eG Foodblog: johnder, slkinsey, weinoo (2011) - A tale of two boroughs

[kayb]

Wow. Just...wow. I felt almost at home in Shelby's blog, albeit she's a lot more game-centric than my family ever was, but at least I was familiar with most of it -- but New York as viewed through this is like another world. Granted, I've only visited two or three times, and hit little but the high spots, but....wow.

Fascinated. Keep it up!

[Shelby]

Lark & Termite isn't a cookbook, in case anyone is wondering.

I saw that and my mind was like "hmmmm....ok....so it's like the bald guy on the travel channel...bugs and birds...worms, undeveloped eggs..etc." I've thought about that book for hours now :laugh:

[Shelby]

Wow. Just...wow. I felt almost at home in Shelby's blog, albeit she's a lot more game-centric than my family ever was, but at least I was familiar with most of it -- but New York as viewed through this is like another world. Granted, I've only visited two or three times, and hit little but the high spots, but....wow.

Fascinated. Keep it up!

I am the same way. TOTALLY out of my element. I would faint from all of the people surrounding me.. I HATE crowds..I cannot imagine passing people on the way to work lol. We drive 30 mins. to work and are lucky to pass a single car on the way.

I love all of the restaurant options with the glorious food that I've never had the chance to try.

[johnder]

Ok, after a drink (or two, or three) at Pegu with Sam and Mitch I find myself at home and a bit hungry. My de-facto, I can do it in my sleep meal, is make some pasta.

Tonight, Aglio e Olio -- with a little bit of kick. I didn't have any spaghetti, but I had this nice dried caputini. When you are only dealing with 5 ingredients, you need to make each one count.

Hard Neck garlic from the Union Square farmers market, Parmigiano-Reggiano, good olive oil (this one from Fairway market) and these crazy hot dried yellow paprika peppers I have.

A little prep of of the ingredients. Garlic and a microplane of the cheese.

The knife, if you noticed is one of my xmas presents to myself. I got it from Korin. It is Masonobu Petty knife. reground to be used in my left hand.

While the pasta is cooking heat the oil.

Add the garlic and crushed paprika (one will do, make sure you don't touch your face after crushing!)

After the pasta is almost done, add to the hot oil with a bit of the pasta cooking liquid. Heat over high heat for a minute or two, so the pasta sucks up the oil and the starch-water.

Finally, top with the cheese.

Edited January 26, 2011 by johnder (log)

[weinoo]

I didn't have any spaghetti, but I had this nice dried caputini.

Dude. Awesome job. But...no spaghetti. Fail.

[johnder]

Well, where is your dinner?!

[weinoo]

Well, where is your dinner?!

LOL. I had some nice melty cheese and some salami. Very healthy!

[weinoo]

So tonight johnder, slkinsey and I ended up here...

Which isn't a bad place to be...

First round, a classic Pegu cocktail, the Tantris Sidecar, while John opted for a classic Negroni, rocks...

Second round, I went with a Verrazano, while John's drink was a Peche something or other...

Third and final round, John and I split an Old Pal...

And then I exited, came home and checked on my starter. Here's what it looked like tonight...

So I made 2 doughs; one is a multi-grain loaf dough and the other a pizza dough. Here's the pizza dough, weighed and put into individual containers for their long, slow rise in the fridge...

I'll bake the multi-grain tomorrow.

[Pierogi]

I am so living vicariously through this. Understand, I love living in Southern California, and know I'm so blessed to be here. (Especially since it was 75° and sunny today, and I haven't turned the heater on in about 3 weeks.... )....

Seriously, its a pretty great place to be. Ocean, mountains, desert, all within a not-so-dreadful drive, even with our traffic. And a pretty good cultural/restaurant/sports scene (yes, pretty good, no, not on a par with NYC).

BUT. There are 2 places I've visited that I would move to in an instant given the opportunity and the means to do so. New Orleans and Manhattan. Both cities just spoke to me the moment I saw them the first time.

I'm looking at these pictures of the city and just plotzing. I could so do that. I could SO have that view out of my kitchen window, Mitch. I could SO eat lunch in that cafeteria with the glass towers around me. Wow. A girl can dream, can't she....?

When I win the lotto...

[Pierogi]

Oh, and I loved the snowman with the Christmas wreath outside the Chinese grocery. I *especially* loved the traffic cone with the Chinese characters on it that was used as his jaunty little orange hat.

[weinoo]

Oh, and I loved the snowman with the Christmas wreath outside the Chinese grocery. I *especially* loved the traffic cone with the Chinese characters on it that was used as his jaunty little orange hat.

They spare no expense .

[weinoo]

Good morning. Here's a quick rundown of my breakfast today. Not as complex as on some other days; I had a lonely grapefruit in the fridge and didn't feel like making supremes, so I pulled this piece of equipment out...

I don't know about anyone else, but I always wash my fruit before cutting it in half. And if you have one of these juicers, a nice trick is to make a little slit on the sides of the cut halves of fruit; it seems to juice easier that way. So, I broke down an orange along with the grapefruit, and got this...

Not bad, about 10 ounces of juice. Normally, I'll eat the whole orange because I like to have a piece of fruit with breakfast, so I had this...

Banana instead. With Fage yogurt. Toasted english muffin, with pb & j. You can see that I'm not limited to buying shelves at IKEA; I also like their lingonberry products .

[hathor]

Big fun guys!

Johnder that is one helluva whiskey collection, and your kitchen is the stuff Manhattan dreams are made of.

Can't believe no one has gone on a riff about Jeffrey's Meat Market yet...not the meat market, but Jeffrey. Let's just say...he's unique.

Looking forward to the Eataly haul. Which will require true dedication because the weather is crippity-crappity today. Blog on!

[weinoo]

Can't believe no one has gone on a riff about Jeffrey's Meat Market yet...not the meat market, but Jeffrey. Let's just say...he's unique.

Shhhh. I'm hoping to.

In the meantime, 2 gratuitous shots. This is my marble slab, used to shape pizza, knead bread, and for other assorted tasks...

And here is a portion of my knife collection. If we get some shots of slkinsey's knife collection, it puts mine to shame. However, these are the knives I use on a daily basis...

[Shelby]

Third and final round, John and I split an Old Pal...

Sounds like I'm glad I'm not a close friend.....

[weinoo]

Third and final round, John and I split an Old Pal...

Sounds like I'm glad I'm not a close friend.....

You are! Glad, that is. I'm glad I got out of there when I did, because it appears as if that wasn't johnder's nor slkinsey's final round.

[johnder]

Yes, unfortunately a round of Dickel shots made an appearance after Mitch left.

Somehow I still managed to cook dinner which is surprising.

My plan today, after hopefully not having a massive coronary shoveling the snow off my sidewalk for the upteenth time this year is to head to work then meet Sam and Mitch at Eataly. Tonight is dinner at home, and tomorrow is the mystery basket cookoff.

Friday night I am heading away for a last minute ski weekend to Vail until Tuesday, so the final few days of the blog for me will be reporting slopside from Vail, Co.

[slkinsey]

Yes, unfortunately a round of Dickel shots made an appearance after Mitch left.

Oh yea. And after you left, a round of Rittenhouse shots made an appearance. I, um, didn't do any cooking when I got home. I can hardly believe you had the stones to work with hot oil.

[weinoo]

With multi-grain bread rising, I wanted to show you some shots of our (immediate) neighborhood. As I mentioned somewhere above, Significant Eater and I live in a cooperative apartment complex called Seward Park Cooperative. It consists of 4 buildings, each 20 storeys tall and has a total of 1,720 apartments (approximately). We (and I say "we" because all owners are shareholders in the corporation) sit on 13 acres of land, and have over 50 commercial properties, including professional offices and retail space.

Without further ado, these can all be found within 2 walking minutes of my front door. First, there's the fruit guy on the corner . Of course, since I'm blogging, he hasn't been on the corner because the weather has been, shall we say, not to his liking. But here he is, nonetheless...

If I turn left on that corner, immediately there is this place...

Roots and Vines was one of the first new breeed coffee shops to move into the neighborhood. They pull and sell Counter Culture, which is a good thing. Of course, now there are no less than 5 or 6 new breed coffee places within 10 minutes of my front door.

Continuing west, on Grand Street, there's...

A nice, little local liquor store. Plenty of bourbons, a few ryes, some nice wines. Good to have. Then, onto the world famous...

Doughnut Plant. Where you can get these...

When we first moved down here over seven years ago, I ate too many of these. I've since learned some self control. And next door to the Doughnut Plant is...

Pizza A Casa. Where Mark Bello gives home pizza-making lessons and sells a lot of pizza making equipment.

Next door to Pizza A Casa is another almost world-famous place...

Kossar's Bialys. Remember my first breakfast shot...

That's a bialy. Or as I like to refer to it, a jewish English muffin. Much better toasted, and always delicious. Next door to Kossar's is...

A kosher bakery. Good for challah and other somewhat edible kosher baked goods. Some Israeli imports, too.

I've left out a few places that I don't frequent, such as a kosher deli and another kosher eatery, but they're forgettable. If you're wondering why we have so many kosher places, it's because this neighborhood was really the center of Jewish life in New York from the late 19th century right up until the 1970's. The neighborhood has changed a lot since then, but there are still plenty of orthodox people around, enough to keep these places alive.

[Shelby]

I cannot fathom stepping out of my door and having all of that within steps. Do you buy only what you're going to eat that day?

[weinoo]

I cannot fathom stepping out of my door and having all of that within steps. Do you buy only what you're going to eat that day?

I tend to shop in a very "European" manner.

So yeah, unless it's for staples (flour, sugar, butter, yogurt, etc.) I will shop for what I'm having that night or what I'm planning on making for the next couple of day's worth of meals.

And unless I'm cooking a specific thing/recipe, I like to shop and just get some inspiration as to what I might want to cook from what looks the best in the butcher's case, the fishmonger's case and the produce department.

Oh, and there's also a supermarket in our group of stores, but not worth showing any pix of. They carry Empire kosher chickens, the only thing out of their meat case that I'll buy.

[weinoo]

Yes, unfortunately a round of Dickel shots made an appearance after Mitch left.

Oh yea. And after you left, a round of Rittenhouse shots made an appearance. I, um, didn't do any cooking when I got home. I can hardly believe you had the stones to work with hot oil.

Lord, Kinsey, you're a better man (and a drunker one) than I. When the shots of Rittenhouse come out, it's time to head for the exits!

[johnder]

I am like Mitch in that I do most of my shopping daily, but once a week I go to Fairway to stock up on dry goods and other things on sale. If you haven't been to a Fairway before, it is quite a trip. The one I go to is in an old warehouse building in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn.

As wikipedia mentions:

Before annexation into the 12th Ward of Brooklyn, Red Hook was a separate village. It is named for the red clay soil and the point of land projecting into the East River. The village was settled by the Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam in 1636, and named Roode Hoek. In Dutch "Hoek" means "point" or "corner" and not the English hook (i.e., not something curved or bent). Today, the area is home to about 11,000 people.

This market is 65,000 square feet. The trick to going to this market as FatGuy and Sam will attest to having to deal with the uptown one, is going on off hours. At all costs you want to avoid the weekends. I typically go on a Thursday or Friday night around 7.

I apologize in advance for the quality of these photos. They have a pretty harsh view on people taking photos there so I was trying to take them from my iphone without looking too suspicious. Although at the end I noticed a security guard following me around.

Fairway claims to be the largest seller of Prime meats in NYC. If this is true or not, I am not sure, but they have some fantastic prices usually on prime meats. During the summer you can pick up prime porterhouses for 7.99 a pound.

One of the things I usually buy every week is some anchovies. They have a great selection

They also have a pretty large Kosher selection servicing the large Jewish population of Brooklyn.

They also have a selection of imported candies and sweets from the UK and Mexico.

I usually also stock up on my nuts and dried fruits. I tend to take them into work to snack on in hopes of avoiding the dreaded candy vending machine.

They also roast some of their own coffee in house. In the summer when I am making Toddy brewed Ice Coffee I will pick up a pound of two and use that.

They also sell my favorite tortilla chips, which happen to be David Rosengarten's favorite too.

Fairway also sources it own olive oils, which are not only typically priced very well, but are very tasty.

One of the things I see often is Red Hook's Engine 279/Ladder 131 fire department pull up and do the shopping for their nightly meal. They disperse throughout the store and pick up the meal. Typically it involves a lot of pasta and chicken/beef from what I can tell. Here is one discussing olive oil with someone.

Also, it is Mallomar season! If you don't know what a Mallomar is, you don't know what you are missing!

This is about the time they were on top of me with taking all the pics, but I managed to get two more off. I purchase two types of butter here weekly. One for baking cooking. Which typically is the 1 lb blocks of Plurga although I have been playing with the Cabot 83 as well. But dollar for dollar Plurga is my fav.

And one specifically for having with bread, which is the Lescure with Flue de sel.

[weinoo]

One word...plugra. Great spy shots .

[Crouton]

I've been eyeballing that Spaetzle maker lately... what's your thoughts on it?