Kernels: Nov 30-Dec 13, 2023
Miami, movies, marriage.
Kernels is a somewhat weekly column of what I’ve been up to lately — plus a list of upcoming events that may be worth your time. I’ll experiment with the format for the first few columns; any feedback or suggestions are appreciated! And feel free to scroll past any section that doesn’t interest you.
It’s been a very packed couple of weeks to start December. There was a bachelor party, a big wedding, a bunch of movies, and back-to-back holiday parties. No one intends for this to happen, but I do not suggest having a hangover two days in a row.
Squash Season
Cooking seasonally gets a bit repetitive during these winter months, as I’m basically just rotating between carrots and squash and beets, with the occasional cabbage. Last weekend, it was the squash’s turn, and I made a roasted butternut squash lasagna with leeks & sage, from a recipe in Anna Hezel’s Lasagna cookbook1. There’s no tomato or meat sauce, only béchamel and Monterey Jack cheese to bind the noodles to the vegetables, so it’s kind of like the baked pasta equivalent of a white pizza. Everything melded together really well, with a pronounced sage flavor, and it was a rare lasagna that wasn’t super heavy on the tummy. It needs a lot of pepper, and I accidentally put Sichuan peppercorns in my peppermill (don’t ask). The málà-esque sting actually worked really well with the lasagna!
Although this was very easy to make, it took a lot longer than anticipated because of my electric stovetop; when making the béchamel it took forever for the milk to boil.
There was some leftover squash that I didn’t use in the lasagna, so I searched for an easy way to use it in a quick meal and made orecchiette pasta with sage and brown butter. Not as good as the lasagna, but far less effort, which is more than sufficient for a weekday meal.
It’s Always Bean Season
I started working through my Q4 shipment from the Rancho Gordo Bean Club, cooking a batch of King City Pink beans. Most of it went into a polenta incantenata, taken from their provided recipe broadsheet. It’s basically a bean, kale, and vegetable stew that has cornmeal added to make it real thick. Quite hearty! With some of the leftover cooked beans, I refried them on Sunday morning and put them on some flour tortillas my roommate had left behind before heading home for the holidays.
One Weekend In Miami…
I spent the first few days of December at a bachelor party in a very un-wintry environment. With all the planning handled by the Best Bud2, it was very nice to just go wherever someone tells you to go. But it also felt like I was being shuttled around from place to place with no real sense of anything beyond the next event. We spent a lot of time sitting in cars as they crawled through seemingly endless gridlock, and after four days in Miami, I had learned less about the city than I had in places I’d visited for only two days. Perhaps this is how celebrities or touring musicians experience different cities. But these are minor gripes; I had a great time. Amidst all the degeneracy, here’s a few things I really enjoyed.
On our first night in town, we went to Cafe La Trova, a terrific cocktail bar with a live Son Cubano band. I was enjoying the music very much, but then the bartenders joined in, with one of them starting a trombone duet with the bandleader. Perhaps the best musical moment of my year.
Typical bachelor party outing, but also the highlight of my weekend: renting a boat to tour Miami, gawking at billionaire’s massive compounds and swimming in a secluded canal on Key Biscayne. The captain thanked us for playing music that largely avoided the Bad Bunny and reggaeton that he hears every day on the job.
I also loved drinking and dancing at The Sylvester and can’t recommend it enough, especially as a pre-game spot. There aren’t many bars like this in New York, where you’ll have an excellent cocktail but the vibes are giving neon lounge. The DJ that night, whose name I should have gotten, was a master on the faders, smoothly guiding the dancefloor from disco to reggaeton to throwback pop.
No better way to recover from a long weekend than eating pastries at Caracas Bakery. Highlights were a guava danish and a cachito (a soft bread filled with ham and cheese).
On my last day in Miami, those of us who had an evening flight spent time in Wynwood, which I’m informed is the most walkable neighborhood within city limits. The outdoor street art museum Wynwood Walls is very cool, but I pretty quickly picked up on the gaudy commercialization of the local art scene. Confusingly, there was a gallery on the museum grounds, run by a stockbroker turned collagist, whose work could only charitably be described as art.
A lot of this neighborhood seemed like a clone of Williamsburg, with painted murals and breweries populating the landscape. Smorgasburg is here too, with vendors offering the exact same things as their Brooklyn counterparts, and just as pricey. I didn’t eat anything, just took a lap around the market, and I’m glad I didn’t wait in any of those long lines as my last meal in Miami ended up being pretty great. The Peruvian restaurant Manta offered an ideal comfort dinner before going back home, where the temperature was thirty degrees lower.
Transit Films
When I’m on planes I like to look around to see what movies other passengers are watching. This is what I spotted on the three-ish hour flights to and from Miami:
At least two people saw Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One
Football, lots of football (my flight back to New York was on a Sunday evening)
Fox News
Clueless
Shaun of the Dead
And my friends watched The Hunt for Red October, Blade Runner 2049, and Drop Dead Gorgeous
A Wedding Banquet
A week after his bachelor party in Miami, my friend got married at The Monkey King in Bushwick, a Chinese restaurant with Bengali characteristics that I always talk about, not just because I know the owners and have two family members on staff. Hosting a wedding at a restaurant is a smart move, especially if they serve great food. To give an idea of the wedding vibe, I got to dust off my koi fish tuxedo, and also debuted a teal overcoat, a thrift find from the $5 rack, that needed new buttons, pockets, and lining. The bride, who is an excellent seamstress, rehabbed my coat, so she requested I wear it. I don’t have a good photo of me in the coat, oddly enough, but I’m sure the wedding photographer snapped some good ones.
The afterparty was next door at Ra Ra Rhino, a new tiki bar hidden in the back of a doughnut shop. I love the Pacific Rim cocktail, and they also have a $20 beer & shot & bump combo: Miller High Life, a well spirit, and a bump of caviar. Make your way there before TikTok ruins this place!
Things to See, Pieces to Read
Restaurant critic Ryan Sutton’s analysis on the rising costs of fine dining is essential for understanding how expensive meals have gotten even more expensive. I’ve been cutting back on fine dining the past few months (mostly because Noma was the cost of three of my usual tasting menus [more on Noma soon!!]), but Meju, Luthun, and Clover Hill are next up on my list for splurge meals. I also need to book a table at the new Filipino restaurant Naks, a new spot from Unapologetic Foods, the restaurant group behind Semma, Dhamaka, Adda, and Rowdy Rooster.
Speaking of Unapologetic Foods, they just launched Biryani Bol, where your biryani comes in a clay pot and all you need to do is bake it. The prices seem more than reasonable, especially if the quality is anywhere close to the goat biryani at Adda. I’ll have to try it out soon!
And the MoMA has announced the lineup for their annual “To Save and Project” series; my usual strategy with picking out movies to watch in such lineups is to just go whenever I have a free afternoon or evening. It’s almost always a rewarding experience: even if the film itself isn’t that great, it’ll at least be interesting. (One highlight that does stand out to me is the world premiere of an Andy Warhol film paired with a 35mm print of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If you want to truly make a day out of going to the movies.)
KitKat Meets Another Cat
They’ll become friends someday.
The next edition of Kernels will cover this past weekend, with a poutine party, a dinner at Frenchette, and Waiting for Godot. Very French-coded!.
the recipe for the butternut squash lasagna isn’t online, but send me a message if you want it!
the role of the Best Man was fulfilled by a woman, hence the gender-neutral phrasing.