Sweet and Tangy Carrots

Sometimes you buy frozen vegetables for 88 cents and leave them in your freezer for five months. At some point during that five months you may or may not have taken them out of the freezer, used them to ice your ankle after soccer practice, and then put them back in. Then one day you may decide that it is time that the bag of aged and tired frozen vegetables to find another home, namely in your stomach. And then you cook them and pretend that eating something from a bag that was once pressed against your sweaty leg is not gross.

As Geneva and I have been saying for years, germs are good. You need just enough to keep you immune.

 Anyways, if you’re not horrified about the materials put into this recipe, then keep reading and maybe try it at home. 

The injured soldier: frozen baby carrots

The doctors: honey dijon mustard, brown sugar, olive oil.

The cure: Microwave 1 cup of carrots until thawed and empty excess water. Toss with a heaping tablespoon of the dijon until coated. Heat ½ teaspoon olive oil in a pan. Add carrots. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons brown sugar over top and stir to coat. Let them sit if you like slightly charred edges, keep stirring if you don’t. Cook until the sugar is carmelized on the carrots and they are piping hot. Salt and pepper and serve.

Devour and appreciate the best 88 cents you’ve spent in a while.

Baked, Brooklyn

 I was interviewing at a location in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There is nothing more stressful that navigating discombobulated transportation on the way to an interview. I didn’t even know there were places in New York that required taking a subway and two buses.

Alas, there I was standing outside of the building after my interview, wondering how the hell I was going to get home. Hail a cab? Fat chance, the only yellow vehicles were Mack trucks driving to the construction site down the road. I was exhausted and wasn’t thinking quickly enough to come up with a plan.

A fellow interviewee asked if I wanted to go to Baked, the famous Brooklyn Bakery. ‘Awhaaaa?!’ I responded. Somehow I had ended up in a faraway land, and yet in this land there were world renowned baked goods just around the corner?

Yes and yes.

Baked was everything I wanted it to be, mostly a respite from my morning of standing on my feet and thinking about my every move.

Am I smiling enough? Or am I smiling too much? Can’t be that over-eager, over-smiler.

Only use proper vocab and big words only use proper vocab and big words.

Did I just say “okie dokie’?

Crap.

So after my stressful morning of interviewing, I needed a booth seat and some sugar. Baked just stepped up to the plate and provided. 

 I ordered the Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake. It achieved coffee cake perfection. All of the flavor of a sweet, cinnamony dough, with those pockets of air that make it seem to melt on your tongue. The crumble topping was nutty, buttery, and delicious, and it was placed on top with what had to be magic. There is nothing worse than when some delicious thing with crumble topping loses all of the crumble.

My new friend and fellow interview survivor ordered the Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. It was dense and generously studded with chocolate. The bread was more dense than I normally like banana bread, it was more akin to a pound cake that meant serious business. Nonetheless, the flavors were phenomenal. 

 I hope I get the chance to return to Baked, it is worth the multiple modes of transportation necessary to get there. The staff at Baked was kind enough to let us linger for an hour while we missed our bus four times, I really have no explanation for this expect for that I was in a post-mental strain, post-sugar rush coma. Take me back I want to do it again. 

Baked

359 Van Brunt Street

Brooklyn, New York

Bella Blu, New York

Wednesday night I met my brother and a family friend for dinner in New York after a long day of interviews. The previous night I had gotten off a bus at 8:00pm, spent the next hour sprinting around midtown trying to find poster board, and then ended up grabbing a slice of pizza by myself in a sad, lonely deli. So needless to say, I was looking forward to a proper meal without the shame and isolation. 

 We entered Bella Blu on the upper east side and were pointed towards our friend waiting at the bar. The atmosphere was a mixture of styles; colorful murals on the wall suggested classic Italian, popular music playing over the din of voices created the feel of a nightspot, and a formal wait staff and table setting set the tone for the delicious food. 

 Wine came first. After a day of interviews, which included spilling coffee on the only blouse I brought for the day, navigating my way back from the fringes of Brooklyn, and lots of forced smiling, I was very ready for a glass of the good stuff. Our friend was well-versed in wine, and his choice was fantastic. Lacking the proper knowledge and vocabulary to describe wine, I will say that it was red, Italian, and delicious. 

 The waiter immediately brought out two different kinds of bread snacks, one was a traditional bread basket with a spicy tomato tapenade, and the second was a basket of small pieces of cheeseless pizza.

For a first course, we shared the stracciatella on recommendation from the waiter. They divided it up into thirds for us, each of us getting a plate with a generous portion of cheese, prosciutto, arugula and tomatoes. The cheese was divine. It was formed into a tubular mound, but it was so soft and fresh that it just fell apart at any pressure from my fork. It was creamy and perfectly salty.

 This restaurant recommendation was given to my brother under the condition that he must order the lobster arribiatta. I am not even sure if this dish was on the menu, but the waiter said he could make it happen. His dish was a whole lobster with spicy tomato spaghetti. The pasta was served in an open lobster shell. The manager came over when I was taking a picture and asked jokingly if I was going to steal his recipe. The lobster was fresh and rich, but I didn’t love the pairing with the tomato sauce. I think there are better ways to serve lobster. 

 I ordered the pan-roasted Chilean sea bass with clams, mussels, and thyme in chardonnay sauce. My dish was divine. All of the elements were executed perfectly. The bass was thick-cut and roasted to perfection, the inside  was moist and flaky and there was a slight crust on top. The shellfish had a strong briny taste and their flavor became infused with the light sauce. The chardonnay sauce was reduced to the ideal consistency and its light flavor complimented the subtle flavors of the bass. There were so many delicious looking options on the menu, but I would have a very hard time going back and not ordering this again. 

We denied dessert because our dinners had been enough, but the waiter brought a tiramisu for the table and I wasn’t mad about it. The wait staff was attentive and provided helpful suggestions as well as delicious extras. Put this on the agenda for a special night out.

Bella Blu

70^th and Lexington

New York

Grilled Cheese Boy, Boston

 When I saw a grilled cheese shop in South Station I knew I wanted something to do with it. Although I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the name.

Is it “boy, it’s a grilled cheese!” Or

“Get me a grilled cheese, boy.” Or

“F$*k being a real boy, I want to be a grilled cheese boy.” –Pinocchio.

Regardless of what inspired the title, I think it’s a grand idea. I was on my way to New York and thought it was the perfect place to grab lunch before sitting on a bus for four hours. Besides, I learned from my last jaunt on the Bolt that the buses stop at the jankiest of food locations. Roy Rogers? What even is that? 

 So grilled cheese it was. Grilled Cheese Boy breaks it down real simple like. Pick your bread, pick your cheese, pick your toppings. The breadth of choices wasn’t huge, which I consider a good thing sometimes because it generally means that the ingredients that they have are fresh and of quality. This was definitely the case. I ordered a sandwich with cheddar and onions on Italian bread. The service was pleasant and the sandwich came in a cute little box. (Bonus points for Grilled Cheese Boy for dominating the Cute and Little category.) 

 The service was pleasant and the sandwich was ready promptly. The price was definitely reasonable, my sandwich was just over four dollars. The bread was crispy on the outside but I didn’t feel that it had been doused in butter. The cheddar was sharp and tangy, it didn’t need to be piled on to get all of cheesy flavor. The red onions were slightly softened from the hot sandwich, but they weren’t separated enough, so sometimes I ended up pulling several out with one bite. And then there were onions falling down my face and no onions in my sandwich, which led to the awkward, “do I or do I not put this fallen material back into my sandwich?” I looked left, looked right, realized I was in South Station and knew no one anyways, and stuffed them back in.

Grilled Cheese Boy is a fine stop for a meal or a snack. I enjoyed my lunch and found it to be savory and cheesy without the massive brick-in-your-stomach feeling. I would not, however, go out of my way to go there. 

Cheese Boy

South Station Train Course

Boston, MA

Homemade Oreos

I don’t want to seem like I’m critical. I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to right a wrong. I know, ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it.’ Oreos, I am not saying that you are broke, I swear. Please forgive my disloyalty. 

 But in the meantime, check out these cookies! Recreations of the classic Oreo have been popping up on the web, I felt that I had to give it a shot. Plus, I was going to visit Joey and boxes of treats are never rejected in an apartment filled with boys, so I figured even if they weren’t perfect someone would eat them.

The recipe details were slightly misleading, the chocolate cookies are called ‘wafers’. To me, wafers are the skinny girls of the cookie world. They are little delicate waifs who are crumbly and light, and they bat their little cookie eyelashes and tease all the boys.

These cookies would slap a wafer upside the head. 

 The first step is to make the chocolate cookies. The dough comes together simply by mixing all ingredients in the food processor. I love when batters or dough can be made all in one place.

The cookies ended up in the oven and suddenly my house smelled like brownies and it was heaven.

While the cookies were cooling, I whipped up some frosting with butter, shortening, vanilla, and powdered sugar. This was somewhat of a task because I was using a food processor when I really needed a mixer of some sort. It was like combing your hair with a toothbrush, just not the most efficient way to do things.

The last step was creating the sandwiches. This step was not my finest display of baking skill. Lacking a frosting bag and piping fixture, I used a Ziploc bag and cut a small hole in one corner in order to pipe the frosting directly onto the center of one cookie. The bag was too small. My piping approach was too cavalier. Ten minutes later I had several stacks of beautiful Oreos, but I also had a kitchen covered in buttercream. If you end up with frosting on the counter, the floor, your pants, and your head, and you’re not five years old, you know you’re doing something wrong. 

 The final product was rich and satisfying. Unlike the packaged kind, you can definitely only eat one. The cookies were firm enough to stand up to the cream, but not crumbly or brittle. They packed well and stayed soft for several days. The success of this project got me thinking about all the other packaged cookies that could be recreated. Nutter Butters may be next on the list.

Oreos

From Smitten Kitchen

For the chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar [see recipe note]
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 large egg

For the filling:
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat over to 375. Mix dry ingredients together in a food processor.

Add the butter and egg until formed into dough.

Place batter in on cookie sheet in rounded balls, then flatten out slightly with palm. Cook for 9 minutes.

For frosting beat butter, shortening, and vanilla until smooth. Add sugar slowly.

Once cookies are cool, pipe frosting into center of one cookie and sandwich with a second cookie.