The Best Thing I Ate This Week – Marea's Gnocchetti
How much do I love Marea? Let me count the ways… brodetto di pesce, lobster with burrata and eggplant, langoustines a la plancha, fusilli with red wine-braised octopus and bone marrow, spaghetti with crab, urchin, and breadcrumbs. I could on and on. With Marea, Michael White’s proved he’s just as good at pasta as he is at delicate crudos. I’d eat there once a week if I could afford it, but Marea’s more of a splurge or special occasion spot than a regular hangout. This time around I discovered several dishes I’d never tried before, including an amazingly tender grilled octopus ingeniously paired with smoked potatoes, pickled onion and tonnato as well as grilled cuttlefish (eyes & all) served whole over a livornese sauce. But the best thing I ate that night was a beautiful bowl of pillowy gnocchetti...
Read More
DIY Quesadilla Maker
We love going out for Mexican, but aside from guacamole or ceviche, we rarely make it at home. Homemade tortillas seem daunting and 17-ingredient mole overwhelming. Recently, we’ve developed a fondness for breakfast quesadillas and we’d prefer to eat them in our PJ’s. So we went on a hunt for a kitchen tool to make it a lot easier and we found one. This El Paso Quesadilla Maker (pictured right) is almost too good to be true. It’s non-stick, so you don’t have to worry about prying our cheese-filled quesadilla out and there’s a ready light that lets you know when it’s done. Which means there’s no risk of over or undercooking, and no need to stand guard, peeking under the lid to ensure it’s not going to burn. There’s also a built-in reservoir to catch any gooey cheese...
Read More
Our Favorite Christmas Treats
The holidays are about presents and family, but we’re most excited about the food. We don’t care if it’s Hannukah latkes, gingerbread houses, or Christmas buche de noel. For the best in holiday traditions, we’ve gathered a standout line-up of must-have treats this season. For starters, there’s old favorites, like Balthazar Bakery where they raise the bar on fruitcake or fresh-baked pannetone at Grandaisy spackled with rum-soaked raisins. We discovered mince pies at Brooklyn’s DUB Pies and even peppermint cornflake cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar. Ready, set, celebrate the holidays! Duane Park Patisserie Address: 179 Duane St., btw. Greenwich & Staple Sts. Phone: (212) 274-8447 Website: www.duaneparkpatisserie.com Rumor has it Christmas pudding can be traced back to Medieval times, when the Church decreed that pudding should be made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity with 13 ingredients to represent...
Read More
Chocolate Xmas Tree Mold
Just in time for the holidays, we discovered this clever Christmas mold. What we love about it is how easy it is to make this adorable, edible tree at home. The mold makes it virtually foolproof. All you need to do is melt the chocolate, pour into the cavity of the pan and refrigerate, so it sets. Best of all, you pick the chocolate. If you’re the dark chocolate type (I am!), fill it with your favorite dark chocolate and bake up a different kind, like white, for the star on top. You can give them away as gifts or use your chocolate tree for decoration. If you want to add ornaments, decorate with a few M & M’s, candy canes or whatever else you can dream up before it sets. You can even make a Hannukah tree if...
Read More
Best of Christmas Day Dining Out
Christmas is just over a week away, and if the idea of whipping up a holiday feast in a New York kitchen has you feeling overwhelmed, you may want to keep reading. We’ve checked out what’s for dinner (and brunch, too) at the some of the city’s finest restaurants and compiled a list of our favorites. From braised Christmas goose at Wallse to a Chinese feast Fatty Crab-style, it’s just a reservation away. Lyon Address: 118 Greenwich Ave., btwn Horatio & Jane Sts. Phone: (212) 242-5966 Website: www.lyonnyc.com This year, this charming, West Village spot is hosting brunch and dinner. Take your pick. After you’ve worked up an appetite opening presents, consider brunch at Lyon for the “Double Pink: Salmon & Champagne,” a salmon en croute stuffed with spinach and aromatic rice, served with a beurre blanc sauce, and...
Read More
Dream Gingerbread House Kit
We thought we were impressing our friends with Santa-shaped sugar cookies, but this Gingerbread Kit from Sur La Table takes it to a whole new level. This isn’t a gingerbread house. It’s a mansion! And it’s shockingly easy to make. Really. You don’t even need to look up a recipe. This puppy comes with a pre-packaged gingerbread mix, icing, and other decorations. All you need to buy is eggs and oil. Just add your wet ingredients to the mix, then pour into the house frame molds. There’s even a mold for a gingergirl and gingerboy! Bake, cool, and assemble. Then, trim your edible house with candy canes, candy hearts and plenty of frosting. You get to play Martha Stewart without all the hard work and artistic talent. How great is that!? Gingerhaus Gingerbread House Kit...
Read More
New York's Best Feasts of Seven Fishes
When most people think of Christmas, they imagine sugar cookies, egg nog and baked ham. But there’s another tradition you might want to celebrate if you’re a fan of seafood dubbed the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Any tradition involving fresh fish and the Italian kitchen is worth investigating. A tradition rooted in Southern Italy, the Feast of the Seven Fishes – also known as La Vigilia – is celebrated on Christmas Eve to commemorate the wait for the birth of Jesus. In food terms, it’s a Christmas Eve seafood throwdown with seven different seafood dishes, but chefs stateside are known to cook up much more. With all the great Italian chefs in New York , just imagine the possibilities and the serious spreads of frutti di mare. In fact, more than a few restaurants offer prix fixe menus...
Read More
Dishspotting: The Best Thing I Ate This Week
I often use a meeting or an appointment as an excuse to wander in and admire the edibles at my favorite nearby haunts. A few days ago I happen to be in the Flatiron District, which, of course, meant a drive-by of City Bakery’s salad bar and upfront pastry counter. To me, ogling the oversized chocolate chip, coconut and dark chocolate cookies, and the pretzel croissants is better than window shopping at Tiffany’s. I got a shot of their signature, hot chocolate and was just about to cave and slip in a chocolate chip cookie when I discovered City Bakery’s biscuit Maple Bacon Biscuit that is. While I’m not a fan of bacon cupcakes or most bacon-tinged desserts, these are a delicious exception to my rule. If you’re ever craving something simultaneously savory and sweet, this is your guy. ...
Read More
New York's Best Bowls of Soup
We’re well into fall, and as the days get shorter and the temperature drops, we’re starting to crave something warm and comforting. New York has bragging rights to some of the most imaginative chefs in the country, many with a standout soup, using the season’s peak ingredients, like pumpkin and kale in innovative ways. From the spicy chicken ramen at Momofuku Noodle Bar to Kin Shop’s one-of-a-kind pork meatball soup or Boulud Sud’s Moroccan-spiced pumpkin soup, there’s a bowl for every appetite. Here’s our favorites for 2011 to see you through the season. Kin Shop – Steamed Pork Meatball Soup Address: 469 6th Ave., btwn. 11th & 12th Sts. Phone: (212) 675-4295 Website: www.kinshopnyc.com Harold Dieterle revealed his adoration of Southeast Asian cooking at his first restaurant, Perilla, but he’s taken it up a notch with Kin Shop. His...
Read More
The Food Loop
It’s kind of surprising what with all the innovative gadgets out there that we haven’t found something better to tie up a bird, whole fish, or rolled pork loin than kitchen string or toothpicks. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, we searched the internet for the better option and thankfully found a clever invention from fusion brands called “The Food Loop” (pictured right). Instead of a ratty piece of twine this holiday, try tying your turkey up with this trussing tool. If you’re bird’s too big for one food loop, you can link two loops together. It’s made of silicone and heat resistant up to 675 degrees. The food loop can also be used in the oven, microwave or even on the stove top. And it’s not one of those gadgets you have to put away until the next Thanksgiving. The food...
Read More
New York's Finest Hot Chocolates
With the chilly winter moving in, it’s officially hot chocolate season again–and New York never disappoints. Some local restaurants and shops are taking things to a whole new level this year with everything from hot giandiuja chocolate at Otto to salted caramel hot chocolate at Scratchbread or even rum-spiked cocoa at L.A. Burdick. From your standard classic cocoa to the more exotic renditions involving spices, liqueur, and homemade marshmallows or fluff, there are some notable hot spots to check out this year to warm up. Grom 233 Bleecker St., at Carmine St. (212)206-1738 www.grom.it/eng Sure, they’re known for their gelatos, but that doesn’t mean they’re not serious about their hot chocolate. Oh, they are. Grom’s hot chocolate, made with no milk or water is one of our absolute favorites. A melted mixture of pure Bolivian and Venezuelan chocolate adds to the richness of...
Read More
Ultimate Nut Chopper
Thanksgiving means a lot of nuts. Stuffing with walnuts or hazelnuts, pecan pie, almond cookies, and the list goes on. The New York Times told us that unshelled nuts taste the best, (NYT article) but whole nuts are the next best thing. We always want our recipes to taste the absolute best, but chopping nuts can be a huge time suck: They slip all over the board and are impossible to cut uniformly unless you hold each one down. That’s why we’re grateful for the William-Sonoma Nut Chopper. Its cool, see-through design makes it look like a funky pepper grinder, but it can do so much more.Operated by a hand crank, it has two settings to chop hard and soft nuts – course for stuffings and crumble toppings, and fine to add an interesting flavor to pie dough. The non-skid...
Read MoreCheck out My Book – Try This
