New York Wine and Food Festival – Sunday’s Grand Tasting

Food Network New York City Wine and Food Festival Grand Tasting

Well, Food Network New York City Wine and Food Festival, you’ve triumphed over this little Dusty Baker.  I consider myself, like all contributors to this blog and our readers, to be a major foodie.  But this weekend did me in with all its deliciousness and mayhem.

The festival featured four days of delectable food and drink events benefiting the Food Bank For New York City, which fights hunger in the five boroughs; and Share Our Strength®, a national nonprofit working to end childhood hunger in America.  In 2010 the festival raised over $1.2 million dollars, and organizers promised that this year’s profits – 100% of which go directly to those organizations – would exceed previous benefits.  Food Network personalities hosted alcohol-heavy parties like Tacos and Tequila, The Best Thing I Ever Ate Between Bread, SWEET (an evening of over 30 dessert contributors), and two days of Grand Tasting and demos, a colossus of an event held at pier 57 where ticket-goers could eat and drink their way through some of the best food and wine NYC has to offer, and ogle at their beloved celebrity chefs.

I was fortunate to hop around at a few events.  I got my fill of audience-observing, which I always enjoy when a variety of people are shoved together.  And I chatted with a great number of culinary masters, mostly those you will not see on T.V., about their intricate creations and what makes their foodie tales wag.

But for the most part, I ate.  And then drank.  Then saw a demo.  Then tweeted something I overheard or particularly enjoyed.  Then ate, drank, watched, tweeted and repeated for over seven hours straight at Sunday’s Grand Tasting.  I tottered home and proceeded directly to my couch with a Britta full of water and the TV set to cooking shows.

So here is a personal account of my day at the final Grand Tasting.  Because food is personal, people.  Oh, and it’s hard to snap photos with a wine-glass in one hand, a plate/fork/spoon working in the other and a mouth that can’t stop going “mmmmmmmmmm!”  So sorry about that.  This post is devoid of awesome photos.

Advice for Tackling a Tasting:

• Hydrate: Chug a huge thing of coconut water or gatorade before entering.  Just trust me.
• Leave it at home: Go as empty handed as possible – these things love to give you free stuff, most of which you won’t want but people will climb over you to get anyway.  And if anything you’ll need your hands to balance plate and glasses.
• Go see the demos: this is where you get to learn from others and really get to talk food.  And it gives your stomach a break for a bit.
• Talk! to the chefs and sommeliers about what they do!  They’re seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who, for the most part, grab and go.  They want you to love their product and support their work…
• So support their work! If you particularly love something mark their card or take a pic of their product and find out where you can get it again.

Top Three Favorite Demos:

Alton Brown: Alton is one of very few food celebrities I have a nerdy brain-crush on, and his demo didn’t disappoint me in the slightest.  He teetered out in a plaid shirt, bowtie and fedora, looking much more youthful and spirited than other times I’ve seen him in person but a little worse for wear after his 3 straight days of noshing and hosting (I wasn’t exactly feeling chipper after my own late night either).  He launched into his science-heavy wine/cooking demo: after opening a bottle of rose with a hanging plant screw and electric drill, then chilling it in mere minutes by placing it in an ice bucket with salt-soaked ice and creating an endothermic reaction by spinning the bottle in place, he proceeded to pour himself a goblet-full and downed it in one go.  Way to set the bar, Alton.

With a glass of port he explained the novelty that are sheets of clear gelatin, blending the two together then making tiny little pearls of the wine by utilizing the natural separation of oil and water.  He then walked the audience through the procedure of sabering a champagne bottle open (make sure you chill the champagne upside down so the neck is really cold, line the saber up along the bottle’s seam, shake it a bit to get the bubbles on your side then slice in one quick motion at a 45 degree angle such as you would when dismantling a foe) then used liquid nitrogen to chill it into a sorbet.

As I walked out I overheard a woman say something along the lines of “that was fun but we didn’t learn anything that’s helpful in a home kitchen”.  I beg to differ, lady.  Expect port pearls and sabering uptown shortly.

The Beekman Boys

The Beekman Boys:  Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent Ridgeare are just delightful – two dudes who bought a farmhouse upstate to retreat to on weekends and then reverted to farming to pay the mortgage when they lost their jobs in 2008.  After inheriting about 80 goats, they turned to soap-making.  Then cheese-making.  Then baking and farming in general.

At the demo – evidently only the 3rd they’ve ever done – they walked their crowd (along with an audience member who joined them onstage) through making an “Eight-Minute Galette”, which they described as being the perfect pastry to whip up when a friend calls up from church on a Sunday and tells you they’ll be stopping by on their way home – in about 10 minutes.

With casual pander, humor and earnestness, Josh and Brent made the beautiful apple-rosemary free-form tart while expressing their love of seasonal foods, their upstate community and the model that has helped to make their brand.  And they succeeded in teaching a recipe that was almost impossible to forget: nothing to write down or research, the kind of heirloom recipe featured in their new book.  Look for my replica on TheDustyBaker.com this week.  And if you don’t see me on this site for a while, you can find me playing with goats on a farm upstate at Beekman 1802.

Michael Symon: The Greek and Sicilian Iron Chef has won my foodie-heart many times with his hearty combinations of old-school staples and contemporary techniques.  Along with making a basic pot roast (and being reminded of the simple pleasures of properly heating stainless steal, braising meat and making healthier sauces), Chef Symon spoke on the value of family dinner time (he and his wife of about 20 years have had dinner almost daily with their son), a balanced diet that moderates full fats, is loaded with vegetables and barely contains any processed food and his love for the culture that is behind food.

Symon’s roast was so well seasoned and seared that we could smell it from the middle of the audience in the incredibly lofty space.  And with the cold weather coming, I foresee that same smell coming from my apartment shortly.

Favorite Food!

Spicy-Sweet Canadian Whiskey

Um, as I think I’ve previously stated clearly enough, I ate a lot at this event.  Including things that I don’t normally eat (gluten!) that have me sitting here still in a food coma days later (so worth it!).  Veal sliders, homemade gnocci, cardamom dark chocolate, ceviche, glass upon glass of red, white, rose, sparkling and even some delicious Canadian whiskey (yep, it’s true, Canadian SpiceBox whiskey ain’t half bad).  But these little bites won me over so much so that I might have returned once or twice (or in Talde’s case, five times).  Thank goodness I’m uber-allergic to dairy and therefore couldn’t eat at least 50% of the offerings anyway – I might have keeled over if so.

Top Favorite: Dale Talde’s Perilla Salad: Buddakan’s Dale Talde plans to open his own little join in Prospect Park (7th Ave and 11th) any day now, and thank god, because I could have made a meal out of his little Perilla tastings.  The Asian-American one-bite salads featured sweet and spicy tamarind bacon, chillies and dried shrimp wrapped in a perilla leaf that to me tasted like a cross between spearmint and lemon thyme, with a soft texture.  It was the perfect combination of sweet and savory, rich and bright, and soft and crunchy.  I want more now.

Root Vegetable Stack from the Fat Radish

The Fat Radishe’s Root Vegetable Stack:

I was thankful to see, amongst the meat-and-dairy-heavy spread, this bright little stack of root veg topped with some crunchy veggie chips.

The texture had just enough bite to it while also being cooked to perfect sweetness.  My only slight wish was that the vegetables were seasoned a bit more – yes, showcase the natural flavors of the in-season vegetables, but when you only get one bite, you need to make sure all the flavor is in it.

Boqueria Tapas Bar and Restaurant’s Bacalao: Honestly, I don’t remember exactly what was on Boqueria’s tapas.  I do know it was a salad of codfish (being Portuguese I’m a sucker for it) on toast with lots of tart compliments for the salty fish.  So delicious I steered my roommate there directly as soon as she joined me midday.  And booked my table for dinner there next week.