New Kitchen!

My new kitchen. As you can see, I don't have much space to work with.

Broadway East

Whoah i haven't written a post in 4 months! Life got really busy and for about two months i was eating really crappy food like bland whole wheat pasta with semi-cold pasta sauce dumped on top. But I'm going to start posting more regularly now. So, last night I went to Broadway East with Ursula and Nikki after checking out the Cai Guo Qiang exhibit at the Guggenheim. Which, by the way, was really great. I'm really glad I got to see it before the show closes later this month. My favorite piece was the snake in the bag, aptly called "Snake Bag". Broadway East is situated at the far end of East Broadway, past all of the Chinese bakeries and shops and basement restaurants. The restaurant has a very simple, almost sparse decor - polished wooden floors, dark wooden tables and velvety red banquettes lining the sides of the main dining room. The restaurant is very dimly lit, with the only light coming from small round globes that appear to float down from the ceiling.

I was a little skeptical at first, $21 for a plate of vegetables? Seemed a little outrageous to me. But, the food turned out to be delicious. I ordered a dish that came with grilled polenta, bread crumb encrusted and fried portobello mushrooms, a ragout made of porcini mushrooms and sauteed leafy greens (said kale on the menu, but i'm pretty sure what i ate wasn't kale.) The polenta was the perfect consistency, the ragout had a rich and salty, but not completely overpowering flavor. The light sauteed greens balanced out the hearty ragout perfectly. Our pear crostata dessert was a little disappointing - there was too much crust and too little pear. The presentation of the dish was also unappealing, the caramel sauce was hastily drizzled around the plate, the crostata looked like it hadn't been formed perfectly before it was baked. That said, the other dishes on the dessert menu sounded really good, there was a spiced chai bread pudding and a fig and hazelnut tart.

Overall a very good experience. This is a good choice if you're in the mood for vegan/vegetarian food, but don't want to eat at some hippy crunchy restaurant. Broadway East presents haute hippie food in an upscale setting without a hint of patchouli scent.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

We had a little dinner party last weekend...I gotta mention Nikki's delicious butternut squash risotto...it was excellent. Creamy and starchy, with hints of sweetness from the butternut squash puree. I made roasted brussels sprouts...I tried to replicate The Smith's brussels sprouts, but it didn't have the same lemony flavor. But still, it came out pretty well, the flavor was mellow and almost sweet, with a bit of crunch from the charred outsides.

Ingredients:
2 lbs of brussels sprouts
3 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 lemon
salt and pepper

Directions:
- Preheat oven at 400 degrees
- Cut off the stems of the brussels sprouts and peel off the first layer
- Salt the brussels sprouts with 2-3 generous pinches of salt
- Combine olive oil with juice from half of the lemon
- Zest the lemon and add the zest to the olive oil/lemon juice combo
- Pour the olive oil/lemon juice combo over the brussels sprouts and mix so that it's all coated evenly
- Roast at 400 degrees for 40 minutes
- Shake the baking pan occasionally so that all of the sides are roasted

Beef Stew

This hearty beef stew is a great winter dish. It also freezes well, so you can make a big pot of it and eat it slowly over many weeks. Chop the potatoes and carrots into large chunks, so you get big meaty bites with each spoonful.

Ingredients:

2 pounds beef chuck for stew, cut into 1-inch cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons butter
4 medium carrots, peeled, halved and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 14 oz cane of chicken broth
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 8 oz cans of tomato sauce
1 box of baby Portobello mushrooms, chopped
5 red potatoes, diced
2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans reduced-sodium beef or chicken broth
1 bay leaf
handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
two pinches of dried thyme
two pinches of oregano

Instructions:
Season the beef cubes lightly with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a heavy 6-quart pot over medium heat. Brown the beef in two batches, for approximately 5-6 minutes per batch.

Scoop out the second batch of beef, then add the carrots and onions and raise the heat to medium-high. Cook until the onion starts to turn translucent, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the flour.

Add the chicken broth, wine, tomato sauce and herbs and bring to a boil

Simmer for 20 minutes

Add potatoes and mushrooms, simmer for another 45 minutes

Stir in parsley at the end

The Smith

Ursy, Nikki and I had a fabulous pre-holiday dinner at The Smith. Nikki had some subway complications and showed up at the restaurant looking a wee bit tired, but the bread, butter and wine melted the stress right out of her! I've read multiple reviews of The Smith by various bloggers and New York Magazine and was really excited to try this place out. I always have to wrack my brain when I try to think of a reasonably priced restaurant that serves a good mix of pasta, seafood, steak and other miscellaneous entrees in a laid-back and fun environment. The Smith fits the bill perfectly and I think I might have found a new favorite place!

I was the first to arrive, so I took a seat at the bar and waited for the others to arrive. The bar takes up the entire length of the right side of the restaurant and can seat approximately 25 people. While I sipped my glass of wine quietly in the corner, I had time to note the details of the decor. The Smith is located in what used to be the Pizzeria Uno on 3rd Avenue and 11th street. And although I never stepped foot inside the Uno, the floor tiles in the restaurant looked similar to the floor tiles of Uno's that I have eaten in: small dingy white octagonal tiles with pieces of black tiles interspersed throughout. The walls are also covered with shiny white tiles, sort of like bathroom tiles, which sounds gross but it looked quite nice actually. Once the others arrived, we were seated in a cozy wooden booth that had wooden hooks on the side (thank you! All restaurants should have more space to hang coats and bags!)

Ursula and I split the green bean salad, which was really delicious. Crisp green beans tossed with thin slices of ricotta cheese, cherry tomato halves and toasted almonds, the dish was delightfully cool with several different layers of texture. For my main, I ordered the chopped steak with a side of salad. The chopped steak looked like a cross between a meat loaf and a hamburger patty. It was a small round of meat that had a stiff and thick crust-like texture on the outside. When I cut into the middle of the steak, the meat was crumbly and juicy, like a hamburger almost but only much better. The mushroom gravy that came with my dish was thick and flavorful and I generously slathered the sauce all over my steak. Another great dish I need to note is the side of roasted brussels sprouts. The Smith's brussels sprouts have a, to quote Nikki, "great citrus-y flavor, there's lemon rind in here or something." For dessert, we split the Pink Pussy Cat: red velvet cake with two scoops of strawberry ice-cream, fresh strawberries and whipped cream. REALLY good. Who can hate strawberry ice-cream and whipped cream?

I want to come back here again for dinner, for brunch, for drinks at the bar, for drinks AND dessert at the bar! Our waitress was friendly, attentive and came at all the appropriate moments. The whole place just made me really comfortable and I left completely satisfied, and you can't ask for much more than that.

Dos Caminos

We went to Dos Caminos last night to celebrate Kashmira's birthday...she wanted to have dinner at a place that was "fun and fabulousth". Walk through the heavy red velvet curtains at the front entrance and you'll find yourself on the ground floor of a spacious bi-level restaurant. The walls are painted a soft pink color and chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The crowd is a mix of tourists, couples old and young and many groups of females in sparkly tops out for what appeared to be mostly birthday dinners. We were seated at a long table on the basement level of the restaurant and directly in front of me was a DJ in a fedora and tight v-neck tank top spinning Britney - lots of it. The music gave the restaurant a clubby atmosphere, although most of the diners were pretty quiet and reserved, eating and chatting away. Even though the music was quite loud, we were still able to talk across the table without too much yelling...ahh the magic of good acoustics.
I'd read numerous reviews lamenting the poor quality of service, but our waitress was very polite and prompt, taking our orders right away and making sure our water glasses were always full. We started with the famous guacamole (which you can see bits of inside Kashmira's mouth) and it was quite good. There were plenty of sizable pieces of avocado and the texture was a perfect balance between smooth and chunky. I ordered the Pescado Tacos, served with grilled filets of mahi mahi, spicy cabbage slaw and fresh tomato salsa, all wrapped up in two warm flour tortillas. The fish tasted great - fresh and meaty. The thin strips of cabbage was tart and crunchy, with the fresh tomato salsa giving the dish a nice cooling effect.

My favorite part of the meal came at the end in the form of a pistachio flavored chocolate cake served with a scoop of pistachio ice-cream. The ice-cream had a nutty texture and the chocolate cake was rich but not too thick, with a few pieces of pistachio in the middle.

Dos Caminos is a fun spot for group dinner, festive and loud, but no so much that you can't hear your friends.

Chocolate Truffles

Twas Amar's birthday last week and I made he-who-has-a-major-sweet-tooth (seriously, the dude belongs in a Cathy comic) bittersweet truffles. I tried to make truffles last year and all I got was a hard lump of brown goo. This year, I measured everything to the T and hunkered down for 6 hours to make these damn things. Truffles aren't particularly hard to make, just extremely time consuming. So if you're just lounging around at home on a blustery winter day, tis a good time to make truffles. My truffles tasted pretty good but looked a bit off...I got sick of waiting for the truffle base to solidify, so i started rolling the chocolate concoction into balls before it was fully firm...thus my little balls of chocolate wouldn't hold up..it started to droop and flatten out as soon as I placed them back in my baking dish. So, wait at least 4 hours before you start rolling them into truffles...you can try to put them in the freezer for an hour, that might speed up the process.

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
9 1/2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate (70% cocoa), chopped - for the truffle base
8 ounces of bitter sweet chocolate (70% cocoa), chopped - for the outside shell
3-4 handfuls of walnuts, finely chopped

Instructions:
Bring cream to a simmer, remove from heat and pour over the 9 1/2 ounces of chopped chocolate
Stir until the mixture is smooth and the chocolate is fully melted
Refridgerate the base until it is firm enough to roll into balls, at least 3-4 hours
Once it's firm, take a large spoonful of the chocolate mixture and roll into a small ball, repeat until you've used up all the mixture
Chill the balls for another hour
Place the other 8 ounces of chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of boiling water and melt the chocolate by stirring the chocolate chunks until its smooth and completely melted
Take each ball of truffle base, roll it in the melted chocolate and then roll in the chopped walnuts
Refridgerate the truffles for another hour.