Food tourism: New York City

I had the pleasure of a weekend trip to NYC last weekend. Having been previously with my wife and done the usual tourist stuff, I decided this time to do some more experience-type-food-tourism stuff, which turned out to be really nice! As you can see from the maps, they were all highly reviewed places, so a good weekend eating!

Breakfast: Buttermilk Channel

Sunday morning I trekked across town to Brooklyn with some friends to this place - clearly a hip and in-demand place as once again, there were queues of people out the door and a waiting time of about an hour (luckily we had a local friend who had headed down early to put our names on the list!). I had the french toast with a side of bacon and sausage - it was both a big portion and pretty indulgent (as I was told by the waitress before ordering!) it came with a bourbon and pecan sauce and the cream, and was delicious. Bottomless coffee as standard too.

Coffee: Stumptown Coffee (ACE Hotel)

First thing I wanted to find on the Saturday morning was a good coffee - so I did some quick googling and this place ticked both boxes of being highly recommended and fairly central.

I got there and the queue was out the door (surely a good sign) - the coffee was good, but honestly, being spoilt for choice for good coffee where I am (I work in Fitzrovia, London, which has an abundance of great coffee places) it didn't seem out of the ordinary.

The best part about the place was that it was attached to the lobby of a fairly hipster hotel (Ace hotel, 29th Street) and the lobby had free wi-fi and loads of comfy seating (although it filled up pretty quickly too) so was perfect to sit, relax and use the wifi to plan the rest of the day's food.

I ended up stopping by here a few times through the weekend to chill out and use the wifi.

 

Pizza: Prince St Pizza

This one was recommended by Kenji Lopez-Alt as the best pizza slice in the city, so I made the trek south to try it, and it was good!

Not much to be said, its a decent square slice of pizza with thick, rich red tomato and white homemade mozarella and a generous helping of peperoni.

BBQ: Mighty Quinns

Saturday evening I went out for dinner with friends again, and BBQ seemed like a good idea - a quick Google search later, and Mighty Quinns looked like a good choice (from the reviews on Google Maps). And apparently it is currently considered to be the best BBQ in NYC and the place that put New York on the map in terms of BBQ joints.

It was decent - the pulled pork and brisket both very good, and as you'd expect for slow smoked BBQ meat - disappointingly they had run out of their beef ribs, which I would have liked to have tried, but good all round. Their sides, including the buttermilk brocoli were all excellent too - and a decent selection of American craft beers.

Mastering shortbread (brown butter shortbread recipe)

I have always been a fan of eating shortbread. Well, good shortbread anyway.  Honestly, I can't remember what started me off on this latest quest - I think it was maybe just browsing some recipe books and it put me in the mood to give it a shot.

I don't normally cook that many sweet things, possibly cookies and brownies aside, and have never attempted shortbread before, but a month or two back I suddenly decided on a whim to give it a go.

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I started off using the recipe in Ruhlman's Twenty , which is as follows:

• 225 grams plain flour
• 170 grams butter
• 100 grams caster sugar

(and to be honest, whilst there has been some variation in quantities throughout the experiments, this is pretty much spot on as to my final ratio of the parts)

He advised that the most important thing about making good shortbread was the quality of the ingredients, which makes sense being as its such a simple combination of three ingredients.  What followed was me spending several hours reading about butter. And I am speaking literally. I spent at least three hours reading about butter online.

Michael Ruhlman recommended using cultured butter if you can get it, so I went about trying different butters - the first two I tried were cultured, but honestly I didn't see that much of a noticeable difference in real terms - I then tried a few high-end British salted butters (cultured butter is more of a French/European thing, most English butter isn't cultured).


After a while of variations - all of which predominantly turned out very tasty - I still wasn't super impressed with the quality.

One day, for no particular reason that I can remember, I thought to myself, why not try browning the butter first and using that for my shortbread. This turned out to work well.  Maybe it wouldn't impress shortbread purists, but it works for me. So here it is..

Ingredients

• 1/3 teaspoon fine salt (I started using 1/2 teaspoon in my firstbatch, but it was ever so slightly too salty for my taste, although still very edible - so adjust this to taste) 
• 200 grams plain flour
• 20 grams cornmeal (if you want, just replace this with more plain flour)
• 100 grams white caster sugar
• 170 grams brown butter (butter will reduce in the browning process, so you probably need to start off with something like 220 grams butter to be sure)

Method

1. Brown your butter - this is a simple process, chop it up and chuck it into a pan (ideally a stainless steel or something where you can clearly see the colour of the butter throughout the process) and melt it over a gentle heat - once melted, it will start to turn a golden brown and will start to smell awesome (more so) and kind of nutty, as it starts to brown, keep stirring it to make sure the sediments don't burn 
2. Transfer your molten brown butter to a bowl to cool and set (I transfer it to a bowl on top of a digital scales, so I can get the required 170 grams I need later.
3. Once set, cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer, ideally with a paddle attachment if you have it (this is just for ease really)
4. Once creamed together and looking light, add in the flour, cornflour and salt - mix until combined
5. At this point we are freestyling, if you have a pan or something you want to put it in, then chuck it in, and slam it in the oven at about 160 (fan oven) for about 20minutes, or until lightly browned - What I do at this point is normally roll into a tube shape, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge to cool. Once cooled, it's easily sliced into disks that can be lay on a baking tray for consistent size/appearance biscuits.

Recipe: Autumnal Sausage & Apple Pie

Earlier in the autumn, I was feeling particular autumnal, and was looking for something apt to cook one weekend and for me, sausages and apples are pretty autumnal.

So I decided to put them in to a pie. Pies are one of those things, much like casseroles, that are pretty easy to do. They are largely formulaic to the point of being boring (if it wasn't for the fact that they taste great that is!) - that’s not to say they cant be experimental, or wacky, more that if you have a solid ingredient base, then you really can't go wrong. In this case, sausage and apple being a tried and tested pairing, it was just a case of going through the motions and slapping it in some pastry.

Once again, I didn't make the pastry myself - its something I neither have the time, or any real great inclination to get involved with. Shop bought ready-to-roll works fine for my pies, and I just let the filling do all the hard work.

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Anyway, as I said, its a pretty formulaic thing - Start with a savoury base using butter and some aromatics (in this case, as often, leeks), then add some flour and a bit of flavour (whether it be tomato purée for a red meat casserole, or something else - this time wholegrain mustard, because I love mustard and pork), add the primary filling then cover with stock (or other flavoured liquids such as alcohol - even water will work though), reduce and then bang into a pie!

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Ingredients

• 10-12 sausages (judging by the size of your pie)
• 1 large apple (I have cooked this twice - the first time I used two apples, and it was just a touch too apple-y for my liking, so reduced the second time around), roughly chopped
• 1 large tablespoon butter
• 1-2 tablespoons of plain flour
• 1 large leek
• Pastry (make your own or shop bought)
• 150ml cider (I do this by eye - I bought a normal sized bottle of cider, but guess it was something like 100-150 ml I added)
• 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard 
• 200ml stock (vegetable, chicken, whatever. Cubes are fine)

Method

Pre-heat the oven according to your pastry - the filling will be cooked by the time it hits the oven, so we are just heating and cooking the pastry.

1.  Cook the sausages - either in the oven or grill, pan
2. Whilst cooking, melt the butter in a heavy frying pan and cook the leeks with a generous pinch of salt until soft and starting to brown
3. Add the chopped apples and heat for a few minutes
4. Add the plain flour and stir through to bring together the juices
5. Add the mustard and stir through to form a paste with the leeks
6. Once the sausages are cooked, add them and any juices to the pan and stir through to mix together
7. add the stock and the cider to the pan, and simmer gently on a medium heat to reduce - once reduced to a pie like thickness (well, a bit less viscous actually, as it will continue to thicken whilst cooling) take off the heat and leave to cool
8. Put together with your pastry and slap in the oven to cook. Serve with other vegetables, mash, whatever..

Beef rib casserole

Having discovered the value of beef short ribs, whilst shopping for the weekend roast I took the opportunity to grab some more from the supermarket meat counter.  The meat is cheap and its marbling makes it fantastic for slow cooking - this dish took less than 10 minutes prep time and then sat in the oven all afternoon and turned out pretty great.

(If anyone can teach me how to take a good photo of what is essentially a mush of vegetable casserole and a lump of meat then please do!)

If I'm honest, it was a fairly random, BBQ inspired casserole, whilst distinctly trying not to taste like BBQ.  What I mean is, the ingredients are really just a combination of my usual BBQ ratatouille and short beef ribs, but no BBQ rubs/spices/flavours.  As you would expect with the level of marbling in the meat, after slow cooking the meat fell off the bone and was incredibly soft - I could literally cut the meat with a spoon.

Ingredients

• 1 beef short rib (just under 500g, served two people)
• 1 tablespoon of mustard
• 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
• 250ml stock (vegetable/beef/whatever)
• 1 onion
• 1 aubergine
• 1 courgette
• 1 clove of garlic
• butter for cooking onions
• salt and pepper for seasoning
• 400gram tin of chopped tomatoes

Method

1.  Chop the onion and garlic and cook over a medium heat in the butter, untill soft (5 mins or so)
   
   
2. Whilst the onions are cooking, chop the aubergine and set aside (on a plate/kitchen towel etc) and salt liberally - this is just to draw out the moisture and bitterness - we will wash this off later
   
   
3. Next chop up the courgette
   
   
4. Once the onions are soft, stir in the tomato puree and mustard and cook for another minute or two
   
   
5. Now quickly throw the rib into the pan and brown it
   
   
6. Wash the aubergines in cold water, layer them in the bottom of a casserole dish and then sit the rib(s) on top
   
   
7. add the chopped tomatoes to the pan with the onions etc, mix through to de-glaze the pan, then pour the tomato mix over the rib in the casserole dish
   
   
8. Cover and cook in the oven at 140 degrees for 4 hours or so, serve with mash, crusty bread, or whatever!

BBQ beef short ribs

We recently celebrated older boy's birthday, and as part of celebrations we had both sets of grandparents over for another BBQ.  Once again, another opportunity to experiment, so this time I included beef short ribs - I'm not sure that I had ever tried beef ribs before, but having heard some good things I thought they could be good. The meat is great value - Waitrose sells it on their fresh meat counter at just under £7 a kilo, and you get a lot more meat on the rib than you do with normal pork ribs.


I followed a fairly simple, time-honoured BBQ pattern - dry-rub + slow cooking. The dry-rub wasn't anything special, just a few simple spices, but it worked well.

Ingredients

• American style yellow mustard (probably a tablespoon or two, but its just got to be enough to coat the ribs)
• 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt (sea salt or something similar)
• 2-3 short beef ribs (obviously cook more if you want more! but you might need more dry rub if you do)
• salt and pepper 

Method

1. Mix the sugar & spices in a bowl until combined
   
   
2. Coat the ribs in the yellow mustard, it doesn't have to be thick, just make sure it is coated evenly across
   
   
3. apply the dry rub to the ribs - rub/pat to apply evenly
   
   
4. I cheated the slow cooking, by pre-cooking them in the oven - I popped them in the oven at 110 degrees centigrade, for about 3 hours or so.  I sat the ribs on a rack sitting in the roasting tray, adding water to the roasting tray (not so much that it touches the meat) and then place a foil tent over the top of the ribs
   
   
5. When I was then BBQ-ing, I moved the ribs to the cooler side of the grill (indirect heat) and cooked them there with the rest of the food for about an hour or so (I had smoking chips on the BBQ too)

Sticky BBQ chicken

Last weekend was Fathers Day here in the UK, so we decided to have a family BBQ (reasoning I like to BBQ, I had a decent box of craft beers to drink and it was warm weather)

I did a few things, a standard pulled pork & coleslaw, burgers (I always enjoy burgers, and Tescos have started selling brioche burger buns again, so was a no brainer), chicken legs with oregano/sumac (this is SeriousEats fault - I happened to read a recipe they had about grilled chicken with za'atar which was basically sumac plus some other herbs, so when I then saw the sumac in the supermarket I impulse bought some) - but to be honest, it was a little bit of a let down.  The pork wasn't as good as my previous outing (I'm putting it down to a worse piece of meat) and the chicken was a little overdone. However, the one highlight was a BBQ chicken experiment.

I didn't really put any thought into it, I just thought I would slap some dry rub and BBQ sauce on some chicken legs and leave it at that - and they came out better than I expected.

They had a good contrast of the standard sweet/smoky BBQ flavour you would expect, plus a little heat and the deep red, sticky effect you have with good BBQ wings (these were legs though).


There are two elements, to it - one is a basic update to my last BBQ sauce (although either would work) and my latest dry-rub, which is pretty basic, but can be used on pretty much anything (as I have said before, stick it on potato wedges etc). The key is to apply the rub to the chicken before grilling, then 10 minutes or so before they are ready to come off, liberally brush the legs with the BBQ sauce and grill further - This will thicken up the sauce and give it the sticky consistency, but applying the sauce at the start of cooking will just result in burnt sauce.

BBQ Sauce - Ingredients

• 2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons american mustard (like Frenchs)
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• couple dashes hot sauce (something like Franks Hot Sauce)
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 3 tablespoon cider vinegar
• salt & pepper seasoning
• 250ml ketchup

1. Again, really simple - stick all the ingredients except the ketchup into a saucepan and mix and then bring to a simmer
   
   
2. Add the ketchup and a tablespoon or two of water and simmer for 30minutes or so - or until the sauce is reduced to a BBQ sauce like consistency

Dry rub

Dry rubs are really simple, just get all the ingredients and mix them together. They can happily last a few months in a jar so will last the summer - although this quantity is reduced - this probably covers a medium piece of pulled pork (1-2 kg) and 8 chicken legs or so.

• 1 1/2 tablespoon coarse sea salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 tablespoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/2 tablespoon chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional - adjust according to how hot you like)

Recipe: Chicken nuggets & beans

Having moved on from perfecting my grilled cheese, I have a new food obsession: Southern fried chicken.  To be honest, it is something I have thought about for a while, but have always skipped making it on account of not having a deep fat fryer (and generally not wanting to deep fry things).  However, last weekend, I was planning on making some baked beans with my older boy and suddenly thought maybe we should also make some chicken nuggets. I then thought, why not make chicken nuggets but trying to get a similar taste/texture to southern fried chicken?

Now, there are two elements to the experiment:

1. Making up a recipe for the batter/seasoning
   
   
2. Finding the best non-deep frying alternatives

Plus, there's the baked beans.

KFC style chicken nuggets

I guess I should clarify that the title is probably more aspirational (kind of anyway, really we are aiming for much better than KFC, plus healthier) - also, as mentioned above, we were free-styling with this one and will be a work in progress)

Ingredients

• 400 grams chopped chicken breast
• 300ml buttermilk
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal/polenta (can be swapped for flour)
• 1 teaspoon mixed italian herbs (can be swapped for just one tablespoon of dried oregano, basil & thyme)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• vegetable oil for frying (if you are frying)

Method

1. Leave the chicken to rest in a bowl with the buttermilk - I put mine in the buttermilk first thing in the morning before cooking in the evening, but if you don't have time then just stick them in the buttermilk whilst you prepare the rest of the ingredients
   
   
2. Mix the dry ingredients together in another bowl, add a tablespoon of the buttermilk to the dry mix and stir through - this is to achieve that nobbly type texture that you often get on KFC (see the picture above of the coated chicken), and I got this tip from Kenji at the FoodLab (although also apparently a known technique) - the alternative technique suggested to achieve this effect is to double-dip the chicken (buttermilk, roll in batter, dip in buttermilk then back in the batter).
   
   
3. Cook the chicken - I tried both shallow frying and oven baking:
   
   Shallow fry - This was the first approach I tried, the problem was I was too conservative with the oil, and the chicken was sticking to the pan a bit, which resulted in a lot of the batter falling off every time I had to scrape it up to turn over.  I think the recommended amount is about one inch of oil.  The chicken tasted good, and the batter had a good oil-y texture, but  still seemed too fried for me.
   
   Oven bake - The second half of the batch went on a very lightly oiled baking tray in the oven, at about 180degrees (fan oven), cook until the chicken is cooked (I think it was probably about 20 minutes for me).  The batter remained intact, and the seasoned batter tasted good, but it wasn't the texture (or appearance) of fried chicken.
   

It largely tasted pretty good, and went down well, but in my opinion it needs a few tweaks:

• It tasted too oregano-y - I will keep some Italian herbs in the mix, but probably reduce it
• There wasn't enough black pepper.  Pepper is a big part of normal KFC type seasoning, and whilst I didn't want to replicate it completely, it needed more

My next experiment will be an updated batter, used with chicken legs but cooked on the BBQ - The BBQ seems to be pretty good at keeping chicken legs juicy, which I am hoping will provide more moisture to the batter without needing a tonne of oil.

Baked beans 

In our house, we actually call these "tomato beans" - because if you are familiar with "Reasons my kid is crying", we feared that if we called them baked beans, and then the boys ate them, they may take a grievance with the fact that they aren't actually the baked beans they might expect.

And honestly, there isn't really any recipe/reason to this one. Its just tomatoes and beans, then anything we decide to throw in.  But here is more or less what we put in the last batch (which went down well, including with my wife - which made me think they would actually go down well as a side at our next BBQ):

Ingredients

• 400 gram tin of tomatoes (preferably whole, but doesn't matter)
• 400 gram tin haricot beans
• punch of sugar
• smoked sweet paprika
• dash of balsamic vinegar
• tomato purée
• squirt tomato ketchup (optional - this is just for fun)
• any other spices/herbs you want

Method

1. First step is what we call "messy hands" - jam the tomatoes into a bowl and squash them all up (this is why we use whole tomatoes - its more fun for the boy to squash them)
   
   
2. Add the rest of the ingredients - this is a fun one to cook just because its all done by taste really, and the boy gets to taste the ingredients as we add them in and taste the work in progress as we go
   
   
3. Purée the tomato sauce in a blender/food processor
   
   
4. Add the tomato and beans to a pan, simmer on the hob until heated through