Tablehopping in New York

I'm surrounded... so I'm hopping out of Danish and into English. This trip is so short! I'm usually here for at least a couple of weeks. Condensing is the modus operandi, half-filled containers are no option. After days of rediscovering grade school friends - and surprisingly having a great time with all the 'kids' I never knew - and visiting family and friends in and out of town, I'm pleasantly overstimulated.

From table to table... condensed. There's usually enough time for a walk around some block before sitting down again. From farmer's market to farmer's market...

Heirloom tomatoes and plums from the Union Square market and a tasty and succulent free-range Rock Cornish game hen from the smaller Sunday market in Stuyvesant Town - the entrance is from Ave A or B on 14th St. if you're in the area.

Apple cider, the freshly pressed, dark, unfiltered juice of apples, that's just different from the otherwise great most, we have in Denmark... Everything's local, organic, hand-made, grass-fed etc. etc.

My high quality baker-sister in Ithaca - where a lot of the New York vendors are from - sells at her farmer's market on the weekend. But now it's Tuesday, so we're just customers stocking up for dinner.

The sweetest corn, prima local cheese, rainbow chard and succulent pork chops. Organic, free-range, heirloom, bla bla bla...

Uh huh, I know that consumption of industrial, corn syrup sweetened junk food is on the rise and that there's still a loooong way to go before we have a majority of food systems that are really sustainable for the planet and it's creatures. But it warms my slow food heart, that it's so much easier to eat this way, than it was 30 years ago.

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Happy Easter

... and Mazel tov! from the Pesach peep.

Back on the farm

Home again. It seems like eons ago, I was eating pastrami sandwiches and salted cukes at Katz's with the girl chef and Jonas... gangsta look.

I love being in this space between homes. For a few days, things I take for granted are in motion. The big choices are visible, before I get into the rythym of this part of my life. Movable feast. Deep and refreshing. Sort of being reborn.

See you!

A fond farewell to take out. Corn, pineapple and It's a beautiful morning muffins. Frittatas, veggie quiche.
Sushi, Korean, thin-crust pizza, a half espresso with a shot of chocolate, seaweed salad, porchetta on a roll, braised greens, sushi.Quick, early morning bagel on the highway.Sushi.
Oops, the girl chef shopping.
Even from supermarkets... Really good self-composed salad and spit-roasted lemon chicken from Wegmann's in Ithaca. From Union Square Whole Foods - big organic supermarket - fresh cut fruit, marinated mushrooms, artichoke salad, sesame tofu and buckwheat noodles. I've only cooked 3 or 4 meals the whole time I've been here. And I'm the cook....

Happy New Year!

Spent part of New Year's Eve with my Dad at his favorite food market, Cerrado's in Clifton, NJ. Coming from Dk it's just joyously a lot of seriously good food at great prices.
Sets off my I-am-not-a-foodie refrain. We're not in a market created for discerning gourmets - not a bad word about that. This is a food store, where normal Italian-, Middle Eastern-, Asian- and the odd Anglo-Saxon Americans buy their dinner. Fish, meat, pasta and whole aisles of canned tomatoes and olive oil...Mounds of nice, cheap veggies. A big variety of good cheese sold by people, who know what they're doing. My Dad picked up 12 lbs. of curd to make his homemade mozzarella. Don't mind having those genes.

Midtown windows

An evening foray out of our East Village home base, braving the crowds on 5th Ave, catching the wild windows at Bergdorff's. Would have loved to have created one of those!
Crazy animals, swimming fish and decorated cupcakes, charlottes and wedding cakes.
Loving the Obama effect with brown models at posh Fendi's. Stock up, girls.

Octopus agrodolce

My high quality midwife sister catches homebirthed babies in NYC, leaving a trail of touched, happy parents around town. One of them is a chef at Aliseo, a great little Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.
We dropped in after an afternoon of checking out Dumbo, trendy area under the Manhatten Bridge. Home of the River Cafe, too. The salt spray from Olafur Eliassons waterfall installation under the bridge has seemingly killed a lot of the Cafe's plants. Oops. Would have liked to see it, though.
At Aliseo we had real food and good wine with roots in Le Marche. Part of this trip is about Food Agency inspiration, this is definitely some.

Home cured salumi, white anchovies in a lemon dressing, scallops in pancetta with great grilled cabbage, braised goat, gnocchi, panna cotta with a super anis sauce, and a winner - Crispy octopus agrodolce. I got a kind of a recipe from the chef:
Boil the octopus tender in water, wine, salt and 'some spices'. Pan fry it crispy and toss with agrodolce. Maybe we'll have a try with the creature in my Dad's freezer.

We drank a luscious Rosso Conero from Garofoli. Big producers, still craftsmen.

China street

Kathrine's happy guy

Redfish... lots of fish

Boy with ducks on hooks

Pretzels from the hippo panda

The ultimate golden gulls.

Latkes - the Chanukah worm says mazel tov!

In the best Chanukah spirit, we spent Christmas Eve with an old friend making latkes, enjoying her childhood tradition of eating them fresh from the pan. The ingredients are:

4 lbs. - ca. 1,5 kg - baking potatoes

1 big onion

2 tbsp/spsk matzoh meal, wheat flour is fine, too

2 eggs

salt and peper

The potatoes were peeled and grated along with the onions on the Acme Special Safety Grater. Dangerous tool. We took turns. No bloody knuckles.

Remove some of the water with a few paper towels. Then mix the egg, flour, salt and pepper with the grated potatoes.
Heat up 1 1/2 inches of oil. Drop spoonfulls of the potato mixture into the hot oil and flatten the cakes. Turn them over when they're nicely browned on the first side. When they're finished drain them on some paper towels to absorb some of the fat.

Latkes are best right from the pan. If they make it to a plate, they're good with applesauce. Mott's is a classic, I'd rather have my mom's.

The latkes were delicious, much better - more delicate - than the ones I traveled uptown to get at Zabar's last time I was in this mecca-city of Jewish cuisine. Secrets, says Melissa, are minimal amounts of egg and matzoh meal, flattening the cakes when they get on the pan and having the right temperature oil.
Happy Chanukah!

Blue Christmas

'Why don't you stay home tonight, we'll help you out at the bakery tomorrow...' Decorating a big custom order of smurf blue and white snowflake shortbread cookies sounded like a breeze Sunday evening with Barbera in the nose. After hours of diligent piping with The Nutcracker on replay in the background we were definitely in the Christmas spirit.OMG, you didn't lick that pastry bag...???

Kind of perfect

Pre-Christmas dinner at my baker sister's place in Ithaca. We went wild at Wegman's. Irma x 50 plus some well stocked veg, cheese, fish, meat, bakery and take-out departments. Quali, quali.

Scallop ceviche with lime, horseradish and chives. Beef tenderloin - I was in scaloppini mode, but the available veal is raised nastily, so it's on the boycott list. Mushrooms, green beans, potatoes in phyllo packs. And the wine...

From Sparrow's Fine Wines. I wanted a light red with a smell that does the same thing for me as good pinot noir. David, the owner - brilliant with food/wine pairings - gave me a bottle of Barbera d'Asti. Montetusa, 1997 from A. Bertelli. Didn't cost much, I would have paid it for the nose. Well... Drank it with the tenderloin. Mami. Food and wine heaven with super company with great palates.

Certain sacrifices

Staying with a high quality baker of a sister, it's easy to get sucked into having to eat her homebaked croissants for breakfast. A couple with discreetly sweetened almond paste. A few plain. And pain au chocolat, one of my all time favorites when they're good.Needless to say...

Mmm...

I've had tears in my eyes plenty of times during the night. One of them was when April Lorraine Young said on TV2 early this morning, that this is the first time the USA really feels like her country. Her tears. My tears. That old wound is in me, too. Something that has been terribly wrong has shifted to something more right. Somewhere deep inside I relaxed, the change is almost imperceptible and yet profound.I laughed when I asked my local pastry chef to decorate the bakery's best French chocolate cake with a picture of Obama. Had the pleasure of eating it with a couple of good friends, aware of the history of the moment. Accompanied by... tears... and good, red dessert wine - Arturo's Passito di Terre verdiane. Congratulations to us all!