Slurping at Ramen Setagaya
What’s better after a few drinks than a big bowl of noodles? A big bowl of noodles at Ramen Setagaya.
23:35:00 on 03/29/08
by liz -
Restaurants -
A TASTE OF TOKYO
While I'm toiling away in Beijing at my new job, my partner Max is in Tokyo this week for the first time, visiting his friend Takuji. He's torturing me with photos of the dinners I'm missing - so I'm going to torture you too!
Tonite they ate at a restaurant he has been hearing about for years. Every nite at 5pm, Takuji's dad goes to this tiny local restaurant:
Legend has it that unless you are a regular customer, or are a friend of a regular customer, you won't get served.
Fortunately, Max is connected. The drink you see pictured above - Sake with deep fried blowfish fin. Yes, that blowfish - the fish that can kill if its not prepared correctly by an expert.
There was more blowfish on the menu...
20:37:00 on 03/29/08
by janine -
J in Beijng -
BDoF: PDT
Let’s face it. The reason we did so much walking during the afternoon of our BDoF was only to wait for one thing: the hour when PDT opened. To say that PDT — which stands for Please Don’t Tell — is a cocktail bar is true, but also a bit of an understatement. It’s a speakeasy, a hot dog joint, and it’s a bit of a think-tank, too, where the city’s brightest cocktail stars are invited to collaborate on a creative menu that is delicious, but also a lot of fun. Bacon-infused bourbon? Why not?!
BDoF: Walking and Drinking (Not at the Same Time)
After lunch at JoJo, we continued our BDoF in the city by walking and walking and walking. Karen finally had to go back to work (poor dear; you can see the fruits of her labor on her web site here — just launch the video player and poke around....), and we contined walking all the way to the East Village, where we found ourselves inside a brand-new wine bar. Now here’s something you don’t see very often: a photo food blogging someone else taking a photo food blogging. Maybe I’m not the only dork in town.
Lunch at JoJo: with Karen!
We figured it’s been nearly 2 1/2 years since we’ve seen Karen, our great friend from Australia. Indeed, it’s been so long that she has never made an appearance on SCF. That’s right. Since its inception in Fall, 2005, we have not seen Karen. It was appropriate, then, that we shared a fancy lunch to mark our reunion. We settled on JoJo. The pea soup? It tasted of spring.
10:30:00 on 03/29/08
by liz -
Restaurants -
Friday Night Pasta Dinner
Tessa’s amazing Scarpetta sauce played a starring role in our Friday night supper this weekend. Champagne was a close second.
Happy Easter!
For the second year in a row, the farm celebrated Easter at the O’Donnells, where Rory and Sarah helped Auntie Boo search for the loot in her first Easter egg hunt. (Guess who went home with all the eggs?)
Planting and Prepping the Porch for Spring
Even though the wind is still whipping through the fields and there’s a chill in the air, we thought it high time to plant our first crops and prep the porch — on the off chance there might be a warm evening we could relish with a cocktail sipped out on the veranda. We were especially inspired by the arrival of three brand-new cushions for our chairs.
Bourbon Thursdays
Much as I love Peniche, we need to be hitting another spot for Bourbon Thursdays real soon: Q in Port Chester. Just look at these bourbons! I'll report back on this soon.
More Fun with “The New Spanish Table”
With all the recipes I want to make from this book, you may be hearing about it for several years. For our next trick, we present pork meatballs, served with patatas bravas. It was the centerpiece of our Sunday Night Supper at the Ranch.
Saturday Night Supper at Kelli & Patrick's
Kelli and Patrick had someone cancel for Saturday night supper, so they invited us to come and eat the food. We were happy to oblige, especially when the food is such delicious dishes as salmon pizza appetizer, filet mignon with a blue cheese sauce and a potato gateau made with gruyere.
How To Butcher A Beef Tenderloin (AKA Getting a Chateaubriand and Filet Mignon from One Big-Assed Piece of Meat)
We had the occasion to buy two huge tenderloins for a party in February and decided to butcher them ourselves. We found it wasn’t as hard as we thought. Warning: this post is not for the squeamish.
Fun with Spanish Cookery at The Farm
The Farm hasn’t been much of an entertaining place lately, what with all the restaurant meals we’ve been dining our way through and the extra-long hours it’s been taking to pull off several huge projects at once out in the fields. But we took some leisure time on Saturday and invited the farm’s good friend and neighbor Irene over to help us enjoy it. We cooked a new recipe from a new cuisine we’ve been learning more and more about lately: Spanish.
Pastela Moruna (Moorish Chicken and Nut Pie)
This is one of author Anya von Bremzen’s favorite recipes of all time and it soon will be one of yours, too. It’s great for company because you can make the filling a day ahead, and it’s OK to serve it at room temperature, so you can even bake this before anyone arrives.
Clams in Olive Oil with Jamon and Pine Nuts
This recipe comes from chef Quim Marques of the Barcelona seafood restaurant El Suquet de l'Almirall, who prepared it as a guest chef at Solera restaurant in Manhattan.
Check Out My Restaurant Meals
I'll be working overtime over on Small Bites for the next week, dining all around for Hudson Valley Restaurant Week. I'll have one exciting post to share here — a Saturday night dinner at the farm — but other than that, I'll be taking a small break from SCF for the week. Keep up with my escapades over at LoHud and I'll see you next week!
A Cocktail Catastrophe
The bunkhouse bar was a battlefield Saturday after three cocktail debacles left the farmers writhing in horror after what had befallen them. Everything that could go wrong did: Missing ingredients, bad balance. We really didn't even like our sidecars.
Happy Birfday Mae!
Mae turns one on March 5. But she doesn't know that! So Sarah threw her a grand birthday party on Saturday. She was the belle of the ball:
Hugh Turns One!
My godson Hugh turned one on Feb. 28. Kelli says his older siblings liked the cake as much — if not better — than he did.
More Weekend Breakfast Cookery
I suppose we were in the mood for more serious breakfast this weekend. For Sunday’s breaking of the fast, we went Mexican.
Saturday Morning Brekky with Thor’s Pancetta
One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a package of pork. Thor — whom SCF readers might remember from such posts as Friends from Far Lands and Tuesday in the Park in July — is learning a new craft: the art of curing meat. I used some of his amazing pancetta for the first time this morning, crisping some up to serve with my mushroom-and-potato hash topped with egg:
