by Maggie and Ed | Apr 27, 2016 | Food
Sometimes it’s funny how things work out. Not really here, though. We just started thinking that we should introduce a new outdoor space and instead decided to fix up an underutilized one.
There’re two things you need to know about outdoor furniture. It’s expensive and, it’s generally pretty ugly. We drove around last Saturday trying to put something together searching yard sales, antique shops, and eventually ending up in Target curled up sleeping in a corner.
Then we remembered we already had a table and two chairs. The yard sales were great to find more ceramic planters, and Target was great for more cheapo plastic ones. We built up some legs for a couple with some wooden dowels.
Maggie’s sister and kids were coming over Sunday and we wanted to make the space nice before that. We’ve still gotta make our lives seem good enough that she abandons her child’s school and moves closer into the city, so we don’t have to drive as much. We were going to grill some wrapped zucchini, artichoke spread, mushroom spread, eggplant, tomato and then eat the spiral with a blob of mozzarella. We were jokingly calling it our Pinterest dream dinner.
We also got some corn and decided that the kids would probably like eating chicken wings more than veggie wraps, so we got tons of wings too. Quantity seems to be key with mid-size children.
I prepped it all in a circulator. It’s nice to not have to worry about much other than getting your cheapo tiny grill as hot as possible and searing everything like crazy. Especially if you’re cooking for a crowd. I like to do corn with some of the husks, butter, and salt. I did the wings at 70C for 4ish hours, one buffalo spicy and one garlic herby. We tossed in some spices and sauce, but it got a bit diluted with the chicken juices. Next time I’d leave a little more time to make a final sauce with the cooking juices, but sometimes it’s better to cut your losses and enjoy the good weather with family.
by Maggie and Ed | Apr 21, 2016 | Food, Sandwiches
A few more shots from our recent New York visit! We had reservations for Sadelle’s that Thursday afternoon. It’s too cute. Ignoring any concept of how much food a person can reasonably eat, we eagerly made our way through bagels, tuna melts, and blintzes, each better than the last. The folks next to us decided it was the appropriate place to split a Greek Salad with Greek Dressing. It is not. If you stop by, just order something with bagels, dummy.
Full of carbs and bloody mary’s, we spent the rest of the afternoon bopping around lower Manhattan, stocking up on office supplies, and oggling the always glorious BDDW and their new sister company M. Crow.
Next up: dragging an amazingly compassionate friend around town until we had walked off enough of our brunch to swing by Fuku and live out Ed’s high-end chic-fil-a fantasies. And they did not disappoint. Elbow to elbow sipping dreamsicle slushies in the small, dimly lit space, all my normal feelings surrounding spicy chicken sandwiches (read: hungover and/or in a mall food court) quickly faded.
We spent the rest of the evening on the prowl for a bar with available seats, a surprisingly difficult feat. We finally settled outside of Union Square with Coronaritas, like you do.
Not pictured: the bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll that disappeared too quickly as we prayed to the Toyota-Gods to make the car start (it worked!).
Unfortunately pictured: road trip shame food.
by Maggie and Ed | Apr 4, 2016 | Food, Sandwiches
Maggie and I returned to her 2nd hometown of New York City last week to see Faust play at Market Hotel, a venue where she worked years ago. Maggie also had a doctor’s appointment at Mt. Sinai. We decided to stick to an all sandwich diet, partly for Steve’s research and partly cause we’re cheap and it’s tough to get into too much trouble with buying sandwiches. I got a little overwhelmed trying to figure out where to go while not really knowing our schedule 100%, so I started adding places into a google map trying to fill out all of the city, so we could just stop anywhere when we got hungry.
We stayed in Long Island City at the Paper factory. It was very affordable and clean, the lobby was quirky, the staff were friendly. The hotel isn’t really near anywhere though, just in storage building central and we were starving. So we decided to go to the closest place on the map to the hotel, Cemitas El Tigre. It was about a 20 minute walk, 15 of which were through deserted warehouses. We saw some guys demolishing a building from inside which was cool. But otherwise the lack of people was a little weird. Everything got better near the restaurant though. We got micheladas, a barbacoa cemita, and a carnitas burrito. Maggie’s often on the fence about ordering carnitas places since it’s often kinda dissapointing, but I was happy to prove her wrong here. That burrito was so good. So was the cemita. I wanna get some papalo for myself. We were having a great time relaxing after the drive. My sister texted me that Fritz was playing fetch with her and sent us a cute picture. We were relaxed and full and warm and ready to just uber back to the hotel to get an early start the next day, when I realized that my phone had turned itself off and wouldn’t be joining us for the rest of the trip. Dumb.
Maggie’s doctor was in the UES by all the rich babies and old ladies. We walked around to some children’s clothing stores looking for a baby is born gift for my sister and laughed that they cost more than our adult clothing. It’s pretty excessive to dress a child in a $180 shirt for two months. You know, unless you’re dressing them in some linen clothes that make them look like a japanese farmer. I thought I saw something that looked like it turned the baby into a starfish, but then i saw arm holes. pass. I didn’t really have anything that wasn’t at least an hour away, so we went to the coffee shop we always stop at by the hospital and bought some little sandwiches and went to the park to eat them. Maggie kept walking around looking for benches and some stuff, and I was hungry and thought we should just eat. Eventually she took me over this hill to the whoa it’s the city and a pond spot.
We took some pictures and thought about stuff and had a little gaze. There were no benches so we went back down to eat.
We got a soppressata and petso chibatta thingy and a prosciutto and mozzarella on brioche. They were good. Next we went to Kitchen Arts & Letters, which I had wanted to visit for a while. It was crazy and we wanted to buy everything. We got a couple little books to read on the subway and remembered that we’d have to carry whatever else we bought for the rest of the day.
We went to the met to do a quick jog through and look at all the decapitated head paintings. This older guy was peeing in the fountain. I guessed so. Then we headed to the Met Breuer to see the Unfinished show. It was really cool, worth checking out if you’re up there before it closes. Give yourself a few hours, it’s nice to read the stories behind everything. I like the one with the victorian lady missing her face the most. Or maybe the one next to it. Or like 20 other things. We almost bought the book for it, but luckily remembered the carrying thing again.
This was at the beginning of our walk out of the met. Nice and springy and happy. Flowers blooming and children playing. We had about a 40 minute walk to get to Alidoro. We considered a taxi, since we had been on our feet since 9 am and it was about 3:30 then, but it was only 15 minutes faster and decided to go for the walk. Twenty blocks left it started getting bad. The dogs were barking, we were hungry, getting pretty tired. Ten blocks left, almost there, can’t wait to sit down. Two left, so close. Finally Alidoro! aand they’re closed. We had a bit of a cry, and looked at my map and the closest place was another 20 minutes away. So we picked something from google, Untamed sandwiches. It was pretty close.
Whoa were we lucky. It was great. We got a Nettle Neck Lamb sandwich, which was lamb neck with nettle pesto and some other stuff, and a chicken tinga with jalapeno, cilantro and stuff. So good! They also had beer, so double relaxing.
We were rejuvenated after that and strolled to the subway to get back to our hotel. We passed Maggie’s favorite building.
It was getting late, and we were going to relax a bit before heading to Market Hotel for Faust.
The Market Hotel was cool. I met Maggie’s old pal Todd P and he showed us around the place. I also met Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, which was crazy. Faust had miked up the M train that runs past the window and incorporated it into their show, and had the front of the audience sit down and watch some knitting. It was hard to believe that I was seeing them, after they had only lived in records for so long.
After all the excitement, we broke our sandwich only rule to get some late night snacks from Mr. Kiwi on the heels of the Lucky Peach fame, and went to bed.
by Maggie and Ed | Mar 19, 2016 | Entrée, Food, New Techniques, Recipes, Tiny Food
We grew up in a weird time for food. I, personally, come of age eating a hell of a lot of canned vegetables. Questionable textures, often drowned in butter and saccharine sweet. One thing my mother really did right, though, was artichokes. I have nothing but fond memories for spaghetti dinners that began with artichokes and lemon butter, and equally as many (potentially false) myths about the edible thistle. Did you know the Greeks ate artichokes before every meal as a palette cleanser?
My go-to preparation is normally steamed until tender and served with caper butter, but we’ve also taken to serving them alongside an herbed aioli [see: half mayo + half sage brown butter]. The dip is from one of our diehard favorite cookbooks, Maximum Flavor. They recommend roasting halved filled with garlic, but after a few attempts to change my ways I’m still a 100% advocate for steaming.
After a full out artichoke drought in the grocery store the last few months, we were pleasantly surprised to find a super affordable box of baby artichokes this week. Pinterest told us to bake them. With some hesitation from our previous disappointments, we opted to steam the quartered baby ‘chokes first and then toss in olive oil, panko, and parmesean and broil in the oven until crispy.
The final result was really satisfying, but definitely some room for improvements. The one thing I love about steaming is that it leaves the vegetable super tender and green. The added time for cooking in an oven tends to allow the artichoke to oxidize and dry out, and the outer leaves were a bit too tough to eat in their entirety. We had trouble deciding if it was the fault of drying out the leaves in broiling, or if the smaller of the bunch steamed more fully yielding a better texture.
Served with a bowl of lemon caper aioli, any minor setbacks in preparation are quickly eclipsed by the joy of eating a giant bowl of “vegetables” dipped in mayo while binge watching Seinfeld. 10/10
by Maggie and Ed | Mar 16, 2016 | Cocktails, Vegan, Vegetarian
While we settle into a new routine in light of our Steve’s Deli hibernation, we’re enjoying some extra free time. The recent warm weather and our new found freedom left us itching for spring time cocktails, so we took advantage of our lingering whole-sale vendors and grabbed a 10 lb bag of carrots. We stumbled across this recipe late last summer, and with a few tweaks it is one we come back to again and again. All the joy of your beloved summer cocktail with enough vegetable juice to take the edge off the guilt you feel after downing a bottle of tequila “between a few friends.”
A 10 lb bag of carrots yields roughly a half gallon of juice, for the record. We had plenty left over to blend into your morning smoothie or save for a soup base. Ed seared a halved jalapeno with the Searzall until crispy and tossed it into a ball jar with 750mL of tequila overnight. The heat of your jalapeno will definitely change the nature of this drink and the time you will want to soak.
Spicy Carrot Margaritas
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup water
- 1 bunch fresh cilantro
- 1 cup mezcal or tequila
- 1 medium jalapeño
- 3 ounces fresh carrot juice
- 1½ ounces jalapeño-infused tequila
- ½ ounce Cointreau
- ½ ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
- ½ ounce cilantro syrup
- ice
- salt
- limes for garnish
- Cilantro Simple Syrup: Bring sugar and water to a simmer and stir until just combined. Remove from heat and add cilantro. Let steep until strongly flavored, 1 to 6 hours. Strain cilantro from syrup once it reaches your desired flavor.
- Jalapeño Tequila: halve one medium jalapeño and sear. We use a Searzall, but a heavy skillet or broiling works as well. Remove seeds for less heat in your final product. Soak the seared jalapeño in the tequila for at least an hour and then remove. Increase soaking time for more heat.
- To prepare the cocktail, fill a shaker half with ice and combine all ingredient. Shake vigorously until chilled.
- Round the edge of a 6oz tall glass with a lime wedge and then dredge in salt. Fill glass half with ice. Pour strained cocktail into glass, garnish with a lime, and serve.
3.2.2929
by Maggie and Ed | Mar 6, 2016 | Food, Sandwiches, steve's deli
Last weekend was the final days in operation for the Pittsburgh Public Market. Extremely thankful for everyone that came out to support us and the rest of the vendors at the market, buy us out of sandwiches, and listen to Bjork inspired sauerkraut ballads. Keep your ear to the ground as we wade through piles of paperwork to rekindle the Steve’s Deli fire in a brick and mortar location in Bloomfield.
