Restaurant review: Salumeria Rosi

Last night, my sister and I saw Guster at the Beacon Theatre, a small theater about 10 blocks north of my apartment. It was a fabulous show -- after intermission, Guster played their entire album, "Lost and Gone Forever." We sang, we laughed, we danced. It was great.

Anyway, before all that excitement, we had a lovely dinner at Salumeria Rosi around the corner from the Beacon Theater. Salumeria Rosi is part tiny restaurant and part salumi shop. I have stopped by there many times to pick up some of their cured meats and grissini (thin breadsticks). They make great pre-dinner snacks.

Salumeria Rosi's menu is made up of a selection of small plates - think Italian tapas. As a general rule, I do not like the small plate style of dining. I never feel like I've eaten enough. But I will go along with it if I'm dining with only one other person. Any more than that and you only get a bite or two of each small plate - so unsatisfying.

We started with three small plates: burrata, the world's most delicious mozzarella cheese; caponata, a delicious sweet and sour eggplant relish; and mortadella di bologna with pistachios, which, as its name suggests, is essentially Italian bologna. YUM! I LOVE bologna. I was annoyed that our $3 plate of mortadella only included two slices of it. Since I buy it at their deli counter pretty often, I know that you can get 1/4 pound of mortadella for $5, so $3 for two slices was a rip off. I also was surprised that the two grissini we requested cost $1 each, instead of $0.25 each, which is what they cost if you buy them to go. Hmph.

Next we shared 4 additional small plates: roasted brussels sprouts with pancetta and garlic; rigatoni all'Amatriciana, a pasta sauce made with cured pork, red onions, and tomatoes; homemade pork sausage cooked in a tomato sauce with chickpeas; and soft polenta with a butternut squash and vegetable ragu. The sprouts, pasta, and sausage were delicious. I love al dente pasta and this rigatoni was cooked perfectly and had just the right amount of sauce. But the polenta dish was underwhelming. The polenta was much too runny for me and the ragu was lackluster - no texture contrast among the vegetables. Just mush upon mush.

For dessert, we shared a pumpkin bread pudding with a vanilla anglaise sauce which was really wonderful. It was remarkably light and fluffy for a bread pudding. And not too sweet.

Overall, we were pleased with our meal. The service wasn't great, and the hostess reminded us at least twice that she'd need our table back by 8 pm even though when we left at 8 pm, there were many empty tables. Also, the wine by the glass was really expensive - $20 for a glass of barolo!? As my long lost friend Andrew Brophy would say, that's bonkers! But everything but that polenta dish was really good. So I will certainly be back.

**

Details:

Salumeria Rosi

283 Amsterdam Avenue (between 73rd and 74th Streets)

New York, New York

(212) 877-4800

Dinner for two: ~$150 nearly half of which can be attributed to the super expensive wine

Wow. I'm full.

I am emerging from the haze of yesterday's calorie overdose. I made way too much food. It was absurd. But almost everything turned out just exactly as I planned it. And now we have a refrigerator full of leftover-stuffed tupperware.

Judd took the entire day off and was very helpful in the kitchen. In fact, he made the very tasty pear, onion, and dry jack cheese hors d'oeuvres we nibbled on while the turkey was in the oven. I had actually tried that recipe when Ann and Brian came over last weekend, but used sheets of phyllo instead of the cups, which was a big mess. I definitely recommend using phyllo cups if you are going to try this recipe.

Since my refrigerator is so small, our raw turkey had been awaiting its destiny in my mother's refrigerator across town. But my mom and sister brought it west when they came over around 1pm, and it went right into the oven. We roasted our 12 lb turkey for just under 3 hours with nothing more than butter, salt, and pepper on the outside and an onion and a bunch of fresh thyme on the inside and it turned out beautifully. Though you'll have to trust me on that, since I forgot to take its picture in all of the excitement.

Without further ado, here are some photos of our massive spread.

I certainly straddled the line of a lot of a good thing and too much of a good thing. If you'd asked me last night, I probably would have chosen the latter of those two. But that's what Thanksgiving is all about. Overeating. And family, too. And then eating pie.

One pound of unsalted butter: ~$3.50

One quart of cream: ~$6

2 lbs of challah: ~$9

One 12 lb organic turkey from Lobel's: $100 (thanks, Kristy!)

Spending my favorite holiday with my new husband and old mom and sister: priceless.

Thanksgiving Eve

If I am not in a tryptophan-and-gluttony-induced coma at this time tomorrow, something will have gone terribly wrong. Which seems unlikely at this point since we are on track to eat a massive Thanksgiving feast around 4:00 pm tomorrow.

I got home from work around 3:30 this afternoon and got to work. First order of business: baking 8 yams in a hot oven for about 90 minutes, skin on. I wanted sweet potatoes, but they didn't have any at Fairway last night. Oh well - I doubt I will notice a difference, if one in fact exists, between sweet potatoes and yams. Once the yams were cool enough to touch, I peeled their skins off with my fingers and mixed the yam flesh with marmalade, fresh ginger, fresh orange juice, butter, brown sugar, and a salt. The resulting delicious orange mush is in a baking dish in my refrigerator now.

Next I peeled, thinly sliced, and caramelized about twenty shallots for my mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots. It took nearly 40 minutes to get them a golden brown color. They are also in a plastic container in my refrigerator, ready to be added to mashed yukon gold potatoes with creme fraiche much closer to dinner time.

Finally, I made the oatmeal crumble topping for the orangey yam mixture. Since I couldn't find the Archway oatmeal cookies, I am substituting the oatmeal crumble topping from the Barefoot Contessa's Old-Fashioned Apple Crisp on page 226 of "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" - I think should work out just fine since it has all the same ingredients that you'd find in oatmeal cookies (i.e., butter, oatmeal, brown sugar, sugar, and flour). Fingers crossed.

Wedged between those containers of light cream (for creamed spinach) is the large black container of oatmeal crumble topping, and the small white container of caramelized shallots. I'll spread the crumble on top of the yam mixture before baking it tomorrow afternoon.

And now my infected ear and I are getting in bed. Yes, readers, I have come down with yet another ailment in less than two months: an ear infection. But I am on antibiotics and am hoping for a speedy recovery.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings from Thanksgiving headquarters

The preparations for my favorite meal of the year have begun. Yesterday, after a 7:00 am trip to Fairway, I finalized the menu for our Thanksgiving feast, made my shopping list for later in the week, and got to work on two things that can be done several days in advance: turkey stock and cranberry sauce. Fairway is a mad house on an average day, and in the days leading up to Thanksgiving or a snow storm, shopping there can inspire a nervous breakdown. Early morning or late at night is the only way to go.

First item: turkey stock from this 2008 New York Times recipe for turkey gravy from scratch. I won't recite the entire process, but it started with over 6 pounds of buttered turkey legs and wings roasting in the oven for two hours,

followed by 6 hours of simmering those parts in water on the stove.

I now have two quarts of rich brown turkey stock and at least 1/2 a cup of turkey fat, which hopefully will make for some delicious gravy on Thursday.

Next up, the cranberry sauce. I have made Ina Garten's Cranberry Fruit Conserve for the last few years. It's very easy and texturally appealing with chunks of walnuts and raisins.

That recipe is on page 225 of "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" and may be in some of her other books, too. I find that her recipe calls for FAR too much sugar. So I only used about 1/2 a cup of sugar instead of the 1 3/4 cups she recommends. Then I added two packs of Splenda to achieve the desired sweetness, in honor of my mom with diabetes.

I plan to shop for the remaining items LATE on Monday night and spend Wednesday afternoon cooking most of the sides for our feast with my sister's help - she's coming home on Tuesday - including apple chestnut stuffing, the shallot portion of mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots, creamed spinach, and my single favorite Thanksgiving side of all time: orange-flavored sweet potatoes with an oatmeal cookie topping. I am going to have to improvise the topping this year since Archway, the brand that had made the oatmeal cookies my Aunt Marisol or I have historically used for this recipe, has gone under and I can't find any other oatmeal cookies that don't have raisin paste in them.

A week of good dinners

Monday: another dress-rehearsal for Thanksgiving: roast turkey breast, roasted red potatoes with rosemary, sauteed brussels sprouts, and a truffle-scented pan gravy. I had smeared some black truffle butter under the skin of the turkey before I cooked it, but I did not think it imparted any truffle flavor to the finished turkey breast. So I used more truffle butter to make the gravy.

Tuesday: spaghetti squash with marinara sauce, Nate's meatless meatballs (don't knock em till you've tried em! I recommend the "classic flavor") and steamed broccoli with pecorino cheese.

Wednesday: salumi and pecorino fritters; mini calzones with tomato and mozzarella; and meatball and ricotta lasagna at the Enoteca at I Trulli with Alexis. Their bar menu is considerably less expensive than the restaurant menu.

Thursday: Mu shu vegetables (no mushrooms!) and the world's best steamed vegetable dumplings from Ollie's.

Friday: an enormous serving of yummy meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes at City Grill with Steph.

Restaurant review: Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Judd and I received a very generous gift certificate for dinner Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York, as a wedding present from our friend Anastasia. My sister, who had eaten there a few times, suggested we cash in our lovely gift in the fall since that was a very pretty time of year to eat there. So in September, I naively called to make a dinner reservation for two. Little did I know that to make a dinner reservation for a Saturday night, I would need to call two months in advance of the calendar day on which I wanted to dine. So in our case, I made a reservation on Monday, September 14th for dinner on Saturday, November 14th. And that date finally arrived last night!

Pocantico Hills is in Westchester County about 45 minutes north of the Upper West Side, near Tarrytown. The restaurant is literally housed in a beautiful old stone barn, which is just one part of the larger Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. The farm at Stone Barns grows or produces most of the food that fellow Tufts grad Dan Barber cooks in the kitchen of Blue Hill.

The entire place is stunning and beautifully furnished. There was a roaring fire in the cozy bar area and stylish black leather wing chairs to relax in. The dining room at Blue Hill is even more spectacular. It has vaulted ceilings and a large wooden table in its center with enormous candles and an arrangement of seasonal branches. There is no menu at Blue Hill. Instead, diners are presented with a list of over 100 possible seasonal ingredients and choose between a 5- or 8-course Farmer's Feast which is custom-comprised by the chef based on those ingredients and any restrictions you impose. We chose the 8-course Farmer's Feast - thanks, Stash! - and I asked for no fish (I am very picky about fish and thought it was easier just to exclude it), no venison, and no chocolate. Magic ensued.

Our 3 hour meal started with the arrival of three little starters: small glasses of velvety fennel soup, tiny vegetables impaled on a rectangular piece of wood (e.g., a small radish, a miniature carrot, a floret of purple cauliflower), and smoked kale and red Adirondack potato chips.

Next up: tiny beet burgers and skewered salsify wrapped in pancetta and covered in sesame seeds. Wow- these were two of the tastiest bites of food from the entire night.

The warm homemade bread followed with homemade butter, homemade ricotta cheese, and homemade arugula salt (the arugula is dehydrated and crumbled into the salt). I wasn't into the arugula salt, which we were encouraged to sprinkle onto our bread, but the butter was exceptional on its own. None of these three courses counted toward our eight course meal, which I will now list:

Course 1: Smoked tomato soup with a tiny quenelle of tomato confit, a mini crouton, and far too many other accoutrements to list

Course 2: forono beets with pine nut butter and micro greens (our server even brought over some raw forono beets so we could see what they look like - they grow in cold weather which makes them sweeter for their struggle)

Course 3: braised fennel with apple for me and local striped bass with cauliflower puree and concord grapes for Judd

Course 4: "this morning's egg," poached and served with spicy lentils and lettuce broth (our server brought over a nest full of eggs and explained the lives of the chickens at Stone Barns who had laid them that morning)

Course 5: homemade ravioli with Hudson Valley beef, grated horseradish, and beet puree - another standout

Course 6: pork tenderloin and pork belly with tender chunks of carrot and crispy Brussels sprouts leaves

Course 7: pickled quince with fromage blanc, crumbled nuts, and ginger ice cream - I love ginger ice-cream!

Course 8: cream of toasted what with comice pear slivers, some kind of cookie, and lemon verbena ice cream

Everything about this meal - and, true to its name, it really was a feast - was exceptional from the beautiful farmhouse setting, the elegant and slightly modern plates, bowls, and glasses, and the impeccable service. Judd left our camera in the car, but I probably wouldn't have taken any photos anyway since it was too serene inside the dining room for flash photography. But the food was the real star. I have never before tasted vegetables prepared with such imagination, precision, or intensity.

I had told our server that I had also gone to Tufts and we got a lovely handwritten note from Dan Barber on our way out inviting us to return for the winter harvest. Mr. Barber, I accept your kind invitation with pleasure, though I probably should call on Monday to make a reservation to get back there while it's still winter.

****

Details:

Blue Hill at Stone Barns

630 Bedford Road

Pocantico Hills, New York

(914) 366-9600

Dinner for two: ~$450 (thank goodness we had a gift certificate to cover most of that!)

Chicken Stock

An anonymous commenter recently asked for my chicken stock recipe. I've only made it twice (though last year I made my own turkey stock!) but I'm happy to share my technique, since I wouldn't really call this a recipe.

Step one: stick chicken carcass in a large pot with 3 unpeeled carrots, 1 unpeeled onion, two ribs of celery, a bunch of dill, a bunch of parsley, a bunch of thyme, 6-10 peppercorns, and water to cover.

Step 2: cook over medium heat for a long time (2 - 3 hours).

Step 3: strain contents of pot reserving the liquid - VOILA! You have made chicken stock.

Any excuse to make stuffing

Thank goodness for Veterans' Day -- a rare and refreshing mid-week day off. Good news: I got to test out another stuffing recipe with my found time. Bad news: I think I am getting sick AGAIN!!! I even have a fever. WTF!? I just got over a sinus and throat infection six weeks ago! Ugh.

On last night's menu: roast chicken with pan gravy; chestnut and dried cranberry stuffing; and steamed asparagus.

I started with a 4.5lb Murray's chicken from the Fairway in Red Hook and I stuffed it with a lemon, thyme, and a head of garlic.

Some butter, a hot oven, and 90 minutes later, I had a roast chicken!

When the chicken was cooked, I made gravy by combining the chicken fat in the roasting pan with some flour, chicken stock (which I made during my last roast chicken adventure), and white wine.

The stuffing recipe came from an old Williams-Sonoma catalog. (If you read them cover to cover, you'll find at least one or two recipes in each catalog.) And it was pretty good - even better tonight, actually.

Here's the recipe:

Chestnut and Cranberry Stuffing

3 cups chicken stock

1 cup dried cranberries

4 tablespoons (that's half a stick!) unsalted butter

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1/2 lb pork sausage, casings removed (I used sweet italian sausage, I am sure breakfast sausage would also be ok)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 lb loaf of bread (I used an enormous baguette), cut into 1" pieces and lightly toasted in the oven

2 cups prepared French chestnuts, halved

2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley

salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2 1/4 - 3 quart baking dish.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, warm stock until steam begins to rise. Remove from heat and add cranberries. Set aside.

3. Melt butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and carrot. Saute, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are tender and translucent (~3 minutes). Add parsley, sage, and thyme, and cook for an additional minute. Remove vegetable-herb mixture from pan and add to bowl. In the same pan, saute the sausage meat, breaking it up while cooking, until browned and cooked through (~10 minutes). Transfer sausage to the bowl with vegetables.

4. In a large bowl, stir egg while slowly pouring in the stock and cranberries. Add toasted bread and stir until well mixed. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until stock is absorbed (~6 minutes). Add vegetables and sausage. Season with salt and pepper and stir well to mix.

5. Transfer stuffing to baking dish and bake until brown and crispy (~45 minutes).

Serves 6-10 (depending on how many other sides you're serving).

I am still leaning toward using the challah, apple, and chestnut recipe I tried last year, which didn't have any sausage. But I will try one more recipe - probably one with cornbread - before I make the final selection.

Aunt Loren and Uncle Judd visit Milwaukee

Judd and I took a painfully early morning flight out to Milwaukee on Saturday morning to meet our new nephew, August Judd Newton, who arrived on Thursday morning. For anyone keeping track, this is now my tenth niece/nephew - Judd has a big family - who range in age from 25 years to 4 days old.

I managed to sample some local Wisconsin cuisine in between visiting our in-laws, holding the new little peanut, and playing with our two year old nephew, Jonas. On Saturday, we had dinner with Judd's parents, who drove down from Michigan, at Louise's. The warm homemade focaccia made up for the ho-hum cheese, mushroom, and asparagus stuffed chicken breast I ordered. On Sunday morning, I had a fantastic sweet potato and black bean burrito for brunch at Beans and Barley, a mostly vegetarian restaurant and market that I'd remembered from our last visit to Milwaukee. Later, we took Judd's mom, visiting from Arizona, to theMilwaukee Public Market for a late lunch. Judd had a vegetarian sandwich at Good Harvest, and I had grilled chicken and egyptian rice with crispy fried onions, lentils, elbow macaroni, and chickpeas at Aladdin.

Today, we took Jonas to the Milwaukee Zoo.

And then stopped at the Dogg Haus for Chicago-style hot dogs, which I think just means hot dogs with a lot of strange toppings. I ordered "the Atlanta" which was topped with chili and coleslaw. Pretty good, but not too filling.

The brewery tours and cheese tastings are going to have to wait for another visit. In the meantime, here are some more pictures of the little guy, with his doting family.

Jaime Oliver's pumpkin, sage, bacon, and chestnut risotto

Here's how yesterday went: first I watched the NYC Marathon on television. Then I sat around on my couch. And then I cooked and ate an artery clogging dinner.

I have been saving this Jaime Oliver risotto recipe since it was published in the New York Times in 2003 and finally made it tonight because I already had sage, two quarts of homemade chicken stock in my fridge which I made with the carcass from last weekend's roast chicken, and because the Stokes Farm stand has had a lot of butternut squash lately. I replaced pedestrian bacon with sliced, not rolled, pancetta, which is available at Fairway's deli counter. Also, I had no interest in bothering with a pumpkin, so I used butternut squash, which Jaime said would be ok.


There were several times during this recipe where I scratched my head: dust the roasting squash with ground coriander? Put the bacon, or pancetta in my case, on top of roasting squash in the oven? Why not cook it on top of the stove first, remove with a slotted spoon, and then cook the shallot, celery, and rice in the rendered fat? And celery? In risotto? Really? And then four tablespoons (that's half a stick) of butter!? But I've eaten at Fifteen, Jaime's famous Italian restaurant in London, a couple of times and the food was actually really good. So I decided to trust him.


As you can see, I made garlicky broccoli to go with the risotto.

All I can say is wow. It was delicious. AND DECADENT! Pancetta AND butter (and I only used one tablespoon) AND grated cheese?! This risotto is going down in history as one of the meals that will flash before my eyes when I have a heart attack one day, along with a cheeseburger I ate from a drive through at In and Out after a week of over-eating in Napa when I wasn't even hungry, but just curious about In and Out.





If you don't eat breakfast or lunch one day and instead feel like hitting the calorie jackpot in just one meal, then I certainly recommend this fall risotto indulgence. It was pretty easy to make, all things considered, and if I need to go into hibernation tomorrow, I should be ok until at least February.

Happy Birthday, Stash!

Judd and I send you our best wishes for a wonderful 30th birthday! We love you. And we loved our dinner at the Red Cat before you moved so heartbreakingly far away.

You've been one of my favorite dining companions since the fall of 1997, whether we were at Babbo or the Campus Center Patio, Milestone's or Zocalo. NYC isn't the same without you :(

We look forward to hearing about your birthday dinner - hopefully Telly will post something on his blog!