Coffee or Tea?
Now that it's getting colder, be and i have been drinking a lot of tea. On our China trip in 2002, our tour brought us to a tea plantation famed for growing an ultra-rare, top grade green tea called
Dragonwell. The top 2 grades are not even exported to other countries! We purchased 1 big canister and received a free mini one. The tea is full leaf, hand picked, dried and roasted. When you brew it, the leaves grow and you can smell the freshness in the steam. It makes you remember "tea" is just a certain leaf of a bush. We're still working on drinking it 2 years after the fact, not because it isn't good, but because i've gone through a major coffee phase which is only now subsiding.
This coffee phase made me acquire 2
stovetop espresso machines, another
French press, a burr grinder and numerous little bags of different coffees. So far i really like the
Costa Rican Dota from Whole Foods, but the pound of
Kona peaberry we got in Hawaii is very very tasty. It's a rich cup of coffee that we try not to drink all the time (at $35 a lb -- in the place it's grown!)
You can't drink coffee at night so now it's all about tea. My constant favorite is Assam. I have this itty bitty amount left of organic Assam i found at
Harrod's when we were in London. Like a dummy, i drank and drank this wonderful tea until i realized you can't get it online or at any store, even in New York! I previously thought i could just find out which plantation the exact tea is from or if it's packaged under another company but NO LUCK. I've tried every good looking Assam i could; i even requested a tea shop brew me some samples in case they had the one. There is just something very perfect about that certain Assam. Other brands are too dry, have too much tannin, no flavor or are in need of milk to make it drinkable. The next best brand i've had is
Red Label. I like it a lot but there is something better about full leaf; Red Label is a loose tea but the leaves have been processed into little pellets.
Everyone who's had this Assam tea i'm raving about has proclaimed it's very good. Anyone going to London, i will pay you top dollar for this tea! It's in a wooden box, Harrod's organic Assam! Better yet, if anyone has any info about it, pass it on!
Cupcake Competition
Today at work, Melissa brought in a box of absolutely beautiful cupcakes from
The Cupcake Cafe. I chose a chocolate one with a flower and leaves on top; the buttercream frosting was amazingly buttery and light, but the cake part could've been better. The batch Melissa brought in this past summer that she made from scratch, frosting and all, were much much better. I do have to admit they were stunning though, especially in a box tray of 16. I don't remember if i had cupcakes from Magnolia or Buttercup a few summers ago, but i thought those weren't that amazing either. I like the Cupcake Cafe better than whatever that batch was, but better yet i like the cupcakes at
Podunk in the East Village. A$ was the first to discover this cute tea house 2 or so years ago. We used to meet up there and have tea and cake. Once we tried to have a knitting session there but we ended up talking smack instead! Anyways, back to the cupcakes: the owner charges $1 each but it could be higher now. Regardless, they are so delicious you'll get addicted if you try them! The icing is a perfect balance of smooth and sugary, the cupcake part cannot be beat. They taste better than homemade, in a buttery, moist, crumbly kind of way. Their other baked goods are top notch too, in case she runs out of cupcakes (which has sadly been known to happen)!
Orange Candy
I just juiced our 4 little Valencia oranges and 1 large pink grapefruit. Sliced each around their equators, used a reamer to squeeze out as much juice as possible and strained the pulp. All together i netted 12 oz, split between myself and be. I just needed to say that the resulting beverage tasted like candy. Orange candy. There was no sourness found in the likes of store-bought juice; even the not-from–concentrate is sorta sour. The juice was a dense opaque bright orange, super heavily sweet but crisp and refreshing. The grapefruit made the end of each sip (well, we really chugged our glasses, but "sip" sounds more savory) a tad bitter, but even the grapefruit is not like the kind from the supermarket. Once, be and conducted a taste test between our
Urban Organics grapefruit and a regular "gourmet market" grapefruit. The latter was about twice the size but the bitterness was 10x. If kids had produce like this, everyone would love fruits and vegetables. If you are in New York and want to take our word, try the box for yourself, say that be and i sent you.
Produce Update
Made last night:
1) Cornbread, which ended up very good! Nothing stuck in my corn sticks pan since i sprayed non-stick stuff on it before heating it in the oven. When the pan turns a nice glossy black i'll resign from using this strange chemically stuff. I used most of the batter from Kavita's yummy recipe in my big skillet and it'll be enough for 12 slices of cornbread! be thought it was "very spicy" but i liked it just right. It's a non-sweet, cheesy and hot recipe which would be great with chili.
2) Soup, which was delicious of course! You can't really mess up vegetable soup. What we make now has strayed very far from the original recipe i found off the internet, but each batch is still great although different from the last. It's a good way to reduce produce around the house.
bebe's Vegetable Soup (last batch i doubled the below recipe!)
2 T olive oil
2 medium waxy potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lb kale, chopped
2 qts vegetable stock (canned or from cubes is up to you)
1 small can tomato sauce or 2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 can chickpeas
1 can corn or 2 ears fresh corn, kernels cut off
2 carrots, sliced into rounds
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
Note you can use zucchini, summer squash, canned beans, mushrooms, fake meat, pasta or any other ingredients for this soup. You will need to add more vegetable stock and seasonings to compensate.
Heat the oil in a big stockpot on medium heat. Add potatoes and cover, cook for about 5 minutes and stir occasionally. Add the garlic and kale, cover to wilt for 1-2 minutes. Add stock, tomato, chickpeas, corn, carrots and bay leaves. Stir well and season with salt and pepper (i use a lot of pepper, enough for be's mom to say it's "picante"). Bring to a full boil, then lower heat back to medium and simmer 5-10 minutes until potatoes are done.
What's great about this soup is not only it's versatility, but the kale! The kale keeps it's texture and is a little crispy, which is a nice balance with the soft potatoes and chickpeas. I added the corn and carrots since i had those around. The original recipe called for chorizo, so it was essentially only potatoes, kale and chorizo.
Made today:
3) Pita pizza; our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. I couldn't finish the last pieces and be used an entire portobello mushroom cap as topping on his. Super easy, made easier with pre-grated cheese. I used fake pepperoni on mine.
4) Carrot-apple-ginger juice in my trusty 6-year old Juiceman. We used 1.5 bags of carrots, 6 apples (3 gala, 3 mutsu) and a big piece of ginger. In addition, be juiced another 2 bags of carrots for beverages tomorrow.
5) Tea, twice. be had Dragonwell green tea, grade #1 from China both times, i had Assam and then green tea with rooibos.
Threw out:
6) Arugula, which turned yellowish and wilty. I was out of town the weekend we received this, otherwise i would have happily eaten it.
7) Dandelion, which i'm tired of eating raw or chopping up and cooking with fake bacon. be doesn't like it and i can't ever eat a whole pound of it.
8) Lettuce; we still have 2 heads of this!
Our current fridge is very old and acts up a lot. We have to keep a big cup near the back to catch the dripping -- we empty almost 32 oz of fridgewater every 2 weeks! If we fiddle with the knobs, it gets too warm inside OR things on the top shelves freeze. I'm glad our freezer works fine besides the fact everything gets freezerburn surprisingly fast. I don't recall the produce i've acquired in previous housing arrangements going bad as quickly as it does here. I can't wait until we can design our own kitchen and get an awesome fridge, storage-freezer, big-burner stove and tons of counter space. Did i mention that our 1st fridge in this apartment was held together with DUCT TAPE on the inside? Just sayin, i drool at suburban fridges.
Changes
This afternoon be and i drove around Brooklyn to look at neighborhoods and houses. We discovered that "Kensington" has some serious Southern-style wraparound porch houses and that white people are living west of 3rd Ave now. Being the hungry people we are, we decided to have dinner at
Hunan Delight again, and we actually had to wait for a table. The whole entire restaurant was FULL. In all the times we've been there, we never had to wait. I'm glad it means good business for them since they are yummy and rightly deserve it, but it's sad to see how the neighborhood has changed. It's crazy white hipster and all the businesses are different. Park Slope seems to have lost any diversity it had.
On a different note, a few years ago Hunan Delight added "Vegetarian General Tso's Chicken" to their lunch menu. I truly believe this addition was due to the fact
baby L and i always went and requested it at lunch. They always agreed but for an extra $1. A little later, it appeared in print on the menu! Park Slopers: be sure to go and enjoy a lunch for me.
Don't some dogs always look worried and sad?
I think be and i failed in the produce reduction.
Check out my favorite old picture of Degraw Street:
Brooklyn Tile
Diner Talk
Glomar spent the night on our red couch and was craving eggs this morning, so i suggested having breakfast at our favorite little diner, the
New York Ham n Eggery. There is hardly any mention of it online and it's a very unassuming little place, easily missed if walking or driving by too quickly. The patrons all seem to be locals and/or workers at the nearby Home Depot or Best Buy on Northern Blvd in Queens.
The food is typical diner fare with the addition of gyros and some greek ingredients (feta, olives) but what makes it different is the fact they serve Good Food. The portions are huge and the cooks are great at what they make, be it grilled cheese (with real sliced cheddar, not singles) or hash browned potatoes that actually are delicious. Even the white bread toast is tasty, toasted just right and with a spread of butter. Their nothing-fancy coffee is decent, much better than the coffee the (our) moms make!
The diner was packed so we waited a little while for a booth (there are only 7 small booths total at this place). I like their glitter blue and silver upholstery as well as the old Coke bottles and soda siphon collection near the front. The waitstaff and cooks are all very nice and i think the owner is always there too. It's been there since 1949; sitting in our booth we wondered what the area looked like 50 years ago.
In high school we used to go to
Denny's or
Anita's late at night and have long philosophical discussions about varied subjects. Today was no different -- we ended up discussing the differences between
Generation X and Y, if video games had any role in this definition and how be and glomar fit in. The conversation essentially boiled down to how which (pop) culture movements defined you and hence, whether you're
X or Y. I think technically it's not just pop culture but the boys did enjoy their fight about video games and whether listening to
the Smiths in the 80s or 90s made you X or Y. Ah, just like when we were 17, but not at a
racist joint like Denny's nor at Anita's which uses lard!
So if you're ever in Queens, take the R, V or G to 46th St or any of the assorted buses on Northern to a little diner next to Best Buy and get into a long pointless discussion while eating good food.
Too Much Squash
Right now, our kitchen counter holds: 4 kabocha, 2 butternut and 1 acorn squash. My mom made us butternut squash a few times growing up, but other than that i don't really know anything about it! Luckily, dude IMed me roasting instructions and also emailed a nice recipe for cranberry-pear chutney.
Today be's abuelita made us so many pupusas -- a corn flour pattie filled with cheese, cooked on a griddle. When be makes them, they are still good but not as round and sorta lumpy. When it's big breakfast day he makes pupusas, i heat up refried beans and make platanos/plantains. Recently though, big breakfast has meant cereal and soymilk.
Tomorrow is produce reduction day, so our plan is to make: butternut soup, kale and potato soup, carrot-apple-ginger juice, collard greens with fake ham, hash browns and something with spinach. If i'm up to it, i might make cornbread with Kavita's yummy cornbread recipe, which i finally found! It's in a Workshop cookbook that A$ and i made last year. I'll let you know how the food turns out!
Thankstaking
be's family was having Thankstaking dinner at their neighbors' house, so we had a Thankstaking lunch with them this afternoon. One cannot go to a meal empty-handed, so we stopped by
Parisi Bakery to pick up some bread. We knew it would be crowded full of people buying bread, cookies and pies for dinner, but had no idea the line would stretch down the block! I mean, this line was for bread -- not a concert or movie opening night -- for $1.00 loaves of bread! They were sold out of almost everything except butter cookies so we got a pound, but couldn't wait the "5 minutes" for new loaves to come out of the oven. As we left the bakery, the line was just growing longer and longer. be makes his excellent croutons from leftover Parisi bread and they're the best croutons i've ever had. This past summer we gave
Ishle and Dave a little ziplock bag of them and Dave ate them all for breakfast the next day! Sans salad! So if you're ever on the N train to Astoria, get off at the Broadway stop and get some loaves.
The Thankstaking lunch was fun; the dishes i liked the most were the yellow rice and vinegared vegetables (curtido). be's mom even made a vegetarian batch of her stuffing for us. It consisted of fake meat, potato chunks, chickpeas, onions and bell peppers (but i didn't eat the bell peppers), capers and a tomato sauce. Now we have enough leftovers in the fridge for 8 more meals!
At home, be had fruit with vanilla ice cream in an attempt to consume some of the near-rotting produce we have laying around. Every week we get a
box of organic produce delivered to us. Our thinking is that if we paid for it, we have to eat it. We sometimes eat like crap so this is our way of making sure we eat more fruits and veggies. This thinking works only if we don't eat out more than 2x a week however, and in New York that's a difficult thing to do. This past week we've had a ton of friends in town so alas, our poor produce is not lookin so hot sitting on the counter or getting humidified in the fridge. When be cut open the wrinkly kiwi though, it tasted like candy! You know those
kiwi gummies with the real seeds in them? This kiwi was so good it tasted unreal. We then went into a long lament about how produce in this country sucks so much that when we have a real apple, we think it tastes artificial. After this candy kiwi, we ate the last of the pineapple we got at Honolulu Airport. This pineapple was so good i could really eat the entire one by myself, juice squirting out when you take a bite, so sweet and yummy. That made me think of the strawberries we had all over Paris (gariguettes) which upon first bite, made us say, "this tastes like Starburst!" How sad this all is.
Les Fraises (scroll down)
This tastes like Starburst!
Fraise v Gariguette
What i don't understand about Thanksgiving is the turkey obsession. 90% of households make and eat turkey today, but first of all, no one seems to know how to cook it (hence, a
helpline) and secondly, no one really seems to like it. What everyone likes is the "tradition" but i'm all for burning down dumb, pointless traditions. If people really wanted to make a meal representative of what the "Pilgrims and Indians" ate, it sure wouldn't look like what's served at today's table (who serves
succotash these days?) nor would football be a main focal point for the lazy men.
No turkey!
I'm really glad we did the family meal thing early this time. It seems so late now but we have the whole evening to be homebodies. Maybe i'll knit something warm; this weather is terrible.
Sweet Potato Secrets
I've been to
Outback Steakhouse two times: the first was for my brother's college graduation, the second for be's mom's birthday. On both occasions i found Outback to be overpriced and not particularly good. Perhaps their steaks are, but as for their sides -- they suck! The only redeeming dish in my opinion was their baked sweet potato. After i had their sweet potato for the first time, i searched and searched the web for one of those "secret formula" recipe deals. I found a few and tried them; the best one was still grossly oily and had the wrong texture.
But tonight i tweaked the recipe and i do have to say it's exactly like the one at Outback! So sweet and yummilicious. Now you try making it. It would be good for Thankstaking if you're tired of "candied yams with mini marshmallows."
Bebe's Sweet Potato
2 sweet potatoes
1/2 T shortening
salt
2 T whipped butter
2 T honey
1/8 t cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Scrub the potatoes, rub them with shortening, sprinkle with a little salt and prick skins a few times with a fork. Place in a baking dish and bake for 1 - 1.25 hours until very, very soft. Split the potato skins lengthwise but not through to the bottom of the skins, leave for 20 minutes to cool. Meanwhile, combine the butter, honey and cinnamon. When the potatoes are warm (not hot!), fill with the butter mixture and serve.
We all Scream
Flashback to high school: i had the sudden urge to run out and buy the new
U2 album at midnight so be and i headed towards Virgin Megastore at 10:30PM. As we were leaving the house, he goes, "Do you know what i kind of want now?" and i was like, "Ice cream."
This past summer we must have gone to
Uncle Louie G's in Astoria dozens of times. This really nice couple bought it in spring and we like supporting them, as well as our serious Italian ice and ice cream addiction. Their flavors are really accurate and yummy! So tonight be got a big size rocky road + pumpkin pie (which tasted like real pumpkin pie!) and i got a mini cup of cookies n cream. On the subway we were struggling to finish, and i think mostly it's due to the fact that today we consumed: cereal, leftover Hunan Delight, pita pizza, Taco Bell + KFC, soda and coffee --- not a good food day. It reminded me of the Great Wimp Out of 2004, when glomar, be and i decided, "Wouldn't it be awesome to eat a cream puff at
Beard Papa Sweets, get ice cream at
Stone Cold Creamery, and then top it off with halo halo at
Krystal's?" On the night of the GWO, we only made it to Cold Stone and only be was able to finish a "Love It" size (which is like a pint with all this crap mixed in, and your bowl weighs about 14 oz). We were sitting on the steps outside, lamenting and forcing ourselves to eat as much as we could. It was like peanut butter/Oreo/coffee chips/vanilla torture. In total we spent about $17 on ice cream!
In the end, tonight be almost finished his whole big cup, in addition to half of my mini cup. Obviously, he's the ice cream eater between the two of us. Take a look at the picture below, when the boys did their first Vermonster. I think it was be who drank the ice cream soup at the bottom. He totally smelled like sugar for a few days after!
Vermonster #1
Mushroom Madness
On our last
Costco trip, be bought 2 packages of 4 huge portobello mushrooms each, for under $9 total! He has a severe case of mushroom madness. Whenever we visit my parents in VA, my mom makes mushroom dish after mushroom dish for him. As a kid, my siblings and i stopped eating mushrooms after seeing some old black and white Japanese movie about people who went nuts and had growths all over their faces, and who probably went around and killed all the other castaways on the island, all from eating mushrooms. I think my brother still won't eat them, but my sister and i have seen the light. She makes a mean Rachel Ray mushroom fries dish, courtesy of our friends at
Lake Isle Press, that my mom now makes since she likes it so much!
Tonight be made one of our favorite mushroom dishes that we love to eat on
Parisi bread, but any bread will do. It's super easy and everyone will want more.
2 cups finely chopped portobello mushrooms (1 large or 2 small caps)
2 T butter
1-2 cloves crushed garlic
salt and pepper
Melt the butter in a small pot over medium heat, add garlic and stir. Add mushrooms and stir to coat. The mushrooms will cook down significantly, stir occasionally and lower the heat if necessary. When the mushrooms turn dark brown and there's only a little juice left, add salt and pepper and serve on toasted bread, crackers or in pasta.
3x Thai
After the Li-Young Lee poetry class at the
Workshop, P, be and i headed downtown for dinner. It was a toss up against falafel and lentil soup at Chickpea or noodle dishes at East Village Thai. Thai won out because i'm always down for pad Thai. I think it's a perfect dish: slightly sour, slightly sweet, chewy, crisp, fresh, hot, noodle-y and full of peanutty goodness. Be always gets pad sew ew (broad noodles) when we go out, so i feel like we're dumb for getting two noodle dishes, but we keep ordering the same way each time.
On my recent trip to NoVA, i had Thai food two times with two different sets of friends. The first crew included an
incredibly smart and funny 3 year old who proclaimed that his favorite food was pad Thai! I thought that he sure had sophisticated tastes for a 3 year old, but this is the same kid who said "complicated" in casual conversation. The second meal was with a dear old friend of mine from junior high. The food was great but the dried roasted crushed chiles were lacking in heat. The batch P gave me that her father made is so good that i intentionally make foods to eat it on.
I've had plenty of good pad Thai in New York. I'm not an expert on what's authentic or not; i only know what i like and what i suspect has been Americanized. The place by our house in Astoria is actually quite good, as is Holy Basil and
Pam Real Thai. Nothing beats the first place i had Thai food at though. It was back in high school at a little restaurant that opened at
Fair Oaks Mall called Owen Thai. The main decor of the place was a line of stuffed animal elephants hanging from the ceiling. This was when one could still smoke in the "smoking section" of any restaurant (at Owen i recall it was 1 or 2 tables) and we would be the only customers in there, eating out of styrofoam sectioned plates. Owen closed a few months after it opened, proving, i suppose, that Thai food was just too different and new to white suburbanites at the mall in 1991. The smells of the cooking would fill up that wing of the mall and i'm sure it was as undefined to them as it was to me. They made this fried tofu, bamboo shoots and basil dish that i still crave to this day.
I don't know how much of my craving for Owen Thai is because it was excellent food or because it's nostalgic. I guess i'll never know since i can't go and see for myself. Many times, revisiting something from the past leaves you with disappointment because it doesn't live up to the fond memories, much like how watching
Three's Company as an adult makes you realize how stupid it was, but you loved it as a kid and now your memory is ruined.
Some Thai iced tea would hit the spot right now.
Cornbread Obsession
As a current Queens resident, all my entries seem to be about Brooklyn! Maybe it's an indicator of our future whereabouts. Tonight after a fun
knitting session with A$, we met up with P and had a grand Southern meal at the
Cornbread Cafe. As the name states, cornbread is the main focus here and it sure was tasty!
I'd been craving good cornbread after my foolish attempts at baking a few pans from scratch. I downloaded multiple recipes, bought all the assorted ingredients (buttermilk, cheeses, chiles, white cornmeal, yellow cornmeal, even pre-made mixes!) that these varying recipes called for (well, not the sour cream one of them did) and ordered 2 cast iron pans with stars and
corn shapes. I already have 3 cast iron pans but the cute shapes with the added benefit of a higher ratio of crispy crust sold me. I suspect my cornbread batches so far were terrible because my cute pans were not seasoned enough and i haven't found a great recipe yet. Kavita once gave us her secret cornbread recipe so as soon as i find it, i'm going to make a batch in my trusty 12" skillet and enjoy eating the whole pan myself.
In addition to yummy cornbread, we all enjoyed greens, potato salad, candied sweet potatoes, cajun rice, mac n cheese, Dr. Pepper and curried cabbage. P also had the chicken n dumplins. be liked the leftovers i took home, so it looks like we'll be making another trip there soon! Meanwhile, anyone out there with a yummy cornbread recipe, please pass it on!
Chicken Lips
When bebe saw
Pollo Campero in Sunset Park, Brooklyn he just had to eat some. I had no idea how big of a chain it was; apparently it's all over NoVA. I liked the fries but the hot sauces/salsas were so mild and disappointing to a hot sauce freak like me. I guess if i ate chicken it would be the best chicken ever. The double dinner boys seemed to think so.
Delight Tonight
When i lived in Brooklyn we loved to eat at
Hunan Delight, this great Chinese restaurant that also has a big vegetarian section. In my palm III i once kept a running list of everyone we took there (is this indicative of a personality disorder or just list-mania?) and it numbered in the dozens. Most notably my roommates
smooth and
dude loved their vegetarian General Tso's chicken, vegetarian beef and broccoli and this eggplant dish. I just ate there tonight with my
be and
glomar, and although the fake beef and broc was not up to par, the accidental ordering of veggie General Tso's BEAN CURD as opposed to FAKE CHICKEN was not the end of the world. There is something really nice about going back to your old neighborhood, even if it's now overrun with hipsters.
La premiere vraie entree
I realized tonight that i've had bexn.net for over 4 years now ... don't ask why it's taken me so long to actually write a real post. If it weren't for
dude who set up this blogger thing and for
glomar who suggested i write about food, none of this would be happening! It's a great idea. All i talk about is where we ate, what we made, how we made it, what we wish we could eat, what we wish we didn't eat and of course, how our lives changed because of this or that food-related experience. Take the unassuming leafy green, kale. Most of us have never tried nor would ever buy kale. It doesn't look appetizing---it's matte green and crumbly looking---but our lives changed a few months ago with one great pot of kale soup. Maybe i'll blog about that later; I have to keep this site suspenseful so you'll have a reason to come back.
