who's the new guy?

Hello,

Thanks to Nick and Brie for the invite.

I'm Matt, and I have been cooking professionally for about 5 years now. Nick and I have nerded it up with food ever since we met many years ago, he was just smart enough not to get into the food industry! Truth is I love my line of work, and I love thinking, talking, and learning about food, so its great to have a new outlet like this blog. Plus i'm always curious what people with normal lives outside of professional kitchens eat on a daily basis.

I've been super inspired lately and cooking my ass off at home and at the restaurant where i work, so i have alot of meals i'd love to share and discuss on here, but first its food-related xmas wishlist time:


Wine glasses - as much as i want fancy riedel glasses, i just need some decent, large and thin red wine glasses. anybody know of a good source?

Urban Italian by Andrew Carmellini. This book looks awesome. He was the chef at Cafe Boulud for some time, then opened A Voce, an upscale Italian restaurant in manhattan. Now hes unemployed, hoping to open another place in NYC soon. In the meantime, him and his wife wrote this book, about cooking simple Italian food in a tiny new york apartment. Ive been on a serious italian food kick lately so all of these recipes, especially the short ribs braciole, make me super hungry. I guess theres some pretty unreal kitchen stories too which is probably the real reason why i want this.

Balsamico. I mean like really old, really small bottle, really concentrated. I've never had a really exceptional one, save for the Villa Manadori, which is great. I've been cooking alot with saba lately, which i love, but i want that special bottle of the good stuff.

Razor Clams. I have never cooked with these, and can never seem to find them in markets. I think we can get them through city fish at the restaurant where i work, but i really want a shellfishing license so i can go out and get my own, now that i live so close to the shore. One of my favorite things to eat in NYC is the dish of razor clams at Casa Mono, Mario Batali's spanish tapas restaurant near Union Square. They are thrown, split and with the shell still attached, onto a hot flat top (they call it a plancha in spain) until they carmelize and firm up nicely, meanwhile the cook mixes a vinaigrette in a bowl, just lemon juice, tons of garlic, spanish olive oil, chopped parsley, and salt and pepper. The clams are just piled on a plate and the vinaigrette is poured over. Extremely simple, delicious and fun to eat.

Iberico Ham. Speaking of Spain, if anybody has ever had this type of ham, they'll understand why i want this so bad. The product of a very special breed of pig, raised in a very special way in the Extremadurra region of Spain, this dry cured ham is some of the best in the world. The best hams, called Bellota, are taken from black footed pigs who graze solely on acorns, their flesh and fat become perfumed by that nuttiness. It only became legal to sell in the United States last year or earlier this year i believe. Amazing flavor and texture, too bad its so goddamn expensive. Anyone want to go in on a whole ham?

Chitarra. A Chittara is an old fashioned device used for cutting pasta. It looks like a board with a bunch of guitar strings attached. The dough is rolled over the surface of the wires and is cut into the desired shape, usually spaghetti.

How about y'all?