Thanksgiving Part I: Apple Pie—at Last!

Homemade desserts at the Thanksgiving table have a way of lighting up the room with their presence. Pies, especially, are like the candelabras of the soul. And with that said, I've finally found an apple pie recipe that I can wax rhapsodic about. It's a recipe I found in the Thanksgiving issue of Food & Wine, co-edited by Michael Symon and featuring an article with REM. Boy, I'd love to eat caramelized brussels sprouts in a beautiful rustic outdoor setting with Michael Stipe and Co. For a future issue, Food & Wine should do a Tea Time with Morrissey.

Back to Thanksgiving 2011. Here, without further ado, is a photo of the finished pie:

It's a little charred around the edges, I admit. I'm going to have to look into how to prevent that from happening. It can probably be prevented by covering the pie with aluminum foil until the last 15 minutes or so of baking. Oh well, maybe next time. What I loved about this pie is that the filling actually filled the pie! So, individual slices looked great on the plate. Also, the black edges didn't affect the flavor. To my great relief and extreme delight, it tasted like real apple pie, nothing more, nothing less.

I should also mention that I used different apples than what is recommended—the recipe calls for Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Cortland or Jonathan but I used Granny Smith apples because they looked so bright green and pretty that I couldn't resist buying them. Each one looked just like this:

Consequently, the pie tasted a little tart the first day and necessitated ice cream—as does life in general. On the following day, the pie tasted much sweeter and didn't need ice cream at all. In other words, the ice cream only made it better.

The Space-Time-Cocktail-Continuum

Juan Carlos, master cocktail maker at Orsay

From what I understand about the Theory of Relativity, there's no mention of cocktails in it. Nevertheless, I've discovered my own way to expand time while remaining at rest. And by at rest I mean seated at an outdoor table at Orsay restaurant on the Upper East Side. Yes, cocktails are involved, exquisite cocktails, but this is not a blog post about drinking until your surroundings mutate into liquid pocket watches. This is a blog post about the art of killing time.

Located on the corner of 76th Street and Lexington, Orsay is a Parisian feast for the eye situated in a quiet area where it can be enjoyed without competing noises and hoards of people. Sitting in the open veranda area on a stunning Saturday in June, I caught up with a friend who is always super fun to hang out with, so the meal had a lot going for it from the start. I ordered the Croque Madame without ham, which some would say, and did say, is not a Croque Madame but a cheese sandwich. I wouldn't go that far, but I admit it was a crock Madame.

Now for the cocktails. The art. A meal with well-placed cocktails is like a well-punctuated sentence, it flows nicely. This brunch was well-punctuated. Juan Carlos, the mixologist at Orsay, is a masterful drink maker and cute (see pic). It takes a very skilled craftsman to understand the art of subtlety, and there is a delicate subtlety to Juan Carlos's enchanting libations. Needless to say, delicious cocktails that ingeniously mask the taste of alcohol behind the poetry of flavor can be treacherous. So sip cautiously and set your limits. Also, you wouldn't want to ascend and descend the marble stairs that spiral up to the restroom with impaired senses.

The Quintessential Cupcake

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The Devil's Food cupcake from Amy's Bread is the best chocolate cupcake in Manhattan.

I don't know if you've noticed, but New York City has a lot of freakin' cupcakes. Somewhat surprisingly, I've never made it my goal to sample every one. And the reason for that is, I'm so blissfully content with the cupcakes at Amy's Bread.

Basically, when I want a cupcake, I want just that, a cup-sized cake. Nothing outrageous, nothing pretentious; just give me something simple and pretty, wholesome, and yes, delicious. Finding old-fashioned cupcakes is not the easiest thing to do these days, as more and more bakers seem to be taking a Lady Gaga approach to cupcake making. Everyone's pushing the envelope. There are a lot of crazy concoctions out there, a lot of bold flavors, bright colors and frostings drizzled and bedecked with caramel, cookies and candy. Even bacon—bacon! Then there are Magnolia cupcakes, which I do love. But Magnolia cupcakes, with their pale pastel frostings and mildly sweet cake have a kind of ceremonious feel to them. Consequently, they don't speak to my soul the way the more traditional, homey cupcakes at Amy's Bread do.

Pictured above, is a Devil's Food cupcake from Amy's. Sometimes, I try scraping off a third of the frosting to cut calories but after one bite I'll spread it back on because it's so darn good. And the cake—oh the cake! It's the richest, most perfect, chocolate cake. The vanilla cake with pink frosting is also excellent.

Bottom line, if you're in New York City and want a classic, delicious cupcake, then find the nearest Amy's Bread. I obviously recommend the Devil's Food cupcake. But if you really want to be decadent, if you really want to be sinful, go for a slice of their Devil's Food cake!

Stovetop Peaches and Ice Cream

Fresh peaches cooked and served over ice cream

Juicy ripe peaches in the summer are a joyous occasion. Their sweet, delicate fragrance alone is enough to carry you adrift over the world in a Chagall-like dream. But there's one thing that's even better than fresh, delicious peaches in the summer and that's fresh delicious peaches with ice cream!

This is a ridiculously simple recipe that I picked up from Bloomberg Businessweek--of all places! Peel and dice 4-6 gorgeous peaches, place them in a skillet, sprinkle in a little bit of sugar, and heat until hot and bubbly. Serve over ice cream and prepare to make Bill Cosby pudding faces. My ice cream of choice is Blue Marble vanilla which is as bright white and creamy as soft serve. To borrow from Woody Allen, I don't love it, I lurv it.

Bloomberg Businessweek suggests that managers make this for their employees instead of the standard make-your-own-sundaes sprinkled with M&Ms. While I do love the recipe, I have to say, I couldn't possibly envision any manager I've ever worked for cooking peaches for anyone in the office. Also, I don't think many offices have stoves. Microwaves, yes, stoves, not so much.

I made this dessert a couple of times over the summer, including once for myself during Hurricane Irene. Like many New Yorkers, I stocked up on nachos and chips and water and braced myself for an indoor cataract to emerge from the ceiling. Fortunately, that didn't happen. So it was in a relaxed state of mind that I was able to sit down to a bowl of warm peaches and Blue Marble ice cream while watching The Conspirator. Great movie. Boy, can Robert Redford tell a story...

The Champagne of Honeys?

Once, while browsing through the Green Market in Union Square, I was told by a honey vendor that a particular honey—twice as expensive as the others—was the champagne of honeys. Like magic, his words seemed to illuminate the precious contents from within, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Not that I didn't appreciate honey before—I've always revered honey as the heart and soul of the kitchen cupboard, but my appreciation, while deep, was limited in scope. There were no kinds of honey, as I saw it, there was just honey.

Through the simple device of a sales pitch, a whole new world opened up to me, a gorgeously bright and meticulous world where fields of flowers are like vineyards ripening in the sun. Why hadn't I ever made the connection? How dumb and blind I've been all these years merely tolerating honey as a healthy sweetner for oatmeal, tea, and the occasional glass of warm milk. I began to fathom the existence of a vast variety of honeys out there, each to be enjoyed and savored for its origin and distinct flavors. Both honey and champagne involve labor-intensive processes—by bee and by man respectively— for the purpose of producing something tasty and wonderful. Both capture the essence of nature at its most exquisite. It's all there in each drop of honey—the beauty, the sweetness, the light—nature's bounty distilled in a golden concentration that drips and pours in languorously slow motion, like a vision of love.

Unlike champagne, honey is literally a key ingredient to enjoying quiet time. Maybe honey is nature's way of telling us to take things slowly, now and then, to savor those magical turns of life's merry-go-round, even when they've disappeared from view.

In the midst of this great honey epiphany was a tiny, tangible spoonful to be sampled. I could only imagine how incredible this honey would taste. The champagne of honeys. No doubt the edible result of the perfect storm of flowers, soil and sunlight. A true nectar of the gods. I braced myself for something wonderful.

Well, let's just say that this locally produced, so-called champagne of honeys, failed to pop my cork. A little too sour of an aftertaste for me. Slightly rank, too. Where are these Brooklyn bees foraging nectar anyway? What sort of control do rooftop apiarists have over their bees' wherabouts? Maybe their bees are dumpster diving on the side, like little winged freegans. Concealing my distaste, I said thank you to the honey vendor and pretended to browse a little longer before making a beeline home.

But the experience wasn't a total loss, I walked away with a newfound appreciation for honey as an inherently opulent food with countless variations. And while I had thus far only tasted the standard table wine version, if there was a champagne version, I knew exactly where I'd find it.


To be continued...

Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill

I don't remember specifically where I've come across references to Boone's Farm, only that it's almost always mentioned with an amusing blend of nostalgia and mock contrition. Long Island, where I grew up, didn't have Boone's Farm, and so my curiosity about it was really strong. There are many flavors in the Boone's Farm family of wines, but the one with the most dedicated fans seems to be Strawberry Hill. There's even a dessert recipe for it. Fascinated, I had to learn more...

Priced at less than $3.00, Boone's Farm falls into a cheap liquor category often referred to as bum wines or bum liquors. Google 'bum wines' and you will find yourself at the threshold of a carnival of brazenly artificial alcoholic beverages that is a marvel to behold. Think Fla-Vor-Ice bars spiked with varying levels of alcohol content. In the context of the cheap wine world, Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill stands out as the fairy princess of the bunch. Its faint pink blush and white label called to my inner girlishness like an Easy Bake Oven. After some online searches, a visit to Trader Joe's and Astor Wines, it was apparent that this wine is not available in Manhattan. Inquiries at wine stores in Park Slope drew baffled smiles but no bottles of the precious strawberry-flavored fluid. So I ordered a bottle online and it arrived three days later.



The crisp, clean bottle arrived cold from the wintry weather—very convenient since I was dying to try it. A quick twist of the white aluminum cap and my curiosity was just a short tilt of an espresso cup from fulfillment. I drank in the chilled pink liquid and a pleasantly familiar candy flavor swelled inside my mouth. Not cotton candy, not lollipop...what was it? Aha! I thought. Watermelon Jolly Rancher! Yes, that was it!




More sipping. The vaguely berry but undeniably pink taste brought to mind the Barbie perfume maker my next door neighbor Helen had and how we'd spent an afternoon cranking these plastic wands filled with various colored fragrance concentrates that would transform tap water into colorful scented elixirs such as rose or strawberry. The more you cranked, the more turns of the wand, hence the darker the color and the stronger the perfume. Needless to say, we cranked those wands like mad alchemists—sampling, at times gasping at our Barbie creations as if we had just created Chanel No. 6 through 10.

How long my mind drifted back to recollections of immortal childhood memories, I don't know, but this stuff is delightful. No, it's not Chablis, but put me back in college with a bottle of this, a Justin Timberlake CD (???), and any one from my top 10 list of favorite guys at school, and years later, I'd probably perk up at the mention of Strawberry Boone's Farm with amused nostalgia and mock contrition, too. And that, to quote Martha Stewart, is a good thing!

The Deal Closer @ The Standard Grill

Square of Chocolate from the Standard Grill in NYC, under the High Line. This is not the dessert showcased in this blog post; I thought it best to leave that as a surprise.


At the Standard Grill, executive pastry chef, Frederick Aquino, has loosened chocolate cake's corset to create a fun and flirty chocolate burlesque called the Deal Closer. A king's portion of fluffy chocolate mousse covered with generous mounds of unsweetened whipped cream and sprinkled with thick chocolate shavings, arrives in a large glass kitchen bowl with two rubber spatulas. One taste and I said to myself about Chef Aquino, I like this man's joie de vivre!

First there's the eye-popping excitement of a big bowl of chocolate mousse. And spatulas, not spoons—what more do you need? Beyond the feast for the eyes, there's the titillating sensation of delving deep into a rugged heap of whipped cream followed next by billowy mousse, and then, fathoms below, a rich bed of chocolate cake. If you decide to tackle this mountain of mousse with a metal spoon, as I did, you can add to your sensory enjoyments, the muffled, hollow, tapping sound of the spoon hitting the bottom of the glass bowl somewhere beneath all that mousse.

As mentioned, the whipped cream is unsweetened, which is brilliant because given the portions too much sugar would really slow you down. The mousse is sufficiently chocolatey with little sprinkles of salt to keep things from getting monotonous. The chocolate cake is actually the most rewarding part of this whole extravaganza, it's like the rich soil you've been mining through all this mousse for.

Tacombi on Elizabeth Street

Food served from the tacomobile at Tacombi.

It was on a very cold night that I went into this exciting new Mexican eaterie, a beachside-themed taco place that embodies the spirit of a long hot summer, even in the dead of winter. Folding aluminum chairs, backyard lights strung across the walls, and, at the very heart of it all, a Volkswagon Kombi, out of which is served a daily menu of tostadas, tamales and tacos, create an appetizing ambience for sure. Inspired by the tasty and cheap street food of Mexico, Tacombi's offerings are appetizer-size and feature shredded meats and authentic-tasting moles and salsas.

Pollo con Mole taco, Tostada de Aguacate and a cold glass of horchata.


I so wanted to pig out at this place, but a couple of factors prevented this from happening. First, the food is tasty, but not mind-blowing. Also, $4 is a lot to pay for miniature portions. After four tacos, i.e. $16, I was still hungry.

That said, the vegetarian Maiz y Poblano tacos are extremely tasty and the Pollo con Mole is...interesting. That's obviously not the greatest of food accolades, but the chicken and brown sauce, while fresh and savory, didn't have that soul-embracing deliciousness that makes tacos and other street food so irresistably awesome. I also tried the Tostada de Aguacate—a crunchy corn tostada topped with mashed avocado, tomatillo and cilantro. I enjoyed it but had to roll my eyes at the reality of paying $4 for a glorified chip with guacamole.


Drink stand where homemade drinks, bottled sodas and tokens for tacos, tomales and tostadas are sold.



Maybe I'll have better luck with Tacombi's breakfast menu...next time.