of skank. I’ll tolerate the skank when depserate, but there’s no comparison with a fresh helping of the real mccoy. The goopy, heart clogging cream sauce and generous chunks of succulent, toothsome fish, ornamented by crisp circles of sliced onions and just the right balance of sweetness is an aphrodisiac if ever there was one. This may, in fact, be my favorite food on the planet. Lately I skip the bagel for this stuff and snarf it right out of the plastic container. My mom never liked the herring much - she just wanted the onions in the herring cream sauce. So I may not have come to this love until later in life.

Whitefish (and other baked fishes) - The whole whitefish, as opposed to the chopped-in-a-salad version, has a historical and humorous place in my family’s lore (and one which I’ve blogged about before). In short, this is what you bring to people sitting shiva (a Jewish ritual of opening the house - and filling it with food - for a week after the death of a loved one). When my dad died - forever changing our Sunday bagel ritual - we had a freezer full of whitefish. Hence, this is a rather mournful food for me - but one which I enjoy nonetheless. Baked salmon is nice too, and so is baked sturgeon though I don’t get why it’s so expensive. Somehow smoked trout seems to fit in here too - though we never had it when I was a kid.

Tomatoes - I’ve been confused my whole life about whether tomatoes belong on a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Ultimately I have to lean in the direction of no they don’t - though I’ve often been a violator of this dictum. Do you know what tomatoes were put on this earth for? I mean, do you really want to see a raw, sliced tomato do its splendiforous thing? Okay listen closely: Haloumi sandwich. Haloumi is a hard, salty cypriot cheese that generally is either grilled or fried (it isn’t much good raw). A warm pita, some fried up Haloumi, and a few fat slices of tomato and you’ll understand all at once what God was thinking. The cheese is almost inedibly salty without the juicy, salt-absorbing balm of the tomato. (You can get Haloumi in Astoria for cheap, or, if you’re in Maine, you can pay the insane price of $6.99 for a block of it - it’s worth the very occasional splurge). But I don’t think tomato works quite right in the bagel situation, unless, I suppose, you’ve got some extra salty lox. The whole mess of it just gets watered down, you know? (For a while I enjoyed this bagel attrocity: bagel, toasted (I know, I know), with sliced tomatoes and hot sauce and that’s it. That was my definition of something healthy. Actually, this yields a revelation - a tomato is too wet for an untoasted bagel - the dough just turns to mush. So here’s an argument for the toasted bagel, but one that is clearly limited in scope).

I feel as though I’ve had my say for today. I hope this proves helpful to at least one of you.

→ 11 CommentsCategories: Maine · New York · food · rambling
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