Sick

Happy Holidays, y'all!

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/12/steamed-fried-cod-milt-kiku-shirako-tachi-recipes.html

Rien Faire Comme Un Au Pair

The RER trains into Paris were on strike this weekend, which means I have to take a different train that takes even longer to get into Paris. The problem is not that I don't have the time to spare, but rather that this long and arduous journey makes me believe that I somehow deserve to indulge myself in fine Parisian haute cuisine. And indulge myself I did.

After this au pair that I was supposed to meet up with bailed on me -- a turn of events that I was secretly somewhat ecstatic about -- it was time to feast. After stopping in at the Breizh Cafe only to be told the wait was an hour and a half, I decided to make my way from the Marais to Saint Germain des Pres. This is somewhat of a troop so I stopped at a market and bought myself une galette saucisse traditionnelle. It was a hot sausage wrapped in a cold buckwheat crepe. Pretty delicious.

Next I stopped by L'Epigramme per David Leib's recommendation but alas, it's Sunday so it was closed. I stumbled onto Boulevard Saint Germain and saw Da Rosa... I figured if nothing else, I could just eat raisins soaked in sauterne and covered with chocolate for lunch. I asked if they had room for one, but the place was packed. Luckily the waiter must have seen my disappointment, and explained that there was a table in the basement where they hang the Spanish hams; if I wanted, I could eat there. C'est un peu froid mais quand meme... So I ended up sitting all by myself at this little table in the meat room of De Rosa. At first it felt weird, but then I developed a sort of back-room Tony Soprano understanding of it and I was like this is iiiiiiill.


Ok, I'll speed this up. I ordered the risotto with Iberico ham and a Savignon Blanc avec une carafe d'eau, bien sur. It was phenomenal. Dessert was an insane chocolate cake that was super moist, filled with a warm chocolate pudding and surrounded by a vanilla cream. As I bit into it three words inevitably came to mind: Get 'em girl!

After finally seeing the entire Limits of Control, I had a sausage shwarma at a pretty good little Lebanese restaurant next to the theater. As I'm writing this, I'm finishing up my Le Petit Suisse, fromage frais with a little pure cane sugar on top.

And I leave you with a little adapted Adorno:

Rien faire comme [un au pair], lying on water and looking peacefully at the sky, ‘being nothing else, without any further definition and fulfilment’, might take the place of process, act, satisfaction, and so truly keep the promise of dialectical logic that it would culminate in its origin.

Cookie Monster

That's me, of course! Taking a brief break here in the Netherlands to report on tonight's unexpected cooking triumph: chocolate chip cookies. I know I haven't posted at all while I've been away (don't worry, I've got a lot stored up!) but I have been cooking quite a bit. We are fortunate to have a lovely, spacious apartment with a kitchen and dishwasher; however, we are oven-challenged. We basically have a microwave for an oven - I'm told it's a convection oven and so far we've cooked all kinds of goodies in it, but it still just looks like a microwave to me. I don't trust it. On top of that, the other night we had an unfortunate incident in which the microwave/oven began to smoke and emit a very strange and alarming smell, prompting me to worry that a fire might be imminent. I went so far as to fetch my neighbor (more on him later) and ask him to have a look at the thing, and we haven't really been on solid footing since then.

My lovely roommate was making dinner tonight and mentioned that she had tested out the oven a couple times and it seemed to be fine. Hope! Of course, at the end of our meal I began dreaming of chocolate chip cookies, and after a brief peak at the internet, I rose from the table with a mission. Baking makes me feel good, for so many reasons that I won't go into now, but suffice it to say that I love to eat and food is comforting and sometimes it helps to fill my heart with gezellig when I am missing someone. I was looking for something really quick and easy because after a few glasses of wine, I get a little sleepy. This recipe took all of 10 minutes and turned out delicious. I even made the entire thing in one pot on the stove, so there was minimal cleanup. I think the key is that you brown the butter on the stovetop, which imbues the batter with a heavenly nutty caramel flavor. Then it's just sugar, flour, the usual suspects, and some chocolate, which I chopped roughly from 2 different chocolate bars because they don't seem to sell chocolate chips here (perhaps the only deterrent from living here permanently?)

The cookies took about 8 minutes in our little convection contraption (I ran it hotter than the recipe calls for because our temperature only increases in 25-degree increments) and they were perfect...crunchy but not quite crispy on the outer edges, soft and almost mushy in the middle... I couldn't wait for them to cool off, but by the time I got to the third one, they were at perfect temperature. I guzzled some cold milk with these babies and sighed a long, happy, comforted sigh before crawling into bed.

Recipe here.

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood

Forewent (is that a word?) both franny's and the W (whose room service menu includes an entire page FOR DOGS) for Pam Real Thai Food, the best Thai joint I have found in Manhattan (I have yet to venture to Queens, where it's supposed to be really great). The four of us ordered, to start, fried calamari, which was served without the tentacles and in longer rings than you'd get at, say, a bar, and with a slightly viscous sweet chili dipping sauce. We also shared curry puffs, which were very similar to samosas (though lacking peas) and came with a thinner, brighter, more vinegary sauce. Then I went with my old standby, Pad See Eil, because I find that whenever I order something else there, even if it's delicious (and it usually is), I miss it. The wide rice noodles that fall in folds and stick together, the thick, dark sweet soy sauce, the tender stalks of Chinese broccoli, the scrambled egg, the crispy but not over-fried tofu--it drives me nuts. I was not disappointed, but admittedly envious of Steven's choice, which also consisted of wide rice noodles but tossed with chicken, cabbage, and a blended spicy red sauce instead. Jo got a third wide noodle dish with chicken, red peppers, and basil, and her co-worker had the larb gai (minced chicken) and Som Tum (shredded green papaya with a dense kind of green bean, peanuts, and tiny dried shrimp--another of my favorites).

Breakfast the next morning was: a slice of Boule bread with almond butter, a (perfect, if I do say so myself) fried egg, and a cup of English Breakfast tea, which I can never seem to finish.

Lunch: A very vanilla turkey-and-cheddar sandwich on a whole grain bread, with lettuce, tomato, and honey mustard. Half a pickle. A bag of Baked Lay's Potato Chips. A Diet Coke, which gave me a headache.

Dinner at the Grisly Pear, where my dear friend Becky was hosting trivia night: Sam Adams Winter Lager. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad veggie burger. It was bloated and mushy with chunks of broccoli and topped with something called "cilantro cream," whatever that means, and on a sesame bun with a lifeless slice of tomato, some greens, and shredded carrots. The fries were decent at least. They were even better in the form of the cheese fries the other people on my team ordered--theirs came with cheddar and, oddly, rosemary.

Breakfast this A.M.: Another slice of Boule bread with almond butter. A very ripe banana. Three baby carrots. English Breakfast tea.

Lunch: In Bryant Park, delightful leftovers from Andrea's dinner party last night, which I rudely missed. Courtesy of Cook's Illustrated, butternut squash risotto with sage, which had a distinctly wine-y flavor in the best possible way, peas with cream and leeks, and a tangle of apple crisp made with lots of brown sugar and granola. Impressively good.

Self-Inspired

I am happy with what I ate so far today so I thought I'd blog about it. I miss this thing!

Breakfast: Fried egg, sunny-side down. Small hunk of orange Cabot cheddar (why's it orange, by the way?). Slice of delicious Boule bread from Brooklyn Larder, spread with Trader Joe's blackberry jam. English breakfast tea, no milk. Water, vitamin, fish oil.

Lunch: Leftover Szechuan: chicken with celery and mushrooms in a spicy garlicky sauce. It needed peanuts. Homemade Jasmine rice.

Mid-afternoon snack: Handful of yogurt-covered pretzels. One of the last Macouns of the season.

Dinner at franny's or the W?

Pancake Man

Its been awhile since we've seen one of these and not everyone is completely crazy about subliminal implications but I know at least one person reading this from art history has a smile growing across her face.

The run down:
Pancakes a la buckwheat, choc chips, kasha, ground sunflower seeds & banana chips
Maple s-y-"up"
a fresh batch of yoghurt
almonds
granola clumps
fried egg, chedah cheese & slice of tomato

Cold Hot Pasta

Is hott in herre & I've got the remedy...



Arrabiata is one of the few un-swear related words i brought back from sweet Italia. Often inexpensive, tasty and unique due to it's hott character Arrabiata is not a sexually transmitted disease but rather a popular red sauce found all over Roma.

I was told by Gabriele that Arrabiata means "of the Arabs", presumably an Ancient Roman pick up from the crusades but Wikipedia suggests the following: All'arrabbiata means "angry style", named as such due to the heat of the peppers.

Either origin this sauce makes for a great overlay, both fresh off the stove on evening over penne or the following afternoon, outta the fridge. In fact, the heat (& in case you missed it, even Santa thinks this iz some heat) when combined with cool, is one of the great universal combos. Jason Alexander certainly nailed the thought with this dance number, in probably my all-time favorite commercial.