Euro Goodies

So last time I remarked on the excellent food to be found in Barcelona. Today I’ll review the temptations along the rest of the Mediterranean.In addition to Barcelona, we saw Monaco, Italy, Greece and Turkey, all beautiful in their own way. The food was good everywhere but we didn’t have as much time to explore local cuisine as in Barcelona. Thus we had what I would call an intro to goodies from the South, which sounds promising…

In Monaco, everyone was eating salad of course, to be expected. We saw ritzy people everywhere stuffing themselves with somewhat substantial salads. I ordered one that I eyed on my neighbor’s table and was not disappointed – butter lettuce, lots and lots of deli meat, eggs, cheese, tomato and a ridiculous amount of mayo dressing, without the actual funky mayo texture or taste.

In Turkey we enjoyed on-the-run gyros (good but not as delicious as in Athens), Turkish tea and mouth watering rice puddings at the Grand Bazaar, and for a tangy yet refreshing pick-me-up, pomegranate juice which is widely available from street vendors. In addition to the perfumed jiggly milk desserts, we also had small yet rich baklava, probably the best I ever had.

Speaking of the gyros in Athens, we had that ‘til we could eat no more and then we had fresh coconut water and coconut from yet another street vendor (they are everywhere).

In Italy, we did major sightseeing and not as much eating. In Sorrento we enjoyed delicious lemon cookies (Sorrento is known for its lemons and limoncello) and a good meal overlooking the Mediterranean. The meal was not as memorable but the views were. In Venice, the food in the touristy areas was oversalted and overpriced, but the desserts picked up at local bakeries and cafes were extraordinary. Their cakes are different than the cakes you get in the US. There is no cream or double-deckers, meaning you get one small layer of something like coffee cake, usually made with nuts or fruity jams. I highly recommend the sugar-balanced sweets in Venice, which are great with a cup of tea or coffee. And if you can’t get enough of them, you can stock up on cookies in your suitcase to enjoy later at home.

Salad in Monaco

 Pomegranate juice from street vendors in Istanbul, Turkey

 Enjoying Turkish tea at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul

Share the Baklava - it's very sweet

 Dried chilis in Sorrento, which is actually known for its lemons

 Pastries in Venice - lots of jam and nuts

 The selections are fantastic

 Souvenirs to take home

Barcelona Culinary Tour

I had the incredible pleasure of going on a tour of the Mediterranean recently that swept me from the Western porky delicacies to the custardy gelatos and ended with the Eastern perfumed rice puddings. If I had had more time, I would have done nothing but eat, eat, eat. I was however on a mission to see half of Europe with a large group in tow and very limited time in every location.

The most amount of time was spent in Barcelona, which I am happy to concur is as fun as people claimed and as delicious.

We indulged in surprisingly good pastries (I am always surprised when pastries are good outside of Paris or Vienna), tapas (Spanish appetizers or small bites), sandwiches and plenty of seafood.

My mission was to eat seafood paella, however the paella never made it in front of me, and I enjoyed the succulent shrimp, fish and octopus without its starchy counterpart. The octopus! Let me tell you about the best octopus on this planet. We ordered a dish called Galician-style octopus, which is a plate of small octopus pieces served with boiled potatoes, olive oil and paprika. Not sure what the heck they do to that octopus but it’s tender and melts in your mouth.

The shrimp, fish, langoustines and razor clams were all delicious as well, although the clams were a bit sandy.

We also had a fair share of pork, in the form of ribs, sausage and iberico ham.

The main and very popular market called La Boqueria is a sight to behold with every color fruit, vegetable and meat represented. It’s a feast for the eyes and the mouth. Besides buying fresh produce, you can stop at a food vendor and order tapas, seafood or whatever else they are serving for lunch or dinner. Expect the food to be good but the wait times and service to be infuriating.

Unfortunately my culinary exploration of Barcelona was not nearly long enough, which means I will have to go back for more.

At La Boqueria

No explanation needed - get on my plate! 

Gummy candy 

Very fresh eggs 

Biggest bone I've ever seen 

Soup time 

Tongue and balls 

Meat on a stick? Yes please! 

Sandwiches usually consist of bread rubbed with tomatoes and stuffed with Iberico ham 

The said Iberico ham 

Which you can buy at the market 

One of the many seafood dishes  

Having lunch at the market

Review – Jewel Bako

Last night I took my husband to Jewel Bako for his birthday. Jewel Bako stands for Jewel Box and it’s appropriately named. The restaurant is a small but fancy establishment in the East Village, tucked away on a side street with no signage. It blends into the background and it didn’t help that there was minor construction going on in front of their place, however we found it and all’s good.

Made reservations to sit at the sushi bar which I highly recommend – you get dinner and a show.

We ordered two rolls, the Chef Omakase Tasting Menu and the Omakase Sushi special, way too much food for us. I had read reviews online to get an idea of what to expect, and many indicated that they left the place hungry, so I figured we’d start out with what we ordered and could always get more later. Boy were we wrong. We should have ordered half as much. I think the two rolls put it over the top. By the end of the evening, I could not see another piece of fish and jumped on the dessert they brought out, compliments of the house. So after complaining endlessly about how much we ate and how I could not have sushi again for at least six months, we concluded that it was the best sushi we’ve had in NYC so far. It was fresh, delicious and pretty to look at. The chefs were also very entertaining to watch and in very good moods, an overall great experience. We had a few drinks and besides the dessert, also got complimentary sake at the end cause they were closing shop and the staff was celebrating its good mood. The free stuff would have set us back at least $100 if we had to pay for it.

The rolls we got were good and big and probably stuffed us right at the beginning. They were followed by a sashimi platter, soup, a fancy appetizer plate, a tuna pizza piece, a shooter consisting of rice, raw scallop, fresh and cooked urchin, and endless individual sushi pieces. We also had cooked scorpion fish in between there and at the end an ice cream sandwich consisting of green tea ice cream with chocolaty cookies and intentionally burned nuts. Sounds funky but was surprisingly not sweet but yummy.
I learned more about sushi and fish than I expected. I absolutely do not like mackerel, and raw shrimp, octopus or scallops. All sorts of tuna (various degrees of fattiness) are delicious as well as salmon, snapper, yellowtail, sea bass and the cooked eel and barracuda (poison omitted). And good roe does not have to taste fishy at all.
So we survived the fish extravaganza and walked away with some expensive mercury poisoning I’m sure. Well worth it though. We’ll go back and order half or a third as much.

Tuna Pizza

Starters - green pea tofu with gold pearls, salmon skin salad, marinaded tuna and spicy yellow tail in a phyllo cup 

Sea Bass and Spicy Yellowtail rolls in the back, sashimi in front 

Refreshing Sea Bass roll (note the drinks in the back - their plum wine sake was great)

Marinated Tuna sushi (we must have had at least 10 of these individual pieces each) 

Scallop and Urchin shooter 

Eel 

Green Tea Ice Cream Sandwich 

Asian Flavors

Last time I was craving Mexican food like nothing else and not much has changed in that department. Today however, I will discuss some of the delicious food we have been enjoying since being here.
I know I have mentioned Chinatown a few times and some delicious Dim Sum we had. There are many other Asian flavors we have discovered since then and I’m not talking about simply sushi.
In Midtown, there is a street dedicated solely to Korean food. Technically it’s considered Koreatown but you can’t really turn a street into a town in my opinion. Nevertheless, I love, love, love going there and enjoy the food as much as I do the people and vibe. It’s busy and exciting and really makes you feel as if you were in some Korean town as opposed to the middle of NYC.
In our own neighborhood in Brooklyn we have also been exposed to Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese food, all good and all really affordable. If you take one thing away from this article, let it be that Asian food is good for your wallet.
So, here are our fave dishes, courtesy of some Asian culture or another.

Korean BBQ - you cook the meat yourself on the hot plate in the center of the table and eat it along with all those extra side dishes

Pad Thai Noodles - noodles cooked with 16 other ingredients including your meat of choice - contains peanuts!

Vietnamese Pho Soup - refreshing broth with rice noodles and your choice of meat

Japanese Ramen Soup - noodles in hearty beef broth with your choice of meat or veggies and optional eggs; often served spicy

Shrimp Spring Rolls - I think this is Thai; glass/rice noodles rolled up with shrimp, carrots, cucumbers, mint and cilantro served with peanut dipping sauce

Korean Tofu Stew - can be spicy or not; best eaten with rice thrown in to absorb the broth

Vietnamese Sandwich - fresh and crispy roll stuffed with bbq pork, carrots, cilantro, cucumbers/onions

Missing Mexican Food!

It’s been eight months now since I moved to New York and the thing I was afraid of is happening – I’m missing Mexican food like crazy. Other than missing family and friends whenever I travel or move to a new place, I miss the food the most.
So San Diego is known for delicious Mexican food because of its proximity to Mexico. Lots of dishes are what you would consider Mexican-American or Tex-Mex but I don’t care, I love it. I didn’t realize how much I had grown accustomed to this type of cuisine until I moved to NY and couldn't find any good Mexican food here. I haven’t tried every single place in the city but the ones I have been to have not lived up to my expectations. Guess the closest thing I can get is Cuban food, which is somewhat similar but not really.

So occasionally I get a ridiculous craving for carne asada fries or a satisfying bean and cheese burrito. Damn, maybe I shouldn’t be writing about this as my mouth is starting to water…. I’ll just give you a run-down of the things I’ve come to love and the things that have sustained me through high school, college and grad school. Ditching class in high school for a carne asada burrito was always worth it to me and when one of my teachers allowed us to order food to be delivered to our class, I was in heaven. Every Thursday I’d devour a shrimp quesadilla during Chemistry. In college I survived off Taco Bell and their incredibly cheap bean burritos and soft tacos. Not the most authentic Mexican food but on a college budget, it hit the spot. Those two items traveled with me through grad school but with a bit more money in my pocket (not sure how that happened), I also indulged in shrimp burritos from Rubios as well as their carnitas street tacos. That’s more legit I guess. And finally my husband introduced me to the best place ever in South San Diego, a place called Super Sergios which is a typical taco shop that provided many carne asada fries on our late nights coming home from parties. Anyways, here are my faves and rules for eating them.

Bean & Cheese Burrito - best eaten with hot sauce although I'm chicken and only eat "mild" (Taco Bell Mild Hot Sauce is the best)

Carne Asada Burrito - perfect as is if done right; should be juicy and flavorful and no hot sauce needed

Carne Asada Fries - fries covered with beef strips, guacamole, cheese, sour cream and drizzled with hot sauce

Fajitas - sizzling skillet of your choice of meat (mine is shrimp) with bell peppers, onions and mushrooms

Shrimp Burrito - shrimp wrapped in a flour tortilla with rice, beans, sauce and pico de gallo - best served with guacamole and roasted chipotle salsa

Quesadillas - I like mine stuffed with shrimp but there are endless variations, just make sure they are crispy and eat with sour cream, guacamole and salsa

Street Tacos - best ones in my opinion are the pork ones, served with onion and cilantro; just top with salsa and ready to go

Review – Little Poland

Little Poland is a restaurant located in the East Village of Manhattan that is just like any typical Eastern European restaurant I would expect. If you have never traveled outside your hometown and don’t know much about Eastern Europe, be in for a culture shock at this restaurant that got a C grading from the health department. Normally I cringe when I have to eat at a B restaurant so this was definitely going out of my comfort zone. I stopped at this restaurant on my errand running trip so I was alone. Got a table in the corner at the front of the restaurant overlooking the street and people walking by – best seat in the house for sure.
I checked out their menu and the day’s specials and decided on something I don’t usually cook myself, beef stroganoff, which consists of beef strips served in creamy gravy. Alongside that I got noodles, the traditional thing to get with beef stroganoff and kind of random, sauerkraut, cause I couldn’t decide what second side I wanted with my meal.
The beef stroganoff was flavorful but had a few unexpected parts of gristle in it. I also bit down on something black and suspect-looking a couple of times and realized they were just juniper berries. Imagine my relief…
The noodles were a perfect accompaniment although the sauerkraut was their version of what it should be and not something I would order again, just because I am picky about my sauerkraut and don’t want carrots or other veggies added to it.
If I hadn’t been so stuffed afterwards, I would have ordered the cheese blintzes cause they sounded and looked delicious but guess I’ll have to save that for next time.
There was a family sitting in front of me, mind you with no children, who were doing nothing but complaining the entire time. Can you believe the waitress who didn’t want to check on the soup back there, and she didn’t bring rye bread, etc.. I was pretty sure they must have been Midwesterners visiting cause they really were expecting the world and got an Eastern European waitress who really didn’t give a crap. They’d talk shit about her as soon as she’d leave and she’d talk shit right back about them in Polish. It was quite entertaining to observe during my lunch. So yeah, I enjoyed the show and the food at this establishment that got a C grade, and I’d go back.

Review - Cafe Sabarsky

It's been a while since I've written and that's because I've been incredibly busy. Busy with work but of course also busy with trying new places to write about. First up is Cafe Sabarsky, which is a Viennese-style cafe inside the Neue Galerie museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
We've been experiencing ridiculous heat waves and since I decided not to get an A/C unit, I thought a visit to the MET might cool me off a bit. On the way there, I walked by the Neue Galerie museum, which is a museum displaying German and Austrian art. To keep the ambiance alive, they also offer great treats in the cafe on the first floor.
Cafe Sabarsky oozes old world charm. Having lived in Vienna myself, I can assure you that the traditional feeling in there is legit. Everything reminded me of my favorite city in the world, from the decor to the German newspapers available for your perusal, to the surprisingly delicious food.
Granted the staff did not speak much German so when I ordered the German-named food, I had to point it out on the menu or use its English name instead. Who cares though, many going there don't speak German and don't give a hoot.
I started my meal with gulash soup which was flavorful with spices, a bit peppery as it should be, and quite filling. I should have thought of that before having ordered another course.
For my entree I ordered the Kaesekrainer with sauerkraut and roast potatoes. The Kaesekrainer is a bratwurst-type sausage stuffed with cheese that melts during the cooking process and is wonderful once you bite into it. Doesn't look pretty and actually doesn't sound very appetizing either but it's delicious. The sauerkraut was very soft which I'm not used to. It was buttery as if melting in your mouth. Not sure if I was crazy about that. Also, I felt the flavor of caraway seeds in it was missing but if you don't eat sauerkraut often, you won't know the difference. The roast potatoes were funky. There was some kind of dessert spice sprinkled on them and I'm not talking about nutmeg. I could not figure out what it was but I didn't finish the potatoes.
For dessert you can check out the cakes and tarts displayed along one wall of the cafe or simply order from the menu. I opted for the strawberry and elderflower mousse cake which looked divine. I love any type of mousse so this was an absolute winner. It wasn't overly sweet and after my heavy meal, it went down just right. I even recommended it to the people sitting at the neighboring table who were trying to decide on dessert.
The final bill was a bit higher than I normally like to spend but then again, I don't usually eat that much. I was simply excited to eat my favorite food.
Even though I was there alone, I did not mind it as I flipped through the German paper and enjoyed listening to the classical music during my meal.
I will definitely go back and try other items on their menu.

Review - La Villa

There seems to be a shortage of cheap pizza places in our neighborhood, so we do of course the next best thing and go to a restaurant. La Villa is kind of like the California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) chains with a restaurant part, a bar area, TV screens that show nothing but sports and wood-fired ovens for their pizzas. So on one of those pizza craving evenings, we stopped there and ordered a small Speciale pizza, a slice of red velvet cake and consumed some beer while we waited for our to-go order. Our "small" pizza was easily enough for 3-4 people and my husband was keen on the meat choices so we shared that one. The toppings were fennel sausage, pepperoni (not my favorite), homemade meatballs, mushrooms, caramelized onions, roasted peppers and mozzarella. Generally I just like ham or prosciutto on mine but this was surprisingly good. Good enough in fact that I would order it again.
Their red velvet cake was moist and thankfully not as sweet as most of them.
The ambience inside was nice, mellow and pretty much just like CPK would be.
Overall, a success for our first visit. Keep you posted on future ones.

Storing Eggs

To follow up yesterday's info, thought I'd share data specific to storing eggs and foods containing eggs. Nothing too glamorous but still important to know. This would have come in handy during Easter now that I think about it if any of you colored eggs, etc. but will also be good to know for any other holiday such as 4th of July (think of macaroni salads for picnics) or Thanksgiving and Christmas (pies galore).

Leftover Storage

After my not-so-pretty experience with food poisoning, I'm paranoid about handling, cooking and storing food properly because most likely, I got myself sick. So I did a little research online and found the following information regarding storing leftovers. Some of it I already knew, some was news so hopefully this will enlighten you as well.

Review - Bierkraft 2

I know I've already talked about Bierkraft before but we had the chance to go back recently for their first annual Oyster & Beer festival. Unfortunately this was a day after I had food poisoning so the oysters were not in the stars for me but I did order one of their popular sandwiches. My husband along with a bunch of other people tried the oysters and said they were surprisingly delicious for a place that's not know for serving anything other than beer and bread.
As far as the bread/sandwich part goes, the picture below shows everything that's wrong with it. They've got the idea right by choosing great ingredients or toppings for their sandwiches but they use a beheamoth of a roll that is too thick and chewy. By the time you finish eating the sandwich (which has to be shared with someone else because it's huge), your jaw feels like it's had a jawbreaker. Nevertheless, that won't stop us from going there and sampling other goods.

Quinoa Salad

If you are not familiar with quinoa, read up a little on the internet about it. It’s a very healthy protein-rich grain that is consumed in developing countries but is making quite a name for itself in the Western world. This is a wonderful alternative to meat too but sometimes I serve it as a salad alongside steak or something similar.

Ingredients

1 cup of chicken stock

1 garlic clove, smashed

½ cup of quinoa

1 cup of cherry tomatoes

¼ of a purple onion

Half of a small cucumber

2-3 mint leaves

¼ cup of parsley

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of olive oil

1-2 splashes of vinegar

Directions

Rinse the quinoa thoroughly before cooking. Place in a pot with the chicken stock and garlic and bring to a boil. Once the stock comes to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes until all the liquid has been absorbed and the quinoa looks translucent. Meanwhile chop the cucumber and tomatoes into small pieces and finely dice the onion. Chop the parsley and mint and all with the vegetables into a bowl. Add the salt, vinegar and oil and stir to combine. Once the quinoa is cooked, set aside to cool. Combine the cooled quinoa with the vegetable mixture and place in the fridge for half an hour for the flavors to meld. Serve cold or at room temperature.