Paul Caine

Mushroom Farm, Kennett Square

Senator Duane and partner (fiancé?) Nice day for a parade, not so oppressive.

Great article about Tastykake in Philadelphia magazine. (I’m a month late to the story. This blog is like six months late to being reanimated. Expect more - I’m done with school.) After recounting what seems to be a typical Philly tale of a political insider taking over a dying legacy business that’s not so much a business as it is a dumping ground for city money, the author muses on the consequences:

Tastykake is a creature of the business world it inhabits, a world where a weak private sector doesn’t typically lead the public sector, but rather depends on it for subsidies and aid.

“In Philadelphia, it’s very much who you know, and not how good your ideas are,” says Stephen Van Dyck, the former CEO of MariTrans Shipping. After 25 years in Philadelphia, Van Dyck grew so frustrated with the city’s business culture — and the stream of public funding he saw going to private enterprise in the form of cash for stadiums, Delaware River dredging and the effort to keep shipbuilding alive at the Navy Yard — that he relocated his firm from Market Street to Tampa in 1999. 

It’s like we feel bad for those companies — ones with the right connections, at any rate — unfortunate enough to be headquartered here (Comcast excluded). They are so weak, so fragile, and there are so few of them that, even in dire financial times, virtually no objections were raised when Pizzi asked for a little public assistance. And it is, after all, Tastykake we’re talking about.

Philadelphia’s first integrated housing development, currently 50-something years old. Amazing homes, some designed by Louis Kahn (in whose old studio I am currently sitting). Woodsy vibe.

From The New Yorker, 2/4/1991

younglovescalendar:

Saturday, January 15, 7 p.m.: Radere (record release) + Anduin (Richmond, VA) + DJ Andrew Joseph (Philly) $5 donation

Radere is Carl Ritger, a local musician working hard to make this city safe for the deepest, most all-encompassing journeys in sound. It was he (along with DJ Andrew Joseph,…

I’ve been meaning to upload this guy for months!

Boy has it been a while. That’s because I’ve been so busy. I am still busy! 

Courtesy of World Cafe Live and its (evidently terrible) patrons.

“Sons, lock up your dads: Wilco to start work on new album this month!”

—A really lame headline, courtesy of Tiny Mix Tapes. 

To my own inbox, this time:

Hi,
 Thanks for your respond in regards to our puppies. Ricky (male) and Lola(female) are the 2 available puppies awaiting a new home. They are hand raised, hand fed, potty and home trained domestics. They have a good relationship with other home pets, well socialized, pre-spoiled. They are Vet checked with updated vet records, current on vaccines, shots and wormed. They have an excellent temperament ,they have wonderful and great personalities, exceptional champion bloodlines. They are close ringed, closed bonded. They are kennel club registered, tested and proven .Their nails are well trimmed . They have crate equivalent toys ,a free bag of an organic feed and food menu with other accessories .They are fast learners,like playing ,full of fun and very sensitive. They are ready for their new home and going out for an adoption, they have adapted to the following:
-They eat 2 to 3 times daily and have adapted to that.
-They take to order like when you ask them to lie down.
We are giving them for adoption because we are being moved to lots of
different places due to the nature of our job which also requires a
lot of time. We realized they are going to be lonely and as you know
they are very delicate creatures and need a lot of care and devotion
and that is why we are looking and have decided to give them out to a
loving and caring home where they will be loved, cared for and will be
given all the time and attention that they need, maintained and brought
up, they will meet up with any requirements if need be. we are located
in HONOLULU in HAWAII

 Do you have any puppy presently? What breed, Small Description?
-Are you taking both puppies? If not male or female.
-Do you have a large yard that they can play?
 You will be paying but the  transportation fee to your home.We shall
be waiting to hear from you soon so that we can proceed with all
arrangements.

All we need for these lovely babies is love and care and if
you are willing to take very good care of these cute babies we will
let you have it OK.All you need to do is pay for the delivery fees
which is $250 for each of the puppies and $500 for both puppies so if
you are interested ,we will need your full delivery address so that we
can get these babies registered and delivered to you OK.so get back
with these information’s.
-your full names
-house address
-contact number
-state
-nearest airport to your home

 with this address we will get these babies registered and delivered
to you and we hope you will take very good care of these babies as
part of your family.We will be shipping them from Honolulu
International Airport .We shall be using a reliable delivery agency
which offers home delivery services so the puppies will be delivered
at your door steps.They also have well trained vet specialist that
will take proper care of pets during flight.The shipping fee will be
paid directly to the shipping company.
.
STAY BLESSED

Here’s a response to some article about some writing professor who sent some e-mail denigrating South Carolina and praising New York. Interesting, the perception of the city from outside of it.

I just don’t understand what’s left in New York. It’s a bunch of circles of rich people. Bankers, socialites, reality show stars, housewives, media personalities, celebrities, etc. What is in New York that is original? You can attend the shows and events that this professor recommends…but aren’t a whole host of other writers attending the same things? Writing about the same things? Why must one go to some cultural mecca to become a great cultural icon? Why not forge an original path as a solitary genius? (these aren’t criticisms of you, just general questions) 

today’s New York seems insular and self-serving and completely counterproductive to innovation and originality. I honestly don’t know what a writer would find inspirational about it. 

I interviewed the Arcade Fire for the A.V. Club. In order to introduce it on this site, I wrote a really long anti-PR post that, in the heat of the moment, seemed completely appropriate. But I learned long ago to sit on these sorts of passionate cris de coeur for at least a day before unfurling them across the internet, and I’m glad I did so in this case. That said, I will share one paragraph about my experience, which scans as acceptable a few days later:

And so it was with this Arcade Fire interview. After delaying the interview several times and promising me I could speak with Win or Regine, the PR person met me at the interview site and told me I was going to speak with Jeremy and Richard, the drummer and utility multi-instrumentalist, respectively. That’s fine—they’re both great guys and fantastic musicians—but that’s also not what we agreed upon. But what could I do? This was The Arcade Fire, and I was but one in a long string of prostrating journalists.

Oh, Arcade Fire. I recently read a fantastic piece by Matt Feeney in The American Scene, in which he eviscerates the song “City With No Children.” After flagging a particularly cringeworthy line, he concludes:

 In that moment, I realize that my allegiance to Arcade Fire has been a fragile construct built on a combination of anxiety that they had it in them to say such a thing and relief that they had miraculously avoided saying it so far. But now that they’ve said it, so doggedly, so willfully, I can’t help thinking it’s what they’ve been trying to say all along.

It could very well be true!

Via my friend Matthew, a very adorable 409 scam:

Hello,
 
My name is Robin Hebert, I am an Oncologist Doctor, i work for different prominent hospital, I came across your email address through am email surfing Affiliated with the US chamber of Commerce, and My late Grandma was a puppy breeder, She died about 4 months ago and she left 1 Female English Bulldog,1 Maltese and 1 Female Yorkshire Terrier before she pass a way, one of the Female puppy recently had a litter 3 puppies, They are so adorable,Due to my job as a Oncologist , My job do not allow me to take good care of these babies, I would have love to take care of them myself but due to the nature of my job i do hardly have time for my self, So i want to find them caring & loving parent who will take good care of them and willing to adopt,if you interested in having one of them, Please contact me as soon as possible (and be specified with the puppy you want English Bulldog, Maltese and Yorkie) and I will email you with the full details on how to go about adopting them.
 
Looking forward to your prompt e-mail again.
Thanks.
Robin Hebert RN

A few years ago, we got the chance to tour a Dallis Bros. Coffee Roasting Facility. It was beautiful! Big, shiny industrial roasters (costing upwards of 13,000 dollars) producing the most heavenly smell.

Then, here and there, we started hearing about people roasting their own coffee. It seemed like too much work, possibly too costly. Then we read on Boing Boing about a guy who was roasting his own coffee with an air popper. Neat! Except we didn’t have an air popper, we had a Whirley Pop. 

What’s a Whirley Pop, you ask?

We saw one at a thrift store in Atlantic City, and since one of us is a devoted popcorn-eater, the other one of us very kindly purchased it to enable the other’s popcorn-eating. (Even if you don’t buy it from a thrift store for a few dollars, a new one costs a reasonable 20 dollars or so.) We wondered whether it was possible to use the Whirley Pop instead of an air popper. Turns out, it is!  Not only is it possible, but it works beautifully well. 

Step 1: Buy green beans from Sweet Maria’s (about 6.80/lb).

Step 2: Roast the beans as you would popcorn kernels. It’s important that you don’t stop turning. Our subpar first batch was due to constant peeking to see if it was done, and we learned instead to listen for the cracking of the beans. That’s when it’s about done. 

Step 3: Dump the beans in a colander and let it sit for 24 hours. 

Step 4: Grind the beans fresh daily. We use a French press which grinds a little coarser than drip coffee.

Step 5: Enjoy a truly spectacular cup of coffee. It’s sort of ruined us for anything but this process—which sounds elaborate— but is really quite simple and cost-efficient. 

Beet Blood

Clark Park Farmer’s Market Cucumber

Smoking Habit: chicken we smoked then assembled with mustard + spices sauce on homemade quick-rise hamburger bun.

A morning delight of potato, corn, onion, apple cider vinegar, gochu flakes + two perfectly cooked eggs.

The most adorable pattypan squash gifted by a lovely neighbor—Katie P— stuffed with bacon, squash innards, onion and garlic.

Here is an interesting fact: the best recipe for fried shrimp is easily accessed by typing “long john silvers fish batter” into Google and clicking on the first link. Here is another fact, this one less interesting: you will feel sick if you just fry twenty shrimp and eat them in rapid succession, straight off the oil-saturated paper towel. We’ve done this many times and its always a case of diminishing returns. But what to do? How to complement the world’s best fried shrimp recipe?

Answer: Make a misleadingly named take on shrimp and grits.

First we sautéed corn, basil, and spring onions for a couple of minutes. Next, we brought some beef stock to a simmer and slowly added a little bit of agar, Once the agar dissolved, we dumped in polenta, the sautéed corn, and some grated pecorino, and stirred until the mixture was pretty stiff but still malleable. Once at the proper consistency, the polenta/corn mash was portioned into a bunch of silicone cupcake molds (thanks, mom!), which then went into the freezer to stiffen up.

When the polenta cakes began to hold their shape, they were removed from the molds and pan-seared until golden, at which point they sort of looked like scallops. These were assembled on a plate with the fried shrimp, and the whole finished product - the shrimp and scallops, if you will - was topped with a rich tomato sauce (prepared with chicken stock and pecorino), and then topped with a little more pecorino.

This meal is emblematic of our talent in taking inherently healthy ingredients (shrimp, polenta, corn) and combining them into something less so.

Final observation: Polenta is insane. You put a tiny sprinkling into liquid and it grows and grows, like one of those sponges that fits into a pill casing but explodes into a large-ish shark or dinosaur when exposed to warm bathwater. We have been using the same small bag of polenta for well over a year.

The Clark Park farmer’s market, despite any previous statements to the contrary, is an obnoxious place. It teems with overgrown, overall-wearing liberal arts casualties sipping middling $3 lattes from Green Line Cafe, soldiers deep in the trenches of the tote bag wars, perpetual graduate students. It’s an event that requires rapid ingress and egress, and sadly the apple seller was so mobbed that I had to overhear at least three insipid conversations while waiting to pick up our bounty.

At home: Made a basic tart crust, shoved it into a glass pan with fingertips, baked it for a few minutes until some gold peeked out the top. Peeled the apples, sliced them thin with a mandoline, and stacked them atop the crust, interrupting each layer with a sprinkle of cinnamon, sugar, and butter. Baked for maybe 45 minutes. The result: a pretty good approximation of something the archetypal grandmother might have made, had she made tarts and not the more commonly cited pies.

The construction of the trash can smoker has been something of a game-changer around Urban Provincial HQ. On Saturday, we attempted our longest smoke yet—a 7 lb pork butt purchased at Reading Terminal Market.

On Friday night, we made a rub out of brown sugar, white sugar, korean red pepper flakes, cumin, salt, and pepper. We slathered the pork butt in mustard, and then coated with the rub. In the early morning, we threw it on the smoker, which was burning apple wood. 10 hours later, we pulled the pork butt from the smoker, and proceeded to pull it apart and devour it.

Meet our garden.

On Sunday morning, we watched the Food Network - particularly, a competition involving trash can smokers. This event, which I think took place at the old Airstream diner/outdoor pavilion/vacant lot at Lorimer and Metropolitan in Williamsburg, made frequent use of the term “DIY.”

That afternoon, we pogoed from Home Depot to Lowe’s to Home Depot to Target to Ikea, finding supplies to build a homegrown electric smoker. After we’d put everything together, we smoked pork loin and shark, and the result tasted like a wildfire, and not in a good way, if that’s even possible. Clearly, we would need to recalibrate.

Which brings us to tonight, our second stab at the smoker. We started with trout, brined it, smoked it for an hour and then finished in the oven. (The oven was foolish; we shouldn’t have rushed it. Finishing out the trout in the smoker would led to a more tender result.) Served alongside a killer mango chutney, prepared with onion, mint and basil from our container garden, and homemade hot sauce.

We like the Reading Terminal Market. When we first arrived in Philadelphia, this was not necessarily the case. It seemed loud, crowded, confusing to navigate. Most people walking through were similarly lost. Over time, the market has revealed its charms to us. Today, one of the resident butchers was selling these inordinately thick lamb loins, and a vegetable seller had in-shell English peas. Meanwhile at home, the swiss chard was not going to eat itself.

We marinated the lamb chops in minced basil, garlic, and champagne (not a pro tip so much as a matter of circumstance), and seared them on a smoking cast-iron pan before being placed in a hot oven. At the same time, we sauteed the swiss chard with bacon and onions, then simmered the result in chicken stock. To make the sauce, we softened some onions, added and reduced some red wine, and mixed in some horseradish. Very simple.

At the very end, we threw the peas into the swiss chard. Buying peas in the shell is confusing - you need a massive amount of shells to produce a small amount of peas. Good to know.

All the same, a hearty meal. A Thursday night luxury.

Hearty pain perdu. Lots of sugar, bacon, eggs - this is a breakfast to be prepared…infrequently. Of note: baking bacon, rather than frying it, results in better bacon. Good to know.

Here marks the point at which we realized a mandoline was far more than a dangerous gadget, and got serious about purchasing one. While these chips were delicious—and oven baked, no less—making cut after uneven cut with a knife that could probably stand to be sharper was a turning point.

So we bought a mandoline. Soon you’ll see some examples of the food we make with that mandoline. But not yet.

Have you ever made a last minute decision to do something pretty onerous and time-consuming? Because last weekend, we spontaneously decided to spend the day at Hersheypark. Neither of us had been on a roller coaster in a very long time, and Hersheypark is far away. That said, we gradually convinced one another to make the trip, all the while preparing an early lunch of japchae.

We cooked each vegetable—carrots, scallions, onions, garlic, bell peppers—separately, put them all in a big metal bowl, and added glass noodles and stir-fried Quorn. We tossed the noodles with sesame oil and soy sauce, and that was our lunch. By the time we’d finished eating, we were already in a rush to get to the amusement park.

Sadly, the japchae wasn’t fantastic. It was edible, sure, but it was missing something. Who knows what—we didn’t care all that much, because we assumed we’d be eating chocolate all day. And that’s what happened! We took the Hershey’s Chocolate World tour, purchased a milk shake in the choco-centric gift shop, and spent a pleasant day in the town that chocolate built.

And on the way home, we got lost in the Milton Hershey School, a gorgeous boarding school for underprivileged children. According to Wikipedia, the school’s endowment is nearly $8 billion. We are somehow not surprised. The second-largest rotunda in the world doesn’t come for free. It comes from chocolate.

Some words and phrases are a pleasure to say out loud. “Melon ball,” for example, or “onomatopœia.” What pleasant phrases. To this vaguely sketched-out list we might add “tteokbokki”—say it “duck pucky”—or rice cakes in a spicy sauce. It’s a popular Korean street food dish, available for a couple of dollars all over Seoul, and it’s delicious. That’s the plate on the left. We purchased the tteok and boiled it with gochujang, our massive collard greens, anchovies, garlic, onions, and soy sauce. 

We’ve written before about our fantastic grocery store, the H-Mart of Upper Darby. They sell bulgogi prepared with a variety of meats—we purchased pork, and stir-fried it with habanero peppers, beautiful heirloom bell peppers from the farmer’s market, and various aromatics. That’s the dish in the middle.

Finally, we took some incredible arugula from the farmer’s market, and tossed it with lemon juice, salt, olive oil, and heirloom tomatoes. Nothing complicated. That’s on the right.

This meal was how we broke our (non-existent, illusory) fast from Yom Kippur. Oh well. The meal was delicious, at least. Shana tova. 

The story of our pizza oven is long and complicated. We began with an initial burst of energy and optimism, resulting in the acquisition of a barbeque grill, a propane burner, and the metalworking services of Metal Dimensions in Brooklyn—all in a matter of hours. But then we slowed down quite a bit. Lacking appropriate pizza stones, we were unable to crank the oven up to the 700 or 800 degree temperatures we wanted without burning the bottoms to a crisp. In order to use the oven at all, we had to keep the temperature at around 350 degrees, thus defeating the purpose of constructing a dedicated pizza oven. An example of one of our mediocre results from that era is here.

A few days ago we bought two Fibrament stones, known for their place in commercial kitchens. These are far better at conducting heat than the random tiles we’d purchased at Home Depot, and much more durable. Yesterday one of us installed the stones in the oven, and last night we tested the whole apparatus, using dough purchased from an unremarkable local pizzeria.

What an incredible difference. For the first time, we’re getting the oven to produce at the level we’d like. The above pizza was cooked in three minutes at around 750 degrees, and it shows in the color, crispiness, and puffiness of the cornicione. It tasted great, too: For this particular test we topped the pizza with garlic, mozzarella, and barbeque chicken from the Pennsylvania Dutch family that sets up their pit smokers on Clark Park every Thursday afternoon.

Sometimes, a sandwich isn’t just a sandwich—it’s an experiment that could soon go horribly off the rails. Continuing a series one of us began on a personal blog, we’d like to welcome Experimental Sandwiches to provincial regions. First up, a shrimp and zucchini sandwich.

Components

-Shrimp, simmered with Korean chili paste
-Zucchini, simmered along with the shrimp
-Fresh basil
-Raw onions
-Sriracha mayo
-Grocery store bread

Remarks

Extraordinarily messy. Too much bread. Good flavors.

We—and by we, we mean all of us, not just us, understand?—live in an absurd food climate. (Things were especially ridiculous when we lived in Brooklyn, a place where no one ever cooks but everyone seems to know exactly which vegetable should be consumed at exactly which point in the season.) It is a climate where food is more useful as a conversation topic, as social capital, as literal conspicuous consumption, than a precursor to delicious meals. Certain ingredients go in and out of vogue at breakneck speeds, such that, say, pork belly is now lamented as a cliché, mere years after well-meaning urbanites discovered it in the first place. Ramps have become a controversial item. It’s nonsense, really.

This meal was delightfully resistant to trends. Pork tenderloin—maybe the least cool cut of the pig, but certainly tasty—along with black sweet rice and kale. Easy, basic, delicious.

We started by marinating the tenderloin overnight in wine, garlic, shallots, hot red pepper, rosemary, salt and pepper. The next day, we put it in the oven for about 20 or 30 minutes. While that was cooking, we put the rice in the rice cooker and the kale in the wok, along with some onions and basil. Once everything was done we put it on a plate.

A few days ago one of us spent the weekend at a friend’s parents’ house in coastal Connecticut, not far from New London, along with several other like-minded compatriots. We ate lobster and went to the beach and made mischief out by the docks, and whenever we’d come back to the house, we’d lay about in tastefully appointed rooms and read back copies of Cook’s Illustrated.

What a magazine. Everyone who’s read it knows how great it is—the drawings, the science, the gentle authority—but neither of us had ever actually cooked a recipe from the magazine. So we started with something basic: roasted potatoes. We sliced the potatoes into 1/2” slices, parboiled them for five minutes, shook them in salt and oil until the surface was slightly abraded, and then placed them in the oven. After 25 minutes we flipped them, and after another 25 minutes they were done. Crispy on the outside, plenty moist on the inside. No complaints. Served with mustard, beer, and fatigue.

Elsewhere! One of us is in Vancouver. Back soon!

Once upon a time, one of us was a finalist for the management trainee program at General Mills. We both consider this the luckiest job rejection either of us has ever received. Of course, for a person with an interest in consumer-products marketing, General Mills is something of a holy grail—you’ve just got to be comfortable selling items like this, this, this, and this. If you read this blog, you’ll perceive quite quickly that this person is neither of us. (We would, however, be more than comfortable selling this. Ecstatic, even.)

But there’s a time and place for everything, and when it comes to the great American tradition of taco night, we are happy to welcome a General Mills product to our table: Old El Paso hard taco shells. They’ve always been there for us, an ideal medium for the artistic creations that go within. But not this time! Here they were stale, chewy, presumably a victim of the sort of moisture that even modern food science hasn’t completely banished. Oh well. We had to make do.

We began by sautéing corn, onions and chili powder together in a pan, chili powder being the only even remotely Latin American spice in our pantry. In a separate pan, we fried some bacon until crispy and then mixed it into the corn, leaving the bacon grease in the original pan. We then added tomato sauce and Sriracha to the corn/onion/bacon mixture, and kept it at high heat to thicken. In the pan with the bacon grease we added garlic, onions, Quorn grounds, chili powder, and lemon juice, along with a splash of hot sauce, and cooked for a few minutes, until the onions softened.

As is customary, this meal was a self-serve affair, with the “meat,” corn relish, Colby Jack cheese, and spring onions presented in separate bowls for individual assembly. And if you’re wondering where we bought such a fetching table, you should know it’s not a table at all. It’s our roof. 

I’m a writer and graduate student who lives in Philadelphia, PA. From the end of 2008 to the beginning of 2010 I worked for The A.V. Club, the arts-and-culture adjunct to The Onion, where I wrote about music and culture. I currently freelance for a number of publications, including The A.V. Club and Nylon. As a student, I’m currently enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania’s city planning program, where I study neighborhoods, real estate, and economic development. I’m particularly interested in changes in use, as well as innovative private and public development. I graduate in 2012.

Since last fall, I’ve worked for John Doyle at Doyle Real Estate Advisors. Over the past few months, I’ve had a hand in historic rehabilitation tax credit applications, BRAC (base realignment and closure) recommendations for defunct military installations, and lots of affordable housing work. This summer, I’m working in the redevelopment department of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust; projects include activating Philadelphia’s Market East corridor and arranging alternative uses for traditional regional malls.  

My resume can be found below; peruse at will. To contact me about writing, e-mail me at paulcaine.writing [at] gmail [dot] com. If you’re just writing to say hello, do that at paul.j.caine [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sadly—and needlessly—most of my work for The A.V. Club is no longer available on the front-end of the website. Articles written for the national A.V. Club or picked up by other cities can be found here. Pieces I’ve written for Eater can be found, with a little digging, here. I also upload PDFs and links to my recent writing on my blog, or try to, anyway.