What to eat in New York City in 1987

Nostalgic recipes suitable for the Sunday after a night of clubbing.

In this newsletter, I will not tell you (much) about the House club mixes, the man go-go dancing on a pedestal in a feather headdress, the other man bopping with me on the dark dance floor, the jokes I told that they found hilarious, the jokes they told that made me fall to the ground in laughter — or had I drunk too much champagne? I will not even tell you about the champagne. I will tell you about the kind of food we ate.

Dearest Food friends,

One of the happiest weeks of my whole life was spent clubbing every night in Manhattan with a bunch of gay male friends. We found ourselves in one dance spot after another, arriving around midnight and dancing until 4, then crashing at one person’s apartment or another until around noon. We got together for a post-club brunch, hung out laughing and talking, either went out for or made dinner, and hit the clubs again.

I find myself nostalgic for that week — deeply nostalgic! It was one of the few carefree times in my whole life. I don’t know what your life has wrought lately, but for the past few years, life has seemed harder, even in the little things.

I miss those men. Most of them died of AIDS. They were kind, generous, and funny. They were good dancers. In their memory, I got involved in the fight for AIDS research funding in America. I find myself remembering them most particularly right now, in this divided America, in this moment where almost everyone seems worried. That week, that one single week, where I did nothing but drink, dance, laugh and cook — I have never been so carefree before or since. That week haunts me tenderly right now.

In this newsletter, I will not tell you (much) about the House club mixes, the man go-go dancing on a pedestal in a feather headdress, the other man bopping with me on the dark dance floor, the jokes I told that they found hilarious, the jokes they told that made me fall to the ground in laughter — or had I drunk too much champagne? I will not even tell you about the champagne. I will tell you about the kind of food we ate. At the time, it was highly fashionable in Manhattan. Today, it is a bit retro. I am charmed by the thought of it, so much so, I made it again and give you the recipes here.

When Rene, George, John, and others of us would get together after a night of dancing, inevitably in somebody’s apartment in the West Village, we would have brunch. Once in a while, we would go over to the East Village to Stingy Lulu’s for a drag brunch, with waitresses in cocktail dresses and colorful wigs, but mostly, as we all cooked, we would make a frittata. Frittatas were standard après-club brunch fare.

A frittata, for anyone who doesn’t already know this, is essentially an omelet that is put in the oven at the end stage of preparation, rendering the eggs fluffy and magnificent when they hit the plate. George would usually bring croissants from a local bakery, Rene would chop vegetables, and I would saute them and mix the eggs in, then pop the frying pan in the oven.

Before I cook any dish, I chop up all the ingredients that require chopping before I begin the rest of the cooking process.

It was on Sunday mornings, still a bit hungover, I developed some good culinary habits:

1. Above, you can see what the French call my mise en place, or my prep work. Before I start to actually cook, I chop every ingredient require chopping and organize all the parts of the recipe I will use so that they are easily accessible.

2. Below, you can see a morning habit I developed out of these hungover apartment brunches. In the morning when I get up, I tend to chop herbs I will use for the whole day, first in any eggs I am scrambling, then later for other cooking projects. I purposely chop more herbs than I will need for breakfast. I store the leftover herbs in a teacup near the stove so that later in the day when I am, say, making a sauce, I can just pinch some and toss them in the pot.

3. I also learned what might be called “hair of the dog” technique from George. When everybody eating is hungover, nobody is upset if one uses a bit of alcohol in one’s cooking, however improbably, because if anybody’s head is throbbing, a bit of the hair of the dog that bit them in a glass near the stove will make that person more clear-eyed. The French use a lot of wine in their cooking, though not for breakfast. George found interesting uses for vodka and mixed Bloody Mary cocktails with extra celery for our brunches. In my nostalgic cooking here, I did not attempt George’s potent Bloody Mary morning routine.

In the morning, I often chop a bunch of herbs, and I put them in a teacup to use for my day’s cooking. I find this saves time.

What I did in making my nostalgia-laden frittata, was sautée the bacon, red onion, and yellow pepper that you see here. I scrambled the eggs with a little milk, salt, pepper, cilantro, and parsley, and then I poured the egg mixture into the frying pan. When it was half-solid, I added vegan mozzarella shreds and popped the pan in the oven for about 15 minutes. It came out fluffy and delicious, just as I remembered. I didn’t have a Bloody Mary. I ate this with iced tea instead.

I started thinking generally about the food that was supposed to be fashionable in New York at that time. There was a lot of talk about “fusion” cuisine, which was, let’s be frank, Western dishes with a little bit of influence from the East. Nothing much got fused. I decided to recreate that kind of meal that was fashionable in the West Village at that time.

For my husband (who doesn’t like clubbing and never did) and I, I made a braised Teriyaki-honey-glazed salmon with scallions and asparagus.

This is a dish that would have been called “fusion” cuisine in the 1980s. I think it is no more authentically Japanese than Betty Crocker. It is simply delicious.

I served it with asparagus braised in white wine sauce, also typical (thought not exclusive) to the late eighties hip cuisine of New York. I sprinkled them with herbs from that same teacup above. I served this meal with plain white rice.

I recommend adding herbs to all your vegetable dishes.

Finally, I added a salad. Of course we are all eating salads today, but styles change over time in what a salad might contain. For instance, in the Victorian era, salads often included cooked vegetables, now rarely included. In the 1980s, I remember lots of crunchy, though not particularly flavorful, lettuce, crunchy croutons, creamy dressings, and alfalfa sprouts. I gave us such a salad with this meal. I couldn’t bear to have nothing but iceberg lettuce (as I remember the era’s salads), and I swapped out the high-calorie creamy ranch dressing of the time for a fat-free poppy seed creamy dressing by Skinny Girl (which has probably prevented me from gaining many pounds by now).

Alfalfa Sprouts are somewhat out of fashion, but in the 1980s, it was hard to get a restaurant salad without them included. In my nostalgia, I added them here.

There are things for which people are NOT nostalgic in the 1980s, surely. These may include the smell of hair spray in every club bathroom, an abundance of Spandex at the gym, and sexual harassment with impunity. I would not move back to the eighties if I could. I danced with wonderful gay boys because I had to slap so many heterosexual male hands off of me otherwise. I miss my chosen dance partners. I miss driving in George’s convertible, singing to house mix dance music on the radio, both of us believing that the future was bright. He died the next year at the age of 28. I joined ACT UP and started fighting for AIDS research funding. A year after that, I got hired at a job on the same day as male colleagues and was paid thirty percent less than they were for the same work. A new labor law on the books of the State of New York got me back pay, but George, who was so kind, is never driving back to pick me up for a week of fun. I miss the hope I felt in those days, a hope I search for in old recipes. If Proust’s muffin evokes a redolent past, perhaps alfalfa sprouts on a salad and a sleepy frittata can take me back.

I wish you emotional eating, food friends — not the kind that gets you to binge a quart of ice cream with hot fudge while you watch old movies and cry over a disappointment. I wish you emotional eating that transports you to a place that used to feel like home to you. I believe in home — but where is it for each of us? Right now, I just can’t find it the same way I once could. Perhaps with the right recipes you can. Feel free to try mine. Whatever you eat, eat emotionally, my friends. May your path home be evenly paved and wide.

---

Shopping list and Recipes

Here is a list of groceries to make each of these dishes:

Dairy:

1/2 dozen eggs

A small container of whole milk

At least a stick of butter

Vegan mozzarella shreds (you could cut up your own non-vegan mozzarella instead, if you like)

Meat:

1 package of bacon

1 large filet of salmon

Produce:

1 Yellow bell pepper

1 Orange bell pepper

2 tomatoes

1 cucumber

Alfalfa sprouts

2 red onions

Garlic (1 bud — or about a teaspoon of it from a jar, as I prefer)

1 bunch of scallions

Asparagus

Fresh parsley

Mixed greens

Other aisles:

At least a small bottle of cooking White wine (I used Riesling out of a standard-sized bottle).

Croutons

Fat-free creamy salad dressing

White Rice

Honey

Teriyaki sauce

Grated ginger (or dried ginger)

At my grocery this week, this supermarket shopping cart would ring up at around $96.00.

RECIPES

ANNE’S SUNDAY BRUNCH FRITATA

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp butter

3 pieces of bacon cut into lardons (small pieces)

2 coarsely chopped red onions

1 yellow pepper

1 tbsp. Chopped parsley

1 tbsp. Minced garlic

6 eggs

A splash of milk

Salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup of shreds of mozzarella (I used vegan mozzarella, but of course you can choose traditional mozzarella as well).

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Spread the slices of bacon in a frying pan and sautée them until the fat is at least partially rendered, coating the pan.

3. Place the chopped bell pepper, and red onions in the pan and sautée. Add the garlic a minute or two before you add the scrambled eggs.

4. While the vegetables and bacon are sautéing in the pan, scramble the eggs, milk, salt, pepper and parsley in a bowl.

5. When the red onions are slightly browned, pour the eggs into the pan. As it sizzles for a minute, scrape the eggs from the sides as they cook toward the center of the pan using the flat side of a fork.

6. Once the eggs are about half-cooked, turn off the flame under the pan, and add shreds of mozzarella by sprinkling them evenly on top.

7. Put the pan in the oven for about 15 minutes.

SALMON IN A HONEY-TERIYAKI GLAZE

1 large portion of salmon.

1 tbsp vegetable oil.

1 tbsp butter

1/4 cup of honey

1/4 cup of Teriyaki sauce

2 tbsp ginger

Salt and pepper to taste

2 chopped scallions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the butter and oil in a baking pan. Place the salmon in there as well, skin side down.

3. In a small bowl, combine the honey, teriyaki sauce, ginger, salt and pepper. Take a basting brush and coat the salmon evenly with the mixture.

4. Sprinkle the salmon with sliced scallions.

5. Place in the oven and cook for about a half hour. (Note that the asparagus can go in the same oven to cook.)

6. Serve over rice.

BRAISED ASPARAGUS IN WHITE WINE AND HERBS

1 bunch of asparagus, trimmed.

1 tbsp of butter

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

1/4 cup of white wine

Chopped parsley, oregano, and thyme

Salt and pepper to taste.

1. Set the oven at 350 degrees.

2. Place all ingredients in a baking pan, sprinkling the herbs over the top of the asparagus.

3. Bake for about a half hour.

1980s SALAD

Take EVERYTHING ELSE I mentioned in the shopping list that was not called for in the previous recipes. Chop and toss.