Resto

I was thrilled when my friend Jen suggested a big group dinner out this past Friday night.

This last week was my last one at Harper (no more freelancing), Jen has had some issues at work, and the Soul Twin was starting the healing process after a family tragedy: we were a rag-tag group, for sure.  Put in charge of getting a reservation, Resto seemed the perfect place to eat.  Gorgeous quality, heavy on soul-soothing food, and a casual atmosphere was exactly what we needed (check out the dinner menu - you'll see below that they even offer large format meals with "nose to tail" options).

Friday night was a beautiful autumn evening, crystal-clear with temps in the 60s.  Perfect.  Our group of 7 scored the only table out on the sidewalk so we were able to escape the noise inside; it felt like our very own private space in the middle of a city sidewalk.

One of my favorite things at Resto is the deviled eggs.  They're served on "pork toast": a pig's head is boiled down until it's fatty and melty and then it's smoothed flat in a sheet pan and frozen.  Once solid, it's cut up, breaded, and fried.  Crispy on the outside, melty fattiness on the inside, it's nothing short of pork heaven.  A slightly spicy deviled egg is served on top.

It's insanely rich - four of us shared this and we were more than satiated.

Andrea and Brian shared the moules et frites with Dijon mustard, house-made bacon, Parmesan, onion confit, and tarragon.  Tina and Jen shared the moules et frites with green curry, lemongrass, coconut milk, and kaffir lime.

Adam and Phil both had the burger.

I ordered the skirt steak with wax beans, fine herbs, pistachios, walnuts, pine nuts, and honey.

We also ordered every one of the dipping sauces for the frites: lime pickle; mayo and onion; sweet chili; Old Bay; mayo; Cajun remoulade; Sriracha; lemon and smoked paprika (my favorite!); yogurt, cumin, and roasted garlic; gribiche.

Resto is also one of the rare places that has an outstanding wine AND beer list - it seems that most places only have one or the other. This list isn't the whole book you see below but it's damn close.  The best thing is that I've never had a server at Resto who didn't know their beers and wines from top to bottom - they can find the perfect pairing to anything, I'm sure of it.

An amazing night of good food, good wine, and good friends.

Eat, drink, and share a communal meal to cure what ails you.

Simple Things

It was one of those serendipitous meals.  I had leeks I needed to use.  I needed breakfast.  Bug was asking for bacon.  Did I have eggs?  Yep.

A quick saute of the leeks in olive oil.  Fried up the egg in the same pan.  Fried the bacon.  Chopped lemon thyme over the whole thing.

I splurged and had a glass of Prosecco with it.  Lovely.

Weekday Meals, Part 2: Antipasti and Soft-Boiled Eggs

This is the conclusion to my week as a single parent.  I intentionally left the "easier" meals until last.  So on Wednesday, we had "antipasti."  I call it antipasti, but I do believe it's not the traditional sort.  Anyway, I made myself a little salad with a honey mustard vinaigrette (approximately 1/2 tsp. honey mustard, about 3 tbsp olive oil, approx 1/2 tsp. sherry vinegar**, kosher salt and pepper to taste). 

I cut up a pear for Bug, as well as sliced up some smoked mozzarella (she loves the stuff). 

For me, I included some buffalo mozzarella, which I sprinkled with flake salt, fresh pepper, and lemon zest.  I've also discovered the joys (seriously, it's near-ecstasy) of smoked duck, thanks to my local purveyors Hudson Valley Duck Farm at Fresh Direct. 

Add some salami, which Bug loves, and some triple cream Brie...you have a meal!  Not just any meal, but a rather - dare I say it? - decadent meal for two young ladies without their knight?  Who needs a man, right?

For Thursday, we made one of Bug's favorites: Soft-Boiled Eggs with Artichoke Bread Fingers*, courtesy of Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate and Zucchini cookbook:

Of course, I don't call them "artichoke bread fingers" - she'd never eat them.  So it becomes: "Hey, hon, how about eggs with dippers tonight?"  Enthusiastic choruses of hallelujah and Mom is a hero.

Adam came home around midnight on Friday so I had still had one more night to get through.  Friday night.  You know what I did?  I ordered a pizza to be delivered, like any normal human being.  And called the week a success.

Eat, drink, and don't just survive...THRIVE.



* The site this links to is the recipe...but gives no credit to Chocolate and Zucchini.  So I give it here.  That is where I got the recipe.


Note: This is fun.  All the photos of the antipasti meal posted here?  Taken by Bug (aka my 9yo daughter).  I was rushing around: opening wine, getting the table set...  And she asked if she could take photos.  And this is the result.  Am I proud?  Totally.

We've Got Company!

My parents are visiting from California this week. With the kids out of school, it's a great time for them to gallivant all over NYC with Bug (while Adam and I still work, alas).

Here's the thing, though: I have a difficult time cooking for my parents when they visit. My dad is diabetic...with high blood pressure...and he's usually trying to lose some weight. This will give you a mental image: he's an ex-football player for UCLA. Likewise, my mom is often off carbs and she really doesn't eat all that much anyway.

So I had to go with one my tried-and-true standbys: Ina Garten's Herb-Baked Eggs (this is a link to the recipe, which I follow to a T - why mess with genius?). I can make it on a weekday with no hassle, but there's still something elegant about the dish. With a green salad and some toasted bread, it's completely satisfying.

Here's the key, though: don't give away the secret! Don't go telling your dinner guests how easy it was, how it was no problem. Take credit, smile graciously, and thank them. Then raise your glass and tell them you love when they visit from California! They'll never be the wiser!

Eat, drink, and don't sweat it when houseguests come knocking!

Spain...On the Road Again (The Book)

Like all good librarians, I check books out from my local library.  Like a bad librarian, I love to write in my books...which is why I am a book buyer.  I dog-ear to mark my place and I love using a highlighter to mark special passages.  And my cookbooks are the worst: they've been dog-eared and highlighted...but I also spill things on them and make all kinds of notes for each recipe I try.  I'd feel bad except that I feel that I'm personalizing my books and, years from now, perhaps my grandchildren will read all my notes and be able to see the passages I loved and it'll make it all more personal.  But what I do with cookbooks is check them out from the library first and try some recipes to see if the book is worth buying.  If I like the test group, then I'll go ahead and buy it so I can start making my notes.  

I recently checked out Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali "with Gwyneth Paltrow."  And the first three recipes were a smashing success.

I made the Tortilla Espanola* first, and it was simple beyond belief.  I didn't change a thing from the recipe and, as it suggested, I served it with jamon and a salad for dinner:

The second dish I made was the empanada.  This one surprised me a bit because I'm used to eating empanadas in restaurants where they come more individually packaged.  This dish confused me as to the difference between calzone and empanada (is it just the difference between Italian and Spanish?).  Either way, the flavor was rich and outstanding.  I halved the recipe for Adam, Bug, and me and it was more than enough for the three of us: I had enough leftovers for two lunches.  And be careful on the cooking time - I cooked it about 27 minutes and it was about 7-9 minutes too long - perhaps because I had halved the recipe.  Anyway, watch the cooking time:

The last dish was the migas, and it was both unique and simple.  The flavor was insane.  I did modify the heck out of this one.  Unfortunately, I don't have photos (my parents were here and I didn't want to be all weird and bloggy about our dinner)...but here is my version of the recipe:

4 c. bread crumbs (I used a baguette)

2 c. panko bread crumbs (I ran out of baguette)

1/3 c. olive oil

6 garlic cloves, not peeled

1/2 lb. Spanish chorizo, casings removed and cut into 1/2-inch dice

1/2 lb. pancetta in one piece, cut into 1/2-inch dice

A large bunch of grapes

4 roasted red peppers, peeled, seeded, and cut into wide strips

Tear up approximately 1/2 a baguette into a food processor.  Process until roughly ground.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over med-high heat.  Add the garlic and stir until lightly browned and fragrant, 1-2 minutes.  Add the chorizo and pancetta and cook, stirring, until the meat is lightly browned and starting to render its fat, about 8 minutes.  Add the bread crumbs (baguette and panko), mix thoroughly, and cook, stirring, until the crumbs are lightly browned (the crumbs are going to soak up all the oil and pork fat - I told you it was insane).  Serve with the grapes and roasted peppers (peel the cloves if you like, or let your guests do it...I peeled mine).

The only thing I would change about this one is I would double the garlic.  Seriously.  The garlic ends up getting roasted in its skin so it's incredibly soft and sweet.  It takes each bite to the next level and we all ended up fighting over the measly 6 cloves in the recipe.

So this makes it official: this cookbook is a buyer!  I'm looking forward to writing notes in the margins for posterity!

Eat, drink, and be okay with owning a book by Gwyneth Paltrow.

* Apologies for my lack of proper accents on the Spanish words.  Does anyone know how to do this on Blogger?  Normally I just import from Google Docs, but...

The $300 Challenge

So I mentioned earlier that we're on a budget.  Big Time.  I shared that we normallly spend (about) $500-600 a month on food, including beer and wine.  That's an estimate...we've never had a budget in 11 years of marriage.

So I've taken a challenge to get our food down to $300 a month.  Beer and wine isn't included in that, as Adam and I agree that we were treating both as nearly disposable.  Now Adam and I buy beer and wine out of our "personal" account.

So here' s the weekend food shopping total:

Union Square market: $46

Natural Foods: $62

Cheeses of the World (some of the nicest purveyors in the city): $26

Minus $17 for the Dogfish Head beer we bought at Natural Foods...  Bringing our weekend shopping to $117 total.  According to my calculations, this should get us EIGHT meals.  EIGHT!  Here's how it'll play out:

Last night: Shrimp with corn and tomato salad, bread with olive oil and balsamic

Tonight: Plums with prosciutto, goat cheese, baby arugula, and champagne vinegar

Monday: Nachos (I had a can of black beans and a bag of tortilla chips begging to be used...)

Tuesday: Soft-boiled eggs with Artichoke Bread Fingers (courtesy of Chocolate & Zucchini)

Wednesday: Grilled Cheese (Kiddo loves grilled cheese made with smoked mozzarella) with Thick-Sliced Onions (the onion recipe is courtesy of Mario Batali)

Thursday: North American salad (I don't have to buy a single ingredient for this - it's made from food I already have on hand.  Thanks to Nigella Lawson's Feast!)

Friday: Naan paninis - I "discovered" some incredibly fresh naan at Whole Foods.  They tasted great used as a pizza crust, but I thought I'd try them as panini bread in place of the thicker, breadier foccacia.  I'm using some salad greens, leftover prosciutto from tonight's meal, and some Taleggio I bought at Cheeses of the World.

Saturday: Pasta (Adam found some fresh at the Union Square Market) with roasted garlic and scallions - this is something I've totally made up.  Never made it before.  We'll see how it goes...

So, I don't know...I still think that's going to get me over $300.  And other than Kiddo's lunch food and cereal in the morning, we don't spend anything on breakfast or lunch on the weekdays...Adam gets free breakfast and lunch at Google (don't even get me started...) and I have a bagel for breakfast (which I buy from my personal account) and I always eat leftovers for lunch.

Eat, drink, and figure out where else to cut without sacrificing quality...

The One Where I Make Breakfast Sandwiches

Some of my favorite meals are the ones I come up with off-the-cuff, no premeditated planning, totally based on what I have in the kitchen. Which is funny because I’m actually a BIG planner. I feel lost without a plan. In the kitchen, though, I’ve become real comfortable with just throwing stuff together in a very unplanned way.

The husband has been out of town, which always leaves an interesting challenge to me because he normally deals with the kiddo while I fix dinner. So when he’s gone, I need to deal with the kiddo’s nightly routine…and avoid takeout and mac n’ cheese. I was at work on Thursday, pondering what the heck I was going to make us for dinner that night. Here was my thought process:

I’m tired of grilled cheese, but it’s the easiest. Is there a variation on it I can put together?

Crap, I don’t have any bread. Wait, I have those parbaked butter croissants in the freezer…

I bet that Taleggio would taste good melted on the croissants…with scrambled eggs! A breakfast sandwich!

Wait, what meat do I have? Hmmm…proscuitto! I can put that on mine! (The kiddo really can’t stand any meat…except Central Park hot dogs…and it’s debatable whether that’s meat or not)

And imagine my pleasure when I got home and discovered that I did in fact have all the ingredients…and I even had bacon in the fridge! Huzzah! So here’s what we had (forgive my totally unprofessional photos - I'm working on it...):

The kiddo declared it was the “best dinner ever, better than clams” and I didn’t realize how comfort food-esque this sort of meal is. Adam could go on trips more often – it forces me to be really creative and I have to admit I feel like a pretty rad person when I get home with the kiddo at 5:30, do her homework, get her a bath, put together dinners like this, and still get her in bed by 8:00 p.m. You can't see it, but I'm doing my Bad Ass dance right now.

Get your mind out of the...kitchen!

It’s Friday afternoon, my boss is out of the office, my boss’s boss is in a meeting all day and I just met three looming deadlines. And it’s sunny out. Having trouble focusing much? Naaah, not me.

** So I’ve discovered a new foodie website I’m totally in love with: Saveurs du Monde. Though it’s in French, you can click on an English tab at the top of the page and it translates it all. But I love the French. Check out this list of ingredients for Crêpes a la bière du Nord de la France (unromantically translated to “beer crêpes”):

Ingrédients
250 g de farine
3 oeufs
60 g de sucre semoule
1/2 litre de bière blonde
1 pincée de sel
un peu de rhum
80 g de beurre
cassonade, marmelade de mûres, gelée de groseilles, miel etc .

I mean, doesn’t everything not only look better but sound better in French? Yeah, I agree. That’s a gorgeous ingredients list, even though I have no idea what groseilles means. But that’s not the point, is it?

The website also had a fabulous-sounding recipe for crêpes filled with ham and mushrooms. Wow. And the recipe index is really good.

** I found out from Chocolate and Zucchini that egg whites coagulate at 149° F. So if you bake a whole egg at that temperature for 30 minutes, the egg white will perfectly coagulate. Sounds like I’m having a soft-boiled (soft-baked?) egg for breakfast tomorrow morning!

** Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook had a lovely post about Salade Lyonnaise, which wasn’t actually about the salad at all…It was more about people-watching in Lyons, France while eating the salad. It doesn’t matter. It was written poetically, with brilliant photos, and it made me wish I were lots of places other than Jamaica, Queens. (The photo is coutesy of Lucy's Kitchen Notebook)

** I’m making another of Jamie’s recipes tonight – so far the cookbook has been really fantastic, even though I’ve had some missteps here and there: for instance, when Jamie says you need an oven-proof nonstick fry pan, do not use an oven-proof stainless steel fry pan. There is a reason the man said to use nonstick, listen to him. As usual, though, it was good for some laughs. And while I destroyed the aesthetics of the dish, the flavor was swoon-worthy. So tonight I’m doing pork chops with some sort of mustard sauce and serving it over gnocchi. I’ll admit that I’m cheating on the gnocchi and I bought already-made stuff. I know, I know. But I’m a full-time working mom! I take my shortcuts where I can get ‘em! They’re just damn lucky that I’m not the mac and cheese/fish sticks sort of mom….though I was raised on that sort of thing, and I turned out just fine. Sort of.

Happy weekend, and bon appétit.

Yay! It's the NYT Dining Section!

I really liked this week’s NYT Dining section. Like Frank Bruni’s headline, “Let’s Eat, Not Fuss,” the whole section seemed to have a simple, no-fuss approach. Which is appropriate, given that it was the 26th and we’re all suffering from holiday overload.

- My in-laws are in town and we ate at a diner here in Queens last week called Georgia Diner; we had heard that it had fantastic diner fare. They did. But the coleslaw just looked nasty – lots of dripping mayonnaise – and my mother-in-law and I both passed on it. I told her I knew of an Ina Garten recipe for coleslaw that used olive oil and vinegar instead of mayo. Well, the Dining section corrected my memory; it was a recipe for potato salad, not coleslaw. Whether it’s coleslaw or potato salad, it sounds so much lighter and more elegant made with champagne vinegar than gloppy mayo.

- I’m an egg fanatic. I like them soft-boiled, scrambled (with goat cheese, thank you), fried, poached…pretty much anything but hard-boiled. The thing I like best about making eggs is that they offer infinite possibilities – you can mix just about anything in, you can prepare them a dozen different ways, and they conveniently seem to soak up the flavors of anything you cook them in. So I was enormously pleased to see the recipe for Baked Egg with Proscuitto and Tomato. Sounds simple and delicious, even if the tomato is out of season by about six months. I’ll wait until summer for this one. July never seemed so far away! (Side note: Feeling a little under the weather after a…um…long night of imbibing? The magic cure is a poached egg on top of a piece of lightly buttered toast, with just a dash of salt and pepper. Coupled with Advil and water, it will cure all your ills.)

- Frank Bruni rated the 10 Best New Restaurants in “Let’s Eat, Not Fuss.” And I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had actually been to one of them: Anthos! And I do agree that it’s one of the best I’ve been to in the city. Why am I surprised that I had actually been to one of the restaurants? I’m definitely more a home-cook-type-of-foodie versus the restaurant-type. I don’t usually run in the same circles as Frank Bruni. So it was a surprise that we had actually been to the same place! Why do I have "The Jeffersons" theme song in my head? Hmm…