Chef Anand "AJ" Jayapal

On this episode of Wendalicious:

• Chef Anand “AJ” Jayapal, the new Food & Beverage Director for the Mallozzi Group.  AJ was born in India, spent many years in kitchens all across the Capital Region, and created a food company dedicated to bringing Indian flavors to life here in American kitchens – Miss Sydney’s Secret Family Recipes.  But – AJ wasn’t always a chef, and his background may surprise you.
• Diane Conroy-LaCivita,  owner of Harmony House Marketplace in Cohoes, a unique food and arts destination in New York’s Capital District.
• The 8th Annual Jewish Food Festival, taking place on April 3rd at Congregation Gates of Heaven in Schenectady
• News Roundup, including Girl Scouts gone digital, and the latest battle in the global Cupcake Wars.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW:

Links from today’s Show:

• Miss Sydney’s Secret Family Recipes, (518) 768-8113 or 1-866-215-3316
• Mallozzi Group
• Harmony House Marketplace
• Jewish Food Festival

Music credits from today’s show:

• Wendalicious by Matt Francisco and Karl Eisenhart of Pinnacle
• Peeps by Antioquia (source: Mevio.com)
• Uneducated Guess by 3rd Man (source: Mevio.com)

Today’s Poll:

Yesterday, the Spro coffeeshop in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood started offering 12-ounce servings of Aida’s Grand Reserve for $13.  That comes out to a bit more than a dollar an ounce, and that’s for plain old black coffee, sans foam or other milk-accoutrements.

“It’s really a fantastic kind of coffee,” said Spro owner Jay Caragay. “It’s very juicy, fruity, good mouth feel, medium bodied.”

I’m sure it’s delicious, but really – thirteen dollars a cup?

Aida Grand Reserve is grown in El Salvador by a woman named Aida Batlle; Aida apparently operates three legendary estates which regularly produce award-winning coffees.  Ms. Batlle’s family has been coffee-farming for 5 generations, but the business didn’t flourish until Aida took the farms over.  (Here’s a link to a blog post that describes how she came to take over her farm, and how her coffee came to be so expensive.  I glossed over the parts about the “cupping” because the whole idea seems way too pretentious for me).

I love coffee.  Love love love it.  I will spend a little more to get good beans, but this seems like price gouging to me.  Perhaps I’m not as much of a coffee snob as I think I am.  Thank God, because if I were, I’d probably be broke.  I am somewhat snobby, though, as evidenced by my most recent purchase:

La Cafetière Titania 8-cup French Press

All that being said, if anyone in NY’s Capital District knows where I can get my hands on a cup of this stuff, I might be willing to try it, just to see if it’s worth it.  Anyone?

Profussor, this coffee would probably taste delightful with a donut.

Tomorrow (Thursday, July 2), municipalities in Schenectady County will be competing for the title of Best Drinking Water in Schenectady County.  The Town of Rotterdam is the reigning champ, and will be defending its title against Niskayuna, Glenville, Duanesburg, Princetown, the Village of Scotia and the City of Schenectady.  The prize?  Bragging rights, and a trip to the regional competition for the chance to compete for the State finals held at the New York State Fair in Syracuse.

Last week, Albany County hosted its own contest among Albany, Latham, Bethlehem and the villages of Altamont and Green Island.  Latham emerged as the winner in that contest, and will go head to head against winners from Schenectady County and other counties in the regional semifinals.

If you want to cast your vote for the most delicious H2O in Schenectady County, head on down to the Downtown Farmers Market between the hours of 11am-1pm.  The downtown market is located on the corner of Jay Street and Liberty Street near City Hall.

Here’s my question: what taste components comprise a superior municipal water supply?

Take a sip of water; roll it over the tongue. Taste buds immediately begin firing off information to the brain about the liquid’s flavor. Is it salty? Earthy? Soft?   Listen in during a water-tasting contest and you might think that you are privy to a sampling from some of California’s best wine cellars. Clean. Silky. Brilliant. Not all drinking waters warrant these superlatives. For instance, if you had attended a recent water tasting in a southeastern city, you would have heard comments such as crude, with an edge … or like a taking a gulp from a swimming pool … while another judge remarked that a sample tasted like a guppy had swum in it.

That quote is from an article in the December 2001 issue of Aqueduct Magazine, a publication of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.  The article goes on to list a few of the things to look for in a quality drinking water:

• The absence of sulphur or chlorine (sulphur is that rotten-egg smell, and everyone recognizes chlorine from the swimming pool)
• For water to taste correctly on the palate, there must be certain minerals present. Potassium, magnesium, calcium and even small amounts of sodium give water its fullness. Water without these minerals (such as distilled water) tastes flat and dull
• The right balance of those minerals: too many minerals and the water can taste metallic.  Too few, and you’ve got dull water
• A “roundness” of flavor, again provided by those minerals.  Minerals such as potassium, magnesium, calcium and silica give water a softness.  ”They give water roundness on the tongue as opposed to water produced by reverse osmosis, which oftentimes is bland tasting. Water should taste as if it had just been scooped from a running stream,” says Arthur von Wiesenberger, a Santa Barbara author of several water books and a trained water master.

There’s a lot more to water than meets the eye, apparently.  Want to conduct your own water tasting?  Here’s what you need to know.

Which brings up the larger question of our personal sources and containers for drinking water.

Of course we all know that water has of late achieved its own kind of snobbery – Evian, Fuji, SmartWater, and those restaurants that maintain “Water Lists” and employ “Water Sommeliers” (yes, I’m serious).  Municipal drinking water is most assuredly not in the same category as these upscale waters.  But why not?  There is absolutely nothing wrong with municipal drinking water – in fact, many brands of  ”purified drinking water” are actually taken from municipal supplies.  Just check the bottle – you’ll see that I’m right!

Our local Coca-Cola bottling plant fills its Dasani bottles with water from that award-winning Latham water supply!  They “purify” the water through reverse osmosis (removing the minerals), and then add back a proprietary blend of minerals, so that every bottle of Dasani tastes the same, no matter where you buy it.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Dasani’s website.

This subterfuge does not apply to spring water, which is exactly what it says it is: sourced from a spring.

Personally, I have made the decision to stop using bottled water (too much PET plastic, which is a peteroleum-drived product) and instead fill my stainless-steel water bottle from my fridge.  Clifton Park water tastes just fine to me.  One small step…but others are making bigger ones.

• Always at the cutting edge of cuisine and social change, Alice Waters stopped offering bottled water at her legendary Chez Panisse.  She was concerned about the amount of energy expended to get bottled water (Pellegrino, I’m guessing) from Italy to California.
• Mill Valley, California (must be in the water out there) is one of a growing list of 60 American cities that have canceled bottled water contracts. Except for emergencies, Mill Valley has decided that bottled water is wasteful and largely unnecessary when we’ve invested heavily in a safe and reliable public water supply.
• If you must use a disposable bottle: Plant It Water™ recently launched its new “un-bottled” spring water, with packaging made from more than 60 percent renewable materials. The company is one of the first in the U.S. to offer water in a recyclable carton.  Plant It Water packaging uses materials from sources like plant fibers. Tetra Pak, the maker of the package, is considered one of the most sustainable liquid food packages on the market and won the presidential medal for sustainable development in 1996 by former Vice President Al Gore.

Here’s a fact for you: Most bottled water is sold in small plastic containers.  The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) estimates Americans buy more than 28 billion single serving bottles annually. Most people assume the vast majority of plastic bottles are recycled, but that is not the case, as the market for recycling plastic is not as well developed as the infrastructure for recycling glass or paper.  Fabulous.

I seem to have digressed, but I think I’m coming to a point: let’s celebrate our municipal drinking water supplies!  They’re plentiful, tasty, and it’s good for the environment to eschew the plastic bottles and just stick a glass under the ol’ faucet.

I plan to visit the Schenectady Downtown Farmers Market tomorrow to “take the waters”.  I hope to see you there!

Well, I actually don’t like Martinis (unless they’ve been all girlified, like a Choco-tini), but this is still nutty.  People got too much money.

Irony Wine.  I love it.

I haven’t yet seen this wine on the shelves here in the CP (and no one up here carries it just yet, according to the website), but I am going to run right down to the liquor store and ask them to order me some.   With a name like that, how can I resist?

From the Irony Wine website:  Did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? Most of us didn’t imagine where we would be right now. Sure, we dreamed of being firemen, astronauts, rock stars and superheroes, but life often takes you where you didn’t expect it to.

I’ll say.

Irony Wines makes Napa Valley Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon; Russian River Valley Pinot Noir; and Monterey Pinot Noir.

I feel it is my duty to you, my readers, to find some of this wine and drink it.  You can count on me!

This first one was taken at 5:30am at the McDonald’s in Albany International Airport.  It was the sign on the machine that made me laugh.  You can’t see it very well in the photo, but here’s what it says:

“DO NOT PLACE ANYTHING UNDER MCFLURRY MACHINE, DRINKMAKERS, OR DISPENSERS.”

This next one is one I honestly need help deciphering.  It was taken in the Detroit Airport this afternoon, while we were sitting at the bar enjoying a cocktail.  The bottle in the center of the (very blurry) photo is a bottle of Gentleman Jack – which is a new whisky, “charcoal mellowed twice”, made by Jack Daniels.  My question regards the thing upon which it is sitting: is that a scale, some sort of inventory control device?  I’ve never seen one before, and was hoping someone out there might know.  Please help!

Your next question is: what were you doing in Kentucky?  I was visiting my in-laws, who have a hot tub.  Yee haw!  (Oh, and we met up with some of Bob’s family, too.)  I’m happy to be back in crappy upstate NY.  I hate being friendly to strangers, which is apparently some kind of LAW out there.

I feel obligated to add a food entry today…so here’s one of my all-time favorite breakfasts.

Creamy Brown Rice Pudding

• 3 cups cooked brown rice
• 4 cups skim milk
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 Tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sweetener of your choice (brown sugar, Turbinado sugar, Splenda, etc.)

Heat rice and milk together in a large pot over medium heat; bring to a boil, stirring as needed. Turn heat down to simmer, and cook uncovered until mixture thickens, about 7 minutes.

Mix together eggs, cornstarch and water, stirring with a whisk until smooth. Add egg mixture to rice mixture, and cook stirring constantly until very thick – about 3 minutes.

Remove from heat, and stir in cinnamon, vanilla, and sweetener. Serve warm or cold. It’s also really good if you add about 2/3 cup raisins or dried cranberries with the rice/milk mixture at the beginning. Makes a lot.  Just be careful not to get any eggshells in it (yes, I did that yesterday).

And, a random thought – am I the only one who absolutely LOVES diet ginger ale? I think I drank a six pack yesterday.

I was headed to the gym after work, running about 10 minutes behind schedule (par for my course). When I arrived at the gym, there was not one parking space in the whole lot. Seriously. I’m not just making up excuses. SO – I figured I’d better just go and get something for dinner before my 6:30pm appointment. I neglected to plan ahead, so ended up getting a salad at a place called Nothing but Noodles (the irony of my food order does not escape me). I hate salad. Even more than I hate tequila (which I don’t hate anymore, incidentally. See my recipe below. Apparently we were just drinking really baaaad tequila in college – duh).

I didn’t get done with my appointment until 8:00, and there’s no way I’m going to the gym two hours before bed.

SO – I’m back to Day One tomorrow. Unlike Gov. Spitzer, I get a do-over.

Recipe of the Day:

A Simply Awesome Margarita

• Juice of one lime
• 1.5oz Sauza Hornitos Reposada tequila
• 1oz triple sec liqueur
• a splash of orange juice

Add to ice in shaker; shake until your fingers freeze. Pour into salted or unsalted margarita glass (or coffee mug, whichever’s handy), and garnish with a squeeze of lime. Drink responsibly.

Wendalicious Must-Buy:

Italian Sausage Seasoning from Penzey’s. It makes 99% fat-free ground turkey taste like sausage – honestly. It’s a miracle spice blend.