As most of you know, I am a "tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners" (Kundera), and I am having my very first Cambridge-based party on Thursday. Feeling a bit nervous for several reasons:
- I'm throwing the party for the 18 new doctoral students who are here. I don't know most. Eek! First of all, I've never cooked for that many people. Second of all, the fact that I don't know them - but will likely be working with them for the next 4-5 years - makes me extra-anxious. With you people it's easy: if I get you boozed up enough I know you'll applaud prettymuch anything I serve. But NEW people? They're a bit more of a challenge.
- Given the number of invitees, I'll have to do a buffet AND make something people can eat standing up. So cutting is out, as is anything messy or likely to stain (no red wine sauce).
- I am poor now. A shocking development and one that I am not pleased about. Price is going to be a big issue in my ingredient-choice.
- The last, and perhaps most ulcer-inducing (how I wish I were joking) thing to worry about is the fact that two girls I don't know too well are helping me prep. Sounds great, right? Well, yes -- unless you take into account the fact that my love of cooking coupled with my oft-noted tendency to micromanage makes me a bit more of a Gordon Ramsey than a Mario Batali in the kitchen. Or, in Top Chef terms, a bit more Hung than Stephanie. Or in plebeian terms for you non-cooking-show-addicts: I'm a bossy bitch in the kitchen. I will probably spend the whole time trying to make sure I am nice and therefore serve terrible, uncreative food. I also have to factor in the lack-of-I.Z., my tireless, patient, and trusty sous-chef. Sigh.
There are some good things though. I am excited about cooking for an audience wider than my teenage brothers and/or N., who love anything as long as it's meat. Lots and lots of meat. I have also discovered Cambridge farmers markets and am thrilled. It's really a change to live in a place with so many near-by farms: I've picked up some gorgeous bounty lately (tomatoes, summer squash, mint, basil, corn, etc). I'm planning on basing my menu around midsummer harvest goodies and I'm very, very excited about working with these ingredients. (That was a particularly lame sentence).
What I'm thinking of making so far:
To start, mini-pizza slices with different toppings. Sauteed mixed mushrooms, thyme and Asiago; roasted red peppers and goat cheese; maybe something else.
Main courses of oven-baked, herb-crusted chicken (haven't quite worked out this one yet: maybe a slimmed-down, dry version of chicken parm), sliced; oven-roasted garlic and rosemary shrimp.
Side-salads: mixed young potato salad (made it recently with different colors of baby potatoes, including blue - looks pretty/unusual, super-filling, very simple); pan-roasted corn, mint, tomato and feta salad; tomato and watermelon salad.
I'm not in charge of desserts, but have a raspberry-almond pound cake recipe I might have to whip out.
Thoughts/ideas are much appreciated. A. and I.Z., I'd love to hear suggestions. The rest of you have eaten my food: any favorites?
Post-party redux and photos to follow.
Tootles!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Perfect Meal
I spent the better part of a very dry lecture on price discrimination trying to come up with the perfect meal: a sort of gastronomic all-star game. I quickly realized that given all the incredible meals I've had, I would need to set some parameters to make the task anywhere near manageable. Limiting myself geographically seemed too unfair (how could I possibly eliminate all Croatian seafood?! Italian pasta?! French desserts?! Spanish pintxos?! etc.), so I decided to set a chronological delineation: I could only include things I'd eaten in the last twelve months. I'm also specifying that this is a restaurant menu and cannot, therefore, include home-made goodies (I'm afraid the entire list would be reduced to one item otherwise: my uncle's prosciutto).
I present you with T.'s Perfect Menu (of the last twelve months):
Amuse Bouche
The mezze from Komi in Washington, DC. The seemingly endless procession of one-bite mezze served at Komi may just be the ultimate way to begin a meal. The special stand-outs definitely include the marscapone-stuffed date, "caesar salad" bite, scallop two ways (of course scallops have to be included in my menu at least once), and deviled eggs.
First Course
Carpaccio from Opat on the island of Opat, Croatia. I have had about 4 different types of carpaccio here, and they are all phenomenal and impossible to choose from. The chef/owner just makes it from whatever fish is freshest (anything from tuna to branzino), and in this location that means caught 15-20 minutes ago. The freshness of the fish combined with the chef's paper-thin slicing and the nutty goodness of Croatian olive oil makes for out-of-this world carpaccio.
Second Course
Kanpachi tartare from Le Bernardin in New York. This delicate, silky dish might just be my personal version of seafood nirvana. Definitely worth Le Bernardin's hefty price tags.
Third Course
Mozarella ravioli from Del Posto in New York. This ravioli came as part of a 'trio' of pastas and easily outshone its more complicated counterparts - as well as any other pasta dish I've had in the last year. The ravioli, served with a simple tomato sauce, are incredibly light, airy, and refined; the sauce a little sweet and unbelievably fresh.
Fourth (Main) Course
Saint Pierre on salt from Opat. Or, actually, any other fish they have available. Simply put: Croatian seafood is the best there is. Opat is the best seafood restaurant in Croatia. And 'on salt' is the single best way of preparing fish - a method that involves slowly baking the fish on a solid rock of hot sea-salt. The fish is tender, moist, and surprisingly unsalty. The best of the best of the best.
Dessert
The orange souffle from Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, France. This might just be the single best dish I've eaten all year, from the best restaurant I've eaten in all year. Everything about Pierre Gagnaire is worthy of its three Michelin stars, but this dessert was truly flawless. I was - am - in awe and still dream of it. Sigh.
There it is. I'd love to hear any comments/omissions, as well as your personal lists.
I present you with T.'s Perfect Menu (of the last twelve months):
Amuse Bouche
The mezze from Komi in Washington, DC. The seemingly endless procession of one-bite mezze served at Komi may just be the ultimate way to begin a meal. The special stand-outs definitely include the marscapone-stuffed date, "caesar salad" bite, scallop two ways (of course scallops have to be included in my menu at least once), and deviled eggs.
First Course
Carpaccio from Opat on the island of Opat, Croatia. I have had about 4 different types of carpaccio here, and they are all phenomenal and impossible to choose from. The chef/owner just makes it from whatever fish is freshest (anything from tuna to branzino), and in this location that means caught 15-20 minutes ago. The freshness of the fish combined with the chef's paper-thin slicing and the nutty goodness of Croatian olive oil makes for out-of-this world carpaccio.
Second Course
Kanpachi tartare from Le Bernardin in New York. This delicate, silky dish might just be my personal version of seafood nirvana. Definitely worth Le Bernardin's hefty price tags.
Third Course
Mozarella ravioli from Del Posto in New York. This ravioli came as part of a 'trio' of pastas and easily outshone its more complicated counterparts - as well as any other pasta dish I've had in the last year. The ravioli, served with a simple tomato sauce, are incredibly light, airy, and refined; the sauce a little sweet and unbelievably fresh.
Fourth (Main) Course
Saint Pierre on salt from Opat. Or, actually, any other fish they have available. Simply put: Croatian seafood is the best there is. Opat is the best seafood restaurant in Croatia. And 'on salt' is the single best way of preparing fish - a method that involves slowly baking the fish on a solid rock of hot sea-salt. The fish is tender, moist, and surprisingly unsalty. The best of the best of the best.
Dessert
The orange souffle from Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, France. This might just be the single best dish I've eaten all year, from the best restaurant I've eaten in all year. Everything about Pierre Gagnaire is worthy of its three Michelin stars, but this dessert was truly flawless. I was - am - in awe and still dream of it. Sigh.
There it is. I'd love to hear any comments/omissions, as well as your personal lists.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
My First Post and a Weekend of Eating
Well, here I am. Starting a blog. I decided I would do this over a bowl of noodles at Soba-Ya following a suggestion by my decidedly tech-savvy and arguably uber-nerdy boyfriend. I already talk/think/read about restaurants and recipes an excessive amount, the reasoning went: I may as well start writing about them. Besides, what better way to mark my slow but unwavering two-year decline from well-heeled socialite to aproned home-body than to embrace the ultimate dork-pastime – blogging – about the ultimate domestic-pastime – eating.
Here, then, are my thoughts on home-cooking , low-brow gorging, hi-brow dining and everything in between:
***
An Epicurean Weekend
The amount and variety of delicious food I consumed this weekend in New York was pretty astounding. Started the visit off at Chinoyo on East 6th. Why more people don’t know about this place is simply beyond me. It’s one of those little restaurants you hope will remain a hidden gem while simultaneously fretting an imminent shut-down unless crowds pick up. The head chef and owner – Chinoyo herself – is also the main hostess, and is very attentive and sweet (she recognized N. and was more than happy to offer suggestions).
Her suggestions were all very, very yummy. The food at Chinoyo is essentially Japanese home-style cooking: the type of food Murakami writes about and I imagine my Japanese grandmother might prepare (if I had a Japanese grandmother). A welcome respite from all the bastardized sushi restaurants on every corner of America. The dishes – just like the restaurant – are small, delicate, and unpretentious. We started with perfect, deceptively simple miso-glazed eggplant (a dish I’ve tried to recreate at home but ended with a sticky, miso-y mess) and an octopus-and-seaweed dish that was well-prepared but not especially exciting. I had the cod, which was sweet and flakey (not to be missed), and N. the mackerel, slightly less flavorful but definitely more refined. All this and a bottle of unfiltered sake (which I’ve recently discovered to great delight) for about $30 a person. Lovely. I’d eat there every day.
On Friday we had dinner with a bigger group at Perbacco, A.’s excellent suggestion. I was really excited since I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere is perfect for a larger group: it’s loud, fun, slightly tipsy and definitely feels like being back in Italy.
Rare to find a place where six people can eat equally well, but not a single dish at Perbacco was flawed. We started by sharing pepper-crusted scallops on a bed of spicy arugula and fagioli: simple enough to be classic and different enough to be memorable. N. and I shared tagliatelle in a duck stew and the special pasta, parsley bigoli with shrimp. The tagliatelle were perfect, and the sauce very duck-y without being overpowering. The dish definitely demonstrated the importance of proper shape-and-sauce pairings: I don’t think the dense, flavorful sauce would have worked quite as well with anything else. Yummm. And why are bigoli such an underused pasta? I generally eschew the meaningless adjective “authentic” when describing food or restaurants, but just a bite transported me to a tiny restaurant in Siena where I got stuffed and slightly drunk by myself while reading Sons and Lovers. Others at the table had pork belly, which was luscious and slightly sweet (a sidenote: K. is the only girl I know whose idea of a ‘diet’ is foregoing the pasta but ordering the fattiest piece of meat I can think of), and steak, which I sadly couldn’t eat but which was purportedly delicious (sidenote #2: my inability to enjoy beef has been very distressing in my life. I feel like people who love steak really LOVE steak in the same way that people who love dessert LOVE dessert: more than anyone loves, say, chicken or root vegetables. The fact that I am unable to partake in this steak-love-a-thon has bothered me for years). My only complaints were that a “carafe” of wine (a youngish Vapolicella) really meant 3.5 glasses – something restaurants really need to standardize – and that our server was erratic and stressed. Then again, he seemed to be serving the whole room, so a forgivable offense and all in all a fantastic meal.
On Saturday N. and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and got pizza from Grimaldi’s. Despite the winding line, we only had to wait about 15 minutes because we opted for take-out and ate our pizza in the park. Besides, the wait was well worth the delicious pizza. I ordered a small with extra ricotta and sun-dried tomatoes and N. a large pepperoni. While the fresh basil, sauce and cheese – and the ever-important sauce-to-cheese ratio – were all great, what really makes this pizza is the crust. It was crunchy but not cracker-y and almost smoky-flavored…delicious. We ordered far, far too much. This was only the second time I’ve heard N. proclaim he was full (after eating all but one slice of his supplemented with some of mine; the first time was after he ate an entire pork tenderloin with fig sauce made for 6 people).
Finished the visit with noodles at the aforementioned Soba-Ya on East 9th. We both ordered the special: large bowls of hot soba with tiny shrimp tempura, egg, mushrooms, and other delicious things I couldn’t really identify. I generally love soba, but this was really exceptional. The broth was very unusual, complex, and not too salty. Definitely not the typical noodle-broth and one that I would LOVE to know how to prepare. The noodles were perfectly al-dente (how do they stay like that in the hot soup??) and the add-ons tender and delectable. We had a late lunch/early dinner at 5:30 and by the time we left the restaurant was already packed. Actually I’m really craving some of those noodles now.
A slightly embarrassing admission: I went to Pinkberry three times this weekend. I have a tendency to jump on these types of trends very late as I often refuse to try things that everybody else likes. What usually ends up happening is that I finally succumb and then proceed to talk about these new ‘trends’ several months late. Good examples are my initial refusal to watch/read/try and subsequent near-obsession with the Lord of the Rings movies, the O.C., Everything is Illuminated, and now Pinkberry. But seriously. How good is that stuff?!
Here, then, are my thoughts on home-cooking , low-brow gorging, hi-brow dining and everything in between:
***
An Epicurean Weekend
The amount and variety of delicious food I consumed this weekend in New York was pretty astounding. Started the visit off at Chinoyo on East 6th. Why more people don’t know about this place is simply beyond me. It’s one of those little restaurants you hope will remain a hidden gem while simultaneously fretting an imminent shut-down unless crowds pick up. The head chef and owner – Chinoyo herself – is also the main hostess, and is very attentive and sweet (she recognized N. and was more than happy to offer suggestions).
Her suggestions were all very, very yummy. The food at Chinoyo is essentially Japanese home-style cooking: the type of food Murakami writes about and I imagine my Japanese grandmother might prepare (if I had a Japanese grandmother). A welcome respite from all the bastardized sushi restaurants on every corner of America. The dishes – just like the restaurant – are small, delicate, and unpretentious. We started with perfect, deceptively simple miso-glazed eggplant (a dish I’ve tried to recreate at home but ended with a sticky, miso-y mess) and an octopus-and-seaweed dish that was well-prepared but not especially exciting. I had the cod, which was sweet and flakey (not to be missed), and N. the mackerel, slightly less flavorful but definitely more refined. All this and a bottle of unfiltered sake (which I’ve recently discovered to great delight) for about $30 a person. Lovely. I’d eat there every day.
On Friday we had dinner with a bigger group at Perbacco, A.’s excellent suggestion. I was really excited since I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere is perfect for a larger group: it’s loud, fun, slightly tipsy and definitely feels like being back in Italy.
Rare to find a place where six people can eat equally well, but not a single dish at Perbacco was flawed. We started by sharing pepper-crusted scallops on a bed of spicy arugula and fagioli: simple enough to be classic and different enough to be memorable. N. and I shared tagliatelle in a duck stew and the special pasta, parsley bigoli with shrimp. The tagliatelle were perfect, and the sauce very duck-y without being overpowering. The dish definitely demonstrated the importance of proper shape-and-sauce pairings: I don’t think the dense, flavorful sauce would have worked quite as well with anything else. Yummm. And why are bigoli such an underused pasta? I generally eschew the meaningless adjective “authentic” when describing food or restaurants, but just a bite transported me to a tiny restaurant in Siena where I got stuffed and slightly drunk by myself while reading Sons and Lovers. Others at the table had pork belly, which was luscious and slightly sweet (a sidenote: K. is the only girl I know whose idea of a ‘diet’ is foregoing the pasta but ordering the fattiest piece of meat I can think of), and steak, which I sadly couldn’t eat but which was purportedly delicious (sidenote #2: my inability to enjoy beef has been very distressing in my life. I feel like people who love steak really LOVE steak in the same way that people who love dessert LOVE dessert: more than anyone loves, say, chicken or root vegetables. The fact that I am unable to partake in this steak-love-a-thon has bothered me for years). My only complaints were that a “carafe” of wine (a youngish Vapolicella) really meant 3.5 glasses – something restaurants really need to standardize – and that our server was erratic and stressed. Then again, he seemed to be serving the whole room, so a forgivable offense and all in all a fantastic meal.
On Saturday N. and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and got pizza from Grimaldi’s. Despite the winding line, we only had to wait about 15 minutes because we opted for take-out and ate our pizza in the park. Besides, the wait was well worth the delicious pizza. I ordered a small with extra ricotta and sun-dried tomatoes and N. a large pepperoni. While the fresh basil, sauce and cheese – and the ever-important sauce-to-cheese ratio – were all great, what really makes this pizza is the crust. It was crunchy but not cracker-y and almost smoky-flavored…delicious. We ordered far, far too much. This was only the second time I’ve heard N. proclaim he was full (after eating all but one slice of his supplemented with some of mine; the first time was after he ate an entire pork tenderloin with fig sauce made for 6 people).
Finished the visit with noodles at the aforementioned Soba-Ya on East 9th. We both ordered the special: large bowls of hot soba with tiny shrimp tempura, egg, mushrooms, and other delicious things I couldn’t really identify. I generally love soba, but this was really exceptional. The broth was very unusual, complex, and not too salty. Definitely not the typical noodle-broth and one that I would LOVE to know how to prepare. The noodles were perfectly al-dente (how do they stay like that in the hot soup??) and the add-ons tender and delectable. We had a late lunch/early dinner at 5:30 and by the time we left the restaurant was already packed. Actually I’m really craving some of those noodles now.
A slightly embarrassing admission: I went to Pinkberry three times this weekend. I have a tendency to jump on these types of trends very late as I often refuse to try things that everybody else likes. What usually ends up happening is that I finally succumb and then proceed to talk about these new ‘trends’ several months late. Good examples are my initial refusal to watch/read/try and subsequent near-obsession with the Lord of the Rings movies, the O.C., Everything is Illuminated, and now Pinkberry. But seriously. How good is that stuff?!
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