Jun 6
My friend Alexis who teaches beverage courses at the French Culinary Institute and writes A Thirsty Spirit can turn anything into a delicious cocktail. Click here to read what she did to the agua fresca recipe from the New York Times I’d written about in So Hot.
Jun 5
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 4
I did not grow up eating arroz y frijoles negros/black beans and rice. This would not be extraordinary except that I’m a Cuban raised in Miami. It would be easier for me to list the things that we don’t serve with black beans and rice, and they’re mostly desserts. On weekends, we would go to my grandparent’s apartment where they would spend all morning preparing a large, traditional meal for us that would of course include frijoles negros. I would sit on the yellow shag carpet in their living room watching reruns of I Love Lucy (I thought it was a documentary) and old Tarzan movies, while they cooked. I knew lunch was almost ready when I heard my grandfather frying the egg that would go on my white rice in place of the beans everyone else would be having. There was never a tantrum, I had just decided I didn’t like them and they were never forced. We’d all sit down to it, and I’d hear my parents and sister rave about the incredible frijoles they were having without feeling the slightest inclination. Abuelo Peláez was my favorite and I was his. Secretly, I think I loved the exception he made for me. Plus, he made the most incredible fried eggs I’ve ever tasted. The tops were a translucent white and the yolks were the perfect kind of runny.
Jun 2
When I wrote about Botero last week, I titled the post Art Break since it wasn’t strictly about food. Normally, I don’t make too much of a distinction between art and food. I often catch myself telling people I went to see the Gustav Klimt exhibit at Café Sabarsky. Really, I went to see the smoked trout crêpes with horseradish crème fraîche at Sabarsky. The Klimt paintings were upstairs in the Neue Galerie itself. If I’m going to MoMA, I can’t help thinking of the raspberry & fromage blanc sorbet sundae at Terrace 5, which has the added advantage of overlooking the sculpture garden. And the Met is always beautiful but less overwhelming, if you can let it all sink in over afternoon tea at the Petrie Court (or a Crumbs cupcake in the the cafeteria, I’m not picky). That’s why I was so excited when I came across the news in Tasting Table about the special menu Spanish chef José Andrés created for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to coincide with their exhibits, Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life and The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits form Imperial Spain. Garden Café España will be running until September 17, 2009. I can’t wait to visit D.C. this summer to eat the exhibit.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of Pablo Picasso’s She-Goat (1950) from the MoMA’s Abby Alrich Rockefeller Scupture Garden
Jun 1
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…
May 31
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
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 28
I love camarones enchilados or creole-style shrimp. Growing up, it was the perfect every day dish thrown together at the last minute. On a good day, we had it with fluffy white race and maduros. On a rushed day, frozen shrimp and Cuban crackers. It was one of the first things I’d tried to make on my own, but there was always something missing. I looked at a few different versions pulling different elements from each. What really made the difference though was Alex Garcia’s recommendation from In a Cuban Kitchen to add the shrimp at the very end, allowing the flavors in the sauce to develop without over cooking the shrimp. Spicy but sweet and well worth the time.
May 26
When my cousin Marta, who lives in Spain, asked if I’d tried the Thermomix, a “kitchen robot” she’d received as a gift that did “almost everything”, I thought she was referring to a souped up crock pot I might look at the next time I was in a Williams-Sonoma or wishlisting on Amazon. My curiosity was piqued when I came across this article in the Wall Street Journal, “Snaring the Elusive Thermomix” by Raymond Sokolov. Learning that it was in fact a robot that did do almost everything and simultaneously too, I was disappointed to read that it wasn’t available in the U.S. By the time I found Spanish food blogs that listed both regular and Thermomix recipes on their sites, I was feeling a little deprived. Not of a machine I might not need after all, but of the Jetsons future I thought we’d all have by now. I’ve asked Marta to let me know what it’s like to cook with a Thermomix and how she uses it. In the meantime, I’ve posted a clip of how I imagine it works until I know differently.
May 25
Now that the heat is not just outside but very much inside my apartment, I’ve started thinking about ways to cool off this summer. When I came across this New York Times recipe for agua fresca, I knew that I was going to be doing a lot of pureeing in the next few months. I made the cantaloupe agua fresca for the park today, following the directions closely, and loved the results. There are other versions where you don’t strain after blending or add more fruit at the end which I’ll definitely try next time. Mostly, I love having an excuse to buy any farmer’s market fruit too pretty to leave behind (not unlike the fat little bird sugar dispenser I found this weekend). Maybe the heat is getting to me after all?
Finalist for the 2015 James Beard Foundation Award in the International Cookbook Category for The Cuban Table
hungry sofia 