Spring Mid-Terms (or How Baked Ziti with Meatballs Saved My Life)

This is my first year in New York.

Many view their first year in New York as a test. For me, it's Spring Mid-Term season. Well, if you can call this Spring. I would call it 'Second Winter', but I'm a desert kid.

For those of you not perched on our spectacular little island (archipelago?), let me let you in on a little secret: it has rained for six days straight. I've been told not to complain about the weather in New York. I've been reminded by benevolent forces that what I'm noticing is that New York actually HAS weather, unlike the sometimes subtly dampened climate of my youth. So, I'm learning to actually use an umbrella. And to recognize hot pink Wellies as a legitimate fashion decision.

Despite all of these positive steps in the right direction, sometimes, when you work in Midtown and have to wear fancy clothes no matter what the weather outside is like, you need a little extra help staying positive. Here's where Papa Perrone comes in.

Folks, I give you... LUNCH.



I apologize for the quality of this photo (aren't blurry photos what food blogs are all about?), but I had to take it with my phone, quickly, before I shoved the rest of it down my gullet.

This hulking behemoth of a lunch plate, baked ziti with homemade meatballs, tops out at $8.50. In a neighborhood where you can hardly get a cup of soup for under $10, Papa Perrone is truly a hero. He parks his large, extremely well-equipped food truck right around the corner from my office, on 55th between Madison and Park.

Guys, take another look at this, I'm not kidding:



Some people turn their noses up at food from carts/trucks. Stupid people. Who hate their taste buds and love to waste money. Papa Perrone's truck has a longer line trailing from it every time I go, with good reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'll eat a sandwich from Pret on an off-day as well, but there's no way it could ever compare to lunch from this man, for a few reasons: This man is about taste, generosity, an un-flinching love of perfect marinara and a general air of good-naturedness every time I see him. Also, he will put anything on garlic bread.

Sometimes, when it's really miserable outside, it's so nice to know that there's someone out there who loves your stomach as much as it needs to be loved. That someone is Papa Perrone.



Papa Perrone's
55th btw Madison & Park
917-880-1432
www.papaperrone.com

Enjoying Fiscal Responsibility: Eating at Home

Times are tough for everyone. Poor kids in Brooklyn being no exception. And, as my dear friend Dr. Booze once exclaimed, "My tasting menus don't pay for THEMSELVES."

With that in mind, my Sidekick and I have been eating at home with much more frequent regularity. This isn't really anything new as we both love to cook as much as we love to eat. It has, however, made us think more than we ever have about curbing our spending, especially on groceries. Lucky for us, I was raised in a house where budgeting was NEVER synonymous with eating things like Hamburger Helper. My parents lovingly instilled within me the ability and desire to use humble ingredients to delicious, fresh and noble ends.

So, we've started to think about each meal in terms of how we can stretch our hard-earned dollars. We've stopped letting basic ingredients like eggs, cheese, bread and milk sit around in our fridge to die a slow, lonely death.

Breakfast is an excellent place to start. I'm in a diner phase, which means I crave a hearty breakfast around 11:30 every weekend morning. My Sidekick and I pulled together this bagel sandwich with eggs, some speck and aged provolone from snacks the night before, and a fruit salad of bananas, Granny Smith apples, a tangerine, topped with a bit of mascarpone (left over from a pasta sauce a few nights before), drizzled with cinnamon and honey.



Toad in the Hole (or eggs in a basket, as I grew up with them) are one of my Sidekick's go-to breakfasts. I love this breakfast, but always feeling like it's missing one element.

DUH, cheese.

It's obvious that I'm a grilled cheese fanatic. I would eat it every day if I had my choice. I've also hatched a theory that most of my favorite meals are just a variation on a grilled cheese sandwich. Bagels and cream cheese, quesadillas, cheeseburgers, pizza, all just different forms of the same unbelievably wonderful idea. Bread, cheese, other stuff, heat.



With that in mind, I've started tinkering with Grilled Cheese Toad in the Hole. The first one I made (above) looked awesome in the pan. But the hole was so much deeper than in a normal piece of toast, that the egg couldn't spread out to cook evenly.

In subsequent versions I've made my signature Drunk-In-College grilled cheese and cut a much larger hole in the finished product. I then return it to the pan, drop a little nubbin of butter in the cut-out, and pour in an egg (seasoned with a bit of sea salt and some chives, this really becomes something to be proud of). The heat of the pan is important, I've discovered. If it's too hot, your egg starts to freak out, and becomes a mix of big craters and crunchy brown edges. Keeping the heat lower means that the whites have more time to set, while you keep your yolk nice and runny for dipping purposes.



I'll continue to mess with this and report back.

Extending this buy-cheap-eat-famously philosophy to dinner, we've been eating a lot of root vegetables, especially beets. Beets are awesome for so many reasons. They make everything pretty, taste delicious, are so easy to cook a monkey could do it and top out at $2.50 a bunch. It took me a little while to win my Sidekick over to beets. Anyone forced to eat nothing but pickled pink disks from a can in their childhood will obviously have some reservations. Now, he's a beet fiend.

Our cheap and quick Valentine's Day dinner? Roasted beet and goat cheese risotto, with a salad of roasted shitake mushrooms, sticky-sweet cubes of rosemary roasted parsnip, watercress and a roasted garlic vinaigrette.



The next night, we had some leftover beets and beet greens. This led us to a garlic and mustard rubbed flank steak with creamy horseradish beets and sauteed greens.



With stuff this dirt cheap and pretty, who could ever eat tuna-noodle casserole again?

Let's Play Catsup.

Oh, hi.

After being sufficiently ball-busted by my uncle (Mitch of Tasty Travails), my aunt (his Significant Eater) and my trusty Sidekick for not updating this mother, I've finally caved and will now fill you in on some delectable details. And you will, in turn, forgive me for my weeks of laziness/having a job.

Stomach Grumbles are GOOOO....

Let's start on some weekend day in the past. My Sidekick and I, mildly hung-over from the night before, dragged ourselves out of bed for our (semi) weekly bocce match at Floyd with our compatriots on If You Want My Bocce. The magical thing about Floyd is that it sits directly next to the second location of Brooklyn's Chip Shop.

I'm incredibly pleased to see that England's bad rap as having terrible food is quickly being beaten to death with a club. In fact, I credit the time I spent in England to really putting the nail in the coffin for my food obsession. If you've ever lived in a place where you have HP Sauce on every table, London Pride flowing from every tap and some of the greatest grocery stores in the universe, you'll understand.



I've come to think of this day as one where HP Sauce followed me nearly everywhere. Never a bad thing. What you see above is a Full English Breakfast. Or, as it is affectionately known at the Chip Shop when paired with a cup of coffee and a mimosa, The Hangover Special. And let me tell you, it really does have miraculous properties.

This breakfast led us to our first bocce win this season. Coincidence?

After plenty of beer in the middle of the afternoon (I heart Saturday), my sidekick and I made the decision to go see a certain crappy horror film in 3D, down near Prospect Park.

With a little time to kill, and grumbles in our stomachs (we're truly incorrigible, folks), we stumbled upon a Windsor Terrace gem from the DUB Pies folks (stands for Down Under Bakery), The Pie Shop. This is a tiny storefront cafe, with three two-top tables pushing max capacity. Their menu is written on a huge chalkboard wall, and consists nearly entirely of Australian/New Zealand style pies. Meat pies, fruit pies, veg pies. They also have a few soups on the menu, which are NOT to be missed.



My sidekick and I shared a steak and mushroom pie, and each got our own cups of the potato dill soup. If you go to Dub Pies and are lucky enough to have potato dill soup as an option, I urge you, I insist, ORDER A BOWL. A cup will never be enough of this perfectly seasoned, piping hot concoction. Although, should you ignore me and need a second cup after realizing your mistake, I'm sure that the phenomenally friendly staff would be happy to assist you. You'll be dead to me, however.



Clearly I'm biased, as soup is my favorite genre of food, but I can not think of enough praise for this stuff.

With a little extra time between HP Sauce's latest appearance in our lives and the movie we were about to expose our brains to, we decided to make one last stop on 7th Ave at Beer Table. This, another tiny storefront temple to booze and grub, is truly a place for people who love beer like some people love a fine wine. Their beer list is extremely intimidating, both intellectually and economically (the bottled beer list tops out at $110, no kidding), so my Sidekick and I stuck to a Long Island porter that was on special.



Paired with a bowl of fiery, citrusy picholines, a fresh baguette and tangy, piquant, house-made beer cheese, we were fortified against the cold, and just drunk enough to see a hilariously stupid movie in a theater full of screaming teenagers.



Also, apparently drunk enough to have documented my 3D glasses. Yikes!


Chip Shop
129 Atlantic Ave
(between Clinton St & Henry St)
Brooklyn, NY 11201

DUB Pies: The Pie Shop
211 Prospect Park West
(corner of 16th St)
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Beer Table
427 B 7th Avenue
(Btwn 14th & 15th Sts)
Brooklyn, NY 11215

A Coffee Phenomenon

I'm sheepish.

I know I owe three or four posts of epic structure and meaning.

But I can't give you that right now.

What I can give you is the coolest blog about coffee I've ever read. To be fair it's also about New York and all of the wonderful ticks and tocks that make this city so much fun to be a part of.

Pictures of Cristoph Neimann's Lego representations of things we all love and recognize have been surfacing everywhere I turn. Today I found out that his love/hate/need/despise relationship with coffee is something I totally identify with. Enjoy. I'm going to go make a cup immediately.

In Which I Conquer My Fear of Cold Weather for Love of My Tastebuds.

Hi kids!

It is WINTER in New York. Anyone noticed?

We all know I'm a desert kid. New Mexico gets snow, on occasion. By 'on occasion', I mean that one inch of fresh powder on the sidewalk shuts down schools and businesses city-wide. I have no idea what my fair hometown would do with the snow-rain-sleet-hail combo blanketing NYC the last three days.

But I, my friends, am determined to adapt. So, yesterday my sidekick and I decided to venture out into the 27 degree day for a little adventure. First stop: another one of Kathy's ideas.

The day we met Kathy and Mitzy at the Brooklyn Flea, she mentioned a great patisserie in Park Slope called Trois Pommes. She offhandedly mentioned that they make killer doughnuts, but only on Saturdays. This is information that I promptly forgot. However, my sidekick, failure of many a sweets-12-step-program that he is, has been pining away every weekend for a trip down 5th avenue to this fabled patisserie.

Don't ask me why yesterday, a Saturday in Brooklyn where I saw fewer people on the street than may have been out in Albuquerque after a snowstorm, was the day we decided to do so. I am, however, extremely glad that we did.

Exhibit A: Coffee and House-made Rasberry Jelly Doughnuts.



I'm back on coffee for the first time in years. And it's a good thing. Trois Pommes uses Gorilla Coffee, (a local favorite, which just so happens to live a block away from me) which I've decided is fantastic.

Exhibit B: An Extremely Pleased Sidekick.



So, with the boyfriend happy and sugar-ed, we decided to go for a little romp around Williamsburg and do a little (much procrastinated) Christmas shopping. Our plan was to kick around until afternoon for a late lunch at Fette Sau (famed Brooklyn beer bar Spuyten Duyvil's BBQ brainchild), as we've heard raves about it and are both meat fans, in general. I mean, pork is important. Disagreement with that statement baffles me.

However, much to our and our frost-bitten noses displeasure, we discovered that Fette Sau is dinner only. They open at 5pm to dispell their carnivorous gospel, and not before.

Instead, by very, very happy accident, we wandered into a diner. Well, not A diner, rather, a joint simply called 'Diner' at the corner of Broadway and Berry. Now, rumor has it, this mildly renovated 1920's dining car once held an actual greasy spoon.

I thank whichever restaurant god bestowed it's latest incarnation upon us.



It is a tiny, cramped, possibly architecturally unstable hovel. Which, if you know anything about me, you know appealed to me instantly. The menu, which I would guess changes daily, comes to you hand-written on a piece of cash register receipt. These are market-influenced offerings. You can just tell. That being said, it is a BARGAIN. Not ridiculously cheap by normal diner standards, but this is FAR from a normal diner.

Exhibit A: Sidekick's Sausage 'Sammy' (their words, not mine).



Soft, butter-griddled bun. Like the best bulky roll you've ever tasted. If they're not house-made, they get them from somewhere VERY close. Perfectly seasoned, home made sausage patty (I tasted rosemary). Two, perfectly over easy eggs. Runny yolks, tender-but-set whites. House-pickled onions (are you noticing a pattern here?). So simple, so perfect.

Exhibit B: My 'Market Salad'.



House-made buttermilk dressing (I am a fan of the newest Ranch come-back). Herby, leafy salad with chives, green onions and radishes. BACON LARDONS. And the most perfect (while maybe not traditional) Scotch Egg that's ever existed. Allow me to expand upon this (as if you have any choice):

I think Scotch Eggs are gross. They're usually a pretty stodgy amalgamation of hard-boiled egg, greasy sausage, stale bread crumbs, fried to death.

Diner's Scotch Egg defies physics. In order to... Scotch an egg (?), it has to be boiled first, at LEAST soft-boiled, so that you can shell it and add the crispy coating. It is then cooked again. The yolk inside that Scotch Egg is RUNNY. What does this mean?

This means that Diner has cooked an egg TWICE better than most mortals could cook an egg ONCE. And for that, I salute them. I believe the egg was missing the requisite sausage component, but aside from that it was a Scotch Egg for all others to aspire to.

Oh and GREAT coffee. Did I mention I'm back on coffee?

Happy Eidachristmahanukkwanzikah everyone!



Trois Pommes
260 5th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-230-3119

Diner
85 Broadway (Berry St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-486-3077

Employment Update: Noooooodles

Hi kids.

Ok, so, somehow I got myself an interview/audition in a kitchen in Carroll Gardens hand-pulling noodles. I know, WHAT? I think it's fate, but there's still a distinct possibility I will totally fumble it.

So everyone think good thoughts. Competent, steady-handed thoughts.

Here's what Eat It has to say: DUMPLINGS!

Eton
205 Sackett St.
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Tastebuds: "What a great weekend!"

Moving to a new city can be so stressful. You start over in so many ways. How to arrange the apartment, which spices to start re-filling cabinets with first, how on earth you'll ever find a job, which neighborhood spots are worth becoming a regular at... The possibilities are truly endless. Now move to Brooklyn and multiply those possibilities by 5,000.

We moved in on Saturday and everyone kept saying, 'How excited are YOU?'. And for some reason, I just couldn't muster up more than a half-honest, 'Soooo excited'. We found a great apartment, with an even better roommate, in an amazing part of Brooklyn that's convenient to everything, and I couldn't even find the energy to elaborate? To be honest, I was overwhelmed. I've wanted to live in New York since I was old enough to decide such things, which my sidekick and I determined last week was... about five or six.

It's like Chanukah (insert Christmas, Goyem); I'd wait and wait and wait for one specific present EVERY year, let's call it 'Hot Shots Basketball'. And every year I'd tear through my presents hoping for that ONE present to be unveiled. But every year my parents saved it till last, hidden away under their bed or something, just to see me squirm. They'd bring it out in this triumphant 'We got you' moment at the very end of the night, but by then I'd worked up so much agita about not getting it that I was exhausted! This is kind of how I felt about New York last week.

Now, let me be clear, this is not New York's fault. New York is wonderful and I love her. It's not you, New York, it's me. But don't worry, I don't want to break up. I still believe in us. Even more after this weekend. And New York, you and I have my tastebuds to thank for this...

Well, to be more specific, New York, my tastebuds and my loyal and supportive sidekick have another person to thank. Her name is Kathy.

Kathy writes a blog called 'A Passion for Food', which I was introduced to by a certain benevolent-food-and-booze-appreciating uncle, and I'm beginning to suspect that Kathy's tastebuds and my tastebuds have an awful lot in common.



This is a bowl of beef noodle soup. The beef, probably neck-meat, but 'parts' to be sure. The soup, a salty, murky, oily broth of dubious origin that achieves that perfect, blissful state of umami. But the noodles are the real star.

They're hand pulled.

The phrase itself really doesn't do the process justice. Here's what happens: When you walk into Lan Zhou Handmade Noodles at 144 E. Broadway -- if you are lucky enough to have someone clue you in on what this magical address holds -- you are greeted with the distinct feeling that you don't belong here unless you speak Chinese. Ignore that. It's a stupid reflex that will keep you from enjoying heaven on earth for your tastebuds.

There is a very short English menu, a noticeably larger Chinese version, an array of condiments unfamiliar to most and, in the back of the room, a man beating the truth out of a long glutinous strand of dough. When you order, this man in the back of the room interrogates the dough, slamming it down on a metal table like it owes him money. Twisting, adding flour, adding water, slamming, twisting... and then suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, the dough confesses, falling into perfectly uniform strands between this artist's hands.

My friends, we call these NOODLES.




And we call this: BLISS.

And this: SIDEKICK BLISS.

But Lan Zhou isn't quite done with us yet. There are DUMPLINGS. Doused with my new condiment of choice: Chinkiang Vinegar. Or black vinegar. Or... I don't know, mother's milk. I threatened to drink it off the plate with a straw. It sounds silly, but LOOK at the plate:



It's blurry, Mitch, I know, but you can only take so many pictures before things get cold. And that's just not in my nature. These things are piping hot, crispy and tender on the outside and filled with exactly the right ratio of pork : chive. Trust me on this, I've investigated, there's no other word for this but SEXY.

Now here's what happens when you leave the noodle bar on East Broadway: You know a secret. A very delicious, very cheap (noodle bowls max out at $4.50, I think), very share-able secret that will make people who love you only love you more. And if you're a recent New York transplant struggling with your ability to enjoy your favorite city in the world, you walk out of the noodle bar feeling warm from the soup and ready for anything. Because if you've found a place like this and enjoyed it, then my friends, you get it. You win. Your tastebuds, and possibly your sense of life-purpose will thank you. Don't thank me for this.

Thank Kathy.

It was all her idea.

Coming up next: Kathy's next contribution to my tastebuds, Parisian macarons a la Mitzy of Itzy Bitzy Patisserie. I'll let 'A Passion for Food' introduce you, as she introduced me, and in a few days, after I've devoured all dozen of them, I'll report back.


Lan Zhou Hand Made Noodles
144 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002
(212) 566-6933

Jackson, TN: I'm Staying

There has been so much to catch up on this month (another cross-country road-trip, some time in Cape Cod, New York). I'll have to backtrack a little. Specifically, to Jackson, Tennessee, where I almost decided to spend the rest of my life.

The Scene: A Waffle House. My second Waffle House, to be precise. And as promised, I had a date with Hashbrowns-All-the-Way. She showed up looking like this:



For Waffle House nubes (like me), Hashbrowns-All-the-Way are hashbrowns scattered across the grill, then smothered with onions, covered with cheese, ham, tomatoes, mushrooms and jalapenos (usually including 'house chili', which scared the bejeezus out of me, so I left off).

And let me say that the combination of total potato induced euphoria, the charming Waffle House employee banter, and our waitress (named Betty Boop; a woman with tattoos, a gold grill and possibly the cheeriest disposition of any Waffle House employee in the nation) almost made me stay in Jackson, TN.

So, while my sidekick and I hunker down in New York, frantically searching for apartments and jobs, I hold onto the idea that if we can't hack it here, maybe there's a career for me in a waffle house somewhere. I've always wanted a gold grill.