Father's Day!

So, it's impossible to get Alex to say what he wants to do for Father's Day 2012.
It's a big deal, the first one, surviving almost 7 months - and more than surviving, thriving! Being a wonderful dad! So Atticus and I want to celebrate him for that... and we're coming up empty.

Which brings us back to what always works best: FOOD.

Alex is more of a lunch/dinner guy than breakfast or brunch, mostly because he hates mornings. Atticus being smiley in the mornings helps, but still, it's a struggle.

So our plan is this (shhh, don't tell him). We're going to let him sleep late. As late as we can muster.
Meanwhile, the two of us are going to try our darnedest to make Eggs Benedict and Eggs Florentine (we don't know which one he likes best). And then we will keep it available for whenever he wakes up! No breakfast in bed, no early morning surprise, just a delicious meal ready whenever he is ready to eat it!

We'll also be going for a second brunch at Katie's apartment, to celebrate my dad. Or Pop, as Atticus knows him. That will be fun.

Alex has requested time spent at the Father's Day March against Stop and Frisk.
http://www.nyclu.org/june17
So we'll do that, then come home and eat again! Hopefully with his help cooking, this time...

I bought a BEE-YOO-TI-FUL steak from Fresh Direct, which was a very big deal, and we'll have it with gorgonzola mashed potatoes and grilled onions, maybe some salad or broccoli rabe, if we still have it around.

We are hoping he likes it, because, to be honest, we have no idea.

Best...meatloaf...ever!

I know, I know. Meatloaf doesn't inspire poems or songs or hymns to its greatness. It's generally a way to get rid of old meat, stale bread, eggs that have been sitting too long. And that's how I started= we are moving in a week! and our cabinets need to be emptied. But I wanted it to be delicious, too... so I looked on Epicurious and found:

Old-Fashioned Meatloaf
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Old-Fashioned-Meat-Loaf-11676

The reviews were hilarious, mostly because most of the cooks somehow added bacon to this lusty mix of egg, ground pork and beef. I modified the recipe only slightly (no scallions, 2 lbs meat instead of 2.25lbs), and cooked it for exactly an hour. It took awhile for me- I'm not going to lie- because of the chopping and the sauteeing on the cooktop first, and then the mixing, but it was well worth the results. Katie came over for dinner and took leftovers home! I was proud.

The other meals this week will be a Nice Roasted Chicken and this delicious sounding salad:
Sizzling Halloumi Cheese with Fava Beans and Mint
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Sizzling-Halloumi-Cheese-with-Fava-Beans-and-Mint-238258
The only flaw here is that I can't find Halloumi cheese in grocery stores or on FreshDirect, so I went with the Internet's recommendation for a substitute- Queso Fresco. I have no idea how it's going to taste or hold up to the cooking process, but if it fails, it will be a big one.

Since the movers will be packing up all of our kitchen equipment except for the bare bones, this is the last real week of meals until we get settled in the new place. I'm looking forward to eating all of our favorite NY restaurant food on paper plates next week: Ethiopian from Abyssinia on 135th, soul food from Amy Ruth's on 116th, sushi from Charlie's Place (125th and Madison), and falafel from Habibi's. We will really miss having such a selection of ethnic and delicious foods nearby. Sigh. There's always something.

Ethiopian food in Ethiopia!

It's the real deal. The real injera, the real shiro and gomen, the real kitfo. Not that we haven't had some damn fine Ethiopian food in New York - there's a place a few blocks away where homesick Ethiopians ply their trade that Erin was feasting at with great regularity before we left. But this stuff was good. I mean the injera had a tang to it that I have not experienced here and the shiro in a couple of places had a spice blend that is impossible to both forget and replicate. Not to mention the fact that kitfo snuck up on us on the first day... our driver orders some food for us after a brief discussion and turns out he didn't even know that kitfo would be lurking... we got a hodge-podge and after my first bite after not looking at the plate, I had a novel thought - 'that's raw beef I taste.' Ahhh kitfo. Never again.

It's actually quite hard in some ways to reconcile the generous eating habits of many urban Ethiopians these days with the 1980s images that are stuck in my head of starving Ethiopian children... though it only took about 30 minutes in the hospital to realize that the specter of yesteryear was actually in front of me today.

Sticking to the food... other than the Ethiopian food that we had in abundance, I had some solid coffee place after place. Here's a photo of the meal with the hidden kitfo (we look like hell because we had just flown from NYC-Cairo, spent the day there, Cairo-Addis, then 6hr drive to this place all with 2-3hrs sleep and I was post-call).

 Back to the coffee, Ethiopia is where coffee is thought to have originated. Now back here in the states, the respect they pay to coffee in ceremony validates Ethiopia's claim to its origin. You can't grab a coffee to go. You have to sit, they roast the beans in front of you and then go through this whole serving routine with incense and the like. And it's not just a show - literally every person who just orders coffee gets it this way - the leaves are some sort of welcoming/good luck thing (see photos below). The top one is cheap street style but still with the incense and some sort of green leafy thing that I never got a full explanation for. The bottom is the more grandiose display but still pretty common.

 We had some great Indian, some decent Italian (the only occupiers ever of Ethiopia) and some good more European/American style food too. And the boy had loads of admirers. Below is the most glamorous of the group but nearly every waiter/waitress held him at some point.

Last week of dinner before Ethiopia!

We are all excited for our big trip to Egypt and Ethiopia where the food is going to be awesome!!!

But this week holds promise as well... my last week in the ICU so Erin will still be doing a good proportion of the cooking. One unexpected benefit of Erin doing so much of the cooking recently was revealed to me the other night when we cooked together - we make a much better team in the kitchen now! It was a lot of fun actually.

Black bean chili with cornbread and roasted pepper mix (spicy and with garlic)
Cheese and tomato souffle with romaine, blue and carmelized onion salad
Salmon teriyaki over rice with edamame and rainbow chard 
Burgers and zucchini (with some for Mr. Atticus) 

To mix it up a bit, here's a photo of Erin and Katie hanging out before we went out to dinner and Aunt Katie stayed with Atticus... not that night, but another we had some great tapas at Buceo 95 (www.buceo95.com). Sat on the porch with some good wine and were in our own little happy world.

Vino: Monastrel, Bodegas Guardiola Crianza 2006 Jumilla, Spain
with...
Piquillos Rellenos - young manchego cheese stuffed peppers
Remolachas y Valdeón - pickled baby yellow and red beets, blue cheese, swiss chard chiffonade
Patatas Bravas - baby purple and red bliss potato medley, spicy tomato sauce, garlic alioli
Buñuelos de Jamón - serrano ham and manchego cheese fritters, pimenton alioli 
Paella - wild boar, cured spicy and mild chorizo, saffron rice 


With a lovely aniseed fig creme brulee for dessert

Soup!

Roasted-Yellow-Pepper-Soup-and-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-with-Serrano-Cream
Erin tonight made a version of an epicurious recipe that involves roasted yellow peppers and tomatoes with a jalapeno cream on top - it was amazing. Sides of quesadillas and roasted corn to boot! Here's what it looked like and the link below:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Yellow-Pepper-Soup-and-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-with-Serrano-Cream-11554

I'm getting spoiled with all of this cooking Erin has been doing though she still seems to think it's not fancy enough to blog about... but it's so good that I'm going to.

Fettuccini with freshly made pesto, eggplant bruschetta and salad
- Erin made the pesto from the Silver Spoon recipe, no adjustments. It's an interesting pesto because it's heavy on the pine nuts and no garlic which is more typical of American-style pesto. It has plenty of parmigiano which if mixed quickly with the hot pasta melts just perfectly. Again, flawless execution by the chef du month.
The eggplant bruschetta I must say was a no repeat. It's a great idea, but there's too much thyme in the eggplant and comes across way too strong - I think in the future adding some basil and spice with less thyme would work out well.

And finally, another picture of boy expanding his palate - carrots!

Dinners week of April 8

We have an exciting week coming up. Erin's been at the helm as of late and is pushing her culinary skills with fantastic results. This last week she made (I have none of the details available):

Indian curried potato and cauliflower with great lentils
Spinach, goat cheese, red pepper and avocado salad with garlic bread
Burgers with fries and broccoli

She's an amazing cook. She wasn't always the greatest in the kitchen other than desserts, but she has honed her skills for sure!

Little dude also had a couple of firsts. Erin sent me a photo while I was at work of what appeared to be guacamole on Atticus' face (see below). I was thrilled and he looked delighted. I figured the little guy ate some mashed up avocado... I always tell my patients to start with one food at a time to make sure they don't have an allergy to anything... Erin's an immunologist... but no. Turns out the little fellow had real guacamole with the usual 4-5 ingredients as his first food! Developing his palate early!

He also ate his first grass on a walk in Harlem and had his first swing ride (kind of) - I put him in (his mother was not around), and he sort of looked at me like 'really, Dad? I'm kinda small for this.' But he smiled when I pushed him.

This week here's the preview from Chef Erin:
Skate fish tacos with a cabbage/carrot/poblano relish
Bibimbap - if you don't know what that means, you haven't lived
Carbonara - really the best way to eat spaghetti known to man, here's the recipe from October that I posted... we'll see how Erin's version differs!
- cook the bacon with some garlic while pasta water boils (please don't add olive oil to pasta water!)
- beat two eggs
- grate about 1 cup of parmigiano
- after the pasta is done cooking and drained, I like to add the bacon with a little of the grease and garlic still in it to the pasta first so it doesn't stick together at all when you add the egg and quickly toss while quickly adding parmigiano

California and Texas Vacation Food

Vacation revisited

It's a gloomy day in Harlem - a perfect day to revisit the meals we had in sunny California and Texas where we went for a brief vacation... lots of fish, lots of meat too and plenty of meals out and in with lots of family and friends. Here are a couple of the memorable ones:

Korean: I love Korean food. Erin does too. It has that perfect mix of spice, vegetables and meat served over a big bowl of rice that makes for good comfort food somehow. We had a great night ordering in from a place in La Jolla; had planned to go out but then Atticus intervened at the restaurant and home was much easier. The vegetable gopdol that Erin had was fantastic and my bulgogi had a really spicy barbeque sauce that came with it that just made my night. 

Sushi Ota: There are many sushi houses in San Diego. I used to work in one. Many serve decent fare. None are sushi ota. After working in a sushi bar for 2 years, a Japanese friend of mine took me to Sushi Ota as a going away present from San Diego. It's amazing. It's not in a tourist locale, it's in a smallish little mall, and it has the best sushi I've ever had. We were the only non-Japanese folks in there; actually there were a couple of Anglos at some of the other tables but they were speaking Japanese. Erin had a sushi bowl with 12 pieces of buttery sashimi that made a veritable rainbow; I had a few specialty rolls and some orange clam sashimi that was intriguing. It's a little hard to eat other places for a while after Sushi Ota.

Mexican up the yazoo: Both Texas and California served up delectable variations on Mexican food and I'm not about to get in the middle of which variation is better. We had awesome fish tacos in San Diego and Andale's in Los Gatos; solid (nearly literally with beans) breakfast tacos in San Antonio and some great enchiladas in La Jolla. One of the standard things in those two great states that seems to be lacking here is a bowl of fresh salsa and tortilla chips - it's almost always free and always a good introduction to the restaurant - a good telltale sign of whether to dive in at this place or play it safe.

Steak and wine: My dad treated us to a great meal of steak, scalloped potatoes and salad while we were visiting. When I think of gourmet home-cooked food, my dad's cooking is the first thing that comes to mind... these days I think I may cook a wider variety, but I still think of his cooking as the best. We had some excellent Cabernet from Santa Cruz and the steaks were cooked in my dad's Green Egg - a kamado style cooker that resembles a barbeque and has its roots in Japanese cooking. Good stuff.

Clam chowder: this was good and worth remaking when good clams are available:
- scrub clams and put in pot with a little olive oil and cook on high for a few minutes by themselves, then add garlic, onion and thyme to the mix for a couple of minutes. Finish the clams by adding some white wine, a bit of water if you like and covering the clams to steam until open (10mins).
The base can be made by stewing some potatoes in 2 cups of cream until they're nice and mushy.
Finally the veggie mix starts with bacon (of course), then add celery, green onion, kale or whatever else you'd like to toss in the mix.
Make the clam part first so that you can take the clams out of their shells while the rest is cooking and then keep some of the shells for decor.
It's worth the effort!

It's just been a week since we've been back and we've been relying on old favorites this week. Will update the blog again next week as things get more exciting... rumors of curried lentils with spiced cauliflower, grilled tilefish with broccolini and pecans...