Yesterday they raised the “Kandi Won,” which is the “DEATH YACHT” (as per the Post) that sunk on the 4th of July, on Long Island, killing three children. It’s not really germane to that tragedy, but when the tabloids went wild over “Long Island Yacht Disaster” and the like, I most certainly was not picturing this wee 34-foot Silverton. (On which I would no sooner board 27 people than I would try to land a helicopter on it.) Anyway, terrible story, very sad, and I blame the media.

“We were just doing global research with field strategists in understanding the role of beer in Saturday night around the world vs. other drinks. In studying beer, we started to discover that young adults cherish their smartphones and iPhones so much that they don’t want to lose them if they have an epic night out. Now they take what they call their ‘drunk phone,’ a cheap low-end phone, so now they are carrying two phones because they don’t want to lose their smartphone.”

Unprintable at Le Poisson Rouge; Sites of Execution at 1:1. (iTunes)

How To Make 17th-Century Delights: Whipp’d Syllabub

by Gina Patnaik and Lili Loofbourow

A series about recipes that may seem odd or outmoded and yet we’re curious to try!

Hospitality mavens of the 1690s knew that, if you were expecting company, you’d do well to serve up a nice cold syllabub. (As the nursery rhyme goes, the queen of clubs made syllabubs.) Syllabub, a foamy, marvelous vehicle for wine and cream and froth, inspired strong feelings. “I shall hate Sillabubs as long as I live,” announces Lady Addleplot, the “a highflown Stickler against Government” in Thomas d’Urfey’s play Love for Money. John Donne has a satire about two country bumpkins who choose a too-hot custard instead of “Choice Sillabubs with Sugar hill’d all o’re” to their mutual disadvantage. A pearl might be “as white as a syllabub,” and the proverbial swine before whom it was cast was, proverbially, “as shamefac’t as a sow that slaps up a syllabub.”

But George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, said it best: “Next — enter the sweet Sillabub of LOVE.”

To make a syllabub you’ll need cream, sack (the beverage — amontillado or sherry or white port or muscatel will work), two egg whites, and ¼ cup of sugar, plus flavoring spices. You will also need a syllabub pot — glass, ideally, with a spout through which your guest could suck out the syllabub from the bottom underneath. You may not have one. Never fear: we discuss some substitutions below. The enterprising cook will also need some birch twigs.

Here is your recipe, by one J.S., the 1696 edition of whose book, The accomplished ladies rich closet of rarities, is turning us into accomplished ladies.

To do a 17th-century recipe justice, you need 17th-century tools. You will need to fashion a whisking implement out of birch twigs.

Step 1. Find a birch tree. They look like this:

Make sure the bark looks like this:

Step 3. Abscond with some branches.

Step 4. Strip off a twig.

Step 5. Take off all the leaves. Wash.

Step 6. Tie the twigs together somehow, using rubber bands or ribbon — something hardy. Trim the twigs so they’re roughly the same size.

Step 7. Make sure you have all your ingredients: sugar, whipping cream, Moscato (or sherry, or white port), two eggs, and a whisk.

Step 8. Combine the ingredients: the whites of two eggs, ½ cup of wine, ¼ cup of sugar, and the pint of cream.

Step 9. Start whisking.

Step 10. Whisk for a long time. It will stay liquidy.

Whisk some more. Take turns with a friend. Perspire. Wonder if it is all for naught.
Try, experimentally, whisking a small portion in a different bowl with a modern-day whisk, to see if that makes a difference. It does:

Regret doubting the text; realize that the struggle of making your syllabub froth is part and parcel of making you into the accomplished ladies you will eventually, meringue-like, become.

Look up who invented the wire whisk. Marvel. Now that you’ve had a break, keep whisking with your birch twigs.

And at long last (though really it has only been fifteen minutes), you will have this:

Step 11. The recipe says to “scum it,” which implies there’s some liquid underneath from which to “scum” the froth. We overdid the whipping (Puritan zeal); it’s probably better to stop before it’s quite as stiff as the syllabub shown. If this happens to you, just say you’re using Sir Kenelm Digby’s book of recipes. Published four years after his death in 1669, it advises the syllabub-maker to beat the ingredients together with a whisk “till all appeareth converted into froth.” The next step would be to leave it overnight to separate out, such that “the next day the Curd will be thick and firm above, and the drink clear under it.” His recipe is worth reading in full, though — he was a man with ideas:

I conceive it may do well, to put into each glass (when you pour the liquor into it) a sprig of Rosemary a little bruised, or a little Lemon-peel, or some such thing to quicken the taste; or use Amber-sugar, or spirit of Cinnamon, or of Lignum-Cassiae; or Nutmegs, or Mace or Cloves, a very little

Step 12. Make the best of your overwhipped syllabub: since you don’t have a night for it to separate out, layer the froth over the amontillado or sherry or muscatel or white port. Decide it might be good with raspberries, so try putting it in layers.

Step 13. Toast and taste.

Step 14. Evaluate. Lili thought it was good, Gina (who is a chef) thought it wasn’t, particularly. The syllabub is just okay layered over wine — it would definitely be better done properly. If we’d left the syllabub overnight to separate, the clear liquid that settled out would have been infused with the other flavors.

The raspberries with syllabub, on the other hand, were spectacular — the best combination of sweet, creamy, fruity and winy:

Verdict: if you don’t have time to let you syllabub steep overnight, serve it as an amazing cream with fruit for dessert.

Step 15. Serving. Improvise a syllabub pot.

A syllabub pot offers a way for each individual consumer to drink the syllabub from the bottom, without having to fight through the foam — here is a picture of one. (This is obviously how beer should be served too.) To achieve the same effect, you could just stick a straw in a glass or use a mate.
If the whipping seems like too much work, take heart. Syllabubs can be made without whipping (though we certainly couldn’t endorse it). Joseph Cooper, chief cook to Charles I, offered this recipe for a plain syllabub in his 1654 Art of Cookery:

Take a pinte of White-wine or Sack, and a sprig of Rosemary, a Nutmeg quartered, a Lemmon squeezed into it, with the peele, and Sugar; put them into the pot at night, and cover them till the next morne; then take a pinte of Cream, a pinte and halfe of new Milk; then take out the Lemon peel and Rosemary, and Nutmeg, and so squirt in your Milk into the pot.

Next up: what do with those two egg yolks left over from your syllabub-making.

Previously in Recipes For Disaster: Impossible Pie and Chemical Apple Pie

Gina Patnaik is a onetime chef and current Ph.D. candidate in English at UC-Berkeley. Lili Loofbourow is a writer in Oakland. She writes at Dear Television and over here

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People scream. [Via]

What’s going on with Atlantan trap rap? (“Trap” is regional slang for the drug market. Trapping is selling drugs. Trap rap is rap music centered around and focussed on the drug market.) Well, first of all, OJ Da Juiceman is never going to catch those sneaky kids who steal the money from his dice game while he’s wearing so much gold. He can’t run fast enough if he has to hold all his chains against his chest to make sure they don’t fly around and hit him in the face! (This is reminiscent of the old I’m Gonna Git You Sucka joke about people dying from “O.G.” or “over gold.”) But he’s doing all right by having Gunplay on his song. Gunplay is from Florida, a friend of Rick Ross, and has been surprising people by being really great lately. With his deep, booming voice and full, rounded enunciation, he sounds more like the Geto Boys’ Geto Willie D. than anyone since the Geto Boys’ Willie D. (And that’s a very good thing.)

Shawty Lo has a great voice, too. He sounds like he’s whispering and shouting at the same time. But Gucci Mane wins the M.V.P. award on his new song.

“He said she said we said/Gucci Mane’s a weed head/So many bitches in my room/I think that I need like three beds/He eat it/I beat it/Found out you cheated/He’s heated/He texted me/Want a question me/About some bitch I deleted.”

Wow! There are certainly lots of question one could ask Gucci about his sexual politics, but that is some excellent rapping.

Speaking of sexual politics, yesterday, Gucci’s friend and partner Waka Flocka Flame became the latest rapper to come out with a nice statement about gay rights. Taking to his Twitter feed, Flocka wrote,

“Everyone [has] a right to b who they wanna b. Gay or straight. Black or white. We all the same and shouldn’t be judged by that shit…”

This is a continuation of very healthy trend that has taken hold in rap lately. (One that reflects a trend in American society as a whole.) And seems ever more important coming from someone like Waka Flocka, who is super engaging and lovable, but has not often been known for espousing progressive ideology.

Lastly, a new video from T.I.’s friend Young Dro, but no real news. “Everything’s still Polo,” he says, maintaining the brand loyalty that has defined his career. He is adamant about this.

Looking forward to community board meeting about Midtown East rezoning. City envisioning vast upzoning that will change skyline. Good idea?

— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) July 11, 2012

Glad the Bloomberg Admin is pursuing zoning change to allow smaller apartments + address growing demand in NYC for affordable studios.

— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) July 10, 2012

I love me some Michael Kimmelman, even when he is profoundly wrong, in his new role as Times architecture critic, about how New York City does and should work. (Though when he’s right, he’s right! People should be rioting over the $4-BILLION World Trade Center PATH station!) He is a gentle and thoughtful soul. I will also point out that Kimmelman has published thirteen times so far this year, which, my goodness, that’s the last good job in America. So I suppose when I see things like his Twitter output today I recoil in horror, because, while I am perhaps a bit overly cynical about the rationale behind development in New York, even a fairly normal person might think that radical rezoning and the introduction of free-market “micro-units” of 250-square-feet is perhaps something of a dark sign!

Let’s talk about this touted micro-unit business!

Officials say there are about 1.8 million one- and two-person households in New York City, but only about a million studio and one-bedroom apartments — a sign, they say, that the city’s housing stock has not kept up with its changing demographics.

Those one- and two-person households include much of the City’s stock of middle class and well-off gays, for one thing. And rich singles. You can’t really shove small/childless households into a single demographic club. For another thing, it’s the larger households — particularly with children — who are more likely to be poor. And the un-rich singles form households out of roommates.

Young, single New Yorkers in particular can find it hard to find an affordable apartment as demand outstrips supply.

Hmm. It’s in part “demand” and “supply,” which certainly has an effect on vacancy rate, but what’s actually happened to force the vacancy rate to its current crazy breaking point is owner occupation, due to amazingly rising rents and low interest rates. When you do the math on mortgage v. rent, mortgage currently makes sense — if you’re well-off enough to put a lot of money down. But new owners is really what squeezed the rental market — not an increase in renters.

The mayor is calling for proposals over the next two months for a building containing about 80 micro-units, all of which must have kitchens and bathrooms…. The apartments, once built, will be sold or rented on the open market. The city will not be subsidizing the project. If successful, the pilot project could help usher in a loosening of the city’s zoning laws regarding minimum housing size.

That’s right: no subsidies, and welcome to the open market. So now we can introduce a stiff competition to get into a building of 250-square-foot apartments. The future is actually going to be worse than Blade Runner.

The mayor said the project is part of his plan to create or preserve 165,000 affordable homes in the city by 2014.

I believe that the Mayor believes in this plan. But no on else does, because they don’t have the incentive. (Also, let us never forget that the plan says “create OR preserve,” which is sort of like… okay so a baseline of success is zero new affordable homes? Okay!)

Let’s take 8 Spruce! That’s the Frank Gehry building downtown. (Which is lovely, by the way, on the inside! Though frankly, Mr. Gehry, I found the pool to be small.) As you may recall, the building got “$203.9 million in tax-free financing from the New York Liberty Bond Program,” and got a 20-year tax abatement by, instead of creating affordable units, donating 3% of their financing to the New York City Housing and Urban Development Council. (That’s how it works: either you cough up some cash, or you have to put poor people in your building.) Wouldn’t you cough up $6 million in exchange for being able to rent out $6400 750-square-foot one-bedroom apartments? (Though you get two months free rent on a 14-month lease! And amazing views! Plus no broker fee! Those apartments are really pretty, especially if you don’t own anything and/or are Patrick Bateman.)

As far as I can see, every bit of development and rezoning from Giuliani to Bloomberg has only served rich and upper-middle-class people, from the new garbage high-rise canyon that is Sixth Avenue in the 20s and 30s to the Williamsburg waterfront. The development, while adding needed dwelling units, has had profoundly negative impact on middle-class and not rich people. And it’s had a profound impact on neighborhoods: what happens to your rent when there are $6400 one-bedrooms all around you? Yup.

The pro-development agenda of the Mayor — which, yes, is part of the lifeblood of the City! Money is what makes the City go round! — cannot compete with the pro-affordable housing agenda of the Mayor. There is absolutely nothing about rezoning Midtown East and creating “free market micro-apartments” that will serve people who should have affordable housing, really it’s quite the opposite.

“What we’ve seen is that out on rivers people like to drink and do some things we might not normally do.”
 — If you guessed “eat raw crawfish,” you are probably spending too much time with people who are drinking on the rivers.

Can you even get your head around the idea that we once lived in a world where women were encouraged to GAIN WEIGHT and show off fuller figures? It’s crazy! I can’t believe it, and neither can Matt Lauer, who calls it “a world upside-down.” And how! So bizarre!

“It’s a project 500 million years in the making: Using a process called paleo-experimental evolution, Georgia Tech researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli(E. coli) bacteria. This bacterium has now been growing for more than 1,000 generations, giving the scientists a front row seat to observe evolution in action.” [Via]