One City. Many Villages.

_Cotilleos-gossip ., originally uploaded by amparogue.

I love the sense of community in the city. If this strikes you as odd, here are some examples from our visit to New York this winter:

Scene 1:

R and I are getting on the elevator in a friend's building with at least 200 tenants. We're heading up to their apartment. A woman we don't know is already in the elevator waiting for the doors to close.

R says to me: "What floor do they live on?"
Me: "Four. I think. Or maybe 5?"
R: "It's 4." (He pushes the button.)
Woman in elevator: "Who are you going to see?"
Me: "The Levy's"
Woman: "Ann and Henry? 4-I. So they're back from Florida?"
R: "No they're still down there."

Scene 2: Same building, several days later.

Mrs. so-and-so is moving out. R and a tenant in the building see moving men carrying furniture out of the elevator and into a truck. He tells R: "5-J is moving out. It's taking all day. Four rooms of furniture in 3 rooms."

The same day. A different neighbor tells Alex in the laundry room:
"Apt 5-J is moving out. You wouldn't believe all the furniture. Four rooms of furniture in 3 rooms."

Scene 3:

Alex and I take the Long Island Railroad from Great Neck to B & H Photo in Manhattan. Now remember. This train transports millions of passengers every day. We're in B & H for a few hours when a man comes up to us.

Man: "You were on the train, weren't you? I recognized you."
Me: (puzzled, searching my memory and coming up with a vague recollection) "Oh, yes, that's right. I remember now."
Man: "Funny, isn't it? We both end up here."
Me gesturing at the store: "Yes. This is a great place, isn't it?"
Man: Nods.
Me: "So where are we going next?"

Those Lips

Segredo, originally uploaded by Lídia Ramalho.

On the streets and in the subways this winter in New York City, I picked up a lot of impressions and filed them away in notebooks or on camera. This time, it was lips.

This needs some explanation. In the gym, I'd see her working out. She was trim, athletic...her blonde hair caught up in a pony tail, swaying as she lifted weights. From the back, her taut muscles, trim waist and lean legs indicated she was in her 20's or 30's. But then, the moment of truth... She'd whirl around, dumb bells in hand, and I'd see her blooming botoxed lips in a face as rigid as a mask. Well, I'd think, she's half mummified already in her pursuit of eternal youth.

Risotto--Two Ways

There's such a thing as too many choices. Sometimes I don't mind--like the chance to have my decaf Dunkin Donuts with a shot of vanilla, light, 1 sugar---which they only get right about 25% of the time. But that's the price you pay for having so many options.

When I'm cooking for company, I'm happy to oblige those who are vegetarians or allergic to shellfish, but sometimes I feel put upon--like the night last week when I made risotto 2 ways (one for the vegetarians who didn't like onions or chicken broth and another for the carnivores with onions and chicken broth). All was fine until the dear someone I married wanted to know if I made it the way he wanted--with vegetable broth and onions. Oddio! As my Italian grandmother would say. What do I look like? A short-order cook? In the end, though, everyone was happy and the recipe came out just right. So now, I'll pass it along to you in 2 forms--one for vegetarians and the other for carnivores.

Risotto--2 Ways
(Serves 6-8 as a side dish)

1.5 cups of arborio rice
4 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth
1 medium onion, diced
1 lb. of mushrooms (I used a mixture of mini portobellos and white)
1-2 clove(s) garlic, minced (optional)
1/4 cup white wine or more to taste. (A dry pinot grigio or chardonnay works well.)
3 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 cup shredded parmegiana cheese (optional)
salt and pepper to taste


1. Saute the mushrooms, onions and garlic in the olive oil in a large frying pan on medium heat.

2. When the onions are translucent and the mushrooms are browned, add the uncooked rice. Stir for 2 minutes until it's lightly browned and coated with the oil. Turn down the temperature to medium-low.

3. Add the broth one cup at a time and stir until the liquid is absorbed. Continue adding and stirring while the rice cooks. If the rice starts to stick to the bottom of the pot, lower the temperature some more, add more liquid and stir again.

4. Taste the rice as it cooks. When about 15 minutes have passed and it begins to soften, add the white wine. Continue tasting and stirring until the rice is soft and becomes creamy, somewhere around 20 minutes. At that point, take it off the heat and stir in about 1/4 cup of shredded parmegiana cheese.

Serving suggestions for the carnivores: Pair this with a salad, Italian bread, and chicken piccata. For the vegetarians...just omit the chicken. In any case, enjoy!



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Tea-Licious

Tea kettle, originally uploaded by canbalci.

It took me just a second to say yes. A tea tasting at Dean & DeLuca hosted by TWG Tea? Of course, I'd go.

After all, I consider myself a tea aficionado. One might say I have more than a little knowledge on the subject. After all, I mail order tea from British importers because I can’t find my favorite brands locally. And I prepare it according to standard tea wisdom—boiling water poured into a warmed crockery pot filled with 2 teaspoons of tea, one for me and one for the pot, which is covered and left to stew for approximately 4 minutes. None of that insipid dunk-and-sip tea for me. I prefer the loose variety, especially black teas—Assam, English Breakfast, and Irish.

I've come a long way from the tea of my childhood—a feeble commercial brand with a bitter aftertaste, which turned as orange as a tropical sunset when the bag sat in the cup for too long. It was medicinal–used to sooth a sore throat—or it was a quaint custom reserved for visits to my Irish granny, who drank tea in a china cup and served cookies on a plate adorned with a paper doily.

In a word, I have evolved—or so I thought until last Thursday afternoon at Dean & DeLuca’s when I sampled TWG specialty teas blended with fragrant flowers, fruit, and spices from around the world. Maranda Barnes, the director and co-founder of TWG Tea, had flown in from Singapore on a mission to educate Americans about this beverage and the need for us to return to Asia to find the best possible teas, harvested from renowned gardens throughout India, China, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries.

Maranda wants to cultivate (so to speak) a new breed of American tea connoisseurs who are eager to enjoy exotic, premium teas at home or in tea salons. To this end, TWG produces over 600 varieties of tea, some blended specifically for the American palate. Their White House Tea, for example, is a white tea infused with roses, fruit and essential oils. It is sophisticated, light and balanced, with a lingering aftertaste of fennel and ripe berries. Another of my favorites is Tea 380, commissioned for Singapore Airlines. It is a blend of white and blue tea (oolong), flavored with flowers, fruit, vanilla and spice.

For me, it was a sensory experience—involving both smell and taste. Different parts of the palate are activated with each sip, something I had experienced when drinking wine. This was no accident. The teas are painstakingly blended to create layers of flavor, which highlight the taste of the tea but don’t overpower it. This in itself was a revelation.

I’m pleased to report that all the teas I sampled complimented the pastries pictured here. As we sipped and nibbled, we imagined a meal in which each course was paired with a different type of tea. Imagine it. Green, black, white, or oolong teas specially blended to highlight the flavors of each dish.

The good news for Maranda and other high-end tea companies is that American tea consumption is steadily rising and so is our interest in specialty teas, according to the Tea Association of the U.S.A. More and more Americans are turning to tea, attracted by its taste, cost, lower levels of caffeine (40 milligrams for a cup of black tea, less than half the amount for coffee), and its healthful benefits. But this is tempered with the Tea Associations' statistics that 85 percent of all our tea is iced and 65 percent of the tea brewed in the United States is prepared using tea bags. And speaking of tea bags, I learned that they contain the “dust” or dregs of the tea leaf.

These two features of American tea consumption have a long history, given that icing tea and putting it into convenient pouches or bags are American inventions dating from 1904. But Maranda reminds me that as Americans we need to reach back to our colonial roots when our ancestors, who were connoisseurs of fine tea, dumped their precious tea into the harbor as a measure of their resentment of British imperialism and the high import tax.

To that, I’d add that American tea drinkers who like the convenience of tea bags don’t have to sacrifice taste or freshness if they simply learn the rating system used by tea growers, which is often printed on tea boxes. The tea is ranked into 4 grades based on 2 criterion: the quality of the crop and the size of the leaf, which is whole, broken or ground. According to Le Palais des Thes, the highest whole leaf category is F.O.P. or flowery orange pekoe, the finest grade composed of the bud of the tea plant and the two leaves nesting around it. Orange doesn’t describe the color of the tea, but comes from the Dutch dynasty Orange Nassau. Pekoe is the Anglicization of the Chinese word “Pak-ho,” meaning “fine hair" or “down.” It refers to the closed bud, which resembles white down. The lowest grade--F. Fannings—is reserved for ground leaves or fannings, also known as dust. This is what typically goes into tea bags.

For those of you who would like to expand your tea horizons and sample TWG, it is currently available through Dean & DeLuca stores in the USA and online at www.deandeluca.com. Over the next few months, they’ll be adding selected classic teas, such as Darjeeling and Earl Grey. Take it from me--Your taste buds will thank you for it.



Additional photos by TWG Tea and the author.

No Reservations

My favorite shot of the weekend. A restaurant in Grand Central Station. Taken with a Sigma macro lens 70-300 mm.

Don't Give Me This For Dinner

This picture reminds me of the meals I suffered through when I was young, growing up in the days when Saucy Susan shrimp cocktail was considered the height of fine dining, along with a hunk of Velveeta on a Ritz cracker. That bland slab of baked ham, frozen peas heated to lukewarm, and candied yams,glazed beyond recognition, make me shudder with nostalgia. So, that's why I turn into a sulky and bad-tempered child when I'm served a particularly bad meal at a restaurant, something that's happened twice in the past week.

In the first case, I was served up Singapore noodles with so much curry powder dumped on them, my lips turned numb. And in the second case, my onion and cheddar omelette was so oily that it practically slid off the plate.

I was insulted and disgusted. Didn't the chef even look at what he or she was dumping on the plate? Did he or she even taste the food? In both cases, I was tempted to take the plate back to the kitchen and demand exactly that. But reason took over. I complained to the waitresses. One of them shrugged and the other one giggled. Alright. I'm not Gordon Ramsey from "Kitchen Nightmares" and commanded no respect. But being food obsessed, I have to vent somewhere. So here are my 10 Commandments For Restaurant Owners.

1. Don't hover by the cash register. Go into the kitchen and see what your chefs are preparing. If you wouldn't eat it, neither will your customers.
2. Know your menu. Is it authentic? No self-respecting Greek restaurant owner within 100 miles of New York City (the American version of Athens) puts beets on their Greek salad, so don't let your chef in New Hampshire do it.
3. If you own a pizzaria, let's say, don't start out using fresh mozzarella when you first open the restaurant and then switch to the cheap yellow variety that's as glossy as a pool of melted butter. Your customers will notice.
4. Stale bread is still stale bread even if it's hidden at the bottom of the bread basket.
5. If you're an absentee owner, chances are pretty good that your staff will take the night off when you're not there. And your customers won't like it.
6. The time between ordering the food and the arrival of the food is proportional to the quality of the meal.
7. Chefs who love artichokes, for example, should not be allowed to put that ingredient in the majority of the entrees. (To wit, that Italian restaurant in Meredith, New Hampshire, which shall remain nameless.)
8. If the restaurant is called "Cucina Bella," for example,the menu should not offer sushi. (This is actually what happened in a so-called Italian restaurant in the North End in Boston.) In other words, the promise of the name, decor, and menu have to jibe with what is actually delivered to the table.
9. Eggs are eggs, even if they're served with Hollandaise sauce. So, the customer is going to resent it if you charge $12.00 for them. The same is true for pizza. Because most customers have a ceiling price for certain foods,$25.00 for one pizza pie is going to feel like robbery.
10. Customers appreciate a clean restaurant, but we can't stand when the waitstaff vigorously spritz the table right next us while we're eating.

And above all else, respect the customer. If don't, your restaurant will fail. That much is certain.

Photograph "Demon Child" originally uploaded by: Ms.BlueSky on Flickr.com

What Would Shaun Sheep Say?

I love that line from The Sopranos. Corrado "Junior" Soprano says to Tony, “We’re dropping like flies.”

Tony tells him, “It’s all that charcoal broiled meat you people ate.”

Uncle Junior replies, “Nobody told us ‘til the 80’s.”





No doubt too much of a good thing is dangerous to your health. That goes for alcohol or bacon or even ice cream. I consider myself relatively health-conscious. I exercise nearly every day, watch my weight, and take vitamins, but everyone has their limits. My weakness…flavor. I want to eat food that is flavorful and delicious and somehow in my head this does not jibe with vegetarianism. I hate to climb on any diet bandwagon. I scoff at Atkins Diet, the South Beach, and even Jenny Craig. So when R dropped his little bombshell that he was becoming a vegetarian, I was--shall we say--resistant. "How long will this last? 24 hours?" I quipped, given that R doesn’t particularly like vegetables. And how was I supposed to cook anything remotely flavorful given that I was working with a limited list of ingredients and excluding meat or fish of any kind (nothing with a face or a mother, he said). So, with great trepidation, I reluctantly climbed on the bandwagon. It's been three weeks now, and I must say, it’s not as bad as I expected. In fact, I’m trying recipes that I’d still make even after he sees the error of his ways and repents. It still feels like a punishment to me. But when the urge for meat overpowers me I make my pasta with meat sauce or chili with turkey meat. Moderation is still my watchword, as well as daily exercise.

Over the next few posts, I'll highlight the recipes that worked for both of us and provide a satisfying change from our usual meat dishes without sacrificing flavor. Stay tuned!

The Royal Sheep - Rhönschaf: Originally uploaded by Ben on Flickr.com.

What's Inside Your Fridge?

Coming home after a long absence, I yank open the refrigerator and peer inside at the unfamiliar bag of grapes or leftover container of rice, wondering if indeed Goldilocks had dropped by and rearranged the contents. Unlike the editor-in-chief of Saveur Magazine who displayed the contents of his refrigerator in the January/February issue, revealing pristine rows of neatly stacked packages and containers, my fridge is chaotic. Above all else, it is a monument to condiments, a kingdom of barbecue sauce (2 bottles), soy sauce (2 bottles), teriyaki, and hoisin. Mayo and mustard (3 kinds, one with champagne) share shelf space with maple syrup (one imitation and the other genuine), capers (2 bottles), vinegar (3 kinds), and olives (Spanish with pimento and kalamata). Oh, it's a staggering collection.

Before I unpack my new groceries, I reorganize and rearrange, vowing to use up the surplus once again until I end up with a refrigerator that even Martha Stewart would be proud of. Then again, like all new year resolutions, this one will likely be just as foolish and will soon be discarded like the vow to give up chocolate. But for a moment, I'm buoyed up with a sense of righteous purpose like the leaders of an odd religious sect, determined to root out sloth and other guilty sins in the kitchen.

Sylvia's Restaurant

"How can you stay in Harlem and not go to Sylvia's?" our friend John said to us a few weeks ago. He's right. Sylvia's has been a Harlem mecca for legendary Southern-style home cooking since the 1960's. Contrite and perpetually hungry, we agreed to go.

Sylvia's Restaurant at 328 Lenox Avenue is owned and operated by the Woods family. Sylvia and Herbert, who met in a bean field when they were eleven and twelve years old, married in 1943, and had four children. In 1962, they opened Sylvia's Restaurant in a storefront on Lenox Avenue with enough room to feed 35 people. Now it occupies nearly a city block and can seat up to 450 people. Since its inception, it has been a family-run place guided by the motto of love for God, love for family, love of good food, and dedication to hard work.

It's an eclectic place with counter service and takeout in one room, which opens into larger,more formal dining rooms with pale green walls and signed portraits of celebrities who want to be immortalized as fans of the ribs and chicken. R took one look at the menu and found a perfect meal--smothered chicken served with a waffle. "A waffle?" I said and he replied, "How can anything with a waffle be bad?" Good point. The chicken, covered in brown gravy, was moist and succulent and fell off the bone. And the waffle was perfect, according to R.



I opted for the ribs, a specialty of the house, and so did John and Joyce. As you can see in the photo, she clearly enjoyed her choice. The meat was succulent and delicious and slathered with Sylvia's sauce, a famous savory blend of tomatoes and pungent spices. Delicious. Aly, who opted for a meatless meal, chose 4 side dishes--which included candied yams, collard greens,string beans, macaroni & cheese, garlic mashed potatoes, and black-eyed peas.



Although I wasn't thrilled with the collard greens, I absolutely loved the corn bread, which was hot and buttery, and melted in my mouth, just like the desserts, which we sampled, despite claiming that we couldn't eat another bite. The peach cobbler and banana bread pudding were fantastic. And so was the fried chicken, and turkey judging from the satisfied smiles of the couple next to us. Well, we'll just have to wait for our next visit.

Sylvia's Restaurant
328 Lenox Avenue near the corner of 127th Street
Harlem, NY

Lighting Up

I don't smoke... thanks, originally uploaded by ƒreg.

I love these vignettes that randomly happen on the street in New York, these flashes of a person’s life that are crystallized in one brief moment. Here’s one I picked up the other day when R and I were walking down Broadway. We were passing a woman who was getting a light from a man on the street. When she straightened up and started puffing on her cigarette, we passed her and I said to Rich:


Me: That smells like pot.

Woman: (overhears me) It is.

Me: Enjoy it.

Woman: I will. This stuff is good. Real good. And I need it. (Laughs)