Comfortable in-between

Page 2

Nevermind.

I take it back.

Endings are the hardest part.

Especially lately.

For me, anyway.

Or maybe it’s just transitions?

I went to North Carolina recently to help judge a chef throwdown at the Asheville Wine & Food Festival.

My friend Brooke came along for company, and on Friday night, our friend Thomas joined us.

Welcome to Asheville…

I needed the break.

But we were heading down a twisty road under a canopy of damp green to Canyon Kitchen in Cashiers, North Carolina.

From the table…

Chef John Fleer (formerly of Blackberry Farm) soon had us passing watermelon with goat cheese, chicken saltimbocca with Benton’s ham over Lazzaroli pasta and sweet tomatoes. For dessert it was Cruze buttermilk panna cotta with shortbread and blackberries.

Fleer is friends with Thomas, so he stopped by for a glass of wine at the end of the night and brought us a tuft of the panna cotta's special ingredient from the garden -- anise hyssop. We talked about Tuscan kale (his favorite ingredient at the moment), figs (his former favorite ingredient until he had trouble finding them locally), and the Dead Milkmen, a band that crashed on his floor during college.

He told us how he went from studying philosophy in graduate school at the UNC Chapel Hill(his father had been a professor at Wake Forest) to working in a kitchen for a woman who always had food under her fingernails.

Philosophy lost him to food. Academic philosophy, at least.

We started the next day at one of Asheville’s fantastically quirky tailgate markets.

We had stalks of okra swaddled in buttery sleeping bags.

Chocolate from chopsticks.

Goat cheese with bee pollen and lavender.

And beet-gorgonzola pastries that prompted a story from our host Dodie of the Asheville Convention & Visitors’ Bureau.

Dodie likes getting beets from her CSA farmer, and she once bonded over them with the guy who distributes the boxes.

Dodie (looking inside box): "Beets! I love beets."

CSA guy: "I know...Can’t you just imagine your insides all magenta."

This woman’s name is Tara.

She helps make this bread.

There's much more to say about Asheville. The city of about 70,000 has 17 active farmers' markets and more than 200 independent restaurants. They call it a Footopian Society, and I can't wait to get back.

Heard along the way:

No Mystery – Now You See Them (in the photo above)
Wildflowers – Tom Petty
Hit ‘Em Up Style - Carolina Chocolate Drops
Moon Song – Bob Schneider
There, There -- Radiohead
Far Away in Another Town – Justin Townes Earl

Picking plum

"Take the fruit from the tree, break the skin with your teeth

Is it bitter or sweet? All depends on your timing."

--Cleanse Song, Bright Eyes

Chicken fight

Earlier this summer, someone from the Village Voice wrote about "Nashville-style hot chicken" on a menu in Brooklyn.

Then my friend Dana at the Nashville Scene wrote about the Village Voice writing about "Nashville-style hot chicken" in Brooklyn.

Then someone from New York magazine wrote about Dana at the Nashville Scene writing about "Nashville-style hot chicken" in Brooklyn.

So I couldn’t help myself.

I wanted to write about it, too.

Is the chicken hot enough in Brooklyn? Can they take the heat? Are New Yorkers total hot chicken wimps? While these questions have been raised, I wonder if we should all just wave a greasy white napkin in surrender.

I don’t consider myself a hot chicken expert, and I’ve never attempted to make it. But I have had my share of Prince’s Hot Chicken, and in one of the most interesting afternoons of my existence, I took Thomas Keller there for lunch (More on that here.) So while I was in New York for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party this summer, I had to check out the Nashville-style chicken for myself at Peaches HotHouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Yes, a few differences should be noted.

At Peaches HotHouse the chicken is pleasantly orange. Like a sunset.

At Prince’s it’s rusty-brown like a paint chip from the walls of hell.

At Peaches HotHouse the chicken rests on a sturdy mattress of egg bread.

At Prince’s it sits on a standard-issue slice of white bread so thick with grease you could wring it out.

At Peaches HotHouse there are no windows for placing an order. No paper plates with celebrity signatures nailed to the wall. No vending machine in the corner. And -- brace yourselves purists -- no skillets for frying (they use a fryer instead).

So what about the heat?

When I visited Peaches HotHouse, I had to box up my chicken mid-meal and run off to the airport. I ended up missing my flight. So while waiting to speak with a ticket agent, I scarfed down the rest of it without a single…drop…of…water.

But all things considered, I love what the guys in New York are doing.

The crisp crust balances a bit of burn with a touch of sweet while holding together the moist, juicy insides. The chicken comes alongside a mound of mouth-cooling macaroni salad. Nice touch. And the egg bread, albeit it sans grease, adds sophistication. Lord knows we could stand to lay off the grease in Tennessee occasionally.

When it comes to heat, I spoke with Ben Grossman, one of the owners of Peaches HotHouse, who said truly “hot-hot” Prince’s-style versions can be cooked to order on request.

“The chicken that we serve up here is probably more like a medium down in Nashville,” he said. “But we do offer two more varieties of hot, hot chicken which you need to ask for. I remember when I was eating down at Prince’s I could only take a few bites.”

(Uh-huh.)

But then Ben almost earned a bless-your-heart merit badge when he added that he and his partner Craig Samuel – both Brooklynites – have a “Southern spirit.”

Ben said he learned about Prince’s through a Southern Foodways Alliance documentary (watch it here), and he visited Prince’s, Bolton’s and 400 Degrees on a trip through the South. His version of Nashville-style hot chicken on the Peaches HotHouse menu is his best-selling item. But it also makes up only about 20 percent of actual sales, because these guys (they’re classically trained chefs) have plenty more on the menu such a spicy-sweet watermelon and arugula salad with lime and ginger.

I appreciate that Peaches Hothouse isn’t trying to rip off our hot chicken – rather they're paying homage to it with their own version. And I like knowing that Nashville now has something to export besides country music.

Hot chicken on a stick at the Music City Hot Chicken Festival in July.

The line at the festival for Prince’s was outrageous. We waited for Bolton’s instead.

Bawk.



What to do after a hot chicken festival?

Drink moonshine!

For a different kind of burn...