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Posts from the ‘Manhattan’ Category

Jul 30

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Milking a Coconut

I was looking at different dessert recipes when my cousin sent me one for a Venezuelan bienmesabe, a coconut custard cake that required me to crack one open and extract the milk.  Picturing hammers and machetes and emergency room visits, I thought she was crazy if she thought I was going milk my own coconut.  My next thought was where in New York to find them.  In Miami this would not be a problem.  Though Miami Beach has become unrecognizable in many ways, you still see men pushing grocery carts of fresh green coconuts along red hot sidewalks.  With one balletic move, they’ll swing a giant machete to cut a tiny hole just big enough for a slender straw for a coco frio.  Fresh or dry, I knew my best chance was Essex Market in the Lower East Side.  I found them straightaway at Batista Grocery.  The clerk helped me pick out a few by shaking them to make sure they had water inside and offered to crack them open for me to be sure that the meat inside was still fresh.  For a moment, I was tempted.  It would be so much easier, but I was decided and it seemed a shame not to go through with it.  After all, it was a  pretty common kitchen technique before we were all hooked on cans.  So here are some pictures along with a few things I learned by milking my own coconut… Read more

Jun 29

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Found Objects

I came across a small Kiosk installation for the first time at the Brooklyn Flea.  IMG_2920They had cans of Jupina soda, IMG_2670Ricos meringues, bricks of espresso,  La Cubanita guava paste, and orange gum balls exhibited together like a Cuban survivalist kit left under the Manhattan bridge.  Asked to pick a handful of time capsule objects to explain Miami’s Little Havana circa 1985, I might choose the same ones (just adding a bottle of Royal Violets baby cologne for good measure). Read more

Jun 11

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Road to Búzios

 

For months, I’ve had five untouched bags of farofa piled high on a pantry shelf.  Not knowing how to use them but not wanting to throw them away either, I finally thought to ask my Brazilian friend, Claudia, for a recipe.  When she started to recite the different ways it could be prepared, we decided it would be easier for her to come to my house next week to show me.  She gave me a list of ingredients for our learning lunch with a warning to do no more than soak the black beans (lest I do anything to make them Cuban before she gets there).  Excited, I went home to bring down the exiled farofa which was now…expired.  It had obviously been trying to tell me something when it  kept falling on my head each time I went into the pantry.  Now that I had a plan but no farofa, I headed to Búzios in Little Brazil. Read more

Jun 5

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Pretty Paella

The first annual Paella Parade is this Sunday, June 7, 11:00 AM-3:00PM at Water Taxi Beach, South Street Seaport.  It’s local chefs competing for most creative, best use of ingredients, best overall taste, paella parade pleaser and (my favorite) prettiest.  Tickets are $25 for all the paella and wines from El Coto de Rioja you could want.  I’ll find out this Sunday just how much that is!

Jun 1

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In a Manhattan Kitchen, Part 2

As promised, I’m posting the results of our market run through Chinatown.  When it was all laid out, I have to admit I was intimidated.  I knew absolutely nothing about Filipino foods. A combination of Spanish, Mexican, Malaysian, Chinese and Indian, I had never seen many of the ingredients before and their names wouldn’t stop moving long enough to be written down so I’ve included a lot of pictures.  With Benjie’s help, Annette explained the origins of what we would be making.  Then it all started going at once…

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May 31

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In a Manhattan Kitchen, Part 1

New York City’s Chinatown offers everything you could possibly want while seeming completely inaccessible at the same time.  That’s why I really wanted to take advantage of the market tour and Filipino cooking class offered by a member of my blogging group, Annette Tomei.  Annette is a chef, writer and teacher at the International Culinary Center.  Her blog, Wander, Eat and Tell, chronicling her travels and food experiences is always a push out the door, especially when she turns her attention to nearby neighborhoods I can explore with new eyes.  One of her trips was to the Philippines to visit her brother-in-law Benjie’s family.  While she was there, she spent time in a Filipino kitchen learning from four elderly women who shared their recipes and cooking knowledge in exchange for a promise that she teach it to others in her own country.

To that end, Annette planned today’s class.  I met the group at the ICC and we walked over to Chinatown to pick up the final ingredients (and do some snacking you can read about here).  The group was made up of Annette; Steven, our writing teacher; Hayley, another ICC instructor; Benjie and his friends, Luisa and Raqui.  Food markets in Chinatown can be overwhelming so it was great to work our way through with a sense of purpose and Annette prepped guide.  Looking the pictures now, it all seems so vivid.  Before today I never felt like I could find the same spot twice, now I can’t wait to go back.

Rambutan, cherries, mangoes, lychees and mangosteens at Tan Tin Hung Supermarket. Read more

May 29

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Art Break

The first year I moved to New York the central medians along Park Avenue were lined with enormous bronze statues by Fernando Botero.  Not really knowing a Park Avenue without them, I thought the full bodied sculptures had always been there and always would be.  It turned out to be a temporary installation sponsored by the Public Art Fund, and they were gone after a couple months.  Park Avenue has always seemed empty without them.  Today, my mother and I were running to meet my sister when we came across this Botero in a walkway along 57th Street.  I don’t know how much longer it will be there, but it’s wonderful to come across his public installations unexpectedly and know his figures are still roaming the City.

Fernando Botero, Rape of Europa, 2007

May 21

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The Sandwich Armada

I discovered Despana by accident, looking for something else, in the disorienting cross streets where Little Italy becomes Soho.  A small gourmet shop and wholesaler specializing in Spanish imports, it’s lined on one side with olive oils, jars of preserves, canned delicacies and Valor hot chocolate and cases of cheese and cured meats on the other. There’s also a small lunch counter offering pintxos, tortillas, bocadillos, salads and desserts.  Basically, everything you worried you’d never find when your year abroad ended.  Now that I have found it, I plan to seek it with purpose, again and again and again.

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May 18

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Cooking with Celia

This past week was my older sister Cami’s birthday, so I have been wound up planning an informal, low-key picnic in Central Park for 40 people.  When I sent out the evite, I was worried that people wouldn’t be able to make it.  When the RSVPs climbed, I was worried they all meant it when they said they were.  I did my best to anticipate any logistical problems – were the bathrooms at the Delacorte Theater open, were leashed dogs allowed on the Great Lawn, were you allowed to hang a piñata from Central Park’s look-but-don’t-climb trees?  (Answers: Yes, Yes, and Not if they see you). I prayed for sun but when I woke up to a gray Saturday morning, I was overwhelmed by the enormous number of things left to do for a picnic that was so obviously going be awash in early afternoon thunderstorms and soaked donkey piñatas.

I wanted Cami to have the classic Cuban spread – cangrejitos (crab-shaped puffs filled with sweet ham), crispy croquetas, meat filled empanadas, bocaditos (small white bread sandwiches filled with flavored cream cheese), and pastelitos de guayaba. Armed with 4 sheets of puff pastry, 3 bricks of cream cheese, ham and picadillo fillings, and the last of the homemade guava paste I’d brought from home, I set to work.  To add a further complication, I was also settling in my mother and Chiqui who had arrived the night before for a two week stay (Chiqui being the 8 pound chihuahua who has replaced me in my mother’s affections).

The few hours I had given myself to prepare evaporated between finding extra closet space, outlets for chargers and rolling out emapanada dough.  With just an hour to go, it seemed hopeless, and I started weighing the evils of less food versus having friends wandering the park looking for a spot that hadn’t been staked out.  Then someone, probably Chiqui, set my  iTunes to Celia Cruz.  Now while listening to Celia cannot solve every problem, it does make unhappiness almost impossible.  Somewhere Between Cao Cao Mani Picao and Oye Mi Rumba, time slowed enough for me to finish my first empanadas and my mother to cut the crusts of my sister’s favorite tuna bocaditos.  By the time I climbed up the subway stairs to 81st Street & Central Park West with a box full of Cuban treats and five minutes to spare,  I could finally see the blue skies I first felt when Celia started singing.

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