Talking with My Mouth Full (22 page)

Our wedding menu

(
Courtesy of THUSS + FARRELL
)

The next course was fish: grilled striped bass with red wine, roasted figs, young turnips, braised romaine, and polenta. Even Jeremy agreed that it was sensational.

Due to noise regulations, we needed to be back inside the space by 10 p.m. We wanted to be quick about finishing dinner and a few short speeches, so we opted not to do a plated dessert, which meant no wedding cake. Instead, we served small bites of sweets that were easy to pick up and eat while dancing, even with a drink in the other hand.

The desserts included mini fruit tarts (peach, strawberry, and raspberry), French macaroons in vanilla and coffee, bite-sized banana marshmallows on sticks, strawberry sorbet bars dipped in dark chocolate.

To top it off, we asked City Bakery (a New York City institution we’ve been eating at for well over a decade) to make us a few hundred of their chocolate chip cookies. Their cookies are famously decadent, golden brown and crumbly around the edges, chewy and buttery in the center, with large chunks of semisweet chocolate scattered throughout. We set them out in giant glass jars, a nod to my mother’s kitchen counter.

It felt like the perfect summer feast: simple, fresh, and festive, with plenty of cocktails and lots of good wine.

I dreamed of having jars of my father’s famous homemade pickles for guests to take away. But I realized that shipping two hundred jars of kosher dills through U.S. Customs would be no easy task. Instead, we convinced Gus’s Pickles, one of New York’s oldest pickle merchants on the Lower East Side, to specially jar a batch for us, and we created a special label that read: “New York Pickles! They’re not as good as Ivor’s, but they’re pretty darn close!”

Then Jeremy and I went on our greatest trip to date: a honeymoon in Vietnam and Japan. Friends who knew the country well told us to start in Hanoi, the culturally rich capital, because it was quieter and we could acclimate before we made our way to Saigon, in the south, which they explained was much more intense.

As you can imagine, I did an enormous amount of research on where to go for all our meals. Through the course of my life, I seem to have developed a kind of food-related OCD, and can put a lot of pressure on myself about where and what I eat. The one place on the top of my list was a well-known family-run shop called Cha Ca La Vong in Hanoi’s old quarter. Cha Ca is a traditional Northern Vietnamese dish made with snake-head fish, turmeric, dill, salt-roasted peanuts, and yellow chili peppers on a bed of rice noodles. This little spot was said to make the ultimate version.

We landed in Hanoi and spent three glorious days exploring the city’s historic sites, and strategically planned that on our last full day we would go to Cha Ca La Vong for lunch. We spent the morning at the Temple of Literature (the country’s first university, founded in 1070) and Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, where his embalmed body lies. We lost track of time. In a panic we jumped into a cyclo (those bicycle-drawn rickshaws) and raced across town. When we arrived, they were already closing the shop and shut their door in our faces. There was no pretense of hospitality or charm. We pleaded, but they weren’t interested in listening.

I was determined to eat there before we left, so we decided to rearrange our schedule and go back for dinner. That night, we got roped into seeing a water puppet show—a ridiculously touristy performance we didn’t really need to attend. The show ended at nine, and I knew if we moved fast, we could make it to Cha Ca La Vong in time. We ran through the dizzying streets of the old quarter, navigating our way past chickens and children, old ladies aggressively prodding us to purchase their wares, souvenir vendors clamoring for our attention. Again, the moment we finally arrived, for the second time that day no less, they slammed the doors in front of us.

That was my limit. Maybe it was the combination of exhaustion from jet lag, the time change, the foreign locale, the claustrophobia of the heaving city, and the general culture shock, but it all just suddenly overwhelmed me and I broke down, sobbing loudly right there in the street. I was inconsolable. It was now getting late and everything was closing. There was nowhere else to eat dinner. Jeremy, God bless him, tried to calm me down. He put me in a cab and finally found us a badly lit buffet, where he made me a plate of tepid vegetables and unidentifiable meats. I sobbed harder.

“What’s wrong?” Jeremy kept asking. “What can I do?”

It was obviously about more than not getting to eat this one dish. I knew it wasn’t rational, but I couldn’t control myself. I cried all the way back to the hotel and was still weeping when we got into bed. Jeremy’s gentle attempt at consolation turned to frustration, and finally exhaustion. He rolled over and went to sleep. This, on the third day of our honeymoon. It’s a wonder he stayed married to me!

I woke up the next morning, my eyes puffy and swollen. I walked out onto our terrace and watched the city slowly wake from its slumber. It looked so much less menacing in the daylight and I was able come to terms with the events from the night before.

As I sat there, I came to realize that I don’t always have to check everything off my list or always clean my plate. My life is incredibly fortunate, in that there are still a million extraordinary experiences waiting to be had. There will always be another meal. Not every one has to count so much.

Jeremy woke up shortly after me and asked if everything was okay. He started to tell me how I needed to learn to let go. But, by then, I already had.

The rest of our trip was extraordinary. We flew to Hoi An and spent three days exploring its markets and ancient architecture. From there, we went to a small island in the South China Sea, off the coast of Nha Trang, where we hiked, lounged on the beach, and took boat trips to the daily market and a nearby lobster farm.

We ended the Vietnam portion of our trip in Saigon, which was just as intense and chaotic as we had been told. But the food there was truly outstanding. We relished the chance to sit on red plastic stools in front of stalls on the street where they meticulously cooked crab a hundred different ways. At the Ben Thanh night market, we feasted on whole grilled fish with chilies and lemongrass, and large river prawns poached in coconut milk and dill, then dipped in salt ground with chilies and lime. We ravenously consumed pâté-filled Banh Mi sandwiches, sugary sweet mangosteens, rich, earthy
pho
, and countless Vietnamese iced coffees.

Then we flew to Tokyo, armed with a list of restaurants that Jean-Georges Vongerichten had recommended through our friend Dorie Greenspan, the cookbook author I had befriended when first interviewing with Daniel. My most highly anticipated of these was a tiny restaurant run by a revered sushi chef, described to us only as the Yoda of sushi.

The streets of Tokyo create a labyrinth, and this restaurant was down a tiny, unmarked alley, in the heart of Shinjuku. The taxi couldn’t even find it. Eventually we set out on foot and were able to locate its unremarkable entrance. There were only eight seats. We were the only Caucasians in the room.

No one there spoke English. (In my experience there is little English spoken in Japan, unlike many other Asian countries, where you can get around pretty easily speaking English and perhaps a few words in the local vernacular, like “hello,” “sorry,” “please,” and “thank you.”) We were at their mercy. So we ordered the
omakase
, or tasting menu, and we just nodded and smiled as they started bringing us food.

We didn’t recognize half of what we were ingesting, endless bites of raw fish and meticulously sliced seafood, carefully constructed vegetable dishes, hot dumplings, immaculate sushi, seaweed that looked like tiny green fish eggs, which I later learned are called “sea grapes” or “sea caviar.”

At one point, the sushi chef passed us what looked like a large white mussel in a delicate broth. It tasted salty and soft, a little bit sweet.

“I wonder what this is.”

We shrugged our shoulders and kept eating. The sake flowed freely. We felt like we were in an alternate universe. We could only understand each other and could not get over how lucky we were that we had found ourselves in this master’s hands.

By the end of the night, it was just Jeremy, me, and two other patrons at the other end of the sushi bar. Eventually, the chef turned to us and in broken English asked what we were doing there. We gathered they rarely saw foreigners. We threw out the name Jean-Georges Vongerichten, hoping it would spark some recognition. He shrugged and went back to his work.

Suddenly, the man at the end of the bar piped up. “Jean-Georges? I sell him fish!”

It turned out this man was one of Tokyo’s leading fish distributors. He’d been working at the Tsukiji Fish Market since he was fourteen and supplied some of the greatest restaurants in the world. I asked if there was any way for us to get into the private and prized bluefin tuna auctions that happened each morning. I had been hoping to see them ever since I learned about the market so many years ago while working for Jeffrey. We’d been trying to find a guide, because you need special authorization to get in.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll take you. Meet me there tomorrow at five a.m.”

We went went back to our hotel, slept for two hours, then headed out. We realized we didn’t even know this man’s name, but we showed up that morning, and sure enough, there he was.

This extraordinary gentleman put passes around our necks and took us through the fresh and frozen tuna auctions, where all the bluefin tuna for the whole world is rated and sold.

“Stay close,” he told us. Then he pointed at a bag of soft white mounds. “That’s what you ate last night.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “What is it?”

“Cod sperm,” he replied, giggling.

Jeremy gulped. While at first I found it slightly shocking, perhaps it’s not that different from eating caviar, if you think about it.

The market was organized chaos. Everywhere we turned, men were hauling massive flats of fish in all shapes and sizes. The tuna themselves were moved around on the floor with giant hooks in their mouths. Each weighed hundreds of pounds. Dozens of people gathered, bells rang out around us, and the furious haggling of the auction began.

Afterward, our guide took us to the live section of the market, where they keep enormous tanks with creatures from the deep–octopi, eels, rays, blowfish. It was a sight to behold. Around 7 a.m. he took us for breakfast to a sushi restaurant just outside the main market building, the perfect end to our adventure. We flew home the next day to start our married life.

Morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market’s bluefin tuna auctions

There’s a bookstore in the West Village that sells vintage, hard-to-find, and first-edition cookbooks. The owner, Bonnie Slotnick, will hunt down special editions for you. My mother and I used to go there together every time she was in town. One day Bonnie called to say, “The book your mother ordered for you is in.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I went in and picked it up. It was an old Jewish cookbook called
A Treasure for My Daughter
, first published in 1950 and written by the Montreal chapter of Hadassah (a Jewish charitable organization) to which my grandmother belonged. It was a collection of traditional Jewish recipes and marital advice meant to include everything a good Jewish wife would need to know to nurture her household.

Plenty of the advice and recipes in it are outdated and hilarious: Prune whip. Baked gefilte fish molds. Giblet fricassee. Potato and liver blintzes. Haleshkes. Liver varenikes. Brain latkes ( yes, brain latkes). Yeast delights. What did they find delightful about yeast?

Ironically, this kind of nose-to-tail (although in the Jewish version, not with a pig!) cooking has come back in fashion lately. Chefs love cooking giblets, liver, and brains these days.

The trend makes a lot of sense. These dishes were born out of the need to stretch the dollar by using more inexpensive parts of the animal along with basic ingredients that could go a long way, too, like potatoes, onions, and cabbage. This is what my people ate in the old country, in the ghettos of Eastern Europe.

These working-class recipes born from necessity have become the hearty, ambitious food that chefs now praise and crave. You have to work hard to make these cuts tasty. It’s not an already-delicious piece like a New York strip. With knowledge and aptitude, though, the less popular cuts become exemplary, both in flavor and in affordability.

While I had no intention of making brain latkes for Jeremy, I was touched that my mother thought to find me that book. It’s a link to Jewish women before me and a direct connection to my grandmother. Besides, I’m happy for all the marriage advice I can get. It’s a struggle to find enough time with my husband while keeping a hectic work schedule, and we don’t even have children yet.

Now that I’m married, I also feel like I have a better answer to that clichéd question: Why are there so few female chefs with restaurant empires?

It’s definitely not because women don’t cook as well as men. But there are some logistical hurdles.