No, not Ann Arbor Tobacco and Firearms but rather the Ann Arbor Tortilla Factory of which I recently was able to sample some of their stone ground corn tortilla chips and fresh salsa. The salsa, a mish of fresh produce, closely resembles pico di gallo and included a few non-standard ingredients like radish and lime. The tortilla chips looked home made and each chip had seemingly been packaged with love and attention. Both products had an ingredient list that could be counted on one hand but best of all they were incredibly scrumptious. I can’t wait to try some of their other products.

http://www.a2tortilla.com/

I was reading about Polenta in Marcella Hazan’s book, “Essentials of Italian Cooking” (available at the Deli) because I’ve always enjoyed grits, and polenta is like yellow grits. She has an extensive write-up on Polenta and admonishes that the best way to cook it is by stirring in an open pot for 45 minutes. I was aghast. I’d never spent that long on polenta or grits and they tasted fine! Besides my limp geek wrists would give out long before the end. Then I saw that she had a cheater recipe that called for stirring for a minute every ten minutes of cooking - that I could do! So this morning I put 3 1/8 Cups of water, 3/4 Cups coarse italian polenta, and 1/2 Tablespoon salt in a pot and brought it to a boil. Her ratio for polenta to water is 1 x 4.2 which I honored and it worked great. I set the heat and my timer and walked away. First ten revealed soupy lava. Ouch, it’s amazing how hot polenta is when it splashes on you! Second ten pretty much what I’m used to seeing. Third ten same thing. Then something happened between 30 and 40 minutes - the polenta went from grainy to creamy and soft. I did another 10 minutes with an open pot stirring every few minutes and it thickened up a bit more. Though it did NOT pull away cleanly (!) from the sides of the pot, as she writes, it seemed ready to my hungry self. I added some butter, grated Parm, and half a tin of warmed Ortiz spanish tuna. Wow. Unlike any polenta I have ever made - there is something definitely magic that happens around 45 minutes in to the cooking and it is so much better I don’t think I can ever go back. The yield was a bit greater than 2 Cups which is perfect for me.

New York. Restaurants. Wow. Extremely well fed. Not enough time.

db Bistro Moderne Friday Night
Modern French-American bistro (duh)
Our ‘fanciest’ for the weekend - changed into nice shirts on the street after having been walking for a while.
What we had: The db Burger - stuffed with short ribs, foie gras, and black truffle, which is their trademark dish. Several of us had cocktails, great Old Fashioned. Other dishes included bacon wrapped salmon with roasted figs. Had some Madeira for dessert.

Otto Saturday Lunch
Mario Batali’s pizzeria
Billie’s favorite of the weekend. Most tables had young children. Lots of space.
What we had: Pizza Lardo (wow, texture), Pizza Vongole (mountain of clams, in the shells, atop the pizza), Pizza Quattro Stagioni, Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Alphonso Olives (purple). Good service.

LAN Saturday Dinner
Japanese Fusion
What we had: Sushi. Inventive. Fresh. Actually got Toro. They had a woman sushi chef! We were obviously the last people on the priority list for service, but they did a good job. Elph had a glass of Tokaj that he’d read about but never tried. Yummy desserts.

Shake Shack Saturday Afternoon
Union Square’s burger and shake joint in Madison Park
Billie stood in line for an hour and 40 minutes, waited another 20 minutes for food.
What she had: cheeseburger, rootbeer float

Union Square Cafe Sunday Brunch
Our second annual Sunday brunch at USC.
Our server Basha was great! They treated us very well. Love the service there!
What we had: raw oysters and champagne, grilled fillet mignon of tuna with wasabi mashed potatoes, black bean soup with Sherry, calamari, gnocci, USC french toast - they brought us several complimentary desserts. Had a nice cup of Sencha. We had a great window seat.

Little Giant Sunday Dinner
Friends of Zing, nice ambiance, music and light were great, it was getting cool and damp outside but it was warm inside, service was a little gruff
What we had: burrata, swine of the week - pork chops, egg cream with Stoli vanilla, short ribs, ginger mojito, cote du rhone (they had no Cab or Syrah). JoeG drank a Bee’s Knees - honey infused vodka, splash of ginger ale, twist.

More pics added to the NYC 2007 photo album.

This is a photo from our good friend Kristie at Mail Order. If you’re a discerning Zingernaut you can tell by the chairs, plates, and reflected rafters that this was taken on the Roadhouse patio. I really like the shot because of the reflection, but also because it conveys the feeling a having just enjoyed a really good meal and trying to savor that last bite (or gulp, in this case) for as long as possible. (Having just read Heat, I’m feeling rather poetic about food.)

It seems like in the finance and service driven work of ZingNet we often struggle with how to reach our Great Food! bottom line. We don’t cook food and we don’t sell food. But we do support businesses that do both.

IT sends out a survey whenever we close a trouble ticket. The feedback we’ve gotten has all been in a similar vein: bring food.

ZingNet huddles every-other-week, usually twice a month, and there is always food at the meeting. ZingNet is also striving to establish a presence in all the businesses.

Thinking of these things while noshing on some Rick’s Picks, I thought, “ZingNet needs to eat more. We need to get lost in the land of a thousand flavors.” (more…)

The movie. I’m not a big Walt Disney fan so I had low expectations. I had heard good things about the movie from friends but honestly I don’t trust my friends taste in movies to match my own.

There’s a distinct lack of technology present in Ratatouille.

I was laughing by 10 minutes in and continued to enjoy the movie all the way through to the sickly sweet ending. It’s great. The references to food, food prep, and the back of house of restaurants was fun in a strange way - it was like our little arcane world of food service was being opened up for everyone to see.

If you are in the food service or a foodie, go see it.

Menu: baked chicken marinated in buttermilk, garlic, rosemary; grilled corn on the cob; arugula salad tossed with Lincoln Log and raspberries; s’mores made with Bakehouse graham crackers and marshmellows.

We ran a mini game around inventorying all the computers in the ZCoB and won!  Our reward was attending the ZingFeast on June 28, 2007.

Beverages:
Fresh Strawberry Spritzer
Wild Mulberry Spritzer

Starters:
Grilled Norwegian Mackarel served with a gooseberry chutney atop a crostini
Cold Sour Cherry Soup topped with Marcona almonds
Fresh Arugula Salad tossed with fresh goat cheese, raspberries and tarragon

Mains:
Fresh Twigs & Berries - a salad of whole-wheat berries, sunflower sprouts, fresh cherries, herbs, onions and apple cider vinaigrette
New York Style New Potatoes simply boiled and served with Michigan farm butter
Organic Roasted Pork Shoulder slow roasted with blueberries, vinegar, bay leaves and onions

Dessert:
Fresh raspberry sorbet

Billie reintroduced an idea today that grabbed our interest. We have been doing our IT department dinners every couple of months but haven’t really leveraged our connections with the Zingerman’s businesses. What we’d like to do is work with the Zingerman’s businesses and build on current promotions of food  (such as Australian month) to craft our IT dinner and then we’d blog about it afterwards and share with the world our enthusiasms - further promoting the food!

We all got together at Craig & Jenny’s house to cook dinner last Friday. The menu: flounder stuffed with mushrooms topped with a tomato reduction; grilled asparagus with pecorino; corn chowder; homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries. Jillian’s taking the picture. More pics here…