The cover art for The Rolling Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup features a beatific Mick Jagger swathed in some kind of pastel-tinged material, his head topped with a mysterious pinkish substance. Judging by the album title, I’m assuming this is intended to be some kind of cheesecloth, with Jagger’s head replacing the goat’s as part of a flavorful bouqet garni, ready to be plunged into the stew. As seen in the gatefold photo pictured above, the actual soup is prepared with far less delicacy. More commonly known as Mannish Water - a nod to its supposed aphrodisiac properties - the Jamaican goat’s head soup involves simmering various native vegetables and tubers, a slew of goat parts, scotch bonnet peppers and rum into a thin broth. A festival food usually reserved for bridegroom consumption on the eve of a wedding, it remains popular enough to merit a soup mix version from Grace, which would probably pair well with their version of Irish Moss, another hypothetical libido-fortifier. The company does not appear to provide any shortcuts for Cow Cod Soup, the bovine cousin to Mannish Water, which boasts a full roster of bull parts but appears to skip the head (too big for most pots, I imagine). As for the album, it was recorded in Kingston, with a full complement of Jamaican and Guyanese musicians, as the band continued their early ‘70s period of jet-setting dissipation and tax-refugee ennui, but contains no other direct references to Jamaican cuisine. For a more thorough discussion of the soup, and its potential magical qualities, see Pluto Shervington’s 1976 hit "Ram Goat Liver."
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Bird’s Nest gets a lot of attention as one of those fundamentally bizarre foods, perfectly demonstrating the eccentricities of the Chinese palate. Produced from the massed saliva of tiny cave swifts, it’s prized for its supposed health proprieties_, textural qualities and the inherent difficulty of procuring these little prizes. The latter makes this one of the most expensive foods on earth (retailing at upwards of 2k per kg), although the old, dangerous method of scaling cliff faces to pluck nests from gaps in the rock has mostly disappeared, largely due to the accompanying devastation of swiftlet populations. The nests are now harvested in specially built birdhouse complexes dotted throughout Southeast Asia (see here for more info and a fabulous headline), but the high price remains part of the prestige attraction and has thus held. This leaves lots of room for artificial bird’s nest flavoring, which might not pass muster in the famous soup, but works as part of handy imitation beverage. Genuine bird’s nest drinks do exist, and may come with better packaging and real-deal spittle, but the imitation, purchased for $1.50 from a Chinese supermarket, will do in a pinch. This version employs “artificial bird’s nest flavoring,” in addition to floating flecks of white fungus, which I guess cover for the missing textural consistency of the actual nests. Produced in Thailand, which seems to have recently caught the bug in terms of bird’s nest production and consumption, the can also boasts a bevy of beautiful birds, darting through the air with the stern efficiency of military aircraft. The golden sun, cresting above the outline of a white cloud, is also a nice touch.
Two possible interpretations for this one.
1) (Summer Version) The mammoth sandwiches clash together, bodies piled on bodies, sweaty, hulking warriors dreaming of a refreshing Valhalla, a land of ice and refreshment. The victors clamber atop the corpses of the fallen, striving to reach the frosty promise of this celestial cooler. Which will you choose to pair with your drink, and grant it eternal glory? 2) (Winter Version). From the firmament descends a creeping glacier, its progress impelled by the frozen will of the Arctic Beverage Gods, pressing down upon this motley crew of refugees, huddling together desperately for warmth. Only the fittest of sandwiches will be save from certain icy doom (or the saddest; that beef patty on the upper left looks like it’s in really bad shape). A bodega for all seasons! In most cases, souse refers to a variant of head cheese, an aspic of skull padding and organ meats pickled with vinegar. Picadillo, throughout Spain and Latin America, points to a swirling of spiced ground meat seasoned with tomatoes and peppers, plus various aromatics and spices. In Panama, as I learned from a recent visit to Crown Heights’ Panamanian Independence Day festival, things are a little different. There, souse instead refers to the other extreme of nose-to-tail eating - pickled feet, usually of the porcine or bovine variety - a denomination which actually applies all over the Caribbean. Historically connected to that other souse, it demonstrates an inventive way to make use of spare parts, via a spicy, citrusy preparation that can now also be prepared with chicken feet or conch. Sharing the vinegary base of the European variety, the one here also comes smothered in quick-pickled cucumbers, ribbons of white onion and rounds of Scotch Bonnet pepper, the entire thing immersed a tincture tinged with lime. Further flavor is provided through the addition of culantro (aka Chadon Beni), cilantro’s brawnier cousin.
The result is both bracingly fresh and a bit unsettling - the sensation of nibbling cold gelatinous flesh off of a pig’s hoof making me glad I didn’t order the cow version - although it’s ultimately not much different than a plate of pork belly. If only all cans were this beautiful, evoking the fresh driven snows of the Alps via pure white packaging and the fresh-faced grins of two young soda sippers. The colors here actually point back to the flag of Austria, where Almdudler was born in 1957. The name (according to Wikipedia at least) roughly translates to “yodeling in the Alpine pasture," and the taste is pretty much as close to that image as you can get in soda form.
As an American, it’s always fun to see what the rest of the world thinks of us. Sourced from Italy, these strange chips both invoke American flavors and unintentionally parody them, calling up visions of a grease-smeared New World paradise, in which meat and potato flavors marvelously converge. I couldn’t help but think of British American-themed restaurant featured in season three of Arrested Development. As for the chips themselves, Chipsburger may be ridiculous, but they’re far from an abomination, certainly better than Doritos’ experimental ‘secret burger’ flavor. The two snacks do share a similar profile, evoking burger taste through an overtone of piercing pickle flavor, with some cheese in the middle and a musky foundation of MSG for the bass notes. Chipsburger also wins out completely in terms of packaging, a clean field of red stripes bursting into a constellation of blue stars. The burger, bearing slices of American cheese both above and beneath the patty, bears down on the chip, ready to deliver its payload with all the crushing force of a monster truck demolishing a helpless junker.
I’ve been meaning for years to visit Pirosmani, long considered one of the jewels of South Brooklyn’s Caucasian belt, ensconced in an out-of-the way corner of Gravesend that’s accessible only by car (or bus). Circumstances recently aligned to grant me the use of a vehicle for the weekend, and so I set off with a group to check out a wide assortment of Georgian feast foods. Surrounding a pivotal stretch of the Silk Road, with a spice-speckled cuisine that gloriously combines Eastern-European and Asian styles, Georgia has been getting a lot of attention lately, even expanding into Lower Manhattan via a few new venues (Oda House, Old Tblisi Garden and Tone Café). Pirosmani, on the other hand, isn’t aiming for modern bistro cool, with a truncated banquet hall full of rustic folk-art murals (reproductions of work by the restaurant's artist namesake), tulle wall draperies, thick white tablecloths and seasonal ceiling decorations. On Friday nights it also offers live music from a singing keyboardist, who backed up his spirited performance with a series of Youtube nature videos. The wide spread of kebabs, khachapuri and roasted poultry were immensely satisfying, but others have already better summed up the broad outlines of the country’s cooking. What instead caught my attention were two unusual herbal preparations, one pickled, another in soft drink form.
Certain Indian dishes get all the attention. Naan gets ordered with every meal. Tandoori and tikka masala hog the spotlight, with the downside that many fascinating foods don't seem to get any attention at all. In the last decade or so, a thaw has been occurring, with the growing interest in these congenial ambassador dishes granting chefs license to try new things. A few weeks back I had an exciting presentation of sliced duck breast in tamarind sauce (Magret de Canard Pulivaar) a relic of the longtime French occupation of Pudicherry, at Sunnyside’s Saffron Gardens. Branching out beyond the usual Indo-American fare, the meal also included curry spiked with the pan-Indian, Persian-derived mincemeat keema, Xacuti de Galinha (a Goan favorite, the name reflecting the region’s Portuguese history) and yengai, an eggplant, sesame and peanut dish hailing from Karnataka. My own childhood neighborhood, formerly a wasteland of diners, over-the-hill Italian joints and fast food franchises, has blossomed into a wonderland of new Indian options, many of them offering specialties from the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, opening up a new world of parottas, moilees and kingfish fries. Another example is the above-mentioned Patra (aka Patrode), a complex Malvani/Gujarati preparation that employs the gram flour used in so many fritters as putty between a pinwheel bundle of taro leaves. Found at the fantastic Rahjbog, a sweet shop which also offers dosas, dhoklas, pav sandwiches and chai, a veritable roster of lesser-known items that will probably see their visibility increased in the coming years, as America's understanding of Indian cuisine becomes deeper and more nuanced.
As a committed lunatic, I spend an undue amount of time trawling Yelp pages and MenuPages listings, seeking out the strange and the unique amid the torrents of food selfies and vaguely described menu items. Last Thursday, while immersed in a messy spread of browser tabs on local Caribbean restaurants, I stumbled upon what seemed like an ordinary French bakery, clicking through to the listing mostly to keep up my frenzied momentum. Amid the croissants and omelets listed on Richol’s menu I noticed a strange item, simply labeled ‘agoulou,’ which neither I nor any internet content written in English seemed to recognize.
Not quite a deli landscape, but this simple mural, spotted in the Bronx, achieves a sort of heavenly luster unmatched by most hectic sandwich collages. Elevated against a beautiful sky blue background, the plated behemoth here floats dream-like atop its bone-white host, its impossibly green lettuce as lush and welcoming as a summer garden. Lotto streamers hint at an even greater transcendence just beyond our grasp, while a bevy of grey stars, squiggles and wind wisps push back against the gray cloud (or unpainted section?) hovering above. As for that tube of sausage, looming in the upper left corner, I am totally stumped.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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