Guilty Pleasures
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stlukesguild
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Only if you're in New York. I have a great story about my former studio partner. Yes... THAT one again. He stupidly allowed his teaching license to expire and he was let go. He went down to the school board and started schmoozing it up with the CEO... talking a lot about New York... where both had lived for some years. The subject of Junior's cheesecake came up and he promised to get her one. He called one of his friends who lived outside the city but worked in town. He had him mail him a Junior's box. He proceeded to place a local cheesecake in the box and give it to her. She was never the wiser... and he got his job back. 
stlukesguild
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We had a friend while we lived in New York who was a native and informed us that there were 6 foods you had to make properly if you didn't want to raise the ire of the locals: Cheesecake, Corned Beef Rubens, Bagels, Manhattan Clam Chowder, Coffee, and Pizza.
musket
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You're forgetting chopped liver.
You can get Junior's cheesecake from Junior's at most markets.
What you can't get anywhere anymore, not even in Brooklyn, is the cake to end all cakes-- Ebinger's blackout cake. This cake was practically a religion in Brooklyn. You had to go to Ebinger's Bakery in Flatbush to get it, and it had to be eaten within 24 hours or the chocolate pudding center would go bad. When Ebinger's closed down in 72, Brooklyn went into mourning, and so did all us Jewish kids from New Jersey whose grandparents lived in Flatbush.
The cake has never been successfully duplicated, though many have tried.
You can get Junior's cheesecake from Junior's at most markets.
What you can't get anywhere anymore, not even in Brooklyn, is the cake to end all cakes-- Ebinger's blackout cake. This cake was practically a religion in Brooklyn. You had to go to Ebinger's Bakery in Flatbush to get it, and it had to be eaten within 24 hours or the chocolate pudding center would go bad. When Ebinger's closed down in 72, Brooklyn went into mourning, and so did all us Jewish kids from New Jersey whose grandparents lived in Flatbush.
The cake has never been successfully duplicated, though many have tried.
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stlukesguild
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You're forgetting chopped liver.
That's a Jewish "delicacy"... along with Gefilte fish and half-sour pickles. You couldn't pay us goyim enough to eat that stuff.
That's a Jewish "delicacy"... along with Gefilte fish and half-sour pickles. You couldn't pay us goyim enough to eat that stuff.
musket
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What, I'll bet you have no problem with fancy goyishe French pate! You know, fois gras? Well, good chopped liver is much better. It can be had from Russ and Daughters on Houston St if you don't mind getting killed on shipping. Almost as good as my grandma's. While you're at it, get some of their full fat veggie cream cheese... you'll think you've died and gone to heaven, and if you eat too much of either, well, likely you'll die, heaven I don't know from.
Gefilte fish is wonderful if made right, but you have to start with a live carp in the bathtub. Of all my relatives, only my aunt Lily in Providence, RI, could do it.
Gefilte fish is wonderful if made right, but you have to start with a live carp in the bathtub. Of all my relatives, only my aunt Lily in Providence, RI, could do it.
stlukesguild
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My former studio partner... yes THAT one... was Jewish. He exposed me to a lot of Jewish culture... including Yiddish slang and swear words. 
He took me to a local Jewish deli and tried to get me to eat some of the Jewish delicacies. The half-sour pickle was bad enough. He tried to crack on me by telling the server working behind the counter, a Black man, that "My German friend here thinks Jewish food is the worst thing imaginable." The guy replied, "He might be just right." My friend tried to save face by suggesting that Jewish food is an acquired taste... "just like Black cooking." The server and I both started laughing. BBQ? Fried Chicken? Green Beans with Bacon? Blackened Cajun Catfish? An acquired taste? We both agreed that Chitlins are an acquired taste, however. I never acquired that taste... even after my Chinese friend tried to slip it by me at Dim-Sum.
Comically, I went out to eat with my Jewish friend another time after we were helping to hang an art exhibition. We went around the corner to a bar and grill, and he proceeded to order a bacon double cheeseburger. I told him Yahweh had his number and he was going straight to hell. He responded, "What do you know from Yahweh?" Milk and dairy in the same dish... and bacon?!
ps... I use the term "Black" as opposed to African-American which is really a term invented by White Americans wishing to appear more sensitive. Martin Luther King was famously against the term and most of the Black children... and adults... I work with in the schools also use the term Black. They even get more specific: "light-skinned black", etc... It seems more respectful to use the term that a given people prefer.
He took me to a local Jewish deli and tried to get me to eat some of the Jewish delicacies. The half-sour pickle was bad enough. He tried to crack on me by telling the server working behind the counter, a Black man, that "My German friend here thinks Jewish food is the worst thing imaginable." The guy replied, "He might be just right." My friend tried to save face by suggesting that Jewish food is an acquired taste... "just like Black cooking." The server and I both started laughing. BBQ? Fried Chicken? Green Beans with Bacon? Blackened Cajun Catfish? An acquired taste? We both agreed that Chitlins are an acquired taste, however. I never acquired that taste... even after my Chinese friend tried to slip it by me at Dim-Sum.Comically, I went out to eat with my Jewish friend another time after we were helping to hang an art exhibition. We went around the corner to a bar and grill, and he proceeded to order a bacon double cheeseburger. I told him Yahweh had his number and he was going straight to hell. He responded, "What do you know from Yahweh?" Milk and dairy in the same dish... and bacon?!
ps... I use the term "Black" as opposed to African-American which is really a term invented by White Americans wishing to appear more sensitive. Martin Luther King was famously against the term and most of the Black children... and adults... I work with in the schools also use the term Black. They even get more specific: "light-skinned black", etc... It seems more respectful to use the term that a given people prefer.
stlukesguild
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Talk about going off on a tangent.
musket
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You have clearly never had real chicken soup, never mind with knedlach. My grandma made floaters; my nana made sinkers, which I preferred. Properly cooked brisket is also beyond your ken, along with luckshenkugel, stuffed cabbage, cream cheese with lox on a bagel, and tzimiss. I'll go with you on half-sours; it's Kosher dills for me, preferably from a place on Hester St that may still be there. Also, unless you have had a bagel in New York City, you haven't had a bagel at all. It's the water.
musket
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Talk about going off on a tangent.
Well, you know what they say about all that cheesecake... she ain't chopped liver!
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Of all people, my father, not a Jew (although he used my great grandmother's recipe--she was Jewish) made the best matzoball soup you've ever tasted. He was basically a Mennonite, or raised one anyway. He'd put a few Dutch pasta noodles in with the regular noodles and it was damn good!
stlukesguild
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One of the big bakeries that made the bagels that would then be shipped to Manhattan was in the building next to the one that I lived and worked in in Jersey City. The smell was immediately recognizable... unforgettable. Our Chicken Soup... Chicken Noodle Soup... was Hungarian... like my Mother-in-Law. She about lost it when her husband, my Father-in-Law admitted that I made Chicken Paprikas better than she did.
musket
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Uh, sorry, the best bagels were made right in Manhattan by H&H. They had a store for a long time on the Upper West Side. A bagel should be eaten fresh from the oven.
The foyer of the apartment building in Flatbush where my grandparents lived... all you had to do was walk in there to start salivating.
The foyer of the apartment building in Flatbush where my grandparents lived... all you had to do was walk in there to start salivating.
musket
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I forget when they closed the Upper West Side location; I used to go there all the time when I was living on W. 81st and going to Cooper Union. They still have a wholesale bakery somewhere in the West 40s. And yes, they rule. New York has the best tasting tap water of any place I've ever lived, and that's what you need for a real New York bagel... but it really is true, it has to be fresh out of the oven if you want a true New York bagel experience.
stlukesguild
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OK... back to the OP. Not all of my artistic "guilty pleasures" were "cheesecake. After comic books, I suspect the old monster movies that used to play on local TV every Friday night were among the biggest visual influences on me as a kid. I used to collect the various monster magazines that included photos from the films as well as reproductions of the posters. No wonder I came so naturally to German Expressionism. Not only were the films themselves indebted to the look of German Expressionist films by directors including F.W Murnau, Fritz Lang, Robert Reinert, Robert Wiene, Carl Boese & Paul Wegener, etc... films such as Metropolis, M, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Nosferatu, etc... The posters for these films often employed the saturated... even garish colors of German Expressionism, and even the graphics and/or lettering.
