It was, verifiably, a complete and total kitchen disaster. Food wise, that is, I didn't burn anything down or something like that. And the sad thing is, I had an opportunity to cut my losses at one point, but I kept pushing on, I kept telling myself, better press on. (willy wonka, anyone?)
It all started because Jeff was operating, not on a person, but on computers, or something. I'm still not sure I know what he's doing when he's "operating," all I know is that it's boring for me and we don't get to go have fun. So I decided since I was stuck not having fun, I should make something exciting for dinner. Something that would keep me occupied in the kitchen for awhile and something I haven't made in awhile and something that wouldn't be in the oven for like 3 hours (since it was so humid).
So I browsed recipes for awhile until I decided that I would make homemade pasta. yum! it's not usually that hard, and always tastes delicious. I found a recipe for ravioli that sounded great, and not too hard (the filling/sauce that is), and went to the store to pick up a few ingredients I needed.
I came back and got ready to rock in the kitchen. I had to decide between two recipes, one, which made more dough (and I kind of needed a lot for the ravioli) and was the traditional method (pile of flour, with a well in the middle where the eggs go). The second, which was a smaller batch and used the food processor. I decided to go with the first, even though I KNEW I always seem to have trouble with the flour/egg/well method. I didn't care, I was sure, since I've done it several times and in the end, always worked out, I would have either learned from my mistakes by now or at least I'd be able to pull it out like I had in the past.
So I piled up my flour on my cutting board, made a well, and started dropping eggs in. Three eggs in, two to go. The fourth egg started to break the flour wall and pour down the side, so in a flash of brilliance, I decide (instead of starting to mix in the flour), to add the fifth egg. at which point, you can only imagine what happened, eggs pouring all down the sides of my flour pile, onto the board and down the cabinets. I tried quickly to mix in the flour, but that only made the egg mess move faster, down the cupboards, all over my oven mitts, and started creeping dangerously close to the espresso maker. I called Jeff in to try and help me stop the egg madness, but he was "in the middle of something" - operating I guess.
So the only thing I could think to do was to wrap both my arms around the oozing egg mess to contain it. So I literally laid down on top of the flour/egg pile and put my arms around the eggs that were pouring all over the counter. At which point, I slid the whole mess into the sink. Thank goodness for that under-mounted sink we have, makes for an easy slide.
A few expletives later, I said, well, it looks like we're ordering Indian food tonight. The reason being, I didn't have enough eggs to make another batch and have eggs for breakfast the next morning, plus after a mess like that I wasn't sure I wanted to continue. Jeff said he didn't care what we did, order food, whatever. Then he said we could go out for brunch, so if I wanted to use the rest of the eggs, that'd be ok. And I love brunch, so the idea of going out for brunch the next day gave me the motivation to try again with the dough. So this would have been my out, I could have cut my losses, ordered food for dinner and been happy. But, not wanting to quit on the ravioli, and the prospect of brunch the next day, motivated me to try try try again.
So, after throwing a bunch of egg covered things in the washing machine and hosing down my egg covered arms, I pulled out the recipe for the food processor method. 20 seconds later, I had great looking pasta dough (note to self: NEVER make it by hand again, EVER EVER).
I was rockin' now. I made the filling for the raviolis, cooled it a bit and tasted it. Delicious! dinner was going to be good, I could feel it now.
I busted out the pasta roller attachment for my mixer and started rolling out the dough. I always get impatient with this step, it seems to take forever and I need go go gadget arms because it gets so long. But I kept cutting it in half and pushing forward. I was in the zone. I laid down several pieces I finished and started filling them. One of the problems I've often had when making ravioli is that they explode in the water. So I was trying very hard to get all the air out, but in doing so, the dough was breaking and there were all these holes in them. So I kept trying to patch the holes and keep going.
I'm not sure if the dough was dry and that's why it was getting holes in it, but they were just becoming huge dough balls. ugly huge dough balls.
So I went back and for the second half of the dough I tried to not roll it out so thin, because I thought that might be the problem, and then tried filling them. but they were kind of thick and weird. so with all the patching and different thickness doughs, I had some raviolis that were huge dough balls, some that sort of looked like ravioli but were really thick and then every weird shape in between. some flat, some round, some with 6 layers of dough, some with random pasta dough pieces hanging off of them. but I kept going.
I made the sauce (butter and mushrooms) and dumped the ravioli into gently simmering water. after double the amount of time the recipes said to cook them, I took them out, and some were completely overcooked and some were raw and some had exploded. I tossed them with the butter mushroom sauce, it was an ugly nightmare. more exploded.
Jeff came into the kitchen at this point (there were more expletives) and I said, please let's just order dinner. he insisted that we eat it. especially after the five hours I had spent in the kitchen (it actually wasn't that long, but it felt like it). So I served it up and we sat down. it was not good. it was as though a five year old made us dinner out of play-dough. I guess that's not entirely true, since the filling still tasted pretty good. it just looked like a mess and I felt like a mess, it was still hot and humid and the kitchen was a total mess (I had needed to use practically every piece of equipment, several pots and pans and there was still food everywhere). Jeff ate all of his, and went back for more. I'm pretty sure he was doing it to make me feel better, since I was being a crab-apple, but I can't be sure.
I have vowed to never make my own ravioli again. I will make pasta dough for lasagna or fettuccine or something and I'll make ravioli filling and make them with won-ton wrappers or something, but the combination of the two is a complete disaster, and I am done with lying in piles of eggs on my Saturday afternoon.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
A Suburban Adventure
This one's totally unrelated to food....
Given my four day weekend, I was itching for some kind of adventure, there were enough days to lay around and enjoy being off work, but if I had too much time I knew I would either bake (and we already have four tupperwares filled with oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, and brownies, plus the pudding ice cream), or organize and re-organize the apartment.
We had been throwing around the idea of going to Target for weeks now, and brought it up again while at brunch with our friends on Saturday. they only offered us many words of encouragement, "you should totally rent a car" and "Target!?! yes!" (I may be paraphrasing, but that's pretty close). Jeff looked for cars for Saturday afternoon (at 12:30 on Saturday), but unsurprisingly, none were available. so we kind of dropped it, said we'd look again, but forgot by the time we got home.
Sunday morning I got a reminder email from one of my friends, so Jeff looked online again. there was ONE car available in the whole city and the only time it was available was from 2 - 6 pm. PERFECT. and it was a MINI COOPER! I immediately asked if it were a convertible, sadly no, but the sunroof was essentially the whole top of the car.
one afternoon trip to target in a mini coming up!
next came me AGONIZING over which target to go to. there are several in NJ, one in Queens and then bunches out further in Long Island. I had been to one in LI with a friend awhile back and it was fantastic, so I wanted to go there to make sure we had a good target experience, but it was a 45 minute drive, and we didn't want to have to rush at target if there was traffic. see the thing is, you want the target to be far enough outside the city so that its the suburbs (and you get the full suburban target experience) but not too far that it takes forever to get there. a fine line, a very fine line. so we decided on one in NJ.
there was a little apprehension over the size of the trunk, given that we were going to target and all, and the whole point is to buy everything, but I heard that the trunk is really bigger than you think it is, and with a leap of faith we piled into the car (three of us total).
rarin' to go, Jeff turns the key in the ignition, nothing. but all the lights go on in the car. it doesn't turn over, it doesn't try to turn over, but the air comes on, all the lights go on, everything except the engine. so it's not the battery, it seemed as though it was disengaged. could our target hopes come crashing down? I hoped not. Jeff was sure we were "being stupid" but got out and asked the parking attendant, who gently reminded Jeff he had to swipe his zip car card on the inside of the car to engage it. oh RIGHT! (actually, I had no idea you had to do this, but now we'll never forget). with only a few minutes lost, we set out for the suburbs.
we head out for the open highway (well, the very traffic-y west side highway) and headed to the tunnel. Also happening this weekend is Fleet Week in which Navy ships come into the piers in mid-town and you can check them out and there are sailors and such wandering around. anyway, the ships are close to the tunnel, so there's lots of people and LOTS of policemen.
having not often driven out of the city, we didn't exactly know the route, and we fell back into our normal routine where Jeff drives fast and I can't tell him where to go and then I yell that he did the wrong thing. aah, the suburbs. anyway, he ended up in the wrong lane, "wrong" because we needed to turn left to go to the tunnel and he couldn't get into the left lane because there were orange cones set up (set up with plenty of space between them so that a car, especially a mini could go between them). I said, "go through the cones" Jeff said "I can't, and there is a police man RIGHT there" (literally 15 feet in front of us). But, Jeff does it anyway.
cop looks up, and immediately starts walking to the car. he does not look happy.
"What are you doing? You want a ticket on Memorial Day? You saw me standing there and the cones, what are you doing disrespecting my cones? You're disrespecting me and my cones. The only reason I can think you did that was because you want a ticket on Memorial Day."
he took a breath and Jeff said
"No, but I can see why you think that. I'm sorry"
and he replied
"Get out of my lane!"
we got through the light and by the cop and all three of us immediately started laughing "disrespecting my cones" - did he seriously just say that?! but I would have been in HUGE trouble if Jeff would have gotten a ticket. however, it was very clear that he wasn't giving Jeff a ticket from the beginning, because he just would have asked for license and registration. but we were through the traffic, through the cop and his cones and on our way.
when we got to our exit and got off the highway, the area seemed, well, not what I had hoped for. I became very nervous that the target would not be everything that I had been imagining. but we made it inside, and it definitely met my expectations. we filled up a cart (literally filled up to the top), and headed to the checkout. we then began to worry about fitting it all in the car (especially since Jeff insisted we buy a mop). we took the cart out and just started piling the bags in, one on top of another, we kept piling until we had two bags left, which probably could have fit in the trunk too, but we had extra space in the back, so we through them back there. the mop, of course had to slide in the back and through the front two seats. but, it was pretty amazing, I'd have to say.
we headed back into the city munching on Goldfish crackers, happy suburbanites for a couple of hours.
Given my four day weekend, I was itching for some kind of adventure, there were enough days to lay around and enjoy being off work, but if I had too much time I knew I would either bake (and we already have four tupperwares filled with oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, and brownies, plus the pudding ice cream), or organize and re-organize the apartment.
We had been throwing around the idea of going to Target for weeks now, and brought it up again while at brunch with our friends on Saturday. they only offered us many words of encouragement, "you should totally rent a car" and "Target!?! yes!" (I may be paraphrasing, but that's pretty close). Jeff looked for cars for Saturday afternoon (at 12:30 on Saturday), but unsurprisingly, none were available. so we kind of dropped it, said we'd look again, but forgot by the time we got home.
Sunday morning I got a reminder email from one of my friends, so Jeff looked online again. there was ONE car available in the whole city and the only time it was available was from 2 - 6 pm. PERFECT. and it was a MINI COOPER! I immediately asked if it were a convertible, sadly no, but the sunroof was essentially the whole top of the car.
one afternoon trip to target in a mini coming up!
next came me AGONIZING over which target to go to. there are several in NJ, one in Queens and then bunches out further in Long Island. I had been to one in LI with a friend awhile back and it was fantastic, so I wanted to go there to make sure we had a good target experience, but it was a 45 minute drive, and we didn't want to have to rush at target if there was traffic. see the thing is, you want the target to be far enough outside the city so that its the suburbs (and you get the full suburban target experience) but not too far that it takes forever to get there. a fine line, a very fine line. so we decided on one in NJ.
there was a little apprehension over the size of the trunk, given that we were going to target and all, and the whole point is to buy everything, but I heard that the trunk is really bigger than you think it is, and with a leap of faith we piled into the car (three of us total).
rarin' to go, Jeff turns the key in the ignition, nothing. but all the lights go on in the car. it doesn't turn over, it doesn't try to turn over, but the air comes on, all the lights go on, everything except the engine. so it's not the battery, it seemed as though it was disengaged. could our target hopes come crashing down? I hoped not. Jeff was sure we were "being stupid" but got out and asked the parking attendant, who gently reminded Jeff he had to swipe his zip car card on the inside of the car to engage it. oh RIGHT! (actually, I had no idea you had to do this, but now we'll never forget). with only a few minutes lost, we set out for the suburbs.
we head out for the open highway (well, the very traffic-y west side highway) and headed to the tunnel. Also happening this weekend is Fleet Week in which Navy ships come into the piers in mid-town and you can check them out and there are sailors and such wandering around. anyway, the ships are close to the tunnel, so there's lots of people and LOTS of policemen.
having not often driven out of the city, we didn't exactly know the route, and we fell back into our normal routine where Jeff drives fast and I can't tell him where to go and then I yell that he did the wrong thing. aah, the suburbs. anyway, he ended up in the wrong lane, "wrong" because we needed to turn left to go to the tunnel and he couldn't get into the left lane because there were orange cones set up (set up with plenty of space between them so that a car, especially a mini could go between them). I said, "go through the cones" Jeff said "I can't, and there is a police man RIGHT there" (literally 15 feet in front of us). But, Jeff does it anyway.
cop looks up, and immediately starts walking to the car. he does not look happy.
"What are you doing? You want a ticket on Memorial Day? You saw me standing there and the cones, what are you doing disrespecting my cones? You're disrespecting me and my cones. The only reason I can think you did that was because you want a ticket on Memorial Day."
he took a breath and Jeff said
"No, but I can see why you think that. I'm sorry"
and he replied
"Get out of my lane!"
we got through the light and by the cop and all three of us immediately started laughing "disrespecting my cones" - did he seriously just say that?! but I would have been in HUGE trouble if Jeff would have gotten a ticket. however, it was very clear that he wasn't giving Jeff a ticket from the beginning, because he just would have asked for license and registration. but we were through the traffic, through the cop and his cones and on our way.
when we got to our exit and got off the highway, the area seemed, well, not what I had hoped for. I became very nervous that the target would not be everything that I had been imagining. but we made it inside, and it definitely met my expectations. we filled up a cart (literally filled up to the top), and headed to the checkout. we then began to worry about fitting it all in the car (especially since Jeff insisted we buy a mop). we took the cart out and just started piling the bags in, one on top of another, we kept piling until we had two bags left, which probably could have fit in the trunk too, but we had extra space in the back, so we through them back there. the mop, of course had to slide in the back and through the front two seats. but, it was pretty amazing, I'd have to say.
we headed back into the city munching on Goldfish crackers, happy suburbanites for a couple of hours.
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Return of the Puddin' Pop
Raise your hand if you remember the frozen pudding pops. Raise your hand if you thought they were freakin' AWESOME. maybe I'm the only one with my hand in the air (or for that matter both hands in the air), but you're probably not raising your hand because you:
1. think it's silly to raise your hand while reading a blog
2. never had a pudding pop
3. don't have taste buds
Seriously people. pudding pops, or for that matter, the chocolate pudding pops, were one of the best things I remember eating when I was younger. I loved that crispy icy exterior and then the bite of the cold on your teeth, but still the soft texture as you bit into it. I used to slowly lick off all the icy exterior to get to the pudding goodness on the inside, savoring each and every lick.
So I recently re-purchased an ice cream maker (if I haven't told you the story of the first one that broke, it's a good one, but let's just say my freezer was covered in blue anti-freeze as the bowl oozed from a crack in the seam). with a new kitchen, a recent trip to Italy (and therefore a renewed obsession with gelato) and a Williams-Sonoma gift certificate, I felt it the perfect time for a new ice cream maker.
I hooked it up nearly immediately after the first bowl was frozen, and made a mediocre vanilla ice cream. I then remembered my frustration trying to make a fabulous gelato in the past, and I never quite got there without using all heavy whipping cream. I then decided to flip through the instruction manual (we were going to make margaritas, so I wanted to see if it had any hints). I stumbled upon some recipes, which all looked fairly typical until I flipped the page to "Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream." Could it be? Could it be like my cherished pudding pops? I remained very very skeptical.
Living in a "paperless" household, I threw away the manual assuming it would be online. so today I came home with my packet of instant chocolate pudding (I think it's the first time I've ever bought instant pudding) and hopped online to find the recipe. unfortunately cuisinart decided that it didn't need to post the manual online, but did have five select recipes which didn't include the pudding recipe. All I could remember was that it called for milk and a package of chocolate pudding.
so putting google to good use I searched for a chocolate pudding ice cream recipe. unfortunately I came up with junk. a lot of extra sugar, eggs, and other things that I don't remember in the original. so, I decided to wing it. I didn't know how much milk to add, but since most recipes had 3 cups of some combination of milk and cream, I just put in 3 cups of milk and mixed in the pudding package. I threw it in the ice cream maker and set it to work.
20 minutes later I ventured a taste. my school days on the playground came rushing back to me immediately. success! pudding pop ice cream! and it wasn't even done churning yet. I tried to let it go longer but I kept eating it. finally, I pried myself away and put it in the freezer for a bit, but I've already probably eaten half of the batch. it is delicious. probably not perfect, but next time I'm going to freeze it in an ice cube tray for a real pudding pop like experience. and it's still unbelievable that there were 2 ingredients. TWO!
ooh, the pudding pop goodness will definitely be an obsession of mine for the time being. I may even try another pudding flavor. I don't think it'll be as good, but I've got two freezer bowls, so I can go back-to-back rounds.
so here's the recipe. I still can't believe it. I'm in pudding pop heaven:
Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream
3 cups of milk (or any combination of milk and cream)
1 package of instant pudding
whisk the pudding into cold milk. prepare ice cream according to the manufacturers instructions on your ice cream maker.
eat pudding pops and love life a little more.
1. think it's silly to raise your hand while reading a blog
2. never had a pudding pop
3. don't have taste buds
Seriously people. pudding pops, or for that matter, the chocolate pudding pops, were one of the best things I remember eating when I was younger. I loved that crispy icy exterior and then the bite of the cold on your teeth, but still the soft texture as you bit into it. I used to slowly lick off all the icy exterior to get to the pudding goodness on the inside, savoring each and every lick.
So I recently re-purchased an ice cream maker (if I haven't told you the story of the first one that broke, it's a good one, but let's just say my freezer was covered in blue anti-freeze as the bowl oozed from a crack in the seam). with a new kitchen, a recent trip to Italy (and therefore a renewed obsession with gelato) and a Williams-Sonoma gift certificate, I felt it the perfect time for a new ice cream maker.
I hooked it up nearly immediately after the first bowl was frozen, and made a mediocre vanilla ice cream. I then remembered my frustration trying to make a fabulous gelato in the past, and I never quite got there without using all heavy whipping cream. I then decided to flip through the instruction manual (we were going to make margaritas, so I wanted to see if it had any hints). I stumbled upon some recipes, which all looked fairly typical until I flipped the page to "Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream." Could it be? Could it be like my cherished pudding pops? I remained very very skeptical.
Living in a "paperless" household, I threw away the manual assuming it would be online. so today I came home with my packet of instant chocolate pudding (I think it's the first time I've ever bought instant pudding) and hopped online to find the recipe. unfortunately cuisinart decided that it didn't need to post the manual online, but did have five select recipes which didn't include the pudding recipe. All I could remember was that it called for milk and a package of chocolate pudding.
so putting google to good use I searched for a chocolate pudding ice cream recipe. unfortunately I came up with junk. a lot of extra sugar, eggs, and other things that I don't remember in the original. so, I decided to wing it. I didn't know how much milk to add, but since most recipes had 3 cups of some combination of milk and cream, I just put in 3 cups of milk and mixed in the pudding package. I threw it in the ice cream maker and set it to work.
20 minutes later I ventured a taste. my school days on the playground came rushing back to me immediately. success! pudding pop ice cream! and it wasn't even done churning yet. I tried to let it go longer but I kept eating it. finally, I pried myself away and put it in the freezer for a bit, but I've already probably eaten half of the batch. it is delicious. probably not perfect, but next time I'm going to freeze it in an ice cube tray for a real pudding pop like experience. and it's still unbelievable that there were 2 ingredients. TWO!
ooh, the pudding pop goodness will definitely be an obsession of mine for the time being. I may even try another pudding flavor. I don't think it'll be as good, but I've got two freezer bowls, so I can go back-to-back rounds.
so here's the recipe. I still can't believe it. I'm in pudding pop heaven:
Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream
3 cups of milk (or any combination of milk and cream)
1 package of instant pudding
whisk the pudding into cold milk. prepare ice cream according to the manufacturers instructions on your ice cream maker.
eat pudding pops and love life a little more.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Highlight from Birthday Eating Extravaganza: Dad likes Indian Food!
older....wiser...more tired, and VERY full. that's pretty much what it's like to be 30. oh, 30. so much to eat, and so little space.
so it all started like this:
MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWwwww.
mmeoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW
meow?
"shut up Lola"
meow?
"LOLA!"
MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow
"Happy Birthday!"
"ugh"
then Jeff gets up to shut up the cat, since it was my birthday, which entitled me to be the one staying in bed and not feeding the cat. as Jeff went out to put the smack down on Lola (i.e. fill up her bowl with delicious tuna), I realized that we didn't have any milk. no, not for the cat, but for my birthday cappuccino that Jeff had promised to make me and I was SO looking forward to. I yelled into the kitchen that we had no milk followed by "this birthday already sucks." Jeff came back into the bedroom to console me, but I was inconsolable, no milk = no coffee (well until he went to the store and bought some). and then: KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK at the door. Jeff started scrambling around, whereas I knew it had to be birthday goodness (I was expecting a package or flowers or something). but EVEN BETTER! my sister and bro-in-law. I literally jumped up and down screaming for about 10 seconds. and then my b.i.l. offered to go get me milk too...what a day it was turning into! fast forward several more hours and my parents and aunt also showed up and surprised me.
the plan (before all the visitors!) for my birthday was a whole lot of eating...starting with Peter Luger for a steak birthday lunch. oh god. steak and burgers. it's really as good as people say it is. you can order BACON as your APPETIZER. "I would like one piece of bacon before my huge piece of cow comes please." I was in heaven. I split the burger with my sister and got some of the famous porterhouse as well. all good, very very good. so very good. mmm....beef (and bacon)...mmmm....
so after PL, we were meeting some friends for dinner at a smallish italian "small plates" place. italian tapas in a way. it was family style and I picked it because they had all sorts of panini. the food was great, so was the wine and the friends and family, but the best part of the night came when they brought the cake out.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAUREN"
said the cake.
so, you may have noticed, my name is not spelled in the typical way. so Jeff was very very careful when he told them how to spell it. In fact (apparently), the guy on the phone at the bakery said "with a 'C', as in 'cat'" - to which Jeff answered in the affirmative. so, we were both kind of confused and made the waiter go back and make sure it was my cake (perhaps, we thought, someone else named Lauren was not going to get her cake). and the waiter went back and brought out the receipt "Jess Cox" ordered the cake. well, if I'm Lauren then I guess it makes sense that Jeff is Jess. my friend took some awesome pictures of my face and Jeff trying to explain to me what happened. If I can find the pics, I'll post them at the end of this entry.
overall, though it was a great day. but the weekend of eating was not over yet. Saturday we had reservations at Picholine. a "jacket required" restaurant. as we were getting dressed (correction, as I was getting dressed and everyone else was lying around, which was fine for everyone but Jeff cause they all had picked out what they were going to wear except him), and it got closer and closer until the time we had to leave, Jeff finally asked me what he should wear. Given that I was at t-5 minutes, I obviously couldn't think about his outfit. I said "a jacket" he said "jeans?" and I said "sure" - he totally didn't believe me, but my argument was that it didn't say you needed a suit, you just needed a jacket. so he got all fancified on the top half and wore jeans on the bottom half. I thought it was cool, in fact, later I said to Jeff that I loved his attitude towards the restaurant, I think what I actually said was that I loved that he went into the restaurant and "was like, whatever dudes, I'm wearing my jeans." of course, they didn't say anything to him. after all, he was still wearing a jacket.
the food, I thought, was really quite amazing. but what I really liked was that it was a fixed price menu, but priced by the number of courses you got. but you could order two appetizers or two main courses or three desserts or two entrees and one dessert or one appetizer and one dessert and so on and so forth. they would appropriately size your appetizer course as such...so I ended up ordering two entrees, but they made my appetizer "entree" small. I loved that. I ordered scallops as my appetizer, which were good, but not nearly as good as the mushroom risotto that I hijacked from my aunt. it was salty and creamy and delicious. so very delicious. but my main course was out of this world. chicken "kiev" - in quotes because instead of butter pouring out when you cut into it, molten foie gras came oozing out. pure heaven. I can't say I've ever had a better chicken dish. of course, the best part of the evening came when I ordered my dessert course and they brought me a 2nd dessert (for my birthday). and no, I didn't share, despite having two ENTIRE dessert courses in front of me (and they didn't make one of them smaller to be an "appetizer" dessert course). however, I didn't manage to finish both. I actually ended up liking the "bonus birthday" dessert better than the one I ordered. the bonus one was brioche thing, kind of like a mini loaf of brioche (very mini) battered and cooked, like french toast. I don't know exactly, but it was delicious. the dessert I actually ordered was a peanut butter souffle with banana ice cream. it needed chocolate...it was far to peanut buttery.
but really...the highlight of the food weekend came on Sunday. my parents were staying with us Sunday night, and everyone else had left in the early afternoon for their flights. I announced to Jeff and my parents that we would be ordering Indian for dinner. I then turned to my dad and told him he would be having leftover pizza or PL steak. he was cool with that...I was cool with that, but Jeff insisted that we order my dad some chicken tikka masala. everyone knows my dad is not the adventurous eater that I am (huge understatement). I mean, I guess I always thought he'd like it, but we could never get him to try it.
alas, the food arrived and Jeff prepared my dad's plate for him. some rice mixed in with his tikka masala, a somosa on the side and a huge hunk of nan. apparently, he'll try food that Jeff "prepares" for him. we all dug in to our dinners and kind of forgot about dad, until suddenly I realized that he was not complaining...and his food was half eaten. and right about then he announced "not bad...not bad at all. It's like tomato soup, but with chicken and rice." ha! I mean, the chicken tikka masala that we get from our takeout place is not spicy at all, so that helps a lot. Plus, I put a huge dollop of plain yogurt on his, which he loves, so that also helped. incredible. but now we know, we have to have Jeff convince dad to try things and make it all "dad-like" for him and familiar. the possibilities are now endless! it's totally going to be ethiopian the next time he comes.
so, who knew? I really CAN be surprised...PL really IS amazing (it's the aging!), no matter how many times you see you're name spelled wrong, there's always a new version, 2 desserts are better than one (and you don't need fancy pants when it's "jacket required") AND dad likes Indian food! what a birthday weekend!
PS - if my name was spelled wrong on my cake, does that mean it wasn't actually my birthday and I'm not really a year older? I think the answer to that question is most definitely, yes. :)
so it all started like this:
MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWwwww.
mmeoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW
meow?
"shut up Lola"
meow?
"LOLA!"
MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow
"Happy Birthday!"
"ugh"
then Jeff gets up to shut up the cat, since it was my birthday, which entitled me to be the one staying in bed and not feeding the cat. as Jeff went out to put the smack down on Lola (i.e. fill up her bowl with delicious tuna), I realized that we didn't have any milk. no, not for the cat, but for my birthday cappuccino that Jeff had promised to make me and I was SO looking forward to. I yelled into the kitchen that we had no milk followed by "this birthday already sucks." Jeff came back into the bedroom to console me, but I was inconsolable, no milk = no coffee (well until he went to the store and bought some). and then: KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK at the door. Jeff started scrambling around, whereas I knew it had to be birthday goodness (I was expecting a package or flowers or something). but EVEN BETTER! my sister and bro-in-law. I literally jumped up and down screaming for about 10 seconds. and then my b.i.l. offered to go get me milk too...what a day it was turning into! fast forward several more hours and my parents and aunt also showed up and surprised me.
the plan (before all the visitors!) for my birthday was a whole lot of eating...starting with Peter Luger for a steak birthday lunch. oh god. steak and burgers. it's really as good as people say it is. you can order BACON as your APPETIZER. "I would like one piece of bacon before my huge piece of cow comes please." I was in heaven. I split the burger with my sister and got some of the famous porterhouse as well. all good, very very good. so very good. mmm....beef (and bacon)...mmmm....
so after PL, we were meeting some friends for dinner at a smallish italian "small plates" place. italian tapas in a way. it was family style and I picked it because they had all sorts of panini. the food was great, so was the wine and the friends and family, but the best part of the night came when they brought the cake out.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAUREN"
said the cake.
so, you may have noticed, my name is not spelled in the typical way. so Jeff was very very careful when he told them how to spell it. In fact (apparently), the guy on the phone at the bakery said "with a 'C', as in 'cat'" - to which Jeff answered in the affirmative. so, we were both kind of confused and made the waiter go back and make sure it was my cake (perhaps, we thought, someone else named Lauren was not going to get her cake). and the waiter went back and brought out the receipt "Jess Cox" ordered the cake. well, if I'm Lauren then I guess it makes sense that Jeff is Jess. my friend took some awesome pictures of my face and Jeff trying to explain to me what happened. If I can find the pics, I'll post them at the end of this entry.
overall, though it was a great day. but the weekend of eating was not over yet. Saturday we had reservations at Picholine. a "jacket required" restaurant. as we were getting dressed (correction, as I was getting dressed and everyone else was lying around, which was fine for everyone but Jeff cause they all had picked out what they were going to wear except him), and it got closer and closer until the time we had to leave, Jeff finally asked me what he should wear. Given that I was at t-5 minutes, I obviously couldn't think about his outfit. I said "a jacket" he said "jeans?" and I said "sure" - he totally didn't believe me, but my argument was that it didn't say you needed a suit, you just needed a jacket. so he got all fancified on the top half and wore jeans on the bottom half. I thought it was cool, in fact, later I said to Jeff that I loved his attitude towards the restaurant, I think what I actually said was that I loved that he went into the restaurant and "was like, whatever dudes, I'm wearing my jeans." of course, they didn't say anything to him. after all, he was still wearing a jacket.
the food, I thought, was really quite amazing. but what I really liked was that it was a fixed price menu, but priced by the number of courses you got. but you could order two appetizers or two main courses or three desserts or two entrees and one dessert or one appetizer and one dessert and so on and so forth. they would appropriately size your appetizer course as such...so I ended up ordering two entrees, but they made my appetizer "entree" small. I loved that. I ordered scallops as my appetizer, which were good, but not nearly as good as the mushroom risotto that I hijacked from my aunt. it was salty and creamy and delicious. so very delicious. but my main course was out of this world. chicken "kiev" - in quotes because instead of butter pouring out when you cut into it, molten foie gras came oozing out. pure heaven. I can't say I've ever had a better chicken dish. of course, the best part of the evening came when I ordered my dessert course and they brought me a 2nd dessert (for my birthday). and no, I didn't share, despite having two ENTIRE dessert courses in front of me (and they didn't make one of them smaller to be an "appetizer" dessert course). however, I didn't manage to finish both. I actually ended up liking the "bonus birthday" dessert better than the one I ordered. the bonus one was brioche thing, kind of like a mini loaf of brioche (very mini) battered and cooked, like french toast. I don't know exactly, but it was delicious. the dessert I actually ordered was a peanut butter souffle with banana ice cream. it needed chocolate...it was far to peanut buttery.
but really...the highlight of the food weekend came on Sunday. my parents were staying with us Sunday night, and everyone else had left in the early afternoon for their flights. I announced to Jeff and my parents that we would be ordering Indian for dinner. I then turned to my dad and told him he would be having leftover pizza or PL steak. he was cool with that...I was cool with that, but Jeff insisted that we order my dad some chicken tikka masala. everyone knows my dad is not the adventurous eater that I am (huge understatement). I mean, I guess I always thought he'd like it, but we could never get him to try it.
alas, the food arrived and Jeff prepared my dad's plate for him. some rice mixed in with his tikka masala, a somosa on the side and a huge hunk of nan. apparently, he'll try food that Jeff "prepares" for him. we all dug in to our dinners and kind of forgot about dad, until suddenly I realized that he was not complaining...and his food was half eaten. and right about then he announced "not bad...not bad at all. It's like tomato soup, but with chicken and rice." ha! I mean, the chicken tikka masala that we get from our takeout place is not spicy at all, so that helps a lot. Plus, I put a huge dollop of plain yogurt on his, which he loves, so that also helped. incredible. but now we know, we have to have Jeff convince dad to try things and make it all "dad-like" for him and familiar. the possibilities are now endless! it's totally going to be ethiopian the next time he comes.
so, who knew? I really CAN be surprised...PL really IS amazing (it's the aging!), no matter how many times you see you're name spelled wrong, there's always a new version, 2 desserts are better than one (and you don't need fancy pants when it's "jacket required") AND dad likes Indian food! what a birthday weekend!
PS - if my name was spelled wrong on my cake, does that mean it wasn't actually my birthday and I'm not really a year older? I think the answer to that question is most definitely, yes. :)
Thursday, March 13, 2008
No Splitting This Split
I have been reinspired to blog again. Many days and months have passed (a year even?), and I guess it's unsurprising to those who know me, that the thing to bring me back to the blog is my one true love. Ice cream that is. To be more specific, my absolute favorite the ice cream treat, the banana split. oh, how I love the banana split. There are variations that are better than others, and I've never really been a big fan of the pineapple portion of the banana split, but tonight, I had the banana split that beats all banana splits. Not only did it beat every other banana split, it KILLED every other banana split. It was the home-run touchdown of banana splits.
So I've been traveling for work and have spent the last two weeks in
I went after work and settled in at the bar with a nice glass of wine. My treat dinner, I thought to myself, it being my last night here and all. I glanced over the menu, but I had studied it dutifully online and knew I wanted to order the burger. With bacon and cheese of course. And seriously, I am not a big believer in the fancy [expensive] burgers, but since this was treat night for me, I went for it. I did a little web surfing and emailing and before I knew it my burger had arrived…about three inches thick and with a sufficient pile of french fries on the side. I immediately dug into the fries and they were salted perfectly and peppered too. FINALLY. I don’t know why restaurants don’t always salt and pepper the fries, they’re SO much better with both. I mean, doesn’t everyone love the salt and pepper potato chips? It’s like that, but better because they’re hot and wonderful. Anyway, I managed to get my mouth around the huge burger and in no time I was half through it. Tender, juicy, and just delicious. Totally worth the $20 I was paying for it.
But this is a blog about the banana split…so we’ll move quickly onto that portion of the meal. I did eat the entire burger and left three fry crunchies on the plate, and was feeling full, but since the burger was so good, I figured the banana split had to be good, and really, how could I not order it? I really didn’t have a choice in the matter, the decision was completely out of my hands. Before I knew it I was ordering it. It seemed that the banana split took at least twice as long to arrive as the burger did, but perhaps that’s because I was so looking forward to it. Despite my clear excitement for the split, I really didn’t think it was going to be so good. I mean, I figured it would be good, but I had no expectation that it would be the best banana split ever. And I’m serious, best ever.
So the banana split arrived and my eyes must have grown to the size of the ice cream scoops; it was served up on an old school tv dinner type plate (you know the one, with four divisions, three small portions and one big one). The banana was served up in the main part of the plate (don’t worry, now that Jeff made me get that fancy phone, I take pictures), and it was snuggled between a pool of chocolate and a pool of caramel (for the record, I don’t like caramel). The banana was sliced in half lengthwise and covered with the following:
- whipped cream
- strawberry and chocolate sauce (duh)
- crispy chocolate bits
- freeze dried pineapple (they FINALLY solved the gross pineapple problem)
- and just a nice sprinkling of chopped pistachios
The three ice cream flavors were: chocolate, strawberry (sorbet though, more about this in a minute), and caramel. I started with the chocolate ice cream (traditional choice for me, obviously) a bit of chocolate ice cream and a bit of banana (with all the banana fixins’) on one spoon. What surprised me immediately was the creaminess of the ice cream, I swear that the ice cream was made only out of heavy cream and chocolate. The banana with all the nibbly bits provided just the right amount of crunch, sweet, sour (from the freeze dried pineapple), creamy and good good goodness. I immediately ate about 5 bites in a row without thinking…I had to try every combination, chocolate ice cream with the caramel sauce, caramel ice cream with the chocolate sauce and so on and so forth. And despite my strong dislike of caramel, I found it not so sweet and just right with the banana and the rest of the deliciousness. I usually hate caramel because it oozes with gooey sweetness, which to me, is the mark of a bad dessert, if you have to cover the flavor with gooey sweet then it is just not good. But both the caramel sauce and caramel ice cream were LOADED with cream, so it was not so sweet at all.
So we now come to the strawberry sorbet. I had avoided it….I was so terribly disappointed when I first realized it was sorbet (sorbet is for cleansing your palate it is NOT a dessert…do you hear me Jeff? not a dessert). So when the rest of the split was so good, I had to give the strawberry a try. I reluctantly put my spoon in but only put a mere dab on the end of the spoon and filled up the rest with the banana goodies. But I took a bite and realized, this may be what all good banana splits were missing, it was SO refreshing with the rest of the dense creamy split. It was like an even better strawberry sauce. and I didn’t have faith, even after all the good food I had eaten.
this was the point in the split in which I had take a huge breath and I realized that my stomach was about to explode. I hade made it through about half the chocolate scoop (each scoop was probably about 10 oz of ice cream), half the caramel and a third of the strawberry (I know! but the strawberry came to the party too late in the game for me to get through that much of it).
I had about two bites left of the banana (in addition to the ice cream), and I realized I could not go on (so unlike me, one of my friends has already commented). Despite it being my celebratory night, I was not going to make myself sick (I have only once made myself sick from eating too much….aah, pound cake….and I still love it), so I threw in the napkin. but by that time I had already convinced the woman sitting next to me that she too must order the banana split.
Perhaps the joy also came from the fact that it was 60 + degrees here today, so I had that spring feeling in my step. PLUS, when I was younger spring meant the DQ, and that was my first experience with the banana split. but I’d have to say that 99% of the goodness in today’s banana split was from the fantabulousness of it, and maybe 1% could be attributed to the nostalgia. Regardless, this means that spring is here, ice cream season is officially upon us and there will be many many more banana splits for me this summer.
Even if I had gone to this restaurant with others, I would have not split this split.
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