Slow Cooked

Oh, That's Right; I Have a Food Blog

Eeep.  It's not that I haven't been cooking or that I haven't been restaurant-ing; I've just been very very lazy and not written a word in weeks!  Everyone needs a little hiatus now and then...

Highlights of the past few weeks:

• Chocolate-chip walnut cookies from Levain Bakery
• The B'stilla from Epices on w.70th
• Patsy's pizza just around the corner from me
• Chicken roasted with olives, tomatoes, orange zest and generous amounts of Herbes de Provence
• A yummy Easter frittata with apple, potato, sausage and onion
• Delicios vegan fare (it exists!) at Blossom
• ...especially the chocolate avacado terrine, which sounds odd but is delicious and makes perfect sense when you see it
• My favorite beet, orange, pine nut and ricotta salata salad from Inoteca
• A fantastic French burgandy for $13, with both a screw-cap AND a label bearing the words 'Pinot Noir'!
• Many pieces of Grandaisy's pizza; I am partial to the cauliflower and the tomato
• Le Pain Quotidien's baguette

...and hopefully, much more to come...

I am Officially Obsessed

...with Burrata cheese. On three consecutive Friday nights I've spent $8.99 at Citarella for a creamy Burrata. (Burrata, if you have not been lucky enough to encounter it, is a shell of fresh mozzarella filled with a mozzarella/cream fresh cheese center of gooey goodness.) I've spread it on bread, served it with sliced heirloom tomatoes, and most recently, replicated a favorite dish sampled in Boston last summer.

I whisked together about 1/4 cup olive oil, juice of one lemon, and about a teaspoon of honey and tossed lightly over baby arugula. Then I piled the arugula on plates, cut the burrata in half and put an oozing blob of cheese over the arugula, sprinkled with lemon zest and drizzled the tiniest bit of honey over the cheese. Heaven.

When I start eating burrata with a spoon, it's time to worry.

My Last Supper, the Book

One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was a copy of My Last Supper, a book featuring 50 top chefs and their preferred final meals.   My whole family enjoyed flipping through it, and what I loved most was comparing who would pick comfort and who would pick luxury.  It was fascinating to read the menus, and also to compare which chefs absolutely wanted to cook their own final meal and those who absolutely wanted someone else to prepare it.  There are recipes and fun photos and interesting glimpses of personality, and I highly recommend the book to anyone who shares a curiosity about food, restaurants and chefs. 

As for me, I think my final meal would begin with raw oysters and Champagne, then sashimi or crudo and a crisp white wine, followed by a pasta course with a fresh tomato sauce, then a thin, crisp pizza with fennel - like the one at Otto - and for dessert, either my mother's lemon cheesecake or plain vanilla ice cream with hot fudge sauce.  Or a box of chocolates.  Or a really tart lemon dessert.  Or bread pudding.  Oh, and I think I want a nice Barolo with the pasta and pizza.  And then more Champagne with dessert.  Although I might prefer a multi-course Basque feast, now that I think about it.  Or Mexican food and margaritas.  Sushi and pizza.  Maybe a meal of all pastries?  The more you think about it, the harder the question is to answer!  But, it also never gets old...yum.  What would your last meal be?

Appreciating Otto

I'm leaving for a quick trip to Paris tomorrow evening, but before heading to France I thought I'd mention a brief but noteworthy visit to Italy, or rather, to a corner of the Batali empire, here in New York.

I love Otto.  I love love love it.  One of my best afternoons this past summer involved leaving work early on a Friday and sitting at the bar with a book, a pizza, and several glasses of wine, chatting with the bartender and fellow office-sprung lunchers.  Otto can be noisy and crowded, but I'm rarely interested in waiting for a table; my heart belongs to the bar, always.

Eating at a restaurant's bar gives me much more freedom to scan and pick and order something, then a little something else, then maybe a bite of this, followed by some more of that.  Plus, I always love the birds-eye view of the action behind the bar - I am nothing if not nosy.  Which is how I ended up squeezing into the bar at Otto on Saturday night, and having a few glasses of wine - first, the Dolcetto D'Alba followed by the Barbera D'Asti - and some cheese and pasta.

Now, I don't think I've ever eaten at Otto and not ordered pizza, but after a plate of three cheeses (which, if I remember right included a New York State triple cream goat cheese, a Parmigiano Reggiano and a Pecorino Di Fossa, all served with a trio of sweet condiments: red-pepper flaked honey, an apricot compote, and something divine with sour cherries) we found ourselves looking longingly at the diner next to us.  First a plate of salumi tempted us, then a serving of pasta, and fearing that asking the gentleman for a bite of his dinner would be considered rude, we ordered the pasta for ourselves.  It was the bucatini, thicker than spaghetti noodles with a hole in the center, with tomato, red onion and chilies.  I love - love - anything with chilies in it, and though we couldn't finish the dish, I have to say that it gave the pizza a run for its (or would that be my?) money.

Of course, the perfect solution is just to show up hungry and try a little of everything, no?

Thanksgiving, on East 4th Street

November is a funny time to stop writing about food, I suppose; after all it's the perfect time for both eating and entertaining, both of which I've been doing plenty.  But, there's also that inevitable whoooosh of the days flying past as December - and then Christmas - and then New Year's - approaches, and well...time has gotten away from me.

But I've been doing plenty of eating, don't worry!  This year for Thanksgiving Kevin and I found ourselves with no travel plans and no urban orphans to adopt at our table, so we tried something new: we went out for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a completely strange sensation to make zero runs to the store for last minute items, to have no worries about timing the bird with the side dishes, to not have to set a table.  It was nice.  I'm not going to lie, I'm a big fan of the Process, so not having a kitchen teeming with foodstuffs felt weird, but on the other hand, we had a great meal.

We ate at Knife and Fork, which offered a $65 four-course tasting menu starting with a goat cheese salad, then poached lobster in a tangerine-pumpkin soup, turkey and ham with chestnut cream and brussel sprouts, and then a ridiculously rich chocolate fondant dessert which consisted of, basically, chocolate and butter.  The end.  I splurged on a gorgeous bottle of Stags Leap "Artemis" Cabernet ($117) which was staggeringly good, and then took a cab home to a kitchen with nary a dish to be cleaned.  And lo, I was thankful.

Like 1995 All Over Again

When I was a teenager, frozen yogurt was big.  Throughout college, it was still big.  The last time I went out for frozen yogurt (I mean, FroYo) I was probably wearing jean shorts and Jack Purcells and crossing Russell Boulevard from my sorority house to hit the frozen yogurt shop near Safeway.  And the way I remember it was: chocolate, vanilla, toppings such as gummy bears, crushed Oreos and Butterfingers.

Flash forward eleventy million years and I'm walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn and see Oko.  I am intrigued.  Also, I am hot and hungry, so I go in.  Oko is frozen yogurt for 2007; everything is green or all-natural or organic or re-purposed or recycled or reclaimed.  The packaging is all made from renewable or recycled materials.  The cleaning products used in-house are all non-toxic.  The yogurt is made locally by a Greek family and the toppings and other ingredients are from local suppliers whenever possible.  The teas are fair-trade.  The shop itself is green: the counter tops are made from sunflower hulls, the walls have bamboo paneling and the paint is all VOC-free.  Blah blah blah dual-flush toilets, LED lights, etc.  1% of all sales are donated to environmental causes.  It's cool.

...none of which would impress me if the product wasn't good.  Well, maybe a little, but I was converted the second I took a bite of the frozen yogurt.  I had the original plain flavor (although there were 2 or 3 others available) topped with fat, fresh blackberries, and I have to say that this frozen yohurt put TCBY to shame.  The yogurt was rich and tangy --  I wish I could come up with more words to described it, but rich and tangy pretty much covers it, and I couldn't have asked for more.  It's seriously good. 

Plus, that somewhat smug, I-just-helped-the-planet feeling burns lots of calories, I hear.

Oko (718 398-3671) is located at 152 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, at De Graw Street.

Vacation Time

I just joined a CSA.  And I mean just, as in:  I stopped by the pick-up location of a local (one of two, thank you neo-hippie brownstone Brooklyn!) CSA on their first week of the season to ask about available shares, and as luck would have it, a nice guy named Oliver had just joined and was looking for someone to split a share with.  Five minutes later I had a head of red leaf lettuce, a bunch of radishes and a bag of dried black beans, along with a scrap of paper with Oliver's email address. 

This should be interesting.  At least, the turnip months will be.  Summer will be a joy, I'm thinking.

I let Oliver take more than half of the items this week, since Kevin and I are leaving in two days for a vacation on which I'm sure we'll spend too much money and eat too many things.  We're heading to Amsterdam and Paris for four days each; send the food recs my way asap!!  So far we are attempting to try
Benoit, Chez L'ami Jean, Hiramatsu (in Paris) and De Kas (in Amsterdam)...but send me your faves, especially if they are offbeat, local haunts, good people watching, or just really, really good.

A Bientot!  Expect much foreign foodie gab in two weeks!

Fiesta!

There is a Mexican restaurant in Oakland located across the street from the county jail that sells some of the best tamales I've ever eaten.  Good Mexican food is hard to find in New York City, and authentic handmade tamales seem near impossible.

My friend Suzie is in town, visiting from California, and she and my friend Sara hosted a dinner party last night for which they made heaps and heaps of tamales.  Suzie and Sara are both fantastic cooks; and Suzie has frequently turned out amazing Mexican fare for me -- she's a Rick Bayless fan, and makes a mean salpicon.  Last night, however, it was the tamales' time to shine.

We started the evening with crab ceviche served both on tortilla chips and cucumber slices, with platters of sliced avocado and mango alongside -- both drizzled with lime juice, and the mango was given the added bite of some chili powder liberally sprinkled over it. I drank rose for most of the evening, and the dryness and freshness of the wine was a great partner for the tangy Mexican food.

We had salads of Bibb lettuce, queso fresco, bacon, avocado, mango and toasted sesame seeds with (I think) a cilantro lime dressing -- sort of Sara and Suzie's version of a Mexican Cobb Salad.   Dinner was piles and piles of delicious steamed tamales: mushroom tamales steamed in corn husks and chili pork tamales steamed in banana leafs.  I had three or four; honestly I lost track, especially when the plate of fresh, hot churros appeared in front of me.

Mexican food -- good, real, fresh Mexican food, not the cheese-and-bean stuff you often find passed off as Mexican -- is one of my favorite cuisines and one of the things I miss most about California.  Mexican food does not mean just burritos and nachos, and while I'm scared to ask how much lard Sara and Suzie went through in their tamale prep, the freshness and brightness of the flavors in Mexican cooking truly can't be beat.  Especially when someone one else does all the work for you, and all that's left is to show up with a bottle of wine and a large appetite!

Holiday Eats

Highlights include one very lovely dinner party, and lowlights include the six pounds I somehow managed to gain during the holiday season, but between the high and the low, there was much good eating over Christmas.  On Christmas Eve alone there was toffee, fudge, lemon bread, apple dumplings, chocolate hazelnut mousse cake, pumpkin pie, heaps of Dungeness crab, vegetables, meatballs, cauliflower and fennel salad, bread, cheese, gingerbread...although I pretty much confined myself to crab and lemon bread. 

There was so much food, and so much cooking, that my husband said, "After spending the past three days watching your parents cook, and spending three days reading food magazines, and spending three days watching the Food Network, I kind of just want to bake something..."

There was a lot of good food:

Product Review: Silicone Ties

In a previous life I worked at a fantastic cookware shop in Brooklyn called A Cook's Companion.  During my tenure there I picked up ridiculous amounts of cooking and cookware information, and yes, stocked up on my All-Clad and Le Crueset.  What I realized during that time, as people frantically came looking for avocado slicers and off-set deli knives and fancy double boilers, was that I am not a Gadget Person.  I am happy with my chef's knife, a good cutting board, a Microplane zester and my hands.  I don't like clutter, and I don't like clangy things that only do one job banging around in my drawers.

However, on occasion there were tools and gadgets and fun kitchen toys that piqued even my interest, and basically everything in the silicone genre fell into that category.  I'm a convert.  And, when I saw the silicone ties hanging near the roasting pans, I grabbed a set as quickly as I could, because I'll be honest:  I suck at trussing. 

Not long ago, I came across a post on Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen about the (wonderful!) silicone ties, and I was frankly shocked that more people didn't vouch for their handiness.  Tonight I was again reminded of how useful these little pink ties can be, as I attempted to brown chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese and arugula.  The ties are pretty much idiot-proof, as you can see from my makeshift bows and knots and twists, but they are a heck of a lot more durable and hearty than a toothpick, and much easier to deal with than twine.  Bonus is that they clean super easy; I stick them in the utensil basket of my dishwasher.

So, to sum up...I hate almost all kitchen gadgets.  But love my cute pink silicone ties!