EDIBLE BROOKLYN, Issue 17, Spring 2010

What says Spring in Brooklyn more than smoked meat, right? I don't just mean the open aired grilling variety, but those that grace the Polish Butchers of Greenpoint (as seen on Edible Brooklyn's Spring 2010 cover, photo by Dina Kantor). From one enclave to the next, we see diverse backgrounds influencing the ethnic foods we eat. The BACK OF THE HOUSE series stop by Dressler in Williamburg, who's chef, Polo Dobkin, comes from Austrian and Spanish roots to revitalizes stodgy old American bistro staples, into contemporary inflected masterpieces, exempli gratia "steak and short rib, with whipped potatoes, creamed spinach & sauce bordelaise".

From classics to coops, we explore the backyard chicken coop movement, look in the Fridge of WNYC Radio personality Leonard Lopate, sip some joe from nearly hundred year old Dallis Coffee, taste fresh baked macaroons, and watch locally foraged wood became a coffee table for our magazine to sit on. Enjoy!

EDIBLE MANHATTAN, Issue 10, March/April 2010

Spring is in the air, and beginning to show in the food we eat. Edible Manhattan's 10th Issue (March/April 2010).

Passover, which commemorates an escape, but also marks an Exodus, in which Winter's bleak bounty begets a Spring cleaning, in which we'll celebrate by slicing lox and schmearing bagels in the BACK OF THE HOUSE of Russ and Daughters.

We're also toured around by superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson (of Aquavit) favorite spots by the man himself. We peak "In The Kitchen With" lauded economist Joseph Stiglitz, stop in for nostalgia in the form of a PB&J sandwich at Peanut Butter and Co, and bask in "This Organic Life" through Joan Gussow's earthmother education, with hopes that your garden may grow, and snow may go away.

Edible Manhattan BLOG: Prime (Lunch) Meats, Or, Happy Birthday Dad!

Brooklyn Dispatch: Prime (Lunch) Meats, Or, Our Photo Editor Takes His Dad Out for a Memory-Filled Meal

“The specials today are pastrami and roast beef”.

“Wait, stop right there,” my father said after an eager glance at the menu. Often the mention of these (mostly mass-produced) cold cuts can leave people cold. But Prime Meats, the Germanic-influenced spin-off of Frankies Spuntino (profiled in Edible Brooklyn’s Summer 2007 issue ) on the corner of Court Street and Luquer Street, had just unleashed a lunchmeat program that is utmost prime! This comes on top of its already well-known revivalist sausages (bratwurst, knockwurst and weisswurst) and sauerbraten.

Growing up in Kensington on Ocean Ave, my father was within walking distance of the Prospect Park Parade Grounds. As documented in The Brooklyn Cookbook by Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy Jr., he was weaned on the “hometown immigrant” foods like knishes and “sephardic vegetable pickles surrendered by Syrian Jews in Flatbush.” In the 1980s, my father moved less than an hour upstate with my mother to raise my brother and I, so we never benefited from the bounty of his Brooklyn heritage.

This Saturday is my father’s birthday. I attempted to make him a batch of my Grandmother’s Sweet and Sour meatballs, but as he corrected me with a pucker, “there’s a bit too much sour salt.” (Note to self: adjust recipe from 1T to 1t.)

It wasn’t until one afternoon, sitting in the sun-stroked banquets at Prime Meats–which are as dark-grained as the Bavarian pretzels they serve–that our collective and nuanced nostalgia set in. For my father, a time of watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field; for me, eating lunch at our kitchen table in Westchester listening to him reminisce about those very days.

The common ground was a carefully crafted sandwich, once thought of as the sodden contents of my brown paper bag during school recess, but now made, thanks to Prime Meat, with accoutrements like malolactic fermented dill pickles and sauerkraut. (Stressing that the devil is in the details.)

Who knew that this year, it would be with a sandwich, that I say, “Happy birthday, Dad.”