NYC Mike

Wow Elie, that is one amazing looking peice of pork chop. My wife has a very narrow mortar that she uses for a dominican dish called mofongo. I've been websurfing wider ones to use for pesto etc but my kitchen is just so small! . Yours looks really great! -Mike

Where I live, the Dominican owned bodegas make at least 80% of their revenue on beer, cigarettes, 5 for $1 platano, $1-$2 of cheese, salami etc and numbers. The corn flakes on the shelf came with the store when they bought it and normally has inches of dust on it. -mike

Carman's Country Kitchen in Philly. link mike

I could not agree with you more. -Mike

Thanks everyone! I had a lot of pre-game planning help from the boss lady. The pie crust was the bear of the deal by far but made a great breakfast this morning. I thought of sealing that foccaccia with water and pinched all around like I did with the ravioli but didn't! I have to remember to think outside the book sometimes!! I will do that for next time. Pontormo, my first thought after tasting the foccaccia was all of the possibilities for fillings, spinach or greens for sure, cured meats, eggplant. I wonder if that is done in Liguria. -Mike

HA! I had a boss once who lived on 8th and Mercer who said if he had to go above 14th St. for anything, he didn't really need it. But, NYC is wonderful for its bounty, if you are willing to pay you can probably find anything....unless its Ligurian wines of course! I have given up trying and swaped in dolcetto, frascati (my heart is still in Rome ) and orvieto for this month's everyday drinkers. Great meals everyone, very inspirational!! Loved the crescenza so much I wanted to go back and get more. The wisconsin brand was out of stock!! BUT they had this instead...lucky me...it was orders of magnitude better. With it we made Foccaccia col Formaggio. The end product tasted amazing. I will make this again. Getting there was rough though, we lost the seal on the foccaccia midway through and the cheese exploded out of the seams, all over the oven, there was smoke everywhere. We pressed those seams together pretty tight, we thought, you can see the break in the lower left corner. Any advise on how to keep that pie together? Tried my hand at fresh pasta, I really have my eye on the Ravioli di Carne in the Plotkin book but started tonight with the Ravioli di Magro. Served it with fresh tomato and basil sauce. Before.. after. For dessert we made the Spungata Ligure. I have wanted a slice of this since Chufi made it early on. This pie is amazing! The dough is one tough mother to roll out, it broke in a million places but the taste of it was so worth the effort. and a slice with a nice cup of coffee. A nice finish to a great meal. I have my sight set on the Burrida next, those pics are haunting me. -Mike

To each his own I suppose. Not to mention, I don't put high fructose corn syrup for flavor, red cabbage for color or seaweed for a binder in my ice cream that I serve my children. -Mike

Thought this might be the best place for this. I am trying to recreate Cherry Garcia. I started with this link here. The end result tasted roughly like frozen heavy cream. Then we made a vanilla ice cream base for the cherries and chocolate. It was better but not it. Any ideas? Anyone try this already? Thanks, -Mike

I think it's Moretti - should be available at places that have decent by the bottle selections. The Indian-ish spice market on 1st Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets (I want to say Dawal, but not sure) carries a huge selection of bottled beers - and is a great resource for hard-to-find, super fresh spices as well. ← Moretti, that's it, thanks Weinoo.

This is the best/most accurate depiction of an MBA I've seen. -Mike

Went to Lupa for lunch this week, unfortunatly my 2 yr old son who should have been napping wasn't and it cut my meal way short. What I did have, gnocci with sausage was very good. I will have to go back solo and have a full meal. The highlight though was their on tap beer. I wanna say Morelli. Does anyone know if that's it, I can't find it on the website? Know if I can get it in bottles in NYC. -Mike

More firsts for me today, first focaccia, first pesto. I knew things were going well because the smell in the kitchen was unreal. I'll apologize in advance for the picture quality! First, here is the olive oil that graced my floor a few days ago, its quite wonderful. This is very different from any other olive oil I have tasted. It is very aromatic and floral but very mild at the same time. I'd like to do a little side by side antipasti over the weekend with a few other oils we have. I gave the 79st Fairway a second chance on the Crescenza and got someone who knew their stuff. Antipasti today was some marinated ligurian olives some flatbread and the cresenza, even if it is from Wisconsin! Loved the cheese. Especially loved the flatbread but they screamed out for some potted meat or tapenade, the cheese was too mild for them. Alberto, your focaccia looks amazing!! Here is my rookie version, in hindsight, I should have left it in just a few more minutes. I just did Plotkin's base recipe, my favorite way to eat it is with rosemary. I can relate to that article MrBigJas about the pesto being sharper and more pungent. I used Plotkin's "authentic pesto" recipe minus the mortar and pestle. What a lesson that chapter is so many "types" to try. Murray's had the dried trofie. -mike

My favorites are rigatoni and cavetelli. -Mike

Low? Compared to what? My bottle from TJ Maxx was $17 for 3/4 of a liter, supposedly reduced from $26. Cf. fairly recent thread on olive oil under General Food Topics (?) regarding EVOO designations and the like. ← hmm...maybe I am imagining its inexpensive to compensate for the floor waxing that just took place! A trip to Murray's was so-so, found dried trofie which look smaller and tighter rolled to Adam's pic. Bummer was that they only carry crecenza during easter, I struck out at both fairway as well, the uptown one never even heard of it.

I went on a mission today for my first pesto. Fairway has a good selection of Ligurian Olive Oil all decently priced( 6 different bottles/types/sizes). I settled on a first cold press, unfiltered liter for $18 that was wrapped in a gold foil. I was surprised at the price, my regular use evoo is no where near that price. Pine nuts, basil (Ligurian basil may be out of reach for this excersise), cheese I was ready to go! Get home and as I am about to unpack I get a jackass brain freeze moment and BAMM the only bag that mattered shattered on the tile floor. I was crushed, but, not enough to forget to grab the bread and taste the oil! It was great, light and fruity, very aromatic, very fresh tasting. I call do-over for tomorrow. I also found this site. Two ligurian oils for sale here, also inexpensive compared to oils i have seen. Why do you suppose the price is so low? -Mike

This thread is about all the winners for 2006, I thought. Dan Barber won best chef NYC for his work at Blue Hill NYC. mike

OMG Adam, your pesto looks amazing! Thanks for the play by play! -Mike

I own Bones, the NYT gave a great front page review when it came out that motivated me to buy it. I agree with you Ron, it is a terrible book that I would not recommend to anyone. I don't own Charcuterie (6x6 NYC kitchen ) , although I drool and envy regularly on the thread. I cannot imagine Bones beating what I have seen you all create from Charcuterie. On the other hand I am happy about the Best Chef NY win, congrats to Dan Barber and the folks at Blue Hill NYC! -mike

Had a really nice lunch here today with my wife and son #2. It is a very kid friendly place which is rare these days outside the chains. For this aspect alone I will be back to Otto with my other children. Mario was at the bar holding court when we walked in but it did not seem to affect the staff at all. Service was casual and calm and attentive but not overly so. The bruschetta of the day was really good and so were the sicilian olives. #2 son had the kids pizza and I had the lardo , man is that good! My wife had the pasta alla norma, also good, tasty and very fresh but way too skimpy on the eggplant and I prefer wet pasta sauces in bowls and not plates, makes it easier to mop up! Stole a spoon of the kid's vanilla gelato on the way out, it was amazing. I had no room left but next time I'd like to try the olive oil gelato. -Mike

Wow! Looks great Chufi! . Elie, care to share your almond milk dough recipe? My Recipes From Paradise just arrived, what a great book!! -Mike

I have to admit, I am more than a little intimidated this month. Kevin, I think you were right in calling me lucky to get started in Lazio! At first glance I thought the only Ligurian dish I have eaten is Pesto! Not so! Thanks Kevin, Pontormo and Hathor for all the great research! While waiting for Amazon to deliver the Plotkin book we browsed the various links for something to get us started with. We found Zuppa di cozze alla marinara at this site here. I love mussels, I would eat them every day if I could, 100 different ways. It ranks very high on my favorite food list. Mussels marinara was my grandmothers favorite, she would sit me next to her with a heel of crusty bread and a bowl between us for the shells. It may very well have been my foodie addiction moment. We have had mussels this way before, minus the toasted bread inside. We added it today to follow the recipe but next time I'd leave it out and leave more goodness to sop up with the crusty bread. We used some leftover Frascati from last month, so not 100% Ligurian but all very good. Adam, Chufi, your dishes look amazing! mike

Go to any smokeshop in NYC and ask for "whipits".

WOW! What a great thread! One of my many New Year's Resolutions was not to buy a single bottle of wine over $20 bucks! Reason being, I like to drink it but just don't know jack. Easiest thing to do in that case is pay up which I have done a lot of and learned less because of it. Gonna have to read this one twice! -Mike

Best thing about the weather getting warmer in NYC is that it makes me wanna drink beer! This weekend it was Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen, frosted glass and a few lemon slices. -Mike

Awesome pics and write-up UE. Very interesting beverages parings, how did you feel they stacked up/matched to the dishes? Have you seen that type of pairing offered at many other places? I have seen it very rarely but hope it is a growing trend. I drink, but aside from a pre meal cocktail I prefer to lay off wine to better enjoy the food. -Mike