Apartment Dining

Ramsey and I returned last night from a mini vacation at my uncle’s shore house in Ocean City, NJ. It was great to escape from New York for a few days to relax and see family. Looking back, I should have taken more food photos (I completely forgot to get out my camera during our meal at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in Atlantic City on Thursday), but here are a few food and non-food photos from the shore. » Read the rest of this entry «

The folks over at Food Crypt recently posted a link to Michael Pollan discussing his latest book, In Defense of Food, for WBEZ Chicago. It’s a great introduction into Pollan’s work and worth checking out whether you’ve read any of his books or not.

I’m in the middle of In Defense of Food now and it’s reinforcing and expanding on many of the points made in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan’s detailed look at the Western diet has also made me take a closer look at what I’m consuming and how it can/will effect my health in the long run (members of every generation on one side of my family have dealt with cancer of some portion of the digestive tract, resulting in invasive surgeries and painful recoveries). A quick inventory of a day of eating for me showed well-balanced meals, but my snacks were almost exclusively processed foods like chips, cookies, etc. It’s a reflection of how my diet has been slowly deteriorating over the past few months. I’m consuming less fresh fruit, fewer vegetables, fewer whole grains, and little fiber. As I read a chapter of the book in a train station over the weekend, I was actually eating a bag of Skittles (original flavor).

I am by no means becoming a health-obsessed eater, just a more conscious one. The thesis on the cover of In Defense of Food sets simple guidelines: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

I found myself at a bar in the East Village on Saturday night after dinner and a movie around Union Square. After introductions to friends of friends, we hit on something we all had in common: a love of Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar. It’s not that uncommon in New York, as Momofuku is now an institution with constant buzz and hoards of fans between its four locations (Milk Bar, Ssam Bar, Noodle Bar, and Ko), but for some reason, passion for the Bakery and Milk Bar always seems to surpass the rest.

We started to exchange descriptions of our favorite items. The pies, the cookies. I gasped in horror when they revealed they had never tried the pork buns. This was warranted horror, as the mingling flavors of thin cucumber slices, hoisin sauce, scallions, and pork belly on a soft steamed bun is as close to culinary transcendence as I’ve ever been.

The pork buns are really not the stars of the Milk Bar though. They can be found at all of the other Momofuku restaurants. At the Milk Bar, it’s all about the desserts. Christina Tosi, Momofuku’s pastry chef, has developed a menu that takes all of your childhood dreams of sugary breakfast cereals and prized lunch bag snacks and melds them into ice cream, cookies, cakes, and pies. Their current soft serve ice cream flavors include red licorice and fireball, and you can have them topped with Nerds, Lemondrops, or Twizzlers. The compost cookie™ (yes, trademarked) has almost every kind of cookie variety melded into one. It’s pictured here along with the chocolate-chocolate cookie that (I believe) is a chocolate cookie with chocolate brownie chunks.

There are of course what would be considered “fancier” desserts, such as the chocolate chip cake with lemon curd, chocolate crumbs, and coffee buttercream, or the playful Arnold Palmer cake with iced tea jelly, lemon mascarpone cream, almond tea crunch. However, I always return to the cookies. It’s the perfect polyamorous marriage of convenience, comfort, and taste, with everything you need in one little handheld package.

It was the desire for those cookies that pulled all of us out of the bar at 1 AM on Saturday morning; six twenty-somethings walking through the streets of the East Village recalling Saved by the Bell episodes in search of a taste of childhood. When we finally arrived after a short walk, the store was mostly dark and two workers were wiping down the counters. The door was locked. FYI: They close at midnight.

Blogging will resume soon. I hoped to post about a roasted beet pizza I made last night, but I have yet to perfect the proper topping ingredients and ratios. In the meantime, here are some photos of the beets, the only successful portion of the pizza preparation. I roasted them according to this post on Not Eating Out in New York and they turned out well. What’s left of them is currently residing in the refrigerator waiting for my lunch salads this week.

I love the color of the beet stems.

The White House announced this week that Michelle Obama has decided to plant a large vegetable garden on the South Lawn to provide food for the first family and various events. It’s a inspiring move in a time of economic hardship when more and more people are turning to fast food establishments, believing that they’re the cheapest way to buy a meal for their family. The New York Times reports that the entire garden will only cost $200, essentially the cost of mulch, seeds, and other supplies, and it includes 55 varieties of vegetables.

My indoor garden is much smaller and currently features only two kinds of edible plants: basil and mint. I’m hoping to pick up a few more herbs in the coming weeks, as paying $2 for a few ounces of cut, fresh herbs at the supermarket when all I need are a few leaves is a waste. I’m also looking into a dwarf tomato plant to supply some cherry tomatoes for summer salads.

The New York Times has an article about a number of prominent folks in the Brooklyn culinary scene. I feel lucky to live near so many of these stores and producers, particularly The Brooklyn Kitchen and Mast Brothers Chocolate. If all else fails when it comes to my job hunt, maybe I’ll learn a craft and go from there. I could see myself becoming a baker by day and writer by night…

Although I rarely drink coffee now due to health reasons, there was a period of my life when I was drinking two to three lattes a day at work, enjoying the occasional redeye (drip coffee with a shot of espresso), and brewing my own coffee at home on the weekends. I worked as a writer for a company specializing in espresso machines and other gourmet beverage products, so I learned more about coffee, tea, and espresso over the course of a year than most people learn in a lifetime.

It’s with my knowledge of all manner of coffee makers that I would like to make a declaration: the French press is the ideal mode of apartment coffee brewing. It’s compact, it’s economical, and it brews a rich, flavorful cup of coffee. Rather than spending three or four dollars every morning on the way to work, a French press can brew a quick cup that you can pour in a travel mug and go. But where do you begin? » Read the rest of this entry «

In one of my Farmers’ Market Pick posts about roasting carrots, I mentioned the local celebrity and peeler salesman, Joe Ades. He passed away on Sunday and the New York Times has a short article on him. You can also view a video of him in action (ignore the obnoxious overlay ads). He was fascinating to watch and that peeler really is great. I’ve used it every other day since buying it last fall and I hope I never lose it.

We rang in the new year at a dinner party thrown by our friends Angela and Sean. The party was dubbed “There Will Be Ham” for the exact reason you might expect. The photo above is of my soon-to-be baked brie getting into the spirit. More photos after the jump. » Read the rest of this entry «

First came the Twitter feed, then came the Facebook page. You can now become a fan of Apartment Dining on Facebook. Click here to check it out and join the ranks of fellow readers.

I promise some fresh, non-Christmas recipes later this week.