What am I going to do with you, good-looking? How do I treat myself? Let me count the ways. Trudging my way from the camp of the kitchen toy have nots to the enviable haves, this week I made a soaring leap with the purchase of a double-pronged sword—er, blade: this Cuisinart food processor and blender.
As a Christmas gift, I was given a one-night class at Camaje cooking classes. The course for the evening at the West Village French bistro that my benefactor chose to enroll me in was “A Taste of Thai.” This was the first cooking class I had taken since seventh grade home economics, and I couldn’t wait.
“Unlike an earlier wave of food blogs focused on home cooking, recipes and basic restaurant recommendations, the new breed is gossipy and competitive; it trafficks in pointed restaurant criticism and tidbits of news — Craftsteak has installed a new stove!” Whatever, New York Times. I’d rather be cooking at my tiny stove than trumpeting the most hoity-toity restaurant news, and reading the other article in the Magazine section on the American-Taiwanese-Hunanese roots of that ubiquitous dish “General Tso’s Chicken” anyway. … Read More
Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours making sauce, dough, preparing the toppings and putting it all together in a cheesy, sausage and jalepeno pizza to share with a couple of friends. We all had a great time. Then afterwards, I got really sad when I realized, thinking about the cost calculator section of the blog post that would be, that I probably would have spent just the same if I’d just bought a large sausage and jalepeno pie … Read More
Not much to report from my little Brooklyn kitchen this week, since I’ve been living off dinner party leftovers. But I noticed a familiar phrase while biking down Smith St. in Boerum Hill the other day: a corner storefront under renovation (I think around Baltic St.) amongst a busy restaurant row, which had tall glass windows that showed signs of a soon-to-be-restaurant, or maybe market, and a new awning with the words written in stylistically childish font: “Jessie’s Brooklyn Kitchen.” … Read More
Isn’t it a pity New York seems to have a relative dearth of really good cajun restaurants? There’s tons of barbecue and even soul food spots, but New Orleans-style cajun cookin’ is hard to come by. Menupages.com listed only 25 restaurants in the “Cajun and Creole” category, and from just eyeballing it I noticed some that were definitely not. I wondered about this after visiting Portland last summer and eating at a great, cute restaurant called Montage which served an … Read More
I just loved this article by Seth Kugel in the NY Times Real Estate section. This guy is like my antithesis-turned possible doppelganger by the end of the article. Swooned by all the multicultural restaurants and street foods of Jackson Heights, he gets a nagging urge to create and then discovers another fascinating food “find”: his own kitchen. I haven’t lived in Jackson Heights before, but Kugel makes a pretty compelling case for it. Perhaps when I’m priced out of … Read More
A few things I ate recently: burgers, pizza, and lasagna. I guess the abundance of Chinese food over the holidays has left me craving the good ‘ol stuff. And none of them very creatively executed, with perhaps the exception of the burger, because I swung by by Amy’s Bread on Bleecker St. and picked up a couple of “mini” sourdough rolls. Well, they were far too big for one burger. In retrospect I think my original idea of making one … Read More
The meal my family eats on Christmas Eve, a stark contrast to the all-American holiday meals like Thanksgiving, is usually an all-out feast of 5-10 Chinese dishes cooked by my uncle and my mom, a roast duck or chicken from the store added on, and a dessert of some type that we’re too full to eat. This year, we decided to do something different and serve hot pot. I’ve seen some places refer to this communal meal as “Chinese fondue,” … Read More
A quintessential plate of 4-way chili at Skyline Chili: that’s cheese on top of chili on top of spaghetti. Yes, spaghetti. I was pretty sure that Ohio wasn’t the cheese state. But what did I know? It was my first trip to anywhere in the midwest, not including airport layovers. I found myself there last weekend because my college buddy Aaron had gotten married to a Japanese girl while teaching English in Japan, and had brought her back to his … Read More