Top 10 most interesting and unusual things found in the new Bay Ridge Key Food

(Bay Ridge Ave. between Ridge and Third Aves.)

With a neighborhood as international as Bay Ridge, when the new Key Food opened last year its shelves were stocked with ethnic foods of all types, side-by-side the generic grocery store items found everywhere. Here are the top ten most interesting and unusual items found within the confines of the store.

1) Butter Ghee - Clarified butter made from simmering unsalted butter to remove all the water content; ghee has a sacred role in Hindu libation and anointment rituals, but more commonly used in Pakistani cuisine as an ideal frying medium because of its super high smoke point - around 485-degrees F.

2) Chayote - No vegetable has more personality than chayote. They're pursed up like they have something to say but can't. When I walk by, I hear "MMmmm!!!!" It's a vegetable pear from Mexico that can be mashed, pickled, fried, boiled or eaten raw but tastes pretty bland on its own.

3) Zataar - A lemony, rich Arabic spice blend eaten as a simple, Lebanese breakfast; otherwise a leafy plant on its own, not unlike oregano.

4) Whole green cardamon - Used in both food and drink somehow; supposedly one of the great food medicines used to cure everything from kidney stones to snake and scorpion bites. Green cardamon seeds are more commonly ground up and used as a sweetener.

5) Tamarind in the pod - Eaten in many cultures, but prevalent in thai cooking; the seeds need to be taken out of the pod, soaked in water, then put through a serious strainer. Has a bittersweet flavor.

6) Tofu pups - The original vegetarian hot dog. So wrong. "A tasty tofu treat ready for all the toppings you can handle, without all the extra fat and cholesterol your body doesn't want to handle."

7) Lamb ribs - More of a farmstand treat than general supermarket fare, braise 'em, but watch out because they'll have less fat than pork ribs, so add some of your own for moisture's sake!

8) Lamb heads - Or as my Dad pointed out, Capozzelli. Dad's heard of this and even had it as a kid. Whole head here. Teeth, tongue sticking out dead. Eyeballs. Head. It's an exotic dish now, but, as you might guess, has roots in peasant food. Par-boil it, then bake it like a Thanksgiving turkey and serve with some spaghetti.


9) Cabra al Vino - Drunken Goat Cheese. Goat cheese submerged in a bath of wine, giving it a purple hue with a mild, sweet taste.

10) Bell and Evans Air-chilled chicken - I didn't become a vegan after reading Eating Animals, but I did give up chicken. Why? The water-chilled part. After being killed, most commercially made chicken is kept refrigerated by submersion in vats of chilled water for a period of hours. Sometimes the water's chlorinated, sometimes it's not. Either way, imagine what that looks like. Now imagine some of that sludge in your chicken. The USDA allows up to 8% of chicken weight to be from water absorbed during this process.

An omnivore forages in New Jersey

Foraging in Jersey: Hook-Caught Catfish with Greens

By Mike Benigno
for Eat* Like a Vegetarian

Last summer and this, I’ve been thinking more and more about foraging for wild food. Some time off, put away the watch, ditch the cell phone, live off the land. Or at least pretend to.

While it may have not worked out too well for Chris McCandless in Into the Wild and I haven’t read the Krakauer book that inspired the movie, I’ve been building a small library of “livin’-off-the-land” food books, with the centerpieces being two works by Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Blue Eyed Oyster, and Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Asparagus is Gibbons’ guide to living off of wild, foraged food, identifying and proselytizing about close to 50 types of hunter/gatherer treats found right here in the northeast.

At and around Kittatinny Lake, my grandfather used to forage for cardone, a green, leafy weed that grew about as big as a large fern. Staring out the window of the car, walking to get the mail or while rooting around the yard, he’d memorize where plants were and when it was harvest day he’d be on his hands and knees, knife in the ground, uprooting the plants before piling them high on the backyard table. The stems were breaded and fried like chicken cutlets and came off the frying pan like stringy celery but milder and coated in fried goodness – pure, down-home comfort. They were usually gone or close to gone before anyone had ever sat down at the table.

Last week, the catfish were good for hooking. Over the course of the week with a friend, we managed to hook over 20 pounds of catfish, the biggest being a 4-pounder, with several that were over 3 1/2. On Tuesday evening I picked through one of two good worm spots I discovered, foraged the bait and got out to fish the sunset still-water between 6:30 and 8 (the best daytime action). I was on my way back to the dock when I thought I’d try a spot just off a house directly across from ours. Sure enough, I landed a high-3 lb. catty, came home, relaxed, dispatched the thing, then filleted it in the backyard. Last few years, I’ve gotten filleting down to about ten minutes for a catfish, much less for a bass.

I used a sharp knife, a pot of ice to keep the filets chilled and fresh, and proceeded to first cut the head off, pull out the guts, slit the bottom, then cut one filet off as close and even as possible. I got both sides off in two clean pieces, flipped them, skinned the outside, put them back into the ice water, then went back for the bottom flaps which didn’t make the filet cut (two fatty pieces near the pectoral fins). Inside, I washed off all, made an egg wash, coated them in what was meant to be a coating for fried chicken that I’d picked up (a kit from Ad Hoc, Thomas Keller’s simple California restaurant), and put them into about a half-inch of hot stove-top oil until golden brown. I sat down outside with the golden filets with some horseradish sauce, along with a side of mixed collard greens and red kale, cooked in some bacon with onion.

The result was a modern day forage. I turned a few backyard worms into a catfish into a meal on a plate and sat in the same yard where my grandfather would stack up his wild plants. To boot, as I ate out back near the lake, the fish carcass still stood on the cleaning block.

Hey, this is America, right?

Mike Benigno is a freelance writer and self-proclaimed omnivore. He lives in Brooklyn where he can be found fishing in nearby Jamaica Bay with his video camera. He is the author of Lines In the Street, a blog about fishing in urban areas. He can be reached at mikebenigo[at]hotmail.com

dogfish 120 will have to wait, they say

The good folks over at Ski Bar, Bay Ridge, will no doubt verify this and probably be in mourning for the next few weeks, but according to Dogfish Brewery, the most recent batch of in-progress nectar-of-the-Gods, superbeer -120-minute IPA - will never see the light of day.

"Dozens of passionate people at Dogfish got out voted by millions of yeast cells and this batch will not be released," brewer Sam Calagione wrote in a press release. "This batch came in a bit under attenuated and got dinged on our sensory panel for dislocated flavors."

Sam and the Dogfish folks.... I can't blame them for not wanting to release an inferior product, and they promise that there'll be some 120 coming out before year's end, but in the meanwhile all you can do is sit back, grab some 90-minute or early released fall seasonal brew or something.

If you're like me, however, there's no substitute for the 120. About a week ago, I was singing its song to my favorite local barkeep over at the Ski, saying how, basically, 120-minute ruined beer for me forever. Once you've had a sip - or even a smell, for that matter - of this potent elixir, you'll know you'll never, ever, by more impressed by a beer. Last fall's batch ranked in at 22% ABV or, according to some, even higher. And let me tell you this - it's an experience. It took me and a friend close to 45 minutes to finish our pints, and each sip was like taking a shot of concentrated, rich, deep, dark beer. Sweet, potent and powerful. A sensory experience in a glass.

Buy it when you see it. Even if it costs $15 a pint. It's been a year now and I'm still talking about it.