Tailor's!...

"Early bird special"--3 course tasting menu at Tailor's on Broome & Thompson with Albee! Since there were two options for apps, entrees, and desserts, we just got one of each--between Karen and Albee, I have the two most optimal dining homies to maximize tasting menus and...testing restos period :D Karen's sis used to work here as pastry chef--took me a while enough to eat here! Did have drinks w/ Albee here last winter--butternut sqash & palernum (and rum) was AAAAAAWESOME!! got me...toasted...real quick too :P

Again, to open with whatever I ended with!--some gelee. and butter. shhhh! The red pepper gelee (yes, as in bell pepper) came with the check--nice, cleansing, a little sweet, a little peppery :) The butter well--of course that was at the beginning with them breads--just look at it!! ^_^ Pretty, non? Not the best tasting butter for how crafty it looks with some herb & salt speckled on it, but soft it was and still enjoyable. Nummmay num num....

I just like when butter or ice cream is scooped out like that :) Plus this butter seemed whipped and thus scoopable like that. Couldn't really taste the salt or herb sprigs--the olive bread that came with it was yum (no exclamation mark, just as is :P) and the raisin/walnut bread was fragrant--but not that flavorful. I def liked the olive bread--it's reminiscent of the stuffed bread they served @ Il Satollo in the Testaccio neighborhood in Rome--but his bread was more stuffed with goodies and maybe some spinach I think? We even asked to bring the breadbag home for breakfast the next day--OH ROME. Anyhoo, this was a nice bread offering for NYC but I thought...but I just didn't really feel like finishing the bread =/.

First up--sesame sweetbreads (poached before deep frying!) with banana puree and purple mustard paper. Also had seared red snapper with watermelon, olives, coconut 'caviar' and charred ramps!

The sweetbreads were an early favorite--def like this better than the Sorella sweetbreads!! Damn that quince marmalade there! The waitress mentioned that part of why they're so good is that they poached it b/f frying, which of course keeps it moist/tender, and gets a better crust! The frying @ Sorella does render a consistent crustiness but--it was boring and a little on the small side -.- LOVED the mustard paper--tasted a little curry-y in aftertaste but only mildly. Thought it went excellently with the sweatbread and the taste and texture of the puree! Nice little booster/kick to bring it all together.

Seared snapper was refreshing--a little raw so it went cooly w/ the watermelon--which I'm sure has been messed with (in a good way) somehow given Tailor's penchant for molecular gastronomy here and there and infusing stuffs--def had more color and consistent flavor in all the melon chunkcs. If i'm wrong then that's just damn good melon! The snapper once in a while smelled a little fishy which translates to not the freshest--but by my discernible nostril I'd say it went well overall. Def a summer dish--on the fence if I'd order it again. OH!! and the COCONUT CAVIAR! :) crunchy, a little sweet, great texture to complement the dish. Charred ramps was actually nice and a new way to have it for me--which actually, refreshed my feelings for it since I reaaaally burned out on ramps :P Upon hindsight, I quite liked this dish actually...

DEFINITELY would've wanted to try the maple infused snail with bacon, parsley, and toast!! Next up--miso butterscotch pork belly w/artichoke & green apples, and black garlic chicken with long beans and shitake!

LOOOOOOOOOOOOVED the black garlic chicken--the breast was cooked sous vide...had great texture, very moist. The dark meat--which is my fave anyhoo!--was pulled and had a beurre blanc sauce with somethign else I can't remember :( :( but so yum! LOOOOOVED the sauce. The white meat was eh compared to this. The shitake, as shitake tends to, soaked up MUCH MUCH of the sauce so it was pretty salty and intense--but awesome nonetheless b/c i lurve it! and it was balanced out with the chicken. The cooking method, I'm a rube to the super infused biz so...I can't begin to deconstruct in my head. ORDER THIS. and...lots of other stuff :)

Pork belly--I'm a bit in a pork belly overload but this was nice. Which is why this picture is smaller :) Miso butterscotch sauce was VERY nice. Rich, viscous, but not saccharine or too savory--very nice. I've cooked with honey miso so this was easier to process in my head for me haha. Pork belly was a bit...wait for it...wait for it...too fatty. Blasphemy I know! *shrug*. As much as my palate's tired of pork belly this was nice. I think it could be a smidge more fall off the bone like @ Perbacco. mmmm. damn i need to hunt down pics of that from Claud's cam!!

Desserts--kinda hit or miss :( There was an eggless lemon curd with lemon chips, huckleberry sauce & shiso foam, and chocolate cake with malt ice cream, mushroom paper, candied maitake mushrooms, and peanuts.

The cake looked like it had gone thru those NO2 containers that people make the foams/espuma with--and it def looked like what I remember seeing when Anthony Bourdain went to Spain and they made the foam choco-cake nuked in the microwave at El Bulli w/ the brothers Adria!!! Too bad it could've been a little sweeter, a little more chocolatey :( Ice cream was fine--mushroom paper tasty & fun. Candied maitake!! Makes a lot of sense actually! Pretty nice, interesting texture--a little hard to grasp at first but...tastes just like any other candied fruits except way less artificial and achingly sweet. I like--It didn't...really seemt o make sense with the choco cake & ice cream but...nice to have separately.

Lemon curd--I don't like lemon pastries, lemon creams, lemon...desserts :( This however, was very very very much infused with lemon goodness and was pretty tart and punchy--good for any lemon lovers...esp since it left behind the artificially sweetened and chemically extracted...lemmony-ness. Shiso made NO sense on there--u know how i LOVED the mint ice cream @ Craftbar for tasting just like a mint leaf in all its leafy goodness? This jsut tasted like...garnished cilantro--it calmed down the intense lemon flavor but...just felt like I was eating feed. Lemon chips however...i liked! go fig.

Here are the remnants of my cake & 'shroomies! I have another pic I might upload but...eh!

Lastly--ended with a sugar coated red pepper gelee shown above--yes, red pepper. I like :) Overall--tailor has some really good dishes in how they infuse certain flavors and sauces and utilize molecular gastronomy and technical cooking to punch up the dish. A lot of edgy mixes of ingredients are sucessful (others like the lemon curd and shiso well...*shrug*). THe gelees pop up in the drinks menu too which I def think is a nice novelty. It's obvious this is somethign they're much more comfortable with and has been worked on quite a bit.

I'm def excited to go back to try other dishes here--Tailor's rotates what's offered for the $45 3 course tasting menu (available b/w 6 and 7pm), besides the 5 course tasting menu for $80 bucks.

Death by chocolate....cake! in b-burg

Went to brunch @ Relish in Williamsburg on N. 3rd and Wythe. Came late (as I tend to) and noshed on half of Claudia's eggs in casserole (everything was on point, much better than the one at Viceroy b/c it had other elements--potato slices etc that made it a heartier meal), and then the 4 of us split THE CAKE. :)

Quite a decadent little sucker--not as moist as *mine* ;) but ginormous layers + pretty tasty frosting + pretty yummy to begin with cake = yummyYumYUM. HERE's the ODD thing...we all ate it with the whipped cream! We all *had* to eat it with the whipped cream--it was...compulsion beyond comprehension. About halfway thru--we were angling on asking the waitress for another dollop to finish the cake with...except...my god. I normally HATE whipped cream O.o it's just *garnish* like...cilantro! (we'll get to that some other time)

I'm sure the cream was made on premise (or something) or specially sourced since it had none of that airy bland lardy-lightness --> my version of "buttery" in an undelightful (read: uninteresting) slant. We couldn't exactly pin point why the cake tasted so much better with the whip cream--or rather, just...tasted really incomplete without it even tho the cake itself didn't taste like it was lacking. *shrug*. Regardless, it was still magnificent!

I've only wandered in Williamsburg in daylight a handful of times (got some new cords at the Built by Wendy sample sale, my awesomest new winter coat at In God We Trust blahblahblah). Today--LO AND BEHOLD--we came across the Bedford Cheese Shop--which is SO MUCH MORE THAN CHEESE!!!

it's perfectly what I needed after being in Italy and since then avowing to really be good to myself w/ products, produce, artisanal foods etc. I've fallen into a slump of eating just to feed myself and move on b/c I get so carried away with life as a whole and everything becomes such an arduous task (as I tend to make it) that even cooking and eating is laborious.

Will do a full blown post of it some other time....but here's another pic I took there :) They sell jams, pickles, breads, sweets, oils, condiments, snacks--general goods from Italy, England, Germany, Switzerland, Holland--and wherever else. All in one shopping. YESSSS.

This is the same brand as my Oven Roasted Lemon & Thyme Chicken potato chips :) Just mine were Walkers' Sensations and these are regular. MY GOD. i love the british crisps!! :D

...oh what the hell...one more shot of the cake--tipped over! :)

WEEEEEEEE!!!

Bbq in the 'Burg + Chocolate Zucchini cake!

BBQ in williamsburgh--felt like I was in the backwoods of...Appalachia. There was a pit in the backyard (and damn i twas a roomy backyard) and the fire raaaaged within a circle of concrete slabs and hipsters (ha!) Anyway...here's the pasta salad I made:

Here's also the chocolate & zucchini cake Claudia made--this was from the Chocolate & Zucchini foodblog (which we just looooveetthhhh sooooo). It was nummy--had bittersweet chocolate in it. Claudz & I will be presenting an encore @ my own rooftop BBQ this coming Sunday.
There was also fish. it was uneventful. There were saussages and whatnot too but my frickin' camera was acting up--they would've been quite pretty pics tho. :P

And...there's the pic of the fun-ness...except less hipsters visible here and oddly disproportionate number of males. They climbed the tree and broke off branches for kindling--and those watching threw volleyballs etc at them. There was a little bit of rowdiness at the festivities. :)

See entry below for recipe for bastardized pasta salad!...

Gelati Grom-ness...

I am an italo-phile. no to the francophile. yes to the...anyhoodlekins.
Had some Grom on the UWS (Broadway b/w 76th & 77th st) w/ Jules-ster--she got the pistachio, I got the crema di grom.

I gotta say--it's a little refreshing, but disorienting to see Pistachio gelato/ice cream not in unearthly green form (see spumoni gardens pics). The pistachio also tasted nutty (as it probably should) and u can really taste the "toasted" side to it. Warm, not too sweet, delish.

My crema di grom is egg cream, Battifollo "meliga" biscuits (which evidently just means they made it with corn flour instead of wheat and...Grom's rather prideful about their snootiness in ingredients), and Ecuadorian chocolate. Some other flavors had Venezuelan chocolate--u should read about the crazy chocolate wars b/w Amedei and Valrhona...it's a little inSANE. **

Here's more of my ice cream b/c you love ze peektures. (Btw...a little too pricey for the sizes--what u see there was 5 bucks each.People are getting uber snooty about chocolates particularly the cocoa content, where the beans are from (likened to the origins of ze grapes and regions for ze wine and whatnot) and of course the recent NYtimes article on the emergence of snooty Milk Chocolate. The site 70% (referring to the % of cacao powder blahblahbl) is a good resource to edumacate urself on fancy chocolates (and buy them!).

In Italy, it was 3-4 euros for gelato the size of 2 of your fits clinging fervently to a sugar cone. Packed fo yo FACE!!) This one is a little...diminutive ain't it :P

I tried the Marrons de Glaces (good, i can't pinpoint the flavor but possibly red-bean-y or taro-y). The stracciatella is a good vanilla/cream-ish with chocolate and whatnot. Surprisingly they had Hazelnut AND Gianduja--but I gues that makes sense since gianduja is essentially Nutella (hazelnut chocolate) whereas the other one is just singular. I'm not a fan of sorbet so...I didn't try any. The Zabaione i think has the egg cream base like the Crema di Grom but with Sicilian Marsala wine.

I've had a few gelati downtown but I dunno...this does taste a lot cleaner/crisper and while creamy, just not as heavy as most gelati. My favorite was this place in Rome (I can't remember the cross streets but this was possibly near Piazza Navona on the way back from the Vatican near the bridge where that castle is. VAGUE yes? Whatebbs yo). Florence gelati was good but for some reason...that one in Rome always stuck with me.
There was a great gelato/coffee shop in the Belmont Shore strip in Long Beach. That you can look up yourself but I think it was called Cafe Roma--dun dun dunnn....

--
**(Valrhona refused to let the Tessieri bro/sis work with them, Tessieri goes straight to make a deal with the chocolate plantation folks in South America to work exclusively for Tessieri's AMADEI!!)

Icebox Cake...

Icebox cake from Billy's Bakery--just some homemade whip cream, layers of chocolate wafery-ness.
YUM-O. just kidding. i don't like rachael ray. Yes I lower-cased her name on purpose.
Le sigh. such a pretty little cake. As always, Billy's frostings/creams are on point.
i lobe u. (more for aesthetics than taste but whatebbs...)
Me & J spent a whole day eating super rich foods. This was 2nd to last :)
We went to Elmo's for dinner on 20th & 7th ave--that my friend, was quite delish. will save for another post. Had the Harvest Salad, Chatham Cod (perfectly cooked, with sweet potatoes and scallions), and a chocolate creme brulee to end. Lounge downstairs, will have to consider for Birthday. Very nice space, very modern, loungey--edgy and whatnot for 7th ave in Chelsea. Good date spot, nice electronica-y/downtempo music. Better than Kion in terms of ambience in spread.

Ohhh the Cakes u/i Make!...

I like to make zees cake. Zees one is very very rich, not too sweet, very moist, and lotsa chocolate. Eet ees ze triple chocolate cake--zees one had Chocolate & Peanut Butter chips...
You know ze recipe ees good when it starts with a stick of butter. or in this case....TWO. and a cup of sour cream, chocolate pudding mix, devil's food cake mix, 5 eggs, a teaspoon of Vanilla extract (but I prefer almond extract)...and to mix it up diff types of chocolate morsels. Bake for 50-55 min @ 375, let sit for 10 min in pan, cool for 15 min or so on rack.

I make eet for ze roomie passing the NY/NJ Bar Exam (that's law, not liquor!!). Zees cake has Butterscotch & White Chocolate chips...
I make eet for birfdays...(but not for mine this year b/c I had Billy's BAAAKERY!!)...
I make eet a lot. I bake eet for Thanksgiving this year. Zees cake has chopped up Andes Mints (b/c I couldn't find the Mint Swirled Chocolate chips)...
I bake eet for my first Xmas dinnah away from home...(star shape! extra festive with Raspberry & Chocolate chips :))...
I also made pan-roasted Chilean Sea Bass with soba noodles, cream of wild mushroom (cremini, portabello, woodsear? i can't remember), and oven baked asparagus wrapped with manchego and prosciutto with a little lemon-butter sauce. And apparently we also drink Riesling in the free Pom glasses :P
I bake tres cakes for ze baby showah complete veeth requisite sprinkles and cream cheese and or lemon frosting, but alas I do not have zee peektures.
I bake eet yust because...and so I stab eet too. Zees one has Caramel and Milk Chocolate chips...
Oh...and WHERE might you find these diff types of chocolate chips? ODDLY ENOUGH...Gristedes. but the one on the UWS had much more selection than anywhere else oddly enough. *shrug*. Happy Baking...

Birthday Scampi...

happy birfday to moi! (cake from billy's bakery on 22nd & 8th--i lobe it!) 3 layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream in lavender (u can't tell but it's a pretty lavender :) with pastel green, white, and yellow sprinkles in a gradation of each color. u likey the comma splice no? ;)

so for bday dinner, I "made" shrimp scampi with my spin on garlic and oil pasta which is just with tomatoes and basil sauteed in garlic w/fish sauce. Yeah--u thought I was lying about using fish sauce in everything didn't you!! *shakes fist!*

I can't rave enough about using fresh basil (fresh dill, fresh herbs blahblah) enough garlic to stink for days. Basil rocks my socks. Basil and dill. SERIOUSLY. I also like arugula--I never took to bitter produce or spicy/hot foods, but man, u can really taste the diff and I eat spicy selectively now.

Back to the bday dinner food--I put "made" scampi in quotations because the scampi was frozen shrimp from Costco :) It used to be my fave b/c it was all seasoned and whatnot and just fantastically *salty* to my taste per se with a really robust flavor. (I also never understood that phrasing, robust, until lately anyway so it's just one of those things that you can't fully get conceptually until you really experience that taste.)

ANYWAY, I have to drain crazy amounts of butter every time I made it. Either way, it was a little disappointing that they altered the scampi to be so bland and buttery but great in that it made the tomato-basil-fish-sauce aspect really pop out more. I was sparing in the fish sauce. :P