For sake’s sake
By admin at October 19, 2010 | 2:29 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - There are few better ways to while away a Sunday afternoon than sipping good rice wine. Before I attended a sake tasting/food pairing seminar at Gomen-Kudasai at 215 Main Street in New Paltz the other day, I knew that warm sake and miso soup were wondrously warming on wintry days, but I didn’t know anything about sake as a refined and complex
Good-hearted, good-tasting cheese
By admin at November 3, 2010 | 6:22 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi Cheese is the perfect food, unless you’re vegan or lactose-intolerant. Providing protein and pure pleasure, well-made cheeses also boast nuances of flavor — thanks to their own terroir and methods of production — that are as refined as any fine wine’s. I’ve long said that after butter and garlic cheese is my favorite food. And I’ve
New York New York bagel bagel
By admin at November 16, 2010 | 3:04 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - ‘The bagel [is] an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.’ — Beatrice and Ira Freeman, “About Bagels,” The New York Times, May 22, 1960 The über-popular, ubiquitous bagel, now on every street corner, wasn’t always so well known. An article in the December 17, 1951, New York Times had to define the item and offer the spelling
Talking Tony
By admin at December 3, 2010 | 2:11 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Although I admire the talents of many of them, I’ve never been one to have crushes on movie stars or musicians. (Well, okay, there was Donny Osmond, but that doesn’t count.) Celebrities just seem fake as holographs to me, like they consist of 95 percent our own ideas of them, and only five percent flesh and blood. But a certain current food
Bittersweet leaves of winter
By admin at December 22, 2010 | 10:58 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Unassuming endive is a pale, cream-colored, torpedo-shaped thing that you’ll find with the lettuces, although it doesn’t look a lot like lettuce. Sort of underrated and overrated both, endive is a relatively undiscovered yet pricey delicacy that is delicious whether raw or cooked — one of many tasty salad greens and kin to chicory, escarole and
Food trends of 2011
By admin at January 21, 2011 | 5:50 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - In the fashion world, pink might be the new black. But in the food world, pie is the new cupcake and hot dog is the new burger. And this year you just might see more moonshine, grits and powders as sauce than you ever have before. As in the worlds of fashion and celebrity, edible items take their turns in the spotlight, coming and going according
School for love
By admin at February 3, 2011 | 11:04 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Valentine’s Day celebrates romantic love, a time to pamper or to be pampered, or both. There are greetings cards festooned with flowers, fragrant red roses, boxes of chocolates and such clichés of the day. But the surest way to a lover’s heart may be via the stomach, when good food is made with care and shared with the object of one’s
Food of love, play on
By admin at February 11, 2011 | 6:07 pm | 0 Comments
By Jennifer Brizzi - “Every night should have its own menu.” -- Balzac Like air and water, two of life’s necessities are food and sex, which also go together better than a horse and carriage, or rather Cool Whip and skin, as the case may be. On Valentine’s Day some foods set a mood when lovers or future lovers treat each other with 30-pound boxes of chocolate
Feed your head
By admin at February 18, 2011 | 11:21 pm | 0 Comments
Hudson Valley Food Network presents Seed & Sow Skill Share workshops in Walden this Sunday Those of us who love to putter around the kitchen or yard are always eager to learn new things, fancying ourselves Renaissance men and women of small-scale food production. I have made my own sausages; once tried to grow shiitakes on a log (harvest: one mushroom); and would
Thyme of the season
By admin at March 21, 2011 | 3:44 pm | 0 Comments
Versatile culinary herb is celebrated in lore, legend and recipes the world over During the Renaissance, it was said that a thyme-infused potion would let you see fairies and protect you from their impish antics. Earlier still, in medieval England, fairies frolicked in beds of thyme, it was thought, and thyme was burned at Midsummer as offerings to the
Savory Seder: CIA instructor Phillip Crispo’s tribute to the ritual meal
By admin at April 14, 2011 | 10:17 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - The Passover Seder meal is steeped in ancient tradition but accepting of innovation. While some rules are strict, such as bans on leavened bread and other grains, the main entrée is at the whim of the cook; there’s no “you have to have turkey and stuffing” like at Thanksgiving. While turkey is fine for a Seder – or another kind of roast bird,
Extrasensory delectations
By admin at May 18, 2011 | 1:47 pm | 0 Comments
Prepackaged umami and kokumi are pushing back the boundaries of flavor As if sweet, salty, sour and bitter flavors weren’t enough, there are now a fifth and sixth taste as well: umami and kokumi, both credited to the Japanese. They’re not quite flavors, but gustatory reactions to foods. The former was discovered in Japan in 1908 by chemist Dr.
A little kelp from my friends
By admin at May 27, 2011 | 1:20 am | 0 Comments
Or, the myriad culinary delights of seaweed You would never eat slimy seaweed – the gross stuff that snakes around your ankles when you wade in the ocean. “Few Americans ever think of a seaweed as something to eat,” wrote Euell Gibbons in Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop (David McKay, 1964), “and yet you have probably eaten seaweed during the past
Mac attack
By admin at June 2, 2011 | 7:01 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Try this basic recipe for classic cheesy comfort food – then adapt to your own tastes Food has the power to nourish and please us, and certain dishes have a way of soothing us when nothing else will do. During a current time of turmoil and much stress in my life, when a family situation is turning my world on end, I find myself craving that
Fan club Med
By admin at July 15, 2011 | 3:36 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - The Mediterranean Diet makes a comeback The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged Gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers – all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat,
Fair fare
By admin at July 29, 2011 | 7:20 pm | 0 Comments
![Fair Fare [story]](http://www.dinehudsonvalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Fair-Fare-story-150x150.jpg)
by Jennifer Brizzi - County fair season is your annual excuse to chow down on greasy treats Fair time is more than animals, shows and rides; it’s an exercise in self-indulgence. All year long we may eat fruit and steamed vegetables, brown rice and broiled lean meats, treating anything fried as the Devil incarnate. But come fair time all moderation goes out the window
Oddest eateries in the world
By admin at August 3, 2011 | 6:05 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Alternative dining experiences for the adventurous food-lover If running out for a burger and fries at that same old red-and-yellow-plastic-themed place – or even pasta at your favorite go-to Italian – is leaving you cold lately, try something different the next time the munchies hit. Something really different. Forge new boundaries of
Sweet harvest
By admin at August 11, 2011 | 3:54 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Ellenville celebrates blueberries this Saturday; Hurley cornfest follows a week later We have festivals celebrating garlic and pickles, kumquats and truffles. You name it; if we eat it, we throw a party for it. Well-worth-celebrating in the Hudson Valley are two of the glories of August: blueberries and corn. At two upcoming festivals in Ellenville
Locavores in love
By admin at August 24, 2011 | 7:48 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Never mind the white wedding – a green feast is where it’s at My sister Katy started telling me about her plans for a big party in August at her home in Three Oaks, Michigan, to celebrate the small January 1 wedding that she had had with husband Pete. I heard the expression “low-impact” used in such a context for the first time. While they
Holy aïoli!
By admin at September 22, 2011 | 3:41 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Garlic Festival returns to Saugerties this weekend There are five elements: earth, air, fire, water and garlic…Without garlic I simply would not care to live. – Louis Diat It helps to love garlic more than just a little when you go to the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival at Cantine Field in Saugerties this Saturday and Sunday. If your passion
Out of your gourd
By admin at October 6, 2011 | 7:51 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Autumn’s the time to try some smashing squash recipes Winter squashes sport a variety of decorative exteriors, but they are always orange or golden-fleshed within. As evocative of autumn as mums and pumpkins, they promise a storehouse of meals to come: smooth purées, rich gratins, soups silky or chunky, ravioli gilded with sage
The apple of temptation
By admin at October 19, 2011 | 8:09 pm | 0 Comments
![hard apple cider STORY [2]](http://www.dinehudsonvalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/hard-apple-cider-STORY-2-150x150.jpg)
by Jennifer Brizzi - The Hudson Valley is back in the hard cider business What’s old is new again: A bracing beverage once wildly popular in ye olden days of America and Europe is now experiencing a big revival in the Hudson Valley. Hard ciders range from sweet to dry and from simple to complex, much like wines do; lately there’s a buzz about them as
Let’s talk turkey
By admin at November 3, 2011 | 3:42 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Naturally raised heritage birds are the alternative festive fowl “Turkey is undoubtedly one of the best gifts that the New World has made to the Old.” – Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) “TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and
Dill with it
By admin at November 17, 2011 | 4:42 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - International Pickle Festival returns to Rosendale this Sunday “Some may smile at the idea of ripe cucumbers, and say that the very thought of them, like the smell, is offensive...But whatever other uses are made of the cucumber, I entreat the reader not to use it in the form of pickles. These, of almost all the forms of vegetable substances,
Confessions of a chowderhead
By admin at December 1, 2011 | 9:10 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - “Clam chowder is essentially one of the most indelicate of our national dishes. It is rude, rugged, a food of body and substance – like Irish stew, Scottish haggis, English steak and kidney pie – a worthy ration for the men and women of a pioneer race and for their offspring.” – Louis P. De Gouy, The Soup Book (Dover, 1949; a new
Lift your spirits
By admin at December 15, 2011 | 7:06 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - There’s more than one way to whip up some eggnog It was virgin eggnog that we kids drank on Christmas Eve around the sparkling Christmas tree with the flashing lights that my mother hated. But we sang carols and sipped thick, rich commercial eggnog – a mix of eggs, cream or milk and sugar – dusted with the bite of freshly ground nutmeg; and
Seafood’s secrets
By admin at January 18, 2012 | 9:40 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Not hard to do the ocean’s bounty justice in your own kitchen We’re afraid of fish. Whether it’s the cost, the odor or the intimidation factor, many of us are afraid to buy and cook it. So we leave it to restaurant chefs and pay top dollar for small portions. This need not be so, says Stephen J. Johnson, a lecturing instructor in culinary
Gone to seed
By admin at January 25, 2012 | 9:03 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Use pumpkin, sunflower and poppy for texture and flavor There’s a whole world in a seed. When cooked into or sprinkled over a dish, they bring more to the party than a bit of crunch and color and a lot of nutrition. “I always add them at the very end of cooking,” says Holly Shelowitz, a Rosendale-based nutrition counselor/teacher
Thoroughly Modern Taco
By admin at February 9, 2012 | 2:42 pm | 1 Comment
by Jennifer Brizzi - Food Truck Fusion, Mexican-style, comes to Rhinebeck There are tacos and then there are tacos. They come in many incarnations, from the real-deal authentic Mexican to the kind that comes out of a box. I wrote a column five years ago called “Loco for Tacos” in which I erroneously stated that there are two kinds, but I’ve since learned that
Sampling the Subcontinent
By admin at February 22, 2012 | 1:43 am | 0 Comments
There’s more than one Indian cuisine, and area shops & restaurants can help you tell the difference I was just 20, alone in London and alone in the restaurant. I sat upstairs in a quiet and opulent boudoirlike room bedecked with lush silks, about to eat Indian food for the first time. I was at the tail end of a solo seven-month backpacking trip that was
Food, glorious affordable food
By admin at March 15, 2012 | 5:22 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Hudson Valley Restaurant Week (two weeks, really) kicks off this Sunday This year’s Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, which runs March 18 to 31, got a jump start on February 28 when the Culinary Institute of America threw a party to ring in the event’s sixth anniversary. The 2012 edition will include more than 200 restaurants participating over a
Sour power
By admin at March 28, 2012 | 5:53 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Find pickles aplenty at the Brine Barrel in Saugerties It may be un-American not to love pickles. We have to have them, cozied up to all our beloved sandwiches, sometimes even sliced inside them, or just munched cold from the fridge. We each eat about nine pounds of them a year, clamoring for them so much that more than half of the cucumbers that
A feast for the eyes
By admin at April 7, 2012 | 7:25 pm | 0 Comments
by @ Jennifer Brizzi - Stephen Weinstein’s fruit and vegetable still-life photos look good enough to eat Fat blue plums and otherworldly flattened Saturn peaches appear tossed from the bag rather than arranged. Through Stephen Weinstein’s lens the plums glisten, and the peaches – soft as baby skin – invite caresses. This feast for the eyes, one of many of
Ukrainian Easter baskets rich in meaning and taste
By admin at April 14, 2012 | 1:39 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi Don’t look for any jelly beans or Peeps in these baskets. Emblematic of Ukrainian Easter — this year, as per the Orthodox church calendar, on April 15 — are special baskets full of nourishing items that will be blessed by priests and then devoured. Rich in symbolism, joy, and good things to eat after the blessing ceremony is over, these
Sea of suds
By admin at April 27, 2012 | 1:09 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizz - Krumville’s Country Inn offers top-notch roadhouse fare to match its famous beer list Restaurants serving local food aren’t too hard to find these days, but coming across 500 kinds of bottled beer – plus ten or 11 on tap – in one small establishment is not so common. Dubbed one of America’s 100 Best Beer Bars by Draft magazine, the
Spear of destiny
By admin at May 11, 2012 | 9:51 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Right now is high season for freshly picked asparagus With fresh asparagus, the higher your income, the higher up the stalk you cut the tip. – Bill Rathje It may be the ultimate vegetable. It is probably the most elegant: fancy and farmy both, at home equally on the tables of the most elegant establishments and in muddy fields. When I’m
Easy pickings
By admin at May 25, 2012 | 7:36 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Resources abound for mid-Hudsonites wanting to learn how to forage If golf is a good walk spoiled, then foraging is a good walk made better – way better. Like most kids, I used to love to run around in the woods, but I had no idea of the treasures that lurked there – the free food: morels and nettles and weeds, and the world of
Locavores in cyberspace
By admin at July 7, 2012 | 11:36 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Shop local farmstands from the convenience of your keyboard via FarmieMarket FarmieMarket is state-of-the-art access to natural food, improving the interface between consumers and farmers, via the Internet. Sarah Gordon, who grew up on a farm with grass-fed cattle, launched it two years ago in the Capital Region, and just last week branches
Gadzukes!
By admin at August 3, 2012 | 11:15 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - How to put summer’s bountiful baby zucchini to good use Zucchini – the wee baby ones – are my favorite summer vegetable. Forget the big bland baseball bats left sneakily on doorsteps and in unlocked cars; I’m talking about the ones that you have to dig through the bin for, at farmstand or farmers’ market. The perfect specimens are
As fresh as it gets
By admin at August 16, 2012 | 7:46 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Henry’s at the Farm features food grown on its grounds at the Buttermilk Falls Inn in Milton At Henry’s at the Farm, the setting soothes you well before the comestibles please your palate. At this restaurant, on the grounds of Buttermilk Falls Inn and Spa in Milton, an enchanting scene of bucolic tranquility draws you into another world, with
A tapestry of tapas
By admin at August 31, 2012 | 6:36 pm | 0 Comments
Mid-Hudson eateries get on the small-plates bandwagon - by Jennifer Brizzi The small-plates concept has been around for ten years or so in this country, although its origins go way back. What originated in the Mediterranean as a convivial way to soak up drinks when out with friends has been translated here to a supposedly cheap and fun new way to dine out. You can make
Reeking havoc
By admin at September 29, 2012 | 3:46 pm | 0 Comments
Reeking havoc Hudson Valley Garlic Festival returns to Saugerties this Saturday & Sunday - by Jennifer Brizzi What cures asp bites and wasp stings? What item – in 15-pound assortments – was once worth one healthy male slave? What repels vampires and prevents plague, leprosy, the flu and general malaise? What – like cows for Indians – is so sacred to one
Something to crow about
By admin at October 4, 2012 | 7:47 pm | 0 Comments
Il Gallo Giallo in New Paltz serves fresh local foods and Italian imported specialties - by Jennifer Brizzi New Paltz’s new Italian wine bar offers an artful mix of the classic and the innovative with the best of the local and the imported. At the two-month-old Il Gallo Giallo (pronounced “eel gollo jollo,” meaning “the yellow rooster”), the consumables make
The road to Yumville
By admin at October 17, 2012 | 10:50 pm | 1 Comment
Food-truck festival this Friday in Saugerties to feature fire, film, bands and crafts - by Jennifer Brizzi There seems to be an explosion of wheeled eateries in the area. While cities have always been full of them, until recently they have been rare around here. The growing fleet of local food trucks vend a variety of items from hot dogs to Vietnamese bánh mì
Canapés for carolers
By admin at December 31, 2012 | 2:48 pm | 0 Comments
Ease seasonal stress by keeping your holiday hors d’oeuvres simple but delicious – by Jennifer Brizzi The world may be ending December 21, but the cocktail party will never die. The holiday season is a perfect excuse for gathering with people over munchies and drinks. From catering jobs and my own parties over the years, I’ve learned that what works best for
