18 Wednesday Jul 2012
The Minamoto Kitchoan kiosk at Mitsuwa in New Jersey is selling a special hands-on summer wagashi. I think it’s arrowroot with agar agar and extra water, mizu. The jelly prism is placed inside a plastic box and pushed through a screen that cuts it into small, spaghetti-like ribbons. A small packet of molasses is included and could be used as a sauce for the jelly noodles. The whole set is only $6.
17 Tuesday Jul 2012
Posted in bucket list, Mexican, New York, Queens
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A few months ago MexGrocer.com had a huge blow out sale and so I bought a real lava rock molcajete. It was kind of hard to find a real one even in New York. Many of the ones I found in Jackson Heights and Corona were decorative serving dishes made out of cement, not lava rock. It took me at least three months to season the one I bought online! I read on The Mija Chronicles that you should do a few turns of dry beans, then dry corn, dry rice, wet rice, and finally the spices. The many rounds help get rid of gritty pieces that might get mixed into your food. Today I finally got to the spices round!
I ground some garlic, dried epazote, ancho chiles, and salt. The resulting paste was very fragrant and tasty!
17 Tuesday Jul 2012
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I had some lettuce scraps left over from lunch yesterday so I decided to blend them with some sour lemonade and make popsicles. Some of the leafy pulp floated to the top but they still tasted really good!
17 Tuesday Jul 2012
Posted in bucket list, New York, snacks, spicy
Má Pêche (Momofuku in midtown) surprised us with a delicious vegan entrée for lunch today. The rice cakes ($18) were served with green garlic purée and hon shimeji mushrooms. What could have ended up like a plate of mushy gnocchi turned out to be something totally mouth watering. Each rice cake was very gently toasted (or maybe fried) to give it an unexpected crispiness. The green garlic sauce was spicy and so good!
I want a Christina Tosi cake for my wedding… or at least my next birthday! I think the frosting-less cakes are so beautiful.
Of course I also bought some of her truffles. The new flavor is strawberry lemon cake. SO GOOD. Is it the powdered milk that makes them so irressistible?
15 Sunday Jul 2012
Posted in New York
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Just a reminder to anyone who is planning on going to New York Restaurant Week this summer: check in to a participating restaurant on foursquare and get $5 back on your Amex credit card. I can’t decide where I want to eat this year. Any suggestions?
14 Saturday Jul 2012
Scoboco just posted this image on his flickr account. Could it really be a first glimpse of M. Wells Dinette at MoMA PS1? First they said on the website that it would be ready in May, then June, now July! I called a MoMA PS1 a few days ago and the receptionist told me that they were hoping to open in July. By the looks of this photo, I’m starting to think she meant July 2013!
12 Thursday Jul 2012
I was in St. Louis, Missouri last weekend for a wedding and, since it was my first (and probably last) time in that city, I set out to try all of the local specialties. Crispy snoots are a unique part of St. Louis BBQ. They are simply the fried face of a pig. In my case, it was a hairy pig that forgot to shave (notice the bristles on the snoot in the photo).
One of the few places that sold crispy snoots was Smoki O’s, just down the street from the Four Seasons where we were staying.
The gooey butter cake was, according to the local legend, invented when somebody messed up a pound cake.
Toasted ravioli are known as T-ravs and typically come with a side of marinara sauce. These were the grossest of the three St. Louis delicacies.
12 Thursday Jul 2012
Roses and thorns about Pok Pok Ny? I like to start with the thorns. There is only one tiny toilet for the entire restaurant and the wait is typically 7-8 people long. The part that bothered me is that when the employees at Pok Pok have to use the bathroom they cut in line and say to everyone, “I just need to check to make sure the bathroom is clean for you!” In line last night one employee did this and as he was walking out he was adjusting his fly, clearly having just urinated. Moments later another employee cut in front of everyone again saying, “I just need to check to make sure the bathroom is clean for you!” My friend told her, “Somebody just did that 30 seconds ago.” The employee looked embarrassed, as it was apparent that we had caught on to their system. Pok Pok: rent some Porta-Johns.
The food was good but nothing was so memorable that I would actually go to Redhook again for it. In fact there was one “Vietnamese” style catfish over vermicelli dish that was covered in dill (I wonder if it was really pak chee lao) and it reminded me of a foul Slavic dish of carp with dill.
The papaya salad with salted black crab could have been a little spicier.
I felt kind of swindled after my Singha slushy arrived. The server omitted the part about it basically being a bottle of beer that was left in a freezer for too long. She pointed to a fanciful battery-operated wooden barrel that twists back and forth, mixing ice and salt around the bottles to lower the temperature and turn the beer into slush.
The wings and the papaya salad with salted black crab are also available at Pok Pok Wing in the Lower East Side — so you won’t have to go all the way to Redhook to try those menu items.
Did I forget the roses? I think I’m just focusing on the thorns because I’m so sad I live in Queens, so far away from this amazing restaurant. It really is a special place with herbs and ingredients hard (impossible?) to find elsewhere in the city. I suppose it’s a case of sour grapes because I know I won’t be able to return for a while and taste their awesome food! PS: the staff is super friendly even though they tend to exude a certain Portlandia vibe.
Pok Pok Ny
127 Columbia St
Brooklyn NY
11 Wednesday Jul 2012
I went to Ladurée yesterday for the first time in weeks. I had been so upset about the discontinuation of the muguet (lily of the valley) flavor that I couldn’t bare even to pass by the storefront.
Overwhelmed with curiosity about the new summer flavors, I found myself in line once again trying to decide which of the new boxes I was going to buy for my collection. I chose this one in honor of the “Queen’s Diamond Jubilee”.
New flavors include basil & lime, strawberry & poppy (not poppyseed, but poppy petals), and the latest “incroyable” strawberry, with a guimauve (marshmallow) filling and a bit of sugar sprinkled on top.
Chinook Olive 