TrelayneNYC
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Posts posted by TrelayneNYC
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Spaghetti alla puttanesca
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Thanks luv.
For brunch today, we had:
Cauliflower with eggs, olives and anchovies
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I'm glad we went last month. I was a bit underwhelmed.
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Selection of oysters.
Clockwise from lower right: Kumamoto; Wellfleet; and I don't remember what the ones in the rear were.
Served with fresh grated horseradish (bottom ramekin), lemon wedges and shallot mignonette.
These were ok. Paired with a 2016 pinot bianco from the Trentino-Alto Adige region in northern Italy. The wine had a crisp minerality with just enough acidity. This might be my newest favorite white wine, come to think of it.We had come by early, were seated immediately, then had to wait nearly 10 minutes before we were handed menus.
I get it, it's the pre-theater dinner crowd and maybe you're understaffed. But first impressions count and, well, you know the drill.
Celery root soup, with crouton, saba and golden raisins.
Nice balance of flavors.
Venison carpaccio, artichokes, aioli, sunchokes, sunflower seeds.
I could have done without the seeds - which added nothing except texture. The aioli was underneath the carpaccio, probably no more than a teaspoon.
This was "fine". But not something I would order again.
Quail, kumquat, chard, farro.
Very good.
Kumquat with chard and farro isn't a pairing I would have thought of but according to B, actually worked.
Striped bass, cauliflower, leek and chervil.
Slight hint of curry in the seasoning coating the tissue-paper thin skin which shattered at the touch of a fork. Well-prepared, although the cauliflower florets were a touch undercooked.
The fish was perfect: flaky, moist and flavorful.
I found myself wishing for a small dish of salt.Sorry for the quality of photos. I didn't have my camera with me so had to use an iPhone. While iPhone photos can be great, you need proper lighting to shine.
Semolina cake with huckleberries and pistachio.
Lovely texture and not too sweet.
Plating sucked though.
The waiter came by with our desserts and almost served us, then realized that we had nothing to eat them with. (IOW, they had cleared our main courses and silverware but didn't replace the used silverware with fresh ones.)
Cheese plate, paired with walnut-date bread. (Bread not shown.)
Although you don't see it, B was given a paper strip to identify the samples.
I've been at other places in town that served cheese, and found the paper a bit tacky. Maybe it's just me.You know, maybe it's great that Traci is tired of fine dining. Because for half of this dinner, the experience was not it.
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We went to Le Central for a birthday lunch on Saturday.
Lillet blanc, St. Germain, honey, lemon and champagne.
The pictures you're about to see came out really well, and when you view them, you'll understand why I prefer to shoot food in natural light as much as possible.
Pâté de Campagne, with cornichons and mustard.
Roasted bone marrow, fig jam, bread.
Onion soup gratinée.
Butter lettuce salad, with apple, cherries and preserved lemon vinaigrette.
Pan-roasted salmon, winter root vegetables, saffron fumet.
Filet mignon au poivre, haricot verts, mushrooms.
Pommes frites.
Roast chicken, with parsnip chips, bacon-lemon brussels sprouts.
I think this was the best dish on the table. Outstanding.
Seared scallops, butternut squash purée, fennel.
Banyuls.
I was going to order a glass of poire eau de vie and I'm glad I switched at the last minute.
Strawberry rhubarb crumble, vanilla ice cream.
Grand Marnier chocolate flourless cake, chocolate rum sauce, candied orange, whipped crème fraîche.
We'll be back, of that you can be sure.
Le Central Bistro
453 Bush Street (Grant Avenue)-
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We had meatballs for dinner tonight.
I've posted my recipe elsewhere in this thread but here it is again for convenience.
170 g fresh breadcrumbs
60 ml whole milk
400 g ground pork
200 g ground beef
32 g chopped mortadella
1 egg
30 g grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
a pinch of grated nutmeg
3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
2 tablespoons finely chopped mint
salt
black pepper800 ml crushed tomatoes
1 garlic clove
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leafThis is my basic recipe for meatballs with the addition of 32 g (1/4 cup) chopped mortadella. The original recipe is from My Kitchen in Rome (which I highly recommend if you love Italian cooking). I've made about 4/5 of the recipes in Rachel's book so you know it's a keeper. Her recipe reverses the proportions of beef to pork but I love the sweetness of ground pork, so there you go. Quantities are also a bit different above and reflect my personal preference. We like our meatballs with not as much breadcrumbs and more herbs, but you might feel differently.
Add the milk to the breadcrumbs. Soak for 10-15 minutes, then squeeze out liquid. Combine breadcrumb mixture, pork, beef, mortadella, egg, cheese, nutmeg, parsley and mint in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Since the cheese will be salty, go easy on the seasoning.
It'll end up looking like this. Form meatballs with a teaspoon.
Line a cookie sheet with foil, then again with parchment paper. Arrange meatballs on top of parchment paper. You'll end up anywhere between 15-20 meatballs.
I like my meatballs golf-ball sized. In the beginning, I'd fry them in olive oil but those ended up greasy. Baking renders them lighter plus you don't need to roll them in flour or cover them in breadcrumbs. Preheat oven at 350 F. Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes.
The sauce is really simple.
Warm 3 tablespoons olive oil in a Dutch oven or large pot. Add some garlic cloves that you've crushed with the back of a spoon. Fry the garlic in the oil over low heat or until the garlic gives off a fragrance that makes your mouth water. This will take some time (at least 15 minutes) and you'll know it's the right moment when the garlic begins to brown.
Next, add the tomatoes, a bay leaf and a pinch of salt. I sometimes like to add some water to the can, slosh it a bit, then add that to the pot.
Raise the heat, bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes.
Then add the meatballs to the pot, cover and braise for 30 minutes. Don't forget to stir every so often.
I like to serve these as is, or with grated cheese.
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For breakfast today, we had:
Roast chicken salad with haricots verts and mustard vinaigrette
Good Sunday morning!
Adapted from Buvette by Jody Williams, page 80.
8 small potatoes
coarse salt
1/4 kg haricots verts, trimmed
salad greens (I used mesclun, radish greens, fava greens and arugula)
freshly ground black pepper
120 ml vinaigrette (recipe follows)
leftover roast chicken
1 tbsp. (14 g) Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. (14 g) whole-grain mustard
2 radishes, thinly slicedvinaigrette (page 258):
2 shallots, peeled and finely diced
1 tsp. (4 g) fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 small garlic clove, grated on a Microplane grater
3 tbsp. (44 ml) red wine vinegar
120 ml extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. (15 ml) water
pinch of sugar
pinch of salt
freshly ground black pepper
Boiling potatoes whole is a technique I picked up recently. It ensures even cooking and less water-soaked vegetables. For a medium-sized potato, it will be completely cooked in about 15 minutes. Larger sized potatoes will take about 20 minutes.
Lift out with a slotted spoon, then plunge into a bowl of ice water. When cool, peel as normal (peel should slip right off), then use as desired.
If you don't want to deal with boiling, you can also steam them whole.
If you don't have a microplane grater, you might be able to achieve nearly the same texture by pounding the garlic in a mortar and pestle or by sprinkling the garlic clove with some salt and mashing it with the tines of a fork on a cutting board.
Either way, you'll end up with a paste that looks a little like this. This is about 1 teaspoon (4 grams) garlic paste.
Trim the haricots verts by removing both ends just like you would regular green beans. (I know you don't need to trim off the tapered end but this is just personal preference.) Prepare by simmering in boiling water (ideally the same pot you cooked the potatoes in) for five minutes. Lift out with a slotted spoon and plunge into a bowl of ice water, then drain.
For the vinaigrette, combine the shallots, garlic paste, chopped thyme, salt, sugar, black pepper and red wine vinegar in a glass measuring cup. Whisk in olive oil until you have about 2/3 cup (158 ml).
Whisk until all ingredients are combined.
Then whisk in 1 tbsp. Dijon mustard and 1 tbsp. whole grain mustard. Taste and correct for salt and pepper.
Once the potatoes are cool, slice into 1/4" (6 mm) thick rounds. Or you can slice them into wedges. It'll work either way.
To plate the salad, take some salad greens and toss with 1/3 of the vinaigrette, then arrange on a platter.
Take the potatoes and green beans, place in a bowl, then add 1/3 of the vinaigrette and toss those with the dressing. Spoon vegetables atop the greens.
Tear the roast chicken into bite-sized pieces, then top the potatoes and green beans with the chicken. Drizzle vinaigrette on top. Scatter radish slices, grind a little more black pepper on top, then serve at once.
This recipe is sized for 4 people and takes about 1 hour from start to finish, including prep time.
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On 3/11/2019 at 7:29 AM, Tweaked said:
Singapore Noodles...pretty damn good.
Recipe from Serious Eats. I made it without the char siu pork, because I have no idea where I would buy some in the district (Full Key maybe?). I would watch the sodium levels with this dish, between the fish sauce and the soy sauce and the recipe calling to season with salt at the end. But overall I thought the recipe worked out very well.
Looks wonderful.
I bet it was awesome too.
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Soft-boiled egg with roasted asparagus and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
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Some pix from last weekend:
Minestrone alla piemontese
This version takes about an hour to prep and cooks for 5-6 hours. It doesn't contain any tomato and the recipe hails from a trattoria in northwestern Italy (Trattoria Razmataz located at Via Vincenzo Bellini 24, Alessandria, Italy 15121, tel.: +39 0131 223249).
There was also this:
Shortbread cookies with Meyer lemon curd.
The curd was a tad overbaked. That's ok, my co-workers didn't mind.
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15 hours ago, Pat said:
How does the fish work out in a make-ahead preparation? I often have fish left after I make it the first time and then try to use it right away in something else. I can't recall making fish ahead of time to serve a day or two later.
It's not any more different than fish soup or clam chowder. I imagine you do have leftovers? The only difference is that this will be eaten tonight.
The bonus is that the sauce can also be used for pasta and the flavors develop marvelously.
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I'm pretty rigid. You haven't been paying attention.
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33 minutes ago, Smita Nordwall said:
Does the skin stay crispy? I can't imagine it would.
No, but it's tasty nonetheless.
If I made this again, I would probably salt and pepper a whole chicken 2-3 days in advance (per Judy Rogers' Zuni Cafe cookbook), slather on a spice paste and marinate for an hour, then roast.
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Then I prepped dinner in advance for Monday and Tuesday this week:
Pesce alla ghiotta, from Two Kitchens by Rachel Roddy, page 252.
Her recipes are in metric, which isn't a big deal to me considering that I can convert easily but it might be a challenge for others.
Quantities listed below are what I used tonight and differ slightly from the book:1 onion
3 celery stalks, with leaves
790 g crushed tomatoes
3 g granulated sugar
30 g capers packed in salt, rinsed
60 g green olives
4 rock cod fillets
salt
freshly ground black pepper-
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Mussakhan, from "Zaitoun" by Yasmin Khan, page 179.
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I subscribe to the Chronicle and the no-stars thing feels like a cop-out to me. We'll see how long it lasts.
Every review is a judgment made by the author regardless of the metrics used in the assessment, and "we're not using stars" is kind of ironic given that she's being paid to provide her informed opinion.
You'll probably want to read Corey Lee (Benu) on IG:
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Yeah. Well, when I click on the link, nothing shows on my screen.
Anyway, that photo is from Yasmin's cookbook. It's on page 56.
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Thanks!
That link doesn't show anything though.
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It doesn't look like the SF Chronicle's new restaurant critic likes Chez Panisse.
QuoteChez Panisse’s simple, source-based approach, and the rotating menu that comes along with it, revealed its drawbacks. Asking servers about the actual dishes, rather than the process, sometimes turned out to be a frustrating exercise. This was especially true in the upstairs cafe, where the a la carte menu forces decisions. When asked about the fried sole entree ($37) on one night, our server told us it was fried, with dressed radicchio, fingerling potatoes and Meyer lemon mayonnaise —which I had just read on the menu. It would have been really nice to know beforehand that the potatoes had been cooked in vinegar, resulting in a dish that was just salt, acid, acid, acid.
That lack of context comes off as off-putting because, as I understand it, one of the tenets of Waters’ take on the farm-to-table philosophy is that knowing where and who your food comes from will lead you to more delicious and pleasurable eating experiences. So what do you do when you know where your potatoes come from and they’re bad? The food, as I’ve experienced it, rarely proves the concept.
Other dishes were also sadly uneven. That wood oven-braised chicken was packed with competing and interesting flavors, while a cardoon soup ($12) failed to produce much of an impression beyond the feeling that we’d just licked a cardoon stalk. The cafe’s rotating house-made pasta ($23) is often the only vegetarian entree available, a fact made more unfortunate by its lack of flavor. I overheard a server advise an adjacent table to order any dessert “with a name in front of it,” since they tend to be house favorites, so on my next visit I ordered accordingly. I was surprised, then, to find that “Lindsey’s bittersweet chocolate cake” ($12) came with a drizzle of caramel sauce that had crossed the dark side into acrid territory, with over-toasted hazelnuts to match. Attributing such a grody dessert to poor Lindsey felt more like incrimination than credit. The pizzettas ($24) were no joke, though: Their crackly and mottled crusts are, so far, the best I’ve had in the Bay Area. The daily offering’s toppings change every day, with the meaty versions often taking advantage of locally sourced charcuterie. A crust like that is a great platform for the revolving cast of ingredients. With this dish, their house style works well.
Or maybe, she just doesn't get it.
QuoteWhen there are so many interesting points of view that have emerged from the food world since 1971, Chez Panisse’s approach comes off as stale. I get that the whole premise of Chez Panisse is that simple presentation and purity of ingredients constitute a more meaningful way to eat, but that lack of ambition on the menu feels more like a bug than a feature, especially considering the unevenness of the dishes I had there on these visits.
The reason why I love the restaurant is precisely because of the simplicity of its food and the lack of ambition.
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Asparagus with eggs and Palestinian za'atar
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We had lunch here today and as usual, a wonderful time was had by all.
Fried oysters, cabbage, tartar sauce
Miso black cod with cucumber pickles
Silken tofu with pickled wasabi leaf and salmon roe
Squid with Japanese mustard spinach and turnips in a mustard-miso sauce
Mabodofu-don (spicy tofu with minced pork over Japanese rice).
At right is a bowl of miso soup with shimeji mushrooms and razor clams. At top left are pickled watermelon radish and pickled carrots.
Same lunch set along with a bowl of katsu-don (fried chicken with egg and sweet dashi over Japanese rice).
Hōjicha panna cotta, served with a miniature pitcher of hōjicha syrup and sesame cookies.
Hōjicha is a Japanese green tea and is distinctive from other Japanese green teas because it is roasted in a porcelain pot over charcoal, whereas most Japanese teas are steamed.
Total bill came out to $120 for two people. Very reasonable for the quality of food served.
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Tonight was vegan night at Casa TrelayneNYC and I'm snacking on some chilled diced pineapple as I type this...
The first two pictures are approx. 1 kg of wild and cultivated mushrooms. The first bowl contains black pearl oyster mushrooms and baby shiitake mushrooms, and the bowl in the bottom picture has yellowfoot chanterelle mushrooms.
Clockwise from bottom left: porcini broth; yellowfoot mushrooms; baby shiitake mushrooms; black pearl oyster mushrooms; thyme leaves; red pepper flakes; sage leaves; flour; tomato paste; garlic paste (3 garlic cloves, smashed and pounded into a paste in a mortar and pestle along with a pinch of salt); diced onion; olive oil.
The porcini broth consists of 10 g dried porcini mushrooms combined with 150 g diced onion, 100 g diced celery, 60 g diced carrots, 1 bay leaf and 710 ml water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes. Strain liquid into a small saucepot and keep on another burner, on low heat.
You can smash the garlic cloves into a paste using the tines of a fork, or pound them in a mortar and pestle.
It'll become something like this after a few minutes.
Porcini broth. Leave this unseasoned since you'll be using it later on.
Warm olive oil in a pan, then fry onions until browned. Season with salt and pepper, then transfer onions to a small bowl.
Add mushrooms to the pan. Cook until the mushrooms begin to exude some liquid. Eventually they'll reabsorb the juices and begin to brown. At that point, add the garlic paste and herbs to the pan. Stir them in and cook for a minute. Reduce heat to medium.
Add the onions back to the pan.
Stir in the tomato paste. Fry for a minute, then stir in the flour.
Cook for one more minute, then add in the porcini broth, a ladleful at a time. Cook until ragu reaches your desired consistency. Taste for salt and pepper, stir in some chopped parsley, then serve at once.
Curly endive salad with orange and oil-cured black olives
Wild mushroom ragù, served over pearl barley and pigeon peas-
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If you're a vegetarian, you're probably going to want to skip this post.
Every year, B and I invite our friends over for a dinner party the night the Oscars are held. This year, I decided to make pernil asado, inspired by a lunch I had at my firm's offices in Silicon Valley. That meal was so delicious that I *had* to learn how to replicate it at home.
Pernil asado con mojo
Arroz con gandules
Green salad, house vinaigrette
Sugar-free deep dark chocolate ice cream
Blackberry-lime pie, whipped creamThe ice cream was homemade and the pie from Whole Paycheck. (I decided to take a break from baking this weekend.)
The sofrito for the arroz con gandules (for non-Spanish speakers, that's rice with pigeon peas) was decidedly non-traditional.
Clockwise from left: minced onion; minced onion and garlic; minced green pepper; minced cilantro; minced celery. Not shown is 1 tablespoon lard melting in a pan.
I ultimately decided to omit the cilantro in the sofrito. Essentially you're sweating the vegetables until they've softened, a process that will take about 20-25 minutes. Salt and pepper at the end.
710 ml chicken stock
85 g minced cilantro
120 g sofrito
a pinch of saffron
14 g dried oregano
822 g canned pigeon peas
1 large onion, chopped
120 g pitted green and black olives
85 g bacon, diced
30 g tomato paste
350 g riceYou can view the recipe here, and the above ingredient list has changed a bit from the original but the process is the same: https://www.saveur.com/…/Arroz-con-Gandules-Rice-and-Pigeon…
Not shown is a Dutch oven with 1 tbsp. (12 g) lard which I substituted for the canola oil in the Saveur recipe.
This is about 12 lbs. (a little over 5.5 kg) pork shoulder with skin and bone. We roasted it at 200 F(93 C) for 11 hours.
To go along with this, we made some mojo:
28 g dried oregano
28 g ground cumin
60 garlic cloves, chopped
940 ml orange juice
940 ml lime juice
salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
We're definitely making it again. For sure.
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Scarola affogata on the side. Better known as braised escarole.
3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, crushed and peeled
1/2 kg escarole, washed, trimmed and coarsely chopped
a generous pinch of salt
a generous pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
Warm olive oil in a pot or Dutch oven, add garlic and fry garlic over medium heat until browned.
The escarole is added raw to the pot, seasoned with salt and red pepper flakes, then covered and braised for 10-15 minutes or until tender.
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Dinner - The Polyphonic Food Blog
in Shopping and Cooking
Posted
Pollo alla cacciatora
Pere al forno con marsala e cannella
This version of chicken cacciatore doesn't contain tomatoes and is adapted from a recipe originally from Taverna Volpetti (Via Alessandro Volta, 8, 00153 Rome, Italy; tel.: +39 06 574 4306)