New York City Food

3

Posted by admin | Posted on 27-03-2008

Category : new york

So I’m back from NYC, and it was awesome seeing all of my friends. It made me miss NYC because there’s just so much to do and so much good, cheap food to be had. It’s really awesome when you look on yelp and see multiple 4 star restaurants within a block or two of where you’re standing.

The places we went to eat were awesome. So delicious you can’t imagine. The halal food cart is just amazing…amazing. I did a slack ass job of taking photos, but here are some:

Chiedo and I took the free Staten Island ferry which offers great views of the NYC skyline, the statue of liberty, and ellis island. One weird thing is I got linked to by some other blog. I noticed this because I usually get like 2-3 visitors a day and then one day I got 50, and I was wondering why the hell this happened. The blog doesn’t really have his facts straight (I’ve been to NYC before and my list of things to do in NYC was in no-way ranked), but I’m flattered I got linked to. And he’s right about the staten island ferry — I think it’s a great tourist destination.


One of my friends, Jaun, took us to this place way back in the day. It’s a great Latino fried chicken place located in Harlem (157th and Broadway).


We brought some back for our gracious hosts, and they fought over the chicken like little kids.


Ummm…delicious. I plan on trying fried chicken again soon. maybe marinating in lime and some spices first. I just wish I could find a resonably sized container of peanut oil to use (not too big and not too small and expensive).


Another great place we went to is Lombardis. The waits a little long, but totally worth it. it’s awesome pizza.

This is one of Chiedo’s many failed attempts at trying to create a cool new profile picture for Facebook.


And a close-up of the real-deal.


All right, so it was a great trip overall. I got to hang out with a shit ton of friends from back in the day, and we had a good time.

I have some good stories about the halal food cart. The first night, we order, and I want both white and red sauce, but I’d never put it on myself (they’ve always done it for me at “my” place). So I decide to put equal amounts of white and red (and a lot of both). I go up to the guy to ask for a lid, and he gives me a crazy look. He asks me if I’ve ever had this hotsauce before. Well I have, but it’s been a while. I took a bite of this shit, and I was trying to suck in cold air the whole way home. When I got there I tried water, milk, and whatever I could get my hands on, but it didn’t help much. It was so delicious though, and I had trouble stopping. In the end, I only ate about half of it, and gave the rest to my Korean friend who finished it off without a drop of water….

The second night we go to halal food cart, as soon as we pull up there’s some gang fight going on. One guys getting beat up in the corner, people are holding others back, etc… It cools down for like a minute and all seems quiet and then all of a sudden this red SUV squeals up, and starts trying to run over the other people. They’re like running around trying to get out of the way. All the while the 30+ of us waiting in line are just standing there watching, chuckling a little (but really scared), wondering wtf is going on. The driver didn’t hit anyone and then sped off as the other people tried to chase him down. The security guards in the building are on the radio, wondering what’s going on outside. I assumed police would be there in a little bit, and I finally see a car show up, but all that happens is he skips the line, pays the man, and grabs his food…where are the police when some maniac is trying to runover people on the sidewalk?? Oh well. All in all, a pretty exciting night by the halal cart.

Anyways, NYC was awesome. Weather wasn’t fantastic, but I’m sure I’ll be going back.

New York City Cookies

1

Posted by admin | Posted on 19-03-2008

Category : cookies, new york

I’m off to the big apple. Leaving tomorrow on a red-eye flight and arriving Thursday early in the morning. I’ll be there through the weekend and then go to my grandmother’s Monday and Tuesday before heading back to SFO. So if you live in NYC gimme a call so we can get together.


If you have suggestions of what to do in NYC, let me know. I’m mostly going to meet up with some friends and party a lot, but another friend from SF is coming with me, and he’s never been to NYC. The list so far is:

  • Staten Island Ferry
  • See Empire State Building
  • See WTC
  • Eat at Katz Deli
  • Eat at Lombardis
  • Get some Halal food
  • See little italy/chinatown
  • Eat at Daisy May BBQ (maybe)
  • See a Broadway Play (maybe)
  • Go to MOMA (maybe)

In planning to go to NYC, I decided to make some cookies–a lot of cookies. Over 100 in fact.

Perhaps this makes me a little crazy, I dunno. I stayed up till 2 am making them though. I brought some into work, but the majority are coming to NYC (hopefully they won’t get crushed on the trip).

What types did I make? Regular chocolate chip, chocolate chip with some white chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate chip, and oatmeal raisin cookies.

What went in:

  • 7.5 cups of flour
  • 8 sticks of butter
  • 8 cups of sugar
  • 10 eggs
  • 4.5 cups of chocolate chips
  • 1 jar of peanut butter
  • 1 jar of peanuts
  • 3 cups of old-fashioned oats
  • 1.5 cups of raisins


So if you’re in NYC, come get some cookies from me.

The oatmeal raisin cookies. It’s more fun to make big ones (and actually easier to cook).


Nice and big chocolate chip ones.



In total 8 plates of cookies….as I said, I’m a little crazy at times. Putting them on 8 plates helped them cool, but it also just screamed of excess, which is what I was going for.


And ready to be shipped. The stuff on the far right went to work. The rest will be in NYC.

Some lessons learned while cooking:

  • Peanut butter cookies are hard to bake. You need to make sure to undercook them (golden brown on only the sides). The first batch of peanut butter ones are a tad burned on the bottom.
  • Burning the bottoms of cookies can be helped a lot if you have a dark, thick baking sheet, and if you use the lower-middle and upper baking racks (flipping them half-way through). I need to go buy some better baking pans (only have 1 really good one).
  • Despite not eating many cookies, I have very little desire to eat any at this point after spending so long baking them.

Hopefully see you all in New York!