Postcard from Long Island: Azuma

There's a tradition that says a bride and groom are supposed to save the top tier of their wedding cake and eat it on their first anniversary.

Last week, two of my closest friends celebrated their one-year anniversary. Their cake was swaddled in seven layers of plastic wrap and aluminum foil at their bride's mother's house.

A few days before their anniversary, I got this email:

"Ok, so i just got a crazy idea, and i'll understand if it's too last minute for y'alls but here it is: G and I are running out to L.I. tonight to pick up the year-old frozen cake. I thought maybe you'd like to come along and we can have dinner at Azuma." She added, "You of course might have already planned out your evening, which I totally understand. But you're totes invited to ours after for year-old cake anyways. (just kidding)."

I had been to Azuma once or twice before with my mother, who lives around the corner from the bride's mother.

It's not the most amazing restaurant by any means, but for that area, a suburban neighborhood, it's one of the more interesting places to nosh.

Azuma is your standard Japanese-with-a-touch-of-Asian-fusion restaurant, the kind of place that could have focused just on Japanese food, or just on sushi, or just on specialty rolls, but for its location and clientele.


Azuma's chicken teriyaki.

I imagine Azuma attracting an adventurous eater who lives nearby, but who also needs to convince his mother, wife, kids, or father-in-law — who happen to shutter at the thought of eating raw fish — to dine out with him. I imagine a middle-aged man who is enamored with the idea of eating a bright purple nugget of yellow tail side-by-side with warm banana, but whose wife demands, "What am I going to eat there?" Maybe he replies, "Honey, they have chicken teriyaki!" ($13) the most prominently displayed non-sushi dinner on the menu. Everyone's happy!

The first time I went to Azuma three or four years ago, I remember it vividly because it was my introduction to scallops served raw. Giant sea scallops are by far my favorite seafood, and a major part of my love for them has to do with texture. So to slurp at their buttery flesh, doused in a light and clear sauce, adorned with a streak of seaweed salad (another food that I swoon over) flecked with red pepper, and served in the shallow bed of a saucer-sized scallop shell was memorable. Ever since that experience, I have been on the hunt for a restaurant item that features raw scallops: ceviche, sushi, on the half shell.

My mother on that visit ordered a special roll called something like "snowy mountain," if I recall. It was your standard California roll buried in a haystack of shredded coconut and panko, which stuck to the roll via Japanese mayo.


Azuma's unappetizing sushi pizza.

On this most recent visit, a few of us shared a couple of things. The special tuna pizza, hastily designed, was a mess and a disaster in flavor profile: a Styrofoam matzoh-like flatbread, layers of sliced avocado, imitation crab meat shredded and piled atop and smothered in some kind of deep red barbecue sauce, with a scallion chiffonade garnish, which would not be its saving grace no matter how deftly sliced.

Much better, though surprisingly bland, were two special rolls not on the online menu. One, called "spicy girl," featuring salmon, lacked any spice or heat. The other, a tuna and banana roll, could have hit the mark, but seemed unseasoned, as if the vinegar had been left out of the rice. As I've become more attuned to sushi, I've slowly moved away from using wasabi and soy sauce to seek out the delicate essence of fish and other ingredients. However, these rolls needed something to punch them up. Dunk I did.

And, I did not eat the cake.


Azuma's spicy girl roll.

Azuma Sushi Asian Fusion
252 Broadway
Greenlawn, New York

Beer of the Month Club: Shipment 1

One of my birthday presents this year, from two of my very generous friends (thanks, guys), is a four-month Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club membership.

Around the middle of each month, a case of beer shows up on my doorstep. Each shipment contains both domestic and international microbrews. For the first delivery, I got three bottles each of four varieties (I'm down to just two bottles already): Buzzard Limited ale, Tallgrass Ale, Primátor Maibock, and Primátor Double Bock.

Of these three, my favorite was the Maibock, although the two Primátors were both very different from the ales.

The double bock, like most double bocks, is noticeably sweet. And this one was heavy, a sipping beer with a syrupy mouthfeel. The Maibock, on the other hand, is creamy but much more drinkable.

Of the two ales, I definitely preferred the Tallgrass, which boasted more flavor all around. Both were very dark brown, a bit hoppy and bitter, and with no head.

Review: Hill Country

Photo from New York Magazine's web site (2008), and courtesy of Hill Country.

Never has meat clung so fearfully to bone. Perhaps it was afraid of heat without smoke, of a cooking process that seized up its muscle without injecting or coaxing out any flavor whatsoever.

I don’t like to write negatively of a place where I’ve only eaten once, but I tried a lot of food at Hill Country, and all of it missed the mark. Hill Country is an utter failure in Texas-style barbecue, greasy, odorous, and sure to perpetuate any bad stereotypes New Yorkers—or maybe I should just say “I”—have about the lone star state.

“Give me whatever’s good,” I told the meat guy, “about 10 dollars’ worth.”

A complimentary bite of brisket wielded a soft and edible texture. Two or three giant beef ribs, at $5.99, however, were $5’s worth of bone and $0.99’s worth of gristle. An equally tough on-bone piece of pork ($3.24) was all peppercorn and oil, with little other flavor. I gnawed through what I could and threw the rest away. Corn pudding was gummy below a crust that was more like dried paste, a disgusting insult to the near $5 price.

Instead of natural meat juices, there is oil, and a lot of it. The roll of paper towels supplied on each table does little to cut through the slick. I tried to use only utensils to eat, yet somehow, the oil seeped upward onto the very handles of my knife and fork. It was everywhere. There was no escape. I felt like I had oil in my sleeves.

Happily, there was white bread, which I used to sponge up various vinegar-based sauces to tide me over.

What amazed me most of all were the dedicated patrons. I overheard two separate dupes in suits telling their lunch buddies while they waited in line, “Just wait! This place is awesome!” Perhaps in the world of bankers and lawyers, there is some pleasure in snarling over bones.

Hill Country
30 West 26th Street
New York, NY

Recipe: Pulled Pork from Braised Pork Shoulder

"I'm braising a pig’s shoulder for you!"

"Oh yes!" says Boyfriend. "That's pulled pork, right? I love pulled pork! Are we eating it for dinner?"

"Yes!"

We pound fists.

"Well," I say, trailing, as he freezes, mid high-five. "We are eating it for dinner, but not tonight. It takes eight hours to cook and a day to cool. So, we can eat it in two days."

He slunks, hangs his head, and turns to retreat to the couch.

How to Braise a Hunk of Pork
Step 1: Marinate
I started with a 5.5-pound piece of bone-in pork shoulder, which had a thick layer of skin and fat on one side.

First, I made a viscous marinade with about 2 tablespoons of Korean red pepper paste, a teaspoon or so of sesame oil, a few more teaspoons of olive oil, table salt, a pinch of black pepper, a few tablespoons of water just to thin it out.

Then I rubbed my washed and still wet hands all over the pork skin and meat to make sure there was nothing odd on it, like a shard of bone or prickly hair. I didn’t want to fully rinse the meat, but I did want to check it once over. Using my fingers and a small fork, I loosened some of the skin away from the meat where the shoulder joint was, and where there was less fat, and smeared some of the marinade inside. I coated the whole thing generously, using my hands and fingertips to massage it in.

The shoulder was then placed in a plastic bag containing one rough-chopped onion, a small head of garlic, peeled and separated, several dried bay leaves, and several stalks of celery with the leafy parts still attached. I left this in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Step 2: Sear
Next, I heated an enamel cast-iron Dutch oven on the stove top over a medium-high flame, while simultaneously bringing a few cups of water to a boil and preheating the oven to 250 Fahrenheit. The shoulder just barely fit in, skin side down. I like brown a bit until I heard a few nasty “pop!”s, then turned it over to brown some of the meat. When that also began to sound agitated, I laid the vegetables from the marinade into the pot, nestling them all around the pork.

The only problem with this method is that the direct heat made the red pepper paste go airborne, leaving me and my houseguest hacking and coughing for 20 minutes until it dissipated. When will I ever learn not to use hot pepper items in a dry and open pan?

Before sealing the Dutch oven with its heavy lid, I added the nearly boiling water as the braising liquid. My theory was that all the vegetables, as well as the juices from the pork and the marinade itself, would create a stock flavorful enough for me to get by with using water and not broth or another stock. Plus, I didn’t have any and when I went to the store earlier in the day, I didn’t have enough room in my bags to carry home one more thing.

After an hour or two, I checked the level of the liquid and topped it off with another 4 cups or so of boiling water, then lowered the temperature to about 220 F. It’s especially important to use hot liquid when braising because the temperature in the oven is low, and adding cool or even room-temperature water would quickly lower the temperature of the food and cooking vessel, essentially halting your cooking process.

Being skin-side up, the fat from the pork was melting into the meat, and the skin, which was above the liquid, had developed a beautiful browned crust.

Step 3: Rest (both you and the pig)
After 5 hours, I needed to get to bed, but I was really hoping to get a full 8 hours of cooking time in on this pork shoulder. So, I turned off the oven but left the pot in there. Seven hours later when I woke up, it was still warm to the touch. That’s when I moved it to the refrigerator to rest until later that night.

Step 4: Skim-n-Trim
The pig piece spent the day in the refrigerator, still in the Dutch oven. That evening, I removed the lid and found a ring of bright orange encircling the meat. It was fat, and it was stained with the red pepper paste. It had also separated cleanly from all the other gelled liquids and solids underneath, the stuff that would later become a sauce.

Taking advantage of the cool temperature of the fat, I used a fork to lift it away in large swaths. It came right up, neatly and cleanly.

There were more things I wanted to strain from the pot, like all those celery stalks, which were now stringy and soggy, and the bay leaves. To strain it, I would first have to reliquify everything — except of course the pork.


Step 5: Reheat and Shred
Back on the stovetop burner went the pot, over a low to medium flame. I jiggled and stirred until the bottom contents turned back into a sauce, at which point I tasted it and decided to add another three cups of hot water.

When it was all looking like a hot meal again, I hoisted the pork shoulder gently from the pot and set it on a jelly roll pan to remove the bone, sheet of fat, and other inedible bits. That's also the point at which I strained the sauce and returned about half of it to a simmer, reserving the other half for another time.

The piece of meat was so big, the insides were still cold when I began shredding the meat with a fork. Little by little, shred by shred, I returned the meat to the pot and let it reheat in the juices. When it was all done and everything was hot again, I turned it off, put the lid on, and waited for my friends to come over.

Step 6: Plate
Considering how aromatic the marinade was, almost all the finished product tasted cleanly porky and not at all like sesame oil or that lovely, sticky pepper paste. It was a bit of a shame because I was planning on having these slightly Asian-infused tacos, but what we got was more like typical pibil, which no one had a problem with whatsoever.

We ate the pork shoulder as tacos on soft corn tortillas with cilantro, avocado, diced red onion, black beans, Belizean hot sauce, and a squeeze of lime. Four hungry people didn't even eat half of it, so there's plenty left over now for — well, the hardest part is deciding what.

Ravioli?