NYC: Restaurant Review - Mama Mia

Mama Mia - lunch on November 18, 2016

Shawn and I ended up having a running joke throughout our three and a half days in New York. We spent the whole time craving lasagna. I started it because on my flight to JFK, I saw a commercial featuring a steaming plate of lasagna. I wanted some. I passed on that want-some to Shawn. Turns out both she and I could eat Italian food anytime, any place. It also turns out that each time we went to an Italian restaurant for a meal, we were easily sidetracked by other dishes and never ordered the lasagna.

Case in point, we yelped our way to Mama Mia, were greeted by a friendly hostess, seated in an almost empty restaurant (for some reason, New Yorkers don't eat lunch at noon but sometime later) and each of us ordered something other than lasagna. We thought about it but her favorite pasta was manicotti and mine is always, always spaghetti and meatballs. So that's what we each got.

No regrets here because it's hard to go wrong with spaghetti and meatballs and, wait for it, it's even harder to have bad food in New York. I'm convinced of it because everything we had was delicious, this lunch included. Mama Mia is again the kind of place I try to patronize whenever I go out to eat. According to their website, they're family owned by the Schiattarella family and have been in business since 1971. They started out as a one-window pizza shop. When we arrived there, it looked to have grown into a prime-location restaurant bigger than Sam's Place and many others I've seen. The service was also top notch, from the hostess to the waiter to the guy who filled our water glasses; everyone was really nice.

Even a nearby patron (the restaurant filled up as we ate lunch and it got closer to 1 o'clock) was able to offer some friendly directions once she learned our post-lunch mission was to find The Little Pie Company (next post). Google maps decreed it wasn't that far from where we were having lunch and this native New Yorker told us we'd know we'd found it once we smelled something incredibly delicious. Our friendly hostess had never heard of it before and we told her she should check it out. If only we were going to pass her way again, we'd tell her about it. But our touristy selves didn't quite know the lay of the land so we didn't know if we'd see her again to report back. But she promised to check it out for herself and off we went to our next foodie mission.

NYC: Restaurant Review - Sam's Place

Sam's Place - lunch on November 17, 2016

I will also be reviewing the restaurants we went to in New York. Partly because my friend Shawn and I discovered we couldn't actually eat sugar 24 hours a day and needed some savory food to dilute the sweets. Who knew?

We both had  craving for Italian and lasagna sounded good to us so we went hunting for a good Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. As an aside, let me just say (again) it's my personal belief that you can't have anything bad to eat in NYC. If you do, it's your own fault. Really. Because you can always get recommendations from the locals or, failing that, there's always yelp.

We yelp'd our way to Sam's Place and it was exactly the kind of restaurant I like to patronize. It was small, perhaps less than a dozen tables fitted into a small space, and had friendly service, including someone who appeared to be the owner who stopped by our table to greet us.

A hunk of bread was placed for our enjoyment while we perused the menu. Despite the craving for lasagna, we both went with tortellini alfredo. Because the butter and sugar from the earlier cronuts needed some more butter and heavy cream to go with it, ha. Okay, it seemed like a good idea at the time and the dish itself was pretty good, albeit a bit rich and a little bland. The Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top helped give it some saltiness. But I have a low bar for pasta and I enjoyed the meal. I enjoyed eating at Sam's Place even more and thought they provided good, friendly service.

NYC: Bakery Review - Baked NY

Baked NYC - visited on November 17, 2016

After we visited Dominique Ansel Bakery, the other bakery on my NYC bucket list to visit was Baked New York. I have all three of their baking books, I've even made recipes from them (that doesn't always happen, ha) and I wanted to try the famous Baked salty-sweet brownie.

Fortunately, there was a Baked location not too far from Dominique Ansel's and within walking distance. I'm sure at this point my friend Shawn would like me to mention that my definition of "walking distance" might be a bit farther than normal people's. After all, the day before, on my subway ride from JFK to Manhattan, I misread some directions I had prepared beforehand and got off at the wrong subway station. I ended up walking from Queens to Manhattan, crossing over the Ed Koch Bridge to make it to our hotel near Grand Central Station. See? Walking distance. Normal people might've just gotten back on the subway and tried again. Piffle. As long as I had my phone's GPS turned on and two good feet, I don't see why I can't walk it, even if it did mean dragging my carry-on with me. Good thing it had wheels.

In any case, I digress. Baked NY was maybe a mile - or so - from Dominique Ansel Bakery so we did walk there. It was a nice little bakery cafe with some tempting display cases of baked goods for sale. Unfortunately, both of us were still full from the cronut and couldn't eat anything more while we were at Baked. Sad panda!

But there was no law against buying stuff "to go" and planning to eat them later back at the hotel so that's what we did. The hardest part was narrowing it down to a few choices. So many delicious options! But I knew there were other bakeries I wanted to try and I reluctantly accepted I really couldn't eat whole display cases at each bakery. Shawn and I settled on the apple crumble bar, the brookster, and the famous sweet-salty Baked brownie.

My review of each:

The apple crumble bar was amazing. Seriously. Perfect shortbread crust, perfect flavor and texture apples, perfect topping. Did I mention perfect? It was moist but not soggy. Apples are in season in the fall so it's always a good time to get an apple dessert. This was delicious.

The Brookster

Sadly, I wasn't quite as impressed with the brookster. It's a brownie "pie" shell with a chocolate chip cookie filling. Sounds good, right? I think this would have been great when it was just out of the oven and cooled to lukewarm. That's how spoiled I am when I bake my own desserts. When we ate this one, while it wasn't dry exactly, it wasn't as fudgy and moist as I would have expected. Personally I think I like my own version as a chocolate chip cookie tart a bit better.

The Baked Salty-Sweet Brownie

Happily, the third of our purchase, the Baked brownie made up for everything. This brownie IS everything. The funny part is, during our time in New York, we I was visiting so many different bakeries and buying so many things "to try" that I couldn't even get to my half of the brownie until after the trip. Shawn managed to eat her half right before we left. I put my half in my backpack with the intent of eating it on the plane ride home. But I forgot all about it until a few days after I had gotten back from the trip. By then, my snobby palate would've said "forget it" and chucked the brownie because who wants a week-old baked good? Not this girl. Except it seemed a shame not to at least have a bite, even if it was just to say I did try it and see if it met my it-must-be-dry-by-now expectations. Color me sheepish because I couldn't have been more wrong. Astonishingly, not only was it still moist and fudgy but it was another amazing (half)piece of deliciousness. And you know I know my brownies. So that's saying something. Plus I liked the large sugar crystals they sprinkled on top to give the brownie a bit of sweet crunch. If you ever get a chance to try a Baked brownie, run, don't walk, to get one. It was freaking delicious and worth every calorie.

NYC: Bakery Review - Dominique Ansel Bakery

Dominique Ansel Bakery - visited on November 17, 2016

Happy 2017! It's that time of the (new) year where I take a break from baking and I give anyone trying to live up to their new year's resolutions to eat healthy and lose weight a break from any tempting new baking recipes, myself included. I've been saving up the next month's worth of posts to food-chronicle my most recent trip to New York City last November. Because you know I just went there to eat and yes, that's practically all I did while I was there. I met my friend Shawn who was there the first part of the week for work and we spent the last part of the week eating. Just eating.

I love New York....for about 3 days. Then the suburbanite in me starts to feel claustrophobic with the masses of people and tall buildings and honking cars. But for those first 3 days, I don't think there's a better spot on earth if you're a foodie. New York City is my food mecca. I've never eaten anything bad in New York. I spend most, if not all, of my time in Manhattan and I know my local NYC friends would chastise me for not venturing out more broadly. It isn't like I don't want to explore more but it's mostly a logistics issue. I end up having a long list of places I want to go to in Manhattan and by the time I get to even a fraction of my list, the 3 days are up and I'm fleeing the city.

Knowing my timetable, I prioritized the trip. The first priority was to try the original cronut from Dominique Ansel's Bakery in Soho. If you've followed my blog for awhile, you know I "met" Dominique Ansel when he came to talk at my company. I won his baking book and took a selfie with him - that counts as meeting him, even if he more than likely doesn't remember me from the countless other adoring fans he (rightly) has. If you don't follow Dominique Ansel Bakery on Instagram, you're missing out on amazing food porn and a social media look at a man who clearly loves what he does, is amazing at it and loves to share that passion with others. Go to Instagram right now and follow him then come back; I'll wait.

I've tried a knockoff of a cronut from Paris Baguette but I wanted to try the real thing made by the cronut's inventor so that was top of my NY foodie bucket list. To not tempt fate because I'd already heard of the long lines outside of his bakery every morning and the limited number of cronuts available (you'd have to be there at least 1-2 hours before the bakery opens to have a good chance of cronut purchase), I ventured to pre-order. He announces a monthly cronut flavor ahead of time and opens up the cronuts for pre-order for each two-week period.

November's flavor was Maple Pecan with spiced sugar - yum, right? For the time period when we would be there, the pre-ordering opened up on October 31. I confess, I had other stuff going on that day (I know, foodie fail) so I didn't even check the preorder site until that night. Only come to find out the cronuts available for preorder on the Friday-Sunday when we would be in town were already sold out. SOLD OUT. Apparently I had underestimated the cronut craze. Silly me.

Fortunately, we were going to be there on a Thursday-Sunday and there were 4 remaining cronuts available for preorder for Thursday. I don't think my trigger finger ever triggered so fast in securing those last 4 cronuts. They limited preorders to no more than 6 per customer but I figured 4 would be good enough, especially since the website said cronuts are best eaten within 8 hours of purchase. Between Shawn and me, I was confident we could put away 2 cronuts each in an 8-hour period.

Once our cronut preorder was secured, we built the plans for our first full day in New York City around picking them up. Which meant Dominique Ansel's Bakery was our first subway ride and first walk. We were on a cronut mission. I have to say, having heard about lining up 1-2 hours ahead of time to get a non-preordered cronut, I highly recommend going the preorder route if you plan to be in NYC on specific dates and can get your preorder in on time. By the time we got to the bakery, it wasn't crowded and our cronuts were ready for pickup at the 11 am time I had secured. Winning.

It was also winning that I liked November's flavor of maple pecan. The cronut was (not surprisingly) delicious. It really is a perfect blend between croissant and doughnut. Flaky layers, creamy filling, glaze, crunchy sugar coating; all perfection. The only thing that surprised me - and it probably shouldn't have - is I got full on just one. As in, I had no room for the second one in my allotment or for anything else for awhile. That shouldn't have been surprising considering how many calories must be in a cronut but let's be honest, I was disappointed in my consumption capacity. Only another foodie would understand that statement,

Fortunately, we had gotten two of the cronuts packaged up to go while we consumed two onsite in the cute little seating area in the bakery. So we figured we had an 8-hour countdown to consume our second cronuts. And since we were already there and my eyes are always bigger than my stomach, I had also purchased (to go) a DKA or Dominique's Kouign Amann, pronounced "koon ah-man" which is described on his website as "tender, flaky, croissant-like dough with a caramelized crunchy crust." I ate it later in the day and can I tell you those words do not do justice to the real thing? OMG, despite my mission and longing for an original Dominique Ansel cronut, if I had to choose, I would pick the DKA as my favorite.  It was SO GOOD. I've had a kouign amann before, in Paris no less but the DKA was better. The best. Highly recommend.

The DKA

Thus our first bakery excursion in New York City didn't disappoint. If you're ever in Soho, you need to go to Dominique Ansel's Bakery. Are you following him on Instagram yet?

Penzey's Baked Ham and Cheese

Ham and Cheese Bake - made December 3, 2016 from Penzey's

Good-bye 2016! To be honest, I won't be sorry to see you go. I will end on a savory note before too much time passes as I will be hanging up my oven mitts for the month of January and have a different set of posts coming up for the new year. But first, let's crank this one out. I found this recipe on Penzey's website and with newfound, albeit short-lived, enthusiasm for making "real food" and using some spices I recently purchased from Penzey's, this looked right up on my alley to venture to make. That means it's both easy to make and something my picky palate would eat. I did modify it slightly though by omitting the mushrooms since I don't like them. I also chopped the onion in small pieces so they wouldn't get in the way of my eating. I don't mind onions if they're small enough and go unnoticed when I take a bite. I'm okay with the flavor of onions, it's the slippery texture I'm not wild about. But when you mix them with equally-soft-textured pasta, small bits of cooked onion are fine.

Of course, typical of my cooking efforts, I decided I knew better than the recipe because when I was putting this together, the 1 1/2 cups of pasta I boiled didn't look like it would be enough for the amount of sauce that the recipe made. I also decided that not only was I going to use up the leftover Honeybaked Ham from Thanksgiving but I would also add some turkey sausage kielbasa for extra protein.

The additional protein turned out to be a good idea, the doubling of the amount of pasta - cough - less so. Yup, it came out a bit dry since now there wasn't enough sauce for the amount of pasta I used. Oops. I also discovered baking the casserole dish when you don't have enough sauce makes the top layer of pasta shells a bit, er, chewy. Ah, you have to bake the dish. Now all that "extra" sauce makes sense to prevent the dish from drying out. So that's a whole post worth of singular advice: don't use too much pasta in this recipe.

Other than my usual foibles of cooking, this dish was fine. It could use a little spice (and remember I have bland taste buds so that's saying something) so feel free to use hot links or some other kind of spicy protein. Or add some (Penzey's) pepper.

A serving with a faux Red Lobster biscuit

1 1/2 cups pasta (elbow macaroni or shells)
2 tablespoons butter
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced (optional, I left them out)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup flour
1/2 to 1 teaspoon Penzey's pepper, to taste
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/3 cups milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 pounds cooked, cubed ham
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cook the pasta according to package directions and drain. 
2. While pasta is cooking, melt the butter over medium heat in a large skillet, Add the mushrooms and onion and cook until tender and golden, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes.
3. Reduce heat to low, sprinkle on the flour and pepper and stir to combine. Gradually add the stock and milk, stirring vigorously as you drizzle it in; simmer until thickened. Add the cheese, nutmeg and lemon juice. Stir until melted and combined, 3-5 minutes. 
4. Add the pasta and ham; stir to combine. Spoon into a greased casserole dish. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese and bake at 350 degrees. uncovered, for 30 minutes, until bubbling and golden.