Forgotten photos

Recently I've mentioned two meals I have made but I was unable to provide photos at the time: Migas and Burg's French Toast.

I made Migas from Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali with Gwyneth Paltrow (click on link above for recipe) while my parents were visiting and, again recently, for a simple family dinner.  It's a great option for cooking with kids because few kids will say no to toasted bread crumbs as dinner!  If they eat the accompanying roasted peppers, chorizo, and pancetta as well, well then that's even better!  I also serve it with a bunch of grapes.  Here is how it turned out:

I also made Burg's French Toast from Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life a few weeks ago...and we just made them for the third time this morning.  It's officially our go-to recipe (again, you can click the link above for the recipe).  The great thing about it is that you can really change it according to your tastes; for instance, Molly doesn't add freshly grated nutmeg to her recipe...and I can't imagine french toast without it.  So I add it to taste.  Ultimately, it's about the bread and egg combo.  We use a porous (but not tooooo much) bread and cut off the crusts (the crusts just get too hard and crunchy, in our experience).  And we soak the bread for ages -  about 3 -5 minutes.  That way you get the really crunchy exterior and custard-like interior.  This morning we even made it using entirely local ingredients: the bread, syrup, eggs, and cream (we made whipped cream to go on top) were all bought locally at Union Square market.  Outstanding.

Eat, drink, and cheers to a 3-day weekend well-spent!

Kevin, this one's for you...

I have a friend, Kevin, who I met through Adam...and he's all about the food. And the drink. Being Oi-rish and all. For reasons I can't quite guess, he's a regular reader of my blog. But he confessed to Adam that he'll often get halfway through a post and realize that it's about kids' books. And my posts have certainly been kid-lit-heavy lately, as all my foodie photos are locked in my computer right now, held captive by the evil tyrant, Time Warner.

So this foodie blog post is dedicated to my friend-in-food, Kevin. Cheers!

- I finished reading A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg, known to the food blogosphere as Orangette. The recipes are inspiring, though the only one I've tried at this point is Burg's French Toast (read: fried French toast...and it is out-of-this-world). I pretty much agree with the reviews I've read about the book: the passages about her late father are poetic and poignant. I enjoyed her stories of Paris. However, I also agree with the reviews when they mentioned Molly's relationship with her now-husband: the passages about their relationship just got overwhelming and leaned toward the saccharine and cloying. They lacked - at least in the writing - the emotional depth seen elsewhere in the book. Overall, though, an enjoyable read. I'm looking forward to making her Butternut Soup with Pear, Cider, and Vanilla Bean! And thanks to Molly for including the recipes from her book on her website - it's great to be able to link to them!

- Listen up, all you New Yorkers! There's a new kid on the block at the Union Square Greenmarket: Grazin' Angus Acres. If you haven't met them yet, do so immediately. They're super nice and helpful: during our first encounter, we asked for a skirt steak. He (unfortunately, we didn't get his name) pulled it out of the cooler but also pulled out a flap steak (which we had never heard of). He gave us a lesson about flap steak, which is actually more complicated than I expected, but here's the bottom line: it is incredibly similar to a skirt or flank steak but costs half the price. Grazin' Angus also has breakfast sausage and hot dogs to swoon over - there are no words, truly.

Lastly, they're eggs are unreal. My friend Josh picked up some meat one morning from GAA. When he opened his bag, the purveyor saw eggs from another stand. He challenged Josh: give me one egg from that dozen, and I'll give you one of our eggs - see which one is better. He marked GAA's egg with an "x". Josh confirmed that Grazin' Angus' egg kicked arse all over its competitor. Adam picked up a dozen last weekend and I've never tasted anything like it.

Don't visit the market without stopping by their booth. This is their first year so we want to make them feel extra welcome so they'll come back forever and ever.

- This article in the NY Times made me long for a hamburger. But I was dismayed by Shake Shack and Rare being so low in the rankings - I always counted them among my faves. On the other hand, I've never had a Peter Luger burger. Must put on to-do list.

- You might have heard about a little thing called the James Beard Foundation Awards...the 2009 winners were recently announced. In particular, I want to congratulate Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page who won in the Reference and Scholarship category for The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs (Little, Brown). I haven't reviewed Flavor Bible here (though I own it), but I did review What to Drink with What You Eat - both books are culinary library essentials. Karen and Andrew were the first people I met "in the industry," and they were both incredibly generous and authentic. So congratulations to them both - their success is well-deserved!

Eat, drink, and cheers to Kevin!