Esca restores my faith in great food

I'd started to think that maybe going to restaurants was a waste of time, money, and calories. Restaurant food is always less healthy and more expensive, and I've been getting pretty decent at cooking basic things for myself. 'course, it helps if you have great ingredients. Last weekend, I was running errands in Little Italy, when I found myself in front of DiPaolo's. I'd heard about it on Chowhound, but never been. I didn't actually need anything and the wait was long, but I bought parmiggiano reggiano, speck (smoked prosciutto), focaccia, and broccoli rabe ravioli. The speck was so good, dinner that night was just a few slices on the focaccia with some olive oil. Mmm...

Then I went to Esca for lunch on Friday and was reminded why we go out. The amuse boche was a white bean and tuna focaccia. They had four choices for the Restaurant Week appetizer: the crudo was tempting, but I had the crispy smelt. The entree choices were pasta with a mix of seafood or amberjack; my companion and I both had the latter. I wish I could do justice to the delicacy of the flavors and how well they integrated, but I can't. I was ready to declare we should come to Esca for every Restaurant Week, when they brought the sublime dessert: orange blossom panna cotta with winter citrus and candied pine nuts. I usually find panna cotta a little boring, but it was the perfect palate cleanser at the end of the meal. This is what a great restaurant meal should be. Read More......

Hapless Cake Attempt #1

I feel compelled to bake a cake because I bought adorable little cake pans from Michael's. I also had an excess of blueberries in the house, so I thought I'd modify a "Berry Good Shortcake" recipe from the manufacturer and make a chunky blueberry syrup and call them Inaugural Cakes and bring them to work tomorrow.

It was a disaster from the beginning. My food processor couldn't accomodate all the ingredients, so I had to cut the butter by hand and my arm got tired long before the mixture resembled "coarse breadcrumbs." I over-Pam-ed the pans. I ran out of milk and used yogurt as a substitute. I still don't know which of the above caused the cakes to overflow - I would love it if my muffins rose that high out of the pan - and the butter? Pam? to ooze onto the floor of the oven, causing smoke to come billowing out of my oven and filling my apt.

Believe it or not, the cakes taste fine, or rather they taste as they should. It didn't dawn on me until I put the first bit in my mouth, that people make shortcake with biscuits. They're decent semi-sweet biscuits, but so not worth the calories. Or the mess. eek! Read More......

Cast Iron Seared Tuna

Happy belated New Year to all my loyal readers! I won't say my New Year's resolution is to update more often, but given that one of my resolutions does involve staying home and studying, it's inevitable there'll more cooking in there too.

I had an errand to run on the east side last evening and on my way home, I walked through 41st between Madison and Fifth. For those of you who don't know, there's a whole block of stores catering to Japanese expat office workers, including a sushi restaurant, a bookstore, a bakery, and a grocery. The last carries sushi-grade fish, labeled in Japanese and with the recent cold-snap, I wasn't particularly worried about it going bad before I got home.

I had a bag of snap peas from FreshDirect packaged so cooking is as simple as making popcorn - 2:30-3:00 in the microwave and voila! While that was nuking, I set my new cast iron skillet on the stove with a little olive oil. I rubbed the maguro (tuna) with a little olive oil and sprinkled some salt and pepper. I couldn't find my sesame seeds, so I'd have to do without. By then, the skillet was hot, so I added the fish, 1-2 mins on each side. I poured the snap peas in a bowl and added the tuna on top. I added some leftover aromatic white wine to the skillet to clean up the last bits of pepper and fish, reduced it slightly, and poured it over the lot. Breakfast! Read More......