Cuisine by Country | hungry sofia

Jun 8

Thank Peru

In Lima: The Next Great Food City from Bon Appétit, Daniel Duane questions whether Lima could become the next great food destination. There is obviously no debate for Arturo Rubio, owner of the Restaurant Huaca Pucllana and former president of the Committee for the Promotion of Peruvian Cuisine, whom he quotes saying:

“JUST TRY TO IMAGINE ITALIAN FOOD WITHOUT TOMATOES, Mr. Duane. Or spanish cooking without chiles. Really, face it, my friend, the Inca domesticated fowl, so there would be no foie gras in France without the food of Peru.” Arturo Rubio’s voice begins to rise now, and he swings his soft hands around to illustrate his point—that every great culinary tradition on earth owes a debt to Peru. “No chocolate in Switzerland,” he cries, laughing at himself now. “No potatoes in Ireland.” Pausing to gulp a Peruvian beer, he nearly spits his next line with glee: “The Irish would’ve starved. New York would have no cops. My God, it was Portuguese traders who brought South American chiles to the Asian subcontinent; there would be no curry in India. No spices in Thailand!”

A Sweet Finish to the Weekend

I have a very dysfunctional relationship with my KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker attachment. I’ve tried a million recipes but the results have been inconsistent. It will give me my dreamed of ice cream for a few hours after it’s just made, but it develops an icy, fuzzy, rock hard taste by the next day. It’s the memories of my few successes that keep me going (there was a green tea ice cream once and a yogurt sorbet that were just right…). That’s why I like Mariana Crespo’s recipe for dulce de leche ice cream so much. It’s straightforward and simple and it gives you a creamy, decadent result every time, that you can take into the week with you.

Jun 6

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Making a Watermelon Blossom

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

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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 2

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Something to See

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

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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…

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 28

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Creole Time

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.

A Rosey Future

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.