Slow Cooked

Avocado-Corn Salad

Today is the last day of July, and once the calendar hits August I officially begin resenting the oven.  This time of year is for fresh produce and chilled things.  It's for barbecue-ing, for those of us lucky enough to have outdoor space (not me!), and it's for salsa and salad and lots of other fresh, colorful things.

I threw together this salsa-salad hybrid because all I really wanted to eat was corn, avocado and/or tomato and this seemed like the easiest way to get all three things in my belly at once.  I think I could dice things a little finer and heap it on some kind of grilled white fish, maybe, or stuff it into a pita or tortilla with shredded chicken...basically, you can't go wrong when the main ingredient is 2 avocados.  I can't even really claim this is a 'recipe' -- it's more a snapshot of my summer.

Also, a warning:  If you cut yourself while dicing an avacado, for instance, you might want to enlist help with the dicing of the jalapeno.  Because let me just tell you that otherwise...OW.  Serious pain.

Avocado-Corn Salad

• 2 avocados, diced
• 3 ears of corn, kernels removed, uncooked
• 1 lb cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 1 cucumber, chopped
• juice of 2 limes
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and diced

Dice the avocado, put in non-reactive bowl, douse with lime juice.  Add the fresh corn, tomatoes, and cucumber, season to taste.  Add the jalapeno.  Avoid touching your eyes.  Eat straight from the bowl, with crisp white wine, cold beer, chips, baguette, tortillas, more wine, more beer, whatever!

The Red Hook Ballfields

For several years now, I've been meaning to make it to the Red Hook Ballfields during summer.  I've heard about the amazing Latin food and the arepas ladies and the mangos-on-a-stick, but up until now, I've never been -- although last summer I tried to find the food stalls, ending up by mistake west of the ball fields and in the vicinity of the then-new Fairway grocery store.

But today!  Today, we finally went! 

It is SO worth the trek to Red Hook - the food is both amazing and dirt cheap, but the crowd makes the experience even more fun.  Soccer and softball fields abut one another and at the eastern edge of the parks, in a dirt lot, there is a wide L of family-run food stalls selling fantastic Guatemalan, Mexican, Equadorian, El Salvadoran and Honduran fare, and lined up at all the stalls are a crazy, noisy mix of yuppies and hipsters and foodies and a huge population of Hispanic people cheering the soccer teams, and kids - tons and tons of kids! - and everyone is eating tacos and papusas and taquitos and arepas on greasy paper plates and drinking aqua fresca and looking for spare napkins.  There were maybe 15 different stalls and a motley assortment of picnic and folding tables set out, but Kevin and I ended up sitting on the grass once we'd purchased our heaping steak tacos from the stand with the longest line (I figured someone had to know something, and picked the stall that looked the most popular). 

While we waited in the one line, Kevin explored a stand a few yards east and came back with amazing taquito-type things: fresh tortillas (as in, a woman was flattening the dough, throwing it on to the grill, and then setting aside once charred) wrapped around chicken and fried, then heaped with pickled onions and cabbage, salsa and some quesa fresca.  As I tried to stymie the flow of vinegar and taco sauce from my chin, I spied a father wheeling his daughter past in a Maclaren stroller, a Balducci's canvas bag slung from one handle.  On my other side, a non-stop chatter of Spanish.

We filled up before being able to get any of the grilled corn or the mangos-on-sticks (a whole mango, peeled and roughly scored, on a skewer, squirted with lime juice and doused with chili powder), but did manage to down 3 aqua frescas - two lime and one watermelon.  All in all, for the three drinks, two taquitos and two tacos, we were out maybe - maybe - $15.

It's a big ol' party down at the Red Hook Ballfields, and I suggest anyone looking for authentic Latin food and a really good time check it out.  A word to the wise:  this is a field trip for your foodie friends, not your in-laws from Ohio.  The ball fields are... how do you say, surrounded by housing projects.  Red Hook is still rather...gritty...so be forewarned that it's a hike to the nearest subway station, and that there are no Starbucks in sight.

The food stalls at the Red Hook Ballfields are open on Saturdays and Sundays during the summer, from noonish to about 5pm.  They only accept cash, and I'd bring my own wet-naps next time!  To get there, take the F to Smith and 9th St, cross under the BQE and head for Bay Street - the food stalls are at Clinton and Bay.

(Editor's note -- I had pics of the actual, you know...FOOD, but apparently the Macro setting and bright afternoon sun did not agree with one another, and the photos were just blinding white blobs, with some lettuce on the permiter.  Oops.)

A Bastille Day Dinner Party

It took me nearly four months, but finally - long after moving into our new apartment - I managed to have an actual dinner party.  The theme, as best as I could adhere to it, was summery French fare, in honor of Bastille Day (which as I see it, is an excuse to have Champagne and watch the petanque matches on Smith Street while drinking sangria out of plastic cups at noon on a Sunday). 

I didn't do anything fancy or particularly complicated, but if you'll let me toot my own horn, this Shrimp Provencal was pretty fantastic -- I followed this recipe pretty closely, adjusting some of the quantities (or, 'didn't measure' if you prefer) and added a handful of fresh chopped tarragon, and served with rice. 

The gazpacho was loved by some (okay, one), deemed too spicy by others, and I have enough leftover that I will be able to conduct a series of taste tests to see if I can identify possible alterations to make on future batches. 

Alexis's mushroom onion tartlettes were a HUGE hit (she'll have to post the recipe!), as was the ham -- ham which I had nothing to do with, aside from purchasing a pound-plus of it from the little French deli on Clinton Street, near Cobble Hill Park.  I sliced open a baguette and heaped on grainy French mustard and this really fantastic ham, cut it into small sandwiches, and VOILA, a perfect eat-at-parties-where-there-are-not-enough-chairs-for-all-guests food.

One of the very helpful employees at Cobblestone Foods helped me pick out my three cheeses; the reblochon was a big hit, as were the pretzel rolls, also from Cobblestone Foods -- think of a perfect marriage between a croissant and a pretzel, and you get the idea.

Dessert was a selection of beautiful little tarts from Cousin John's Bakery, in Park Slope, as well as an improvised plum and cherry crumble which I topped with a mixture of steel cut oats, plain yogurt, brown sugar, flour, and a pinch of salt - basically, oatmeal cookies on top of hot, bubbly fruit.   (I tossed the fruit with a little sugar, cornstarch and salt, topped with the 'dough' and baked the whole mess in a shallow baking dish at 350 for about half an hour.)

We drank plenty of lovely French wine, but somehow forgot to pop open any of the Champagne, which seems a shame, and also an excuse to open a bottle tonight, just because.

The gazpacho recipe follows -- Alexis and I deemed it "Lazy Ass Gazpacho" because it really is an exercise in minimalism - I read a few different recipes, gathered produce, chopped and blended.  That's it.  I didn't peel or seed or roast my tomatoes, I didn't roast peppers to add heat, none of that.  It took me about a half hour to prep, then I blended and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator to allow all the flavors to blend.  Lazy.  Ass.  Gazpacho.

Molly's Lazy-Ass Gazpacho

• 8 tomatoes (about 2 lbs)
• 2 sweet bell peppers (I used one red and one orange)
• 1 red onion
• 2 cucumbers, peeled and seeded
• juice of three lemons
• handful of flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
• (smaller) handful of fresh tarragon, coarsely chopped
• a few healthy shakes of Tabasco sauce
• about 1/4 cup of sherry vinegar
• about 1/2 qt. of tomato juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Chop all the vegetables, add liquids and herbs, blend to desired consistency.  The end.  Store in a non-metal, non-reactive container with tight fitting lid and refrigerate over night to allow flavors to come together.  Serve with sliced avocado - yum!

Stone Park Cafe, Revisited

Kevin and I have gotten in such a habit of heading to Stone Park Cafe for brunch on Sundays that I'd forgotten what their dinner menu even looked like.  The last time we ate dinner there, a member of the Senate walked on me in the (apparently, and unfortunately, unlocked) bathroom, and that ended up being the lingering memory, not what we ate. With my dad visiting for a few days last weekend, I decided it was time to find out what was on the summer menu.  Happily, it turned out that there was lots of fish, lots of vegetables, lots of goodness all around.

He started with the corn bisque, which I've had in the past - it's sweet and rich, and served with a fat helping of peekytoe crab in the bowl.  I started with the short rib 'sandwich' which is a few ounces of braised short rib atop creamed spinach served on a house made potato roll, with one perfect little fried quail egg perched on top of the beef.  It's maybe the daintiest way I've seen short ribs served, and was sort of a more precious version of Stone Park's brunch short rib hash...which is, by the way, fantastic.

I had an entree of arctic char over a asparagus salad and mascarpone foam - the asparagus was a nice compliment to the fish, which can sometimes be a little bland; with the vegetables it came alive.  My dad had the entree special - pan fried grouper over a zucchini pancake with curried vegetables, and he reported that the unexpected spice of the curry paired really nicely with the zucchini fritter and the fish. 

We'd ordered a bottle of chardonnay with dinner, but the owner came over pre-starters to tell us that he was actually out of that particular bottle, but had another chardonnay to recommend -- one he'd just got in after meeting with the rep, he'd just put a bottle to chill, blah blah blah if we didn't mind waiting a few minutes it would be chilled and we could taste it, it was a Sonoma chardonnay that had seen no oak, he was sure we'd like it.  It was from a new producer - one my dad had heard of - and was exactly what was promised to us:  a crisp, refreshing, fruity white that had seen no oak.  I remember (NO OAK) was emphasized on the back of the wine bottle.  What I don't remember is the name of the wine...

We finished our meal with dessert; I had a parfait of fresh berries and peaches and my dad had a key lime mousse tart - I wasn't quite sure what a 'mousse tart' entailed, but it was exactly as it sounds...mousse in a tart shell, tart being the key word with anything involving key limes!

Our bill came to a total of around $160, which included wine, starters, entrees, dessert and coffee for two.  I'd like to go back for dinner if only to get the name of the wine, although now that I think about it, the short rib sandwich, a glass of wine, and dessert just might be the perfect meal. 

Stone Park Cafe (718 369 6548) is located on the corner of 5th Avenue and 3rd Street in Brooklyn.  The restaurant accepts all major credit cards and reservations are recommended for dinner -- and tables at Stone Park can be booked via opentable.com, fyi. 

Hook: Washington D.C.

I really wanted to write a review of Hook, the new(ish) seafood restaurant in Georgetown.

Unfortunately, we (and most of M street) were evacuated last night, just after being served delicate and delicious crudo, right as the bread basket arrived, moments after our bottle of wine was opened, and long before any actual food of substance was in sight.

This was especially disappointing because chefs Barton Seaver and Joshua Whigham were both in the kitchen, cooking.  I was very excited for my Tobago Snapper, and the entire (sustainable!) menu looked delicious.  Boo to evacuations mid-meal.

I can report, however, that the decor is elegant and comfortable at the same time, the servers are passionate about food, the stemware was lovely and the Cava was tasty.  I look forward to returning, the next time I'm in D.C., and hopefully no one will leave any suspicious packages in H&M to thwart my plans.

Hook is located on M Street at 32nd, accepts all major credit cards, and handles police evacuations with grace and aplomb.