New York City: Gahm Mi Oak, Dumplings, Shake Shack
We started the next day right.
Ooh yeah…that’s hot.
There’s a lot of good food in New York, but Gahm Mi Oak is the one place I’ve always got to hit up when I’m in the city. The seolleongtang (ox bone soup) is right up there in my top three bowls of soup, which is kind of a big deal. Because I really like soup.
New York City: Katz’s, Baohaus, and more waffles
Sunday morning, I met up with Mom and Dad at their hotel near Penn Station. None of us had eaten lunch yet, so after we checked in and set our bags down and checked out the springs on the bed and flipped through all the channels on the tv, we headed down to Katz’s for pastrami.
We were handed order tickets as we walked in, along with a warning, “hold on to these.” It was pretty crazy in there, with a mix of dazed tourists milling about, unsure what to do, and locals throwing elbows like Karl Malone in his prime. Channeling my inner Bill Russell, I boxed everyone out who tried to push past and was soon rewarded for these efforts with a really good-looking sandwich.
SHAZAM. Thick, moist, juicy, salty, slightly peppery – seriously good pastrami. My dad and I decided to split one sandwich because we both wanted to save room for later, but that half was so good that I briefly considered heading back into the fray for another, but just looking over at the messy lines made me tired and I said “nah”. I don’t really like lines.
New York City: Waffles and Maialino
A couple weeks ago, I stopped by New York City for a few days on my way home for Christmas. It’d been a while since I was last in New York, maybe two years, and I was real excited to come back. I was excited for snow, for Christmastime in the city (the best place in the world for Christmas), and for the chance to see old friends. And yeah, for the food. That too.
Heading straight to the airport from my office holiday party, I took a red-eye out of San Francisco on Friday night and landed in New York the next morning. I got to my friend Conor’s place in Park Slope and called him to let him know I was there. He slept through my first two calls, so I left a message and popped into the bodega across the street to grab a cup of coffee to slap some alertness into myself. I also needed to get some shampoo, so I asked the guy for the thing of Pert I’d seen in the window. He had no idea what I was talking about, so I had to go outside to point to the Pert through the window. I’m guessing he’d never sold a shampoo there before. It’s a good thing shampoo doesn’t expire (I hope??).
Conor called me back as I left the bodega, then let me into his place and went back to bed. (It was quite early.) I took a shower with my questionable shampoo (which turned out to be fine, or at least my hair hasn’t fallen out yet), then took a quick nap before I had to roll out to Manhattan to meet Cindy for brunch. A hot shower and a good nap after a long flight are pretty great, yeah?
I was supposed to meet Cindy at Maialino, but I’d left Conor’s place a little early because I wanted to explore a bit, so I killed some time by walking around the Union Square Greenmarket and Holiday Market. Sam Talbot, from season 2 of Top Chef, was doing a cooking demonstration at the Greenmarket, but no one cared. I shrugged. Then I ate a waffle.
When I was studying abroad in Paris, there was a stand just outside the metro station that I passed on my way home. The guy made several different things, but I usually got one of two things. The first was his churros, which were always fried to order and came out good and hot, crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, super addictive. The second was his waffles, which were slightly dense and chewy and just so good, in such a simple way. I was in Paris in the winter, and it was cold; it’s a good thing I had hot waffles to keep me warm.
Churros
W*****s in Paris - that shit cray
10 Days of Stuffing, Day 10+: Absolutely Stuffed
Whoo. It’s been three days since the end of Thanksgiving Week, and I’m still full. Case in point: for dinner tonight, all I felt hungry enough to have was a tiny sliver of lemon tart, half a cup of chicken broth (it was really cold up in here), a half-pinky of Comté cheese, and a couple chocolate wafers (in that order). Oh, and a few absentminded handfuls of Special K while my housemates and I watched Serendipity on tv. Never watch Serendipity on tv.
Anyway. This isn’t a bad thing, not being hungry at all. That’s how you know you did Thanksgiving right.
Day 10: Thanksgiving
For Thanksgiving itself, I went to a dinner in SF at a friend of Ze’s. Knowing what was still to come, I tried to hold myself back, but with a Cajun deep-fried turkey, super buttery mashed potatoes, one of the best corn bread’s I’ve ever had, and a giant tray of chow mein there, it was mighty hard. Oh, and I also took more than couple scoops from a giant pan of stuffing, of course.
Man, I’m going to miss stuffing. You’d think that after eating it for 10 days straight, I’d hate it, but NOPE. As a wise friend once said to me, too much of a good thing? It remains a good thing. You can just have too much of it.
So yeah. Stuffing is still one of my favorite things to eat, but I’ve had enough of it over the past week and a half to last me for a good long time. Like until Christmas.
Day 11: Turkey of the Sea
The next day, I rallied my poor stomach for another giant meal, a seafood-heavy feast courtesy of master chef Nancy. There was another giant turkey. And Brussels sprouts, my fave. And deep fried shrimp, and dumplings, and salmon-avocado spring rolls, and pineapple fried rice, and pumpkin risotto, and a giant pot of seafood chowder.
I was full like you wouldn’t believe after this one. Fo’ real. The last time I felt that full was the time we went to Sushi 85 and nearly ate ourselves to death trying to finish our platters of sushi so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the uneaten sushi. That was a bad day.
Unfortunately for my punch-drunk stomach, tapping out here was not an option – there was still one more to go.
Day 12: Dinner Party
Cindy was back from New York for Thanksgiving, so Saturday night, I threw a little dinner party with the usual suspects from last summer, back when I was having dinner parties on the reg.
I spent most of Friday running around shopping, hitting up Milk Pail, 2 Safeways, 2 Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s before I finally got everything I needed. (Stupid frisée). I know I say this almost every week, but it gets truer every time I do: I really miss Wegmans.
It’d been a while since I’d thrown a real dinner party, so I was really excited, because, really, it’s hard to think of a whole lot of things better than cooking for a bunch of friends and eating a giant meal together. (And drinking many bottles of wine.) I was still completely stuffed from the past two nights, so I subconsciously ended up buying bags on bags of healthy-looking vegetables, figuring that this could sort of be a light dinner party to detox from Thanksgiving overeating.
I’ve always had problems with timing (meaning dinner’s always later than I tell people it’ll be), so this time I made sure to have a bunch of pre-dinner snacks on hand that people could graze on while I inevitably scrambled to get everything cooked.
Snacks on snacks.
10 Days of Stuffing, Day 9: Whole Foods Stuffing
I like Whole Foods. It’s no Wegmans, of course, but it’s pretty good.
I stopped by the PA Whole Foods on my way home from work to pick up a pork loin for tomorrow (it’ll be stuffed, surprise), and knowing that I wasn’t going to have time tonight to make a stuffing, I ended up buying a little box of stuffing from the hot bar. I’d only ever had their soups before, but I always found them pretty good, so I thought their stuffing would be at least decent.
Day 9: Whole Foods Stuffing
Yeah…decent is about the best I can say about it. It was a little disappointing.
That’s okay. Disappointing stuffings never come in twos, so tomorrow’s obviously going to be awesome. Thanksgiving Weekend is upon us!
10 Days of Stuffing, Day 8: Not Stuffing
Um. So I don’t really have time to make stuffing tonight, but I did make this last night! (It’s not a stuffing.)
Chinese Sausage foccacia, from the Milk cookbook by Christina Tosi (aka the coolest pastry chef out there). It’s pretty awesome, sort of like an amazing Chinese-y pepperoni pan pizza, crispy on the bottom and fluffy in the middle, but, uh, best not to think about how bad it is for you.
Nah, I’ll tell you. Heh.
1 CUP OF OIL + A WHOLE PACK OF CHINESE SAUSAGES + A BUCKET OF WHITE CARBS = 1 MILLION CALORIES. Or something like that, my math might be a little off.
It’s okay, it’s Thanksgiving Week! Everything you eat this week doesn’t count. (That’s what I’m telling myself.)
10 Days of Stuffing, Day 7: Cranberry Walnut Gruyere Stuffing
Day 7: Stuffing with Dried Cranberries, Walnuts, Gruyere, and Ham Broth
Bread, Ham Broth, Butter, Sage, Onion, Celery, Gruyere, Dried Cranberries, Walnuts
Not too much to say about this one, mostly just a regular ol’ stuffing with a few changes. While the dried cranberries didn’t work so well in the already-sweet Big Game stuffing, they were better here, adding just a bit of sweetness to a savory dish. I really liked the walnuts. Melted Gruyere makes everything good. The ham broth made it a little ham-y for my tastes, although I guess I should’ve expected that. I bought a whole thing of ham “Better Than Bouillon” broth stuff, so I guess I’ll be having hot ham water pretty often now.
