Here There Be Monsters...

We've Got Crabs...

Hideous? Yes. Pinchy? Nasty? Yes, and yes.

But so fucking delicious.

MENU: Summer Corn Salad • Salt Boiled Pertaters (lord have mercy) • Bawled Scrimps • Big Ol' Pot Of Crabs • Peach Pie with Buttermilk Cayenne Ice Cream



So, we decided to do a smaller event, just six of us, this time, and cook up a whole mess of bugs. Karl busted out dessert, and after the potatoes and corn salad were done, Zora, Karine and I set to work on the crabs.

Loading the crabs into the steamers and seasoning them was the fun part. We had a couple of minor crab skirmishes:

"No, no... but, you would be better the other way..."

As it turned out, Karine was really good at dealing with the more aggressive, snappier crabs, and she knew how to serve the crustacean smackdown. We sent her in as the enforcer, just to show the little monsters that we were smarter and tougher.

"They're ugly, and they're food..."

Once she had eliminated all pockets of resistance, we covered the beasties with a whole lot of Old Bay® and salt, and steamed them in vinegar, beer and water for about 15-20 minutes. Just for the record, all of the online recipes I could find recommended 45 minutes, but that seemed waaaaaay too long. Peter and Zora acted as final arbiters of when they were done.






We cooked up the shrimp in a delicious old school shrimp boil broth. Pickling spice, yellow and black mustard seed, green cardamom pods, a whole head of garlic, large quartered onion, lots of kosher salt, water, beer, whole allspice and star anise. Oh -- and a lot of bittersweet smoked paprika, which I can only ever find at Kalustyan's, and now I am out.


Then, we took the party outside to the yard, and dumped the crabs out on a newspapered table.



Finally, we beat the hell out of them with hammers and picks and ate them.






















We anticipate a torrent of angry "Crab Meat Is Murder" emails.

There was also pie.

Following dinner, we retired to the Parking Lot next door to watch Peter's inspired performance as Doody in Grease!, Clamshack's equally inspriring turn as Marty in Grease! (though at a different college), and Tamara's gung ho go as a country singing nun in Sister Amnesia's Country Jamboree-- Nunsense 3. Oh yeah, baby. The power of vhs, a projector, a white wall and an empty parking lot. We are still waiting on Zora's "porn" debut.....

Astoria's Master Of Egyptian Hocus Pocus meets the King Of Kitchen Konfidential...

Anthony Bourdain's job is to travel to distant, exotic destinations, eat beautifully prepared food and say "Mmm! That's delicious!"

The Travel Channel sent him on safari to Astoria, Queens with his faithful, cravatted sidekick, Andrew Zimmern, to eat some lamb testicles... erm, I mean prairie oysters at Ali's Kabab Café.

If you have a sharp eye, you can see me, Zora, Peter and Dapper Dan in the background...

Watch him eat like it's his job. Oh, wait... It is his job.

Zora's Dream of Paella in the Fire

She had a dreeeeeeeeeeam...

... So, It's 9 am, and I'm at The Russian River Valley Pinot Noir Forum, on my seventy-fourth glass of wine, when Zora calls. Did I mention it was 9 am?

She'd had a dream.

A dream about paella, Tamara.

It's gonna come true, Tamara.

She wanted to cook paella on the grill. And she was gonna put it together. Awesome. My inebrio-paralysis notwithstanding, all I had to do was write an invitation. The tricky bit was finding the keyboard... Here it went:

Exhibit A: She had a dream.......
a dream of Paella in the fire, as in... on the grill baby. Sort of like the Brunhilde immolation scene in Ride of the Valkyries, except Paella.

I am in Sonoma, drinking like it is my JOB. Oh wait... it IS my job. at any rate, I can barely get myself out of the room for classes in viticulture, so I am using zora's email to me to describe what will be happening.What I can tell you is that it will be happening THIS SATURDAY, AUG 18 at 7pm in the Reynolds/Wasserman ranch back yard. Usual rules apply. Usual rules being $25 and a bottle of wine per person. More wine if you drink more. Which you probably will.

Zora: "I think you could just say paella is one of those things they always say is "a meal in itself," which just means we reserve the right to decide at the very last second what else we might give you along with clams, mussels, sausages, fish chunks, chicken bits, saffron, lemons, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and maybe people should be instructed to bring cheap red wine plus orange or lemon soda to experience the miracle of "tinto en verano"--the Spanish technique for making even the cheapest vino palatable and refreshing. Maybe we could have a Syria-style spread of little apps out while we do the paella--sort of as a nod to the alleged Arabic origins of the word "paella" (perhaps from baqiyah, for leftovers). And by Syria-style, I mean served on newspaper, and so tasty it will make you weep..."

As you can tell, The invitation was pretty much all Zora. People started emailing instantly -- a virtual frenzy of starving paellaphiles hoping for some saffron and smoke infused rice.
It's... The Bomba, yo...

By Friday night, Z had finished the menu and sent the shopping list. It involved fish, shellfish-- whatever other edible fruits of the sea I wanted to get, some spanish rice called Calasparra, whole greek yogurt, Syrian cheese, capers, olives, gigantic thin Syrian-style pita -- the biggest and floppiest kind, and wonderful, wonderful butter beans.

Mmmggghaaaarrrrllllmyaaahm...


Lucky for us, I also had some tomatoes freshly yoinked off the plants in my garden -- Yeah, baby, Yeah!

Saturday afternoon, I did the shopping, but got slightly sidetracked in the Euromart near the bitter lemon. I remembered that Dapper Dan loves the stuff so I bought a sixpack. Plus, I was positive it would work to create the Tinto Verano stuff-- wrong. Oh well, mighty good on its own.

Ah, the bitter and the sweet...

When I returned to the with all the goodies to find that Zora had deposited even more bags on my porch. Ripe tomatoes in pink, green, red and black, herbs, big inky-dirty beets, 2 chickens with their heads and feet intact (yikes!) and glorious chorizo. When Zora arrived I poured some champagne cocktails, turned up the Dolly Parton, and we were off to the Spanish races.


Speaking of tomatoes...

Zora was running the show, so I was on kitchen slave detail. My first task was to make the tomato salad-- cut up the ripe tomatoes and layer them on a platter.

Well, hello, ladies...

Blanch the superripe ones and peel them, and then puree with a ton of garlic, olive oil and sherry vinegar.



Can I just say... fucking delicious?!?!?! So delicious, in fact, that later, after the appies and during the pre-paella lull, I poured the dressing into teeny glasses, added several drops of sherry vinegar, and served it as gaspacho. I kid you not.



So Karl cleans out our handy BBQ pit, and after the traditional debate about grill height vs. charcoal temperature/density, we get to it.




Outstanding... The pictures don't show it, but Zora was Grillmeister on this one, and worked her little hotgloved fingers to the bone grillin' up sea monsters and crispifying and saffronizing rice... Zora kicked ass with the paella, and also taught us the authentic contemporary Spanish sangria recipe, which is made with, um.... Fanta®. Seriously. Lemon-Lime flavored, fucking FANTA®.



A good time was had by all, and we ended up serving dinner only about three hours behind schedule, which is pretty damn close to our average. Besides, everyone was too drunk to care.

Happy Birthday Julia!

Happy Birthday To You,
Happy Birthday To You,
Happy Birthday, Saint Julia,
Happy Birthday To You!

Wedded Bliss!

Okay, a little off topic, but I figure this is as good a place as any to post links to our wedding photos... Restaurant photos were taken at Mombar, home of Ali's brother Mustafa.

Photos here are courtesy of Zora and the ones here were taken by Matt R.

Enjoy! Stay tuned for more SND!

Ali In The New York Times!

Our very own Ali El-Sayed, The Master Of Egyptian Hocus-Pocus, got a stellar review from Peter Meehan in today's New York Times. Check it out here.

Last Dinner Before The Wedding... Beer Can Chicken Redux!

So, for the last Sunday Dinner before next weekend's big Staten Island Ferry wedding, we wanted something simple, but bursting with the flavors of summer.

Beer Can Chicken to the rescue! Initially, I had grand ideas of making pickled okra, chow chow and maybe even cheese straws, but these were quickly tempered by the lack of time and the fact that Zora was out of town until the food was supposed to hit the table. We had 17 hungry kiddies to feed.

It was ungodly hot, (like 94 degrees hot). Everything was going swimmingly until the beer bubbled over the cans and sort of extinguished the coals and the temperature kept dropping. The chickens were beautifully cooked on the inside, but the skin outside made them look like sickly babies. Not so nice.



After a tense conversation that ultimately required Peter to step in as arbitrator, we transferred the boiling ladies from the coal grill to the gas grill and nearly incinerated them with the new, higher heat. I think I recall Peter muttering something about a fire extinguisher, as we watched flame from the chicken grease shoot out the sides of the grill... Ultimately, they looked less sickly and more like burnt babies, but they were perfectly cooked and soooo juicy, because they had cooked for so long on a lower temp. Who knew?

Zora got extra points for showing up with HONEST TO GOD REAL BALTIMORE CRAB CAKES.


There was no overt violence (fork related wounds, eye poking, bite marks or, you know, plain old punching) as there had been in previous attempts to serve crabcakes in an orderly fashion, but they were sure gone in a hurry. These delicious little fuckers were followed by:

Boiled Peanuts -- just like Grammy from Alabammy makes (Not my Grammy, mind you, but someone's Grammy.)

Farm Lettuce Salad With Radishes, Celery, Red Onion and Cucumber in a Buttermilk-Mint Dressing

Our Guilty Secret Cornbread With Paprika Butter

Black Eyed Peas With Jacob's Cattle Beans, Ham Hocks and Slab Bacon

Grilled Treviso With Olive Oil and Salt



Salt Boiled Potatoes

Summer Squash Au Gratin With Salsa Verde, Gruyere In Brown Butter With Breadcrumbs

and...






Jean Halberstam's Deep Fried Peaches for dessert. Good Lord.

Oh, and, of course... all of the wine and beer our systems would permit.

Karl was the kitchen slave of the day and Karine joined also to help. Thank god-- or I never would have made it.

Next time we do this.... we will be joined in holy matrimony.... or something like that!