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.

Great Recipe: Chewy Sugar Cookies

Chewy Sugar Cookies by Linda McClure, courtesy of foodnetwork.com. Photo by Katherine Lee.

I discovered this recipe last year on foodnetwork.com. It is a funtastically foolproof recipe for sugar cookies that are as pleasing to the eye as to the taste. You don't even need a rolling pin and cookie cutters to make them, an added bonus for the countertop-challenged among us. That said, I have used a rolling pin on this cookie dough to cut out small circles with center circles for mini linzer tarts (maybe not the most authentic thing in the world, but it's very good).

I didn't plan ahead for Christmas this year and wound up at the supermarket on Christmas Eve. The only sprinkles left were blue, pink and yellow and nonpareils. Ideally, it would have been nice to include red sprinkles and silver ball sprinkles but in the end, it's all about the cookie!

Perfect Chocolate Cake @ The Chocolate Room

While on a wild-goose chase for a particular brand of dirt cheap wine (see next week's post), in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I came to a screeching halt at a discreet little cafe called The Chocolate Room. The dessert-dedicated menu described a trove of quintessential chocolate delights. It's a compilation of chocolate's best hits—chocolate layer cake, a brownie Sundae and chocolate pudding—together in one little darling of a cafe. The Chocolate Room even has daily specials and homemade ice cream. Menu in hand, I looked forward to someday going inside.

This past Sunday, I returned with a friend and a veni, vidi, vici spirit, to sit and sample the three-layer chocolate cake:



Here it is in the photo above: a neat slice of cake, with the exception of the front corner which I dug into before remembering to photograph it first. As you can see, the pale chocolate frosting has a subtle gloss and contrasts nicely with the dark, reddish brown cake. The texture is firm but moist. As for the taste, hang on to your laptop, it's pure chocolate splendor!

There's only one way to describe a chocolate layer cake with all the right parts—perfect! And this is just one of many dazzling options available at The Chocolate Room to satisfy your hunger for chocolate.

Skate Fish, Anyone?

One evening, at a restaurant in NYC, I ordered "Skate au Beurre Noire". I didn't know what "skate" was but the waiter described it as "a white fish" so I naturally figured it must be something along the lines of flounder, halibut or sea bass. Feeling safe with that assumption and being sold on the words "au beurre noire", I gave it a try.

At first glance, the skate looked more or less like a normal plate of broiled or sauteed fish. (The image above is very similar to what my meal looked like.) At first bite, the taste seemed OK, but visually, the skate had a strange, fanned-out, ribbed appearance that wasn't very appealing. I suspended judgement and continued eating, though a dormant icky feeling began to fester inside. I left the restaurant engrossed in conversation and without reflecting on the meal. But on repeat visits to the same restaurant, a favorite of mine, I'd wince at the sight of "skate" on the menu. My memory of skate was that of a weird-looking fish bone packed on both sides with spindly, white-ish meat .

I recently discovered that skate isn't really a fish—at least, not in the typical fish head, gills, scales, fins and tail sense. To my gastronomical horror, I have learned that skate is a type of stingray:



How gross is that? (My apologies to those who enjoy skate fish.) Maybe if I had a more positive reaction to my skate dish that night, I wouldn't be so perturbed by this revelation. But having that bad-meal memory lodged in my head predisposed me to utter nausea upon learning that the mystery fish au beurre noire was a kite-shaped sea creature.

Stingrays seem to pop up in the darndest places in my life. While working as an editor for a watch magazine, I learned that the term "galuchat", a pebbly-textured watch strap, means stingray. Alligator straps are referred to as alligator, ostrich as ostrich and sharkskin as sharkskin, but stingray as galuchat? I guess no one loves a stingray, at least not openly:




And just when I thought I knew all the words for stingray, I encounter skate. And of all places, on my dinner plate. I know the world of culinary language has its deceptions—sweetbread anyone?—but when a customer inquires 'what type of fish is skate?', for the love of God, let's call a stingray a stingray. At any rate, the waiter was completely remiss in describing it as "white fish".

I don't pretend to be too squeamish when it comes to trying new foods; I've had escargot three times. All I'm asking is to know exactly what I'm being served. And, if I can manage to live the rest of my life without any more surprise encounters with anything remotely stingrayish, I'll be very happy.

Gluten Free, Flavor Full

Fear no more the search for gluten-free cakes and cupcakes for friends and loved-ones with a gluten-intolerance. It's places like this, Tu-lu's gluten-free bakery, aka Tully's Bakery, in the East Village, that motivate food enthusiasts like me to start a blog.

Though I am not one of the 1 in 133 Americans affected by Celiac disease, I do love cupcakes; this is essentially why I'm writing about Tu-lu's, where I recently purchased two large cupcakes.

Behold:




Chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting: First off, you can smell the chocolate when you cut/bite into it. The cake itself is dense with a natural, traditional chocolate flavor. The chocolate frosting is stupendous: intense, bold, yummy. You almost want to search for a hint of brandy in there because the flavor is so intensely savory, but the only intoxicating element in this frosting is the divine taste of rich cocoa. It's also so light that it melts in your mouth.

Vanilla cupcake with vanilla cream-cheese frosting: The cake has a sturdy yet moist texture and a mild vanilla flavor that doesn't seek the limelight, it's more like the wafer cone that holds the frozen custard, which in this case is a robust vanilla frosting with a splendiferous cream-cheese punch.

As soon as I knew it, my glass of milk was empty and I was staring down at a plate of gluten-free crumbs. But in spite of having just devoured two cupcakes, I didn't feel heavy or weighed down. It made me wonder if maybe I have a sensitivity to gluten? I don't, but it's to the baker's credit that these festive treats make you ponder the presence of gluten in your diet as something potentially deleterious to your health rather than other GF baked goods that simply leave you feeling sorry for those who can't eat gluten.

So who's responsible? Quality, as I discover time and time again, is no accident, but the result of training, effort, skill, passion and ability. Owner/baker, Tully, originally from Memphis, Tennessee, studied at Le Cordon Bleu and then moved here to NYC, where she interned at Gramercy Tavern. You can read her story on her Web site which basically describes how she was diagnosed as gluten intolerant and that this twist of fate led her on a search for delicious gluten-free cakes and cookies. There were none to be found, so she strove to create a recipe of her own, ultimately arriving at a winning combination of rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour along with natural and organic ingredients. What an amazing story of turning trial into triumph, Tully's Bakery is dharma at its most delicious.