Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 16

You Know You Want To Stir Ricotta Into Your Pasta

You’re going to start calling me a broken record on here. In fact, me saying that “I’m a broken record on here” feels like something I’ve said before.

Essentially, I’m going to hit a few of the same themes in this post I’ve been hitting lately: (1) watching cooking shows on PBS; (2) going to McCall’s Meat and Fish. Let’s start with PBS. I watch all of the cooking shows on PBS to get ideas and recently I was watching one I’ve never watched before, Nick Stellino’s show. He’s a jovial Italian man who speaks with a thick Italian accent and with lots of enthusiasm for the food he makes. Recently, he was extolling the virtues of his wife’s pasta. Her trick? She stirs ricotta in at the end. I made a mental note to try that someday. That someday happened on Tuesday night.

I went to McCall’s (actually, looking at my recent posts, I don’t think I’ve mentioned McCall’s, so maybe I’m not a broken record) (oh wait, I mentioned it in the Fun with Chiles post, I am a broken record) and picked up sausage and pasta and canned tomatoes. To be honest, I didn’t go to McCall’s with the idea of buying ricotta to stir into my pasta, but while I was there, I saw that they had nice ricotta so I bought a container and brought it home along with everything else. Of course I paid first. I’m not a thief, geesh!

Not to toot my own horn too much, but this pasta that I made would’ve been pretty incredible even without the ricotta. I started by browning a pound of sausage meat in olive oil:

Then I did as Lidia Bastianich teaches on PBS (here we go again!) and created a “hot spot.” That’s where you push everything aside and create little areas in the oil to cook the other things you’re adding. In this case: sliced garlic and red chile flakes.

Once toasted, stir that all together and add a good splash of red wine.

Confession: I should’ve added tomato paste to the hot spot too, so it could toast, but I forgot to do that. So I added that along with the wine. It’s OK, it’s all going to be fine.

Once that all cooked down, I added a can of cherry tomatoes.

And a big pinch of salt. Do I need to say that? You can always just assume that I add salt when I add an ingredient to anything.

That all cooked down for a while while I brought a big pot of water to a boil with lots of salt (well, not too much, enough to make it taste like a good broth… I learned that from Scott Conant, but not on PBS) and then I dropped the pasta in as the tomato sauce got thick.

Then it’s all about timing. You want to cook your pasta for a minute or two less than the package directions while making sure your sauce doesn’t get too crazy thick. Keep the heat on low once it’s saucy.

Then you marry everything by dropping the almost-cooked pasta in with the sauce and adding a ladleful of pasta water.

Cook that all together on high heat until the pasta’s taken in as much sauce as possible and the bottom of the pan is relatively dry when you drag your spoon across it.

Now’s the fun part… bring on the cheese!

First I added some grated Pecorino for flavor. I didn’t have that much Pecorino, so don’t think I’m stingy. I just didn’t have it.

Finally, it was time to add the ricotta. I thought Craig would get a kick out of doing that (he loves cheese) so I summoned him to the kitchen and had him conduct the grand finale.

(Aren’t his pajamas cute? I got them in Australia.)

OK, let’s zoom in close so you can see how good it is to add ricotta to your pasta.

OK, that’s pretty sloppy looking, but look how nice once I added basil…

This was all so excellent; sort of like a deconstructed lasagna. As Nick Stellino puts it, adding ricotta is like adding cream but not as rich and fatty. So there’s a lightness to the creaminess. I agree. Adding ricotta is a wonderful thing to do to your pasta, which is why I wrote this post. Now try it!

The post You Know You Want To Stir Ricotta Into Your Pasta appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.

Fun with Chiles

This will shock none of you, especially if you know me in real life, but I’m something of a wimp.

Roller coasters? Terrifying. Horror movies? As if. (Though I do love Rosemary’s Baby, but mostly for Ruth Gordon). And, in the culinary department, I’ve been avoiding chiles for most of my adult life. Sure, I can handle a few pickled jalapeños in my nachos–and, as everyone knows, they’re a key ingredient in Eggs Adam Roberts–but the idea of cooking with raw, un-pickled, fiery chiles has never appealed to me. Until recently…

I’m a regular, these days, at the Sunday farmer’s market in Atwater Village. Having just been to New York, where I sauntered through the Union Square farmer’s market which, in September, is really at its peak (with gorgeous tomatoes, etc.), it’s fun to notice the things that we get here in California that my east coast brethren have to live without. For example, citrus. Our farmer’s market has tablefuls of lemons, limes, blood oranges, grapefruits, all for super cheap. You won’t see that in New York. (Though New York has something we don’t have: seasons!) Anyway, this is all leading to something that we have here that you guys don’t have there…

Chiles. At least, I don’t think you have that there. I’ve never seen chiles at a New York farmer’s market. But we have tons, currently under netting because of flies, which makes these chiles seem like a colorful, naughty bride. [Note: I realize now that this is mostly a picture of peppers, but the chiles are on the left…]

Maybe it was something in the air, but on this last trip to the farmer’s market, I decided to just go for it and buy a bunch of chiles. And, funny enough, when I got home to read the Sunday Times, there was this article (seen in the top picture) about how chiles are good for you (anti-cancerous and all that). So the universe was telling me it was time to get over my chile-phobia.

Here’s what I made first: a soup kind of thing with Fresno chiles. Observe.

That’s onions, garlic, and chopped Fresno chiles all sauteeing together. To that, I added canned cannellini beans.

And, finally, a chopped heirloom tomato.

Cooked that all down together with some salt and then topped with basil.

Actually, that was less a soup kind of thing and more like the bodega beans that Rachel Wharton once taught me how to make. And they were most excellent; the heat was there, but distributed nicely through the dish, so it was warming rather than punishing. I was really into it.

Next up: a pasta with raw tomatoes, one of my favorite things to make in the summer / end of summer / great tomato period that we’re in right now. Generally, you just chop raw tomatoes (heirloom, preferably) and toss them with olive oil, a splash of vinegar, salt, pepper, and some basil. But this time around, I added chopped Fresno chiles too.

Then I boiled orecchiette in lots of salted water and when it was just al dente, I stirred that into my raw tomato sauce.

Topped with Feta to mitigate the heat, this, again, had just the right balance of chile-heat…

But was I being too wimpy with my chiles? Did I dare try a spicier one? Like the Thai bird chile that the woman who sold me these chiles warned me was “very, very spicy”?

That’s it on the right along with some garlic. I was about to make sausage and clams, on the suggestion of the fishmonger / butcher at McCall’s, who told me to brown some sausage, add some garlic, then wine, and finally clams. What he didn’t know was that I was also going to add THE SPICIEST CHILE IN THE WORLD. (OK, one of the spiciest.)

OK, so I chickened out a little. I didn’t add a whole Thai bird chile. Just a little. I was scared.

Oh, I also went my own way and added cherry tomatoes…

And, finally, the clams…

What can I say? This dinner was pretty excellent (especially with a baguette to mop up the sauce). And, without tooting my horn too much, I think I added the perfect amount of Thai bird chile. Still just a warming heat, but nothing too punishing.

And so ends my post about cooking with chiles. Are you impressed? Do you feel like I need to take it further? Hey, I’m doing my best. I once watched five minutes of The Strangers with Liv Tyler and almost had a panic attack. I can handle Thunder Mountain. But I’ll get there with chiles, eventually. Or maybe I’ll just embrace the fact that when it comes to chiles, scary movies, and roller coasters, just a little goes a long way.

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Berry Blasted Oatmeal

There are two kinds of childhoods to have in America: the one where you’re allowed to have sugar cereal and the one where you’re not.

I’m the product of the former sort of childhood and Craig’s the product of the latter. If scientists were to study us to see how my consumption of Lucky Charms, Corn Pops, and Frosted Rice Krispies (yes, that was a thing) and Craig’s non-consumption of these breakfast sugar bombs affected us in later life, they probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I have an enormous sweet tooth and Craig usually wants to skip dessert. Also, I do crossword puzzles in pen, get to the movies twenty minutes early, and I almost always choose escalators over elevators when given the choice. Whether this is the result of eating sugar cereal as a child is anyone’s guess.

The point is, as a conscientious adult, I’ve struggled to dial down the sugar in my breakfast. That means more eggs, less pancakes; more oatmeal, less brown sugar mixed in. I also try to buy berries every Sunday at the Atwater Village Farmer’s Market because they’re naturally sweet and they taste good mixed in with yogurt and just the teensiest bit of granola. Also, my 95 year-old Uncle Jerry says the secret to his longevity is eating berries every morning.

This morning, though, the idea of just plain berries in yogurt with granola sounded boring. And plain oatmeal sounded boring too. So I decided to shake things up a bit… and thus my BERRY BLASTED OATMEAL was born.

Here’s what I did (and there won’t be a printable recipe at the end, so pay attention!) (Are you mad?) In a pot, I added ONE TABLESPOON of butter and ONE TABLESPOON of brown sugar:

I realize there are some health nuts out there who will see that and write a comment along the lines of: “OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU SAY YOU’RE CONSCIENTIOUS AND THEN PUT A WHOLE TABLESPOON OF BUTTER AND A WHOLE TABLESPOON OF BROWN SUGAR IN YOUR OATMEAL YOU MONSTER?!?!?!” To these people I say: middle finger emoji.

Now, you crank up the heat and let that brown sugar cook with the butter for a second until it’s a bit combined and bubbly:

To that, add a bunch of berries. How many berries? As many as your heart desires. I added the whole carton of blackberries, about half a carton of raspberries, and same with the blueberries:

Add a pinch of salt, crank up the heat, and then add a squeeze of orange juice or lemon juice, whatever citrus you have lying around. Just not grapefruit, that’d be weird:

You could also add some booze here like Brandy, but that’d be a totally weird thing to do at 8:30 in the morning, so I’m not saying that I did it. But you could do it (just be sure to pour the brandy into a little measuring spoon first so you don’t pour directly from the bottle over the open flame, or you really will be berry-blasted):

Let the berries cook until the liquid is super syrupy and the berries are mostly broken down:

Then pour the berry compote (because that’s what this is, really) into a separate bowl:

Then, in your now-empty berry pot, add a cup of water:

Bring that to a boil with a pinch of salt and then add half a cup of old-fashioned oats (this serves one, btw):

Stir that in, lower the heat a bit, and cook until your oatmeal’s thick and there’s almost no liquid left. It’ll be a cool pink color:

Pour that into a bowl and then drizzle your compote over the top. Sprinkle on some fresh berries and behold…

… a berry-blasted breakfast that has just a little bit of butter and a little bit of sugar. If you start doing crossword puzzles in pen, showing up to movies twenty minutes early, or riding escalators over elevators, you’ll have this oatmeal to blame.

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A Bold New Vision For My Cookbook Collection

Since you last knew me, I’ve developed a few food-related obsessions. The first one is plates. I collect vintage plates now on Ebay and Etsy and I have quite a collection (OK, here’s a peek on Instagram). I’m also obsessed with old cookbooks, usually ones that have historic value (The Lutece Cookbook, for example) but sometimes I purchase cookbooks that are pretty campy and semi-historic (The Uta Hagen Cookbook, The Liberace Cookbook, The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook). Those collectible cookbooks held the highest position on my old cookbook shelf, a shelf that was beginning to look like a real mess. Here’s what I’m talking about…

Even Mr. Lolita was scandalized.

So this past weekend, I took it all apart. Every book came out and I laid them out on various tables and chairs, though I didn’t do the whole “spark joy” thing. I made that mistake once before and accidentally gave away half my not-food-book collection. But that’s a story for another time.

Looking at all my cookbooks spread out, and then at the empty shelf (which Craig purchased at H.D. Buttercup and which he gladly AHEM reluctantly donated to my kitchen back in 2013) I decided that it was time to shake things up.

The former organization prioritized the vintage/collectible/campy stuff on the top shelf, the things I hoped people would enjoy rifling through at dinner parties. That never really happened. Then there were the staples on the second shelf, spilling down to the third shelf. On the bottom shelf, dessert books.

This time, though, I decided to map things out differently:

That’s right, no more vintage/collectibles at the top… from now on, the top two shelves would be VIPs!

Meaning: the books I’m most excited to cook from RIGHT NOW.

Not sure if that’s obvious to everyone–to put the books you’re most excited to cook from at the top of your cookbook shelf–but to me, it’s a definite game changer. Now when I mosey into my kitchen, I see the books that I’m most psyched to see at the very top. Let’s take a closer look:

These are truly my top-tier cookbooks right now, the ones I’m most likely to cook from if you’re coming over for a dinner party. You might spy Ottolenghi’s new dessert book, Sweet, in the mix; yup, that’s a VIP! But there are some unexpected ones, too: Donald Link’s Down South, Alfred Portale’s Simple Pleasures (where I got the recipe for the best soup I’ve ever made), The Food of Campanile (which Nancy Silverton wrote with Mark Peel, back when they were married and owned a restaurant together). But the book I’m happiest to own right now is this one…

Margot Henderson is married to Fergus Henderson, the British chef famous for cooking all the parts of the animal (I ate at his restaurant St. John when I was in London) and who wrote a book called Nose To Tail. Well as wonderful as that book is (it’s also in my collection), I have to say I’m a bigger fan of Margot’s book. It’s bright and funny and does something that no other cookbook does that I’m aware of: it scales its recipes to various sizes depending on how many people you’re feeding. More than anything else, it’s the book I’m most excited to pull off the shelf these days just to spend time with it.

One tier down, you have the other VIP books. Please don’t judge them unfairly for not making the top tier; it’s like getting a silver medal at the Olympics. These books are still at the Olympics. Give them a break.

These are all solid books, with some novelties mixed in (Ottolenghi’s first book, for example, a gift that my friend Lauren gave me years ago, before Ottolenghi was a name, and I was like: “Umm, thanks!” Little did I know it’d be a SECOND TIER COOKBOOK someday). I’m particularly excited about cooking from Every Grain of Rice (which, weirdly, I keep putting off), The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook, and My Two Souths (already made the fried chicken from it; it was pretty special).

Now let’s talk about the third tier. Things changed from my original plan: dessert books moved up a shelf and now share space with the warhorses. These are the books that’ve been with me the longest, in a way… the Inas, the Marios, the Lidias. These books are still stalwarts in the kitchen. I’ll pull down an Ina anytime I want to make a solid meal without too much fanfare. And Mario’s always a good resource for authentic Italian, as is Lidia. The dessert books–the ones that SURVIVED–are on the right.

And finally, we have the classics. These are now on the bottom shelf because I’m thinking of the bottom shelf more as a library, rather than the place I’ll go to first when I have people coming over. I think that makes sense. Gone are the novelties–Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous AND The Two Fat Ladies Cookbook are now in our living room (hope Craig doesn’t notice)–and Uta’s in my nightstand. There are some real treasures on this bottom shelf…

Come into the Kitchen by Mary and Vincent Price, The Cooking of Southwest France by Paula Wolfert, The Graham Kerr Cookbook (he was The Galloping Gourmet long before I was The Amateur Gourmet), Veal Cookery by Craig Claiborne, When French Women Cook by Madeleine Kamman (that’s one of my favorites), Simple French Food by Richard Olney, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, and The Breakfast Book / The Supper Book both by Marion Cummingham. They may be bottom-tier books geographically speaking, but these are top-tier cookbooks by all other measures. And I’m glad they’re all down there for me to peruse on lazy Sundays of the future.

So behold: my newly organized cookbook collection!

And to all of the cookbooks that didn’t survive the reshuffling, please know that you’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Just not on my shelf.

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Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know I’m late to the party with this one (the party being the “put tahini into your desserts” party) but I’ve also not been blogging for two years, so cut me some slack!

The truth is, during my blogging hiatus, I was much more likely to make recipes that I’d already made before than to try new ones. That was part of the relief of not blogging: there wasn’t this sense of, “I’ve got to feed the beast.” (Sorry for calling you a beast.) But now that I’m back in the saddle, I find myself thinking of you, my beautiful beast; and so when I had friends coming over for dinner the other night, I decided not to make my usual chocolate chip cookies. I decided to make the kind with tahini.

The recipe I turned to was this one by Julia Moskin. The tahini I turned to was the one Michael Solomonov recommends in his Zahav cookbook: Soom (which you can buy on Amazon).

There’s really not much to this recipe: you beat your butter the way you normally would, only you add tahini to the mix. Sugar, vanilla, eggs, you know the drill. At the end, you add lots of chopped chocolate (I may have added more than the recipe suggested; sue me).

The nice thing is, the dough has to rest, so it’s a good thing to make the night before a dinner party (which is what I did). Here’s the dough pre-refrigerator:

The next night, as I fed chicken to my friends Eric, Sean, and Tim (who you may recognize from the New York post… his new book, Life Is Like A Musical, comes out this week!), I let the cookie dough come to room temperature out of the fridge, to make it easier to scoop. (I also pre-heated the oven to 325. Why am I saying this in parentheses?)

So after the chicken was et, into the kitchen I went to go a’scoopin’:

Then into the oven they went and I let them go until they were nice and brown all over, even though the recipe is pretty strict about taking them out while they’re still pale in the middle.

So what’s the verdict?

The verdict is: GUILTY OF BEING AMAZING!

Seriously, the tahini adds so much flavor. That’s basically the best way to describe it: cookie-wise, because they were warm out of the oven, they were gooey and soft and oh-so-good. But then the tahini flavor kicks in, and you get this deep, nutty, toasted quality that’s pretty transcendent. Yeah I used the word “transcendnet.” But I couldn’t spell it the second time.

So the moral of the story is… because you guys exist, I made cookies with tahini in them, and my life is better because of it. So thank you.

[Once again: the link to the recipe.]

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A Most Excellent Breakfast Taco

One reoccurring theme you’ll discover on Amateur Gourmet 2.0 is that I watch a lot of PBS cooking shows. I learned how to make a daiquiri watching Simply Ming, and then, watching Rick Bayless’s show, I learned how to make a most excellent breakfast taco.

If Ned Flanders became human and grew obsessed with Mexico, he’d have a show a lot like Rick Bayless’s. There’s an “aw shucks” charm to Bayless, but also a huge breadth of knowledge, which–at the end of every episode–he translates into something you can do at home. (Some have accused Bayles of cultural appropriation, but I don’t think that’s true of his show: most of it is a platform for Mexican chefs to show off what they do.) Anyway, this breakfast taco…

The main ingredients are all pictured here:

Well, except the tortillas and the eggs. These are just the ingredients for the salsa, which is really a matter of taste: chop a tomato or two. It’s prettier if you use heirloom tomatoes. Then add some chopped red onion. And, the key ingredient, a finely minced habanero (less if you don’t like spicy, more if you do). Before Bayless’s show, I was scared of habaneros; but using it here, it added so much to the flavor of the dish, a kind of fruity heat (the kind of heat I generate too). Add chopped cilantro, FRESH lime juice (no bottled, please), a glug of olive oil, and a pinch of salt.

(You’re going to ask for a recipe at the end, but really this is just to taste: trust yourself!)

Once you have your salsa, you can do your eggs. Bayless heated a little olive oil in a pan and then cracked the eggs (two) directly into it, breaking up the yolks as they cooked so you get streaks of yellow and white, which I thought was pretty cool (don’t forget salt and pepper):

While that’s happening, you get to do my favorite thing to do in the kitchen: set something on fire!

Lay your corn tortillas (buy the best you can get, look in the refrigerated section) directly on the gas burners and turn on the heat. Watch as they char around the edges and flip, repeatedly, with tongs, until they look something like this:

That’s it… it’s just a matter of assembly from there. Lay in your eggs, top with your salsa, fold, and eat right away. Rick Bayless added extra cilantro to his. He really likes cilantro.

And there you have it. A most excellent breakfast taco, indeed.

P.S. If you really want a recipe, here’s a link to the one on Rick Bayless’s site. Turns out, he doesn’t use olive oil… but I did. And I’ll live with that mistake for the rest of my life.

P.P.S. Just realized, looking at the picture, that I also added crumbled queso fresco. Really, I’m the worst at this.

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Saved By A Boston Shaker: A Perfect Lime Leaf Daiquiri

One of the best things about starting this blog again is the help that I get from you, my loyal readers.

A commenter with a wonderful name, Adam, chimed in on my last post about cocktail-making (see: “The Time I Made A Lime-Leaf Infused Daiquiri But Couldn’t Open The Cocktail Shaker”) and suggested I try a Boston shaker. I read up on it, and the concept made sense to me: instead of a vertical, tightly-sealed bullet, the Boston shaker works at an angle. At least that’s how it seemed. Then I got confirmation of that yesterday when I popped into Barkeep in Silverlake to ask all about it…

And sure enough, Boston shakers are what they sell there (along with lots of other cool cocktail-stuff):

One of the men who worked there demonstrated the idea: you shove the top piece in at an angle and listen for it to make a seal. I suppose the angle creates a greater risk that you’ll slosh liquor all over yourself if you don’t close it correctly, so I practiced a few times, and then paid the bill, and headed home to try it out.

Actually, first I did work: this happened at 3 o’clock. I’m sure some of you drink cocktails at 3 o’clock, but I’m a respectable member of society, thank you very much.

So at 3:30, I headed home to make the cocktail. (Just kidding: this happened at 6:30, right before Jeopardy.)

Everything from the previous cocktail post still pertains, except for the shaker. Though this time I doubled the recipe: 4 ounces clear rum, 2 ounces fresh lime juice, 1 1/2 ounces lime leaf-infused simple syrup.

Into the Boston shaker everything went, along with some ice…

Then I wedged the top piece in aggressively at an angle, listening for the WHOOSH of the seal. Well it’s not really a WHOOSH. More like the sound a vacuum cleaner might make if you jammed it against your forehead.

And then I SHOOK SHOOK SHOOK, like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and I knew my seal was good because I didn’t get any liquid anywhere.

(Tom Cruise seems so creepy in that new movie trailer, don’t you think?)

At last, the moment of truth: the strain into the coupe.

Worked like a dream. I love my new Boston Shaker! Thanks Other Adam.

I sliced a little lime garnish and put it onto the edge to make it pretty:

As for the taste, it was nice and cold and icy in the way a shaken drink should be. Apparently, a daiquiri tests the mettle of any great bartender (I think I said that in the other post), so now that I have a Boston shaker, my mettle is off-the-charts.

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A Week in New York with Meals at Pearl Oyster Bar, Mimi, Flora Bar, Daniel, Bar Bolonat, Union Square Cafe, Cafe Altro Paradiso, Hearth, and King

Craig’s in the middle of editing his new movie ALEX STRANGELOVE for Netflix (can’t wait for you to see it) in New York and though I planned to just stay in L.A. for the duration of the edit, two things did occur to me when he asked me to come out for a week: (1) it’d be good for our marriage for me to support and nurture Craig through the difficulties of the editing process; (2) I COULD EAT AT A BUNCH OF NEW YORK CITY RESTAURANTS!

I won’t tell you which was the more compelling factor, but there I was, last Monday, arriving at JFK and taking a cab into the city.

Craig was doing film-related work in the Village and so I decided to drop my stuff off on the Upper East Side (where we were staying) and to take the new 2nd Avenue Subway to Union Square, and then walk over to the Village, grabbing some dinner on the way.

Monday night is a great time to fly into New York: not only was the airport pretty empty, restaurants too (at least at the end of September) were only half-full. As I wandered through the Village, I found myself drawn to Cornelia Street and back to an old staple that’s one of my favorite New York City haunts and has been for years: Pearl Oyster Bar.

There’s a certain kind of hunger you achieve when you travel that makes for the most sublime eating experiences when you finally sit down. I think the greatest bite of my life was when I drove from San Francisco to Napa on my book tour, a drive that took forever (I hit lots of traffic), and I decided to go straight to Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, where I sat at the bar, had a glass of wine, and a sublime Caesar salad.

Well: here at Pearl I did exactly the same thing, only this Caesar salad was the stuff of poetry.

The Pearl Caesar has a consistency unlike any other Caesar I’ve ever had; it’s positively shellacked in briny dressing (I mean that in the best way) and I think the richness is a result of gently cooking the egg before emulsifying it (I have the Pearl Cookbook and I seem to remember that step in the process). Also brilliant: the croutons are made of English Muffins. This, plus a glass of Gruner Vetliner, was the most excellent first bite of New York City; chased, of course, by a bowl of impossible-to-photograph-well Clam Chowder:

The next day, I had lots of work to do, so holed up where I was staying and got a mediocre toasted everything bagel from Pick-A-Bagel on 2nd Avenue with lox spread, tomato, and onion, which–despite being mediocre–was still amazing because it was a bagel in New York and reminded me of the kinds of bagels I’d eat growing up.

That night, we were meeting up with a new friend; Broadway star GIDEON GLICK who you may have heard on the Spring Awakening cast recording (“I love you Hanshel!” I know the thing by heart because I cook to it all the time) or seen in his star-turn in Significant Other. We started at the Washington Square Hotel Bar, one of Craig’s favorite bars in New York, partially because it’s the least glamorous place you can imagine.

Each of us got a Manhattan which was so strong but so right at the same time (the room was spinning when I went to bed that night, I blame this):

Then it was off to Mimi, a restaurant I learned about through reverse dinner reservation engineering. See, in the olden days, I’d figure out a restaurant I wanted to go to and then clamor for a reservation. Now I just use the apps–OpenTable, Resy–and see what’s available and then read about the places that are available to see if I’m interested. On Resy, I saw a table available at Mimi, so I read the Pete Wells review, which was mostly positive, and the New York Magazine review, which was even more positive. So off to Mimi we went:

This really felt like a restaurant in Paris, from the cramped tables to the not-warm, but passionate service. Our table was so cramped, it almost felt like we were at a table for five with the people sitting next to us; this restaurant isn’t for the faint of heart. Here’s Craig and Gideon to illustrate:

OK, that doesn’t look too cramped after all. It was also very dark.

Which makes these pictures not-so-great, but the chicken liver mousse was most excellent:

Wow, that’s a huge picture but that’s because I batch-edited all these pictures so they’re all 640 width, even the vertical ones. Sorry!

Confession: I don’t remember much else of what we ate there, and the pictures are really bad, so here’s just one more…

That thing in the background was delicious: cheesy, gooey, carby. I don’t remember what it was and the online menu doesn’t match our meal there.

(Maybe you can tell, I’m not sure I’d rush back to Mimi, but let’s not make a big deal about it.)

The next day, I went to go see a much-ballyhooed play, A Doll’s House Part 2 which was in its final week. I missed Laurie Metcalf, who I love so much, in the lead part, but Julie White was wonderful and this was a terrific, thought-provoking play.

Afterwards, the restaurant Daniel called (where we were supposed to have dinner; more on that in a bit) with news that a water main broke outside the restaurant and that they’d have to reschedule our dinner to the next night. (They were very nice about it.)

So after Craig finished with work that day, he came back to the Upper East Side and I led him to Flora Bar, a restaurant I was most curious about, in the old Untitled spot at the former-Whitney now Met Breuer:

Craig’s a huge fan of Ignacio Mattos and his restaurant Estela on Houston in SoHo. It has a dish that’s truly one of the most memorable things Craig and I have ever eaten: an endive salad that buries a granola made of walnuts, breadcrumbs, anchovies, and chunks of cheese. It sounds bizarre but it’s oh so good.

So Flora Bar, also a Mattos restaurant, was an exciting thing to find near where we were staying. And on this lovely New York night, there was a table right outside. Get ready for another huge picture!

Here are pictures of everything that we ate, some of which will be self-explanatory (a Caesar with the most amazing croutons soaked with an orange-flavored oil) some of which won’t (a steak that you can’t see because it’s covered in mushroom disks):

That dessert was maybe the most mind-blowing of all: it was a disc of frozen coconut ice cream on top of of something made of mango, but the craziest part was that it tasted like it was infused with jalapenos. There was heat.

At the end of our trip, which we’ll get to eventually (I hope!), Craig and I agreed that our dinner at Flora Bar was probably our favorite meal of the week. The only downside: the price. It’s a little crazy expensive, especially that steak, but I think it’s worth it.

Now: the next day. I continued to work on the Upper East Side, and needing a break, I wandered up to the famous Kitchen Arts & Letters, a culinary book store rivaled only by Bonnie Slotnick’s downtown and Omnivore Books in San Francisco.

I spent about an hour there (I could’ve spent HOURS there) seeking out something that would be impossible to find anywhere else. Eventually, I think I found it:

The store’s proprietor asked if I’d read about the recent revelations regarding Roald Dahl; I said I hadn’t. He paused, saying that if I went home, read about them, and decided to bring the book back, he’d give me a refund. So naturally I went home and read some stuff about him; I guess he was anti-Semitic? Though Steven Speilberg had to address that when he did The BFG and he seemed to think Dahl was more of a provocateur who liked to get a reaction out of people. And, frankly, if I had to purge my book collection of hateful writers/creators I’d have a very thin book collection indeed (bye T.S. Eliot, etc). I’m all about separating the artist from the art, or the cookbook, as the case may be.

Now: on to Daniel!

Why did we go to Daniel, one of the most lavish restaurants in New York?

Blame Bette Midler.

We had a tiny windfall a few weeks ago (someday I’ll tell you about green envelopes; which equal residuals in the entertainment biz… ok, I guess I just told you about them) and upon receiving one, I made up my mind: when I went to visit Craig in New York, we’d go see Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly!

Now there’s a lot you have to know about this: I love Bette Midler, always have. Going to Beaches with my grandmother is one of my most prominent movie memories (especially since my grandfather had just died and I chose Beaches in order to cheer her up… oops!) I’ve seen Bette Midler many times in concert; once with my parents when I was in middle school, wondering why there were so many men at the concert?

But Hello Dolly! is not my favorite. I once saw my college boyfriend in it in Summerstock in Birmingham, Alabama. It was cute, but once was enough. Then I saw it again in Atlanta. Then I saw the Barbra Streisand movie. I find it all incredibly corny/cheesy. It’s fine, it’s cute, but when I went to pay for the tickets, I just couldn’t hit the “PURCHASE” button. It was so wildly expensive on StubHub…

And for the same money, we could go have an incredible, earth-shattering meal somewhere. So I chose Daniel:

Why Daniel over New York’s other palaces of fine dining? Didn’t Pete Wells demote it a star, knocking it down from four to three?

Well: he did. But Daniel, more so than any other restaurant in New York, evokes the kind of classic New York French restaurant I love reading about in books, with the kind of old-world French style captured in movies like Ratatouille. The other choices all had knocks against them, in this department: Le Bernardin is lovely, but it’s focused mainly on seafood; The Grill at the Four Seasons is recently refurbished, but too trendy for my tastes; Jean-Georges is certainly excellent, but it’s known for its Asian-fusion. He’s into yuzu. I wanted French food without Yuzu.

And that’s precisely what we got. Again, a series of pictures:

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Our waiter, who you can see in the middle of that series of pictures, was so helpful: we didn’t want to do a bottle, but wanted to get a glass or two of wine to match the food. He poured us half glasses for the first two courses, and a full glass for the third course, which worked out perfectly.

And though I feel like I’ll lose my gay card for saying this, I’m glad we chose Daniel over Bette Midler (somewhere, an angry unicorn is blowing fire from its nose and charging out to find me). This meal WAS theater: entertaining, inspiring, fattening (OK, theater’s not fattening). I’m very glad we went.

Jesus, do I still have more meals to write about? I’m on an airplane, by the way. This post is getting me all the way back to L.A.

Next night: had dinner with our friend Chris at Bar Bolonat. My pictures are lousy, but you should see Chris because he’s handsome and our good friend:

That’s what he looks like ordering wine.

All of the food at Bar Bolonat was flavorful and perfect for a Friday night, catching up with an old friend.

(Do you feel like I cheated there? It’s just because the pictures were bad!)

Now: on to another highlight meal, the one that we had at the newly re-opened Union Square Cafe.

I like this place even better in its new location, and it wasn’t hard to get a reservation for lunch (again: use the apps. I play them like a video game!)

We were joined by the lovable creator of BETTER LATE THAN NEVER and THE GREAT AMERICAN WHATEVER and the Tweeter behind TIM FEDERLE: Tim Federle!

That’s him with our appetizers, a beautiful tomato salad (God, now that I’m blogging again, do I have to come up with more adjectives for food besides beautiful?) and a gorgeous polenta that tasted like adult baby food in the best possible way. Here are close-up pictures of both:

We all had the famous tuna burger, which lives up to the hype, and is a very good thing to eat for lunch (we had it with salad instead of chips because I’m really into showing restraint… haha):

Then for dessert, there was a battle of wills: Tim was Team Ricotta Mousse, I was Team Strawberry Pavlova. Actually, Tim very kindly said I should just get the Pavlova, but the waitress overhearing this brought us BOTH. That’s the kind of service Union Square Cafe (and Danny Meyer restaurants) are famous for.

OK, now even I’m getting exhausted from this post. So let me just tell you: Saturday night we met our friends Lucci and Josh at Cafe Altro Paradiso, another Ignacio Mattos restaurant. This one’s less weird than Estela, less ritzy than Flora Bar, more just straight-forward Italian food but made with so much artistry and wisdom and love. I really think this restaurant’s a gem; from the way it looks to the way everything tastes. It’s not a blow-you-away kind of restaurant; it’s more of just a restaurant that feels right, if that makes sense. Like a pair of elegant Italian slippers. Here are some pics:

Yesterday, our last day in New York, we met our friends Ola and Andres for brunch at Hearth, which is firing on all cylinders these days (last trip to New York, we ate there and had a tremendous dinner; Craig goes all the time and always wants to eat there every time I visit. I love Marco Canora and his food. Why am I still in parentheses?)

The two best things about eating brunch at Hearth: (1) You can make a reservation on OpenTable; (2) the pastry chef is the legendary Karen DeMasco, whose baking book is incredible, and who’s worked at some of the city’s best restaurants. Her corn muffin with blueberries was out of this world. And all the savory food was so, so, good; way better than brunch food has any right to be. My kale and sausage ragu was so deeply-flavored, it should be taught as a class at all culinary schools:

After brunch, Craig and I went to see the most heartbreaking but lovely play by Amy Herzog at The New York Theater Workshop, a play called MARY JANE, about the mother of a very sick child:

Needless to say, we needed a drink afterwards. I researched “wine bar” on my phone, and we wound up at Rebelle Wine Bar on the Bowery, which had the most incredible Sunday deal: HALF OFF all wines less than $400. Every wine on the menu.

So we got an $80 Jura Chardonnay for $40, which I’m still a bit in shock over:

We also got to sit outside and watch the people go by. Somebody came up to Craig and asked if he was The Amateur Gourmet! I immediately threw my Jura wine in the man’s face; just kidding, we had a nice conversation. He’s starting a podcast.

Finally–FINALLY–we had our last meal of the trip, at King in the West Village, which I read about in The New York Times and The New Yorker:

This was a very straightforward, delightful dinner that maybe didn’t dazzle, but it comforted in all the right ways:

Would you look at that: this post took so much time, we just landed in Australia.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed our meals in New York. I sure did. And seeing Craig! Because that’s what the trip was all about. Heart emoji.

The post A Week in New York with Meals at Pearl Oyster Bar, Mimi, Flora Bar, Daniel, Bar Bolonat, Union Square Cafe, Cafe Altro Paradiso, Hearth, and King appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.

A Story For The Weekend

I’m sitting on a bench in the West Village, waiting for Craig to finish editing, and since I have some time to kill I’m going to tell you a story about something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was at a party in West Hollywood on the top of a building and Craig, and several of our friends, had made their way up to the roof. I’d just poured myself a plastic cup of red wine and wasn’t sure what to do, so I put the plastic cup in my mouth, biting the lip, and started my way up the ladder. At some point, I wanted to see how much further I had to go, and–like a modern day CARRIE–I lifted my head up and completely doused myself with cheap Pinot Noir. I had to walk through a room of attractive strangers searching for paper towels while dripping purple/red fluid.

The moral of the story is: never leave home.

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The Time I Made A Lime Leaf-Infused Lime Daiquiri But Couldn’t Open The Cocktail Shaker

I’m a big fan of Simply Ming on PBS (in fact, I’m just a big fan of cooking shows on PBS in general).

But Simply Ming seems to be one of the only platforms on TV where real, heavyweight chefs can come and showcase a dish (Daniel Boulud and Shaun Hergatt were recent guests). And he always starts the show with a cocktail, usually something simple and elegantly-made, which he offers to the guest before they get cooking. When pastry chef extraordinaire Johnny Iuzzini was on the show recently, Ming made him one of his favorite cocktails–a cocktail that Johnny said he always orders at a new bar to see if they make it right–a simple daiquiri with white rum, lime juice, and simple syrup.

Something about that combo really intrigued me (and also the fact that it’s a classic cocktail) so the next time I was at Barkeep in Silverlake, I picked up a bottle of white rum, the one you see at the top of this post. I had the limes, I had the sugar and water, I also had (foreboding music) the cocktail shaker.

Turns out, I also had kaffir lime leaves which I’d picked up at Cookbook in Echo Park which I keep mentioning in these posts, so you know it must be a pretty great store.

I decided to infuse those into the simple syrup for extra lime flavor. That was just a matter of mixing equal parts of sugar and water (a cup each) and dropping in the leaves; bringing it to a boil until the sugar dissolved and turning off the heat.

After letting it sit for twenty minutes, I strained the mixture into a jar…

Or, actually, just poured it into a jar and then placed it in the fridge.

A few hours later, I looked up Ming’s recipe which seemed delightfully simple: 2 ounces clear Rum, 1 ounce fresh lime juice, 3/4 ounce simple syrup, lime wheel for garnish, ice. Then: “Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Give a hard shake and double strain into a coupe glass.”

I did exactly that, everything except “double strain into a coupe glass” because as the title of this post suggests… I couldn’t get the cocktail shaker open!

I tried banging it, I tried hitting it, I tried tapping it, I tried yelling at it, I tried putting it between my feet and pulling upwards, I tried tying it to a toy train and pushing the speed up to max, I tried dropping it off a tall building, I tried lighting it on fire, I tried singing to it, dancing with it, telling it that it was the most beautiful cocktail shaker in all the world.

But it wouldn’t budge. So I did the next best thing: I made the drink again, but this time in a measuring cup with ice.

And then stirred actively for about a minute until I knew all the liquid was chilled (which is the point of shaking with ice, really. Just ask James Bond.)

Then I poured it into a coupe, just like the recipe said:

And it was a most excellent drink, I really wanted more of it. Next time I’ll probably double the portions of everything. And also, next time, I’ll use a different cocktail shaker? Or your advice in the comments, which you’ll inevitably give. I welcome it. Cheers!

The post The Time I Made A Lime Leaf-Infused Lime Daiquiri But Couldn’t Open The Cocktail Shaker appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.