Knitted Donut!

Tonight Todd and I went to City Bakery for their City Bakery Night of Knitting on the Rocks (With Chocolate Too!).  I learned about this fun and tasty event on the Mochimochi Land blog and signed right up.  I was lucky enough to find empty seats at the Brooklyn General Doughknits workshop table and we got to chat with Anna Hrachovec and the nice people from Brooklyn General.

This year they didn't try to have people do more than one workshop which was good, because last year there really just wasn't time. The tickets were significantly more expensive, which I think discouraged a lot of people from coming, but made for smaller crowds.

Although we spent most of our time at the Brooklyn General table I also met a nice woman from Knitty City who gave me a bag and a fun clicky tape measure in exchange for contributing to their charity project which will become a blanket to be sent to Japan.

Again they had tons of delicious food including their super rich hot chocolate and macaroni and cheese.  I managed to only get one serving of food, but ended up succumbing to two cups of hot chocolate.  Overall a fun and worthwhile event.

My Dad Makes Amazing Pizza

On a recent house-hunting marathon up to Connecticut we took a swing through Ossining, NY on the way back. My father owns a pizza place (Sal's Pizza), which makes some of the best pizza I've ever had. Their dough is to die for. 

After treating ourselves to some of the specialty flavors—including bbq chicken ranch, buffalo chicken, and their tasty original pizza—we got to watch my dad make some pies too. This is him getting started on a regular-size original pie.

Beyond Downtown San Francisco

Now that I have a little more time to spend outside of work I was able to catch up with some friends that I've been meaning to see.  I caught the correct train in the right direction and got off at the right stop without mishap and even got a seat and got in some knitting.
I was a little early so I got to people watch outside the train until Sarah walked up at the appointed time.  After a little indecision we decided to go to a place we thought would be Oaxacan, but turned out to be Salvadoran instead.  But that turned out to be ok, because after a peek at Cafe Platano's delicious sounding menu we were sold.

While waiting for Alain, Sarah and I poured over the menu and had everything picked out before he arrived.  Although we didn't even make it off the small plates menu.  We made excellent choices including: fried platanos, fried yuca, an avocado salad, pastelitos, corn tamales and of course pupusas.  Sadly as often happens with food I was to excited to remember to take and pictures of anything.  But it was great to catch up with Sarah and Alain, to get a glimpse of their neighborhood, and to help them find a tasty new place to eat. 

Creme Brulee Cart

After my successful choice yesterday, the guys were willing to take my suggestion when I wanted to look for another cart from the list Todd found in November so we went over to the Creme Brulee Cart on Market at Sutter street. 

Unlike many of the places on the list, the creme brulee is really sold from a tiny cart, not a truck so we almost missed it.  There is just one guy at this cart which is really like a cooler with wheels.  When you make your order he takes out these small foil cups, sprinkles sugar on the top, torches it, adds more sugar, torches it again and then if you're not planning to eat it right away he puts a little lid on it.

I opted for the "Yes Please" which has balsamic glazed strawberries in a nutella custard.  It was amazing.  It could have been overwhelming but the proportions were just right and the moderate serving size was just right for a post lunch snack.

Curry Up Now

In November, for my birthday (for which I have a back post queued up), Todd planned out a wonderful trip to San Francisco. I don't want to steal too much content from that post, but although the trip centered around the amazing Cavalia show, Todd came up with a number of other exciting things to do. One of which involved tracking down reportedly delicious food with mobile places of businesses based on this article.  We picked and found Curry Up Now on our very first afternoon and discovered that at least this cart was even better than the article purported. 

Fast forward to today for lunch when I suggested this to my coworkers.  We were almost frightened off by the enormous line, but it moved quickly and it was worth it.  The food was every bit as good as I hoped and remembered, particularly the fresh and perfectly fried samosas which are good enough to eat without any condiments.  To further prove my point, we all decided no to head straight into food coma so we all saved some of our food for later, but by 5pm the guys polished off their leftovers and there was serious samosa envy.  Score 1 for Olivia's lunch suggestions!

After Work Adventures in SF

This is the first post in a while that lives up to the name of this blog: I'm currently waiting to fly home on a redeye.  I've been coming to San Francisco three days a week for six out of the last seven weeks and tonight is the first time I've had time after work to do anything not work related.

Here is my cute little swatch.

My first stop was this yarn store I've been stalking for a few weeks. On my way to work each day I walk through the Union Square and Chinatown areas and one day I looked up to see a bright red sigh that read "Yarn." When I looked it up I discovered that it actually belonged to ArtFibers and that each day they stay open until 6pm.  I also perused their blog and found some of their patterns that I really liked.  As matter of fact I happen to be wearing a shawl collared sweater today when this caught my eye.  I'd nipped in right before they closed at 6, but Roxanne was nice enough to let me pet all the luscious swatches and then whip up a mini swatch of a purply maroon to see if that would be a good color for the collar and cuffs of the cropped jacket.

This is my swatch next to the sample of the body yarn. 
This picture really doesn't do justice to the rich colors of the yarn.

We thought it picked up enough of the colors in the multicolored main body that I should go ahead and use it.  The next step will be for me to go back next week when Roxanne will even adjust the pattern for my measurements and help me to figure out how much yarn I'll need.  And they are having a 15% off anniversary sale.  How nice is that!

After my fiber fix I had an nice little side trip to Victoria's Secret where I actually managed to use a couple of those coupons that turn up periodically in the mail and usually end up in the trash.  Don't think to hard about this - I bought something sensible. 

For my next stop I revisited a place Todd and I ended up at by accident during our trip in the fall: Lori's Diner.  I stopped by just to look at the menu and was lured in by the mozzarella sticks.  Then once I sat down at the table I decided to be adventurous and ordered the BBQ ranch salad too.  I turned out to be worth the gamble as it was a lightly dressed pile of crunchy (romaine) and healthy (mixed) greens with a zippy ranch/bbq dressing and nearly a whole avocado hidden under the entire chicken breast and the yummy dollop of shoestring onions.  

I know I should have had some self-restraint , but I ended up indulging and having a banana split to round things out.  The bananas, strawberries and cherries make this healthy right.  Anyway, I made a valiant effort and reduced their generous portion to this:

The nice people at Lori's even let me use their wireless internet and didn't seem to mind when I whipped out my laptop and monopolized a table for almost three hours (don't worry I left a very nice tip).  Now I just have a few more hours to kill until wheels up....

Doughnut Crawl

At Dough, our last doughnut stop, we completely lost all semblance of self-control and somehow came home with ALL of these beauties.  Nom.

On Thursday I read this article in the NY Times and came up with a brilliant idea: a doughnut crawl. I sent it to Jess and Todd just thinking that it was a funny idea. But there was considerable excitement and a plan solidified like so:

View Doughnut Crawl in a larger map
1) Doughnut Plant
2) Wonder City Coffee & Doughnuts at the Brindle Room
3) Dough
4) Fette Sau
5) Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop
6) Gulluoglu Baklava Cafe

We knew the last two might be a stretch.  As it turned out we did pretty well and even managed to sneak in some bonus stops.

Our first stop, Doughnut Plant, was a popular place to be on a rainy Sunday afternoon, although the line moved quickly and there were plenty of doughnuts available when we made it up to the tiny counter.

Under the board on the left is the doughnut display that emptied as quickly as the staff could fill it.

We had tried some of the Donut Plant's fare before since at Oren's Daily Roast in Grand Central Terminal, so we managed to restrain ourselves and stuck to one doughnut a piece.

From the left going clockwise: a pistachio cake doughnut, a blackberry jelly with vanilla bean glaze yeast doughnut, and a blackberry jelly with peanut butter glaze yeast doughnut. 

As you can tell we were so excited about the doughnuts that we started eating them before we remembered to take any pictures.  The blackberry jam with vanilla bean frosting was my favorite.  The doughnut itself was light, fluffy, tasty.  The jelly was actually reminiscent of good blackberry jam and the vanilla bean glaze was the perfect light and flavorful compliment.  The peanut butter and jam doughnut was similarly well balanced, with a surprisingly un-heavy peanut glaze with peanut chunks that didn't overwhelm the jelly or the doughnut itself.  The pistachio doughnut was good too, with lovely green flecks all the way through and a complimentary almond flavored dough.  In addition to the doughnuts we got chais and coffee. The coffee was good, but the chai was great. Todd said it was as close as he's ever had to Chaiwalla's chai.

For our next stop we nipped up to the lower east side and found a parking space around the corner from the Brindle Room (a.k.a. Wonder City).  After a bit of dithering we decided to have our second batch of doughnuts sitting down somewhere other than the car so we got a table and rounded out things with drinks, greens, and granola.

Cheers!

The delicious cocktails, an elderflower sparking and a Tokyo springtime, came in these nifty glasses that looked a little like stemless champagne glasses.  The drinks themselves were refreshing and fruity without being overly sweet.

These were the main event.  From the back: chocolate hazelnut with toasted almond, caramel, powdered sugar, and chocolate with toasted coconut.

These petite and delicious doughnuts were made from mashed potatoes, which I probably wouldn't have been able to figure out if I hadn't read it in the NY Times article.  They texture is much as they describe in the article.  They are surprisingly delicate and satisfyingly crunchy.

Doughnuts, plus tasty house-made granola, plus savory sauteed greens.

When we sat down and cheeseburgers started to appear at the table next to us, my stomach went "oohh and grilled cheese and tomato would be lovely" but my brain vetoed that and went with granola. 

Instead of waddling straight back to the car we decided to make a couple of bonus stops including a pet food store and Downtown Yarns, and as we were looking at the map it turned out that a Bahn Mi place Todd has been wanting to go to was right across the way.

The pet food store had just what we were looking for and hopefully that will make my dad and Griffin happier.  The yarn store was a bust because they had the copy of Fall 2010 edition of Vogue Knitting that I've been looking for but sadly despite having a label stating to ask for additional copies they did not actually have any additional copies and wouldn't sell me the house copy. 

Mmmmm.... Bahn Mi.....

The Bahn Mi, despite taking forever to prepare, was very good.  The meat was tasty, the bread was nice and crusty, and the veggies provided the perfect compliment to both.

After our bonus Bahn Mi we embarked on the Brooklyn leg of our adventure and made it to Dough shortly before it closed. 

Ta-da!  We made it!

Confusingly Dough is at location that used to be a chicken place called Roosters so when I looked it up on the map all I got was dated information and a dated street view that was totally wrong.  But Dough really is at 305 Franklin Avenue.

Even the logo in their boxes looks good enough to eat...

Inside we were gripped by paralyzing indecision.

Which turned into this:

Oh the choices.  So we decided not to choose.  Gentle reader, you'll be relieved to know that we escaped the shop leaving a couple of flavors for next time. 

We decided not to try to make it to Peter Pan's Donut and Pastry shop and instead decided to switch from carbs to protein for our last stop.  Sofia's explorations into Brooklyn have turned up some excellent taste experiences, including this amazing barbecue place:

In warm weather, or at least dry weather, the picnic benches are the perfect place to eat.

Fette Sau or the Happy Pig has an interesting variety of rich delicious meats that are all cooked to perfection with sides that stand right up to them.

Where to start first?

After a little bit of drooling and dithering we came home with brisket, pork shoulder, bacon, sausage, German potato salad, broccoli salad, baked beans, sauerkraut, pickles and potato rolls.  We brilliantly decided to head home with our haul from the last two stops where we were able to enjoy them at a leisurely pace.  The bacon was, hands down, the best of the dishes and the spicy broccoli salad was the most unexpectedly tasty.  The brisket had yummy charred edges and the perfect line of pink just around the outside.  The sauerkraut was delicious and crisp and the baked beans were wonderfully flavorful while being cooked just enough and still maintaining individual bean integrity.

Overall this was an excellent adventure for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Mallowmars and Pineapple Upsidedown Cake

Today was a baking kind of day. For a get together with some friends I made an old favorite - pineapple upside down cake - from when I was at college armed with my cast iron frying pan and The Joy of Cooking. I acquiesced to the request for a "normal" pineapple upside down cake - one without whole wheat flour and where I remembered to add sugar.  It came out beautifully and disappeared in record time.

Our second and larger project was a reprise of our mallowmar adventure from over the summer.  This time we knew more what to expect and the cooler weather helped too.  Here Todd is with the slightly less stiff marshmallow topping.

This time I was a little tired by the time we got around to dipping the mallowmars in chocolate so mine are the sloppy ones.  We used more cinnamon this time so you could really taste in the graham crackers and that complimented the vanilla and the chocolate really nicely.  

The softer marshmallow was easier to handle, but it spread a little more too.  However the end product was delicious and easier to fit in your mouth. I think that next time slightly less time than the recipe calls for but more than this time would be perfect.

Burghul Kofte and Pistachio Semolina Cake

Kofte

Sauce

Yogurt

The Turkish food we made yesterday we made was delicious, but we didn't quite get to everything we wanted to make.  Since we had the ingredients for the Burghul Kofte with tomato and mint sauce and garlic yogurt, as well as the the pistachio semolina cake, and we really wanted to make them....we went ahead and got cooking. 

The full spread of ingredients.

The first step was to make some more delicious garlic yogurt. 

The kofte themselves were make like gnocci, but we had to tweak the proportion of flour to get them to stay together while we boiled them.  They came out as delicious, satisfying nuggets of grainy goodness. The tomato sauce cooked up to a brilliant red.  We were less careful than we might have been with the pepper, and, although beautiful, the sauce was slightly spicier than we were really comfortable with and the yogurt turned out to be key to enjoying the dish. 

Look how well this recipe packed up into our nifty new bento boxes that we got as Christmas gifts.

There was just enough of the leftover tomato pomegranate mint salad to make a refreshing accompaniment to the kofte.  As I polished off the salad I thought that this salad would be really wonderful to have on a hot day because the yogurt and the pomegranate are so refreshing together, like a yogurt/fruit soup and gazpacho combined.

Todd's caption: Way yummier than gazpacho.

The major hurdle to making the cake was shelling 3/4 cup of pistachios that really would rather have stayed in their shells. 

The pistachios were then combined with the sugar in the food processor and ground to powder.

And that was added to the other ingredients to make a surprisingly stiff and tasty batter.

This batter was all kinds of delicious all on its own.

Other than the pistachios the cake was pretty straightforward and baked up quickly while we enjoyed the kofte.

The finishing touch was cinnamon syrup that soaked into the dense, rich cake. 

The syrup was almost unnecessary because the cake was moist and flavorful with a pleasant texture all on its own.  However, it was fun to watch the cake absorb the syrup because you could actually watch it suck the syrup down and release tiny bubbles.

The book advised cutting the cake into diamonds which turned out to be harder than it looked and I'm pretty sure that squares would have tasted just as good. 

Todd's best effort at diamond-cutting. Luckily he was sated into oblivion at this point or he would have been very angry with the results.

Everything we made from the cookbook came out so well I can hardly wait to try another recipe.  The only caveat is that while the recipes are delicious, they would benefit from additional description if they are really intended for the amateur or home kitchen as they seem to be.  The kofte could have benefited from additional instructions about how to achieve the proper dumpling consistency.  This is particularly true because the recipes use ingredients that are unusual and that we therefor were not entirely comfortable with or sure to expect of. 

Final verdicts:

• Burghul Kofte: 8/10 Hearty and flavorful. Slightly less spicy sauce would have been preferred. Garlic yoghurt is a great accompaniment. We will make this again.  
• Pistachio Cake: 10/10 Marvelous. Will definitely make again, but this time with less or no syrup. Todd actually thinks a thin frosting (a la the cardamom lemon pound cake we tried last year) would be preferable. Or a honey-based syrup instead, that would add more flavor than simple sweetness. The cake itself is a sure winner.

Oat Soda Bread

Todd once mentioned that it would be great if there were an email or newsletter that told you what local produce was in season and gave suggestions for what you could do with it.  Turns out just such a thing exists.  It is the Edible Jersey Newsletter.  The most recent edition included a recipe for Oat Soda Bread that just called out to me.  I'd wanted to make it even before we got excited about the Turkish cook book, but yesterday turned out to be all Turkish recipes.  So when I got up early again today - despite yesterday's long and exciting day - I knew what I wanted to make.

Bob's helped quite a bit with this recipe.

The buttermilk and the oats made this smell wonderful even before it was in the oven. I made just one small adjustment to the recipe; I added about three tablespoons of mixed seeds to the batter in addition to the seeds on the top.

The recipe called for buttering and parchment paper in the loaf pan, but as advertised the bread slid right out when it was done.

The resulting bread was dense and fragrant with a lovely crunchy seed covered crust that went perfectly with salted butter and tea.