Top Row (from left): One World Coffee, raw milk, lardo, bacon. Bottom Row: beef cubes, Pub Cheddar, Cow Pie, Parmesan, Orange Cardamom Sausage

Today’s trip to Hendricks Farm yielded an impressive (and wallet-busting) array of treats), as well as an opportunity to chat at length with Bob del Grosso, who prepared both the sausage and the lardo.

I first read about lardo in Bill Buford’s Heat, and I remember salivating at his description of cured pig’s fat seasoned with rosemary and other spices. Bob’s version did not disappoint. Upon his suggestion, I tried it thinly sliced on some fresh bread, heated for a few minutes under the broiler. Fat lovers: hunt this stuff down!

The Parmesan and Pub Cheddar are old favorites, which I wrote about on an earlier visit to the farm. This was my first encounter with the cow pie, though. This bloomy rind cheese was surprisingly acidic. Had I known better, I would have thought it was chevre. Regardless, it was outstanding.

The beef cubes are for tomorrow’s stew. I was kicking myself on the drive home, when I realized that the one pound I picked up was far to little: forget about even the possibility of leftovers.

Finally, the coffee is from local roaster One Village Coffee. Evidently, they roast right down the road from the farm. This is a blend roasted especially for Hendrick’s Farm. I hope it lives up to the standards I have for the rest of their products.

November in Food Land takes us to the world of tasty, tasty fudge. Ok, so I stole the adjective directly from the name of this month’s subject: Betty’s Tasty Buttons. That’s laziness on the part of this food writer. Find out about founder Liz Begosh’s move to some fancy new digs. Go to article. (Sorry that Philly Weekly screwed up the formatting.)

I had no idea Dungeoness Crab even existed until I moved into my present apartment.  Even with my current knowledge that it’s a large crab found in the Pacific, it still ranks nowhere near Beer and Breakfast on my list of necessities.

Not that I’ve ever had breakfast at the Garden Court Eatery either.  Let’s be honest- its sole value in my life is limited to purveying beer, slightly stale kaiser rolls, and the occasional pint of Häagen-Dazs.  That’s convenience.

That’s a lot of meat.

From middle school and through high school, my family would spend Sunday dinner at my grandfather’s house. Grandpop still lived in the house in which my mother grew up; a fifteen minute drive from our home.

Dinner was a low-key affair. Sometimes there would be a pot of chicken soup that grandpop had recently cooked. But the core of the meal were cold cuts from the deli case at the Acme and rye and pumpernickel from Greenberg’s Bakery (no longer in existence) on Haverford Avenue. Grandpop certainly didn’t keep kosher, but all the same, there never was any ham. Instead, we would eat beef salami, turkey breast, and corned beef. There was generally some Jarlsberg light or Alpine Lace Swiss around the table, but I didn’t eat much cheese back then. And we also had some sides: potato salad and coleslaw.
Grandpop introduced me to the corned beef special. The sandwich is simple: just corned beef on rye topped with coleslaw and Russian dressing. It can get a little messy. I wasn’t a coleslaw enthusiast, nor did I really care for Russian dressing. But I bought into this combination: the sweetness of the dressing nicely counters the saltiness of the corned beef, with the coleslaw lending a little crunch.

An appreciation for the corned beef special is relatively low on the list of the things Grandpop gave me. But I still can’t help thinking about him when I go to my local deli, Koch’s Take Out Shop in West Philadelphia, for a sandwich. The sandwiches are similar, both featuring the thinly sliced corned beef I later learned was a Philadelphia hallmark. (New York delis usually serve corned beef hot, sliced thickly. For a local approximation, try Herschel’s in the Reading Terminal Market.)

The main difference that they load the sandwich with more corned beef than I would ever dare to use myself at Koch’s. I often tell myself I’ll eat half of the sandwich for lunch and save the other half for dinner. Lots of luck with that strategy. Most days, like this afternoon, it all goes done in one sitting. My mother would probably disapprove, but I have a feeling that Grandpop (who stayed as skinny, if not skinnier, than I am his whole life) still wouldn’t mind.

Rick Nichols, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, also found the concept of Dollar Dog Night noteworthy. He also had the wherewithal to make it to the first such event of the season and was less than ecstatic with what he found:

Workers who make an average of about $70 for a seven-hour shift feverishly dumped boxes of dogs on the grill tops, quickly stuffed them in buns, and wrapped them in steamy death shrouds of foil.

The result – big, gummy roll, barely warm lunch-meat-like dog – wasn’t too pretty.

As the old adage goes: you get what you pay for. For the record, I did attend the day game following the Dollar Dog Night, and had an Italian sausage. The sausage, which was grilled and served with peppers and onions, proved to be respectable. At $5.25, it was steep, but not savagely overpriced. More importantly, the line moved swiftly enough that we were in our seats before the first pitch.

Let’s go Phils!

Sure, it’s 45 degrees and misting outside. Still, I can’t lie: I have baseball fever. It’s opening day, and while I don’t have tickets to this afternoon’s game, that hasn’t stopped me from wearing my Chase Utley jersey for the first time since I received it for my birthday.Even though I’m not attending the game, I’m going to touch on the subject of ballpark food from afar. (A more in-depth overview will likely follow my first visit to a game, maybe as early as Thursday?)

First, it’s necessary to get one point of the way: going to the game with an empty stomach is like walking around with your open wallet in your hands, encouraging passers-by to help themselves. After an $8 roast pork sandwich from Tony Luke’s in Ashburn Alley, a $4 bucket of crab fries from Chickie & Pete’s, and a couple of $7 beers, I’ll be lucky if I have anything more than the subway token for the trip home left in my wallet.

Let no one think that I don’t heartily endorse any and all of the above items. But a hoagie from Planet Hoagie in Media or a roast pork from the original Tony Luke’s on Oregon Avenue are both cheaper than the ballpark equivalent, and you won’t necessarily miss an inning and a half of the action while waiting in line.

And with any rule, there are exceptions. While I’ve yet to attend one, the Dollar Dog Night promotion screams out affordability (almost as loudly as it does gluttony.) For someone who eats hotdogs very sporadically and selectively in real life, but frequently at the ballpark, I might have to put one of these events on the agenda. Sure, Phillies Franks might not “answer to a higher authority,” like my usual standby Hebrew National, they can’t taste too bad at the ballpark, especially for only one dollar.

No- not this Jim’s- the West Philly one. The one without any google images.

I couldn’t start writing about food in Philadelphia without paying notice to one hoary standard, the item that people across the nation associate with the city, the cheesesteak. While many here, with justifiable cause, have recently asserted the roast pork sandwich to be the true champion on a soft Italian roll, I can’t entirely turn my back on thinly sliced grilled beef, provolone cheese and properly caramelized onions.

For one, the cheesesteak is largely unavoidable. Unlike the roast pork sandwich, requiring advanced preparation and thus the expectation of a certain number of customers, any neighborhood joint can pull some sliced steak out of the cooler and toss it on their grill to order. As a result, in the city or the suburbs, the cheesesteak is never more than a short walk or drive away.

But in addition to the neighborhood standbys, often pizzerias with a grill to the side, exists a separate category of establishment, the destination cheesesteak emporium. Here, at places with some guy’s first name on the big sign out front, the grill is first and foremost, and meat is almost always cooking on it.

Inspired by the efforts of one sports-talk radio host, and his efforts to sample forty cheesesteaks in forty days, I began thinking about my own personal cheesesteak checklist. With neither a bank account nor arteries equipped for forty in forty, I figured I should, at the very least, get familiar with the options in my own backyard. I jumped in the car and drove deeper into West Philadelphia to the original Jim’s Steaks.

While Jim’s has the name recognition (and signed celebrity promo photos) to match other big boys like Geno’s, Pat’s, and Tony Lukes, most of this recognition undoubtedly stems from the location of its black and white tiled, brightly lit, two level space at the corner of Fourth and South, in a neighborhood bustling with foot traffic on any given weekend night. So, I had no idea what to expect after parking my car down the street from the original Jim’s Steaks on a quiet and unremarkable residential street in the Haddington section of West Philadelphia. Here was a destination name in an unambiguously neighborhood setting. The familiar font on the sign out front reassured me it would be okay to step inside.

Inside was a long, narrow room, with a grill with a sizeable portion of beef and onions sizzling away to my immediate left. Farther along the left side stood the cashier, followed by hoagie making station to the end of the room. On the right side, lining the wall, a counter, with room for ten at the most. One doesn’t go to cheesesteak joints for frills.

Unassuming surroundings aside, the grilling pile of beef reaffirmed the status of Jim’s as a destination establishment, where a steady clientele can be counted upon to keep the beef steadily cooking. And during my mid-afternoon visit, several hours after standard lunchtime, business was indeed brisk. The line didn’t take long, but in twenty minutes of waiting and eating, about a dozen customers passed through the room.
So, how was the steak? In a word, admirable. Chopped to the proper degree of fineness, the meat was hot, not overly greasy, and well-distributed when it went into the long roll, ensuring that the provolone cheese laid at the bottom of the roll was slightly melted by the time I bit into the steak. Caramelized onions, taken from a heaping pile at the end of the grill, were nicely incorporated into the meat. And the classic Amoroso roll, an often underappreciated component of the sandwich, was fresh, soft, but not squishy; an agreeable vessel for the ample filling.

Heading out the door, content with my discovery, I reflected on my earlier dichotomy. Jim’s in West Philly felt like a neighborhood standby but worthy of a drive at the same time. This cheesesteak didn’t change my life, but it helped cut the connection between the product and the hype. Shed of the crowds, neon, and chrome, this was simply a fine, familiar sandwich.