Evan Kleiman

Thinking about Inauguration Day food festivities all of a sudden I realized that this can’t be a beer and popcorn afternoon grazing session, or late night ice cream buffet.  No, Inauguration Day is a morning celebration.  We need to begin Tuesday morning with a bang, with a dish worthy of taking a day off to immerse ourselves in simple happiness.  The popover popped into my mind (yes, I did actually think that).   When was the last time you had a popover? 

I don’t know any friends who make them regularly.  I admit to occasionally running into Neiman Marcus just to have a bite of eggy, chewy buttery goodness with a bit of butter beaten with jam.  It’s that bit of jam that puts the popover into high gear.  Now’s the time to take that jar of special friend made or artisanal farmers market jam or preserves and crack it open.  Lay out an assortment of jams, jellies and preserves, maybe some lemon wedges, powdered sugar and if you want to be decadent some fresh ricotta whipped with a bit of sugar till super smooth in the food processor.  Dust some cinnamon on top.  Yum, no….YUM.

Thanksgiving in our house wasn't Thanksgiving without a stupid amount of chestnuts that needed to be roasted and peeled for stuffing. It was actually fun in a punishing sort of way. We were the house that hosted all the Thanksgiving orphans and to be able to eat on Thanksgiving you had to come over the night before and help roast and peel. Much hilarity ensued as everyone became convinced that their technique was the one way to peel the difficult buggers.

By the time the actual meal came around I was so full from tasting stuffing and eating the crumbled chestnuts that facing that groaning table made me want to groan.  So I had my own meal I created from the bigger meal around me.

Before we sat down to eat, while the adults were having a drink and cheese,  I became obsessed with my aunt's bowlfuls of Spanish peanuts, raisins and chocolate chips that were set throughout the living room.  Forget gorp or trail mix or even Chex mix. That combo was like eating the best cookie ever without the dough.

Big TV nights…what’s a restaurant owner to do?  I’ll tell you the last thing you want to do.  Stand in your empty place sobbing with your head on the bar.  There are a couple of nights a year when you are pretty much guaranteed to be hosting a bowling alley rather than a bustling “eatery”.  Those would be, the night of The Academy Awards and THE UPCOMING ELECTION NIGHT. 

So I decided to close Angeli Caffe on November 4th for in-house dining, but take-out?  Hold onto that phone!  It’s sure to be a night of fingerbiting, sighing, barely held in panic attacks and a lot of swearing at the television.  It’s a night that caps off a couple months of the most intensely escalating high anxiety most of us have ever experienced not brought on by ourselves.  The solution to get us through the night?  LET’S EAT!

This isn’t the night to savor a slow meal of a perfectly balanced plate of meat/fish/veggie entrée accompanied by two veg and a starch.  No, I think this night calls for hours of guilt free grazing.  Think crunchy, salty, (fatty?) bites.  Cheese boards with your favorite crackers you never let yourself have.  Full fat cheeses that seem like strangers to your home.

I was still in bed early one morning when I heard “scus me, scus me”.  When I was convinced she wasn’t going to go away I staggered out on my balcony and looked down.  A young Latina woman was looking up at me.  Yes? I asked.  In broken English she asked if she could take some of my yucca flowers.  At this point I have to say I was shocked.  Not shocked that she wanted the flowers, but really surprised that she asked and that this conversation was taking place in the light of day. 

For years roving crews of yucca flower robbers have been plundering my 30’ stands of mature yuccas in the middle of the night.  I’m alerted to them when all the dogs on the street start going nuts. Typically, one guy drives the truck while another jumps out wielding a long stick with a sharp blade at the end.  A long string operates the hooked blade, which chops off the 12 to 15 inch flowers.  Once, I was able to look into the bed of the truck and it was filled with piles of the unique spears of white waxy flowers.