Arthur Schwartz was the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for 18 years. Perhaps what he’s best known for is as a chameleon—he’s successfully worked in radio, print media, cookbook publishing, TV, and teaching. Today Arthur talks about: More On Being Carb-Less, Dining Out: Prospect Heights
Right now it is time to bring in our good friend and arthur joins us oh every monday and uh we talk about food and various aspects of food and more with arthur good morning arthur happy labor day well i’m not sure what’s happening about it but but let’s acknowledge it
We’re inhaling and exhaling and eating so we we can’t complain correct you’re right uh laboriously yes so um i’m still laboriously uh following this ultra i don’t even know what to call it anymore because it’s an ultra low carb diet this is for rapid weight loss except that there’s nothing rapid going
On here [Laughter] i don’t weigh myself i don’t dare but um i know you do but um i don’t even want to know but i i gauge my weight loss and this is stupid by bob’s weight loss because he’s addicted to the scale so i know at any time of the day
How much he weighs to the ounce so he got a new scale that actually goes to the ounce um anyway so we have not had pasta rice potatoes uh bread uh any of those processed carbohydrate potato is not processed but anyway we haven’t had any white carbs in it’s now gonna be
It’s almost two weeks well it’s more like 12 days today and bob immediately reacted by losing a few pounds and then he immediately re-reacted by gaining a couple pounds not ever going off the diet except that he does have a high carb breakfast he does have
Cereal in a banana still he did give it up for two mornings but then he couldn’t take it so he went and he wasn’t losing weight so he went back to his banana and cereal um i’m looking for ways to get around well first of all cooking is one of my major activities
And when you can’t cook any of those carbohydrates you’re sort of limited i’ve discovered we do eat a lot of salad you’re allowed lettuce on this stuff i i make i’m making it up by the way because if you by the way i i i did some research on the so-called
Keto diet which is a diet that eliminates carbohydrates so that your body goes into a metabolic metabolic phase called ketosis where your body is consuming itself essentially because it hasn’t been fed any fuel any carbohydrates it starts using up your fat stores uh to to and that’s how you lose weight
So anyway he he went back to his banana and cereal since eliminating it didn’t seem to do anything but other than that uh we are super low carb now one of the things that you should not be eating believe it or not is ketchup which is
Basically all carbs and a lot of sugar carbs so what to put on a hamburger what to put on anything uh that you use ketchup on so i this week besides that we this is allowed we had a a delicious dinner of unbelievable tomatoes with fresh mozzarella
And basil and oil you were allowed oil on this diet as really as much as you want great olive oil and that was a nice dinner but i it left me with a lot of basil and i was thinking about making pesto but what do you put pesto on
So instead of making a real genoise genovese a pesto which includes nuts and cheese all of your loud cheese and your allowed nuts i just somehow didn’t want to spread that on stuff so i just made up a a kind of just i’m calling it basil chimichurri because
It’s more like chimichurri than it is like an italian basil pesto and i said genovese because it’s originally from genoa and there are many many many many pestos in italy uh the one that we think of when we say pesto is the one from genoa with basil and
Pine nuts although i use walnuts these days very often garlic so i just put in my mini processor i just put some garlic i’m my seven-year-old niece loves staying untied so anyway she got that from me and in in her old age she’ll say ah goes inside uncle arthur
Anyway um it was wonderful the basil i mean filled up my mini processor a couple of cloves of garlic a big pinch of salt and some olive oil and you know what i liked it better than putting ketchup on my hamburger of course my burger was not on a bun so
Let’s call it a chopped steak so we had chopped steaks with uh uh oh i also put in uh but didn’t tell bob because he would be afraid of it i also put in some hot pepper uh one small calabrese uh hot pepper into this uh
Kind of pesto chimichurri i like to call it chimichurri chimichurri is usually made with parsley and oregano mine was 100 basil i’m probably going to make another one today and i might actually do it with parsley and oregano instead of the basil because i don’t have any more basil what else
Did we do um we’ve been eating um cooked vegetables you’re allowed cooked vegetables broccoli any leafy greens so we’ve been eating quite a bit of spinach i haven’t dealt with mushrooms lately but yes mushrooms are good on this diet and you can just saute them in olive oil that
Would be really good on a chopped steak i would say and also eggs we’ve been eating you know it’s a good protein food and you’re allowed to scramble them in butter i even use a little extra butter these days to make them extra buttery and delicious and i’m experimenting with chinese style
Eggs and the other day when i just could not cook anymore we ordered in spare ribs from the chinese restaurant down the street we also ordered in some spinach which i thought was foolishness because i cook spinach all the time but we had to have something green and
There it was so we ordered a spare ribs and we also ordered something i’d never ever ordered from my local takeout joint a row stock a half a row stock which in fact was really good i was amazed at how good it was anyway i had leftovers of both the duck
And the spare ribs so i diced up the meat i sauteed an onion in some plain old uh canola oil not not in olive oil because i didn’t want that taste in my eggs and i sauteed the onion and then i heated through the diced up leftover duck and sparab
I must tell you this turned out to be really good now i do know that the the spare ribs had a sugary glaze on them but i figured it’s a glaze how much sugar could there be and i only had what four spare ribs
For two of us and a few pieces of duck breasts for the two of us so i thought well that’s okay anyway i diced it all up and then i poured in my scrambled egg mixture now i’ve been experimenting with this mixture i now i know that one of our listeners
Could because he she wrote to me it’s a couple that they’re making these chinese scrambled eggs with tomato now that’s a recipe you can find online it appeared in the new york times several years ago and i’ve been making it ever since because it’s one so good and two so easy and three
So chinese now normally i eat this with a lot of rice so we didn’t have the rice part but i did make a really really good chinese scrambled eggs and here’s what i’ve been putting into my eggs i’m gonna play with this a little bit but
Right now this is a good mixture um for four well i had jumbo eggs actually four jump i bought jumbo eggs because they were on sale and i’m figuring since we’re mostly eating them you know scrambled blah blah blah i’m not baking with them um i could buy jumbos
Uh so i bought four jump four if you’re using large eggs i would say use six large eggs but four jumbos into which i put uh i would say a little splashy tablespoon meaning more than just a tablespoon of um of a wine of chinese
Uh rice wine now you can buy this in the supermarket but i must say that most supermarkets only carried carry the cooking version of this wine and since that’s the only version they carry i would get it or you can use dry or slightly sweet ever so slightly sweet uh
Spanish cherry in fact i tasted my rice wine the other day and i must say it tastes a lot like sherry so that substitutes a good one so a a tablespoon a little bit more of the of the sherry literally uh three drops of soy sauce just for the salt
And about i would say a half a teaspoon you could use a tiny bit more of sesame oil that gives it the eggs a sort of chinese flavor which i love so i beat all that together rather well and then i poured it on top of the onion
And and diced up uh meats that i had heated through and i when i scramble eggs i always scramble sort of lightly i start on high heat and as soon as the eggs start cooking at the edges i start pushing them around the pan and i lower the heat
And in fact since i want these eggs for the chinese dishes to be really soft i turn the heat off and i finish the cooking of the eggs in the residual heat of the pan and they come out very creamy now i’ve been reading a bunch of recipes for chinese eggs
And some of the recipes put in broth as well and i may try that today because i’m going to make something i’ve been craving from a restaurant in queens that i go to right off the long island expressway it’s easy to get to and they make unbelievable scrambled eggs with shrimp
So i’m going to try that today this is by the way very much on the diet and i’m going to use i’m going to look at what a quarter of a pound of small small shrimp looks like i may use as much as a half a pound for two people
And i’m going to quickly quickly uh stir fry the shrimp literally until they just become pink and then take them out of the pan and then um i’m gonna add an onion to the pan and cook that until it’s tender and then i’m gonna take my egg mixture
And put it in and as soon as i put that in i’m gonna add the shrimp so that the last minutes the the few minutes it takes to cook the eggs will finish cooking the shrimp shrimp only need literally three minutes on heat whether it’s in water
In oil in a pan the total cooking time for a medium-sized shrimp is three minutes now i’m gonna try to buy smaller than medium size today and if you can’t get small shrimp to make scrambled eggs with shrimp i would say chop up you know cut into half-inch pieces no bigger
Larger shrimp and saute that literally one minute before you scoop them out and put the eggs in that should be good now of course no rice we are allowing ourselves some fruit so the the best fruits for any diet for that matter not just this low carb one are strawberries and watermelon
And don’t eat too much because they are you are on a diet but if you’re not on a diet who cares but uh and if you’re skinny eat a lot so we went out last night with uh we went out for the first time well the second time
Since uh mid-march the first time was for lunch at a taqueria i think i mentioned that it’s a place that’s been there for as long as i’m here which is 22 years and i’ve never been in it and finally i tried it because they had lovely seating outside and it was a
Beautiful day and the place was empty so and it was the food was really boring um so i’m not going back there unless i’m out with somebody who can’t take mexican food it’s a good place to go for mexican food if you don’t like mexican food
Uh it’s the most i should say it’s the least seasoned mexican food i’ve ever eaten but it was fresh but yesterday um we were we had a visitor visitors bob’s great niece and her husband and great nephew they’re a young couple who just moved here from utah
And uh into new york they would delay by the way tyler had a has a job at chase he’s a he’s a mergers and acquisitions guy at chase and he’s been working at home for the last he was supposed to start here in early spring
But they never got here and he only got here last week and this he’s still working at home uh but they are chases opening their offices next week and he’ll see what that’s all about in any case we we did go out to eat with them
And around here is very nice i gotta say um labor day weekend the neighborhood seems to be empty i mean there are more parking spaces that i i’ve never ever seen before but we went on to vanderbilt avenue which is just two blocks away from me on the other side of flatbush avenue
Where it’s called prospect heights as opposed to my side of flatbush avenue which is called park slope so prospect heights is very up and coming or maybe even up and went it’s got a lot of expensive housing these days and a lot of young people and it’s very just a little sidebar here
I go to a physical therapist a young guy he’s just turned 40. to me that’s young and he has a baby and he and his wife who’s a project manager for construction company just moved from uh crown heights to uh to park slot well it’s called south
Slope it’s the south end of park slope and his parents um and his sister and brother-in-law came to visit from long island and were really upset that he and his wife had just moved to another place in brooklyn why do you want to live here it’s so dangerous
And jeffrey said well i don’t know how dangerous it is all these guys with strollers but that’s all i see on my streets is daddies with strollers and in fact bob and i usually call the neighborhood daddies with strollers there are more of them around here than anywhere i’ve ever seen so anyway
Vanderbilt avenue is a very nice wide street that goes through prospect heights by the way preston has been one reason it’s become so expensive is that there’s all this new construction a cause caused by but part of the atlantic yards which is now called pacific park which is uh the this uh neighborhood
Just behind the barclays center uh it’s all you know small houses and a few six-story apartment houses you know pre-war buildings but now there’s all this new construction high-rises with amenities so there’s all those young people who want high-rises with amenities living in the neighborhood and but they’ve closed the city has closed
Vanderbilt for about six blocks and because it is a wide street with a a a median down the middle with trees on it people are picnicking on the median and setting up tables and chairs on the street and all the restaurants they did this so the restaurants could open
Uh the restaurants spill out into the side over the sidewalk into the gutter we used to call the gutter i don’t know which the roadway and um and it’s like a party in fact the restaurant we were headed for a middle eastern place called zatun was itunes depends on how you say it
Um was across the street from this really bad band that was playing and they do have seating outside the restaurant and in the back in a garden and we said oh let’s hope there’s a table in the garden because i don’t want to listen to this bad music
While we’re eating anyway they did it was quiet it was lovely um it was filled with people although not filled because the tables are very very well distanced apart and you could in fact order uh without ever seeing a waitress if you wanted to by using your phone but for some reason our
Phones weren’t doing what we wanted them to do so a waitress did come over and i was able to get through a middle eastern meal with only eating a small piece of pita and they make freshly baked pita at this place it’s very very very thin
So i feel like i didn’t really consume many carbs there and i did but i did have a falafel because they do have great falafel and that’s chickpeas and that’s sort of a no-no on this diet and i did have a couple of swipes at the baba ganoush
Uh with the bread but then i decided to give up on the bread but there was one thing on the appetizer platters that i remember not liking in this place because i make it so much better but less and it’s rice with lentils and fried onions um mujadah it’s called or
There are other pronunciations of that too and it was so good last night i had to eat it but it was only about a quarter of a cup on the plate maybe a half a cup at the most of rice and lentils so and then they you know middle eastern
Restaurants do great grilled meat and they have other vegetables and salads so i realize i can get through this one on the diet and two through the covered period without becoming sick so and also i discovered they’re open for lunch which i didn’t realize so i think during
In this period i think they’re doing better business than they used to do when it was indoor seating because for one thing they have more seating outside and uh and they’re still doing deliveries so i don’t know some restaurants i think are actually thriving in this period that they’re thriving in
A little different way but you know what you just bought you talking there’s nothing better than the names from middle eastern foods i’m sorry there isn’t middle eastern israel there’s just names that make it sound good whether it’s good or not i don’t know how to probably just be bad
Well um i must say one thing that they had that i ate last night that i’ve been making myself and now i’ve gotta improve my version is excuse me i’m gonna now cough not sneeze but hold on a sec i must say one thing about this diet
Even though i don’t know if i’ve lost weight i suspect i have in that i put on a shirt yesterday that was slightly snug the last time i put it on and it was not snug yesterday so that means i’m deflating a little bit and the other thing is i do have a
Little bit more energy in fact last night i usually conk out at 10 10 30. i stayed up until a little after 11 because i had energy and the third thing is i’m way less flammy than i used to be i’m a very plenty person and that seems to have been
Remedied by this almost no carb diet so i i um there’s something middle eastern let’s see does this sound delicious if i can even think of what it’s called um in any case it’s it’s the meat that you cook on the vertical spit um shawarma yeah that’s shawarma yep ishwarma so
They make chicken so i didn’t know this but this restaurant they must have a lot of other low-carb no carb clients because the waitress right away said to us after bob said well i’m not eating bread and she said oh we bring you a hot pizza and he’s
Almost using bread um is is they have um you can order the meats just for the meat so next time i go i am going to order meats just for meat and then we’ll get some kind of a a salad that we were allowed to eat allowable salad
And that could be a good meal for me so the the the the shawarma was really good and i’ve been doing uh shawarma myself although i don’t have a vertical spit but my friend leah koenig in her last book the jewish cookbook has a spice mixture for shawarma
And in this case you you you make the shawarma on skinless boneless chicken thighs you season them very well with this spice mixture and then you put them in a very hot oven and cook them and then at the end you put them in a skillet second cooking
Basically to crisp up the edges as if it was shawarma well i’ve given up on the second cooking part i thought one cooking was enough but i did like leah’s spice mixture that you put by the way you can rub this into the chicken in the morning and let it sit all day
It’s even better and of course if you grill it on an outdoor grill it’s gonna be even even better i think but i’m gonna i’m gonna beef up my um my my shawarma mixture it’s got paprika i guess i should probably give the give the formula and the book is right here
So i can read it off who remembers i made up a big batch of this when i made it and i put it in the jar and i’ve been using it in fact i just made chicken thighs the other day just full out in bone-in skin on
Chicken thighs which in fact i i still like better oh my god the the the print in this index is so tiny because there’s so much in it and so much in the book reminds me of uh you know and p this is something people don’t know but authors
Have to pay for their own indexes now what’s unfortunate is that the publisher usually gets the index done and but the author pays for it you don’t have to actually pay for it but it comes out of your advance which you already owe the publisher
And let me see where schwarma is come on first of all you have to have a magnifying glass to see this um i’ll find it yet in any case um they came out great i i rubbed the this mixture in in the morning uh in the evening i i put the chicken in
The oven at what 450 for 40 minutes and that of course does the trick and but i still after eating the one last night i don’t know why i’m not finding this i’m looking on oh i’m looking under chickpeas instead of chicken how’s that um so i don’t know where this spice mixture
Is i think i’m going to have to do this next week because i can’t ah here it is here it is i found it so it’s a very easy spice mixture and i think it’s worth keeping around and putting on your chicken um it’s a two teaspoon this is this is for
One dose so to speak that’s going to be enough for two pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs now leia cuts hers into four pieces each chicken thigh i don’t find that’s really necessary so here’s the spice mixture two teaspoons of ground cumin two teaspoons of sweet paprika one half teaspoon of ground cinnamon
One half teaspoon of ground turmeric bob keeps saying oh maybe we should have turmeric because he reads online that is so good for you it’s good for you right well don’t i said you know there’s turmeric in this spicy i’m doing turmeric a half a teaspoon of garlic powder now
That’s a product i never keep in the house i even have trouble smelling garlic powder but i in this case i crushed up a clove of garlic and put it in a half a teaspoon of smoked paprika that gives a nice little bit of smoky flavor if you like
That flavor you could increase that to a half a teaspoon or three quarters of a teaspoon and then um salt of course a half a teaspoon of salt and a quarter of teaspoon at least of a freshly ground black pepper and leia or leah uh marinates or uh
Lets her chicken sit with this uh for as long as you want to let it sit with is i i would say if you do it in the morning you can cook in the afternoon uh along with a large onion uh thinly sliced because this is very good with onion
And that’s it that’s the whole deal some olive oil now when you go to i i don’t put oil in with my spice mixture because i keep the spice mixture in a spice jar but when i go to make the chicken i will in fact
Brush it all with olive oil and put the spice mixture on or put the spice mixture on and then brush it all with olive oil and put it on a sheet pan chicken which you’ve also i would say greased with a little bit of olive oil and cooked the chicken i would say
At 425 is a good a good temperature for boneless skinless thighs and it’s going to take a good half hour to cook and that’s it it’s really good um you can have this with a salad by the way the onion too cook the onion the same way
So i like all those bits of spiced rubbed roasted onion it’s delicious all right of course if i had a pita to stick it in better you could dress even on the diet you could dress this with a tahini sauce just mix up some tahini which is sesame seed paste
Totally allowable on a no carb diet with a little bit of lemon juice and water until enough water to make because as soon as you add lemon juice to the tahini it will seize up and then you can add water until it becomes fluid again and you can drizzle that over
Your chicken another thing to drizzle over over this chicken is yogurt another allowable food so you could have especially if it’s high fat yogurt don’t go for the no fat low yogurt you’re on a diet where your fat is important so and also not only for the metabolic reasons but also because
It fills you up and without carbs it’s hard to get full i think except on fat and speaking of uh um fat butter and now i know why costco sells giant jars of mayonnaise they must all be on the keto diet because you’re allowed a lot of mayonnaise
All right so we’ve been going through mayonnaise here all right all right well anyway let’s see maybe by next week i can report that i actually lost weight on this i’m looking forward to that it causes i must say yesterday i i had high anxiety over elections
And the man in the white house um so i was thinking maybe if i just had a bowl of pasta i’d feel better no but i i know i resisted i resisted but carbs do calm you down so if you’re on a diet like this and you’re feeling particularly anxious in
These anxious times know that it’s because you’re not eating carbs as much as because of the world okay arthur i’ll speak to you next week all right well anyway that was long i’ll talk to you soon all right take care bye arthur schwartz the food maven here
On robin hood radio robinhood radio dot com underwriting support for arthur schwartz the food mavens john andrews restaurant on the hillsdale road in south eggermont 413-528-3467 on the web jarrestaurant.com reuben’s cheese mongers and groceries on main street in great barrington 413-528-0488 rubiners.com hillsdale home chef more information 518-325-7000 hgshomechef.com