Eating In Translation

TCCNJ Spring Festival

(Many of the fairs, festivals, and other wonderful food events that usually fill my calendar each spring have been postponed or cancelled. This post is based on a past year's celebration.)

Each of these "raw meatballs" bears its maker's mark. In contemporary Turkish and Armenian homes, some versions still incorporate the traditional raw lamb or beef, but in public settings cig kofte (Cheeg Kuf-teh) are almost always vegetarian. Typically they're made with a blend of bulgur, onion, tomato, and red pepper paste, then partnered with lettuce-leaf cradles and fresh lemon. As for "meatballs," this English-language term of convenience doesn't convey the primal beauty of the dish: Cig kofte are distinctively yet unselfconsciously shaped by hand.

At this event organized by the Turkish Cultural Center of New Jersey, the manti (Mahn-tee) were also made by hand, I was told, though evidently ahead of time and offsite. Unlike many larger namesakes, the Turkish version of manti are about the size of a thumbnail and take considerable time to make in large numbers. These, filled with ground lamb, were ultimately deposited in red pepper oil, then dressed with garlic yogurt, red pepper flakes, mint, and sumac.

Also shown: two of Grandma's homemade jams, strawberry and orange; "Grandma."

TCCNJ Spring Festival
Overpeck County Park, Leonia, New Jersey
www.Facebook.com/TCCNJ/photos/gm.823141934387615/670020183110120
(This edition of the festival was held on May 16, 2015)

Empanadas Monumental

Dominican sloppy joe: rikitaki (riquitaki) de res. Order "con todo" to add lettuce, tomato, red onion, hardboiled egg, some sort of pinkish sauce, and perhaps extra napkins, too.

From 2011: For all my digging, my report on yaroa is still virtually a blank slate. I've learned very little about this Dominican dish beyond what the counterwoman told me, and so far I've found no references more than a few years old. On a base of potato or plantain, yaroa adds a layer of beef, pork, chicken, or mixed meats and tops the lot with melted mild cheese. It's heavy. If you think of my small order (with mashed plantain and shredded chicken) as a paperweight, the medium would be a bookend and the large, a doorstop.

In addition to quipes, bolas de yuca, and many varieties of empanada, the menu also includes South American salchipapas — which supply a tipoff about the "papa" version of yaroa. It's not layered on mashed potatoes, it's piled on fries, and we've seen where that can lead. For a follow-up report, I'll bear portion size in mind.

Also shown, from around the corner, poised to swoop down on any leavings: Blackburnian and yellow-throated warblers (George Boorujy, 2017, for the Audubon Mural Project), two of more that one hundred murals in John James Audubon's old neighborhood.

Empanadas Monumental
3772 Broadway (West 156th-West 157th Sts.), Manhattan
646-559-2502
(one of many locations)
www.Facebook.com/EmpanadasMonumentalNYC

Terra Thai

Compliments of the proprietors, who recently decamped from Boulder, Colorado, to a tiny East Village storefront: heng lae, pork curry in the style of Chiang Mai; kao ka moo, braised pork in five-spice sauce; and warm coconut milk with sweet corn. Heng lae was a special; next time might bring khao soi.

Terra Thai
518 East 6th St. (Aves. A-B), Manhattan
646-478-7415
www.TerraThaiNY.com
Closed Monday

5 Estrella Bakery

"Tuck it away," Tucky says, within eyeshot of this Washington Heights bakery. And $8, as it happens, was the total for my two-course takeout meal — a Cuban sandwich, chased by a guava-and-cheese pastel from one of the neighborhood's more tempting displays of Dominican sweets.

5 Estrella Bakery
3861 Broadway (at West 161st St.), Manhattan
212-795-5000
www.Instagram.com/5_Estrella_Bakery

New Ivoire Restaurant

My deep dish of riz gras, "fat rice," paired lamb with sautéed onions and sharp mustard. Ivorian riz gras is a relation to various Senegalese rice dishes, particularly for the oil and the seasonings that become imbued in the rice. Commonly they are reddened by tomato paste; mine seemed to be a white (tomato-free) version.

Previously: Breakfast service begins at 4:00, but the cabbies who call on New Ivoire in the early morning hours often can't linger. Many take a sandwich to go; the most fortifying might be a footlong sandwich rognon, laden with onion, tomato, and the namesake sauteed beef kidneys. A more elaborate option adds sweet peas to temper the relentlessly earthy flavor of the offal. If kidneys throw you for a loop, a simple chopped-beef sandwich is also on offer.

A bowl of sauce feuille patate, sweet-potato-leaf stew heavy with beef and served with a plate of white rice, is typical fare at an Ivorian sit-down lunch. When I sat down, years back, a vibrating massage chair held pride of place at one end of the dining room, ready to accommodate weary cab drivers. During the first half of the afternoon's football match, which I watched with a dozen Ivorians while digging into my bowl, the chair sat silent and still under the flatscreen — but, true enough, I left before the late-afternoon shift change. The massage chair has since been retired.

New Ivoire Restaurant
76 East 119th St. (Park-Madison Aves.), Manhattan
212-410-5982
www.Facebook.com/pages/Ivoire-Restaurant/113417135359463

Salento

The puff pastry of this pastel de plátano is plumped with sweet plantain, cheese, and what the baker calls arequipe, which the menu helpfully translates, for his Dominican neighbors, as dulce de leche. On an outside wall, a mural (by Ignacio Campo Salinas, 2019) depicts wax palms, the national trees of the owners' native Colombia.

Salento
2112 Amsterdam Ave. (at 165th St.), Manhattan
646-767-0680
www.Salento-NY.com

Wild mulberries in New York City

Low-hanging fruit: midsummer mulberries, gathered some years before the tightening of New York City's regulations on foraging in the early 2010s. Gathering a heaping quart was the work of little more than an hour. To harvest them in even greater quantity, some folks spread a tarp and shake the berries loose with a (sheathed) pruning hook, an approach that also minimizes reddish-black fingertips. (Mulberries bruise easily.) I relied only on my own long reach — and my reflexes, to dodge the falling berries that threatened to stain me in reprisal.

Also: a few of this year's berries, two months before their prime; where I found them.

Wild mulberries in New York City
Somewhere in the territory shown in my final photo

Hwa Yuan

Negative-calorie cold sesame noodles — allowing for a half-marathon walk, round trip, from Morningside Heights and back, and disregarding the detour, and the calories, entailed by a brace of walnut cookies.

Hwa Yuan
42 East Broadway (Catherine-Market Sts.), Manhattan
212-966-6002
www.HwaYuanNYC.com

Fairs, festivals, and food bazaars, past and future

Many fairs, festivals, and food bazaars, rooted in culinary traditions from all over the world, have been postponed or cancelled this spring. On Sunday, May 24, I'll lead a virtual tour to look at the past, and the future, of these beloved events: https://turnstiletours.com/eating-in-translation-with-dave-cook/

Trenton Pork Roll Festivals

(Many of the fairs, festivals, and other wonderful food events that usually fill my calendar each spring have been postponed or cancelled. This post is based on a past year's festivals.)

To hold diced pork roll in place, what's better than maple icing?