Sunday, December 22, 2013
This Nosh New Yorker is back to blogging - after a three year absence!
It has been over three years since I last posted on this blog! In that time, I've not only continued to operate Noshwalks and published several issues of Noshnews, but I've made a special effort to explore the Bronx, where a lot is happening foodwise, culturally and residentially. There's an emerging artisanl sector - mostly, as far as I can tell - with the establishment of two rum distilleries and some craft beers. I included a visit to one of them - Rine Tirado in the Port Morris neighborhood - to my Crossing 149th Street Noshwalk in the summer.
Since September 2010, I've visited Istanbul and Quito - taking food tours in each city and collecting more food lore. I didn't travel last summer - it was my daughter's last in NYC before heading to college, so NYC neighborhoods were my destinations. I led quite a few custom tours this past year.
Other news: I'm transforming Noshnews from an 8-page newsletter focusing on one or two neighborhoods at a time to a soon-to-be-published free four-pager that will be more wide-ranging and flexible so that I can produce it more often and more easily, drawing on experiences I've had leading tours and exploring on my own. There won't be one concentrated neighborhood theme. Each will depend on what I see, what I"m thinking, new observations on neighborhood food trends, and so on. Each will be packed with infornation, which I think is the strong ponit o0f Noshwalks and Noshnews - that people learn more about New York City neighborhoods from being with me or reading what I've written. It got to the point where it took 10 months or more to produce one issue - very labor intensive - but I did publish 24 in that format - not bad!
In October I offer the first "Dining Out With Noshwalks," a now-periodic get-together in a different neighborhood, visiting a restaurant I've been curious about but couldn't include on a Noshwalk because it didn't really fit in. The first took place in October, when we wen tto the Yemeni restaurant Oasis in the Van Nest section of the Bronx - an area where there's an emerging community of people from different Islamic countries, including Egypt, Yemen, Palestine and Turkey. The second took place in Sunset Park, where we met at Pacificana, a huge dim sum place (although dim sum was not offered in the evening - my error - some places have it 24 hours and I thought this place did...). Then we decided to go elsewhere for dessert and headed to Fifth Avenue in Sunset Park, stopping first at Gran Via, a Dominican/Cuban Bakery and then sat down at Flor de Izucar, a Mexican bakery. We had tastes at each one. That addition to our dinner was so much fun that I'll propose that the nest Dining Out will have the main meal and dessert at two different place. Expect announcements on my Facebook page about the next meal in mid=Kamiaru!
You really should "like" my Noshwalks Facebook page. It's full of photos, including pictures from my travels. But in my next posts here, I will add photos from both cities. The photo in this blog is of a bunch of guys who work for Google in NYC and hired me to lead a custom tour. At first they asked if I'd lead a tour in the Meatpacking District, which I don't cover. Their offices are near there, so I told my contact that it would be much better to go someplace new. We went to Elmhurst and had mostly Thai food. A big, big yum! They loved it! I always love going there.
I'm glad to be blogging again!
Please let me know what you think!
Myra
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Preview photos of Caribbean Brooklyn for Noshnews
I'm putting finishing touches on Noshnews Issue #23 - Caribbean Brooklyn. Here are just a few photos that I hope will tempt you! Let me start with a series of photos to introduce you to delicious Trinidadian doubles! From my reading, doubles are a street food. There aren't lots of street vendors in Brooklyn selling out of carts or trucks; there are plenty of Haitian food stalls, but not Trinidadian ones, from what I saw. Doubles are cheap - $1 or $1.25, for the most part. So you'll definitely buy more than one~
The Doubles is (this is grammatically correct!) an addictive sandwich with a filling of curried chickpeas between two saucer-sized pieces of bread (called barra) sometimes made with either white flour or yellow pea (lentil) flour, with curry and cumin added. haven't tried to make it yet, and rather doubt I will, considering how cheap they are... and I've eaten so many now that I know that the bread needs to have a particular consistency - soft yet solid.
After the two doubles are laid out, a filling of chick peas is added. THe chick peas are curried with onion, ginger and curry powder.
You can choose one of three sauces - tamarind, pepper or kuchela, a hot mango sauce. Some people ask for all three - I usually do! The mixture plays lovely and exotic games with your palate.
You can find the ingredients for doubles in markets all over Brooklyn (and recipes on the Internet). But I'm happier to have someone else make them for me! As you can see, it's a leaky-looking preparation. The sandwich is wrapped in white sandwich paper before you get it. Thank goodness... or it would leak all over you!In any case, the doubles aren't around for long - the flavors now ooze through your veins!
THe colorful baby pants shown below were on sale at the Caton-Flatbush Market at the intersection of these two streets. Until I saw it I had absolutely no awareness of this market. It serves as an incubator for local small businesses. I saw copying companies, hair salons, nail spas, Haitian markets, clothing stalls and more... It was a surprise to me, because I thought I knew NYC's most interesting markets. This one has been around for almost 10 years - and will become a destination on future Noshwalks!
Callaloo seems to be the "national green" of Caribbean Brooklyn. You will see it in all the markets! I also saw some at a beautiful farm on the campus of George Wingate High School, where students, under the tutelage of professional farmers, are growing all sorts of produce to cater to Caribbean palates; they operate a greenmarket during growing season! The student farm is show below; below that is a picture of callalloo (not the farm's!) at Suzie's Farm on Flatbush Avenue.
I've been to many places, but not the Caribbean islands (or Guyana), whose food will be featured in the upcomoing issue of Noshnews. (I was in Cuba more than 30 years ago, however - on a bicycle trip!) The colors and textures are wonderful - as seen in this picture form a market whose proprietor, a friendly but camera-shy woman named Dawn, takes such good care of her merchandise. I can only imagine how much more beautiful it is to see these foods in their natural surroundings!
This last photo won't be in Noshnews, but the store canopy made me laugh. Bagels are the international food of choice, I suppose!
The Doubles is (this is grammatically correct!) an addictive sandwich with a filling of curried chickpeas between two saucer-sized pieces of bread (called barra) sometimes made with either white flour or yellow pea (lentil) flour, with curry and cumin added. haven't tried to make it yet, and rather doubt I will, considering how cheap they are... and I've eaten so many now that I know that the bread needs to have a particular consistency - soft yet solid.
After the two doubles are laid out, a filling of chick peas is added. THe chick peas are curried with onion, ginger and curry powder.
You can choose one of three sauces - tamarind, pepper or kuchela, a hot mango sauce. Some people ask for all three - I usually do! The mixture plays lovely and exotic games with your palate.
You can find the ingredients for doubles in markets all over Brooklyn (and recipes on the Internet). But I'm happier to have someone else make them for me! As you can see, it's a leaky-looking preparation. The sandwich is wrapped in white sandwich paper before you get it. Thank goodness... or it would leak all over you!In any case, the doubles aren't around for long - the flavors now ooze through your veins!
THe colorful baby pants shown below were on sale at the Caton-Flatbush Market at the intersection of these two streets. Until I saw it I had absolutely no awareness of this market. It serves as an incubator for local small businesses. I saw copying companies, hair salons, nail spas, Haitian markets, clothing stalls and more... It was a surprise to me, because I thought I knew NYC's most interesting markets. This one has been around for almost 10 years - and will become a destination on future Noshwalks!
Callaloo seems to be the "national green" of Caribbean Brooklyn. You will see it in all the markets! I also saw some at a beautiful farm on the campus of George Wingate High School, where students, under the tutelage of professional farmers, are growing all sorts of produce to cater to Caribbean palates; they operate a greenmarket during growing season! The student farm is show below; below that is a picture of callalloo (not the farm's!) at Suzie's Farm on Flatbush Avenue.
I've been to many places, but not the Caribbean islands (or Guyana), whose food will be featured in the upcomoing issue of Noshnews. (I was in Cuba more than 30 years ago, however - on a bicycle trip!) The colors and textures are wonderful - as seen in this picture form a market whose proprietor, a friendly but camera-shy woman named Dawn, takes such good care of her merchandise. I can only imagine how much more beautiful it is to see these foods in their natural surroundings!
This last photo won't be in Noshnews, but the store canopy made me laugh. Bagels are the international food of choice, I suppose!
More San Pedro Market photos
Well, I think I've figured out how to add 5 photos at a time. I'll try to add more... but you can see a lot of my photo albums of Peru and other places I've visited at my Noshwalks page on Facebook. In fact, this blog is really just complementary and lets me write endless copy when what you really should do is see the photos of the market.
The first photo shows a girl holding up a "cocona." I didn't know what it was until my last full day in Peru, when I was in Lima and wandered through "Vivenda," a 24-hour produce market in the Miraflores neighborhood, near my hotel, which seemed modeled on Whole Foods. Cocona looked like no fruit (or vegetable) I'd ever seen - lighter in color than any tomatoes iI was familiar with but looking a bit like a tomato; more oblong than round. I bought one, successfully got it through customs, put in my refrigerator and then - alas - got back to it too late. By then it had shriveled up. I'm embarrassed to confess this, because I never got around to tasting it! From what I've read - and there's not much about it on line - it's cultivated in Peru, tastes somewhat like a cross between a tomato and lime (interesting!) and is used by some Peruvian Indians to treat headlice. Maybe that's better than all the gunk I had to use when my daughter had it in 2nd grade!
In the next picture, a woman at a small bakery near the market is holding up a plate containing a slice of causa, a delicious potato pie with an avocado filling. This is not a difficult dish to make - you mash yellow potatoes, flavor with lime and Peruvian pepper paste, and when cool, you prepare one layer (about a 4" square, about1 1/2 " high, add a filling that can be tuna fish, chicken, avocado, shrimp, whatever, and top it off with a second layer of potato. Garnish it with parsley, olives, whatever... This is the ultimate comfort food!
The company I used to arrange my tour, Southern Crossings (www.southerncrossings.com) arranged for an amazing guide, Rich Achante, to take me through San Pedro. I'd already wandered through it on my own the day before, but Rich was able to explain certain foods I wouldn't have thought even to ask about. One is lucuma, the fruit that the woman in the picture is holding. She operates a natural juice bar, making juices and shakes of all sorts of local fruits and vegetables - the type of thing you see all over Latin America - and in the Caribbean and Latin American neighborhoods of New York City. Lucuma has a soft, pasty texture, and Rich described as almost like a caramel pumpkin pudding or - and it looks like that when it's cut open. He said he's so addicted to it that he has to have some lucuma every day - and usually buys it in the form of an ice cream pop purchased from a street vendor!
So much of the produce looks just so gorgeous and tasty. This barrel of peppers, limes, tomatoes and ginger just exudes flavor!
The first photo shows a girl holding up a "cocona." I didn't know what it was until my last full day in Peru, when I was in Lima and wandered through "Vivenda," a 24-hour produce market in the Miraflores neighborhood, near my hotel, which seemed modeled on Whole Foods. Cocona looked like no fruit (or vegetable) I'd ever seen - lighter in color than any tomatoes iI was familiar with but looking a bit like a tomato; more oblong than round. I bought one, successfully got it through customs, put in my refrigerator and then - alas - got back to it too late. By then it had shriveled up. I'm embarrassed to confess this, because I never got around to tasting it! From what I've read - and there's not much about it on line - it's cultivated in Peru, tastes somewhat like a cross between a tomato and lime (interesting!) and is used by some Peruvian Indians to treat headlice. Maybe that's better than all the gunk I had to use when my daughter had it in 2nd grade!
In the next picture, a woman at a small bakery near the market is holding up a plate containing a slice of causa, a delicious potato pie with an avocado filling. This is not a difficult dish to make - you mash yellow potatoes, flavor with lime and Peruvian pepper paste, and when cool, you prepare one layer (about a 4" square, about1 1/2 " high, add a filling that can be tuna fish, chicken, avocado, shrimp, whatever, and top it off with a second layer of potato. Garnish it with parsley, olives, whatever... This is the ultimate comfort food!
The company I used to arrange my tour, Southern Crossings (www.southerncrossings.com) arranged for an amazing guide, Rich Achante, to take me through San Pedro. I'd already wandered through it on my own the day before, but Rich was able to explain certain foods I wouldn't have thought even to ask about. One is lucuma, the fruit that the woman in the picture is holding. She operates a natural juice bar, making juices and shakes of all sorts of local fruits and vegetables - the type of thing you see all over Latin America - and in the Caribbean and Latin American neighborhoods of New York City. Lucuma has a soft, pasty texture, and Rich described as almost like a caramel pumpkin pudding or - and it looks like that when it's cut open. He said he's so addicted to it that he has to have some lucuma every day - and usually buys it in the form of an ice cream pop purchased from a street vendor!
So much of the produce looks just so gorgeous and tasty. This barrel of peppers, limes, tomatoes and ginger just exudes flavor!
More on Cuzco (a bit late...)
Oh, gee, time has flown. And ambitious as I sometimes am, I just didn't get back to talking about my wonderful visit to Peru - now almost two months ago.
As I've worked on this one, I realize why I stopped with the other... Blogspot must have a glitch and I can't upload more than one photo per post! So here's a great close up the wonderful varieties of corn you'll see...a nd I'll do another soon. I'll shortly be switching to a newer, faster computer and hope I'll have more success uploading more photos!
As I've worked on this one, I realize why I stopped with the other... Blogspot must have a glitch and I can't upload more than one photo per post! So here's a great close up the wonderful varieties of corn you'll see...a nd I'll do another soon. I'll shortly be switching to a newer, faster computer and hope I'll have more success uploading more photos!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Peru- Summer 2010
Wow - it's more than a year since my last post! I have about 4 drafts of posts I never published. Lesson: Keep 'em short and publish... just to keep the stream going.
But since last year, I've taken an amazing trip to Peru and had a varied and wonderful season of Noshwalks. I've been spending a lot of time recently building my Noshwalks Facebook page - please visit! - but neglecting my blog. So starting today, and over the next few days (and weeks?), I intend to add enough to the blog to make it a great destination!
You might wonder about my first choice of photos from Peru. Well, that's the first sight that caught my eye when I visited the wonderful San Pedro Market in Cuzco, the principal Andean city of Inca culture. The goal of my visit was, as I've done the past three years, to take a short break in one major place and get to know it as wellas possible within the constraints of time. Unlike my visits to Prague (2007), Antigua, Guatemala (2008) and Barcelona (2009), I didn't stay only in one place. This time I had a bit more time to visit, and so I arranged also to go to Machu Picchu (an absolute must for a first Peru visit), and I also built in 2 cooking classes. Starting with Antigua, my trips all have some sort of food theme.
I'm going to post this now. My next post will have lots of pictures!!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Barcelona
After spending a short, rich visit in Barcelona, the image that stays with me is of the incredible palette of fresh fruit that I saw in La Boqueria - the central market: whole fruit, fruit juices in various combinations, cut fruit, new fruits I'd never seen; fruits I'd seen before but never seemed quite as delicious as they looked here. Although Barcelona has its share of McDonald's, Burger King, Subways and even "Dunkin' Coffee" - I need to find out what's "wrong" with the word Donut so that it couldn't be used in Spain - my image of the locals is that they weren't eating as much junk food as they were fruit and, often, the beautiful breads whose aromas wafted through the streets of the Gothic Quarter near my hotel.
Prior to arriving, I'd signed up for a Gourmet tour that I hoped would be a Barcelona equivalent of my noshwalks, offering tastes-on-the-go. Alas, it was more of a gourmet history tour than an actual eating tour, although I did get a comprehensive map with all the places we visited listed - with photos, too - and I later found that the tour is on-line, so I could have done it myself. Oh well.
But since pictures speak 1,000 words, or however the saying goes, here are more pictures...
Prior to arriving, I'd signed up for a Gourmet tour that I hoped would be a Barcelona equivalent of my noshwalks, offering tastes-on-the-go. Alas, it was more of a gourmet history tour than an actual eating tour, although I did get a comprehensive map with all the places we visited listed - with photos, too - and I later found that the tour is on-line, so I could have done it myself. Oh well.
But since pictures speak 1,000 words, or however the saying goes, here are more pictures...
Sunday, June 14, 2009
A foodie wish list
Some random thoughts... It's been such a long time since I posted that I thought I'd job this quick list whlie I'm still trying to figure out why I'm having problems uploading photos. I did dip into the blogspot troubleshooting page and found out I'm not the only one to have this problem since the site was redesigned. But I haven't found a solution yet. What's weird is that I was able to upload 5 photos to one post - and then not again.
List by 2s....
1. Two cuisines I most want to get to know better: Philippine and Venezuelan
2. Foods I want to learn how to make well: sushi and Mexican mole sauces
3. Neighborhoods I want to spend more time exploring: area around Bronx hub; neighborhoods in East Bronx (including Parkchester) where new immigrants are settling
4. Current favorite "ethnic" fast-food places: Cachapas y mas in Inwood (which recently opened a 2nd outpost on Broadway near 177th Street and expanded its base restaurant) and Merit Food Palace in Jackson Heights (Bangladeshi and Himalayan (Tibetan and Nepali) foods
5. Current favorite Caribbean foods (after working on Noshnews): Trinidadian doubles and black cake, found on Church Avenue and surroundings in Brooklyn - Flatbush, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts
Blogspot won't let me post a photo!!!
List by 2s....
1. Two cuisines I most want to get to know better: Philippine and Venezuelan
2. Foods I want to learn how to make well: sushi and Mexican mole sauces
3. Neighborhoods I want to spend more time exploring: area around Bronx hub; neighborhoods in East Bronx (including Parkchester) where new immigrants are settling
4. Current favorite "ethnic" fast-food places: Cachapas y mas in Inwood (which recently opened a 2nd outpost on Broadway near 177th Street and expanded its base restaurant) and Merit Food Palace in Jackson Heights (Bangladeshi and Himalayan (Tibetan and Nepali) foods
5. Current favorite Caribbean foods (after working on Noshnews): Trinidadian doubles and black cake, found on Church Avenue and surroundings in Brooklyn - Flatbush, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts
Blogspot won't let me post a photo!!!
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