by Cathy Erway
“We’ll make it work,” Mark said. We were still throwing peaches into the pot after they were peeled and sliced by the ever-helpful Nick.
“I know what; let’s add these bananas,” I said, pointing to an extra bunch of bananas left over from the cornbread.
“Let’s do it,” said Mark.
Half an hour later, we piled all the pots, vats, and trays of cornbread into Mark’s car. It took two trips with two cars—Mark’s and Michael’s—to cart all our food to the venue. I was just glad we’d no longer have to carry it upstairs to the rooftop at Studio B. A week before the event was scheduled to take place, the rooftop patio at Studio B was shut down by the health department. Darin and Greg had scrambled to find another space to host the party in, and luckily nailed a nearby Williamsburg bar called Hope Lounge. It boasted a large backyard with a working grill station, just what we would need.
Once at the venue, we arranged all the courses in chafing dishes and platters along a serving table. The only thing that needed to be done now was grilling the peach halves. While the guys got to work on this, I carefully cut each cornbread tray into equal squares. The crowd was beginning to filter into the backyard, and people came over to the grill station, eyeing the offerings. The music started to play. Darin and Greg had created an organized system so people could line up for food. As I was waiting to begin service, I saw an extra bunch of scallions lying around and decided to add them to the sesame noodles. While chopping the bunch with one of Michael’s razor-sharp knives, I sliced off the tip of my thumb along with a sliver of the nail. I lurched for paper towels while blood rushed down my wrist.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked, in the midst of slicing brisket. I nodded, as it didn’t hurt terribly. But the blood was quickly leaking through the thin towel. I went to the bathroom in the bar’s basement and twisted a sturdy paper towel knot around my thumb. But by the time I got back upstairs, it was soaked through, and we’d just begun serving the anxious line of customers. I grabbed another paper towel and stood by the chafing dishes, ready to scoop collards or succotash onto plates. One of the first people who came to my station was Matt.
“What’s wrong with your finger? Do you need a Band-Aid?” he asked. I nodded, wincing. The pain wasn’t horrible, but it also wouldn’t cease. The harder I squeezed on my finger to stop the bleeding, the more piercing it felt. Matt returned a few minutes later with a Band-Aid, some paper towels, and something that looked like it was made of rubber.
“Here; the bar gave me this finger condom. You put it on over the Band-Aid,” he explained. I’d never seen or worn a finger condom in my life, but after wearing it for the rest of the night, I can say that it’s effective against the spread of blood in the food you’re serving up. Over the next dizzying hour, we managed to serve most of the people who’d shown up to the party. The line slowed down afterward, and the three of us chefs, plus Darin, Greg, and a couple of friends of theirs who had been helping to serve, could get a drink and relax. The compliments we’d received on the food had all been positive:
“Insane.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Freaking delicious.”
Greg chomped into his third or fourth slice of brisket, looking to the heavens in thanks. My friend Chrysanthe, a vegetarian, gave a thumbs-up on the grilled peach half, and I snuck an extra one onto her plate. The cornbread dessert had turned out to be a big hit, too, to my relief.
But the best part of the meal was yet to come. A hearty lump of beef tenderloin had been bobbing about in the immersion circulator that Michael brought to the venue and snuck beside the grill. This would be for the staff or “family meal,” in restaurant terminology, which we would all enjoy after service. We had all eaten our share of the barbecue food by the time the tenderloin was ready to come out of the bath, but as soon as Michael peeled away the air-suctioned plastic the meat had been wrapped in, a whiff of perfectly seasoned beef and rosemary filled the cooking station. He tossed it onto the hot grill for a quick char. After it had been browned, he sliced the tenderloin into pieces, revealing a juicy, pink, perfectly medium-rare complexion. I could barely put down three bites of that tender steak, though I wanted to eat much more. There was also potato salad Michael had somehow found time to prepare, served alongside it.
“This is the real stuff here,” Michael said, waving at the rest of the barbecue food we’d labored over for the past day or two.
Darin, Greg, and their friends eagerly filled up on the family meal. I couldn’t decide which food was better—that or the barbecue meal. They were both some of the best foods I’d ever tasted.
“I don’t think I can look at food again for a long time,” Mark joked.
I shook my head. “I’ll never look at cooking the same way again.”
I eventually took off my apron and left the grill station to hang out with friends. Everyone was there—Karol, Matt, Maia, Scott. Well, almost everyone. Jordan was still away.
I managed to forget about the cut on my thumb for the rest of the night; the pain had mostly subsided after the finger condom went on, and I didn’t have to see the bloody mess that was the tip of my finger and its missing slice of nail for the rest of the night. But blood had welled up inside the rubber sheath, gluing it to my finger. I tried to peel it off my finger when I got home later, but when a new spurt of blood erupted, I quickly put it back on for the night. In the morning, I examined both my hands and found many more cuts, blisters, and burns than I could have imagined. They were with me for the rest of the week, tokens of the great undertaking my friends and I had managed.
At one point during the barbecue, Greg introduced me to his friend Josh. Josh was helping to organize another barbecue later that summer, hosted by New York magazine. There would be a cook off component to the event, and Greg thought I’d be a perfect judge. The next week, I got an e-mail from Josh to confirm my interest in serving as one of the judges of the cook-off. The event was called the Highbrow Barbecue, to be held at a waterfront venue in Manhattan and hosted by former Top Chef contestant C. J. Jacobson. This event was clearly not going to be an “underground” party or cook-off. It was also on the pricey side for attendees, at $25 a ticket for an all-you-can-eat barbecue meal prepared by the celebrity chef and a live musical performance by the band the Islands. From lowbrow to highbrow, I thought, shaking my head. Why not?
But before the Highbrow Barbecue came the next Chili Takedown. As promised, I was on the judging committee. Matt Timms and Scott had pulled together a very Brooklyn foodie-based group of judges. There would be Tom Mylan, a butcher for three restaurants in Brooklyn, and Camille Becerra, the chef-owner of the Brooklyn restaurant Paloma and another former Top Chef contestant. I had met Tom Mylan a few times before, but I was a little nervous about chatting with Camille. She was a first-time restaurant owner, after all; what would she make of my anti-eating out blog?
It was a rainy, muggy day in Brooklyn when I arrived at the bar where the Takedown was being held. The crowd of eager chili eaters was so large that they couldn’t fit inside the venue and spilled out into the crowded backyard patio. What’s more, the number of contestants blew away those who had taken part in any previous takedown. Whereas previous competitions had averaged maybe ten contestants, twenty-five amateur chefs had made chili for this one. Long tables with twenty-five homemade chilis lined two walls of the bar’s back room. The diversity among these chilis was overwhelming, too—there were some made with pulled pork, some with brisket, some with beer, tequila, and wine. I recognized several of the contestants from previous cook-offs, but from talking to some of the others, I learned that many were first-timers to the cook-off scene.
That it had become a bona fide “scene” by now was evident. When the other judges and I had finished our powwow and decided on a winner, we walked up to the bar’s stage. I looked out at the wriggling, clamoring audience below me. Everyone had eaten their fill of the free chili, and they were eager to hear the results. There must have been close to two hundred peo
ple packed into that bar, snapping flash photos or weaving their way to get closer to the stage. After introducing himself, Scott handed me the microphone.
“Uhh,” I said. “I’m Cathy, and I write a blog called ‘Not Eating Out in New York.’”
A cheer erupted from the crowd, probably from a handful of friends. I tried to think of what to say next. In the crowd that night, I’d run into several fellow food bloggers and writers whom I’d become friends with over time, and other acquaintances who were avid home cooks and foodies. I’d also made new friends with readers of my blog who’d come out to compete in the famous chili cook-offs that I wrote about so much. While I still loved the spirit of competing in them, in the past year and a half I’d grown from mere avid participant to promoter of amateur cook-offs.
“I started writing about cooking at home, or cooking something at home and bringing it to events like this,” I went on, correcting myself quickly. “And now that’s what I do pretty much all the time.”
Everyone cheered again. I turned to Scott. He nodded at me as if to say, Well said. And then I passed the microphone off to Tom on my left.
A few weeks later, I was perched on a rock at the Manhattan waterfront venue Solar One. It was one of the warmest days of the late summer, without a cloud in the sky. Beneath a white, flapping tent at one edge of the yard, C. J. Jacobson and his team were doling out plates of grilled ribs, corn, and other sides as the party’s barbecue feast. On the stage, Greg was providing beats as the DJ. Along one end of park, hibachi grills were set up as the seven Highbrow Barbecue cook-off contestants prepared their stations. Among them were two contestants who had won different awards at the Great Hot Dog Cook-Off, the winner of the last Chili Takedown, and Serpico himself, Michael Cirino. I’d just come back from chatting with them and some of my fellow cook-off judges and a few other foodie friends who were looking on.
The cook-off was a little less streamlined than I would have liked. There was a long wait before the chefs were given the cue to begin cooking, so since we were all sort of standing around and waiting, I had returned to my earlier post at the rock, beside Jordan. There wasn’t much seating in the outdoor space, so we’d claimed a tall rock facing the deep blue East River.
In the past month, Jordan had surprised her doctors with her progress. She was determined to recover and reclaim her normal life in Brooklyn much faster than their initial predictions, and miraculously, she had succeeded. After the last checkup, she decided it was time to come back home to her one-bedroom apartment, all by herself. She’d need to heave herself up the four flights of stairs to her apartment on crutches, but this was apparently a feat of endurance that she was happy to challenge herself with. I’d offered to let her stay at my place or to stay with her at hers and help out, but she was willful—and optimistic. She’d see how things went. “Takes a lickin‘, keeps on tickin’”—the engraving on her new iPod—couldn’t have been a more fitting statement.
Jordan’s crutches were leaning against the side of the rock. I could tell that she was frustrated and exhausted from having to carry her entire weight around by her armpits. She complained of sweating a lot, and of course it didn’t help that it was the hottest month of summer, and just sitting down in the sun was causing beads of sweat to pour down her pale forehead. She’d been indoors most of the summer, so the sun was also probably doing a number on Jordan’s fair skin and turning her blond hair even lighter. Still, she had been excited to hang out with friends again and to come along to this barbecue. I was speechlessly grateful that she’d hobbled all the way out here to support another one of my crazy food adventures.
Unlike so many of my new friends, Jordan has never been a “foodie.” She didn’t have a penchant for cooking, and once admitted, laughingly, that she still hadn’t turned on the stove in the apartment she’d been living in for six months: “Not even to heat anything up,” she’d cracked.
Our friendship was obviously never based around food or cooking together.
As the sun blazed down on our backs and a gust of wind threatened to topple Jordan’s crutches from their post, I was humbly reminded of how friendships—and life—did not revolve just around food.
Corn and Black-Eyed Pea Succotash
This was one of the crowd-favorite sides at the barbecue I co- chefed at Hope Lounge with Mark and Michael. It works great in late summer, when fresh corn is in season, or in the fall, as a Thanksgiving side.
(MAKES 4-6 SIDE SERVINGS)
1 pound dry black-eyed peas, soaked overnight
4 tablespoons butter
1 large or 2 small red onions, roughly chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1 large sweet red pepper, chopped
About 2 cups fresh corn kernels
1 tablespoon chives, chopped (optional)
Drain the peas and return to a pot with enough water to cover about 2 inches above the top. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook about 40 minutes, or until beans are tender and liquid has almost all reduced to the surface level of the beans (add more water if liquid drops below). Drain.
Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the black-eyed peas and cook, stirring, until just beginning to brown slightly on their surfaces, about 2 minutes. Transfer peas to a bowl and return pan to the heat. Reduce to medium-low and add the onions and a few pinches of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent and slightly caramelized, 4-5 minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook another minute or two, stirring occasionally. Toss in the com and another 2 tablespoons of the butter. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 3-4 minutes. Return the peas to the pan. Toss with salt and pepper to taste. Add chives with the last toss and serve.
Grilled Peaches with Spiced Goat Cheese and Caramelized Shallots
This was the vegetarian option at the same barbecue, which all the vegetarians in attendance seemed to love. I’ve given this recipe a couple of extra touches, like the lemon zest, but any way you spice the goat cheese, it’s really a hands-down crowd pleaser.
(MAKES 8 GRILLED PEACH HALVES)
2 tablespoons butter
15-20 shallots, thinly sliced
8 ounces goat cheese
¼ teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
Oil for the grill
4 ripe peaches, halved and cored
Heat a saute pan with the butter over low heat. Add the shallots and cook over very low heat, stirring occasionally, 15-20 minutes, until caramelized. Reduce heat if edges are beginning to crisp, or add more butter if pan becomes dry. Remove from heat and let cool. In a mixing bowl, whisk the goat cheese with the cumin, coriander, and lemon zest.
Preheat a grill over a high flame. (Alternately, heat a cast-iron griddle with grill marks.) Add vegetable oil to the grill to prevent sticking. Place peaches cut side down on the grill and cook about 5-8 minutes, or until just charred and lightly softened. Transfer to a platter. Stuff the middle of each peach half with a scoop of the goat cheese and top with a pinch of the caramelized shallots.
CHAPTER 14
The End of an Era
“Cath,” my mother squawked through the telephone receiver. “I’m coming into the city today. Going to meet with Jo-Jo for lunch, maybe see a movie.”
“Okay,” I said. I was sitting at my desk at work, tweaking the last sentence of copy that I’d just written for a flatware collection. I hit SAVE.
“I’m meeting him at twelve thirty outside Macy,” she said, referring to Macy’s Herald Square store, just a few blocks south of my office building. “Then we’re going to that Korea street for lunch. You know.”
I did know. Koreatown, or K-town, as it was often called, was a stretch of Korean restaurants, clothing shops, hair salons, karaoke clubs, and other businesses that took up a block of Thirty-second Street. In my eating-out days in New York City, I loved going to restaurants there for a bowl of spicy noodle soup, sizzling
Korean barbecue, and all those little trays of cold appetizers that came to your table as soon as you were seated.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“You wanna come? Just for the lunch?” my mom asked.
“What? No,” I retorted. What was she thinking? I thought. Only during visits to New Jersey, across state lines, did I allow myself to go to restaurants with my family. Okay, so there were a small handful of occurrences when I’d broken my streak and eaten in a New York restaurant, notably when I was hired at my new job and when I left my old job, and my current and former bosses took me out for lunches. But aside from the night of the drunken pizza slice, these exceptions were all work related, which was in accordance with the guidelines I’d set forth at the beginning of the mission. Going to K-town that day would be a clear violation of the Law. Besides, I had brought my lunch with me that day, some shell pasta with sauteed zucchini, garlic, parsley, and chives that was sitting in a container in the communal office refrigerator.
“Well. I don’t know,” my mom said. “Maybe you can take a break. You can’t?”
“No, no breaks. What? Of course not,” I said.