Goodbye, blog

This blog began as a way to relieve abject boredom, but now that I find myself exceptionally busy I am officially closing this blog down (not that anyone was reading it to begin with). If at some point I find myself really bored again, I may pick it back up, but don’t expect any updates anytime soon.

Mushroom and spinach moussaka

The last time I made moussaka, I tried a recipe out of my Moosewood cookbook. Normally I’m not much of a vegetarian cook, but there are a number of very yummy recipes in the Moosewood. However, the mushroom moussaka recipe is not one of them, so I improvised my own. Moussaka is a nice dish because it’s very tasty and can be either vegetarian or non-vegetarian depending on whom you’re cooking for.

Basically, when you make a moussaka, there are three components: the bechamel sauce, the eggplant, and the tomato-based sauce.

The bechamel sauce

• Melt one stick of butter in a heavy saucepan.
• Add about 2/3 cup of flour and let it fry for a bit.
• Slowly add 3 cups of milk, stirring constantly.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• At this point, the mixture might be a bit watery, but let it simmer for a few minutes and it will thicken up (it should have kind of a pudding-like consistency). Then, remove from heat, cover and let it cool. While the mixture is cooling, you can start prepping the eggplant.
• Once the mixture is cool, mix in 2 beaten eggs.

Prepping the eggplant

• Start by removing the skin from 3 medium sized eggplants.
• Slice the eggplants into 1/4 inch rounds. Salt the rounds lightly on both sides and let them rest in a colander for about 20 minutes (the eggplant will drip juices so you should put them in the sink).
• Pat down each slice with a paper towel and lay onto a greased baking sheet. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes until tender.

The tomato sauce
So here’s where you can dump in basically whatever you want. I used mushrooms and spinach since I had vegetarians coming, but you can do ground beef or any kinds of vegetables you have handy.

• Put some olive oil in a pot and cook your vegetables (I used about 10 oz of sliced mushrooms and a package of frozen spinach).
• Add one 15 oz can of tomato sauce.
• Season with salt, pepper, dill, cumin, and a little sugar to taste.
• Let it simmer for a while, add in more salt / spices until it tastes ok.

Assembling the whole thing

• Grease a large casserole dish. Layer the eggplant rounds on the bottom, about two slices deep.
• Add the tomato sauce on top of the first eggplant layer and spread it evenly.
• Use your remaining eggplant to make a layer on top.
• Lastly, top the whole thing with the bechamel sauce and spread this evenly. If you want, you can brush the top with beaten egg but I usually forget to do this.

Bake for about an hour at 350 degrees until the top is kind of a golden color and that’s it!

The verdict: eh… 60%

Well, I was generally happy with the way the food at the dinner party turned out. The moussaka was pretty good (I came up with my own recipe, not having been very happy with previous moussaka recipes I’d tried). The shish kebab was more liked fried kebab since I didn’t really have anything to grill it on, but it was tasty nevertheless. Nantucket pie was yummy as usual.

The big disappointment was the fried grits. Totally flavorless. Next time, I need to mix in more salt and maybe some cheese or something.

Anyway, this was my last New York dinner party… I’m moving (back) to Boston shortly and will continue posting from there on my food exploits. (Although I think no one actually reads this blog so it’s not like anyone cares)

Prepping for one last dinner party (in NYC anyway)

I know this blog has been pretty quiet of late… I’ve been pretty busy so haven’t had a lot of time to post anything new. But I’m throwing one last New York dinner party tonight before I move. It will be a larger group than I have had over before so I am going to be lazy and get paper plates and plastic utensils (I don’t think I have enough real plates and utensils anyway). Plus, I’ll have to be a little creative about seating.

Anyway, here’s what the menu looks like:

• Moussaka
• Shish kebab
• Fried grits
• Salad
• And for dessert: Nantucket pie a la mode

Should be a good time. I’ll take pictures as I cook and post them here.

Price comparison: Boston vs. New York

OK, so I’m in the Boston area for Thanksgiving and made a quick run to the supermarket today. What I saw blew my mind. Groceries here are a LOT cheaper than in New York. In the produce section, all the apples are routinely $1.29 / lb. This would be a SALE price in New York, where the apples are routinely $2.29 / lb or higher. And my favorite cereal, Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds? $4.79 in New York, but a mere $2.69 here. In New York, Trader Joe’s makes a big deal about having a section of cereal that’s under $3!

I remember my marketing professor telling us one time that most people really don’t know how much they spend on stuff and therefore supermarkets have a lot of leeway to price things. I mean, how many of us really pay attention to how much we pay for baking soda? Still, the degree of difference between what you find in Boston and New York really seems a bit excessive.

Chocolate bread pudding

So I’ve made bread pudding a bunch of times before, but this was my first time making the chocolate variety. I’d originally planned on making a flourless chocolate torte, but ended up not making it for two reasons: first, it needs to be made a day in advance, and I was feeling lazy on Saturday; and second, I didn’t feel like getting all the butter that’s required (a flourless chocolate torte is basically butter, chocolate, sugar and eggs mixed together and baked). Hence, the chocolate bread pudding.

• To start off, get a bag of hot dog buns and break them into chunks. The right amount is usually one bag of hot dog buns less one bun (which I think is seven buns). Put them into a loaf pan or similar sized container.



• Next, in a heavy pot bring 1 cup of heavy cream and 3/4 cup of sugar to a boil. Once it’s reached a boil, remove from heat and add 12 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Mix well until you have a smooth mixture and let sit for a couple of minutes.
• In a large bowl, whisk two cups of milk, two eggs, two egg yolks, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Once the mixture starts to get foamy, whisk in your chocolate mixture. You should end up with something that looks like this:

• Pour the chocolate mixture over the hot dog rolls. You should let the whole thing sit for 1-2 hours, occasionally pushing down the bread and mixing things up to make sure the liquid gets absorbed.



• When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. You’ll also want to boil a kettle of water and have a large casserole dish or pot ready because you’ll need to bake the bread pudding in a water bath.
• Place the loaf pan with the bread pudding in the casserole dish and put the whole thing in the oven. Then, take your kettle of boiling water and pour the water in the casserole dish. If you do it this way, you minimize the chances you’re going to splash yourself with boiling water.
• Bake for about an hour. When you pull it out of the oven, I’d recommend leaving the casserole dish in the oven until the water cools off. Don’t want to risk scalding yourself with hot water!

And that’s it! I like my bread pudding a little on the warm side, although it’s good to let it sit for a little while so it’s not too hot. You can also microwave cold bread pudding to heat it up a bit. Now I forgot to take a picture of the bread pudding after it was done, so all I have is a picture of the bread pudding half eaten after my guests had left!

Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner Party

On last night’s menu, we had:

• Chicken cacciatore
• Grits
• Sauteed asparagus
• Portabella mushrooms with vinegar onion marinade
• Chocolate bread pudding

This one took a lot longer than I’d thought to prepare — mainly because it had been a long time since I’d cooked chicken cacciatore and I’d forgotten that there’s a lot of chop and simmer time involved with that one. Urgh. Chopping mushrooms and onions can be really tedious.

Still, the food came out pretty well, I think. I was especially happy with the grits and the chocolate bread pudding since this was the first time I’d tried making both these dishes. I’ve made lots of bread pudding of the non-chocolate variety, but this was my time doing chocolate and it was nice and yummy (and, as always, I used hot dog rolls).

Trader Joe’s was a zoo this week. I actually bailed because the crowds were really getting to me and ended up doing most of my shopping at Whole Food’s where the crowds don’t seem so bad because there’s more space to spread out.

Anyway, the dinner party came off fairly well, I think. Here’s a picture of what the aftermath looked like:

Still, thanks to a concerted to clean up as I was cooking, getting things back to a pristine state took a mere half an hour! Recipes for specific dishes to follow…

Omelet with chinese sausage; broccoli rabe with garlic

Yet another quick dinner. Prep time — a total of 20 minutes. Here’s how I did it.

I really like broccoli rabe. It has a nice, nutty flavor. Plus, it’s not expensive. I got a big bunch of broccoli rabe at the farmer’s market near my apartment for only $1.25. It was about a pound of broccoli rabe, enough for four servings of veggies. The picture below is about half of what I bought.

All good cooking involves garlic. Lots of garlic. So I chopped 3-4 cloves into fine pieces, and then put them in a frying pan with some olive oil.

While the garlic is getting fragrant, wash the broccoli rabe and chop it into large pieces. Once the garlic starts to turn golden, throw the broccoli rabe into the frying pan and let it cook.

While the broccoli rabe was cooking in the frying pan, I worked on the Chinese sausage omelet. In my dialect, it’s called lop cheong. Anyway, I took one sausage and sliced it into thin slices. Then, I beat two eggs together in a small bowl.

Once the broccoli rabe is done, take it out set it aside in a bowl. Add a little more oil to the frying pan and start frying the Chinese sausage. I like to let it get a bit crisp.

After the sausage starts changing color and crinkling around the edges, pour in the beaten eggs. Swirl around a bit and form into an omelet shape. Flip it over, and once the eggs are cooked, you’re done!

I had this with some white rice. And that’s it! Simple but tasty and very quick.

Madama Butterfly at the Met

Another off-topic post. I went to see Madama Butterfly at the Met this past Saturday. And all I can say is… wow! I’d read reviews before going and was a little unsure of how I’d like it — I tend to like very traditional stagings of operas and wasn’t sure if I would like things like Butterfly’s son being played by a puppet. Although on second thought, maybe I only think I like traditional stagings — because the most memorable performances I’ve been to recently have all been non-traditional stagings (Butterfly at the Met, Cosi fan tutte in London).

In any case, the performance was terrific. Great singing all around. And the staging was absolutely beautiful. There’s no need for me to describe it because the show is near the end of its run and the staging has been described extensively elsewhere, but wow. The use of colors was really striking, minimalist in the best possible sense in that everything had a purpose, there wasn’t a single thing on stage that didn’t serve a purpose visually.

Now if only tickets weren’t so darned expensive…

Lady M’s Mille Crepes

Writing about desserts last night reminded me of a dessert I had recently that just blew me away. A few weeks ago, I was with a friend at the Bubble Lounge in Tribeca and ordered a dessert called “Mille Crepes.” Basically, it’s thin crepes layered with a light cream filling into a cake-like shape. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever had, so good that I ended up ordering a second slice! The cream was not too heavy and had just the right amount of sweetness. The layers of crepes created a really unique, layered texture that felt very sophisticated. Overall, this dessert succeeded in tasting rich, yet light at the same time.

Apparently, the Mille Crepes is made by a pastry shop on the upper east side called ‘Lady M’s Confections.’ I’ve never been there, but based on this one dessert it seems like it would definitely be worth checking out.

You can see what the Mille Crepes looks like by clicking here.