Mediocre Food Makes Me Cranky---but I'm going to Spain, so suck on THAT.

Okay, so I didn't post a lot of salads. Or...more than one. Yet. But I have an excuse--FAME. My previous complaints about people wanting to take me out for foods still stand. Case in point: The other night Sasch called me and up and was like, "let's go eat at Cafeteria tonight and then you can write about it." And I, riding high on the rush of my previous post and the instant approbation of my friends, was all, "that is pretty much erzackly what I would like to do tonight."

What I love about Cafeteria: They Put Truffle Oil in Everything.

What I hate about Cafeteria: They Kind of Just Put Truffle Oil in Everything. No one loves a truffle more than This Girl, but really, learn a new trick. And while they have a menu full of interesting cocktails, they are ALL sweet.

Cafeteria's food philosophy is based around tarting-up comfort food(very trendy). They have really, really delicious fried chicken, good meatloaf, and 3 iterations of mac-and-cheese which are just make-your-head-a-splode awesome (one, of course, truffled). They started us off with these biscuits:

They were flaky and crispy and good, but but Sasch and I both thought they were a little bit too sweet, especially with the Honey butter. They brought us a second round that we didn't even touch. Sidestory: Sasch had just gotten off a 3 day fast, was literally starving, and didn't feel like eating another biscuit. So there you go. Then we got this Turkey Burger with Avocado (dericious) and this Hangar Steak with Polenta Fries (eh.)

They were both of an acceptable level of goodness, but nothing spectacular--and again, I thought even the turkey burger was too sweet. I think the problem with the whole meal was I wanted to order the fried chicken and thought, "no, order something you've never tried here before." MISTAKE. I was trying to be all adventuresome, instead of listening to the tum-tums. Lesson learned.

This red velvet cake was awesome though. Surprisingly, it wasn't too sweet, and it was dense, velvety, and tangy.

Here is one of Sasch attacking it with her fork. Did I mention the 3-day fast?

Rawr! No wait, hungrier...RAWR!

So the final verdict? Worth going there, the price is reasonable and if you order the right things (mac n cheese, chicken, meatloaf, comfort foods, etc), its delish. Also, lunch is really good--more salad options--the calamari salad is huge and tasty. There. Wrote about a salad. A month later.

Whatever, shit got real.

Speaking of things that are real, I am going to Spain tomorrow.

"Wait," you say. "Did I read that right?" Oh yes mis amigos. Yo voy a España mañana. I'm muy excited, especially for the copious amounts of cured meats and iberian cheeses I will be eating, and subsequently writing about. For those of you interested in a more comprehensive report of life for a young American studying in Seville, check out www.lindavelasco.blogspot.com. It's pretty much the awesomest thing ever.

Restaurant Burnout, or, "Can't we ever have just like a salad?"

Y'all, it has been about three forevers since I last wrote up in this piece, and my reason is this: People keep coming to visit and wanting to eat out, or taking me out on dates and buying me dinner, or wanting to catch up over a meal. AND it's New York Restaurant Week. (Which, by the way, week? I don't get it. It lasts for a month.)

Not that I'm complaining. I thoroughly enjoy eating out, and frequently--especially when other people are paying for that action! But the past couple of weeks have been an onslaught of restaurants and bars...and sometimes I might get a little tipsy. Not enough to do something like bake bread, just enough to come home and not blog (read: pass out in various states of undress). The upshot is I've just been eating too damn much, because I'm not trying to go to a new restaurant and order a salad, you know? I just feel like, "why would I spend 8 bucks on something I can do better myself?" So now, I'm burnt-out on restaurants, my wallet feels flat, my ass feels fat, and I just want to eat some leafy greens and get my vitamins, b'okay?

In zealous observation of this vegetable inclination, I'm instituting Salad Days (bahaha!), during which I will present an interesting and delicious salad every day this week. Starting with this one:

Watercress Salad with Lemon-Shallot Dressing

This is a lovely fresh-tasting salad. In the middle of winter, it brings a little summer snap to my palate, without requiring a lot of ingredients that are way out-of-season. The cress is nice and spicy, with a hint of bitterness, and the fresh parsley adds a nice bright, clean flavor. It is excellent served with fish, or just by itself.

Ingredients

Salad:

1.5 c. watercress

1 head of lettuce (red leaf lettuce looks lovely, but whatever you prefer)

1 cucumber

1/4 c. fresh flat-leaf parsley (aka Italian parsley)

pine nuts (or walnuts)

Dressing:

1 medium lemon

1 shallot

2 Tbsp heavy or whipping cream

3 Tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper

Wash the watercress, lettuce, and parsley--even if they're organic. They are grown in sand. Nobody likes a mouth full of grit. note: The amounts of the greens are approximate. Use whatever looks like enough for the amount of salad you want to make. I used about 3/4 of the head, and made 3 good-sized salads. Tear the lettuce into forkable (snicker!) pieces, and chop up the parsley a bit. Peel and slice the cuke. If you are using nuts, you can either leave them raw or give them a quick toast in a dry skillet--but they will burn quickly so just toast them until they start to show a little color. For the dressing, juice the lemon through your hand or a strainer and discard the seeds. Whisk in salt and pepper to taste. Dice the shallot and add to the lemon juice mixture. Give it a shot of the heavy cream and add the olive oil, give it a good whisk, and its done! Keep in mind, cream is about 60% water, so this is not a particularly thick dressing, but it is crazy delicious. I made it for dinner with Gige and she was eating it with a spoon after we'd killed the salad. Just before serving, toss the cucumber and greens with the dressing and sprinkle on the pine nuts. If you toss it earlier the acid from the lemon will wilt the lettuce. Then you, um, well, eat it. note: If it doesn't look like enough dressing, just keep adding a little more juice, oil, or cream. You can adjust the proportions to taste. I happen to like it pretty tangy, myself. The longer you let the dressing sit, the more flavor will emerge from the shallots.

You can also substitute another slightly bitter or spicy green for the cress, such as curly endive(frisee) or arugula. I just had a bunch of cress in my crisper--I saw it at Whole Foods for $2 and was like "yes, yes I will." And I'm glad I did.

Watercress. English-type people like to put it in sandwiches. I like to put it in my mouth.

Try it out. Let me know what you think!

Recession Special: Moshe's Falafel

Location: SE corner of 46th and 6th. In a cart.

The deal: 4 falafel balls, tahini, hot sauce, and pickles--$2.00

Falafel sandwich with all of the above, plus lettuce and tomato--$4.75

Moshe's is awesome. The falafel balls are crispy-crunchy on the outside and steamy inside, and the sauces are great. Definitely get the hot sauce though--the tahini on its own can be a little bland, and since they are kosher, no tzatziki. Ask for extra pickles. Mhmmm.

The Splendor of the Chicken, or, January is a Tease

Winter 2010 is on, pigeons, and she is a Stone-Cold Bitch. Mid-January we had those three or four gorgeous days, when everyone was outside without a jacket on, walking their kids and playing with their dogs, and we all sort of thawed out and people were smiling at each other on 8th avenue, and then WHAM! 7 degrees. And you know you don't want to leave your apartment when that happens. But you also don't want to order Thai and watch Heroes alone in your undies--again. So what do you do? Call your friends/lovers/roommates, make them come over (suckers!) and cook a chicken.

On Saturday Gige and I hung out at Cafe Amrita until we started getting dirty looks from the people waiting for tables, and then we took our party to the Hungarian Pastry Shop to sit and drink coffee and do work. Hungarian is a great place to hang out if you like to listen to pretentious grad-students (or if you are one), or if you need a place to work on your latest novella/screenplay/manifesto. They have some really tasty pastries (almond horn!) and also some less than delicious concoctions(weird chocolate ball thing--Sasch loves it), good coffee, and you can just sit there for hours. Which we did, until I started to vibrate from the 7 or 8th refill. We decided to meet up with her mom and make some dinner. The consensus: Chicken And Maybe Like a Salad or Something.

I swear to whatever deity is listening, nothing slaps a band-aid on Winter Madness better than the smell of a roast chicken. Think about it. All the crispy salty brown goodness, the juicy plumpness, the schmaltz dripping down onto various root vegetables. It makes everything just. a little. bit. better. And it's also the kind of dish that looks impressive without actually being that labor-intensive.

You can look up how to do this online, so I'm not gonna repeat it here, but note this: one thing no one ever tells you is that you have to dry the chicken off or it won't brown. Use a few paper towels, get it good and dry, and then rub some butter or olive oil into it. It's foolproof.

Rubbing in the butter. Oh yeah.

Gige does not have a roasting pan, so we used an aluminum thing from the grocery store. Be advised: it is wicked easy to cut through the bottom of these things, and then the juice goes all over, so be careful. Anyway, then we ate it, and I know you're jealous. Deal with it.

We made a gorgeous chicken roasted over turnips and sweet potatoes, and a salad with watercress. The whole thing was fantastic. And we had so much fun cooking together. There's something about cooking as a communal act that is deeply compelling. I think it's the shared responsibility of providing nourishment. Some of my best memories from college are of giant breakfasts we'd make together, of JP grilling salmon he caught himself on a little tailgating grill in the back of his truck, of making blue-cheese stuffed burgers and seared pineapple on the crappiest charcoal Weber in a front yard littered with party-wreckage. And then of eating these things together......as much as I love restaurants, this is the best argument I know for a night in with a (few) bottle(s) of wine, and the people I like. Winter can just suck it, like I sucked the meat of those chicken bones Saturday night (sidenote: I'm not allowed to eat roast chicken in front of people who don't know me. It is Not Cute.)

But tonight I'm definitely watching Heroes in my underwear. Let's not pretend.

Baking bread in my Special Pants

A lot of blogs start off with this deep, heartfelt essay about why they author feels they must be written. But I'm not really into that, largely because I've had a couple glasses of wine, so if that is what you are looking for hear, Ahm sorry but it's nahgannahappen. I'll try to sum it up in 15 words or less.

I like to eat. And/Or cook. And write about what happens.

Today I came home from Kung-Fu class, and thought to myself, "AKV, you should really attempt to do something with this bread dough you've been thinking about." Backstory pt 1: Sometimes I talk to myself in the 3rd person. Backstory pt 2: I've been cooking for this family once a week, and the mom always asks me to make bread dough from this amazing book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day--but I always make the dough, and never see the finished product. So I bought the book, made the dough, and tonight I baked bread. In my Kung-fu pantaloons--which are like harem pants with all the eastern-ass-kicking and none of the sensuality. And then I thought "AKV, there is a half a liter of wine taking up WAAAAAY too much space in yo' fridge, boo." So I started on that. Side note: terrible white wine tastes a lot better if you think about it not in terms of wine, but rather as slightly fermented apple juice. But back to the bread:

It. Was. Amazing.

I thought It was just because pretending to bring a major beat-down in Kung-Fu class makes me hungry, so I made roomates BH and SS eat it. Consensus: Deliciousness. We sat at the breakfast bar and ate fresh bread and truffle butter, and I proceeded to become marvelously Thursdayed (read as: Intoxicated). So I say unto you, O readers, make 2010 the-Year-in-which-You-Don't-Have-to-Buy-Bread, and buy this book instead. Here is the address to Jeff Herzberg and Zoe Francois' Amahzing website for their 2 (soon to be 3) books: www.artisanbreadinfive.com

Back to the bread: It was really, really, yummy. Not that it can compare to my Momma's Christmas bread, or to her amazingly satisfying Kolachy(more on those later), but pretty dang delicious for the amount of work required. In a way, it makes me feel guilty, because I have such vivid memories of Mom spending hours letting dough rise, punching it down, forming loaves, etc, while this was only slightly more labor-intensive than a bowl of cereal. Here it is, in all it's glory:

Just look at that. I made it. Boo-yah! (Please note my artful use of decorative fruits. Classy.)

And here you can see the velvety insides. I changed up the recipe a little by adding ground flaxseed and whole wheat flour. It gives it both a little more substance and a nice nutty flavor. Plus it looks cool.

I think it is particularly fitting to start this blog with a post about bread. Bread is so much a part of our culture that it's become entrenched in our linguistics--We talk about the "Staff of Life," "Our daily bread," we use "bread" and "dough" as slang for money. The word "company" derives from the Latin phrase "com pani," from "com," together, and "pani," bread. It's spiritual. It's primal. Our whole linguistic structure sets us up to seek sustenance.

I'ma go find some.