Your mom likes cake.

“I’m in NYC, betch”

Written on February 24, 2013 by Laura in new york, restaurants, travel

Dominique Ansel Bakery

So began my friend Liz’s message to me when she came to town a couple of weeks ago. A lot of friends, and friends of friends, have been visiting lately, and so I’ve been asked to make a lot of “must-hit” lists in the past few weeks. “What do I absolutely HAVE to eat while I’m here?” is what people want to know. LAWD. To distill this place down into a list of five, or ten, or even twenty places seems impossible — especially because I have only been here a year, which is only one small step above tourist and definitely not long enough to have tried even a fraction of the food that NYC has to offer. HOWEVER, I am a know-it-all at heart (at least, according to a psychic in Koreatown, who I suspect knows what’s up), and nothing makes me happier than to boss people around under the guise of assisting them. So, should you come to visit, I do have some ideas for you. Without further ado, here is a completely subjective and non-comprehensive list of places I think you should eat in New York:

IN MANHATTAN

Momofuku Ssäm Bar
You have to hit some part of David Chang’s empire while you’re here, and this is my favorite (of the ones I’ve tried, at least — full disclosure, I’ve never been to Ko, Ma Pêche, or Booker & Dax). Noodle bar is also good. Milk bar is worth going to just because it’s weird and famous, but to be honest I do not love the treats there. However I would probably step on a small child to get at the sausage and rice cakes dish at Ssäm.

Dominque Ansel Bakery
If you are at all into pastry or sweets you don’t want to miss this place. Skip Bouchon and all the other famous places and just go here, it blows everything else out of the water. Get a kouign-amann.

The Wayland
I really like this place for cocktails if I’m in the East Village, which is not often, but every now and then I’ll make a special trip for it. They have a margarita made with kale and ginger juice, for chrissakes. A bartender once told me that tequila has “natural stimulants” and I choose to believe him, and also to believe that that is a good thing.

The Garden Variety Margarita at the Wayland

Mission Chinese
I have been disappointed by it on occasion, but it’s absolutely worth trying because it will at least be different and interesting and you will probably have one or two dishes that are a mouth party. Also I really love Danny Bowien, I have seen him speak and he is charming and down to earth and smart and I like his approach to food, even if for me it is occasionally a little heavy. And the Twin Peaks thing in the bathroom!

Big Gay Ice Cream
Favorite ice cream shop for many reasons: unicorns, rainbows, sundaes with salt on them, blood orange fig balsamic syrup, Bea Arthur.

IN BROOKLYN

Chavela’s
I thought maybe I just loved this place a lot because it’s near my house and they have taco happy hour, but the more tacos I eat (including some I had at Empellón Taqueria) the more I think it’s just the best place for tacos, period. Also really great here: the huitlacoche quesadilla and the elotes.

Weather Up
My favorite place for cocktails. Really great drinks, cozy atmosphere, and off the beaten path. No sign, which is just a thing that places in New York do that you have to deal with. Also, cash only (same reason).

Pies n Thighs
The chicken biscuit here comes in a literal pool of honey butter and hot sauce. SO GOOD. The cake donuts are great, too.

Roberta’s
For your pizza fix. My friend who is a very picky pizza eater prefers Motorino to Roberta’s, so you might want to consider that, too. They are both very good, trust.

Chuko
Fantastic ramen. Right across from Weather Up, bonus! I have lately been trying to recreate their brussels sprouts in my kitchen and have been failing (fish sauce, peanuts…the menu is purposefully vague, damn them).

Roebling Tea Room
Really like this place for brunch. Solid food and a really lovely space.

Franny’s
Great pizza and simple Italian food. Oh, and AMAZING gelato (ahem).

IN QUEENS

Just eat any and all Chinese, Thai, Indian, etc. food you can get your hands on. (Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot in Flushing is pretty great, if you want a specific recommendation).

Prosperity Dumpling

FAVORITE CHEAP EATS

Good news! It is somewhat possible to hang here without going broke.

Prosperity Dumpling (Chinatown)
A little window with all kinds of dumplings, pancakes, etc. I usually get an order of fried dumplings ($1 for six), and a sesame pancake with duck ($1.75). Best in warmer months cause there’s little to no room inside to sit.

Shanghai Cafe for soup dumplings (Chinatown)
Tons of tempting stuff on this menu, but I think the best bet is to get a bunch of soup dumplings and some scallion pancakes. Plenty of tables.

Punjabi Grocery and Deli (East Village)
I just call this the “Indian place across from Katz’s” — it’s a little basement shop that happens to sell awesome plates of Indian for super cheap.

Lulu’s (Greenpoint)
This is really a bar, but they give you a FREE PIZZA when you order a drink (any drink, and the beers are cheap). It’s pretty good pizza, too.

PLACES ON MY “DYING TO TRY” LIST AT THE MOMENT, IF YOU’RE INTERESTED

Pok Pok
Ippudo
Diner
Talde
SriPraPhai
Yunnan Kitchen

WHAT WOULD YOU PICK??

Share with the class, I want to add to my list.

1 Comment - Leave a comment!

Still here

Written on January 25, 2013 by Laura in new york, restaurants, travel

Ack! It has already been a year since I moved to New York. Aside from the fear of getting pushed onto train tracks that I now live with daily, it’s great. My second-favorite island. If Hawaii doesn’t work out, you guys should move here.

My bestest bud from Chicago came to visit last week, and I ran her ragged trying to show her all of the stuff I love about living here, which maybe only served to convince her that 95% of my time here is spent switching trains and climbing stairs and trying to figure out which way is uptown when I exit the subway. (Not entirely inaccurate.)

We overate, obviously, and I could write a whole post about that — Ssäm bar, Mermaid Inn, soup dumplings in Chinatown, Big Gay Ice Cream, Murray’s Cheese Shop, cocktails at the Wayland — but instead I’ll just tell you about the best thing we did, which was go to Dominque Ansel’s pastry shop.

If you want to have your mind blown, please go here. Dominque Ansel is the former pastry chef at Daniel and the guy is amazing. I mean, look at these:

Fancy and French! Everything I love about pastry. We had a perfect cannelé, a perfect Kouign-amann, and a perfect Religieuse, which is basically a cream puff atop a cream puff, so named because to French people it resembles a nun:

That thing, obviously, was fantastic — cream puffs filled with white and fluffy pastry cream and glazed with a very lightly-rosewater-y icing, sandwiched with those white chocolate petals you see there. Despite my intense affinity for cream puffs, though, the Kouign-amann might have been my favorite — it’s not particularly photogenic so I didn’t grab a picture, but it’s one of the things this bakery is known to do very, very well. It’s similar to a croissant, but with salted butter AND sugar in the layers and on top, the latter caramelizing into crunchy deliciousness when it bakes. Thank the Bretons for this creation. Bless you my friends. And please, don’t pass up the opportunity to try one — I suggest in the morning rather than the afternoon, simply because they often sell out on the early side.

If you’re not convinced yet, Here is a video of M. Ansel making this very pastry of which we speak.

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

The people who live here are smarter than us.

Written on October 23, 2012 by Laura in travel

If Chicago was my first love, and New York is who I plan to settle down and make it work with, then Maui is the sexy Argentinian lover I had a fling with who taught me about life and love and fed me tropical fruits under the stars.

Orrrr it’s the soulmate I met too early when I was a young girl vacationing in the south of France whom destiny finally reunites me with in old age.

Orrrr… uhh.

I had a really good time in Hawaii, is what I’m trying to say. Of course you had a good time in Hawaii, you say while you roll your eyes. But, on the real, Hawaii was not a place about which I ever thought, “OOH, GOD, I HAVE to go there before I die!” Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Iceland, India, sure. Hawaii? I dunno.

WELL I AM DUMB. Hawaii is an amazing tropical paradise. It feels like you should need a passport to get there, but you don’t. (Did you, like me, think it was maybe a 2- or 3-hour flight from the coast of California? It’s OK. We’re Americans and we can’t be expected to know geography.)

I hiked to a waterfall, and I ate shave ice, and fresh passion fruit, and I swam with sea turtles (!) and I saw a manta ray (!!) and I was lucky enough to stay in a very nice place and enjoy some insane meals and lie in the sun.

Oh, I also hung out with some pigs named Candi, Lola and Bubbles.

…And I injured myself so badly trying to clamber into a canoe that I couldn’t lift my arm for a day and a half. So, don’t worry — still a goob.

So in conclusion: We should all move to Hawaii, where we will be so full of Vitamin D that we will never know fear or unhappiness again.

1 Comment - Leave a comment!

Camping in the Catskills

Written on September 5, 2012 by Laura in inspiration, new york, travel

I never thought I would be a Person Who Enjoys Camping, but my friends, I have been converted.

Obligatory food photo: “Nelly Frittata,” one of many awesome meals made on this guy.

Bros at Peekamoose Blue Hole

Best time ever, etc.

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Made a birthday cake for my roommate

Written on September 4, 2012 by Laura in cakes, chocolate, fruit, vanilla

Vanilla cake with passionfruit cremeux, dark chocolate ganache, and whipped cream, if you’re wondering.

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

My Mama’s Chicken Salad

Written on June 26, 2012 by Laura in recipes, savory

is on Saveur.com today! Unrelated, but also cool: this.

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Memorial Day and the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever, Seriously, I Never Exaggerate

Written on May 31, 2012 by Laura in cookies, ice cream, new york, recipes

Where Chicago has the backyard, Brooklyn has the roof. So for Memorial Day this year, instead of a barbecue, we had a rooftop picnic.

We had a bunch of stuff: sgroppinos, Mom’s famous chicken salad, pesto pasta, cold beer, a billion kinds of dip, and a steady stream of mom jokes.

The best part though (at least, according to me, who made them) was these:

cookiewich

Chocolate chip pretzel cookie ice cream sandwiches, yallz.

This recipe for these cookies has occupied a greasy, well-worn page in my little recipe book for some time. The original recipe was given to me by a pastry chef I used to work for, who would make it for family meal all the time. I’ve modified it since, but it remains the simplest and the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve ever tried.

There are so many great things about these cookies that I can’t even compose a coherent paragraph, I have to put them into a bulleted list:

BULLET NUMBER ONE: They are easy to make and they don’t require any stupid special-trip ingredients.

BULLET NUMBER TWO: There is a ton of butter and brown sugar in them (flavor!), yet they don’t spread out too much (crispy flat cookies are the worst).

BULLET NUMBER THREE: They once won me $50 of free booze in a cookie contest at the bar. This doesn’t benefit you, but I wanted to brag.

BULLET NUMBER FOUR: They freeze well, both in the sense that you can make up the dough and bake them straight from frozen (there is nothing better than suddenly remembering you have cookie dough ready to bake off), and in the sense that when the finished cookies are frozen, you can still bite into them (no broken teefs from your ice cream sandwiches).

BULLET NUMBER FIVE: They are good on their own, but this is also the perfect place to get rid of things like peanut butter chips or extra chocolate-covered pretzels (haha, “extra” chocolate-covered pretzels).

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Some standard tips: Your butter should be room-temp and soft, but not melty (i.e. you should be able to squeeze it easily like clay but it shouldn’t be melting all over your hands). Your eggs should be room temperature, too (this goes for most baked goods—it just helps everything play nice together). If they’re still cold from the fridge, have them take a little bath in a bowl of warm water for a while. You will need a small scale to measure the ingredients.

MAKES ABOUT 4 DOZEN COOKIES

8 oz. butter
364g brown sugar
1 T vanilla
2 eggs
364g flour
½–¾ tsp. salt, according to taste (and how many pretzels you’re adding)
1 tsp. baking soda
450g chocolate chips (ish, feel free to add more or less depending on your preferences)
Several handfuls of pretzels (same deal)

Combine all your dry ingredients and give them a good whisk.

Mix the butter and sugar in a stand mixer on low with the paddle attachment until it’s toothpaste-textured. (Very light and fluffy is great for cakes; for cookies don’t go quite as long in the mixer).

Scrape the bowl well to make sure it’s all mixed, then add the eggs and vanilla slowly as you continue to mix. Add a little at a time, let it get incorporated, then add some more. If the batter starts to curdle, add a little bit of the flour.

Scrape again and add in the crunchy bits.

Add in the flour in halves. No need to mix the crap out of it, just until it’s incorporated.

Drop tablespoon-sized blobs of dough onto a cookie sheet (covered in parchment or sprayed with nonstick spray).

Now, you can

Bake them right away at 350°F for 8–12 minutes.

OR

Cover them with a sheet of wax paper and freeze the dough balls to bake later. Bake them straight from frozen at 350° for 10–14 minutes. (I can’t recommend that you eat the dough frozen, because technically, you know, it’s raw…but it’s delicious).

Whichever way you go, take them out when they don’t seem quiiiiite done yet. They will continue baking a bit even out of the oven.

Enjoy with some melty ice cream on a rooftop.

3 Comments - Leave a comment!

Home Sweet Home and Mom’s Chicken Salad

Written on May 19, 2012 by Laura in recipes, salty, savory, travel

Last weekend I took the bus from New York to Virginia to hang out with my family for Mother’s Day.

I didn’t miss Virginia too terribly when I lived in Chicago. I missed the people, sure, and sometimes the weather, but overall I was pretty happy being an Illinois resident, where the politics were more liberal and I could buy whiskey in Target. My NYC friends would wax poetic about the Virginia countryside and I’d be all, “Yep, it sure is pretty. ANYWAY…”

Well friends, maybe it’s the lack of green space where I live in New York, or maybe I just finally got some smarts, but on this trip I understood. The breeze! Like the beautiful green cool breath of tree angels! And the smell! Like plants and dirt—DIRT dirt, from the EARTH, not particles of trash and human feces! When the air caresses your skin in New York it always makes you feel sort of molested and vaguely dirty. When the air caresses your skin at my parents’ house it’s like the cool touch of a beautiful Scandinavian man who smells nice.

This is not my parents’ house, but it is very near their house.

I listened to birds. The dog frolicked. My dad, the original hipster, showed me his backyard chickens. We all ate burgers and inhaled fresh air and looked at green things. And then we took my mom to brunch.

The brunch was good, and I wasn’t about to make my mom cook on Mother’s Day, but normally the real pleasure for me in going home is digging through my parents’ fridge, or coaxing my mom to make one of my favorites. Deviled eggs, chicken salad, german chocolate cake—one of those things that isn’t really hard to make but that no one but Mom will ever be able to do just right. I particularly remember this chicken salad inspiring school-lunch envy   when I was growing up. One friend of mine repeatedly bugged her own mother to make it, then when she finally did, informed her that the result “just wasn’t as good” as my mom’s. Burn.

And truly, when I made it yesterday in my little Brooklyn kitchen, the result was good—delicious, even—but it just wasn’t quite the same.

Mom’s Chicken Salad

3–4 boneless chicken breasts (Mom’s note: Rib-in is fine too, it just takes more time to pull off the bone.)
¾ cup celery (about 3 stalks), peeled and finely chopped
¾ cup sweet pickle relish
2 hard boiled eggs, finely chopped
½–¾ cup vidalia onion (about 1 med. onion), finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Mayonnaise (about ½–1 cup, according to taste—don’t skimp though!)

Boil the chicken til done (mine took about half an hour) and shred or chop while still warm. (Mom shreds hers and this is how I recommend it.)
Add celery, relish, eggs, onion, salt and pepper—taste and then add more celery, relish or onion depending on what it needs.
Add the mayonnaise last, in ½-cup increments, until it’s the consistency you like.

5 Comments - Leave a comment!

In Sweden, Candy Eats You

Written on May 7, 2012 by Laura in candy, new york

The other day I g-chatted my friend Melissa. (Have we all agreed that this is a verb now? I’m cool with it if you guys are.)

“I HAVE to try that salty licorice!” I said/typed. Actually, I think it was more along the lines of “omguhhhhhhh that salty licorice! hafta try it!!!” but we’ll pretend that someone on the cusp of thirty doesn’t communicate like a fifteen year old.

For some reason the sort of licorice that is popular in Scandinavia—strong and salty, one of those things that falls very far on the “acquired taste” end of the spectrum—had been on my mind. First a friend went to Denmark and tried it. Then it came up in conversation in a bar. And then I saw this. Whenever I start to hear a lot about something weird-tasting that I haven’t tried yet, I get jealous. How come everyone had tried this but me??

A few minutes later I got a message with a name and address: Sockerbit Sweet & Swedish, 89 Christopher Street.

Sockerbit is in the West Village, near the Christopher Street stop on the 1 and next to a skincare shop where a guy from Israel will try to rub you with dead sea salt. It is wall-to-wall gummies and licorice, sold by the pound, plus a few other Scandinavian food items. You will feel this excited when you enter:

My friend and I filled a bag with candies and walked down the street, tasting them one by one, trying to find a piece of licorice that approximated the one she had tried in Copenhagen. They were salty, and mouth-puckering, but in a good way. “No, this one isn’t as strong,” she kept saying, every time we reached in the bag. Finally we both pulled out a little black wheel and bit into it. It tasted of… blue cheese. “Yep, that’s it,” she said, and made an incomprehensible face. I turned it over in my mouth for a minute, willing myself to like it. Then I spit it out. Not there yet.

I mean, I see how you might acquire the taste for it. I’m sure it escalates, like alcohol tolerance or libertarianism. And then one day you’re drunk at 10am, eating “candy” that tastes like Gorgonzola and spitting on homeless people.

Sometimes I wonder how far one should really take this acquired taste thing. I’ve used the tactic of repeatedly eating a food until it goes from “HURGH” to “I suppose this is edible” to “Hey I actually like this” with a pretty good success rate. Fennel, blue cheese, cilantro, olives, and yes, licorice: these are all things I had to learn to like but that I legitimately enjoy now. But at what point do you begin to seem delusional when you’re standing around trying to convince your friends that no REALLY, this gross-tasting thing is actually GOOD, you just haven’t REALIZED it yet? (I’m looking at you, Malort. Which, as it happens, was created by a Swedish person! Swedes, why do you want everything you ingest to punch you in the mouth?)

One day, I fear, I will just down anything you put in front of me, with no regard to whether it actually tastes good or not (all those who I have tried to convince that a shot of Jagermeister mixed with Rumpleminze “tastes like Christmas” will undoubtedly argue that this day has come and gone).

Nevertheless, I found myself craving a piece of licorice as I wrote this post. Maybe just a slightly-salty piece, more of a light smack rather than a punch in the face. Time for another trip?

Note: I have since found quite a few other places where you can buy this licorice in New York, among them Economy Candy on the Lower East Side and Dewey’s Candy in DUMBO.

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

Cruise Ship Highlights

Written on April 22, 2012 by Laura in travel

Have you guys ever been on a cruise?

Before this trip I had been on exactly one, when I was twelve, to the Bahamas. I don’t remember much about it except that our room was really small and claustrophobic and I played a lot of ping pong.

So I didn’t really know what to expect this time around. In my head I guess I was sort of imagining a combination of dinner at Downton Abbey and the resort in Dirty Dancing?

And, dudes—that’s EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS LIKE. Well maybe more like the resort in Dirty Dancing combined with someone hacking up several Broadway musicals and reassembling them, human centipede-style.

I’m sorry for that, it really was the first description that came to mind.

Anyway, this, for example. This really happened:

And also this. Did I mention there was a disco on the top deck?

SO GOOD. There was also: purple carpet, a lounge singer, and bread sculptures. And not a hint of ironic posturing in sight, unlike every single stupid place in New York.

So if you have surmised that I probably drank a lot of ouzo, requested Beyoncé, danced with the cast from the musical show and in general had the best time ever, then my friends you are excellent surmisers.

0 Comments - Leave a comment!