More Cheese Than Polenta
Welcome to Buffet Magazine, an independently owned digital food magazine. Our Thursday editions are where we feature a great new recipe. Tuesday is for features.
IN THIS ISSUE: Alpine week concludes, domestic crops wallow, and two chicken dinners grace the silver screen.
Appetizers
The Rain on Grains
As fond as we are of fontina-laced dishes from the far valleys of the Alps, we do like to check in on what’s happening in the big flat breadbasket of the USA from time to time. It’s harvest season right now, and the news is not so good. Summer’s relentless rains are playing havoc with the corn and soybean crop—we’re talking “mold, seed discoloration and pod shattering,” per AgWeb. —Sam
Cahiers du Chicken
Earlier this week I treated myself to two dinners (kati rolls and then pomme frites across the street) on the NYU-adjacent cheap eats corridor of MacDougal Street, then watched two movies at two theaters—the new Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! at the Angelika on Houston Street, followed by a short walk farther downtown to see the late Marjane Satrapi’s Poulet Aux Prunes presented by Cinema Tehran. There was one other unlikely pairing: both films featured chicken dishes that made my popcorn and fountain Cherry Coke pale in comparison. First it was oyakodon cooked in its traditional aluminum pan with a vertical handle, eaten by Haru and her husband Luis as they watch the tape from their ballroom dance lesson. (No spoilers here.) Then it was Nasser Ali’s begrudgingly loving wife Faranguisse making him chicken with plums—or morgh ba aloo, or aloo mosamma as it is called in the northwest of Iran. Somehow, chicken feels good in a place like this. —Nozlee