Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
It was the weekend and I did weekendy stuff.
I had gone on Thursday to the Beacon Theater with my colleague R. to purchase tickets to see Elvis Costello there next month. (Squee!) It's across the street from Fairway, the market that makes me remember why I got into cooking. It is not really that far from my home, but it's gotten to be out of my general orbit, so I forget how much I like shopping there.
In the outside bargain area I found edibly ripe peaches and bags of red and yellow bell peppers quite cheap, plus huge beefsteak tomatoes, and inside I got some decent strawberries, two giant bunches of basil, two heads of garlic, cremini mushrooms, bocconcini, and pitted Moroccan olives, along with a couple of cute little hanger steaks.
Friday afternoon (following a much-needed pedicure) I set to work on the pesto. The basil was so sandy I had to soak and rinse it twice, like spinach, but it was lovely and fragrant. Then I cut the tip off a whole head of garlic and popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds. It came out perfect, still plenty of bite, but a little bit mellowed and very easy to peel. I chucked it all in the blender with generous amounts of Spanish olive oil and processed it down to about a pound of rich, green goo. At first taste, it was disappointing, until I added just about a quarter teaspoon of salt. My goodness, how it woke up! I am always amazed how the tiniest bit of salt will bring out other flavors.
So for dinner we had mezzi rigatoni with pesto, a stir fry of onions, cremini mushrooms, and yellow peppers with a bit of Worcestershire sauce, and steaks rubbed with dried Italian herbs, garlic powder, and a dash of wine vinegar. Mmmmm.
Emerson brought a baguette, along with a big bouquet of cream-colored roses with deep red interiors. (They were very striking, but too delicate for this weekend's heat, sadly.) I'd intended to make a fruit salad for our dessert, but he wanted to go out so we ended up at a diner with a chocolate malt for me and a root beer shake for him. These warm evenings it is really nice to sit at the outdoor tables and watch the Upper West Side happen around us.
The only other time I had been to visit his family, we had driven. This time we took the bus for an hour out of Port Authority, and his mom came to meet us in one of those odd suburban park-and-ride spots. It was behind a Wal-Mart where we spent a disorienting half-hour dwarfed by giant bargains before going to her house for an early dinner.
I had brought her some of my fresh pesto in a jar. With her limited English, I don't think she really understood how to use it, but she gamely dipped a finger in to taste it and carefully put it in the fridge. I believe it did its duty quite effectively, which was to convey the message that I am a nice girl who cooks.
Emerson had asked his mom to prepare this special dish called mulukheia. It's a leafy green vegetable that grows in between the cotton plants. To cook it, first you boil a chicken with onions to make the stock, then you chop up the leaves really finely and toss them into the boiling broth. You can eat the leafy broth as soup or pour it over rice, and then you sautee the chicken and have that with it. The rice was kind of like Rice-a-Roni, with some little vermicelli noodles in it, and there was a pretty normal green salad without dressing, just salt and pepper. I thought the mulukheia was too salty, but he said that is just his mom and not the dish itself. There was one other dish whose name I forget, but it was basically white beans in tomato sauce simmered with chunks of beef. It had no particular special flavor, but it was homey and nice. For dessert she made a creme caramel, which is apparently quite popular there. It was yummy, and I was not required to have more of the deadly Egyptian coffee or cigarettes.
Then we went to visit his dad in the nursing home. He actually seems more alert than when I saw him in the hospital last month, but he isn't doing well. I don't have much experience with stroke patients, so I have no idea what to expect, but he is clearly in decline.
When we got back to the city, we wandered down to 32nd Street to have dessert (OK, our second dessert) at Koryodang, a Korean bakery cafe and bubble-tea joint that has a weird futuristic vibe to it, and is filled with ultra-stylish Asian teenagers and their very sleek electronics. We shared a big snow ice with red bean paste, strawberry ice cream, and a pile of assorted fruits, and had hot ginger tea, which was strong and sweet with slices of fresh ginger and three pignoli nuts floating on top like some sort of girlified Sambuca alle tre mosche.
Sunday morning we finally got to eat the peaches and strawberries for breakfast, and for lunch I made a big insalata caprese with the tomatoes, mozzarella, red peppers, and olives. I feel so virtuous all stuffed with fresh produce!
We were originally supposed to meet Badverb and Nounsgood for lunch at the Boat Basin Cafe and then a trip to the Met, but everybody was getting stressed out and we decided to postpone our joint activity. We decided to go the museum on our own anyway, because the Hatshepsut exhibit is only there for a few more weeks. I didn't fully understand the documentation behind it, but the artworks were extremely powerful in depicting her evolution from queen and regent to full-fleged pharoah. It was fascinating to get Emerson's schoolboy legends to go with the more formal explanations of the exhibit. I always enjoy shows that have a more intimate scale like this one. You could really take it in with a couple of hours of concentration and get the overall idea of it. That is a big change from the Met's main Egyptian collection, which is just too overwhelming to comprehend.
Emerson went home to work on his current schoolwork, which is a really challenging financial management class, and I am now collapsed on the couch and wondering where I will discover the engergy to go to work tomorrow at any decent level of productivity.
God bless my air conditioner!
I had gone on Thursday to the Beacon Theater with my colleague R. to purchase tickets to see Elvis Costello there next month. (Squee!) It's across the street from Fairway, the market that makes me remember why I got into cooking. It is not really that far from my home, but it's gotten to be out of my general orbit, so I forget how much I like shopping there.
In the outside bargain area I found edibly ripe peaches and bags of red and yellow bell peppers quite cheap, plus huge beefsteak tomatoes, and inside I got some decent strawberries, two giant bunches of basil, two heads of garlic, cremini mushrooms, bocconcini, and pitted Moroccan olives, along with a couple of cute little hanger steaks.
Friday afternoon (following a much-needed pedicure) I set to work on the pesto. The basil was so sandy I had to soak and rinse it twice, like spinach, but it was lovely and fragrant. Then I cut the tip off a whole head of garlic and popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds. It came out perfect, still plenty of bite, but a little bit mellowed and very easy to peel. I chucked it all in the blender with generous amounts of Spanish olive oil and processed it down to about a pound of rich, green goo. At first taste, it was disappointing, until I added just about a quarter teaspoon of salt. My goodness, how it woke up! I am always amazed how the tiniest bit of salt will bring out other flavors.
So for dinner we had mezzi rigatoni with pesto, a stir fry of onions, cremini mushrooms, and yellow peppers with a bit of Worcestershire sauce, and steaks rubbed with dried Italian herbs, garlic powder, and a dash of wine vinegar. Mmmmm.
Emerson brought a baguette, along with a big bouquet of cream-colored roses with deep red interiors. (They were very striking, but too delicate for this weekend's heat, sadly.) I'd intended to make a fruit salad for our dessert, but he wanted to go out so we ended up at a diner with a chocolate malt for me and a root beer shake for him. These warm evenings it is really nice to sit at the outdoor tables and watch the Upper West Side happen around us.
The only other time I had been to visit his family, we had driven. This time we took the bus for an hour out of Port Authority, and his mom came to meet us in one of those odd suburban park-and-ride spots. It was behind a Wal-Mart where we spent a disorienting half-hour dwarfed by giant bargains before going to her house for an early dinner.
I had brought her some of my fresh pesto in a jar. With her limited English, I don't think she really understood how to use it, but she gamely dipped a finger in to taste it and carefully put it in the fridge. I believe it did its duty quite effectively, which was to convey the message that I am a nice girl who cooks.
Emerson had asked his mom to prepare this special dish called mulukheia. It's a leafy green vegetable that grows in between the cotton plants. To cook it, first you boil a chicken with onions to make the stock, then you chop up the leaves really finely and toss them into the boiling broth. You can eat the leafy broth as soup or pour it over rice, and then you sautee the chicken and have that with it. The rice was kind of like Rice-a-Roni, with some little vermicelli noodles in it, and there was a pretty normal green salad without dressing, just salt and pepper. I thought the mulukheia was too salty, but he said that is just his mom and not the dish itself. There was one other dish whose name I forget, but it was basically white beans in tomato sauce simmered with chunks of beef. It had no particular special flavor, but it was homey and nice. For dessert she made a creme caramel, which is apparently quite popular there. It was yummy, and I was not required to have more of the deadly Egyptian coffee or cigarettes.
Then we went to visit his dad in the nursing home. He actually seems more alert than when I saw him in the hospital last month, but he isn't doing well. I don't have much experience with stroke patients, so I have no idea what to expect, but he is clearly in decline.
When we got back to the city, we wandered down to 32nd Street to have dessert (OK, our second dessert) at Koryodang, a Korean bakery cafe and bubble-tea joint that has a weird futuristic vibe to it, and is filled with ultra-stylish Asian teenagers and their very sleek electronics. We shared a big snow ice with red bean paste, strawberry ice cream, and a pile of assorted fruits, and had hot ginger tea, which was strong and sweet with slices of fresh ginger and three pignoli nuts floating on top like some sort of girlified Sambuca alle tre mosche.
Sunday morning we finally got to eat the peaches and strawberries for breakfast, and for lunch I made a big insalata caprese with the tomatoes, mozzarella, red peppers, and olives. I feel so virtuous all stuffed with fresh produce!
We were originally supposed to meet Badverb and Nounsgood for lunch at the Boat Basin Cafe and then a trip to the Met, but everybody was getting stressed out and we decided to postpone our joint activity. We decided to go the museum on our own anyway, because the Hatshepsut exhibit is only there for a few more weeks. I didn't fully understand the documentation behind it, but the artworks were extremely powerful in depicting her evolution from queen and regent to full-fleged pharoah. It was fascinating to get Emerson's schoolboy legends to go with the more formal explanations of the exhibit. I always enjoy shows that have a more intimate scale like this one. You could really take it in with a couple of hours of concentration and get the overall idea of it. That is a big change from the Met's main Egyptian collection, which is just too overwhelming to comprehend.
Emerson went home to work on his current schoolwork, which is a really challenging financial management class, and I am now collapsed on the couch and wondering where I will discover the engergy to go to work tomorrow at any decent level of productivity.
God bless my air conditioner!