It was in the early to mid-80s and I was about 10-11 years old. When we went to the supermarket, I would always have my parents buy me the little Pillsbury cookbooks that were in the check-out line. I remember one specific of the cookbook series because I made every single recipe in it, including a chocolate pudding pie. I crushed up chocolate Nabisco wafers, made a crust, poured in instant pudding and topped it with some sort of doctored-up Cool-Whip.
Last year at Artisan, I was planning for a dessert menu change for the summer and I pictured that chocolate pudding pie. We serve modern American food – so we put a modern twist on old classics – and I knew I could make a modern version of that pie that would take people back to their childhood. The challenge was taking that pie, which at the time you were 10 was the best you’d ever had, and updating that memory for your adult palate. I kept the crushed wafers as the familiar taste, put them at the bottom of a half pint Mason jar, put the chocolate custard on top, added a croquant for texture, and finished it with a marshmallow fluff in lieu of the Cool-Whip. After toasting the fluff with a blowtorch I ended up with a dessert that was reminiscent of chocolate pudding pie and s’mores, flavors that bring back fond memories to all!
There are those who are intuitive cooks. They can just rustle up some
ingredients from their pantry and freezer and blithely come up with a
smashing meal with the effortless grace that leaves someone like me
scratching their head feeling like a pair of brown shoes in a world of
Tuxedos.
Growing up in Galveston, Texas with parents who love good food gave me a million food memories. Chief among them are shrimp po-boys, fried oysters, endless Tex Mex and one little particular sandwich I’d always insist on grabbing from the Old Strand Emporium. Without giving too much of a history lesson about this "interesting" island off the gulf coast, Galveston was home to a booming port and bustling city during the end of the 19th century. While many things have come and gone, the Emporium is still there. Think high ceilings, Victorian-style general store with tons of candy. You can see why it was one of my favorite places to visit as a kid, but it wasn’t for the sweets or soda. It was for one particular sandwich that has been stuck in my head for over 30 years.
Last time I was at the supermarket, the cashier picked up my head of radicchio and punched in the code for red cabbage. The price came up as 70 cents.
During my first fall as a single person, I started eating fried fish
for dinner a few nights a week. I cooked it with ingredients I bought
at M2M, a Korean bodega across the street from my apartment building in
the East Village. M2M sold three types of fish: salmon, sole, and basa.
The salmon was bright orange and fat, the sole was thin and yellow with
odd raised bumps like pores, and the basa was light pink and
smooth-fleshed. I have a bourgeois distaste for salmon stemming from a
childhood vacation to France where it had was served at nearly every
meal, and I feared the wan, pebbly sole. So I always bought the basa,
despite the fact that before moving across the street from M2M I had
never heard of this fish.