Tag: Mara L.

European Green values have, in my particular case, very much to do with taste. Traditionally crafted produce simply tastes better. My moral lowness (or should I say, potential moral lowness, for I haven’t yet figured out whether eating meat is actually morally bad or not) becomes particularly clear to me when I see my fellow Green-value-Manhattanites abdicate all meat. They actually mean it: they look at eating from their moral point of view.

From the culinary point of view, meat in Manhattan is excellent—and I mean it, genuinely excellent. Better than in most places in Europe. Meat here is something to lift your spirits. When I have little time, but a desire for luxury, I buy fillet steak. When I have more time, I buy the kind of beef that Italians cook in red wine, with lots of herbs, tomatoes, shallots, carrots and so on, and I happily eat it with Rigatoni.

So where does this leave me with my attempt to blend in here? Here’s my little theory: The artsy crowd that I hang out with is actually not representative. Vegetarians that they often are, they do not mirror the true nature of Manhattan. This place is, in its heart, a meat eating place, which is a truth visible (to me) when I walk down the street. Manhattan is about survival—at least for the likes of me—and survival doesn’t have the patience for vegetarianism. Don’t we need strength to survive the next heart-breaking phone call, when we realize that we won’t be able to make it to the wedding of a close friend? Living in several places takes a toll. And meat, bad or not bad as eating it may be, steels your soul against the onslaughts of exhaustion.

It is undeniable that my longings for European food are not inspired by UK cooking. It’s the cooking from the Alps, and Italy, and ultimately the whole Mediterranean that I am missing. However, I was a student in England for a semester, and there is one deep truth to be learnt from the British: tea is a heal-all. It’s not like Italians think, that tea is only for the five days per year when you have the flu. Tea cures everything, loneliness, sadness, exhaustion, nervousness, you name it. “Have a cup of tea”—the very sound of these consoling words shuts out the world, and here you are, already getting better!

So, when fall sets in, and you find yourself in Manhattan, where people believe in modern science rather than the spell of a cup of tea, where do you turn? There’s not a single truly British tea place here (in the semi-sad, nostalgic sense that makes it all work). So, there’s one more reason to explore the Asian cuisines. In fact, this is not only advisable for cold autumn days. If you are one of these weaklings from Europe like me who freezes to death in Manhattan’s air-conditioned restaurants during summer, you might want to always steer your friends to Asian restaurants, with your secret plan of surviving the lunch hour by holding on to endless cups of hot green tea.

But the true curing experience, the one that will faintly remind you of England, can only be revived in very few places. Clearly, the “Tea Box” restaurant at Takashimaya on 5th Avenue is one of them. Tea comes in the most beautiful pots and cups (very unlike the tea you had in England), and tastes simply amazing. While there’s really nothing European in this experience at all, it will strike a note and make you happy.

Only a few weeks ago I was complaining about not having had enough of a beach summer. Strangely, I only feel the pain of the end of the summer when it’s still there, but oh so cruelly nearing its end. Now, I feel like embracing the crispness of autumn. And accordingly, my regrets take a different shape: desire for some heart-warming fall-food, right from the Alps.

So here is one thing that expatriates can cook in New York in precisely the same way they would at home: potato-pancakes with apple-sauce, as every mountain kid loves them. Several stores, including Balducci’s, carry a German (or Austrian?) product by Pfanni, a kind of pre-shredded, dried potato-cum-herbs mix. That’s what literally everyone, even the most sophisticated gourmets, use in Europe. You only add water, wait a couple of minutes, and off you go. Some olive oil in a pan, and the little potato pancakes are done in just a few minutes.

Apple sauce, in Italy, is done differently from the way it’s done here. The word “apple sauce”, in fact, is a little distasteful for me, since it suggests a sauce. In Italy, we love real pieces of apple, not a sauce-like substance, which to us tastes as if one were in a hospital. So you buy the best apples you can get (right now a lot of stores carry organic apples from the region, which have a nice mix of acid and sweetness), cut them up, add some (very little) sugar, and then either of the following: lots of freshly squeezed lemon juice; or some lemon juice and some orange juice; or some lemon juice and some white whine. You will easily guess that the latter is the real Italian way of doing it.

Eating your potato pancake with cooked apples (let’s call it that), you will genuinely feel at home.