Beautiful, Luscious, Tremendous & Melancholy

I’d like to talk about one of our favourite breakfast/brunches, but I am also melancholy today.  Why is that you ask? Because the Wee Girl has gone off to Italy for 5 months as an exchange student and left myself and Himself here, bereft.  Well, I’m bereft; Himself has already moved his golf gear into her now vacant bedroom*…

So on her last morning *sob* in Sydney I made BLTs for us, they’re a big favourite, and with the Flying Pig bacon, home grown tomatoes and home-made mayo they ascend to a thing worthy of worship.

I cannot believe A. they’re so easy to make and B. I only discovered them a few years ago.  I’ve been making up time since, as they’re quick, we nearly always have the ingredients in the house and I try to tell myself they are moderately healthy (bacon is a whole food, isn’t it?).  Let us pause a moment to reflect on the sheer awesomeness that is bacon…

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..

... 

Later…

Okay so, BLTs right? There’re a couple of tricks to attain awesomeness which I will now share with you:

Home-made mayo, very easy, delicious and not to be eaten if you’re preggers or suffer from some kind of weird raw egg allergy**

Season the tomatoes well before they go on!  Don’t season the sandwich, only the tomatoes.  Slice them up at the beginning, season LIBERALLY with salt and pepper and leave them to think about themselves while you do the mayo and the bacon.

Good bacon.  Make sure it’s terrifically smoky (or maple cured) and of course comes from happy, organically, pasture raised pigs (or you’re going to hell).

Lightly toasted Turkish.  Wholemeal Turkish bread is great, but white is good too.  In the picture I’d used pumpkin, we didn’t like it as much.

So now you know the tricks, here’s what you do.

Slice your tomatoes and season liberally.  Put your bacon onto fry.  While your bacon’s cooking, make your mayonnaise (recipe here).  Toast your Turkish, but not too much, you don't want it too crispy or it hurts the roof of your mouth when you eat it.  Drain your now crispy bacon on kitchen towel and then smear the toast bottom liberally with mayo (don’t put mayo on the top yet, it melts on the hot bread.)  I don’t use any butter because once you know how much oil is in mayo, you realise you don’t need any more fat that day.  Artistically place your bacon on the bottom bit of bread.  Add a flourish of tomatoes and then reverently place a couple of pieces of lettuce (or lots of baby spinach, or rocket if you’re in a peppery mood) on top.  Smear the top piece of toast with the more mayo and pop it on.  Hold together with a fancy toothpick/skewer for that “I’m from Woollahra*** and need the fancy pick to bring it all together” look.

Easy no?  Now there is no excuse! Go forth and BLT!!

*wait for the squawk of indignation when she reads this…

**you know who you are…

***I'm not, but I have a weakness for fancy picks

Delicious Summery Spag Bol

I have to tell you, nothing beats the pleasure of cooking with your own home grown vegies and the superior feeling one gets from using ethically raised meat.  Last night I decided on scratched together spaghetti bolognaise; this meant I could only use what’s in the house to make it.  I had about fifty thousand capsicum in the crisper from when the Wee Girl’s girlfriends were all over last Friday making pizza and having a party to send her off in style for her big Italian* exchange student adventure.  However, I digress.

I had a lot of capsicums which needed using and I found a packet of delicious F&B pork mince in the trusty chest freezer.  I’ve made spag bol with pork mince before – it is delicious! Or a combination of pork and beef is also divine – you need to try it, and as I’ve helpfully attached my recipe, you’ve no excuse not to…

Usually when I make spag bol I soften onion, garlic and anchovies before browning off the mince.  This time, due to the fact I had some home grown carrots available (is there no end to what I can pull out of the ground ‽‽‽) I thought I’d do a traditional Italian battuto to start off my dish.  Essentially this is very (very) finely diced onion, celery and carrot.  I also included garlic, basil stalks, bay leaves and anchovies.  I fried this down gently in olive oil until it was very soft (which I believe, turns it into a soffritto).  Apparently this is the legit way to start a myriad of Italian dishes. Once it was really soft I turned up the heat, pushed it all to one side and browned off the pork mince.

When the pork was cooked out I added what was left of a bottle of red wine which was languishing on the bench.  DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE PEOPLE! This rubbish about ‘only use the wine for cooking which you’d drink’ is a load of codswallop! Once a quarter of a bottle of wine in a large dish of other stuff is bubbled down to next to nothing, it’s just another flavour note – I really don’t think our palettes are refined enough to tell I opened the bottle a week ago.  Well, that’s what I think anyway.

Once the wine was next to gone, I added a beef stock cube, diced red, green and yellow capsicum, a whole lot of tomatoes from the garden that I whizzed up in the Magimix and some balsamic vinegar.  A big pinch of salt, pepper and a squirt of pizza base sauce (I’d run out of tomato paste).  Also all the basil leaves from the stalks I used earlier.  I then simmered all of this down for about 45 minutes.  

 

During the last bit of simmering I cooked some spaghetti and then the Wee Girl and I enjoyed it out in the back garden - me with a glass of freshly opened wine.  This particular recipe made a gloriously light, summery bol. It was perfect for a summer evening in the garden.

That newly opened bottle, and one other, may have been finished off with the BFF when she came around after dinner.  Alas, none of that left for the next time I make bol…

Himself had gone out for a play date with one of his little friends, so only returned in time to enjoy the remaining dregs from the second bottle.  I assured him that all the bol had been eaten and enjoyed by the Wee Girl and myself, so alas, there was none for him to try… He was not convinced and I may have lied, there was a Tupperbox full for him in the fridge for lunch today.  I’m sure he’ll be judging; he’s usually the bol cooker in the house. But I’m convinced my home grown vegies and that F&B pork will make a superior summer bol…

*She leaves in just over a week!! Argh!!

All Done, All Finished

Well peeps! This is my last post from NYC.

So today’s our last day in New York, and we are both very ready to come home.  We miss our dogs, our cat, fish, oh and the Wee Girl.   We decided to start the day with breakfast at Balthazar’s which was probably our nicest breakfast (and we wish we had have tried it earlier, so we could have returned for breakfast again).  We both had Eggs en Cototte, mine was a touch under done but yum regardless and Himself finally had a decent coffee.  Had I mentioned the coffee here is terrible? It’s all drip coffee, and even the proper stuff in the occasional café just isn’t that good.  The also do excellent hot chocolate.

After breakfast we had a bit of a list of final things to do (buy) so up to some electronic shop with a million Jews for some carts (some DJ-y thing).  I have never seen so many Orthodox Jews in one place, most with the curly sideburn thingies.  Do you think one day, they’ll wake up, look in the mirror and think ‘hmmmm is this really the way forward?’ I wondered if they used hot rollers to get the curls as curly as they were – wasn’t game to ask.

After that over to Times Square where they have M&Ms world, had to pick up some souvenirs for niece and nephew. They have this amazing Wall of M&Ms which has them in any colour you can think of – quite cool, but the smell, ugh! Too much cheap chocolate!! Then off to find a Mac store.  As Himself was looking them up on his phone he glanced up and lo! there was one across the road.  In we went to buy half price cosmetics for me.  Australia is such a rip off for makeup!!

Then onto the subway and down to Union Square.  There was meant to be a cheap electronics/DVD place there.   Also, we wanted to get some nuts to feed the squirrels…  The electronics place was a big letdown, we could not for the life of us find somewhere like JBHiFi to get DVDs…  So we grabbed some nuts from a whole food place and trotted across to do some serious squirrel whispering…

They are very sweet creatures, you can hold out a nut and they grab your fingers with their wee paws and take the nut carefully in their mouth.  My only slight concern was the whole rabies thing but I thought I’d just tough it out and get a shot if for some strange reason one decided I looked more delicious than a nut*

After that we went down to Lombardy’s which is a bit of a pizza institution in Little Italy for pizza.  Himself had tried one there on the day I was sick, but was so stressed and frazzled didn’t really enjoy it.  Their small pizza is probably the size of one of our larges but we manned up and ate the whole thing anyway.  Pepperoni  and mushroom, our favourite.

Then more DVD hunting (failed) and finally another suitcase to bring ‘stuff’ home with.  Back to the apartment for a nanna which turned into packing then off for dinner.  We booked a Mexican restaurant, Toloache for dinner.  Delicious! Every Mexican meal we’ve had, including take away has been great. I had tuna ceviche to start and Himself had a quesadilla with cheese and truffle (a bit posh), then we both had tacos for main; they were meant to be starter size but what with the American portions… We got a couple of sides, plantain, rice & black beans and cactus fries (crumbed, deep fried cactus) it tasted as I expected, slightly bland, crispy on the outside, slimy/mushy on the inside but not in a bad way.  The tacos were yum! The margaritas were yum!  It was all yum.

Then… onto The Book of Mormon, a highly anticipated musical written by the South Park Boys.  OHMIGOD SO FUNNY!!! We spent the entire show wetting our pants laughing. The guy beside us had brought his 16(ish) son and was wondering if that made him a bad father, I don’t think it did.  Had to be one of the best musicals I’ve EVER seen.  So if you get the chance, see it.  Apparently very hard to get tickets, but thanks to Himself’s employer in high places we had front row mezzanine seats (very expensive) worth every cent.  Apparently when the seats were first booked, and it was confirmed we had seats and would we like to get them, Himself asked how much they were… there was a pause then ‘we’ve never been asked that before’… Sigh, to be so rich huh? Brilliant show, we were quoting it and giggling all the way home.

Stopped at our ‘local’ for a couple of drinks and some of their delicious fries and now it’s off to bed.  See you soon, we’re back on Saturday…

*not a word from the peanut gallery**

**see what I did there?

And on the Seventh Day, they rested

I know, it's the eighth day - but never let the truth get in the way of a good story...

We’d decided the 1^st would be a rest day.  The day before had been huge, and of course we’d got in late so the plan was to sleep in and then just kick back for a while.  We woke up quite late and mooched around the apartment for at least an hour before we decided that we really needed something to eat.  A leisurely stroll down to the East Village shopping centre passing countless diners (if I see another diner why I’ll…) we finally stumbled upon a patisserie attached to the restaurant we were going that night for dinner (more on that later).  We both ordered a croissant (mine with asparagus and mushroom and Himself’s with ham and cheese) plus coffee and hot chocolate.  As an aside, the mushrooms here are so rich! Why is it, their steak is bland but mushrooms out of this world??

We sat on a bench outside enjoying this relatively light and civilised breakfast before deciding, what the hell, we were here, let’s do some shopping*.  Happily, with flat shoes on we trotted around the various snazzy stores.  Armani Exchange, Gap, G Star Raw, Adidas etc.  Pretty much what is out at the shopping outlet and also some with sales.  One thing we have found is that lots of men in NYC appear to be exactly the size as Himself, as there’s never anything of anything he likes left in his size!

We (I) also stopped at Victoria’s Secret as my bra situation at home is getting a bit dire.  Himself hid in a shop across the road while I did some serious shopping.  What a beautiful store! All made to make you feel incredibly feminine and attractive – I mean, they have dimming lights in their change rooms!!  There were quite a few men hovering about looking awkward and a lot of women looking a bit wild eyed (buy 1 get 50% off the next).  So, after figuring out my size in American I was good to go, found the bra of my dreams and pulled Himself in off the street to pay.  He slunk through the shop, eyes averted until we got to the checkout where he bemoaned the cost - $150 for 4 bras?? That’s a bargain!!!**

By then our feet (and his credit card) were starting to smoke so back down to East 8^th for some lunch.  Five mouthfuls of an awful Ramen later we admitted defeat and headed home.  Annoyingly passing 2 packed ramen places, 2 Thai and a Pommes Frites place where the line is always out the door… do’h

It was 2pm nap time so once Himself was asleep I snuck out to a Chinese massage place I’d spotted on East 6^th for a half hour foot massage (huzzah!)  Of course, a day in NYC wouldn’t be the same without some kind of illness so my throat started getting very sore – probably the cold Himself had been sporting for the last few days.

Another early dinner (phew!) at Balthazar’s.  This place was very hard to get into (hence the 6:30 time) and was absolutely packed.  The tables are so close together they have to pull them out for you to slide into the bench on the other side.  A great vibe though.  I’m still craving light food, what with my delicate stomach and the grease overload which is America so I went with steak tartare for starter and fish for main.  Himself opted for some croquettes followed by confit duck leg.  All food was delicious, the steak tartare was excellently flavoured although the fish lacked lemon (which of course I politely asked for – and was politely given).  The confit duck was richly rich and Himself sniffed it up.

They are also famous for the Steak au Poivre and Pommes Frites and trays of it were coming from the kitchen – the piles of chips on these plates are crazy! So many chippies!! But the crowd love it.  We also shared a bottle of champagne (as you do) and opted for no dessert.  The waiters here were very efficient, though not as friendly as a lot of the other restaurants we’ve been to – too busy to be super friendly I think.  We decided we’d hit them up for breakfast so booked at their handy reservations phone on the way out. 

By then I was fading like the delicate flower I am, but Himself was determined we’d stop for a drink on the way home.  We hailed a cab and jumped in.  Himself (for some reason) started singing***  the latest Pitbull song.  The cabby asked if we liked music? Yes indeed, we reply.  Ah! I’ll put on some music for you… And on come the strains of… Bryan Adams?? That’s right my friends, Everything I do, I do it for you; the extended version.  The cabby was slow clicking and we were singing with power fists in the back.  We gave him a $5 tip…

We stopped at our favourite bar, a framboise beer for Himself and a whisky and dry for me (we had to explain what dry was).  I was busy passing out on the table, throat killing me before Himself gave me up as a bad excuse for a drinking buddy and we went home.

Ahhh sweet, sweet sleep…

*my devious plan all along

**Himself clearly does not know how expensive those bad boys are

***I use this term loosely

Shopping, New Year’s Eve and Sore Feet

I’m not sure if you noticed, yesterday’s blog was actually a day late due to sheer exhaustion, and so following below is why…

This morning started off innocuously enough.  Himself said we had to get an early start as we were going out to a clothing outlet.  It’s about an hour on the bus from Manhattan, so we had a hearty (sigh) breakfast then up to midtown to get the bus.  There’s a lot more snow out past New Jersey, about a foot deep in some spots.  Luckily it was a gorgeous sunny day though.

I thought, in some kind of moment of stupidity, that I’d wear my ankle boots with heels, my rationale was that they’re quicker to get on and off in change rooms rather than the knee high flat boots I’d been wearing everywhere.  Big mistake, after four hours of solid shopping (and we didn’t even manage to get to all the stores we wanted to) my feet were throbbing!! Argh!  But lots of money spent and ‘stuff’ bought.

We then remembered we had a rather early dinner that night so raced back to the bus stop for the 4:10pm bus.  It had only taken an hour to get there after all… plenty of time to get home, dressed and then dinner for 6:00… ha.

It took 20 minutes longer to get back, then as we were pulling into the bus interchange it was the bus jam from hell.  I have never seen so many buses in one place! Le diabolique! So then we were running late – and you can’t not turn up for a dinner reservations here as they still charge you! Argh! So there’s us, with bags of shopping, frazzled after a full day out and having to go straight to the restaurant.

Of course, the interchange where the bus interchange is, is very near Times Square – at 5:30 it was already absolutely packed with the New Year’s Eve crowds, lots of road closures and lots of cabs but none vacant.  We finally flagged one down, when he found out we wanted to go downtown he was very happy to take us – he said he was ditching Manhattan for Queens – way too busy here!

So we tried (and succeeded) on getting all our shopping into two bags and I also did a sneaky shirt change (so sneaky even himself didn’t notice until we got out of the cab – ha) and piled out one block down from where we were meant to be (Prince St, not Spring!) The restaurant in question this night was Raoul’s which is a bit of a NY institution, very famous for their Steak au Poivre with Pommes Frites (that’s steak and chips to you).  By the time we arrived we were totally exhausted from our hard core shopping; and looked it too I’m sure.

But they put us in a cosy corner out the back which was nice, they had balloons everywhere – New Yorkers know how to do NYE in style!  We both had a very light starter and champagne (as it’s NYE after all).  Himself had a goat’s cheese salad and I had Huîtres du Jour (that’s oysters to you).  The oysters… totally bland!! What is going on? Have our taste buds expired?? Or had the rinsed the oysters in fresh water?? Surely not.  They were on a bed of ice and I finally decided they were just too cold.  Himself said I should have let them warm up – that’s when I pointed out that what with the ice, I could be waiting a while.  I think in winter they should use the whole ‘bed of salt’ option…

I went with a pumpkin ravioli for Entree (that's main to you) and Himself decided to once again go the steak.  The ravioli was delicious, it was served with mushrooms and sprout leaves, yum - typically though, a bit heavy on the butter...  Himself’s steak was probably the best we’d had in New York but still a pale comparison to the piece of Dexter fillet I have waiting in the chest freezer at home…  We decided to be piggies and also had dessert. I, the chocolate fondant* and Himself crème brulee.  Both were delicious but of course, way too much food.

Once we finished we staggered home and passed out for a while before our NYE plans.  Well, Himself passed out – I wasn’t allowed as it takes me too long to wake up after naps :-p So I had a bath instead…

Then all dressed up ready for Raines Law Room.  It’s a Speak Easy style bar hidden in a basement down one of the side streets near Union Square.  So we mooched down the street and rang the bell – the door for the place is really non-descript, you need the actual street number or you’d never find it.  A French doorman peeked around the door and asked could he help us? Yes, we answered, we had a reservation for tonight.  Ah yes, come in, come in.  He took our coats and then showed us in to the most gorgeous bar I have ever been to.  It’s done up 1920s style, like an opulent parlour, with small groups of velvet chairs and tiny tables, then a couple of 2-3 seater lounge areas (the lounge) followed by the kitchen where the bar staff are (plus anyone else who wants to hang there).  The music was very jazz, 20s and chilled as were the staff, drinks and canapés.  It was all very quirky and cool.  To get the service there were little door plates on the walls with chains hanging from them, you pulled the chain and a waitress would come along.

We chilled, drank cocktails and ate canapés.  Just before midnight the French doorman came around and offered us all ‘noise makers’ (very classy ones, I might add) and they switched the music across live to Times Square for the official countdown.  At midnight we all blew our noise makers, kissed (only each other, no strangers) and drank champagne.  At about 1:30 we left and strolled home via some bar on 2^nd Ave.  Himself was up for more partying, I was up for more taking my shoes off and lying in bed whimpering softly to myself due to the state of my feet.  Really?? Shopping?? Four Hours?? High Heels??? What was I thinking‽  And of course, new heels for the night out.

We eventually got home and passed out.  I wonder how bad Himself’s hangover will be…

N.B.  You might notice there are no photos? We were so exhausted we forgot to take some at dinner…

*Just for you, Wee Girl – it was pretty nice

It's Steak Jim, but not as we know it

So the day I’ve been most anticipating has arrived! We’re going to see a game of American Football! Huzzah!! Sitting for 3 hours in the freezing cold to watch 60 minutes of game time played in 10 second bursts with 1 minute gaps in between! What fun!!  WTF? And they get so excited about it!

But I get ahead of myself.  Let me tell you about the eggs benedict I had at the diner… Fully expecting poached eggs, ham, English muffins and hollandaise sauce right? Here’s a picture below; don’t ask me what the ‘stuff’ is on the side, some kind of weird potato thing they add to their breakfasts for no extra charge (when they’re not adding fries, that is)

Large, no? and the hollandaise sauce?? Well, cheese sauce with onion flavour actually.  Very, very weird, I only managed one.  You can see behind Himself’s mega portion of pancakes.  There will be a serious diet when we get home!

Then on to find some shopping in the East Village.  We found a few good places, some to be revisited in a couple of days.  I made a couple of purchases – some grey work trousers. Himself reckons my entire work wardrobe is grey (it may be – grey is the new black baby!) and he got some shirts and a pair of jeans.  Alas, then it was shopping time over and onto the football!

We public transported it to the game, we had to transfer at the charmingly name Secaucus (pronounced with a strong NJ accent see-COWR-cus) Station then onto the Met Life Stadium where Himself almost pissed his pants in excitement.  We found our (very good) seats and then settled in to enjoy the stop-start game.  Five minutes into it and I went to hunter-gather lunch (hotdog and beer for him, nachos for me) The nachos looked revolting and tasted remarkably good.  Settled into watch the game.  Ten minutes later I went to check out the merchandise shop, all very standard ‘stuff’, couldn’t get the team shirt of the player Himself wanted, their sizes run from Huge to Gigantic.  In their defence, a lot of people wear them over their fifty layers of clothes due to the fact it’s FREEZING.  Then came back in and settled down to watch the game.  Ten minutes later I went to get a hot chocolate.  Came back in and settled down to watch the game.  By then Himself was turning blue (in honour of the Giants I’m sure) and decided as it was a white-wash we could leave early (huzzah!) Train home, where due to a late running train I experienced the true NY crush that leaves Sydney peak hour for dead…

Due to our all American day we had dinner at the Mesa Grill which is a steak house.  A couple of margaritas to start, some yummy mini shrimp (prawn) tacos and some ribs, which incidentally had nuts sprinkled on top - there is no place for nuts on ribs... So the steaks right? Very highly anticipated rib eye and NY cut sirloin.  Blackened, cooked beautifully, perfectly medium rare; tenderly melting in your mouth and… absolutely flavourless!! I think you’ve spoilt us Mrs Feather, this is the second time we’ve had meat in NY that has been this way.  Either we’re utter, utter food snobs* or the meat here is really second class.  To be honest I get better flavour from the butcher down the road as well – not nearly as amazing as F&B obviously but better than this!! What is going on?? Even adding salt does not help.  I'm not sure if that's how Americans like it but it's a very anti-climatic experience all round.  Their fries were shite too...  The waitress looked at our half finished steaks disappointedly and asked if we'd like them 'to go'.  No thank you, they were lovely but we've been unwell you see...

To be honest, it's true.  Our appetites aren't what they usually are, they give you so much food and we have both been very unwell (yet the weight still creeps on - go figure)

Tomorrow is NYE and a big shopping day at an outlet, better wear comfortable shoes…

 *Totes