donuts4dinner.com

Not Being Anorexic Has Really Paid Off for Me

plumpdumpling — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:00:11 +0000

I don’t mean to not mention it for a week and act like I’m unexcited, but HEY, the most famous NYC food blog ever profiled me last Tuesday:

PROFILE: Downtown Lunch’er “Katie”

Please ignore the quotation marks around my name (that really is my name!) and the fact that the answer about my occupation became nonsensical when I tried some fancy hyperlinking that got edited out. My love of proofreading really makes me an unbearable person, right?

Thanks, Midtown Lunch! I love you best.

The Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich

plumpdumpling — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:45:19 +0000

In honor of the opening of Pop-Tarts World–mass market pastry retail heaven for those of us who were under the impression that only four or five flavors of Pop-Tarts existed–in Times Square this month, my officemates and I decided to make the mythical Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich.

Thanks to Fresh Direct, we had the followed delivered to our office last Friday morning:

• Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts
• Frosted Strawberry with Sprinkles Pop-Tarts
• Edy’s Grand Vanilla Bean ice cream
• Edy’s Grand Chocolate ice cream
• Edy’s Cookies ‘N Cream ice cream
• Edy’s Grand Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream
• Edy’s Slow-Churned French Silk ice cream (possibly my favourite storeice cream in the world)
• Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra ice cream

And with those ingredients, we made these:

strawberry with vanilla ice cream

brown sugar cinnamon with French Silk ice cream

The impending glee was too much for Chantee to handle,

but our notoriously non-gluttonous German interns Sven and Christoph surprisingly dove right in:

And speaking of diving right in, if you accidentally drop Pop-Tart down your bra, expect this from me:

This is one of those instances where once you have it, you can’t not have it. Like mixing heavy cream into iced coffee, spooning jelly into the center of a zeppole, or deep-frying a Snickers bar, I will forever be disappointed when there’s not a Pop-Tart in my dish of ice cream. The synthetic sugariness of it appeals so much to the truly indulgent part of me, and the lack of utensils needed to eat it appeals to my raised-in-a-barn-ness.

Wechsler’s Currywurst – German – East Village

plumpdumpling — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:00:04 +0000

I would go to Wechsler’s every day. It’s one of those quintessential East Village finds that’s tiny, cozy, and cheap, yet unlike most of the East Village, it’s somewhere you can actually take a date.

Not, like, a snobby date.

A date like me.

Basically, I just want to go back to Wechsler’s, and I want you to go with me.

Anyway, here’s a picture of some meat covered in some sauce:

That’s what currywurst is: sausage, sliced and covered in a saucy blend of tomato and curry powder. It’s traditionally a German street food, but when I recommended Wechsler’s to my friend Steve, he reported back the next day that it’s waaaaaaaaaay more bland in Germany. Wechsler’s is spicy and sweet, like the base of a really good chili.

It is a meal at $6, and they serve it with crunchy fries and this tiny little fork that will make you feel like a curry-lovin’ giant.

Wechsler’s Currywurst
120 1st Avenue
New York, NY 10009
(map)

The Lemongrass Grill Curry Puff – Financial District – Thai

plumpdumpling — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:00:07 +0000

The curry puff is common to Thai, Malaysian, and Singaporean cuisine, but none of those cuisines is common to me, so the first time I tried one, I was in heaven. Sort of like an empanada, sort of like a samosa, it’s pastry stuffed with a thick curry, chicken, potatoes, and onion and deep-fried.

Since that original curry puff, I’ve tried as many as I can find in NYC, but I always go back to the one at Lemongrass Grill.

It’s the flakiest, the curry-est, and the most way-too-delicious-to-last-more-than-two-bites. The puff isn’t hard like a samosa’s, so the filling gets to mingle with it.

But really, it wouldn’t be anything without the dipping sauce it comes with. It’s vinegar-based with chunks of cucumber that taste a little bit pickled and a little bit sweet. I didn’t even like cucumbers a couple of years ago, but I would still dig those things out of the little cup with my fingers when my boyfriend wasn’t looking.

And I always follow my curry puff up with their chicken pad thai (which is also my favourite in NYC), or the Gai Tom Kha soup.

Lemongrass Grill
84 William Street
New York, NY 10038 (map)

138 East 34th Street
New York, NY 10016 (map)

2534 Broadway
New York, NY 10025 (map)

61A 7th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217 (map)

156 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201 (map)

Recipe: Low-Carb Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes

plumpdumpling — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:00:57 +0000

I was in Ohio last weekend and spent much of it with my best friend, who–like me–finds lots of excuses to “cheat” on her low-carb diet. Meaning that whenever I’m in town, we go crazy and eat whatever we want, which is everything from Dairy Queen to Pizza Hut to McDonald’s with a couple of local joints thrown in as long as they’re all as unhealthy as possible. We’ve said 100 times in the past year that we’d love to try “being good” one time when I come home for a visit, but this time we actually meant it.

As luck would have it, the lovely Maria Emmerich posted a recipe for a low-carb version of the famed Hostess Little Debbie Chocolate Cupcake in her blog the very day I came home, and you know we went to town on those things. Here’s our take on her recipe:

Cupcakes:
1/2 cup of blanched almond flour
3 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon of iodized sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
1/2 cup of Splenda
4 tablespoons of melted butter

Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Combine the yolks, sweetener, and butter and whisk until well-blended. Combine all of the dry ingredients and blend well. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the whipped whites, then slowly fold in the dry mixture and blend well. Fill the cupcake pan 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 15-18 minutes at 350 degrees F or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Creamy Filling:
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup Splenda

Whip the cream until light and fluffy and add in the sweetener. Place filling in sandwich baggie with one corner snipped off. Scoop a dime-sized hole out of the top of each cupcake, push the snipped corner of the baggie into the hole, and squeeze until the filling rises to the top of the cupcake. (Maria injected hers into side of the cupcakes, so feel free to try both ways and see which gets more filling in.)

Frosting:
50g low-carb chocolate (we used a Lindt 85% Cocoa Bar, but Maria’s, made with a ChocoPerfection bar, turned out much shinier, like the Hostess version)
1 tablespoon heavy cream

Melt the chocolate bar in 10-second intervals in the microwave and add in whipping cream. Once the cupcake is cooled, dip the top of each one in melted chocolate.

Swirly White Topping:
Cream cheese

Add a small amount of cream cheese to another baggie, cut another tiny piece of the corner off, and swirl it onto each cupcake.

Nutritional Info:
297 calories, 6g carbs, 3.5g fiber, 2.5g net carbs
Makes 6 cakes

a cross-sectional view shows how much creamy filling was waiting inside for us

a cup of heavy cream makes a LOT of creamy filling, and you can guess where all of the leftovers went

Tracey and I loved these. A lot of low-carb swaps for common sugary foods are sad approximations that leave you wishing for the real thing, but we didn’t feel a sense of loss while eating these at all. The only problem we had was convincing ourselves not to eat all six in one sitting, and we were rewarded for that the next day with a deliciously hardened chocolate top on the two we saved. If you can double the recipe, I recommend it.

(Cross-posted to UNBREADED)

Restaurant Week Summer 2010: SHO Shaun Hergatt – French/Japanese – Financial District

plumpdumpling — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:30:09 +0000

Two of my co-workers and I decided to hit SHO Shaun Hergatt for a Restaurant Week lunch at the last minute, and their dress code was listed as “jacket preferred”, so I changed into a pair of open-toed red patent leather wedges from my usual flip-flops and hoped no one would notice my jeans and my co-worker’s t-shirt. It must have worked, because they let us in (and were even nice to us!). And I’m sure glad they did.

potato-yuzu dip

Our crusty rolls came with the usual butter but also this dip, which our server told us is one of the chef’s specialties. It had the consistency of mashed potatoes and tasted very fresh and citrusy, thanks to the yuzu.

carpaccio of black angus beef, fried capers, parmesan

I think this is the first time I’ve had fried capers, and I really enjoyed their crunch and their peppercorn-ish flavor. The presentation was so beautiful that my photographer friend, Anthony, had to take several shots of this of his own to mess around in Photoshop with. The texture of the beef was so buttery and tender it was as if it had been cooked for hours.

organic red and yellow beets, Sicilian pistachios, espelette

I may have ruined this dish by starting a glass of sake before I tasted it, because I couldn’t taste the sauce at all. It reminded me of mayonnaise in texture, but the only taste I got were from the earthy beets and the toasted nuts, which of course I loved, because those things are objectively good.

handmade porcini pappardelle

I think pappardelle is my favourite pasta. Thin yet broad, it soaks up flavor and doesn’t overpower other ingredients with breadiness like thicker pastas do. This dish was wonderfully creamy and umami-y, perfectly cooked and YUM.

char siu braised pork belly

But the pork belly was better. I know I’ve said it before at Craftbar and at Sakagura, but I’m just so impressed that it’s possible for someone to take a half-inch thick layer of fat and make it not only edible but craveable. It tastes as good as the pork itself. Raw apples mixed with the soft cooked vegetables, and the salty-sweet soy-infused sauce had seeped into every inch of that belly.

milk chocolate palet, yuzu chantilly, raspberries

I would be hard-pressed to call this milk chocolate if you asked me to describe it, because it was so dense and rich. The chocolate was substantial, too, creamy and whipped yet thick enough to stay on a fork. I admittedly didn’t taste the yuzu in the whipped cream, but the fresh raspberries were divine, as was the crumbly chocolate crust.

peach tarte tatin, mascarpone ice cream, pistachio crumble

I loved the thin, nutty wafer on top, but the whole point of the dessert was the peach, which was so intensely ripe and sweet. I didn’t get more than a taste of it, so I want to go back and order it for myself.

chocolate financier, passion fruit jellies

These were really better than either of the menued desserts. The spongey chocolate cake was buttery and piped with a hazelnut frosting-like cream. The caramelized hazelnut was . . . gah. I like to save the best thing on my plate for last, so I had left a bite of my chocolate palet behind, but I gulped it right down after I had the first bite of this.

The gummy was so sugary it might scare off lesser sweet tooths, but I loved the juxtaposition of the more savory financier with this. And I was mad that I had eaten more slowly than Nik and Anthony, because had I gotten to it first, I would’ve grabbed both of theirs, too.

The great thing about eating lunch here during Restaurant Week (which SHO is continuing through Labor Day, by the way!) is that they give you a $24 gift certificate to come back for dinner. Which means that this lunch was essentially free. So go.

SHO Shaun Hergatt
40 Broad Street
New York, NY 10004
map)

Restaurant Week Summer 2010: Park Avenue Summer – American (new) – Upper East Side

plumpdumpling — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:00:25 +0000

It’s Restaurant Week Summer 2010 here in NYC, and my boyfriend and I finally made a reservation for a place I’ve been eyeing for a couple of years now. Depending on the season, it’s called Park Avenue Summer, Autumn, Winter, or Spring, and the decor changes entirely with the seasons. Appropriately, all of the dishes we had on the first night of Restaurant Week were incredibly summer-y and some of the best we’ve had in all of our years of Restaurant Week-ing.

watermelon amuse-bouche

Does this look like a chunk of pineapple or what? 10 points for surprising me, and another 10 for serving me cream cheese and herbs with fruit. My boyfriend ate the pink hunk and said it was spicy, so another 10 for that. Not that these points mean anything or can be redeemed. Sorry.

burrata, cucumber, tomato

I kind of got this against my will. It was an extra $5, I hate tomatoes, and I wanted the corn soup. But whew, boy, if the menu had explained in detail what this was, I would’ve ordered two. The cheese is regular mozzarella on the outside, but the inside is a blend of mozzarella and cream, making it this dreamy texture. And also making it funky. It was at once the youngest-looking and oldest-tasting cheese, and it paired so nicely with the fresh cucumber. And the tomatoes? They were actually not as gross as I expected, because there was this rich tomato sauce under them that drowned them out.

salmon tartare

I hear chefs talk about how important acid is, especially when it comes to raw fish, but I never got it until this tartare. The first thing I tasted was CITRUS!, and it was glorious. This was probably my favourite dish of the night, just because I’m usually not a fish person, and this made me want to be.

veal chop, summer succotash

This was an extra $10, and my boyfriend made me get it just to be nice, but I secretly wanted his chicken. I’m really bad about not getting all of the meat off anything served on the bone, so I thought it was going to be a waste of good meat. And then I took one bite and realized I’d be picking up the bone and gnawing on it later. (There are pictures.) Super-chargrilled on the outside, super-pink on the inside.

The funny thing was the side. Now, I love corn like nobody’s business, but do you know what I tasted with the first forkful of succotash? PIZZA. I swear, it tasted exactly the way green peppers on a pizza do. And my boyfriend said the exact same thing without me telling him that’s what I was thinking! They must have used a lot of oregano in that salad or something.

free-range chicken, peaches

The peaches were really the highlight here and almost overpowered everything else, which is not a complaint, because the chicken, in my opinion, really would’ve benefited from some spice. I really loved the crispy edges, though, and the crunchy pine nuts. My boyfriend liked the sweet sauce and was reminded of zereshk polo, a Persian dish from his childhood made with chicken, rice, and barberries.

goat cheese mouse in phyllo, honeyed raspberries

Grace Kang from Serious Eats said this was like eating frosting and was “so decadent I could never finish one by myself”. So obviously I didn’t even look at the other desserts. I would say that she was right about the goat cheese being frosting-esque, but I could’ve eaten a whole mixing bowl of it easily. I loved the thin yet moist wafer and the lemony sauce under the raspberries. This dish was so un-sweet that my boyfriend said it was like having a cheese course for dessert, but the honeyed fruit added just enough natural sugar that it completely satisfied me.

banana parfait, chocolate crumbs, banana butterscotch puree

You know how the best part of a Dairy Queen, Dunkin’ Donuts, or Carvel ice cream cake is the uber-crunchy layer of chocolate bits? Now imagine a whole glassful of those, drizzled in banana-flavored butterscotch. WHAT? YES. Delicious.

Park Avenue Summer
100 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10021 (map)

The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges – French – Upper East Side

plumpdumpling — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:00:20 +0000

My boyfriend and I went to The Mark because the Times called it “unambitious” and the whole blogosphere was seemingly up in arms over the two-star rating they gave it despite that. I was prepared to be blown away, anyway, and to give it the many-doughnutted review it deserved.

homemade cherry yuzu and ginger ale sodas ($5)

These sodas were sort of an afterthought, and they turned out to easily be the best part of the meal for me. Ever since the major ginger ale brand in the U.S. started advertising that they use real ginger, I’ve become way more interested in the stuff; I don’t know what I thought was in it before, but it sure wasn’t actual ginger.

If you like drinking that super-commercial style of ginger ale, this might be too much for you to handle, because it is so unbelievably flavorful that you’ll never be able to buy a 2-liter ever again. The ginger was actually settling in the bottom of the glass between sips, which makes me heart pitter-pat just thinking about it. I wish The Mark was closer to my work, because I’d convince all of my co-workers to have happy hour at the bar every day just to get faux-drunk on this stuff.

black truffle pizza with fontina cheese ($21)

Obviously, this was good. A crunchy, airy crust with an earthy, umami middle and that fresh frisée on top. It wasn’t quite as earth-shattering as I expected, though, maybe because it was too easy. Or maybe because I’m becoming a snob who’s becoming too accustomed to black truffle.

market beets, endive, walnuts, grapes ($13)

This was a dish I’d definitely order again. I had never tasted beets until my boyfriend took me to Jules in the East Village three or so years ago, so they’re still a little foreign to me and therefore exciting. Having three different kinds on the plate was like Christmas, and I was pleased to find that they all had distinctive flavors.

The endive with walnuts and grapes was heavenly, and we were sopping that crazy cheese sauce up with our breadbasket.

branzino with couscous ($30-something)

parmesan-crusted organic chicken with artichokes ($25)

I’d be a liar if I said I wouldn’t eat this every day, because come on, look at that crust. The chicken was so moist inside, and the lemony butter sauce only enhanced that, although I needed twice as much of it. When I compare chicken to pork and duck and beef in my mind, it’s so flavorless, and I’m always happy when a chef changes that for me (even if just for a moment).

Grand Marnier souffle, mandarin sorbet ($10)

I’m as disappointed in us as you are for only ordering one dessert, but it was quite the dessert. I usually feel like souffles are more trouble than they’re worth, but this one was so crusty/creamy/orangey. My boyfriend was nice and let me clean out the ramekin, which I did with my finger when our server wasn’t looking.

I liked the formal yet not overly-romantic atmosphere, and the professional service (though our waiter did a double-take when I ordered a Riesling to accompany our meal, but I will not feel bad about my dessert wine love), but for someone with three Michelin stars, it definitely felt like an easy venture rather than a super-passionate one. We left feeling like we’d eaten a nice meal by an accomplished chef, but we didn’t feel wowed. I’m not writing Vongerichten off, though, and I do hope to write an our-socks-were-knocked-off review of his other restaurant, Jean-Georges, soon.

The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges
25 East 77th Street
New York, NY 10075 (map)

Seasonal – Austrian/American (new) – Midtown West

plumpdumpling — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:00:06 +0000

When my boyfriend suggested Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar because it was awarded a Michelin star this year, I pictured a lively Austrian pub type place with comforting foods like bratwurst and sauerkraut and girls named Brunhilda serving them. What I got was a sleek formal dining room with an inventive menu that put me in the mind of wd-50 or Degustation.

This is one of those unfortunate cases where I had the dinner a couple of months ago and was so overwhelmed by the idea of writing about all of the awesomeness I experienced, so pardon my slim review and (hopefully) enjoy the photos.

The tasting menu:

octopus amuse bouche

I basically love anything with one of these green purees. They always taste so refreshing, and they make me think I’m eating something more exciting than leafy vegetables. I’d be so healthy if my life involved more green purees.

salmon with some sort of awesome powder stuff and the BEST, most flavorful microgreens

white asparagus soup, rock shrimp, morcilla, spring onion

I’ve had an interest in white asparagus since Leah said on season 5 of “Top Chef” that it’s her least-favourite ingredient (because, you know, she’s my least-favourite “Top Chef” contestant). Besides tasting fresh and springy, it also has the dubious honor of being the vegetable most resembling a penis. Win-win!

sweetbread, celery root, onion

The best-looking sweetbread you’ve ever seen, am I right?

soft poached egg, lobster, maitake, porcini

This might be the dish that really brings me around to mushrooms. I can handle mushroom flavor but hate the look of the things, so putting them in a foam is genius. And hiding the other kind of mushroom underneath that foam is über-genius. I think this may have been my favourite dish of the night because it was difficult and yet delicious.

trout, goat cheese, pumpkin seed, radish

wagyu, parsley root, black garlic, cipollini, lime

I still think about this dish once a day. There is no reason that lime flavor and steak go together, and the fact that they not only go together but bring out all of the best flavors in each other is mindboggling.

I have no idea what this was, but it really looks exciting, right?

extra dessert!

Seäsonal
132 West 58th Street
New York, NY 10019 (map)

Becco – Italian – Hell’s Kitchen

plumpdumpling — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:30:05 +0000

Finding restaurants that can hold a group as big as my office’s monthly dinner club of co-workers past and present can sometimes be a major challenge, so super-touristy places like Becco are sometimes our only choice. Luckily, super-touristy doesn’t have to mean super-might-as-well-have-gone-to-McDonald’s.

antipasto misto

I know the last picture is awful, but that carrot was so crazy soft and delicious that I had to publicly preserve its memory.

osso bucco

My friend Ash ordered the osso bucco, and everyone was amazed as she went to town on it, scooping the marrow out of the bone with a tiny fork first so she could be sure she didn’t fill up on anything else.

But Becco’s main draw is its unlimited pasta special. For a stupidly low price, you get the three house pastas of the day brought to your table in heaping piles until you beg your server to stop. That night, ours were:

mushroom ravioli

(Even with my usual distrust of mushrooms, the ravioli was easily my favourite of the three.)

spaghetti

veal bolognese

Now, I have to admit that pasta never exactly blows me out of the water (unless it’s gnocchi). A lot of it is way too bland for me after growing up with a mother who must have used half a gallon of oregano in her spaghetti. But this was really, really good pasta. My boyfriend couldn’t stop talking about it for days, actually. And even the Brooklyn-born Italian in our group didn’t complain.

apple strudel with house-made cinnamon gelato

This dessert was the hugest disappointment of my life, but I don’t think it was Becco’s fault. When I ordered it, I guess I was thinking of streusel or an apple brown betty or something, because I expected apple pie filling with a crumbly brown sugar topping. Instead I got apple pie filling and a flaky crust. NOT THE SAME. Very light and not overly sweet, but these are not the things I look for in a dessert.

Funnily enough, I chastised my boyfriend and the Italian for ordering the zabaglione with seasonal fruit, thinking it was the equivalent to a stupid fruit cup with some whipped cream. But dude, zabaglione is great. The custard was suuuuuuuper-intensely flavorful and much more dense than I would’ve imagined. GET THE ZABAGLIONE. You’re welcome.

Some glamour shots of my friends, because they’re vain.

I kind of get a kick out of going to places like this from time to time, because they’re so unlike most NYC restaurants. Meaning huge and bright and full of people who actually eat. I definitely recommend Becco for big groups and anyone who wants to feel like he’s at a huge family dinner for a night.

Becco
355 West 46th Street
New York, NY 10036 (map)

donuts4dinner.com

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