(no subject)

[skygiants]

aberration asked me to talk about anything related to food/cuisine that I feel like talking about for the 21st!

This is a huge topic! I LIKE FOOD. I mean, I don't pour immense amounts of energy into food. But I like food a lot. I like the feeling of accomplishment from making something edible out of disparate ingredients in my house, and I like the magic of going somewhere to eat and having someone provide me with something delicious. I also like the social aspect of cooking -- cooking for and with people -- and the feeling of validation from watching people enjoy eating something that you made.

But I don't have any pictures of food I have made recently, aside from the Thanksgiving and Rosh Hashanah ones that you've all already seen, and I feel like this is the kind of post that demands pictures, so in order to do something different I am going to post about five of my favorite things to eat in NYC that I don't make myself!


1.

Masala mac and cheese from Sarita's Mac and Cheese restaurant! I have no idea what's in it except mac and cheese and spices. Also tomatoes maybe? WHO KNOWS. Pure deliciousness, anyway.

2.

Chilaquiles from Chavela's in Brooklyn! Chilaquiles, as Chavela's does them, are fried tortilla chips and refried beans and amazing green salsa and queso fresco and a fried egg on top, and I have been craving them -- Chavela's chilaquiles, specifically -- for a solid month, like, since Thanksgiving. AND TOMORROW, unless something goes horribly wrong, I am going to eat them.

3.

I would be completely remiss to do a post about New York food and not put an image of Mamoun's falafel here. So many nights when I was in grad school I would get out of class at 10 and be like "I need something fried IMMEDIATELY or I am not going to make it home." And Mamoun's was there to provide, at $2.50 a pop. They have now raised their prices to $2.75 I think, but I'll still take it!

4.


So what you do at B&H Dairy, which is a tiny vegetarian Jewish deli -- or what I do at B&H Dairy, anyway -- is you drag someone with you and you talk them into splitting an order of blintzes and an order of potato pancakes. Then you look wistfully at the challah that everyone else is eating, which is made in-house, and reconsider all your life choices, but the potato pancakes and blintzes are so good and you are so full that there is nothing else to be done.

5.

There was a time in my life when I could not walk by the waffle and dinges truck without being drawn in by the siren waffle song. That time is gone; slowly but steadily, I have built up a resistance. But the waffle truck is still PRETTY AMAZING.

Tell me about your favorite thing you ate recently!

Comments

[agonistes]

This morning I had a hot pimento cheese sandwich from Neal's Deli, which will cure, no joke, anything that ails you. Anything. None of this primarily-mayonnaise business -- no, it's painfully sharp cheddar cut with apple cider vinegar and just a little bourbon.

Neal's pimento cheese is proof that we have achieved something spiritually tremendous.

I'm not kidding.

[skygiants]

*____*

that sounds INCREDIBLY DELIGHTFUL. I love fancy hot cheeses! I should make a cheesemonger visit when I'm back in NYC after the holiday.

[gramarye1971]

Whenever I come home, I often go straight from the airport to a local crepe place with my parents, and order the same thing just about every time: breakfast crepe with scrambled eggs, cheese, and andouille sausage, followed by a strawberry dessert crepe with whipped cream and maple sugar. As my parents and I eat and chat and drink coffee, I can usually feel some of the travel-tension start to leave my shoulders, and I settle into the comfort of being back home for a week or weekend. Always delicious. ^_^

[skygiants]

I love those regular places that just sort of feel like home. For me, there's one specific bagel place near where I live -- the bagels aren't as good as I can get in New York at all, but the place is so comforting I don't even care.

[ceitfianna]

This amazing lamb tangine that I helped my parents make with prunes and so delicious and filling and just right. In terms of what other people made, I haven't eaten anything fantastic lately but my local Chinese places General Tso's always makes me happy and eating it gives me some to myself.

[skygiants]

Those both sound delicious! Vegetarian General Tso's chicken was one of the first things to bring me around to trying soy protein, after becoming a vegetarian.

[nny]

Oh wow, so someday I am coming over to raid your foods, this is a thing that will happen. :D

Favourite thing I've eaten lately... a vegetarian chili with sweet potato and rice that Smaller made me, served with mulled wine. It was absolutely delicious, but like you say it was also the communal aspect of creating and talking through the meal that made it best. Need to sort something like it out for my house, because we're all a bit divided and uncomfortable at the moment.

[skygiants]

YES, YES YOU ARE. Also do not forget the standing invitation to come have American Thanksgiving with a real live American family!

Also, wow, that sounds SUPER delicious. Communal cooking in a house is great, and I hope you get to do that with your housemates! It's a good way to bring people together, I think.

[cinaed]

I JUST made potato pancakes for the first time a few weeks ago and went, "OH MY GOD, WHERE WERE THESE THE FIRST TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF MY LIFE-- oh, I came from a super WASP-y area of Virginia, right. Oh well, eating all 10 pancakes, yum."

That has been the biggest revelation about food in my life recently, haha. I have not gotten a chance to investigate DC's food yet, though! I plan to take some recs from friends and check some places out soon.

But I have been slowly teaching myself how to cook and bake this past month! So far I have successfully roasted my first turkey and made homemade turkey soup, turkey pot pie, and some semi-dubious broccoli cheese soup. And some cornbread muffins and as of this morning, some spice cupcakes with cream cheese icing, yum.

But! I will have to report back, but I found a recipe for white cheese and asparagus pizza and plan to try that out tomorrow! It certainly LOOKS delicious in this cookbook!

[skygiants]

Oh my god, how did you live 27 years without potato pancakes? WHAT A DEPRIVED CHILDHOOD. I'M SO SORRY.

Also, all those things sound delicious! I made broccoli-cheese soup last weekend and it was great. Then I made baked potato soup, which was essentially ... exactly the same soup ... except with baked potatoes as a central ingredient instead of broccoli. ALSO DELICIOUS. Please do report back on the white cheese and asparagus pizza! I almost included spinach-artichoke pizza from Artichoke here in NY as my fifth food item instead of the waffles, but I decided everyone would be confused by how not-NY-style pizza it is...

[sandrylene]

Today at work we did a team pot luck for the holidays, so I made baked brie again. You can't really go wrong with that. NOM.

Other folks made delicious things as well - fried ravioli, sweet potato bread, gingerbread and other stuff. It was nice.

Oh man, though, that mac and cheese... And Chavela's. Why haven't I visited you lately? Oh, right. School. /:

[batyatoon]

I made DELICIOUS MEAT PASTIES that I am probably going to post the recipe for.