Empanada Mania
I know i've already blogged about
Mama's Empanadas at least 4 times in the past year, but if you don't try an empanada after this post then i'm surely a marketing failure!
What makes Mama's empanadas so good is no secret. They come with over 40 different fillings in either crunchy corn or flaky wheat patties, they're cooked to order and the green hot sauce is amazing! (Red is good too, but green is hotter and tastier.) Some notable empanadas: broccoli & cheese, pizza, Hawaiian (ham, cheese & pineapple), chili-dog, tuna fish, Polish (keilbasa & sauerkraut), Italian sausage, Reggaeton (rice, green peas & ham) and "Biagra" aka "Viagra!" There are many other vegetarian offerings besides the usual queso, too.
We always end up going to the Jackson Heights location but note there's one in Sunnyside and another right outside the Queens Center Mall. An empanada fix sure hit the spot after checking out the newly renovated and insanely busy
Queens Center, but i like the original Jackson Heights location the best because it's open 24 hours on Fridays and Saturdays, plus it's always busy and fun.
Tonight we took P to Mama's for a double dinner after Thai at Dow Thong. She had a chicken empanada with lots of delicious green hot sauce, be had a cheese and i opted for the Elvis - a fried wheat empanada filled with a mashed sweet banana and peanut butter mixture. It was surprisingly very tasty! I imagined it to be banana chunks swirled into peanut butter; good thing the mixture had a better consistency than that!
But Astorians and Manhattanites neverfear:
Papa's Empanadas (with a shockingly similar logo) is on Steinway btwn 25th and 28th Aves in Astoria, and Empanada Mama is on 9th Ave at 51st St in Manhattan. According to this
article in the NYTimes:
Empanada Mama is (and if you need to diagram here, feel free) a venture of Socrates Nanas, a first-time restaurateur, and Javier Garcia. They grew up together in Jackson Heights, Queens. Mr. Garcia owns the three Mama's Empanadas shops scattered across Queens. Mr. Garcia started Mama's Empanadas with another friend from the neighborhood, Alberto Bastidas, who has since left the Mama family to open Papa's Empanadas in Astoria. The Mama/Mama's folks disavow any relationship with Papa's, but a quick scan of their menus reveals that all offer a number of the same distinctive empanadas.
I highly recommend the cheese, broccoli & cheese, Greek (spinach, feta and mozzarella) and the Elvis. I can't wait to try the pizza, fig caramel & cheese and the chocolate & peanut butter. I wasn't so into the USA (apples & cinnamon) and although i always get the vegetable ones, they're alright - just trying to eat less cheese, you know. Note the Jackson Heights location now offers a Value Menu: the smallest is 2 empanadas and a soda for $2.50, the largest is 24 and a 2 liter soda for $22.75. That is a lunch option i wish i had in Midtown!
Blek!
I'm anti flavored coffees and teas. I truly think that coffee should taste like coffee, not blueberries or vanilla cinnamon donuts (however wonderful glazed donuts smell, they shouldn't be consumed in liquid form.) And tea should taste like tea, not fake raspberry or chocolate cake. I'll make an exception for things that are naturally flavored, like tea using real dried fruits or coffee with some hot chocolate - but other than that, coffee and tea's primary flavors should be coffee and tea, respectively! This article in the Voice entitled "
Coffee Abuse" really hit the point:
A horrible thought popped into my head recently. Am I the weird one? Is my "small coffee with milk—no sugar" a sign of my utter party-pooperness?
Even something as simple as honey has to be mega-flavorized. Remember those honey sticks from the '90s? They were basically honey sealed into straws, usually found at camping/hiking stores for quick energy snacking. be recently fell in love with the honey sticks from
The Bee Folks, who offers them in natural flavors based on the flowers that the bees used. Most other places seem to sell flavors like grape, pina colada, lemon and licorice. Weird.
ps: good luck getting to work, New Yorkers!
The strike is on. I'm prepared to work from home, but only for a day or so - then i have to haul ass to Manhattan somehow.
Assortment
Does anyone remember those small bags of
Brach's candies at the supermarket registers? My all-time favorite was candy corn - that shit is awesome. I would cry for my teeth if Brach's brought back those small bags. I would totally love grabbing 4 or 5 different small bags instead of 1 giant one like they sell now. I'm all about the assortment; one kind of candy gets really boring unless it's a big bar of
85%.
Anyways, a few days ago i picked up a large bag of Brach's Bridge Mix and it's like a jackpot! I'm still not exactly sure what "Bridge Mix" is except that it's coated in chocolate, but the Brach's one is like getting a bag of: Whoppers, Milk Duds, Goobers, Raisinettes, Butterfinger, chocolate-covered cherries, coconut creams, some sort of fruity jell and the best - chopped nuts with a sweet toffee. Sadly, this is the sort of thing that excites me while on a break from work.
(But you know what's truly great? Old
INXS songs. be and i were each big fans back in junior-high school. Kiss the Dirt.)
Tips
be's been feeling icky for a few days. Maybe it's because he's eaten a large banana split every night for the past week - damn you Breyer's Ice Cream sale at Pathmark! - but to counteract upcoming sickness he brewed a giant pot of
ginger lemon tea. Be sure to use the freshest ginger possible, and you can grate it instead of chopping to get more of the flavor out.
A great ginger tip i read out of
How to Break an Egg (thanks ZZ!):
1) To peel the skin off ginger, use the edge of a teaspoon! It perfectly scrapes off the layer of skin and you don't waste any of the ginger underneath. You can even place your thumb in the spoon indent for better control. Who knew?
Some other tips, while i'm at it:
2) For the butter dish, after unwrapping a stick of butter, use the back of a knife to score the top of the stick unto 8 sections, each representing one tablespoon. Just makes sense, right? First score the stick in half, then quarters etc.
3) If your green vegetables aren't so crisp, after prepping them place in a bowl of cold water for 10-20 minutes. This totally works on asparagus and green beans.
Hot C
In case you've been hiding under three layers of blankets for the past week - New York is cold! And what does ultra-freezing weather bring but a bad craving for hot chocolate? We've been downing at least a mug each per night!
Hands down, my favorite is the Aztec Hot Chocolate from
Mariebelle. I like drinking the chocolate both ways: "European," which equates to an espresso-sized serving of molten chocolate bar; and "American," which is a thinner version made with double the liquid. "American" style is still very rich and decadent (you can see a layer of tiny fat globules on the surface) and is much more delicious than any powdered hot cocoa i've ever tasted. Try the Spicy Hot Chocolate with cinnamon, nutmeg and chipotle!
If you're in Manhattan, try the hot chocolate from
The City Bakery. It's not as intense as Mariebelle's "European" version, but a creamier, milkier style that's equally addictive. You can opt for a homemade marshmallow, too.
I haven't had the chance to check out
Jacques Torres' Chocolate Haven yet, but i hear the hot chocolate is very good.
I recently tried the hot chocolate from
The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn. They have a vat of it behind the counter ready to be ladled out into small cups! I opted for the darker chocolate version, which was intense and slightly bitter, very rich and yummy.
At home i usually make hot chocolate from the Mariebelle tins i have, or a canister of
Ghirardelli cocoa powder. Ghirardelli is much more affordable than Mariebelle but definitely not as rich and delicious. It's still way better than Swiss Miss or anything out of a packet, though. Note that hot *chocolate* is not the same thing as hot *cocoa.* The latter contains cocoa powder but no cocoa butter, aka the fat in real chocolate.
A 95
Finally, a few weeks back, i got a chance to check out Sripraphai in Woodside, Queens! A lot of people say it's the most authentic Thai restaurant in all of New York City. Our party included: P aka resident authority on Thai cuisine,
Ishle aka lover of hot foods, be aka addictee to pad sew ew, and myself.
We tried to arrive by 7pm on a Saturday night since we heard the wait for dinner could get long - and no kidding! the place was full to the brim with people seated at every table and a mob of us clustered around the door, plus another group of people outside. As a party of 4 we waited about 30 minutes before getting seated in the renovated area of the restaurant. Meanwhile, we got a chance to study the desserts and to-go items in the refrigerated cases and the snack items on shelves lining one wall of the restaurant.
be ordered his usual shrimp pad sew ew and a papaya salad with seafood. P and Ish got different versions of the green curry, but P substituted thin rice noodles for the sticky rice. She also ordered a beef appetizer and Ish got a chicken appetizer which looked like fried dumplings. Of course i tried the vegetarian pad Thai and the fried tofu appetizer. Most of us had Thai iced tea to drink. Overall, everyone was very impressed with the food. be is not one to enjoy particularly hot & spicy dishes but he finished his entire papaya salad, which he claimed was one of the hottest things he's ever eaten - and it was "medium" hot! I really liked the flavor of my pad Thai although the noodles were slightly soft. P's green curry with beef contained little green eggplants which added a nice texture. (A funny note: even though P and Ish both requested their curries "hot," P's ended up MUCH hotter than Ishle's! Obviously it pays to order in Thai.)
For dessert, P chose us a sweet rice noodle dish served in coconut milk with crushed ice. The noodles were colored a soft green and hand-rolled. It was so refreshing and delightful. I chose a container of beautiful colored jellies, each containing a multitude of black seeds. Between the waitstaff and our guesses, we figured out the black gelatinous specks were actually basil seeds, adding a nice tiny crunch to the agar agar jellies.
I asked P how she'd rank Sripraphai on a scale of 0 to 100. While 100 is reserved for restaurants in Thailand, she gave Sripraphai a very high 95. I would most definitely go back to try more dishes, desserts and some of the snacks for sale. It's closest to the 69th St stop on the 7 train but we took the R to 65th St which is almost the same distance. Yay for eating out in Queens and being home in less than 15 minutes! But for those in the other boroughs, Sripraphai is totally worth the train ride for some great food.
For another review and restaurant information, check out
John Roleke's post on about.com.
Snow Pea
Happy birthday to
Bonesli (Dec 5th)!
A few nights ago in Chinatown we picked up a pound of snow pea shoots! P was the one who first spotted them; i had previously only eaten them in dumplings and chopped up in other dishes, but she gave us some hints on cooking up our own batch.
Snow pea shoots are generally described as tasting similar to spinach, but more delicate and crisp. Right now it's season for the shoots (winter and early spring) since they aren't too tough. At $5 for 2 lbs it's a good price for so many yummy greens; .5 lb made 2 big servings for our dinner. I ended up quickly sautéing the washed shoots in oil and garlic with a little light soy sauce and salt = so delicious! The flavor was like young spinach crossed with actual snow peas. I enjoyed our simple dish immensely and can't wait to eat our other .5 lb! If you come across snow pea shoots you must get some to try. Thanks P!
Chip Bits
1) Most delicious chip i've tasted in years:
"Dirty" Potato Chips Roasted Garlic & Herb flavor. According to the website, it's guaranteed to keep the vampires away! Great toasty garlic flavor, not overpowering but very pronounced. Amazing crunch factor too.
2) I just tried some of the new
Terra Chips Mediterranean flavor. Back in high school, used to eat Terra Chips whenever i possibly could - they were so different than Ruffles and Pringles and i loved all the different chips except the sweet potato ones. The Mediterranean ones are essentially regular Terra Chips but with a light coating of garlic, olive oil and herb flavored powder. Very good, but after eating half the bag i realized i just wanted to eat the taro chips. Good thing they apparently make bags of
only taro chips, plain and spiced.
3) I'm not so into the
Kettle Chips Jalapeno with Tequila and Lime flavor. They sounded great but in actuality i thought the lime tasted artificial and that they were too sweet. Texture-wise, the chips were great but flavor-wise, let's just say i won't buy them again. Ditto for the Spicy Thai flavor. When i sampled them at the Fancy Food Show i finished my tiny cupful and thought they were quite hot and tasty, but when P passed on her bag i thought they were much too sweet and powdery in a larger quantity.
4) This isn't about chips, it's about a food commercial that is not "so good." Those ultra-annoying Yoplait yogurt commercials, specifically the one about
Chocolate Mousse Style yogurt, make me want to ban tv forever. You know the one: two friends (one black, one white) are at the spa and oogling over yogurt with lines such as, "It's like zen wrapped in karma dipped in chocolate, good." There is just so much wrong with that sentence i can't even start. I can assure you no one of Asian descent wrote that line.
5) The french fries and vegan club sandwich at
Quantum Leap are 2 thumbs up. We used to eat brunch there often many years ago but it fell out of rotation for some reason. I recently had lunch at the new location and will definitely go again soon. The vegan club was sky-high, filled with fake ham, fried tofu and a
Gardenburger-like patty, with lettuce, tomato and sauce. The fries were very crisp and yummy. be liked his Ranch fake chicken wrap; so did i - and i hate wraps! Also of note: during weekend brunch they offer real maple syrup, and the sesame salt seasoning on the tables is tasty!
