reika

I was craving summer rolls (gỏi cuốn) the other day, but Soho doesn't have any good Vietnamese restaurants within walking distance of my office, so I had to stick getting an order from Mooncake Foods, which is an Asian fusion restaurant on Sixth Ave and Watt.

The summer rolls were disappointing -- they were at least half the size of what I'd usually get at my fave Vietnamese place in Queens -- but at least I got a Thai steak salad which sort of made up for the lackluster rolls.

My favorite part about eating ice cream in a cone wasn't really the ice cream so much, but the crisp sweet cones. Ice cream was easy enough to get, but cones were special. The cones that were available from the supermarkets (at least when I was a child) were nothing special, tasting faintly of cardboard if I recall correctly. But going to an actual ice cream shop, there were these special treats called waffle cones, which essentially improved the entire ice cream eating experience by a few hundred percent.

So, discovering these cookies was an epiphany to me. Because to my mind (and taste buds), they're the cones -- without the shape, but with all the yummy sweetness and crispness. They suggest having this with tea, but I think it goes along okay by itself and all your memories of childhood.

Bought the paperback of The Perfect Scoop (with the Borders coupon, it came out to about $13; those coupons will be the death of me, I'm sure), so I'm thinking that one of my plans this summer is to get incredibly fat on ice cream.

Between the cookbook, and this AskMefi thread, I think I'm going to be on my way to the goal soon.

Planned flavors: Corn, avocado, buttermilk, mint, and salted butter caramel. I'm sure there will be some more traditional flavors that I'll true, but right now, I want to be ambitious and aim for the moon.

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Tried baking Smitten Kitchen's yogurt cake last night, and even though it may have overbaked just a tad, it's good~

I really dig cakes like these that are simple yet nice and flavorful. The yogurt does give a bit of tang, which is pushed even more by the lime zest. I skipped the blackberry sauce, since it was late when I started baking (around 11p) but since I do have the berries in the fridge, I may make a small batch of sauce for later.

I do want to bake more this summer, so maybe late-night baking will become my new weekly ritual.

Empire Room, a new cocktail bar at the ground floor of the Empire State Bldg., is open. The drinks are a tad pricier than your average NYC cocktail bar, and the place itself isn't even located on a high enough floor so that you can justify the drink with a view (like the Hancock Bldg in Chicago).

Thinking this'll be a pass.

Manhattan
Angel's Share
B Flat
Brandy Library
The Campbell Apartment
The Dove
Mayahuel
Pegu Club
Smith and Mills
Little Branch (3-Aug 2010)

Brooklyn
Char No. 4
Clover Club
Hotel Delmano
The Jakewalk
Quarter
The Richardson (5-Aug 2010)


To visit
Raines Law Room
Death and Company
Employees Only
Madame Geneva
Dutch Kills
Apothéke
White Star

Haven't been doing too much baking or new recipe cooking lately. Most of my meals these past weeks have come out of a can, or are of the stir-fry kind. As it's also Lent, I'm generally trying to limit my intake of meat. It's a good idea anyway and I may continue to do it even after Easter just to continue the habit.

Anyway, the one time that I did bake -- mayhaps this was three weeks ago -- it was to make a small batch of brownies using (Inside a Black Apple)'s recipe. Tania swore up and down that this recipe is super simple, but has yielded the best results. She's right. It's also a testament of how much of a fatty that I am that I had all the ingredients to make brownies on hand.

I've passed by this restaurant for years. It's a block away from the church where my family and I go to Mass. I never realized it's the last of its species. Must pay a visit very soon.

Yet, at the only remaining outpost of the beloved franchise, on an undistinguished stretch of delis and banks on 37th Avenue at 81st Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, even a waiter struggles to remember what the names are all about.

What exactly is in the Nut Special?

"You know, it’s got the nuts." [Source]

Okay, so if you've never had mentaiko spaghetti, even the idea of spicy cod roe with your pasta probably sounds wrong.

But personally, this is one example where 'fusion cuisine' works.

I've had mentaiko spaghetti at many izakaya, but whenever I look up how to prepare the dish, I'm somewhat daunted by the idea that I have to find/buy the actual cod roe. Not too many Asian groceries carry it; I think I've only found one grocer in Manhattan that does.

S&B makes a lot of Japanese food products (many I'm sure you've seen or even used) -- theirs wasn't the only brand of instant mentaiko sauce that I saw but just knowing that this product exists has made me so happy. It means that I can have my mentaiko spaghetti anytime I desire! Each envelope comes with two servings worth. One packet has the actual sauce and the other has the nori topping. All you need to do is cook your spaghetti (not included!) and then mix the sauces and eat.

Had my holiday brunch on Saturday, and decided to also do a cookie exchange this year. I really should stop giving myself so many things to do. I become really ambitious when it comes to cooking -- if only that applied to other aspects of my life, I would be a much richer woman.

Anyway, I made three types of cookies (and a loaf of banana bread on the side):

Earl Grey Tea Cookies [recipe] - Yeah, it's a Martha recipe, but I tried making a small batch of this last year and really liked it. The cookies are a shortbread texture, and with the tea actually embedded in the cookies, it makes for a unique flavor. The boyfriend totally loved this, which doesn't surprise me since he adores tea in any shape or form, and probably also because the resulting cookies weren't too sweet.

Snickerdoodle Blondies [recipe] - I really like the classic simplicity of snickerdoodles. It's just cinnamon and sugar, but really, life doesn't need anything else more complicated than that. The cinnamon-sugar topping makes the resulting bar cookie appear like a cross between a coffee cake and a blondie, but that's just all right by me. I would've preferred it if the blondie part were chewier, but again, that's my personal preference; the recipe's quite good as it is.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Sandwiches [recipe] - This was a little bit of a cheat since they're essentially just sugar cookies (which I cut out in star shapes -- c'mon, it's the holidays!) with Nutella in between. Everything's always better with Nutella, I figure. The RS sugar cookie recipe, to their credit, is super foolproof. I haven't really worked with sugar cookies before (except for the slice & bake types) but I didn't have any issues with their recipe.