Im-Presso-ive

Exhibit A: Random bruises.

Exhibit B: Typo-ridden emails.

Exhibit C: Mismatched socks.

The evidence is all there, and our secret is out: We are completely unable to function without our first cup of coffee in the morning.

And more and more, our dowdy percolator just won't do. Not only is the brew too mild to get our neurons firing, but the old-school drip pot design leaves us cold and unstimulated.

Enter the Presso.
This vaguely avian beauty pulls a perfect shot of espresso using only coffee grounds, hot water, and a little elbow grease. Simply pour in the grounds, add hot (not boiling!) water, and press down on the ergonomic aluminum levers. Voila - instant concentration!

At $150, the Presso is an economic alternative to conventional espresso machines, and comes with the eco-friendly bonus of being electricity-free and made of recyclable materials.

Still not convinced? The kind folks at Presso throw in a milk frothing attachment, as well as a bifurcated spout that enables you to make two shots at a time.

So go ahead - retire your percolator and replace it with something prettier, more useful. Your boss can thank us later.

Image via Clive Coffee

Beautiful Strange

In Japan, it is referred to as wabi-sabi, an "aesthetic centered on transience... of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete." Derived from Zen Buddhism, the concept appreciates asymmetry and uniquity, and pays homage to the fact that nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and such traits are facets of true beauty.

German artist Uli Westphal has clearly cultivated his own appreciation for wabi-sabi, as evident in his ongoing work photographing "Mutatoes" - gorgeous, alien fruit forms culled from local farmer's markets.

Sadly, with the homogenization of conventional produce, it is becoming more difficult to find such specimens in our own markets. Which is why we'll be buying Westphal's brilliant poster, now available on his website, to pin to our kitchen wall.

Bad hair day? Bags under eyes? Crooked features? You're no freak - you're a beautiful Mutato.

On second thought, perhaps we should hang the poster on our bathroom mirror...

Things Every Girl Ought to Know: Champagne Sabrage

Vintage Canard-Duchene advertisement

Those helpful folks over at The Brooklyn Kitchen seem to have read our minds:

What on Earth are we going to do with all of this Champagne, and all of these swords???

All joking aside, the culinary hub hosts a fantastic video series on their blog, with useful tips for casual cooks, as well as more ambitious feats for the Kitchen Ninja in all of us. No Champers or katanas at your disposal? Not to worry. Harry Rosenblum also demonstrates the technique with a sharp chef's knife, and on a bottle of Brooklyn Brewery Local 1.

Video below. Watch and get inspired to turn that after-work brew into a true celebration.

Slice of Life

The earth is an amazing and sometimes mystical ball that gives us a free ride around the sun every year.  Thanks for that, and thank you gravity, we really appreciate all your hard work. 

And the earth is no simple thing, all those layers, all that history, all that extra stuff going on below the surface...wow.  We love these Xterra adverts for Nissan's Dubai campaign, they make us want to get outside AND get down to business in the kitchen.  mmmm... dessssserrrttt....

The Layers of the Desert - or Dessert

Mountain Dew

Sno CappedMountains

DIY Coke

This week on one of our favorite programs, This American Life, Mr Ira Glass announced that they had uncovered the secret recipe for Coca-Cola. With all of the banter about the evils of soda around the interwebs, we wonder if DIY Coca-Cola would be any better for us...

Coca-Cola

It's time to try a batch - but perhaps with the original wine in it that was eliminated from the recipe when Prohibition was passed. Now where are those damn Coca Leaves...

Download the recipe here.

Listen to the show here.

Taste tests are in order - especially for those new variants of the secret recipe that are sure to surface!

Ira & Ben ready to test at Fairway

Southern Comfort

"Where's that accent from?"

This was a new one for us. We hail from one of the great, accent-less states of the Western U.S., and being of indeterminate origin has always been a point of pride for us.

"Well, where are YOU from?" we countered to the twangy gentleman at the bar.

He grinned widely, took a sip of his beer, and replied, "North Cack-a-lackie!"

We could already tell we were going to fall in love with Van Horn Sandwich Shop.

Lately, South Brooklyn has been suffused with so much country flavor, we've been wondering if the Mason-Dixon line migrated north. For a Gastro Girl, this trend has been a culinary windfall. Between Fort Defiance, Seersucker, and Buttermilk Channel, procuring a grits fix is as convenient as getting a bagel. Van Horn is the newest Dixie kid on the block, here to deliver that South to your mouth between two slices of bread.

Childhood friends - and native North Carolinians - Jacob Van Horn and Rick Hauchman opened the tiny, 30-seat shop in late January, and have already garnered a neighborhood following for their simple, delicious sandwiches, all made with local meat and vegetables. The B.L.P. - Bacon, Lettuce, Pimiento Cheese - is delicious enough on a fat Pullman loaf, but it would be a shame not to top off your meal with a side of Jalapeno Hush Puppies or Collard Greens.

Thirsty? Good thing - not only does Van Horn carry delicious local suds from Kelso and Six Point, but they also have a full liquor license and admirable bourbon selection.

We can't wait to go back to try the Brunswick Stew. Until then, we'll be working on our Southern drawl.

Mille-feuille Fruits Rouge

It seems these days that there are so many recipe websites - so many that they blur together.  The ones that stand out are the ones that try to do something different with recipes - those that illustrate, those that compartmentalize, those that turn them into amazing videos with whimsical style and panache.

We adore Griottes, the Emilie Guelpa's website that has done just that for her Raspberry Mille-feuille recipe.   We are in love with the video's charisma and smitten with the cast of characters: the little butters, the pot of creme, the anise stars, and of course, the raspberries.

The Stars Behind the Scenes

Millefeuille Fruits rouges from Griottes on Vimeo.

The Scene

If you have a minute or two check out the rest of her website - it's gorgeous.  Proper food porn that is organized chromatically.  Yes, chromatically.  Just how we organize! 

Charted Territory

Our love of info-graphics is almost as well-documented as our obsession with all things food-related, and when the two intersect, we find ourselves positively smitten. You can imagine how bowled over we are, then, with this gorgeous poster bearing "The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools," from Brooklyn's own Pop Chart Lab.

Each implement is grouped into categories and sub-categories, with charming descriptions like, "Those That Contain," and "Those That Manipulate." Not only would this pretty poster look lovely next to our knife rack, it would remind us of all the foodie tools and gadgets that have been languishing on our wish-list for too long.

The best feature of the chart is something we imagine is best appreciated in person: it is printed with real copper ink, so it shimmers like a prized saucepan when the light hits it just so. We may not be able to afford the fancy copper cookware, but at $25, the poster is a food-obsessed aesthete's no-brainer.

Available at Pop Chart Lab

Via The Kitchn

Eggs on Wry

In November of 1972, socialite and Warholian muse Maxime de la Falaise requested a recipe from her friend, famed author Vladimir Nabokov, to include in her upcoming tome, Seven Centuries of English Cooking. His submission was never included, but was discovered later in his archives, along with the note, "Never acknowledge(d) by Maxime." Perhaps the wit was too dry, or the recipe too elementary? Regardless, the entry is gleefully, irrepressibly Nabokov.

Eggs à la Nabocoque

Boil water in a saucepan (bubbles mean it is boiling!). Take two eggs (for one person) out of the refrigerator. Hold them under the hot tap water to make them ready for what awaits them.

Place each in a pan, one after the other, and let them slip soundlessly into the (boiling) water. Consult your wristwatch. Stand over them with a spoon preventing them (they are apt to roll) from knocking against the damned side of the pan.

If, however, an egg cracks in the water (now bubbling like mad) and starts to disgorge a cloud of white stuff like a medium in an old-fashioned seance, fish it out and throw it away. Take another and be more careful.

After 200 seconds have passed, or, say, 240 (taking interruptions into account), start scooping the eggs out. Place them, round end up, in two egg cups. With a small spoon tap-tap in a circle and hen pry open the lid of the shell. Have some salt and buttered bread (white) ready. Eat.

Via

Photo via TheStoneSoup

Not Your Ordinary Domestic Goddess

We here at Gastronomista HQ do not love the word routine. Surprises, we love. Spontaneity, yes. Joyful chaos, please sir, I want some more! When it comes to efficiency and order, we believe you can definitely have too much of a good thing. So for this week's cautionary tale we'd like to introduce you to Jeanne Dielman: lonely widow/single mother/meatloaf maker/prostitute extraordinaire. Routine does not begin to describe her life.


On Tuesdays, it's beef stew with poached potatoes. Wednesdays, breaded veal cutlets with peas and carrots. Thursdays, meatloaf. She doesn't wash dishes without putting on her housecoat and carefully fastening every button, nor does she take her clients into her bedroom without taking his coat and hanging it up in a nearby closet. And as far as that bedroom business goes, she finishes in the time it takes to boil some potatoes.


Jeanne is the tragic heroine of experimental Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's almost eponymous feature: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. A meticulous study of repression and domestic anxiety, the film (like My Dinner With Andre) requires patience from the viewer... but really, dear reader, doesn't every good meal?

The film carefully tracks Jeanne over a period of three days. A single mother of teen-aged son Sylvain, Jeanne fills every spare moment in her day to prevent her gaping loneliness from seeping into her seemingly perfect and ordered life.


We watch her eat, bathe, babysit, cook - all in what feels like real time. We are given a special opportunity to observe a private life and an hour in, you feel inextricably privy to and protective of our protagonist - actress Dephine Seyrig's immutably beautiful face certainly doesn't hurt. So when you start to see that she's missed a button, or mussed her hair, or when she doesn't finish with a client in time and the potatoes burn, it feels deeply foreboding. For any other person, these seemingly minute lapses would go unnoticed or chalked up to a simple mistake. For Jeanne, they signal the beginning of the end.

No spoilers, but here's an excerpt.

It's never been so stressful to watch someone make meatloaf.

It's like I always say: break your routine before your routine breaks you.

Utilitarian Utensil

Ah, the graceful spoon. Such an elegant, curvaceous tool, primitive, yet refined, and largely under-appreciated.

Jo-Fan Chang and Alexandra Snook, two graduate students at Rhode Island School of Design, have recently highlighted the easy loveliness of this humble utensil, however. As the first assignment in their undergraduate Introduction to Woodworking course, they instructed their students to make a wooden spoon out of simple hand tools. Some of the results are breathtaking.

Spoon by Nicole Kowalski

Our favorite piece is by Hannah Oh, who shaped a refined version of the utility "knife" by adding a fork and pivoting hinge.

We'd love to have one of these beauties with us at all times, to be ready for whatever culinary adventure suddenly arises.

If this is the first assignment, just imagine what their final projects will look like...

See more here

Please Sir, Another Beer-tini

More info-graphics coming at you today!  But this time, the beer cocktail.  A rather nebulous concept - but strangely intriguing. We believe this is the next frontier of cocktails - a land of much possibility and rich bounty. 

Fortunately, we are privy to the concept. Our house margaritas are made with Tecate - but this info-graphic by Fabio Rex (what a fantastic name good sir, do ring us for a chat) has us wanting to get our shakers out and get mixing.

Fabio Rex - Beer Cocktails

A few that have us licking our lips:

Black Velvet - 1 part Stout, 1 part Champagne

Michelada - 6 parts Mexican Beer, 3 parts tomato juice, 1 part lime juice, 2 dashes Worcestershire, 2 dashes tobasco 

The Diesel - 1 part Lager, 1 part cider, 1 dash Blackcurrant Cordial 

The Snake Bite - 1 part Lager, 1 part Cider

More research has brought us to Donovan - a true beer lover who offers an extensive list of Beer cocktails.  A few we liked:

Colaweizen - 1 part Hefeweizen, 1 part Cola

Radler - 2 parts Hefeweizen, 1 part Lemonade (Arnold Palmer, you've been trumped)

Black Pecker - Stout blended with Woodpecker Cider

Skip and Go Naked - Beer, Gin, Grenadine, Lemon Juice

for more:  visit website. 

Vintage Butchery

We've had a long standing obsession with info-graphics.  We can tell you that our love first blossomed with the most scientific of info-graphics, those that were hand painted, hand measured, obsessively drawn over candle-light.  Sometimes we even ponder, what if - what if I decided to spend my life drawing the flowers of the Amazon?  Sigh.

Needless to say, we've been lusting after these Vintage Butcher posters from Agent Gallery Chicago.  Some are still available, some are not.  Bummer.
 

1920's Lamb Butcher Poster  - $325

1950's Lamb Butcher Poster

1929 Butcher Shop Poster

1950's Pork Butcher Poster

We are also lusting after these.  Jealous are we of the lucky soul who owns these rose tinted glasses.

Fried and True

Some culinary matches are clearly made in heaven. Wine and cheese. Tea and honey. Bacon and eggs.

Booze and doughnuts.

Wait, what was that last one? We must be dreaming, you say?

Well, we needn't fantasize about getting our liquor with a side of fried pastry any longer. Zac Young, pastry chef at Flex Mussels, has already garnered a following for his innovative doughnuts with toothsome fillings - think salted cajeta and spiced chocolate. But now, he has made our wildest fantasies reality by offering a secret, off-menu selection of Boozy Doughnuts, as well. Amongst the spiked varieties offered are Absinthe Chocolate, Margarita, Blueberry Daiquiri, and Maker's Mark Caramel.

For those responsible commuters who would like to start their workday off with a Flex treat, however, Young has also opened a pop-up doughnut stand in Grand Central Terminal, on the Lower Concourse. He'll only be slinging his sweet saucers there until February 4th, though, so get them while they're hot.

As for us, we'll sidle up to the bar and order one of the Maker's Mark Caramel variety.

On second thought... better make that a double.

Via Serious Eats and UrbanDaddy