writer. editor. content strategist.
Chilaquiles at El Paso Taqueria
This week’s New York CHOW Report on NY1 features chilaquiles, those great Mexican hangover slayers: Sloppy fried tortillas, tomatillo salsa, cotija, crema fresca, avocados if you ask nicely– and bam! Good times.
Please click on over to see what you think of our little video– and “like” it on Facebook or YouTube or comment with feedback! Thanks, and thanks to the talented Jenny Woodward for shooting and editing.
Free-range, Cervena-certified elk chops at Henry’s End in Brooklyn Heights
This week’s New York CHOW Report, a short video segment that runs on NY1, is all about the elk chops at Henry’s End in Brooklyn Heights. Their wild game menu has been popular since the 1980s. I’ve also sampled their rabbit ravioli and turtle soup, and although I was not a huge fan of the soup, I loved the ravioli and those chops. So rustic, and so satisfying.
Check out the video if you’re curious about what elk tastes like, and thanks for watching. (The talented Jenny Woodward shot, directed and edited this piece.)
There’s a new CHOW segment running on NY1 that’s a little homage to my New York Times crossword-battling, candy-eating, Entenmann’s crumb cake-loving Pop Pop. He and my granny were wonderful to us when we were kids, but I had no love for his liverwurst habit. This week’s bit is all about my adult hypocrisy: I’m a huge, freakout fan of chicken liver mousse, and you can find out where my current favorite version of it is here.
The NY1 segments are live Tuesdays in the half hour following 8am, 11am, 1pm, 4pm, 12:30am & 1:30am, and Saturday in the half hour following 6:30pm, 8:30pm, 1:30am, 2:30am, and 3:30am.
Thanks for watching and hey, if you know a dish I absolutely must cover and bring to all New Yorkers, please feel free to comment here or even better on CHOW. And go, Jets! –AVB
This week’s segment for CHOW on NY1 focuses on the tasty chicken adobo at Purple Yam, a sweet little pan-Asian Filipino restaurant in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Details about my favorite dish–although it was a close race between the gorgeous lechon and the chicken adobo shown above–can be snagged by clicking here or keeping an eye on NY1 Tuesdays and Saturdays. Thanks for watching!
Everybody has a tender side.
Because it’s the holidays, and because as of 2010 I’ll have lived in this crazy town for a full decade and this realization has put me in a good mood, here’s an el sensitivo shot of my friend Eric (aka “faux Joe“). He is not remotely affiliated with Trader Joe’s. He just happens to own a glorious assortment of tropical shirts and award-winning facial hair.
His visage and those carnations are my little gift to the internet. Happy holidays.
Don’t come at me with that Mega Bunch and bag of avocados, “T.J.”
6. He’s inconsistent. His saag paneer? Terrible. Chicken sausages? Gross. Organic dip chips? Terrific. But you never know what to expect from the Trader, which is like showing up to your local bar one night to find your boyfriend beaming at you with a dozen roses… and the next to find him sobbing on the shoulder of a hooker.
5. He’s pushy. You know how sometimes on a date you throw out your best impressive bit of trivia, like, “I loved Barbara Stanwyck in ‘Ball of Fire’!” and he comes back with, “Are you familiar with the rest of her early 1940s oeuvre?” The answer is no. I just threw out my one bit of awesomeness, you jackass. Checkout Joes do the same thing: They peer at your box of Flax Plus Multigrain cereal under the fluorescent lights and say, “Wow, good choice, I love this! Have you tried our enchiladas?” A staffer reveals that this sort of small talk is “encouraged,” not “enforced.” Still. Bite me, Joe.
4. He’s schizoid. Joe? José? Giotto? Ming? Seriously? Choose who you want to be in this world, man. It is a hard world, and you can’t be everyone at once. You are like that ex who paired a pearlescent button cowboy shirt (yes!) with brown leather pants (huh?) and a silver-studded black punk belt (what?!)
3. He’s cheap.
2. He overdoes it. Sometimes, man, I don’t want the whole bag of unripe avocados, not like that. Don’t tell me about your ex-fiancée or your mom issues on the first date. Sell me a single goddamn avocado.
1. He is horribly perky in the morning. When I wake up, I want coffee until the lights come on in my brain, and that is it. This is the bounce-out-of-bed guy, the “what borough are we traveling to in the next ten minutes?” guy. We hate him.
One morning I was standing in TJ’s at 8am with a $3.99 12-pack of toilet paper clutched to my chest. My bangs were on sideways and the rings under my eyes would have made a panda’s look tame. And lo was I not snapped to attention by a front-of-the-line-Joe, who shouted, “HOW’S YOUR MORNING GOING, MA’AM?” and when I moused, “Fine,” followed with, “ARE YOU OK?”
“Yup, just haven’t had my coffee yet.” He beamed. A solution! “WE HAVE FREE COFFEE RIGHT OVER THERE IF YOU WANT TO GO GET SOME.” Yes, because I am going to leave the line I have been standing in for 10 minutes to go back and get an ounce of your bad coffee in a tiny paper cup when I have Stumptown at home.
Please, Joe, please. Your tropical shirt looks great today. Someone is raising a flag in the air.
I have been working like a madwoman, thus the silence on this site, but promise you something entertaining for Thursday afternoon.
Meantime, that materialistic side I always claim I don’t have? Yeah, it’s still there. It came roaring back with a vengeance when I spied this Griffin & Sabine-esque mug & plate duo from Bailey Doesn’t Bark (via the Times). I feel that if I was able to have my morning coffee in this baby, every day would have that sort of shimmer.
Photo by the talented Ms. Jennifer Causey
So the lovely folks at Design*Sponge contacted me recently about sharing a recipe for a dish I love. I chose this mint panna cotta with strawberries balsamico, adapted from Mario Batali and Epicurious. It’s easy, it’s dead sexy, and it will impress the bejesus out of your friends. The full photo shoot is here, and my Shun santoku blade looks awesome in it. Thanks to Jenene Chesbroughfor also taking a patently ridiculous photo of yours truly.
“Mad Men” may have wrapped for the season, but 60s fashion and retro cuisine are going nowhere fast. My friends have been throwing big-eyeliner-wearing, casserole-eating parties to watch the show, and I hope that the era’s adorable dresses and rad suits stick around for a while.
If you’re not current on your granma’s cuisine, Katie Lee Joel can give you a hand. I interviewed her for the December issue of InStyle(page 390) about how to throw an awesome 60s holiday party, and can attest that her deviled eggs are among the best I’ve ever eaten. So pick up a copy (the story includes recipes!) when you have a chance; turns out Katie Lee believes in yard sales, Don Draper crushes and champagne cocktails — a gal after my own heart.
Anton Walbrook as Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes.
Do you remember your first encounter with sugar cubes, as a kid? They were magic, right? Perfectly square and glowing white, they could be stacked like Legos or popped on the tongue, one at a time, until the corners fuzzed and they broke.
In our house, sugar was nearly verboten. We’d go to friends’ homes, pull open their cabinets and gaze adoringly at bags of Oreos, like sweet-toothed, big-eyed basset hounds. So I remember quite clearly when my elder sister had to make an Egyptian pyramid. Out of sugar cubes. For class. This struck me as a project very much in need of a supervisor. I gallantly took upon the role of producer, assistant director and grip. Anyplace that pyramid was, I was, delivering structural advice and stealing as many cubes as would fit into my little pockets.
You forget about sugar cubes as an adult until you see them in some Euro-style café, and it’s so lovely when you do. (These days I use agave for my coffee since it doesn’t make my blood sugar go racing, which I learned while working on this book). But I miss the luxury of them, which is why I so appreciated an early scene in “The Red Shoes,” currently playing at Film Forum in New York. It’s a gorgeous movie — ostensibly about ballet, but really about obsession — with enough color, punch and chutzpah to make Fellini blush. Film critics are calling the new Technicolor print “sumptuous,” “delirious” and “life-changing.” For critics, they’re not mincing words. Though I’m a purely amateur filmgoer, I was for the first time in my life that obnoxious theatergoer who said, “Wow,” aloud, at a poppingly blue dress.
One of my favorite scenes was, naturally, centered around food. We’ve just met the French ballet director, Lermontov. We know he’s a snob and that he’s a man of few words, but we don’t know much more. Then we witness him calmly interviewing — in his dressing gown, natch — a tremulous undergraduate music student over his Continental breakfast.
Lermontov has his cup of black coffee in one hand, a solitary sugar cube in the other. While speaking to the student, maintaining eye contact all the while, he dips the corner of the cube into the coffee. We see it change color, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. It doesn’t burst. He delivers his final line, the student walks out, and he pops the soaked cube in his mouth, finally taking a sip of coffee. It is the height of audacity that he thought the cube would not crumble without his permission — and the best bit of foreshadowing I’ve seen in a long time.
The flick ends on November 19th. If you’re local, go see itbefore it does.
