Pastrami Reuben at Katz Delicatessen

Pastrami Reuben sandwich at Katz Delicatessen in the Lower East Side. Makes me question why was I ever a vegetarian.

RAM

I can't believe I've lived 26 years without hearing this album:

Asparagus Brunch Salad

Asparagus

Frisée

Bacon

Poached or Boiled Eggs

Pecorino Cheese

Dressing: Lemon Juice, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

Please people, get to the farmer's market and treat yourself to some spring asparagus. For this salad, I cut the asparagus up diagonally and blanched it in boiling water for just 2 minutes. Serve over frisée or mixed greens with a lemon & olive oil vinaigrette.

Spontaneous Bruschetta

I was rummaging through my fridge, and this is what I had:

beets + their greens
red pepper
goat cheese
hummus
loaf of bread about one day away from croutinizing

So, I sauteed garlic (a given in my fridge), beets, peppers and their greens, splashed a little balsamic over the mix, toasted the bread, spread them with goat cheese and bit of hummus and topped it with the vegetables.

Spontaneous bruschetta: tasty, filling, & exceptionally nutritious - from iron to fiber, this one's got the micro- & macro-nutrient fields covered.

mmm...sweet, sweet succulence

EASY PIZZIE

Almost every Sunday night growing up, my family would eat pizza. No, we didn't order it, nor did we throw a it's -just-like-delivery-DiGiorno in the oven, my mom made the dough and we selected our toppings and constructed our pies ourselves. A recent reconstruction of this tasty Sunday evening treat is to the left. The dough is so simple and delicious you'll wonder why in the world you've never given it a shot before.

Proof 1 tbsp yeast in 1 cup warm water with 1 1/2 tsp of salt and 1 1/2 tsp sugar for about 5-10 minutes. Pour this mixture of 2 cups of all-purpose flour (don't go for wheat, you'll regret it later). Knead the dough with another 1/2 - 3/4 cup flour under smooth (it shouldn't be sticky). Let the dough rise till it's doubled in size, 1 1/2 - 2 hours.

Spray your pan with PAM (very important) and color your pizza with your favorite toppings. I chose peppers, onions and Sopressata for this one. Bake at 425 or so for 12-15 minutes. Eat as many pieces as you can.

A Timely Dosage of Rufus

Rufus Wainwright's new album, Out of the Game, is utterly beautiful.

Fool's Gold - The Dive

From now on, I'd like my nature excursions to be like this:

The Last Warm Winter Salad Before Summer

I know its spring now, but we're in that awkward stage before the real growth happens and still stuck with an abundance of winter veggies. So I'm doing it one more time, making my roasted vegetable kale salad. 

Inspired by my dear friend and food comrade, Mariana Cotlear (whose amazing food blog you can follow at Epicuriosa), I have officially established this as my favorite winter vegetable dish. I believe the trick to surviving the winter (especially in cold, drafty NYC apartments) is onions, garlic, root veggies and your oven.

Give the kale nice rub down with olive oil (literally, massage it with your hands as my sista Joanna has taught me), and chop your veggies into pieces that are relatively uniform in size (unless you want to leave some small pieces for yummy charring).

Toss all the veggies in oil, salt and pepper, and roast in the oven at 400-425 for about 30-40 minutes.

For this dish, I chose:
Beets
Fennel
Red Onions
Sweet Potatoes
Yams
Carrots
Garlic

Serve your veggies over the kale with a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar or lemon juice and voila: warm winter salad.

Ever Need Some Blogging Inspiration?

Read David Byrne's Journal.

For me, right now, he's like the Carl Sagan of my music world. I keep going back to learn more from him. Oh so wise, so full of integrity, a man of pure ingenious. Now I just need to find him riding your bike around the streets of New York. Eyes are peeled for sexy, tall, slightly awkward, white-haired man.

Green Onion Regeneration

My dear friend, food science champion and taster extraordinaire, Patricia Peters, let me in on a little secret about green onions: you never have to buy them again! Use the green portion, leave about 3-4 inches of white stem + root, stick 'em in a glass of water, place them on a windowsill and reap the benefits of plant regeneration! This batch lasted a few months before the roots were exhausted of nutrients.

Bright Moments

Once I read that Kelly Pratt, the visionary behind Bright Moments, had but the co-conspirator of Beirut, LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire, my deeply ingrained itch for mainstream Indie rock started tickling. I love this music. The heavy beats interplayed with the light touches of clapping and multi-instrumentality of it makes it feel somewhat transnational (I think). I can't help it, YES I do proscribe to the prototypical sounds of mainstream Indie rock. Bring on that electronica infused accordion knee slappin' toonage!

What my Grandpa Burd taught me

Soft Boiled Eggs: a yummy, healthy alternative to frying. Just place them in boiling water for 5 minutes, and voila, a cooked white, a soft yolk, a great way to add some protein to your salad, sandwich or sauteed veggies.

My Special Sauce

Due to popular demand, I am revealing my special-power-sauce-that-makes-everything-taste-amazing to the cyber world. I grew up in America, so yes, I'm a big junkie for sauces and despite my shameless food snobbery, I am willing to admit that sometimes I do engage in the blasphemous treatment of vegetables as solely a vehicle for sauce.

There are several variations of this sauce, but the basic ingredients are as follows:

Peanut Butter
Rice Vinegar, Lime Juice, or both
Soy Sauce
Cilantro, or Green Onions, or both
Ginger, Garlic, or both
Tahini (optional)
Sesame Seeds (optional)
Splash of water

The key is to not add too much soy sauce rice vinegar, but also to tame the peanut butter and/or tahini by adding a little water. Chop your fresh herbs, garlic and ginger finely. Tastes best over buckwheat noodles, rice noodles, with of course, a bountiful array of sauteed veggies.

Rolling into Spring

Although my domestic cooking repertoire has been on the up-and-up lately, I have clearly lacked the motivation to share my skills on a cyberspacial level. Posting about musical tastes takes less effort, but alas, here my latest creation, thanks to inspiration from my one of my soul sisters, Joanna, who was visiting from Chicago for a couple weeks.

SPRING ROLLS - A fun, fresh, healthy commencement of the tasty new season.

Ingredients: Variable
I used the following (going clockwise in the picture): bean sprouts, red cabbage, julienned carrots, cucumbers, avocado, cilantro, firm tofu, peanut butter, Siracha, mint leaves, rice paper. I kinda went all out with ingredients, but you could use half the ingredients and they would still turn out great.

How to make the perfect spring roll: Be patient, it's going to take a couple tries! I poured some water onto a plate and dipped the rice paper in and out of the water 7 times. You want to make sure the rice paper isn't too soaked and stretchy when you put it down on your work surface since it will continue to change in composition as you fill it with ingredients. Also, do not be overly enthusiastic when filling your spring rolls: you only need a small, small portion of each ingredient to fill these things up.

Roll up the ingredients and just before wrapping it burrito style, spread a layer of peanut butter, Siracha and a mint leave on paper. This will sort of glue the whole roll together.

Dipping Sauce: I'm a sauce junky. I used a little rice vinegar, soy sauce, tahini and/or peanut butter, sesame seeds, mixed to a consistency of your liking. If it gets too thick or intense, just add a bit of water to calm it down.

Menahan Street Band

This is precisely what I've been waiting for - a funky, sexy, soulful conglomeration off of Daptone records. Satisfaction attained.

This is so rad.

Andrew Bird Bliss.

It's about time the Shins came out with a new album!

Why We Like Mini-Treats

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Brian Wansink, Professor and psychology researcher at Cornell, recently commented on an article in the New York Times about why we're so obsessed with mini-desserts: mini-cupcakes, cannolis, macaroons, and the like, positing that “Smaller treats give people license to eat it all, which is a very powerful thing,” he said. “Psychologically, it’s exciting and comforting.” Basically, we're more satisfied by eating something miniature and unhealthy, than less energy dense and healthier, not to mention we don't feel as guilty about it (even if we eat 5).

Full disclosure: it's Halloween time and my eyes widen whenever I see those little Snickers or the mini Reeses peanut-butter cups. The same craving does not bestow itself upon me when I see the normal sized candy bars checking out at Duane Reade. Plus they're cute, and you can lose track of how many you eat, it was probably about 3, right? Yup.

My critique: mini-cupcakes. I'm so over this fad. It's just CAKE. That's all. But now I get it. All of those people whose brains have convinced themselves they don't eat cake get a free pass when it comes to cupcakes. 

I'm rooting for the macaroon market. 

The Door to the Secret Garden

The violin has elicited nostalgia that cannot be expressed through words but I am going to make an attempt: In a dream I had last night I felt like I was walking through the door to a secret garden, into a thought process hidden away for years, only to find myself in an odd space between my consciousness during youth and the current frame of mind. It felt like one of those dreams where you find a secret room in your apartment that you never knew was there, and the discovery is exhilarating. I was 12 again. Navigating my peers, and seeing them through the lens of my innervating and sprouting ego. I was 12, but I was 25, at the same time. I saw that deep inner me again. I was interacting with friends, I was seeing myself with old classmates, trying to insert myself in conversation, my 25 year-old self was asking my 12 year-old self, have any of those traits expressed then carried over to now?

I remembered the feeling of 12, the almost constant state of question marks and the noticeable distance from those older and wiser. Now that gap is narrowing, yet my brain can still bring me back to that moment, to that uneasy but unburdened state of the youth, not knowing how to act and how to respond, but not having to know. Contently treading the waters and enjoying the water temperature. Nostalgia is an understatement, feeling presence of the inner me was opening a locked door to a garden of the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen.