12 Days of Brooklyn – Brooklyn Artisan

A Christmas Visit to the Rieslings of Williamsburg

December 7, 2012 by Bruce Campbell 1 Comment

Day Two • 12 Sips of Brooklyn

dec7

ON OUR FIRST VISIT TO BROOKLYN WINERY, the Brooklyn Artisan taste/sip squad donned hard hats and clambered around a raw construction site. In the two years since then, the winery has developed into a first class facility with a terrific wine bar integrated with the winemaking facilities. The B-A squaddies stopped by again recently to check out a flight of wines and some charcuterie. We didn’t have time for the winery tour (with 10 tasting/sipping stops that day, food journalism can be brutal, I tell you), but we are definitely going back. Brooklyn Winery takes wine very seriously and with classes and tours, they are committed to educating and informing as well as entertaining.

The main room is outfitted with long wooden farmhouse tables in beer garden style, with the upstairs rooms more lounge-like. Very comfortable settings for various sizes of groups, but we opted for the zinc bar, with its copper wine dispenser and proximity to Lex Kiefhaber, the knowledgeable manager. Lex helped us select our flight—the 2011 Stainless Steel Riesling for a white, the 2011 Rosé of Merlot, and the 2010 North Fork Blend red, all made with New York State grapes and all terrific young wines.

Lex then enthusiastically insisted on our comparing a glass of the 2011 Barrel Aged Riesling toe-to-toe with the same grape fermented in stainless steel. The Barrel Aged, with grapes from the Finger Lakes region, is fermented and aged in old oak barrels which Lex explained allows the tart malic acid to convert to smoother lactic acid (a process logically called malolactic fermentation), providing a richer mouthfeel. The Stainless Steel has a more crisp fruit taste characteristic of a modern Riesling. Two distinctly different variations on a common theme, and either is definitely a pick for a Christmas white.

Brooklyn Winery
213 North 8th Street, Williamsburg
347-763-1506

Photographs by Bruce Campbell. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Mrs Eaves, by Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1996.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized, Winery, brewery, distiller Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Sips of Brooklyn, Barrel Aged Riesling, Brooklyn Winery, North Fork Blend, Rosé of Merlot, Stainless Steel Riesling, Williamsburg, wine, wine bar, winery

Fresh Fish, Smoked Fish—Any Way You Like It

December 7, 2012 by Basia Hellwig 3 Comments

Day Two • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn

Wouldn’t this make a perfect tile in the subway station at Sheepshead Bay, home to Brooklyn’s
own 50-boat fishing fleet? But no, the mosaic is by an unknown Roman artist, 3rd to
5th century A.D. Found in Tunisia, it now resides in Brooklyn Museum. (Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum)

THE FEAST OF THE SEVEN FISHES is an Italian Christmas Eve celebration with as many interpretations as there are families and regions of Italy—and Brooklyn. If you want to create your own feast, you have a treat in store: Mermaid’s Garden, Brooklyn’s first CSF, or Community Supported Fishery, is opening its holiday store to the public. (CSF members—including some Brooklyn Artisan folks—sign up for a weekly drop of delicious sustainable fish and seafood, much of it caught in local waters.) The holiday store will have live Montauk lobsters, Montauk Pearl and wild Maine Belon oysters, fish fillets, clams, squid and more. How about Siberian sturgeon caviar?! The online store is open from Saturday, December 8 to Monday, December 17. Pickup will be at four Brooklyn spots on Saturday, December 22.

For full details about the fish (and fishermen), how to buy, and addresses for pickup, go to the Mermaid’s Garden website. And on the Mermaid’s Garden Facebook page, you’ll find wonderful recipes from co-owner and chef Mark Usewitz.

If you’d rather someone else do the cooking, Chef Saul Bolton will be serving a Feast of the Seven Fishes on Dec. 24 at his Michelin-starred Saul Restaurant in Cobble Hill, as he has for the last eight years—and for the first time this year, he tells us, at his new Italian restaurant, Red Gravy, in Brooklyn Heights. Call 718-935-9842 for more information on menus and for reservations.

Mackerel and squid at a Bensonhurst fish market, where you could also find sardines and eel,
popular choices for the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

Don’t forget, too, that Brooklyn is known as the smoked fish capital of America. Acme Smoked Fish has been at the center of that world since the early 1900s when Harry Brownstein, an emigrant from Russia, took a job as a “wagon jobber,” picking up hot fish from smokehouses with his horse-drawn wagon and hand-delivering them to small grocery and appetizing stores. Eventually he got his own smokehouse, which four generations later has grown into a Brooklyn institution that smokes, cures, slices, packs and ships 7 million pounds of fish a year.

Acme Smoked Fish and Blue Hill Bay smoked seafood are both available at wholesale prices at the company’s Fish Friday.

The fish, which except for the sturgeon is certified kosher, is sold all around the city (Zabar’s, Costco)—and well beyond. But for a real feel for where it comes from—and great bargains—get yourself out to the Greenpoint plant on a Friday morning between 8 and 1, the only time sales are open directly to the public. A room just off the plant floor is filled with racks of smoked whitefish, boxes of brook trout, smoked salmon laid out on the table—all perfect for holiday entertaining.

Mermaid’s Garden
info@mermaidsgardennyc.com

Saul Restaurant
140 Smith Street, Cobble Hill
718-935-9842

Acme Smoked Fish Corporation
25-56 Gem Street, Greenpoint
718-383-8585

Photographs by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Mrs Eaves, by Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1996.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Tastes of Brooklyn, Acme Smoked Fish Corporation, brooklyn artisan, Brooklyn Museum, Cobble Hill, Feast of the Seven Fishes, fish, Fish mosaic, Greenpoint, Mermaid's Garden, oysters, Red Gravy, Saul Bolton, Saul Restaurant

12 DAYS OF BROOKLYN: Our Glorious Garden

December 7, 2012 by Anne Mollegen Smith Leave a Comment

Day Two • 12 Views of Brooklyn

Fall becomes winter at the Brooklyn Botanic. (Photo by Jake Miller. See Who's Who)

Photograph by Jake Miller; see Who’s Who

WHO COULD HELP READING THE BODY LANGUAGE of loss, longing or despair into the shape of this beautiful tree? Like some tragic arboreal Lady of Shalott drifting toward her death: “God in his mercy lend her grace,” as Tennyson’s poem said. Or perhaps it is more like an aging and gnarled Narcissus gazing at his wavering reflection on the water – anyone’s poetic imagination might be stirred. Such intimate landscapes found among the Brooklyn Botanic Garden‘s long vistas make it a very personal place, though plant science, research and education are part of its mandate. Opening off Eastern Parkway in a corner of Prospect Park where Washington Avenue crosses behind the Brooklyn Museum, with its own stop on the 2/3 trains, the BBG covers more than 50 acres and receives nearly a million visits a year, as people come for the lively events or the cherry blossoms and water lilies or the many other gardens-within-the-Garden.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Look Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, urban garden

Danish Seamen’s Gløgg

December 6, 2012 by Bruce Campbell Leave a Comment

Day One • 12 Sips of Brooklyn

THE DANISH SEAMEN’S CHURCH (Den Danske Sømandskirke), housed in a lovely brownstone with a ship’s bell in the front yard on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights, is a religious, social and cultural center for New York’s Danes. Brooklyn Artisan’s culinary team made its way there for the smørrebrød during the church’s Traditional Christmas Fair at the end of November. In the yard behind the church, in an immense pot, we discovered Gløgg, the mulled wine that fuels Danish Christmas. It’s wonderfully warming and tastes great with spiced cookies and æbleskiver, the Danish version of the doughnut hole.

Julie Sløk, the Church’s Sømandspræst (pastor—literally “sailor priest”) has shared the recipe—although I would have thought it a closely guarded state secret. Gløgg, according to Julie, “will take about a week to make—like any good recipe it is simple but needs time. So you have to begin a week before. This is the recipe for 10 to 15 persons depending on how much you like it. Voilà and god jul!”

Ingredients
5 sticks cinnamon
2-inch piece of fresh ginger, cut in thin slices
20 whole cloves
25 cardamom pods
2 tsp dried coriander
30 peppercorns
2 cups water

1 1/2 lbs raisins
2 1/2 cups rum
1 bottle port

3 bottles red wine (no need to spend a fortune on it but it should be on the fuller side)
1 lemon
1 orange
1/2 to 1 lb of almond splinters
2 cups of brandy or cognac
Sugar to taste

One week before the party
Create an extract by combining the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom pods, coriander, peppercorns and water.

Bring to a boil, then let it cool down and sit covered for 4 to 5 days.

Mix the rum and port together in another container, add the raisins and soak for 5 days. (Note: Don’t use aluminum containers for storing these parts.)

Day of the party
Strain the extract through a sieve and put it in a large pot along with the peel of one orange and the peel of one lemon. Simmer for 2 minutes.

Pour in the three bottles of red wine and heat it without boiling.

Add the cognac, the raisins with liquid and the almonds. Add sugar to taste (not too sweet but not too sour). Serve hot with spice cookies.

Danish Seamen’s Church
102 Willow Street, Brooklyn Heights
718-875-0042

Photograph by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Avant Garde, by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnese, ITC, 1970.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized, Winery, brewery, distiller Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Sips of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Christmas, Danish Seamen's Church, Denmark, gløgg, Julie Sløk, mulled wine, wine

Not Just Any Festive Ham

December 6, 2012 by Basia Hellwig 1 Comment

Day One • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn

Brooklyn Cured’s Mangalitsa ham sits around in brown sugar and bourbon for a week before
being smoked. (Photo courtesy Brooklyn Cured)

CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS BY THE FIRE, SECRET GIFT GIVING IN THE NIGHT, candy canes, giving to those in greatest need—these are all customs that can be traced to dear St Nick. So what better day than St. Nicholas Day to begin planning Christmas dinner? We have our eye on a traditional ham for our table this year. We knew we could find an excellent hickory-smoked one ($3.69/lb for a 10- or 20-lb ham) at Eagle Provisions, a Polish market in Sunset Park that’s been around since 1935 and is now run by the Zawisny family.

But this year our heads have been turned by Brooklyn Cured’s Smoked Mangalitsa Ham. You may know Brooklyn Cured’s sausages and paté from various markets, restaurants and small grocers around town. Founder Scott Bridi grew up in an Italian-American family in Bensonhurst. He ran the charcuterie program at Gramercy Tavern for two years before going on to Marlow and Daughters butcher shop and then starting his own company. His boneless smoked ham starts out as a Mangalitsa pig, a rare woolly Hungarian breed that almost disappeared and is much prized by chefs. The ones Bridi uses are raised on Mosefund Farm in Branchville, NJ. “They have an unparalleled richness and red-meat qualities that are beyond crave-worthy!” he says. Bridi cures the ham for a full week in brown sugar and bourbon. Then it’s gently smoked with applewood, while being coated with a maple-bourbon glaze. (To reheat, take ham out of refrigerator for half an hour, then put in a 275º oven for 30 to 40 minutes.)

Hungry yet? The Mangalitsa hams are $14/lb; sizes range from 3 to 7 pounds. To order, stop by the markets Brooklyn Cured is at, or e-mail scott@brooklyncured.com. (Be sure to include your name, contact information, size of ham, and the market where you’d like to pick up).

The order deadline for Christmas is Dec. 16. Pickup is on Sundays at the Park Slope Community Market on 5th Ave and 4th Street from 10 am to 4 pm and New Amsterdam Market from 11 am to 4 pm. Give as much notice as you can; a week is preferable, although it is possible if you order on a Wednesday, there will be a ham ready for Sunday pick up.

Eagle Provisions, a great source for ham and kielbasa, may be even better known for its selection of beers—2,000+ including many Brooklyn, New York and international craft ales.

There even may be a few mighty Mangalitsas available on a first-come, first-serve basis on Dec. 23 at Park Slope and New Amsterdam Markets, but really, would you want to risk it?

Brooklyn Cured
917-282-2221
scott@brooklyncured.com

Eagle Provisions
628 5th Avenue, Sunset Park
718-499-0026

Photograph (right) by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Avant Garde, by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnese, ITC, 1970.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, farms/gardens, Food/Drink, Uncategorized Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Tastes of Brooklyn, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn Cured, Christmas, Eagle Provisions, Mangalitsa, Scott Bridi, Sunset Park

BROOKLYN ARTISAN’S 12 DAYS OF BROOKLYN: Starting at the Grand Gateway to Prospect Park

December 6, 2012 by Anne Mollegen Smith 2 Comments

Day One ◊ 12 Views of Brooklyn

Photograph by Joseph Caserto; see our Who’s Who.

THE SOLDIERS’ AND SAILORS’ ARCH at Grand Army Plaza, lighted for the holidays. Built in 1892 to mark the entrance to Prospect Park, the arch was modified three years later when bronze statuary was added. Originally Prospect Park Plaza, the circle was renamed Grand Army Plaza in 1926 as commemoration for veterans of the Union Army of the Civil War. In 1975, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. At the nexus of Union Street, Eastern Parkway, Vanderbilt Avenue, Prospect Park West and Flatbush Avenue, where the 2/3 trains stop, it is an imposing backdrop for the popular Saturday farmer’s market and food truck meet-ups. (Be warned: This is the busiest traffic circle in Brooklyn, and though recent efforts to address the safety and preferences of pedestrians have yielded improvements, not all problems have been solved.)

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Look, Think Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Brooklyn scenes, Etsy.com, food truck meet-up, Grand Army Plaza, Joseph Caserto, Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch

Who’s Who in Creating 12 DAYS OF BROOKLYN

December 6, 2012 by Brooklyn Artisan 9 Comments

Brooklyn Artisan’s 12 Days of Brooklyn is our gift of the season when you visit our site.

12 Views of Brooklyn were gathered from artists and photographers who have looked at Brooklyn through creative and loving eyes and curated by Anne Mollegen Smith. 12 Tastes of Brooklyn were sampled and curated by Basia Hellwig. 12 Sips of Brooklyn were sampled and curated by Bruce A. Campbell.

Typographic designs of the date stamps for all 12 days are by Joy Makon Design.

DEC. 6 Date stamp font: Avant Garde, by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnese, ITC, 1970.

The arch at Grand Army Plaza decorated for the holidays, photograph by Joseph Caserto. A resident of Brooklyn since the late 1980s, Caserto is an award-winning publication designer and earned a BFA with honors from Pratt Institute. See more of his work at etsy.com/shop/josephcaserto

EDITOR’S UPDATE: Joseph Caserto has kindly offered Brooklyn-Artisan visitors a 30% discount on boxed card sets that include this brilliant image of Grand Army Plaza on a winter night. Go to http://www.etsy.com/shop/josephcaserto and use the coupon code COUNTDOWN12.

DEC. 7 Date stamp font: Mrs Eaves, by Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1996

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, photograph by Jake Miller. Miller is a writer as well as a photographer and was a Brooklyn resident in the 1990s, when he shot a series called Brooklyn Light. His articles and photographs have appeared in many national magazines. He now lives in the Boston area.

DEC. 8 Date stamp font: Bauhaus, by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso, ITC, 1975

Menorah in the Snow, photograph by Joy Makon, taken in 2009 in Windsor Terrace. A resident of small-town Brooklyn since 1983, Joy is a magazine art director+designer and an indefatigable lover of all things new and cool. She curates Craft & Design for Brooklyn Artisan and writes and produces the weekly Best of Brooklyn listings.

Dec. 9 Date Stamp font: Cochin, Georges Peignot, Linotype, 1912

Sledding Home, 2009, is an oil-on-canvas painting by Ella Yang, who is a member of the artist-run collective and gallery, 440 Gallery, in Park Slope. The gallery is run collectively by more than a dozen artists with very different styles and outlooks, but a common commitment. It is located in Park Slope on Sixth Avenue between Ninth and Tenth streets.

Dec. 10 Date stamp font: Chalet Tokyo, by René Albert Chalet (a clothing designer), House Industries, 1970

At right, these 4 panels appear to the right of the children’s panel in the 8th Street mural. Just down the street is a Beansprouts childcare center, and around the corner, a church.

‘

Dec. 11 Date stamp font: Goudy Oldstyle, by Frederick W. Goudy, Linotype, 1915

When you visit the site of the Mill Basin house, you can sign the guestbook and review the extensive press clippings. At right, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, holding the proclamation, with the Teitelbaum family.

Dec. 12 Date stamp font: Gill Sans Ultra Bold, by Eric Gill, Monotype, 1928

September Rain, Seventh Avenue, 2006, etching by Eric March (edition of 25). Eric March’s first solo show was A Brooklyn Year at the Park Slope Gallery in 2006. His second show at the gallery was Moments in Time: Queens to Coney Island, in 2009. He teaches painting and illustration in the New York City area. The Park Slope Gallery shows by appointment.

Editor’s Note: Making and printing etchings are special skills: Etching is generally done to a metal plate by coating the surface, then scratching through the coating with a special stylus; an acid is then used to eat away the scratched lines which later hold the ink for the image to be printed. A particular piece is usually identified by the position in the series and the number that are in the edition – 1/25 meaning the first of 25, and so on. A lower number is not necessarily an indicator of quality, since much effort goes into making all the pulls equally good; rather, it is a way of tracking or inventorying the images to discourage theft, loss and forgery, and signals relative scarcity. The artist’s signature – usually written in pencil – shows that he approved the quality of that particular piece. A gallery or publisher sometimes underwrites a limited edition as a form of investment, and value may even rise as inventory shrinks.

Dec. 13 Date stamp font: Shelley Allegro, by Matthew Carter, Linotype, 1972

Porches in the Snow, 2009, by Joy Makon. See her bio above, for Dec. 8. For most of her publications career, Joy has worked as a designer, but as readers of her Joy’s Best of Brooklyn column for Brooklyn Artisan know, she also writes well. Early sign of crossover skills: She was editor of her high school newspaper, and went from there to art school.

Dec. 14 Date stamp font: Rockwell, by Morris Fuller Benton and Frank Pierpont, Monotype, 1934

Canal Cloud Reflections, 2010, another oil painting by Ella Yang (see Dec.9, above).”This was a very still morning, the water in the Gowanus Canal was high and there were plenty of clouds to make great reflections,” she recalls. “I love the contrast between the dilapidated, jumbled items on the left bank and the apparent organization of the buildings on the right bank. That’s the former Williamsburg Bank building on the right – a nice Brooklyn landmark that’s been turned into luxury condos!” Ella is a member of the art collective, 440 Gallery. (Next time you’re on the 440 Gallery site, browse the work of other gallery artists. You can also find other views of the Gowanus, this time abstracts, by 440’s Karen Gibbons.)

Dec. 15 Date stamp font: American Typewriter, by Joel Kaden and Tony Stan, ITC, 1974

The Brooklyn Roasting Co. maintains a phog – a photographic blog – on its site and invites contributions from outside the company. The result is a delightful mélange of coffee growing photographs, of the company’s staff and friends, of DUMBO and elsewhere in Brooklyn. This couldn’t-be-anywhere-but-DUMBO image emerged from that phog. Notice how the image is a study in verticals, from the construction fence through the tall alley and bridge struts to the towers of Outer Brooklyn across the river.

Dec. 17: Date stamp font: Industria, by Neville Brody, Linotype, 1989

Christmas Trees on Sale: Brooklyn-based design professional Joseph Caserto, whose Grand Army Plaza photo launched our series, also contributed this image of a Christmas tree vendor. Joe tweets – @josephcaserto – about his @udemy courses for students to learn InDesign, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, sometimes at a discount. He also sells his work at etsy.com/shop/josephcaserto, with occasional discounts.

In 1851, the same year Henry Gritten (mentioned in Dec.14: 12 Views of Brooklyn) painted Gowanus Bay, a Catskill Mountains farmer named Mark Carr launched the commercial Christmas tree business in New York City with two ox-drawn sleds loaded with forest-cut trees. He sold them all, and harvesting forest trees became a business, a kind of winter crop. In 1901, a from-scratch Christmas-tree farming operation was established in New Jersey, and seven years later their Norway Spruces went on the market for $1.00 apiece. By 2000, the number of American families using artificial trees was significantly larger than those with natural ones.

Dec. 17 Date stamp font: Mason, by Jonathan Barnbrook, Emigre, 1992

Forget those people trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to hayseeds, how does one go about finding a large photograph of it suitable for framing? The selection is mind-boggling. You can check museum shops. You can inquire of Brooklyn photographers whose work you like. You can search by subject on many sites such as etsy.com and fineartamerica.com. There’s instagram and pinterest and the Flickr albums of your friends; ask around. Cross the river and check out the Union Square vendors. You can of course go out yourself, camera or iPhone in hand, by night and by day. You can order prints by size and by medium – would you like a print on canvas? Or in acrylic? Or acrylic on glass? Oh, you’ve settled on having the canvas wrapped around the sides of the mounting? You can get that done at the drug store right on the corner of Flatbush and Seventh Avenue. Step number one in a personal Views of Brooklyn gallery.

The portrait of Emily Warren Roebling in the Brooklyn Museum is by the French painter Charles Émile Auguste Carolus Duran. Emily’s older brother, Civil War General Gouveneur Kemble Warren –and the one who supported her interest in becoming educated though a girl – is remembered by his statue at the gateway to Prospect Park. Although the Warren family came from Cold Spring, NY, not Brooklyn, the brother and sister made their mark on this community.