Corinna Sherman

Seasonal cupcakes at Balducci's

I wandered through the gourmet grocery store called Balducci’s on 8th Avenue and 14th Street last weekend. In addition to being a winter wonderland of cheeses, it also had these cute holiday cupcakes I couldn’t resist photographing. The store itself is visually striking, occupying a domed 1897 landmark building that used to be a bank. There is a small mezzanine in the back that affords a view over the entire store and the soaring ceiling.

Balducci's mezzanine view

My camera phone doesn’t do it justice, so you’ll need to go up there yourself for the full effect. Take a cup of coffee with you, too. There are a few tables and chairs up there, and I saw several people enjoying a quiet moment high above the fancy foods.

In all honesty, I don’t buy anything at Balducci’s. I prefer buying fresh over jarred and prepared items, but it’s never short on eye candy. And real candy, if you like that sort of thing.

I had been meaning to go to HanGawi restaurant for months but had an unbelievably difficult time getting anyone to go with me. Something about the phrase “Korean vegetarian place” made most people immediately lose interest. Fortunately, I finally made it to this little K-Town gem last weekend and enjoyed a meal that was well worth the wait.

My party made dinner reservations in advance, and I would recommend others do the same, since it was completely full the entire time we were there, though never loud. The entrance to HanGawi is dark and unassuming, to the point where it doesn’t look like an open business. Pulling open the door, however, we slipped out of the bitter cold and into a dimly lit foyer lined in rich, dark wood. The hostess directed us to remove our shoes and place them on the floor, which staff discreetly tucked away as we were led up a raised platform to our table. The table appeared to be very low to the floor, but there was actually a well for guests’ legs, so we could still sit in the Western style once we clambered down into our places. With a colorful butt cushion for each of us, we quickly settled into our cozy environs and studied the menus by flickering candlelight. All of us agreed this would make a good date restaurant, assuming any guy could get over the fact that there is no meat on the menu.

HanGawi has an interesting selection of beverages, and since my nose was still numb from being outside, I ordered a cup of the date paste tea. Sadly, the person who took our drink orders was not our assigned waiter, and we did not actually get our drinks until our second inquiry near the end of the meal.

The dinner menu has two prix fixe four-course options, but the rest of the menu looked so enticing that we decided to select an assortment of items and dine family-style. Our waiter smilingly accomodated our request for four sets of plates and bowls so that we could all share each dish, and I have to say that the little golden soup bowls, earth-colored ceramic plates, cloth napkins, and wooden utensils lent a refined yet rustic charm to the meal.

Kabocha pumpkin pancakes and spicy baby dumplings

First to arrive were the appetizers: kabocha pumpkin pancakes and spicy baby dumplings. The pancakes were fried to perfection – light golden brown and crisp on the outside, a warm, chewy yet fluffy texture inside, and a subtle pumpkin flavor that made them stand out from the more common scallion pancakes typically served in Asian restaurants. Since the place is vegetarian, I am 99.9% certain that the “baby” in the spicy baby dumplings does not refer to their filling. Yet neither could it describe their size, for each turned out to be a respectably dumpling-sized two mouthfuls of deliciousness. The inside was reminiscent of tender minced shrimp, but again, likely not. Since none of us could keep from devouring them long enough to inspect the filling more closely, they retain their mystery until next time.

HanGawi vegetable and mushroom wraps and tofu pizza

Next came the entrees: Mongolian hot pot, spicy rice cakes, HanGawi vegetable and mushroom wraps, and tofu pizza. The stand-out here had to be the tofu pizza – thin, crisp squares of fried tofu topped with finely diced shitake mushrooms and zucchini and drizzled with a strawberry-pinenut puree. There was no way to eat these neatly, and they were so good that we didn’t try. Our waiter assembled our wraps table-side, and though their pale crepe-like exteriors couldn’t compete visually next to the colorful tofu pizza, the medley of flavors definitely got our attention, both with and without the accompanying tangy dipping sauce.

Mongolian hot pot

The Mongolian hot pot turned out to be a spicy soup containing several kinds of fungi, cabbage, leeks, and a few random vegetables. The enoki mushrooms were a personal favorite of mine.

Spicy rice cakes

Tossed in a red pepper sauce with vegetables and fried tofu, the spicy rice cakes caused unexpected confusion by closely resembling the sliced white mushrooms that were playing hide-and-seek with them in the dish. They weren’t actually that spicy compared to the hot pot, but with a soft, chewy texture and decidedly cute appearance, there was palpable tension over who would get the last one.

When the tea finally arrived, the meal was all but done. Luckily, the beauty of vegetarian dining is that there is always room at the end for tea. My date paste tea arrived in a large, round cup, shimmering orange and gold with pine nuts and minced date pieces floating on the surface. It gave off the most tantalizing sweet aroma and had a flavor to match, erasing any need for dessert. Of course, that didn’t stop us from going to Koryodang afterwards anyway, but it was only to prolong what had already been a delightful evening with the help of some tiramisu and chocolate chai.

Tiramisu and chocolate chai

This recent article by Michael Lewis, author of the infamous book Liar’s Poker, is long but once you’ve read it, you and your former office mates can sit around the flaming garbage can and discuss the finer points long into the cold, cold night:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom

I’ve been getting increasingly miffed at all the fun things I’m not doing while I tend to Very Important Life Matters™, the latest being getting drunk. Also on my not-to-do list:

• seeing Party Central USA‘s new stage show, Riding an Inflatable Hotdog, at the PIT
• marching in the annual Village Halloween Parade
• being part of a FOOD Network show audience

So what the heck am I doing instead?! I’m sorting through the mountain of photos I took during my recent trip to Taiwan! Here’s one I took of some food carts at the base of one of the many temples I visited. There is nothing quite like the agony of standing under the baking sun, trying to decide whether you want ice cream or squid in your waffle cone…

The Del Close Marathon starts today in New York City. $25 gets you into over 150 shows running nonstop Friday through Sunday. Come check out my group if you’re in town!

Falling Anvil
Sunday, 12:15 pm
Urban Stages
259 West 30th St (between 7th & 8th Ave)
New York, NY 10001

http://www.delclosemarathon.com/

My Art of Editing instructor commented this week that we are now halfway through the semester and asked if anyone has any questions or comments about that fact. I do. I want to know when we are going to start discussing the Art of Editing. Because so far we’ve watched a hodge podge of sometimes grainy, sometimes inadvertently silent, sometimes disappointingly muddled movie clips accompanied by only the most blindingly obvious observations, and it’s starting to grate on me.

I think the trouble stems from the fact that we’re trying to analyze the creative process of editing based on the finished product. It seems to me that’s like trying to analyze the process of novel writing based on the finished book. Sure, if you have an instinct for what works and what doesn’t, that may be all you need, but I wouldn’t sign up for a writing class where I sit and read individual chapters of novels and hope to be struck by insight. That seems like A Waste of Money™. We had one good class where we saw the dailies from Gunsmoke and three alternative edits, discussed the choices the different editors made, and commented on the effectiveness of those choices. We focused on the decision-making process, technical and aesthetic considerations, and storytelling. This, to me, is the art of editing! So why don’t we do that every week?

Hello! I’m back from Spring Break, and I’m ready to finish up the final month of Sound Design. For the rest of the course, I’ll be creating the soundtrack for a short film in ProTools using the audio recordings previously gathered in Washington Square Park.

As an extra twist, the instructor is having each of the original groups use a different group’s recordings during the editing process. When he announced this at the start of class this week, there was a collective furtive glance around the room as we all realized that all of our painstaking slating and meticulous recording would benefit another lucky party. But, as he rightly pointed out, the people doing the sound editing are often not the same people doing the recording. Sneaky, though, how he didn’t tell us until after we finished recording…

On the bright side, I am starting to get more comfortable using ProTools. I’m finding that syncing footsteps to picture is much less frustrating than cutting marching band music clips together and, believe it or not, oddly relaxing. Perhaps I should market a sleep-aid sound effects CD featuring the regular clop-clop-clop of shoes on asphalt in lieu of the more typical ocean waves.

Armed with a collection of freshly recorded sounds from the previous week’s recording adventures in Washington Square Park, I entered this week’s Sound Design class ready to dive into a real ProTools sound editing session. Of all the things covered in the course, I figured the part involving computers would fall right into my comfort zone. What I neglected to consider, however, was the fact that ProTools is a software program intended for professionals in the sound industry – in short, professional listeners – and the most my job demands of my ears is to register the occasional application alert beep.

For the in-class assignment, we were supposed to assemble a collection of music clips so that the final edited version sounded like a reference recording of a marching band. The instructor first demonstrated how to scrub regions of audio and listen to the resulting sound output to find the best edit point. He dragged the cursor back and forth across one section of a track, and out of the computer’s speakers, I heard the equivalent of a bunch of bolts rolling around in a metal trash can. He paused for a microsecond. “That’s a lot of trombone, not so easy to find a good edit spot. Keep looking.” He did the same thing to another section that sounded exactly the same. “Ah, there’s the beginning of the cymbals! Cut there!” I had the uneasy feeling that I was missing something but hoped everything would crystallize once I tried it myself.

At my own workstation, I cranked up the volume on my headphones and dutifully alternated between playing the track at normal speed and scrubbing, looking for strong beats on which to edit. All I heard through the headphones was a low growl, as though ProTools was a dog at the veterinarian’s office and could sense that it was my first time administering an exam. It clearly didn’t trust me, and I didn’t blame it. Realizing at last that I may as well be deaf for all the help my ears were going to be to me, I resorted to lining up the reference and editing tracks and comparing the waveforms visually so that I could at least edit at points where they looked the same. It was a painstaking process and not really the way we were supposed to do the exercise, but I am still mystified at how the whole scrubbing thing is supposed to work. I ran out of time at the end of class, but next time I will try to ask the instructor to explain it again. The only worry I have is that he’ll do the same demonstration for me as he did at the start of class and say, “See, they sound completely different!” My amateur ears just don’t get it.

because air conditioners are heavy and city apartments don’t have enough storage room.

Yes, this is a short post. I worked 60 hours this week, attended two three-hour evenings classes, started memorizing a sketch for this Saturday’s Sketchubator show at the PIT (at 11 PM – be there!), watched To Have and Have Not, and worked on my novel. What do you want?