Mission: Lox - Ming and Ting's Excellent Adventure

"Ming and Ting decided to seek help from the Dragon who lived on the Blue Mountain. It was New Year's Eve, and time for gift-giving, and perhaps the Dragon might be in a generous mood!"

This tantalizing little teaser for the 1967 children's book, "The Dragon Liked Smoked Fish," is actually a spot-on description of my plans for the day. I'll be Ming and Ting, the help-seekers. The Dragon will (hopefully) be a 65+ year-old Eastern European Jewish man behind the counter of Barney Greengrass and Murray's Sturgeon Shop. New Year's Eve will be whatever the date is today. The gifts being given will be knowledge and lox. Blue Mountain will be the Upper West Side. You, my friends, will be the riveted little readers.

So here I go! This is my first bit of field work and I'm a bit anxious. Can I ask the questions that need to be asked? Can I get beyond my passive midwestern demeanor to take on the proverbial Dragon? Will I do right by you, my starving flock? We shall see.

And also, can I get through the pissy weather that is blanketing our fair city today? I took this photo from my fire escape this morning. Uy! Ay! Let's just pray I return bearing gifts.

re: Mission Lox

My bet for the best lox (though unimaginable in my mind) is on the Eastern Europeans. Scots never do anything best, and Swedes are too pale to accomplish anything (like me).

-Lillie

Mission:Lox - That Ain't Exactly Smoked, Kid

So... lox isn't what I thought it was. The words of my first post - about me having a major lack of knowledge - have come even truer than I previously thought. I knew, literally, one thing about lox. It is in fact salmon. It is not, however, smoked. Well, it kind of is. Why is this so complicated?!

So here it is. Lox is salmon - generally fillet - that is cured in a liquid brine. The brine seems to consist of water, salt, and sometimes sugar and "spices." Then it is cold-smoked. Cold-smoking basically means that the meat is exposed to smoke for a short period of time, to give it some flava, but is not exposed to the heat. This is why lox remains so silky and melty and sashimi-like. This reminds me, I need to explore my desire to eat raw beef. Steak tartar might be next?!?!

Alas, questions remain. As my ADD self-help book Finding Your Focus suggests, I'll make a list:


1. What are these mysterious spices? I understand, you know, when in the ingredients section on a food product it vaguely states that "spices" were included in the making of said product, that that is probably a way of protecting their original, centuries-old recipes. But venerable sources of information like Wikipedia should be a bit more transparent, I think. Also, an aside: Why does the Cuban restaurant I work at list "Cuban spices" as an ingredient? I believe the menu is aimed at what the Dominican woman inside of me would call "babosos."


2. How about the duration of the brine? Does the brine last for hours? days? weeks? You really never know with these Nordic and/or Eastern European Jewish folks.


3. And finally, who makes it best? It seems that the Scots, the Swedes and their fellow Nords, and the Ashkenazi Jujubes from Eastern Europe are the old masters. I'll see what I can dig up.



There's a morsel for us to chew on, ey? I figure I'll go out tomorrow and try to get the best stuff in this city of lauded lox. From what I've seen on chowhound, it seems that either Barney Greengrass (fun name!) or Murray's Sturgeon Shop are the places to go, both reasonably easy to get to from my place up in Higgidy Harlem. I'll letcha know how it goes.



nono.

recipe 1: Berry Stuffed French Toast

A recipe for famished souls ready for a sweet overload.

-Lillie/Mama Wirstrom


Ingredients

for the syrup:

• 2 c. unsweetened raspberries
• 3/4 c. brown sugar
• 3 T. butter
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 1/2 t. vanilla

for the toast:

• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. sour cream
• 18 slices sourdough
• 1/2 c. raspberry preserves
• 1 t. vanilla
• 6 eggs
• 1/4 c. half & half
• 1/2 t. cinnamon

Process

for the syrup:
Combine all but vanilla in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 5-7 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

for the toast:
Beat cream cheese and sour cream. Spread on each slice of bread. Combine preserves and vanilla. Spread over cheese on 9 slices. Make sandwiches. Combine eggs, half & half, and cinnamon. Dip both sides of sandwiches and cook on a skillet or the likes. Cut diagonally and sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

Makes 9 filling servings.

re: Alo?

Like many of the best foods, inaugurations are filled with excitement. First times are often the best: first dances, first kisses, first time on a zip line, first ice cream cones. Though overshadowed perhaps by other recent inaugurations, the beginning of The Plate Lickers is a palatable little adventure nonetheless.

so Welcome!

As Noah said, we promise a curiosity-driven blog, tinted with both the hipster irony of our (my?) generation and the timeless American passion for edibles.
We'll share our culinary experiences, learn together, and write all about it. Though we're apart, our hearts and stomachs are one, connected by our first love of eating.

In keeping with the theme of beginnings, perhaps we as the Plate Lickers should set ourselves a goal or two. Challenges?

-Lillie

Please Dip Your Toast

To have lingered upon the delicate and variegated textures of french toast - a fried delicacy unmatched by any other breakfast competitor - four times in twice as many days is a gluttonous sin I was glad to commit while in New York City earlier this month. Like any pleasurable gustatory experience, there is a much to traverse in discovering what separates the standout from the sub-par, and though my arteries (with their infinite foresight) might have issued silent protests, my appetite and I were happy to oblige the lust.

I cannot continue with a study and report on french toast without divulging my deep allegiance to pancakes: it runs through me with the strength of a stream beneath a glacier. Or at least it used to. Save for the ardor that continues to course through me for one particular pancake from my hometown, the glacier seems to have receded, leaving only an esker of pancake passion.

Is it possible that french toast could've taken the spot of top breakfast choice?
Anything is possible in New York City.

Here is how it happened.
1. The Deluxe
On Broadway, between 112th and 113th.
Saturday brunch.
I arrive hungry, ready to indulge a foreign hankering for french toast as I have heard great things about this fancy diner's battered bread.
I am seated along the wall, and as I watch a plate of sensual banana pancakes float past me to another table, I feel apprehension. My plate arrives, though, and I forget about the bananas nearby, taken instead by the strawberry cream cheese spread between the thick slices of challah that is battered and fried and waiting. The crust is crisp, the inside soft, tender, almost custardy. Wonderfully balanced. There is not enough for me.

2. Good Enough To Eat
On Amsterdam, between 83rd and 84th.
This is my favorite breakfast place in the city so far, and though I did not find the all-star plate, I learned about two crucial characteristics of french toast:

• Custardiness is not squishiness. Custardiness is the most beautiful part of french toast. It's like the bread is getting a perm, and it becomes soft, losing all form inside it's crust.
• Formidabiliy. French toast often goes too far. Too custardy becomes squishy and lacks the formidability necessary. The surface area of the french toast cell wall to the pudding-like interior.

3. Fred's
On Amsterdam, at 83rd.
Sunday brunch.
The best french toast. The perfect balance of custardiness and formidability. Fred's uses awesome bread - another important find - which is sliced thick, has a vein of cinnamon filling running through it, and does not lose its shape or constitution when battered and fried. The inside is soft. Everything is perfect.
And they gave us free muffins.


French toast can be stuffed, which is incredibly raw. It is fried, which makes it accessible to everyone. It's made of bread, part of the food triangle, which needs no further explanation.

My foray into french toast culture was the best. I was reminded of a Christmas past when my mom made her own stuffed french toast for our nap-inducing breakfast. Here's the recipe. Make it.

-Lillie

Ready! Set! Eat!

Alo?

Alo!

Welcome to The Plate Lickers! Do not confuse us with "Plate Lickers." They're scurrilous. Unethical, really.

So this is my little friend Lillie and I's feeble attempt at joining the already bloated gastroblogosphere. We're doing this almost entirely for our own entertainment - to rescue us from the monotony, even despair, of everyday life - and I'm virtually certain that we will be this "blog"'s two solitary readers. We're not in it for the fame.

A second motivation (after idleness and depression) for doing this is because we are huge fat people. Lillie is fat. I'm super huge and fat. And do you know how we got this way? How we maintain this heft? We really like food. Lots of kinds of food. We like cheap food and common food. We like fresh-made food, local food. We like hole in the wall food, we like backcountry canned food, we like "hip" Soho fusion restaurant food. Food Food Food Food Eat Eat Eat (Chanting).

An anecdote. Just this morning, I'm walking down the street and I'm thinking I haven't had a Beef Baja Chalupa in quite awhile, I should get one really soon. I need to get one. And then ten minutes later, I decide to buy myself a sesame bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox. As I'm eating this bagel and pulling the smoked salmon apart into these perfect, fun-sized little strips, I think to myself - What if I could have the planet's best smoked salmon? It would make this my best day in a long time. The texture!

And this is when the questions arrive. They bombard me. Where would I get it? Sweden? I think they eat smoked fish. They may or may not have a native salmon population. To be totally honest with myself and with you, the reader(s), I'm not entirely sure where Sweden is. I think I could maybe point it out on a map, but I don't know what bodies of water surround it. Is it a country full of rivers? Are they the kind of rivers and larger bodies of water that are conducive to salmon? I think Love Is All mentions lox in a song. Maybe?

And herein lies the basis of what I think this blog ought to focus on. We are not knowledgeable people. We know very little about a lot of things. We don't know a ton about food. But we are curious, yes! We ask questions. We need to know. And that is what I, for one, endeavor to do. I propose that we pick a subject, a foodstuff, if you will, and we find out all we can about it. And we report back here. And this is how we will all learn.

Learning can be a wonderful escape. And when it involves eating, all the better.

Lil, whatcha thank grrrrrw?