Last Holiday Post

Ok all, it is officially the new year and time for the holiday season to end. That's right, no more merry lights and candies, no more presents, just the slow endless crawl of winter and horrible slush for months and months on end.

However, I have one more holiday food post to do, and I'm-a gonna do it. So there.

Latkes!

Everybody loves latkes. If they say that they don't, then they are lying. Who doesn't love fried crispy potato pancakes? Nobody, that's who. They're a bit of a pain to make, especially at my mother's house, because she doesn't have a food processor like I do. So there's a lot of peeling. And grating. And more peeling. And more grating. Here's my sister Allison, peeling away.


She's a good peeler. Plus, she has awesome orange fingernails.


Once you've peeled and grated however many potatoes will feed your family (we used about 2.5 pounds or half of a 5 pound bag), you soak the potatoes in cold water (at least, according to this recipe from Gourmet that I used).


Then you drain them and add some chopped onion (I picked this recipe so that I wouldn't have to grate any onions - I hate that). Then comes the crazy part that I forgot to take a picture of.

"Spread grated potatoes and onion on a kitchen towel and roll up jelly-roll style. Twist towel tightly to wring out as much liquid as possible." This would not have been possible at my home in Astoria, as I have no clean kitchen towels. My mom has plenty though, so it worked out fine.

Then you mix it in a bowl with a few eggs and some salt. I think I used two eggs? Maybe three. I can't remember.


Then you just heat up some oil in a frying pan (not expensive imported olive oil that your dad orders special from Italy, just regular heart healthy canola oil will do). Put a spoonful of mixture in the pan and flatten it out with a fork (or your hand). Don't put too many latkes in the pan at once or they won't fry properly. Here are mine, frying away until they turn golden brown on one side.


Then you flip them and wait another few minutes or so....don't poke at them in the pan, just let them be.


Drain them on paper towels....


And keep them warm in the oven while you fry the rest.


This will take a long time. You'll add more oil as you go. Your dad will complain that he's hungry. You will tell him to go away and let you cook as he is vibing you and you don't like that. Finally you will eat latkes for Christmas/Hannukah dinner and feel very Jew-y because you are eating latkes on Christmas. Or you could just add more oil and forget about the rest of the paragraph. That may be specific to my family. When you're all done, eat them with sour cream and applesauce. If you're with my sister, she'll refuse to let you make homemade applesauce and insist on the jarred kind. You may as well agree because your family makes you tired and it's easier just to go with the flow.

More exciting blogging to come!

The end is near.....

Sorry, readers. I've been on vacation, doing all sorts of things that keep me from blogging. On the upside, I've been taking pictures galore (I got a new camera for Xmas - a really nice one) and I will have lots of amazing things to show you soon, including lakte making, wine tasting, eggplant pasta and best of all.......lunch at the French Laundry.

Until then, have a happy new year and a safe new year's eve. My new year's eve will pretty much be the opposite of this -



- seeing as this is a huge party and I'm going to hermit it up with Zack and a few close friends, eating Arizmendi pizza and drinking Trader Joe's champagne.

I'll write more in the new year, I promise. Happy 2009!

And so, I'm offering this simple phrase....

It's that time of year, folks. The ingredients have been put away....


Festive cookies and fudge have been made.....


Elana has complained that she doesn't read my blog because she's not on it anymore (Ha! This'll show her).......


And my presents are all set to go (don't you wish you were getting this for Christmas? Well, some of you are).


Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Merry Festivus and all the rest. I'll leave you with some holiday spirit in the form of the Muppets and John Denver. It doesn't get any better than that!

I'll be Home for Christmas...

This post is for all those people stuck in the airport this holiday season. If you're flying Jet Blue out of New York, most likely your flight was canceled because of the snow and then the people at Jet Blue said you couldn't have another flight until Christmas Eve (unacceptable!!!) and so you had to cancel your flight and switch to Southwest at the last minute and had to drive an hour out to Long Island and then switch planes in Baltimore and then stop in San Diego, all just to get to Oakland.

Maybe that's just me.

But if you are stuck in Jet Blue's Terminal 5 at JFK International Airport, fret not, because it's not all bad. Sure, you're not on your flight yet, but hey, you've got a huge choice of quality food. I know, you're thinking "Quality food in the airport? Lena, you must be crazy." But it's true.

Jet Blue has completely redone their terminal. Instead of looking like an airport, it now looks like this:


Pretty, yes? Here's the restaurant up close.


I've been reading about the new Jet Blue restaurants a lot, so when I was there last month, I decided to check out the food. The bartender recommended one of the specials - a warm apricot and arugula salad.


It was excellent. Definitely non-airport restaurant quality. I liked the contrast between the fruit and the arugula and the dressing was not too strong (thank goodness). I also got the cauliflower rigatoni (hey, it's a long flight to Oakland).


It was nice and cheesy with some flecks of fresh rosemary. Yum! The chef is from Del Posto (one of the fancy Mario Batali restaurants), so expect the best.

Hope this cheers up your travels and that you all get to wherever you're trying to go.

Simply having a wonderful Christmas time....

Growing up in California (and being frightened of most athletic activities as a child), snow was not something I encountered regularly. I read about it, saw it in the movies, but rarely came across it in my life. And so, as I enter my eighth winter in New York City, the first big snow possesses a magical quality to me. This morning, I pulled my shades up to find this view looking back at me:


I felt as giddy as a schoolboy (as Ebenezer Scrooge might say)! I knew it was going to be a wonderful day. After a short walk out in the snow, I hunkered down indoors, to watch Miracle on 34th Street and make cookies. Best. Day. Ever.

These cookies are a big hit - I've made them three years in a row and everyone always loves them.

Chocolate Hazelnut Smooches

1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup Nutella
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
red or green sprinkles
Chocolate Kisses!

1. Cream together the butter and sugars and Nutella. Yum. Taste it. It's good.

2. Mix in the egg and vanilla.

3. Add the dry ingredients, about a 1/3 at a time. You don't want flour to explode everywhere.


4. Once it's all combined, roll the dough (in your hands) into tiny walnut sized balls and then roll the balls in sugar.


5. Bake for 8 minutes at 375 degrees.


6. After the 8 minutes, open the oven and press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie and bake again for another 3 minutes.


Cool on a rack. That's it! These are remarkably good, especially on a nice cold snowy day.

This candy isn't made of sugar

As you saw earlier, my dad visited me here in New York. As you may be able to tell from my dad's comments on earlier posts, my dad is a vegetarian (and one of those mean ones who mocks you while you eat a steak, saying that you're ripping into DEAD ANIMAL FLESH). So when I read that a new vegetarian restaurant had opened in the East Village, I made a reservation ASAP (I mean, there's only so many times I can go to Zen Palate).

The new restaurant is called Dirt Candy, which is kind of unappetizing, but luckily, the food tastes way better than the name might suggest. The decor leaves something to be desired, the lights are too bright to make it seem like a "nice restaurant." However, ambiance aside, we had a good meal.

We started off with the "snack" on the menu - jalapeno hush puppies, served with maple butter (there were more than are pictured, but we ate them. Whoops).


They were very nice. Just the right amount of heat, and the sweet maple butter was a nice contrast. But really, what was going to be wrong with fried dough and butter?

We moved on to first courses. I had Mixed Greens with Grilled Cheese Croutons,
roasted garlic vinaigrette and candied grapefruit pops.


I enjoyed all the pieces of the salad individually - the croutons were delicious and cheesy and the grapefruit pops were really interesting - slices of grapefruit on a stick, caramelized in sugar. They were sweet and sticky - but they didn't really go with grilled cheese. As a whole, I wasn't a fan of the dish. I'd each bit by itself though.

My dad fared better with Spinach Soup with Smoked Tofu Dumplings, lemon confit, water chestnuts and pistachio oil.


The soup was a vivid green - this is the first dish where we were really impressed by the color. There were many more to come. My dad and I both enjoyed the soup. It was just a nice simple spinach flavor with a little bit of smoke.

We moved on to main courses. I had Pinot Grigio Papardelle with roasted cauliflower and pine nuts.


The papardelle was made with wine instead of water (according to the waiter), but I didn't really taste much of a difference from regular pasta. I loved the cauliflower and the tomato sauce, but I was less of a fan of the sheet of dehydrated pine nuts. I would have much preferred regular toasted pine nuts. Overall though, it was a very enjoyable dish.

My dad had the Carrot Risotto with Carrot Dumplings and Carrot Curls.


Have you ever seen a dish that's so orange? It's real orange, not gross re-hydrated fake cheese orange. The carrot dumplings were very interesting - they looked like carrot slices, but they were really made of dough. The risotto was very well prepared, I liked it quite a bit. It may have been my favorite dish of the evening.

We skipped dessert - they all were a little too experimental for us. We opted to walk over to Veniero's instead. Yum.

Soon....

It's a busy time folks. Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, and all that jazz. I have to do final performances with my kids at school and go to parties and banquets and weddings - it's a hard life. So, blogging tends to fall to the wayside.

Please just know that I'm making yummy food (and some of you will even get to eat it). Today it's chocolate fudge and spicy molasses cookies, to be given away tomorrow (so I've got to work quickly).

Cross your fingers that you get some baked goods from me and never buy fat free kosher marshmallows. They are not that good.