Restaurant Review: Layla's Falafel, Stamford, CT

A few months back, Kimberly and I were devastated to find out that our local falafelry had closed.  Since then, Kimberly has been pining for deep-fried chickpea goo and I've been longing for lamb shewarma.  There just wasn't anywhere to go that replaced our beloved Falafel Inn, at least not in Norwalk.

We had heard rumors of a Middle Eastern place in Stamford, so we decided to check it on Thursday, May 19, driving down the Merritt, getting off at the High Ridge Road exit and pulling in to Layla's Falafel, located in a small strip-mall about a mile south of the exit, on the west side of the road.  When we arrived, the small dining room was completely full, with half of the tables pushed together to accommodate a large group, so Kimberly and I went next door and wandered the aisles of Mrs. Green's Natural Market.  Mrs. Green's was crunchy and groovy, with what looked to be a rather nice lunch counter in the back of the store, but we had our hearts set on Layla's, so we kept our attention on the Granddad's Pine Tar Soap (which Ian and I love and Kimberly loathes) and the cereal aisle, where there were oat hulls and wheat chaff in abundance.  Kimberly decided to get some really good chocolate, but we were disappointed that good chocolate doesn't seem to be sufficiently "alternative" to have made it onto Mrs. Green's shelves.

My Chicken and Lamb Shawerma Platter with
Kimberly's Falafel Sandwich at Layla's in Stamford

When we returned to Layla's the dining room was being cleaned up and we were seated quickly.  Kimberly ordered the longed-for falafel sandwich and I ordered the chicken and lamb shawerma platter.  Our server brought the food out much faster than seemed possible and we started in happily.  Kimberly's falafel was very good, flavorful with a nice contrast between the crispness on the outside and the softness of the inside. The falafel was wrapped in a beautifully textured flatbread.  My shawerma was a bit of a surprise, as I was expecting a shawerma composed of both chicken and lamb, but received a plate containing chicken shawerma and lamb shawerma, served over mujadara (rice and lentils), with hummus, delicious and eye-wateringly garlicky tahini dip, and a green salad.  There was a basket of warm pita bread for Kimberly and me to share.  Other than the inconvenience of showing up during what must have been a crazier than usual lunch rush, we had nothing to complain about.  The server was very friendly.  The food was fantastic and the price was moderate.  Layla's also has another location in Fairfield, so we'll stop by there sometime soon, I'm sure.

Bye bye, Boojum.

It is said that the two happiest days in a boat owner's life are when he buys his boat and when he sells it. Or "she," of course, if the boat owner happens to be female.

Several years ago, when I was living in New Jersey, I bought a used sailboat off of my fencing buddy, Ryan Alfonso. The boat was a Lockley Sea Witch 12, a small 1970s vintage, ABS plastic over foam construction sailboat that was easy to trailer and was a fairly decent day sailer, though it definitely had some limitations. [For you boat geeks out there, Lockley sold out to Snark in the 1980s and the Sea Witch became the "Sunchaser II." FULL SPECS HERE.] It looked to be a good choice for taking Ian out for an afternoon on the water and teaching him to sail.

Ryan was, to put it gently, "not a sailor" and the boat he sold me had definitely seen both better days and a lot of "creative" repairs. I took the boat home and flipped it over on some sawhorses in the garage and started to take stock of what needed to be done, which was quite a lot. The plastic was cracked in a number of places and I had to learn how to lay fiberglass to repair it. The bow was crushed from some sort of misadventure and I ended up recreating it with foam and then re-glassing it. One day, after I had the boat repaired and repainted, I went sailing in the afternoon and then, with the boat and trailer still behind the car, went to my fencing class. When Ryan saw the boat, he didn't recognize it as the same one that he had sold me, which definitely made me happy.

Over the next few years, I took the boat, which we named Boojum in honor of Lewis Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark," to a variety of places, sailing on the pond at the Al-Genna, the Eddy family camp in the Adirondacks where my family has spent many fourth-of-july weeks, sailing on Willsboro Bay on Lake Champlain, puttering around a bunch of different lakes and reservoirs in New Jersey and New York.

When we moved to Connecticut, though, Boojum's liabilities started to be problematic. She was really too small and light for me to feel comfortable taking her out on Long Island Sound. With no motor, I couldn't launch her from the city boat ramp and she was too big and heavy to launch from the kayak launching area at the beach. Sadly, Boojum sat on her sawhorses while Ian and I started sailing with our friend, Bob McGregor in weekly races during the summer. In March of 2010, a huge wind-storm picked Boojum up, turned her over and slammed her back down on the ground, re-breaking the fiberglass-repaired seams and causing lots of other cracks. Without a good bit more work, Boojum wasn't going to go sailing, but I didn't have the time to fix her and there wasn't really anywhere suitable to take her, anyway. I knew that Boojum and I were bound to part ways, but wasn't ready to deal with it quite yet.

Over the course of the past winter, I decided that it was time to find Boojum a new home. This past Monday, as I was checking my email, I found one from Ed, a fellow Freecycle member, asking if anyone had a boat that he could use with his seven-year-old grandson. I emailed back, telling about Boojum's need of repair, but he wasn't daunted. He came to the house, looked the boat over, and decided that he was up to the challenge, so I trailered Boojum over to his place a couple towns away, leaving Ed (pictured at left) with the boat, all the rigging, some PFDs, and some of the fiberglassing materials and paint that he'd need to repair Boojum back to sailing trim. I hope that he and his grandson have a lot of fun with her, rowing and sailing for years to come. Now, though, it is time for me to start fantasizing about my next boat.

Barbecued Lamb Shanks

Passover is coming.  So is Holy Week, for that matter, so I'm working on plans for a Maundy Thursday Passover Seder and Last Supper Service at church.   Over the years, I've been to seders hosted by a variety of organizations:  Hillel societies, synagogues, interfaith associations, and churches and I've seen what can go right when people come together to celebrate the ancient story of the journey from slavery to freedom.  I've also seen what can go wrong when allegedly well-meaning Christians appropriate the rituals of Judaism and try to Christianize them, saying things like, "When Jews celebrate the Passover, they think that the lamb shank represents the lambs whose blood was sprinkled on the doorposts of their homes so that the Angel of Death would pass over, but we Christians know that the real Lamb of God is Jesus, who died on the cross so that we can have eternal life."  Our service, therefore, will be a Passover seder, celebrating the Jewishness of the story of the Exodus and celebrating how this was a regular part of Jesus' life.  We'll also explore how Jesus took the elements of the seder and reinterpreted them when he broke the bread and shared the cup with his disciples in what we now understand to be the sacrament of Communion. 

So, we're getting ready for the event, a full-bore family-style sit-down meal with candles on the tables and I'm working on the logistics of figuring out how many people will be there, how many matzot we'll need, and how much charoset we'll have to make. The food items, though, are easy, compared to the one inedible item on the seder plate: a lamb shank bone.

Several years ago, when I was in Pennsylvania, my church held a similar event for Maundy Thursday. I made braised lamb shanks for my family's dinner a week or so earlier and then took the bones and boiled them until anything objectionable had detached from them. The only problem was that it took a long time to boil all the connective tissue from the bones and I accidentally left them on the stove when we all went to church one evening. We returned to find the fire department in our apartment, with ventilation fans clearing the smoke.

This year, I'm opted for barbecued lamb shanks. I did a quick check on the internet and found that almost everyone says that it can't be done, that the meat will burn or dry out before all of the tough and chewy bits soften up. Steve Raichlen, in Barbecue USA, has a rather Byzantine method of cooking shanks, involving a combination of traditional low-and-slow barbecuing techniques for an hour and change and, then, wrapping the shanks in foil for an additional hour while they finish cooking.

I'm nothing if not hopeful and ambitious, so I decided that I could make barbecued lamb shanks for dinner tonight. Around 2:00, I started a bunch of shanks brining. By 4:30, I had them coated in olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper, and put them on the cool side of the grill, with a pan of water with onions and garlic beneath the meat, next to the bank of coals. For the next two hours, I kept basting the shanks with a mixture of orange, lemon & lime juice, as they cooked slowly, then I added honey to the mixture for the final baste at 6:30. I took the meat off the grill and served dinner -- the lamb shanks, with raisin and toasted almond couscous and grilled zucchini. Unfortunately, though the meat was done, the connective tissue was still very connective and, while I don't mind gnawing on a bone to get the meat off, neither Kimberly nor Ian is particularly happy with doing so.

While the meat wasn't exactly a failure, it was far from a success. I'd try again, using Raichlen's technique, except that I'm not actually that big a fan of lamb shanks. (Remember, I was really doing this to produced shank bones for the seder plates at church.) I expect that the next lamb that hits my grill will be a boneless leg of lamb, with lots of cumin and cilantro. Oh well...

So, now, I've got a freezer bag of cubed lamb and a pot of lamb shank-bones simmering on the stove, making some lamb stock for a future recipe. I see a lamb stew in the future.

Playing Catch-up

It may look like I haven't blogged for three months, but that isn't really true. The simple reality is that I've got a couple half-written blog posts about things that have happened since the first of the year, they just haven't managed to progress beyond the half-written stage. "So, then," you may ask, "what's been going on that has kept you from writing?" The answer: "Nothing but the ironic reality that, when there's plenty of time to write, it means that there's nothing happening and, when there's plenty happening, there's no time to write." Here, then is a precis.écis of what's been going on.

On January 8, Kimberly, Ian and I went to Mystic Seaport for the annual Pub Sing and Chantey Blast. Before the music began, we wandered around the seaport, seeing Amistad looking quite forlorn, with her topmasts and yards struck, her jibboom gone, and her deck covered with a shelter made of plastic sheeting. Conversely, the Charles W. Morgan is coming along nicely in her restoration. The pub sing was held across the street from the seaport in Frobisher Hall and featured a motley assortment of Seaport musicians, including Don Sineti, Geoff Kauffman, and several others, as well as other chantey singers from a variety of other venues.

My church hosted a performance by the "God Show" conference from Silver Lake on January 9 and Kimberly and I ended up hosting a bunch of teenage boys who stayed overnight in our home. The following Saturday, Kimberly and I took Ian and his girlfriend, Emma, to NYC, where we saw the Henrik Ibsen play John Gabriel Borkman at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Prior to going the the play, we stopped in at the Greenlight Bookstore for a bit, then had lunch at Deniz, a Turkish restaurant on Fulton Street, notfar from the Harvey Theater.

Then the snow came. From the middle of January until the beginning of March, there was snow on the ground. Mountains of it. Fortunately, after the snowplow had plowed several snowfalls of the white stuff into six-foot-high mountains that prevented me from being able to turn the car around in the driveway, help arrived in the form of Eric and Pusnoch, two Chinese homestay students from Beijing. According to the official instructions from the Center for Global Studies, we were to make the kids feel like they were part of the family and to include them in all family activities, so I handed them snow shovels and set them to pitching the plow piles into the back yard. Kimberly, Ian and I shoveled, too, of course. That was only fair. But it was very nice to have three teenagers shoveling instead of only one. Even with all that snow, there was only one ski trip this winter, a day trip to Fahnestock Winter Park with our friend Eric. Our usual multi-day X-C ski trip didn't happen at all because the schools lost their spring break due to all of the days they were closed because of the snow we received here. How ironic that we couldn't go skiing because of all of the snow.

The big event in March was going to the Quick Center at Fairfield University to see a broadcast of the Danny Boyle's production of Frankenstein from the British National Theater, starring Lee Miller as Dr. Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch as the monster, roles that they trade off every other performance. It was astonishingly good and provided a perspective on the play that we'd never have gotten by seeing it live on stage. It was so good that Kimberly is going back tomorrow to see it again, with the actors in the opposite roles.

On a sad note, one of our favorite restaurants, Falafel House, recently closed, so Kimberly has been seriously jonesing for some deep-fried chickpeas. We have, however, discovered a new place, Masas, a Peruvian arepa restaurant, which is directly across the street from where Falafel house used to be. We've been there twice in the last week, so I expect that I'll have to devote a post to it at some point in the near future. So that brings us pretty much up to the present, at least well enough that I don't have to hang my head in shame every time I think about my blog.

Restaurant Review: Eating at Edo, Norwalk, CT

Today was the first day in a long time that things have been quiet in the Bryant-Smith household. Since Thanksgiving, really, things have been running flat out, with additional programs at church for Advent, then having house guests for the entire week between Christmas and New Year's. Yesterday, when I was making the announcements at church, I realized that the office was going to be closed today, which is a clear sign of just how abuzz my brain has been in recent weeks.

Anyhow, with today being a day off, Kimberly and I went out to lunch at our favorite Japanese/Korean restaurant, Edo, at 666 Main Ave. in Norwalk, in an easily-missed strip mall, just north of Walmart and south of Borders.

When I was in college at Virginia Commonwealth University, I discovered Korean food at a restaurant in the 900 block of Grace Street, just down the street from two of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants, "Saigon," and the now-defunct "Asian Gourmet" which was originally an icecream parlor that was bought by Tien "Timmy" Vu and his wife and turned into quite a respectable place to get Vietnamese style teriyaki sandwiches. The Korean restaurant was several steps down to a basement with an unimpressive sign that simply said "Korean Restaurant." That restaurant seems to have closed but, for those of you in the Richmond area, there appears to be a similar one in the same block, called "Mama's Kitchen," possibly run by the same folks.

At that Korean restaurant on Grace Street, I fell in love with Kimchi Jigae, a hot and spicy soup with pork, kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage) and other vegetables, served in a heated stone bowl. What I didn't learn about there were the ponchon (side dishes) traditionally served with Korean meals. For that bit of knowledge, I had to move to New Jersey and the many Korean restaurants in Fort Lee.

But back to today's lunch. Kimberly and I have been eating at Edo since one of my deacons, Joseph Deruvo Jr., recommended the place to us shortly after we moved to Norwalk. Edo, named after the ancient name for Tokyo, features a mix of Japanese and Korean food, but the Korean is the reason Kimberly and I go there. Walking into the restaurant is a warm and welcoming experience, with wood paneling and bamboo beams. Cloth banners hang as accents.

The lunch menu leans toward Japanese bento boxes, with sushi, sashima, tempura, and teriyaki, but Kimberly and I typically ignore these and head straight for the pages of Korean food. Each time I eat at Edo, I disappoint myself by ordering the same thing: jaeyook kimchi gobdol, spicy pork and kimchi with greens, seaweed, sprouts, and other vegetables, served with rice in a heated stone bowl. The magic of the gobdol is that the food continues to cook in it and the rice browns up and caramelizes into a layer of crunchy goodness.

First, though, the ponchon arrive. Today was kimchi, bean sprouts, pickled daikon, lightly pickled cucumber slices and some quickly sauteed leafy greens (napa cabbage?), along with bowls of miso soup. The ponchon are always a great beginning and it is always part of the fun to see what arrives at the table. Frequently, at Edo, there's an apple salad and, sometimes, there's sliced rice cake with barbecue sauce. At other restaurants, I've enjoyed whole broiled or fried fish, sweet black beans, dried anchovies, potato salad, fish cakes and scallion pancakes.

When the entrees arrived, Kimberly was immediately glad for the ponchon vegetables, as her mandoo gui (dumpling soup) had plenty of beef in it, but no vegetables to speak of and, before the meal was done, she had requested additional kimchi. She finished the meal feeling that she had made a mistake ordering it and I ended up sampling a bit of what was left in her bowl, which was good, but definitely lacked the variety that would have improved the soup quite a lot.

My gobdol was -- not surprisingly -- everything I had hoped it would be. The pork was porky, the kimchi (though not particularly spicy today) was flavorful, the vegetables tasty, the barbecue sauce (served on the side in a plastic squeeze bottle) was zingy, and the rice was so good that I chiseled the last of it off the bowl, where it had cooked on.

The only drawbacks to Edo are the 1980s pop music that is piped through the house speakers and the service. While Barry Manilow and Air Supply take me back to my glory days in high school, I rather enjoy it when the music matches what I'm eating and I'm sure it can't be that hard to get Japanese or Korean CDs. The service is never really thorough but is always cheerful and, when you can get your server's attention to ask for what you need, is always prompt.

Kimberly and I will, of course, be going back. I'll see if I can bring myself to order something other than one of the gobdol dishes and I'm certain that Kimberly will be making a different entree selection.

Halloween 2010

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. From the liturgical angle, there's All Saints Day, which is always very meaningful to people as we remember those saints who have departed in the last year. My real love, though, is the creative craft of Halloween.

From the time Ian was little, I loved making him costumes. One year, he was a violin. Another, he was the Statue of Liberty. Another, he was a winged dragon. All of the costumes were, of course, hand-made by me. These days, Ian takes care of his own costumes, more or less. This year, he had planned on dressing as Neo from The Matrix, but we couldn't find him a black trenchcoat (and he and I both refuse to buy a costume...), so he's opted for a reprise of last year's costume, which is just Ian in a kilt.

And then there are the Jack o' Lanterns! I just love carving the things. Over the years, I have carved scary ones, silly ones, fanged ones and freckled ones. When we lived in New Jersey and were forbidden by town ordinance to have political yard signs, I used to carve political pumpkins, including the 2008 masterpiece 6-pumpkin set : (Vote) (O) (b) (a) (m) (a).

This year, I found a wonderfully warty pumpkin that just wanted to be carved into a grumpy old guy (probably a Tea Party supporter) who would yell at someone to get off their lawn.

Happy Halloween.

(and don't forget to vote on Tuesday)

Church Newsletter Column: November 2010

Every so often, the Christian church is faced with uncomfortable realities when we realize that we’ve been on the wrong side of an issue. In 1632, Galileo was placed under permanent house arrest for his “heretical” view that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice verse. At the same time, our Congregationalist ancestors were busy burning “witches” in Salem. As Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, many Christians dug in their heels, preferring to believe that all of those fossils found in layers of rock were not evidence of biological change, but that they were placed there by Satan as a way to tempt people away from faith. Over the years, the church has supported anti-Semitism, defended slavery, and relegated women to second-class status – and used the Bible as the justification for all of these things.

The good news is that, despite periods of ignorance and denial, we have been able to come to terms with reality and to adjust to new understandings of science, culture, society, and faith. Each generation of the church has been able to look at the mistakes of the past, overcome them, and move forward. Having a strong, mature and honest faith requires that each generation continue to do so.

The current struggle within the Christian church is to come to terms with issue of homosexuality, a topic which has come to the front of our consciousness in recent weeks, with the suicides of six gay young people as the end result of their having been bullied by their peers. In my sermon on October 10, I reflected on the tragic deaths of Justin Aaberg, 15, Billy Lucas, 15, Asher Brown, 13, Seth Walsh, 13, Tyler Clementi, 19, Raymond Chase, 19, and how their sense of despair stemmed not only from the acts of individual bullies, but also from a wider social isolation and the sense that they couldn’t even find a safe place in the church. In my sermon, I went on to ask:

And where would they get that idea? They get it from churches like Westboro Baptist Church that famously pickets the funerals of AIDS victims, carrying vile signs declaring whom they believe God hates. They get it from televangelists who blame natural disasters on gays. They get it from groups like “Focus on the Family” that oppose anti-bullying legislation because they believe that it will promote what they call, “the homosexual agenda.” They get it from churches that declare “All are welcome,” on their sign, but indicate otherwise by their actions when a same gender couple sits down together. They even get that idea from churches like ours where, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning folks would, and do in fact, find welcome, but where the church has yet to stand up, speak out, and declare boldly to the world that “These doors are open to you,” doesn’t have an asterisk and a list of exceptions. [The front doors of the church have large signs declaring "These Doors Are Open to You"-- ed.] I believe that there’s no asterisk – and I believe that you believe that there’s no asterisk – but how will they know if we don’t tell them?

After worship, I was mobbed by people who offered their support, many saying that it was time for the church to complete the Open and Affirming process that the church had begun prior to my arrival. They are, of course, right. It is high time for us to get around to formally deciding what we already know to be the case about our congregation, and then telling the world. After all, it doesn’t do anybody any good if we keep God’s inclusive love a secret that we only whisper within our church’s walls.

In the months ahead, our church will begin formulating a vision statement, looking at what we believe to be the unique ministry that God has called our church to undertake in this place and time. Part of that will certainly be making a formal statement about our belief in God’s boundless love and how we envision embodying that love with radical welcome and inclusion of all people, regardless of sexual orientation, national origin, physical ability, age, gender, socio-economic status, or any other factor. I’m looking forward to it!