A trip to 2nd Ave.....I mean 33rd Street

I love meat. I feel about meat the same way that born-again Christians feel about Jesus. I just can't believe that there ever was a time that I didn't accept it into my heart (or my stomach, in my case). Lately, I've been thinking a lot about corned beef sandwiches. I've recently come around to accepting rye bread (I used to hate the taste), so it's opened up a lot of metaphorical sandwich doors. So far, the quintessential corned beef sandwich comes from Katz's Delicatessen (at least, that's my opinion....which is pretty much all you get reading this blog), but I wanted to give the new 2nd Avenue Deli a try. I hadn't been there since my dad took me and my crazy college roommate (who eventually tried to stab me with a butter knife - true story) several years ago. We sat in the Molly Picon room and thought about how Jewish we felt (which is what people do when they find themselves in rooms named after Molly Picon). I thought it was time to give it another try.

Rita and I, after a few failed attempts, finally made it over to 33rd St between Lexington and 3rd Ave (no, the 2nd Avenue Deli is not on 2nd Avenue anymore. It's weird). We both ordered the corned beef sandwich on rye with mustard. It comes with these neat little packages of Russian dressing and mustard and of course, pickles.


Personally, I don't like anything but mustard on my corned beef. I'm a purist. So I skipped the Russian dressing. I liked the pickles a lot. They were good and crunchy. Here's the beautiful sandwich.


Yum. The bread was a little soggy for me, but what can you do. It's a take out sandwich. Can't expect perfection. It didn't beat Katz's, but it was still very good and it has the benefit (for me) of being around the corner from my office - unlike Katz's which is way downtown.

A side note - Rita thought it was too much meat - she actually picked out half the meat and then ate the whole sandwich, which to me seemed crazy. I'd rather eat half the sandwich piled high and then save the other half for later. Then she complained that it was too much meat for her and she was breaking out in meat sweats. So, a warning - this is not a sandwich for the faint of heart. If you're not used to eating huge stacks of meat, maybe you should steer clear. Or work your way up to it with smaller sandwiches first.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For those of you who don't know, I love making themed meals (probably because I think I'm a messier, more-Jewish Martha Stewart who secretly dreams of having her own Food Network show). So for St. Patrick's Day, I decided to make what seemed like the ultimate Irish meal - Corned Beef and Cabbage. In previous years, my aunts have made this on St. Patrick's Day, so I decided, if they could do it, so could I. It actually was surprisingly easy. I used this recipe. I omitted the beets, because I'm lazy, but I put them elsewhere in my dinner (you'll see). Here's the beef all ready to go in the pot:

You can't quite tell from the picture, but it's an almost absurdly fatty cut. Which made it super delicious - but not that health-conscious. Oh well. So, I added 6 cups of beef stock to the pot, and let it simmer for 2.5 hours. Then I added these veggies:

I added way more onions than this. I really like onions. I would recommend just getting a large white or yellow onion instead of these pearl onion though. They all fell apart in the dish and turned to mush (really yummy mush - but mush that made me feel silly for taking the time to parboil and peel them). Anyways, I let the veggies simmer for another 45 minutes and then it was done.

While these things were cooking, I made a carrot beet salad that you can read about here. First you just peel some raw carrots and beets. Here are mine:

I cut my finger peeling the beets. Plus, they dyed my hand a silly shade of red. Oh well. Next you grate them up. I got to use my amazing KitchenAide Food Processor which I'm totally obsessed with, like an out of date hipster with a trucker hat (I can't come up with any better similes than that - how sad).

Then I just tossed it with some things I found in my pantry - White balsamic vinegar from Meredith, some olive oil, hot sauce, mustard, garlic, salt and pepper. Here it is all finished and blurry from my low quality camera:

It was really good. I also made cornbread to go with it (which I know, isn't Irish Soda Bread, but Zack doesn't like caraway seeds and Miriam doesn't like raisins and I was really tired of waiting for sourdough bread to rise). I got the recipe from The New Moosewood Cookbook again, which I'm rapidly falling in love with (Sorry, Zack).

I have leftovers for lunch today, which I'm excited about. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Go out, drink some beers and pinch anyone who's not wearing green.