“Stuff ‘em” is my usual stance when I invite guests over to a meal at my house. You will never leave hungry. You will be fed to the point of bursting. You may need to nap between the meal and the dessert. Lately, I’ve been easing up when it comes to dessert. When our guests woke up from their between-meal naps after the brunch Marlena Spieler and I whipped up this past Saturday, I served them this ethereal and light Pudim Molotov with Crème Anglaise, a Matcha (Green Tea) Cream and Caramelized Black Sesame Almonds. Oh, it’s gluten-free, to boot.
Do Indians host BBQ’s like Americans do? If they do, is there an Indian spiced coleslaw on the menu? I don’t know the answer, but I know that my Indian Spiced Slaw was a hit at both the picnic and the BBQ I took it to recently.
My rules for summer cooking is either not cooked or quick-cooked with low heat dishes. Since we find ourselves eating outdoors, I will add to my rules dishes that stand up to sitting out at warm temperatures like this Potato, Cauliflower & Green Bean Salad in Dijon-basil vinaigrette.
I picked pickled beets. Finding the right savory picnic foods in summer is a challenge. It needs to be not-too-much-work-to-make because it’s usually too hot to cook. It needs to be good “siege” food as in easy to serve and eat while sitting on the ground and being attacked by ants and wasps. It needs the resilience to hold up well in the heat.
Whenever I’m in Chinatown, I have grab a bunch of garlic chives now and ask questions later approach. The question is usually what am I going to do with all of these garlic chives? You can get a quite a decent sized bunch for just a buck. I snap them up because I can’t buy them in my neighborhood. My last bunch made it into at least two dishes recently, Garlic Chive & Chinese Mushroom Potatoes and a dish I’m calling Garlic Chive Garlic Chard.
WILL WALK FOR FOOD. A guide on how to organize a food crawl, an event where food enthusiasts gather to walk around and try different places and dishes around a theme. There’s my recipe for miang kana, a dish that we had on our recent Thai food crawl in Elmhurst Queens.
Dinner for two at the River Cafe will run you over $300 without drinks. For the same money or less, you could feed up to 19 friends by hosting a barbecue in Brooklyn Bridge Park with the same multi-million dollar view. How To Host A BBQ in Brooklyn Bridge Park has tips and a checklist for you to plan, execute and enjoy a successful and stress-free barbecue in the park.
The words “empty cream puff shells” almost sound sad and lonely, but not when they’re the centerpiece of a Make Your Own Profiterole Bar! They become catalysts for excitement and “profiterole-abilities” when paired with ice cream and whipped cream for filling and chocolate sauce, raspberry sauce, and caramel sauce for drizzling and all sorts of sprinkles, nuts, candies, etc. for dazzling.
You have to make chocolate bark at your cafe a friend said before I opened Divalicious Chocolate Cafe, on the edge of Chinatown, in the neighborhood of NOLITA. I said, “Sure”, but I had no idea what she was talking about.
I envisioned a chocolate confection that resembled bark from a tree. It seemed fascinating and complex. How is it made? Did you have to pump air into the chocolate? How does that even happen? Perhaps it would look like a Cadbury Flake bar since it resembles layers of peeling. A Flake bar would be challenging to make without a machine. I seemed hard in my imagination.
Later, when I found out that chocolate bark was just thin sheets of chocolate with dried fruits, nuts, cookies, etc on top, I realized I’d really overthought this. I wondered “Is bark too easy to make and sell at my chocolate cafe?” Absolutely not. It turned out to be a hit and my Salted & Toasted Black and White Sesame Chocolate Bark was best-seller
Monday, I was back at Santina, a restaurant in the meat packing district that I’d been to this past February. I’ve been obsessed with one of their dishes, the cecina, since my first visit. It’s rare that I visit the same restaurant twice in a short time since I have restaurant ADHD. I want to eat at pretty, shiny new restaurants all the time. But my cecina obsession trumps my ADHD and I had a good blogger friend in from DC who wanted to try it. It hits many marks. It’s unusual. It’s easy to make. It’s gluten free. It’s vegan. It’s cheap to make. It’s fun to eat. It can be eaten alone or with a myriad of toppings or even a salad on top.
