Filed under: Cook, Eat | Tags: cheese, French onion soup, NYC, recipes, Smitten Kitchen, soup, The Smith, tomatoes
If the thought of savoring a roasted tomato soup covered in a crunchy, melted crust of cheddar or gruyere cheese sounds at all appetizing to you, look no further. The Smith in midtown is serving its roasted tomato soup in the style of French Onion Soup. And let’s be frank: few things in life are not made better by adding melted cheese.
Pictured above: roast tomato soup from The Smith (Midtown East) 956 Second Ave between 50th and 51st. 212-644-2700.
If you’re feeling ambitious, you can make this at home using this Smitten Kitchen recipe for roasted tomato soup with broiled cheddar (pictured below).
Filed under: Cook, Drink | Tags: chicken, Filipino, mango, recipes, summer salads
In 2008, we had a rotating potluck going and it was Jilly’s turn to cook the main. I’d been craving Filipino food so I requested that she make chicken adobo because all Filipinos know how to make amazing chicken adobo, right? Riiight. All Filipinos know how to make amazing chicken adobo just like all Japanese are ninjas. That first stab at chicken adobo? Let’s just say it was… less than successful. Blame it on the fact that she used boneless skinless chicken breasts, or that she used full sodium soy sauce, or that she hadn’t yet learned what brining was. One diner actually asked, “Is this beef?”
Then one day, she posted this picture, and I knew she’d finally figured it out:
Two years, it took, but she finally perfected the recipe and when I begged her to let me try the new and improved version of her chicken adobo, she had me over for dinner. As I walked into the apartment, the aroma of garlic and ginger wafting through the air, the sound of the chicken sizzling in the pan, and the sight of my lovely hostess smiling at me… it all had me a little weak in the knees.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
Ingredients
- 3 lbs bone-in chicken legs (drumstick/thigh combos), brined overnight in solution of 1/4 cup salt + 1 gallon of water
- 8 large cloves of garlic, finely minced
- 1-inch piece of ginger, thinly sliced
- 2-3 bay leaves
- 3/4 cup reduced sodium soy sauce
- 3/4 cup white vinegar
- Coconut oil OR canola oil to fry chicken
- After brining chicken for 24 hours, remove and let sit in a bowl for 1 hour (to let the water soak into the chicken and away from the skin…we want crispy skin!)
- Marinate chicken for 1 hour in all of the above ingredients (minus the brine, of course) in a large pot
- Begin cooking; let simmer and stir regularly until chicken appears cooked, opaque and white. Turn off heat.
- Have a frying pan ready with oil, preheated till oil is shimmering (supa dupa hot)
- Begin frying chicken in batches as pan allows–this will be messy, but worth it! If possible, a brave soul with long arms (and long sleeves) should be the one doing this step
- Fry till crispy, golden, and brown.
- As each piece is perfectly fried, put it back into the pot with the soy/vinegar/garlic mixture
- When done frying, cook the chicken back up in the soy mixture, and simmer until mixture is thick and chicken is cooked through (the poke-with-a-knife test, etc.)
- Jill likes to add a teaspoon of sugar in there as it simmers at this step to make it a little richer and caramelized-ish
Region: Pfaffenheim (Alsace), France.
Notes: 100 growers created a co-operative called ‘The winegrowers of Pfaffenheim’, whose grapes are never sold outside of the Co-op. Several Grand Cru vineyards. 2010 is the first year these wines are sold in the U.S.Description: Beautiful golden-yellow color with clean aromas of peach and apricots. The palate is surprisingly dry for such intense aromas and richness. Lovely minerality and starfruit character that yields to red plum on the finish.
- 3 Jersey tomatoes OR 4-5 plum tomatoes, diced into 1/2 inch pieces
- 1/2 red onion, also diced
- 1 mango, diced (use a firm mango to avoid smushiness..we like crisp!)
- as much or as little cilantro as you’d like, finely chopped
- dash of white vinegar, to taste
- dash of soy or fish sauce, to taste
- squeezed 1/2 lime or 1/4 lemon
- 1/2 tablespoon sugar
Filed under: Drink | Tags: boozy, cinnamon, cloves, cocktails, cold weather, cranberry, fall, ginger, Halloween, Hobby, party, punch, recipes, spiced, syrup, winter
I was glad to see that the Witches’ Brew punch was so well-received at Hobby, even if no one could see the ice hand floating in the punch because I was too lazy to buy a punch bowl for the occasion. I now see the error of my ways, and I will be sure to shell out for a punch bowl next time I go to the trouble of making ice hands so you can witness them in all their gruesome glory.
For now, the recipe for the punch, which I modeled after the recipe I found on Epicurious (surprise!) by Kemp Minifie. I’m going to rename it “spiced cranberry ginger punch” because that’s way more descriptive than “Witches’ Brew.” Though “spiced cranberry ginger punch” is a mouthful.
Ingredients (Yields ~2 gallons of punch):
- 4 to 6 cinnamon sticks – I used 4 2-inch sticks and found myself wishing for a stronger cinnamon taste so I’ve upped the recommended amount of cinnamon.
- 12 to 15 whole cloves
- 2 fingers of shredded ginger – I just used a peeler to shave off thin slivers of fresh ginger. For a stronger ginger kick, use more.
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 4 quarts of cranberry juice cocktail, chilled
- 1 2-liter bottle of ginger ale, chilled
- 1 2-liter bottle club soda or seltzer, chilled
- 1 bottle of dark rum – spike to taste. I ended up using close to an entire bottle of rum and got something like 40 people pretty tipsy, and it tasted deceptively un-boozy but packed a serious punch (no pun intended).
- Ice
Preparation of spiced syrup
- Bring cinnamon sticks, cloves, ginger, water, and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring until sugar has dissolved, then simmer, covered, 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let steep, uncovered, 1 hour.
- You can refrigerate the spiced syrup, covered, for up to a week. Strain out the solids before use.
Preparation of punch
- Combine cranberry juice, seltzer/club, ginger ale, spiced syrup, and rum in a punch bowl. Stir to mix. Add ice and serve.
- Note: if you want to turn this recipe into individual cocktails, just keep to a ratio of 1/2 cranberry juice, 1/4 seltzer, 1/4 ginger ale, spiced syrup and rum to taste.
Filed under: Cook, Eat | Tags: baking, brain, cookies, creepy, fingers, Halloween, hand, Harvest, Hobby, jello mold, meat loaf hand, party, recipes, sweets, treats
The turnout at Hobby last night was great! I had a blast listening to Leo pontificate on jazz, James schooling us on paragliding, and Abel talking about traveling the world on the cheap. For those of you who attended, my sincerest apologies for what was, at best, a rather scatterbrained stream of consciousness loosely guided by slides that didn’t say much of anything. At the very least, I hope you enjoyed my finger cookies and the punch.
I’ve gotten a few requests for the recipe, so I’m going to post the recipe that I used, which is slightly modified from this one by Clare Crespo. As always, I went through all of the other cooks’ reviews and tweaked the recipe according to their suggestions, which is why you’ll find I reduced salt, increased flour, dipped almond slice nails in jam, refrigerated before baking, and baked with almonds in. I added extra vanilla because I like it, and the bloody chocolate was my own idea, though I’m sure I’m not the first to have come up with it. Recipe after the jump>>
Filed under: Cook, Eat, Go | Tags: appetizers, Asian, easy, Hanoi, pho cuon, recipes, sauce, Vietnam
Has anyone in NYC found a Vietnamese restaurant that serves pho cuon? I haven’t found a single place outside of Hanoi that offers this delectable rolled pho dish (as my friend Thanh calls it) to its customers. This is New York City. Isn’t there some Northern Vietnamese place in Queens or something that y’all can direct me to? Anyone?
I first discovered pho cuon on the northeast side of Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. Thanh, a Hanoi native and then-classmate of mine in Seoul, wanted to take us around to some of the local eateries to sample Hanoi cuisine. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as that day at Truc Bach Lake (the seafood shack later also helped). We stopped at a nondescript roadside stand, no one spoke English, and before I knew it, a glorious plate of pho cuon sat before me.
Pho cuon is simple. It’s just a sheet of Vietnamese rice noodle rolled up around some slightly sweetened sauteed beef, fresh lettuce, and cilantro; served with a dipping sauce composed of what tasted mostly like fish sauce and vinegar with carrots and onions (and possibly daikon). So simple, yet I find myself dreaming about it still.
After a quick search on the web, I found this post on the Wandering Chopsticks blog and nearly wept for joy. Now I can make pho cuon at home! Further, she even posted a recipe for the dipping sauce, nuoc mam cham ngot. I guessed most of the ingredients correctly above, though I missed the sugar (duh – I should’ve caught that).
See ya. I’m off to the Asian grocery now.
Filed under: Cook, Eat | Tags: appetizers, cantaloupe, easy, hors d'oeuvres, melon, prosciutto, recipes, summer
The combination of salty ham and sweet fruit makes for a delightful summer appetizer. It’s also probably the easiest thing you’ll ever make for a party (with the exception, perhaps, of dumping a bag of tortilla chips into a bowl) since it requires absolutely no culinary skill whatsoever besides knowing how to cut up a cantaloupe and wrap meat around it.
Well. I guess there’s no real need to go through the motions of writing out a recipe. Buy prosciutto (or other salty cured ham – sliced paper thin), buy a cantaloupe (or other melon – but honeydew is usually a little too sweet), cut up melon into chunks, wrap prosciutto around melon chunks, and serve. If desired, you can add a dollop of mild goat cheese, a fresh mint leaf, or fig. Totally up to you. If the other ingredients won’t stick to the melon, hold them in place with some toothpicks. The world is your hors d’oeuvre.
Filed under: Cook, Eat | Tags: buffet, cilantro, corn, easy, Kewpie mayo, potato salad, recipes, red onion, southwest, summer salads
Potato salads are great for summer gatherings because they are so easy and inexpensive to throw together, they’re quite filling so that’s great when there are lots of guests, and you can make everything ahead of time and chill overnight – no mad rush to cook after work or as guests are arriving.
The key to a great potato salad is threefold:
- Use Yukon Gold potatoes. They are less starchy than baking potatoes so they taste creamier and hold their shape better when boiled.
- Use good mayo. I like to use Kewpie Mayonnaise
, usually found in Asian/Japanese groceries. I think they use more yolk as it’s more yellow than most American grocery store mayos. It tastes eggy with a touch of tang to me, which is something I really enjoy. I use it sparingly, just enough to keep the potatoes moist and lend some of that creamy, tangy flavor. The worst is an over-mayoed potato salad. Ick.
- Add something crunchy. This way, your potato salad will not taste like cold mashed potatoes with mayonnaise.
Recipe after the jump:
My friend David lives in the relatively unspoiled and supremely fertile Tasmania, and it allows him access to a wide variety of fresh organic produce from all over the world that is grown locally.
He sent me the following note some weeks ago:
Hey you! Try this: Hard boil some free range eggs and quarter them lengthwise. Lay them side by side on a long dish. Dris them in Tamari, Japanese mayo, dots of wasabi and then sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and toasted granuated garlic. I think it looks as good as it tastes! Ciao!
His is definitely a Japanese “deviled” egg. I only just got around to testing out my own version based on ingredients I had on hand, and I am admittedly lacking in my presentation skills so it didn’t turn out nearly as nicely as I imagine David’s did. Not only do I lack imagination, I lack counter space, and I also lack photogenic dishware and a camera with a decent low-light sensor. Forgive me.
It tasted great, though. Like an Asian deviled egg, though I didn’t remove the yolks and blend before returning them to the whites, so it’s “deviled” with bunny ears, not actually deviled. Recipe after the jump. (more…)
Filed under: Cook, Eat, Go | Tags: Asian, Cannes, chicken, citrus, France, ginger, guinea fowl, Jean-Luc Pelé, MIPcano, pâté croute, recipes
One of the best things about cooking in France is the abundance of farmers’ markets. Within 10 minutes’ walk from our hotel in Cannes, there were two farmers’ markets: the Marché Forville and the Marché Gambetta. On our last day in Cannes post-MIPcano, we stayed with a friend at his apartment, and he graciously allowed us free reign of his kitchen. After two weeks of rich food heavy in cream and fat, we were all feeling the need for something lighter. Dave suggested that we try to make something Asian, so with that in mind, I headed to the market.
Although the Marché Gambetta food and textiles and other wares, the Marché Forville has only food – freshly baked bread from neighborhood bakeries, house-cured saucissons and homemade pates from area boucheries, fish caught that morning in surrounding waters, and just-picked fruits and vegetables by local farmers. The produce is fiercely local, with a veritable bounty of beautiful and various kinds of asparagus, artichokes, and strawberries, but not so much in the way of snow peas, bean sprouts, Chinese broccoli, or the like.
After some perusing, I decided to go in the direction of making ginger and citrus marinated chicken legs with a side of gingered veggies. We already had soy sauce, honey, and sesame oil at the the apartment, so I picked up chicken legs, ginger, an orange, a lime, and green onions for the chicken itself, and green beans, onions, and carrots for the side of veggies.
Ingredients for Ginger Citrus Chicken (serves 3):
- 3 chicken skin-on, bone-in chicken quarters, legs and thighs attached
- Juice (and pulp) of half a large orange
- Juice of half a lime
- 4 plump cloves of garlic, minced
- 4 ounces of ginger, peeled and grated
- 2 tablespoon of soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons of honey
- 2 tablespoons of orange marmalade
- 2 half-tablespoons of sesame oil
- Sea salt to taste
- White pepper to taste
Directions for Ginger Citrus Chicken (serves 3):
- Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
- Rinse chicken in cold water and pat dry.
- Rub chicken with a little sea salt and white pepper then set aside.
- In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients above except chicken and one half-tablespoon of sesame oil and mix well. Have a wee taste. Do not be alarmed if the marinade seems very spicy (from the ginger) or very garlicky (duh – from the garlic) – these flavors will mellow out with cooking. In fact, you might even want to add a little more for that extra zing. If you desire more sweetness, add more honey. If you want more tartness, add more lime. If you want more saltiness, add more soy sauce or a pinch of salt.
- Once satisfied with your marinade, arrange your chicken quarters in a baking dish.
- Pour the marinade onto the chicken quarters, and with your hands and/or a spoon, separate the chicken skin from the meat, and make sure the marinade gets all up in there.
- Slice green onions into long strips and scatter atop the chicken. This is purely aesthetic. I just liked the splash of green.
- Slice up leftover orange and lime for garnish. Waste not, want not! Marinate in refrigerator for two to eight hours, but remove from refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature before baking.
- Bake chicken in oven for 40 minutes.
- After 25 minutes, remove chicken from oven briefly and drizzle tops with remaining half-tablespoon of sesame oil to crisp up the skin.
While the chicken was cooking, we enjoyed some of our other market goodies: charcuterie!
This monstrous loaf is called “Pâté croute de pintade fermiere aux morilles” (or for you non-French speakers: “country-style crusted pâté of guinea fowl with morels.” It comes in the shape of a loaf, and consists of myriad different preparations of myriad innards of the guinea fowl with pistachios and morels, all rolled up and baked in a rich, buttery crust. This pretty baby cost 27.80 euros per kilo (but this thin slice only set me back 4 euros or so).
As the chicken was about to finish cooking, I sauteed slivers of onion in sesame oil until translucent, then added green beans (trimmed), and strips of carrot. When everything was just cooked through but still crisp, I added a little soy sauce and some Tabasco (for a kick of spice and vinegar).
Mmm… Then it was time for dessert, and for this glorious occasion, we had picked up a vanilla creme brulee and a chocolate mousse topped with chocolate pop rocks (they were explosive – never had anything like it!) from the best chocolatier in town: L’Atelier Jean-Luc Pelé.
It was a sweet end to a sweet week, and we slept like babies that night… at least until we had to wake up at 3:45 am to catch a cab to the Nice Airport. Until next time…
Treat yourself: L’Atelier Jean-Luc Pelé. 36 rue Meynadier. 06400 Cannes, France. +33 (0)4 9338 0610.
Filed under: Drink | Tags: beer, Cafe El Portal, cocktails, EV, Mayahuel, Mexican, michelada, Nolita, recipes
Photo credit: CaboSanLucasVillas.net
When I was in Mexico last November for a friend’s wedding, I was introduced to a fantastically refreshing beer cocktail called a michelada. I drank several over the course of the week in various parts of Mexico: Acapulco, Mexico City, and Veracruz. Each one was slightly different from the last, but we did pick up a shortcut from our bartender in Veracruz: Maggi Jugo.
Basically, a michelada is a savory beer cocktail. It is always served in a glass with the mix at the bottom and the beer on the side, and you pour the beer into the glass when you are ready to drink. In some ways, it’s a lot like a bloody mary. It seems to be more of a daytime drink than a dinnertime drink, and some bars serve the mix with Clamato juice.
There’s no single right way to make a michelada, as it varies by region and by establishment, and it all comes down to personal taste. We experimented with different proportions at home, and this is what we came up with:
- 1 (12 ounce) bottle Mexican beer – it’s a michelada claro if you go with a light beer like Sol or Corona, and it’s a michelada obscura if you choose a dark beer like Negra Modelo or Indio. I prefer the obscura, but it’s all a matter of preference.
- 3 key limes, juice of – juice of three regular lime wedges will do just fine, too.
- 1 tablespoon of Clamato or other tomato juice (OPTIONAL – In Veracruz, they didn’t use any tomato juice at all) – my buddy Jason swears by Mr. & Mrs. T’s Bloody Mary Mix.
- 1 tablespoon Jugo Maggi seasoning – this magical michelada sauce tastes a little bit like soy sauce and worcestershire sauce mixed together, but lighter and more spiced. If you don’t want to go out to the grocery store and pick up a bottle of this stuff in the international foods aisle, you can substitute 1/2 tbsp worcestershire, 1/2 tbsp soy, and freshly ground pepper to taste.
- Tabasco (or other high vinegar hot sauce) to taste
I like to make my micheladas look pretty by rimming the glass with lime juice and dipping it in Tajin Clasico Seasoning, which is described by the manufacturer as a powdered salsa with salt and lime. It’s a little spicy, it’s tangy, and it’s salty. I like to rim beverages with it, or sprinkle it on fresh fruit or black beans or anything that could use a little zing.
Directions:
- Rim chilled tall glass with lime juice
- Dip rim of glass upside down into small dish of Tajin Clasico Seasoning (or celery salt, if you prefer)
- Combine all ingredients except beer in bottom of glass and add ice
- Garnish glass with a lime wedge and/or a peeled cocktail shrimp, if you’re feeling fancy
- Serve glass and bottle of beer separately, allowing guest to add beer as they drink
I understand that Mayahuel in the East Village serves an excellent and spicy michelada, though I haven’t personally checked it out myself. They use a sangrita as the base (spicy drink mix made with tomato juice, orange juice, and spices) plus lime and Negra Modelo. $9. They also serve cheladas, beer cocktails with lime and salt. $7. Cafe El Portal in SoHo also serves micheladas and cheladas for $6 a pop.
Happy Cinco de Drinko!
