Beet It

So I have recently discovered that I love beets. I just find their color, texture and earthy quality somehow appetizing. I have been literally adding them to almost everything and enjoying every single bite. The ice and snow have probably added to this love affair as there is something particularly wintry about this root. Anyhoo, I love it and was happy to try to a new dish with beets as the main ingredient.

The conversation between me and the Israeli via text went something like this:

ME: Honey, I'm very hungry. Should I just have a snack or should I eat dinner?

ISRAELI: I'm making soup. Ready at 8.

ME: U home?

ISRAELI: No

ME: OK, I'll just have the leftovers from last night.

ISRAELI: Why don't you come and have some soup. Rich and tasty.

ME: OK, where?

(No answer)

(No answer)

(Lightbulb)

ME: OOOOOOOHHHHH...are you making soup for us and it will be ready at 8? Honey, maybe you should be a little more clear next time.

Of course, during that conversation, I had gone ahead and eaten the leftovers, but lucky for me, I still had 2 hours until dinner, which is plenty of time for me to recharge my appetite.

The soup was, of course, beet soup. Fresh beets from Whole Foods, potatoes, garlic, onions, vegetable stock. We started by pealing and cutting the beets. We found that the smaller ones have more natural juices. They will also get softer quicker and make them easier to eat in a soup.

NOTE: If you are a criminal and plan to commit murder, it would be a good idea to cook something with beets afterward thereby covering up your sin against humanity.

Chopped onion and garlic with some olive oil cooked in a dutch oven (control yourself, people, we're adults). Add the beets and vegetable stock to the oven. In this case it was frozen, but obviously does not have to be. Add some chopped potatoes and parsley and let simmer until the beets are soft. Took us about an hour and a half. Just enough time to watch a few episodes of Californication and build up my appetite for Dinner Part Deux.

In a separate pot, cook up some whole wheat cheese ravioli. It will give more substance to the meal and just add another element to soak up the earthy taste produced by the beet.

When everything is done and the soup is in the bowl, feel free to add some creme fresh, spring onions and salt to your desired taste.

Isn't she gorgeous? This is one of my favorite dishes yet. And some would argue that it is actually better cold (at 3am).

Pizza, Pizza

There is nothing I love more than pizza. It is the ultimate perfect food. Cheap, fast, tasty, and most importantly, easy to eat while running down a city block. I have started eating pizza as a light snack in between meals, which probably is contributing to my ever-expanding waste line, but that is for another day and another blog. The point is, I love pizza, and it's about time we had some homemade goodness.

This round of pizza making was experimental, as neither the Israeli nor I have ever attempted it. We only invited one other person over to taste -will call him Legs because, well, you get it-as sometimes I hit full stomach capacity before I can properly taste everything. The evening started with the requisite trip to Whole Foods to get the freshest ingredients possible. One thing we missed out on was real "pizza flour", but after several attempts at Italian specialty stores, we gave up and settled on white.

To start:
We mixed fresh yeast with water and honey in a bowl and another bowl with oil and salt. We poured 3 cups of flour on the table and poured both bowls in.

We were so brilliant for making a little pool for the oil mixture, right?

WRONG!!! Put in in a bowl, smartass!!!

Anyway, if you keep smooshing everything together, eventually it will come into a paste -like substance.

Let the dough sit for an hour and then put in the fridge for about 4-5 hours. Depending on how big you want your pies, you can separate into balls for molding later.

For the sauce, we used one can of pealed San Marzano tomatoes and some pealed fresh ones as well. Chopped an onion and threw it in as well as oregano and chopped garlic. As for the toppings, we grated some fresh mozzarella for one and chopped some nicoise olives, tomatoes and cheese for the other. We chose to make mini-pies which was both good and bad. We were able to perfect our pizza making strategy because we had several attempts, however, when we did get a pie perfect, there wasn't very much to eat and we weren't feeding Legs fast enough. Our biggest problems were transferring the pie from the counter to the oven as the toppings were heavy and the dough was thin. We also had a hard time making circular pies. As you can see, they looked a bit like amoebas, but aesthetics aside, they tasted amazing.

And so went our pizza making experience. This is something we can definitely improve on but has so much potential.



Seafood Delight

I knoooooowwwww!! I'm a slacker. Since the Israeli has been home, I have been so busy eating that I have completely neglected writing about it. Not cool, Abby. Not. Cool. So lets start from the beginning........It was a beautiful spring day, April 13, 1979................JUST KIDDING! Let's just start from last Friday, shall we?

We decided to stay in and cook, enjoy some wine while we sit side-by-side on our iPads enjoy each other's company. The Israeli picked up some fresh fish and pasta from Whole Foods and we were on our way.

We decided to go with a fish medley, if you will: 3 types of shrimp, scallops, mussels and Chilean sea bass(not-pictured here).

We fired up some butter and garlic in a pan and dropped those suckers in there. Does anything smell better than butter and garlic roasting in a pan???  It smelled glorious. It was a celebration in my nose.

When the fish was nicely cooked, we removed it from the pan and cooked the whole wheat linguine in the juices from the fish, butter and garlic.

Brilliant. We added the Chilean sea bass, which we had cooked before, and put everything over the pasta. It was a beautiful sight. We are still working on infusing a little more flavor into the pasta. It didn't quite capture the juices from the fish and required a lot of salt, but once perfected, this dish will change my life.

We have also come across a conflict in our relationship. To add parmigiana cheese or not to on a seafood dish. Thoughts?

Lovely Lupa

So I realize this blog has been inundated with restaurant reviews in the past week and that has not been intentional. I prefer to write about cooking, preparing and experiencing food, however, my main source of home-cooked meals has been absent so restaurants will have to do. I hope in the coming posts, I will have some more home cooking to entertain you with. Do I think that thousands of people are reading this blog, anticipating my every meal? Absolutely, it's what gets me through my day job.

A reservation for the famed restaurant, Lupa, fell into my lap this week and I just couldn't pass it up. Even if I am destitute, living on other peoples wireless connections and eating old olives, I will still accept any offers to go to a good restaurant. That's just me.

So we were conservative in our order, 2 apps to share and one entree each. When the waiter brought out our apps, however, he had a lot more on his plate. "Complements of the chef", we received one of every appetizer. Now, we wanted to the think the reason we were getting such special treatment was the fact that we were these gorgeous girls who the chef just couldn't resist. However, we couldn't actually say that with a straight face, so we knew something else was going on but we chose to just accept our good fortune gracefully and accept what was being handed to us.

We had:
Marinated olives
Beets with pistachio
Broccoli Rab with ricotta
Squash with hazelnut
Brussels sprouts with local apples

When the waiter brought out one of every meat, our suspicions grew. We had just ordered prosciutto but received:

Copper cotta
Testa
Speck
Lingua

It was a beautiful site, but too much for 3 girls to consume (just kidding-we ate every bite).

Luckily, when it came to the entrees, we each received our respective orders and no more.
I ordered the spaghetti with garlic and oil as well as pomodoro. That may sound boring, but it's such a treat when restaurants realize that garlic and oil need that tomato zest. The dish was great, although the pasta was a bit too "al dente" for me. The girls ordered the bucatini all' amatriciana and a gnocchi special. Both were fantastic but I think the bucatini was the crowd favorite.

Before we could even order, the waiter came out with one of every dessert.

(I purposely left the boob shot in to add some flava to the blog. Do I have to check off "Adult Content" now?)

Part of me wanted to believe that, of course, they knew I was a blogger and wanted to get a good review. For sure they were following me on Twitter and Facebook and knew of my culinary genius and wanted to exploit that, however, I thought it best to ask. When asked, the waiter explained that one of my friends taught his son. Not the explanation I was hoping for, but sweet nonetheless. She, of course, was mortified that she didn't remember the parent of one of her students, but alas, the guilt was tempered with the taste ricotta panna cotta with plums.


Erratum: The "gnocchi" is actually just pasta with a chicken ragu. Woops :)

Flex Your Mussels

With the Israeli gone, I still need to eat. So when a friend asked me to join him for dinner, I was happy to accept. My friend, who we will further refer to as The Russian, is an old college buddy who is always down for a good time and always gives me a ride home. Two qualities which are irreplaceable in a friend. As I'm writing this, I am realizing that I hang out with very few American men. I guess life is just more interesting with an accent. The Israeli and the Russian are similar in many ways. I never understand what either are saying when they're on the phone because they are always speaking another language, they are not afraid to say what they think, and they will go out of their way to have a good meal. All qualities I admire. So the Russian was a perfect substitute dinner partner while the Israeli was away.

He suggested Flex Mussels, which I had never heard of but once I saw the menu, was eager to try. The menu is very fish heavy, so if you don't eat seafood, this is not the place for you. We ordered the Simple Salad, which consisted of bibb lettuce, watercress, marcona almonds and a light vinaigrette. This is the perfect salad for me. Very little dressing, big pieces of lettuce and some nuts for the crunch factor. I thought it was perfect and beautifully executed.

The mussels menu is quite extensive. I have never seen mussels prepared this way. There was curry mussels, Italian mussels, and even Mediterranean mussels. We chose the Pesto Mussels with shrimp, garlic and parmigiana and the Bruschetta Mussels with San Marzano tomatoes, lobster, marinated tomato and croutons.

I preferred the bruschetta mussels as the flavors were light and the added bread made it more filling.

All in all, a great meal. Would definitely frequent this establishment again and the atmosphere was trendy yet comfortable. And afterward, I got a ride home. Amazing.

Faux New Year's Eve

The only thing better than New Year's Eve in New York City is a fake New Years Eve Celebration a few days prior to the actual event. You see, partying like a rock star is always fun, however, the lack of available taxis and the uncomfortably drunk teenage girls makes the night somewhat of a drag. I've actually considered not going out on New Years Eve, but I can't help but think that would set the tone of my entire year. But this year, the Israeli was taking a trip back to his home country during the holiday so we decided to celebrate in advance.

Off we went to Jean-Georges'JoJo , a delightful french restaurant on the Upper East Side. It was perhaps the first time the Israeli and I ventured that far uptown together for dinner and the differences were apparent. The crowd was older, the patrons sober and the waiters friendly. It was a nice respite from our usual downtown excursions.

Our first order was for wine, of course.

This wine was absolutely amazing. It was super light, super dry and super expensive (wooooops!). The Israeli wasn't too happy with me after I ordered the wine without looking at the price, but luckily he recovered quickly after tasting it.

Next were the appetizers:

We got the crabmeat salad with thin, wafer-like crackers which was delicious and the three-cheese ravioli with sweet peas and basil. Both appetizers were tasty but the ravioli definitely got the top prize.

For our entrees we got the salmon, slowly baked, truffled mashed potatoes, sugar snap peas, brussel sprouts with truffle vinaigrette. The salmon was cooked perfectly and the brussel sprouts balanced out the dish to perfection. I don't order salmon very much, but it came highly recommended and I can see why.

The Israeli ordered the duck breast which was prepared with a brick pastry and sweet and sour shallots. Not exactly sure what the pastry consisted of, but it was perfection.

Once again, the Israeli's dish was my preferred entree. I think I may have a problem with always wanting what is not mine, but I'll get deeper into that with my therapist.

This Faux New Years Eve was delicious. Now that the Israeli is gone for a week, who is gonna feed me? Any takers???

Dear Snow Day......

Dear Snow Day,

Nothing makes me happier than to see you when I get back from a vacation and am not ready to return to work. You are all things beautiful and I appreciate you more and more every year. I will take the wet pants and slow taxis any day just to see you. I'll take the chapped lips, runny noses and cold feet. But most of all, Snow Day, I'll take the schnitzel.

Oh the schnitzel, my new favorite dish. I could write poems about schnitzel. I could eat every day, all day.

We He started by lining up bowls of flour, eggs and bread crumbs mixed with any of your favorite spices:

As you can see, we decided to have some peas on the side.

Pound the chicken so it's flat and just dip the chicken on down the line. Now, Snow Day, you know that my lack of cooking skills has become somewhat of a barrier in my relationship, but you will be happy to know, the Israeli actually let me help with this part. It was a Snow Day Miracle!

And you are ready to fry some chicken!

Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and fry chicken in hot oil on both sides for 1-2 minutes per side or until golden brown.

And viola! It's all yours! You might want to add some roasted vegetables and some mashed potatoes to balance out the golden fried goodness...

So Snow Day, thank you for the day off, the beautiful white (now black) powder on the sidewalk, and, of course, the schnitzel. Nothing could make for a better day...

Love Always,
Abby