Food and Things

Kermit’s Key Lime Pie On a Stick is Bliss

Laura Weiss — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:02:12 +0000

Every time I’m in Key West, I make a beeline for Kermit’s for a slice of key lime pie that’s head and shoulders above the competition.

But though I adore the delectably tangy pie, I often wind up bypassing it. Instead, I head straight for the freezer case, open up the top, reach inside, and snag one of Kermit’s chocolate covered frozen key lime pies on a stick. Yes, it’s the pie, complete with graham cracker crust, just frozen.

Is Kermit’s frozen bar as good as a classic chocolate covered ice cream bar? Well, I devoured half of the key lime delight before remembering to take a picture….

If you’re not going to be in Key West or near Kermit’s other Florida locale, you can buy the bars as well as Key Line BBQ sauces, cookies and the like online.

Kermit’s Key Lime Pie Shoppe
200A Elizabeth Street
Key West, FL 33040
Open Daily 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM

Bike the Back Streets of Key West

Laura Weiss — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:10:45 +0000

Some say that Key West is a trashy tourist trap with a trail of tchotchke shops strung along Duval Street, the town’s main drag. Once you’ve snagged a neon-hued flamingo you can stop by one of the many bars for a drink.

In fact, many people come to this semitropical island at the southernmost tip of the US solely for the purpose of getting on a non-stop buzz. A river of booze flows through Duval day and night to accommodate the many boozers.

On the other hand, once you get off Duval Street, Key West projects a raffish beauty that’s one part southern Gothic, one part Carribean and one part counterculture, circa 1968.

I like to ride my bike through the back streets, pedaling past the bougainvillea-draped Conch houses, some dating back to the 19th century. The locals seem caught in a time warp. Facial hair on men is big. Not ala Williamsburg. More a 60s Haight look. Lots of T-shirts with peace signs.

During my bike ride the other day, I stopped at 4th of July ice cream parlor at 1110 White Street, part of the Mattheessen’s mini-chain, which also owns two scoop shops near Duval Street.

I’m a sucker for ice cream parlors, but this one disappoints. I sampled the Cuban Coffe and Butter Pecan ice creams. Both, I’m sorry to report, are pretty bland. So generic are these two flavors that it was tough to distinguish between them.

At Old Town Bakery at 930 Eaton Street, the story is much the same. This time, it’s the OMG Brownie that’s lackluster. The pastry barely tastes of chocolate, even though the center of the brownie oozes a crater of molten ganache.

Maybe the reason for this tropical scourge of blandness is that local purveyors are peddling to the tourist trade. Whatever the cause, don’t come to Key West for the ice cream and brownies. Not that you would anyway.

Flushing’s New World Mall Food Stalls: Not Your Mother’s Food Court

Laura Weiss — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:47:04 +0000

By now, the Flushing malls, with their compact food booths from which emerge some dazzling regional Chinese dishes, are a well-known stomping ground for the culinarily curious.

The New World Mall, which opened last year, is hidden on the lower floor of a nondescript office building on Flushing’s bustling Main Street, the predominantly Chinese area’s teeming commercial hub. Enter the building, and the first floor holds few surprises. There’s a wireless provider and a Haagen-Daz ice cream shop. Very humdrum.

Making pork and scallion dumplings at Tianjan Food, New World Mall, Flushing, Queens. Photo: Laura B. Weiss.

But if you ride down the escalator, which is planted straight ahead of you just after you walk inside the building, you’ll encounter a mad riot of neon signs and mobs of hungry locals.

New World Mall, Flushing Queens. Photo: Laura B. Weiss

Yes, it’s a food court with booths stationed around the edges, the center filled with long tables. Except this spot is lined with roughly two dozen stalls serving up all manner of Chinese, Korean and Japanese delights. It seems that every family living in or around Flushing’s Chinatown—the second largest in New York after Manhattan’s—has descended on the place. There are families with children. There are teenagers huddled around tables. Elderly people pick at their steaming bowls of soup noodles.

Hand-pulled noodles with crispy duck at Lan Zhou Hand Made Noodles, New World Mall, Flushing, Queens. Photo: Laura B. Weiss.

Recently, I roamed around the mall, scarfing down savory hand-pulled noodles with fried duck at Lan Zhou Hand Made Noodles; the broth was savory but not earthy or deeply flavored enough for my taste. Then I tried feathery scallion and pork dumplings at Tianjin Food, easily the lightest and most flavorful I’ve eaten outside China.

Dumplings from Tianjin Foods, New World Mall, Flushing, Queens. Photo: Laura B. Weiss.

I finished up with a steaming bowl of congee, a Chinese porridge that’s often eaten for breakfast; sweet chunks of pumpkin floated just beneath the glistening surface.

If you want to try some Asian food dishes in familiar surroundings, the New World Mall provides a gentle introduction. And, of yes, the food court boasts clean bathrooms for that necessary pit stop before you head home.

How to Get There: Take the Number 7 train or LIRR to Flushing/Main Street.

Running with Knives: How Not to Greet the Knife Grinder’s Truck

Laura Weiss — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:01:20 +0000

Knives by by sfllaw via flickr.

Tired of sawing through onions and watching your garlic hop around the counter? All it takes is $15 for the itinerant knife grinder, Mike Palotta, to sharpen three of your very dullest chef’s knives.

Except don’t wrap your knives in a flimsy dish towel (sorry, that’s the way my mom did it) and run down the steps, then gallop down the street, to catch up with Mike’s roving green knife grinding truck. Read more on West Side Rag about how Mike is still plying his trade after more than half a century.

Want Customers for Your New Food Business? Site Links Food Entrepreneurs with Buyers

Laura Weiss — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:20:54 +0000

Photo: BookofCooks.

Friends have told me that my cakes and cookies are pretty terrific. So let’s say that I’ve decided to try to cash in on my baking hobby. Do I really want to go to the bother and expense of setting up an elaborate web site to launch my fledgling effort? The answer is, not if I can avoid it.

But let’s say I want to stick my toe in the water as a food entrepreneur. BookofCooks, an Etsy-like site that allows budding caterers, personal chefs and food sellers to peddle their wares, lets you do just that. Though BookofCooks, which launched in October after a two years in beta, is still sparsely populated, it takes only a few minutes to set up a storefront. You upload a picture of your product, a pitch and contact information, and presto, you’re in business.

That’s what Jacy Cakes of New York, specializing in custom wedding and other special occasion cakes, did. The baker set up a digital shop and promoted it with an arresting come-on: designer shoes made entirely of sugar.

Who’s on BookofCooks? Caterers and personal chefs, as well as aspiring bakers and cooks who are eager to sell you their wares.

So far roughly 2,000 storefronts have been erected and several hundred transactions have been logged on BookofCooks, says site co-founder Julian Mellicovsky. For your digital shop, you can chose the free option or one of two paid premium plans which come with some additional features. The aim is to help you sell products to people in your local area.

For purchasers, the proposition isn’t entirely clear. Why would I buy, cupcakes from some random Manhattan or Brooklyn baker, when I’m tripping over established cupcakeries everywhere I turn? If I’m in the market for a personal chef—Wow, that sounds like a lovely idea!—I’m going to want to get personal references, not just pick someone totally at random off a website.

Still, if you’re catering an event or looking for someone to cook dinners for you on a regular basis, the site’s meant as a first point of contact for locating nearby talent, says Mellicovsky, who may soon add personal testimonials to lend additional credibility to vendors posting on the site.

You can search by city and type of food. Each storefront provides a description of services offered, contact information and a link to each seller’s web site for more details on products and prices. Merchants check off whether they deliver or are willing to cook at your home.

The question is, are customers looking for a Yellow Pages of local food talent? BookofCooks is hoping they’ll be fine with what boils down to little more than an online bake sale.

Food and Things Changes Course

Laura Weiss — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:46:03 +0000

Happy New Year to all! Yes, I know Food and Things hasn’t been too active lately. But now I’m back and I’ve decided to change the blog’s focus. West Side Rag is covering the Upper West Side, including the food scene brilliantly. (I’m one of its columnists.) So it’s time to move on and cover the wider world of food–everything from culinary travel, to events, to recipes, to new blogs, apps and cookbooks.

So that means I’ll be writing about food adventures around New York—and around the country. I’ll cover food stall finds in Flushing, Queens and fried chicken joints in Memphis. Chef Renee Marton’s recipes will continue to appear on Food and Things. Plus, I’ll be posting about my own cooking adventures, mishaps, stumbles and all.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback. For a daily dose of Food and Things, follow me on Twitter @foodandthings.com.

These Rich Sugar Cookie Sandwiches Got Raves

Laura Weiss — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:02:14 +0000

I almost tossed the sugar cookies I baked for New Year’s Eve into the garbage. The recipe was from Mark Bittman, the NY Times food writer and cookbook author. The round-faced Bittman is usually a reliable source for most cooking and baking challenges—from how to prepare kale to putting together a no-fail buttery pound cake. But this time, it looked like the trusty Mark had failed me.

A few minutes out of the oven, this particular batch of sugar cookies could have passed for water crackers they were so bland and tasteless. Since I was baking treats for a New Year’s Eve party at Chef Renee Marton’s, I set to work to try to rehabilitate them. (It wasn’t Bittman’s’ fault it was mine; I over-mixed the batter.) For sure, when you bring a dish to a chef’s house, you want to get it right.

I thought to myself, OK, add some sugar and fat. So I rolled each cookie in powdered sugar. I whipped up some chocolate ganache and smeared it between two cookies to create a richly fudgy sandwich. That was the only filling I made. Everything else—the nutella, the dulce de leche, I pulled from my fridge. Then I glommed a tablespoon or so of sauce onto each cookie, smoothed it with a spatula, and smushed two cookies together to create a sandwich.

The result? The powdered sugar boosted the drab little ovoid’s richness and heightened the sweetness just a tad. The filling seeped into the cookies transforming them into sumptuous little morsels. By the time midnight rolled around, my near-disaster cookies were fit to be eaten—even by a chef.

What was the best part of this cookie-making enterprise? When Chef Renee drifted by a little after midnight and announced, “Everyone’s raving about your cookies.”

Click here for Bittman’s sugar cookie recipe or use your own.

Recipe: Spiced Holiday Walnuts

Laura Weiss — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:35:05 +0000

Photo: By Family O’Abé via Flickr.

These dressed-up walnuts from Chef Renee Marton are great for the holidays, or any time of year for that matter.

Spiced Holiday Walnuts

Ingredients

2 pounds walnut halves

2 egg whites

½ cup granulated sugar

1.5 tablespoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons ground cardamom

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

zest of one orange

Method

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Line two baking trays (with sides) with parchment paper or foil.

Whisk egg whites until very frothy and fold in spices. Toss walnuts gently with mixture until coating is evenly spread throughout the nuts.

Spread on baking sheets evenly, keeping walnuts flat.

Bake for 8 to 12 minutes until toasted and medium brown.

Cool on baking sheets for 30 minutes, then remove walnuts by “peeling” then off the paper.

Store in a closed container—will stay fresh for about a week. These nuts can be frozen.

Where to Go on the Upper West Side for Latkes

Laura Weiss — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:04:51 +0000

When Hanukkah rolls around, even non-cooks are expected to haul out the frying pan and whip up a batch of potato latkes for the gang. After all, isn’t the annual pancake-making ritual part of what makes Hanukkah so special?

But even enthusiastic home cooks can grow weary of the eight-night-long grating, chopping and frying marathon. So this year, think about letting someone else—namely a restaurant chef—do the work for you. Continue reading here.

Got fear of frying? This video will make it all better:

Boozy Ice Cream Treats for the Holiday

Laura Weiss — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:43:26 +0000

Butter Pecan with Brandy Ice Cream. Photo: Ice Cream Happy Hour.

Want to get a buzz on for the holidays? You could stick to plain old cocktails. Or you could jazz them up a bit by adding ice cream. Better yet, why not churn some ice cream that’s flavored by vodka, rum or some other liquor? Click here to read my HuffPo post with recipes you can use for the holidays or all year round.