Dan Philips Makes Me A Grateful Dish

Dan Philips, the man who brought us Gatton Farms hickory smoked bacon for the BLT Fest is back with his annual Grateful Palate gift handbook. Every year, he features a variety of bacon as well as bacon-themed gifts for those who really love pig. I mean REALLY love it.

This year he’s got a whopping forty selections of savory slices of artisan pork. Apple wood smoked, Swiss sugar cured, and Swiss hickory smoked honey cured bacon are a few that just skim the surface of this man’s obsession with the stuff. The popular Bacon-Of-The-Month club is back, but this year, Philips also features a Salami-Of-The-Month club. Decisions, decisions.

The handbook is stuffed with fun gifts from the classic bacon soap to this years’ surprise favorite, bacon brittle. There are a variety of bacon-themed t-shirts this year. My favorite is the Go Pig Racer shirt, which features a pig on wheels.

The gift guide includes items that compliment bacon, too. Specialty balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and imported soy sauce look very tempting. They make me eager with ideas of how I could prepare a great porky feast. Philips even carries sweet products like Hawaiian white honey and an exceptional array of exceptional preserves.

Philips takes his handbook one step further by asking us the join his party and “Think Pink.” His worship for all things piggish might be over the top, but where else could we turn if we wanted a BLT ring? That’s right, the catalogue could be the answer to all your gift-giving woes when your sweetheart asks for jewelry. The BLT ring is a sterling silver set of five rings that look like the ingredients in a BLT. Stack the bread, the bacon, the lettuce, the tomato, and the other slice of bread to have a beautiful BLT with you at all times.

Check out www.GratefulPalate.com to order your catalogue or to make direct pig purchases. You’ll savor every gift!

Forgotten Fries

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my favorite, and your favorite, French fries in Manhattan. In the passed weeks, I have found two more stellar fry experiences.

Stop at decade-old Pommes Frites on Second Ave to have your share of a massive bowl of fresh potatoes on display that are fried upon request and served in the classic paper cone. Aficionados choose from dozens of dips: try the rosemary garlic mayo or the wasabi mayo.

Head to the West Village for Taim. This falafel shop serves up wonderfully crispy, thin-cut, made-daily fries. They come with saffron aioli, which adds a cooling but tangy note to the piping hot potatoes.

I wouldn’t add an insert like this if I weren’t serious. Go get ‘em!

Piñon: Nuts for Pine Nuts

Andrea Lynn, a Culinista for The Dish’s Dishes is a contributor this week. She’s just returned from New Mexico with a passion for pine nuts.

Piñon, the New Mexican version of pine nuts, are the edible seeds of a pine tree. The nuts are inside the pinecone and must be heated to be removed, a rather labor-intensive, price-inflating task.

Interestingly, these delicious nuts are used in both sweet or savory dishes in New Mexico. They are roasted and salted to be shelled and eaten like sunflower seeds. They are candied as piñon brittle or baked into an apple pie. They are added to tomatoes to turn into salsa.

And, if the nuts couldn’t be any better, they contain the highest amount of protein of any nut or seed. So, next time you want to add an ingredient to make a dish unique, reach for the always delicious, always exciting piñon.

Briermere Farms: North Forkful of Pie

Just one pie from Briermere Farms wasn’t enough for a group of four who recently dined al fresco on the North Fork. An apple pie ended the meal on a comforting note while a blackberry pie exemplified the season’s ripest fruit with just the right amount of tartness to balance the sweet, bursting berries.

The humbly made desserts are found at a roadside stand near Riverhead where people line up to for pie packed with every variety of summers’ bounty.

Most pies are the old fashioned ones with a full sheath of crust over the entire thing. Some are laced with cream or covered in crisp; all are delicious.

CALL TO PIE: 631.722.3931

Little Owl, Big Chicken

I recently dined at Little Owl on Bedford Street with four of my friends. Though the wait was long, the dinner was well worth it. Fat scallops served over grapefruit slivers, duck resting upon spicy arugula, Parmesan, and almonds, and cavatelli laced with ricotta, fava beans, and bacon impressed us as our opening salvo.

The feast continued with seasonal dishes that included corn, peas, and nodes of citrus. Surprisingly, the true gem on the menu was the crispy chicken, which came with thick home fries, asparagus, and shitake mushrooms. Chicken isn’t always the superlative option, and my mention of it here does not imply that the rest of our food—the pork chop, the halibut, the cod—was bad. It was quite the contrary. All our food was impeccable; it was just the chicken that we all kept grabbing for bites.

And this led to a conversation about other great chickens: Zuni in San Francisco and L’Ami Louis in Paris. These places are renowned for their birds. I’ve heard of rock stars finishing a show and then boarding a plane that takes them directly to L’Ami Louis. And on my first culinary excursion to California, I was told I absolutely could not miss Zuni’s roast chicken.

This humble bird needs to redeem itself and Little Owl’s rendition is helping it fluff its feathers. In a restaurant where the majority of the menu has popped up in conversation for nearly a week now, it’s impressive that the chicken makes the cut.

It seems like if someone can do chicken right, then it is really right. When I interview my Culinistas™, I give them chicken to cook with because its so simple and so versatile and so often perceived as boring. But are chicken cacciatore, thyme crusted chicken, sweet and sour chicken, or citrus seared chicken boring? I end up eating a lot of chicken when I hire and am always impressed by the diversity of the dishes that my Culinistas™ create.

Whether it is your Culinista™ preparing it for you or your waiter at Little Owl setting it down at your table, chicken is a perfect dish for any occasion, the excitement is in how you make it.

A Pot of Summer Luck

Potluck in the summertime is the absolute best dinner to organize. What is sometimes burdensome—the responsibility of preparing a portion of a meal for admission—is immediately ameliorated by the sheer bounty of ingredients at the market. Stuck bringing an appetizer? Go to the Eckerton Hill Farms booth at the Union Square Greenmarket, buy a variety of heirloom tomatoes and call it tomato salad! Boil corn for one minute, transfer it to a platter and you’ve got a great side dish

Need to supply a dessert? How about a bowl of the juiciest cherries from Berried Treasures? By highlighting an ingredient instead of fussing over the assembly of a complex recipe, the burden is gone and all that is left is the fun of the party. If you are stuck for inspiration at the Greenmarket, head to the Real Foods Markets for a fresh look at the seasons finest.

BLT 2

All this talk about the perfect BLT and no talk about sides? If you imagine a plate with a perfect BLT, you’ll likely dream up some pretty tasty fries and a crunchy pickle to go alongside it.

The variety of delicious fries in this city span from thick to thin, spiced to truffled, roasted to fried. Check out Florent for classic, thin, diner fries that are made once, and sometimes, twice a day. For waffle fries, brave the mob at Crif Dogs. Spotted Pig has renowned shoestring fries that are flecked with bits of rosemary and garlic crisps; Stanton Social dusts theirs in herbs and serves them with red chili mayonnaise. Jerry’s adds truffle oil to make for extremely decadent fries, while Good World fries come thick, hand-cut, and roasted in their skin each night. They maintain more of a potato taste and texture than the thick ones at the White Horse. Here, thick fries are served more in the style of country club, pre-made fries, which are always best with a hefty portion of ketchup. Balthazar takes seriously the issue of French fries and has a special machine bolted to the wall for fry fabrication. Raoul’s fries are of a similar caliber: always crispy and thin, and best with a steak.

On to the subject of pickles, New Yorkers have pickles as steeped in tradition as well they are in brine. At Guss’, tasty cukes are displayed in massive barrels outside of the storefront. Guss’ dominates the pickle market, though Rick’s Picks is the leading choice for specialty pickled vegetables such as beets and green beans.

The cool crunch of a tangy pickle and the crackle of a fresh fry top off every BLT experience.

BLTerrific

With such a simple sandwich, the key to perfection lies in its ingredients and their relative proportions.

1 Blue Ribbon Bakery Pullman loaf

12 strips Grateful Palate bacon

4 leaves of green leaf lettuce

1 big Brandywine tomato

Hellman’s mayonnaise

1.Fry the bacon over medium heat until the strips are very crispy but not crumbly.

2. Slice 8 pieces of bread. They should be 3/4 of an inch thick. Toast them.

3.Slice the tomato into 1/2-inch thick rounds.

4.Spread a thinthinthin layer of mayo onto one piece of bread. Cover with one leaf of lettuce. Add a tomato slice. Top with 3 pieces of bacon. Close with another piece of bread. Cut diagonally.

Makes 4 Sandwiches.