Weekend Evaluation: the long weekend was not long enough

The past couple of years we've had people over for Gretchen's birthday.  I usually try to take a dish or ingredient that she's really liked over the past year and put some kind of creative spin on it.  This time I started with the short rib croquette and worked backwards, and went with a German-leaning menu again (after the Alsatian/Germanic food last year: tarte flambe/sweet potato spaetzle).

Although I wanted the food to be good, I also really want to make sure I can hang out when we have friends over.  The past couple of times we've had people over I feel like I spend too much time in the kitchen, and I think from that standpoint dinner was a success. 

The food was okay, definitely not great, but scaling to larger quantities is not something I'm used to.  So to feel like things weren't horrible and my planning was good; it went okay.


Since we had all week off, I'm including two weekends, I just didn't have time to finish the post last week.  We're also coming up on the end of the normal CSA share - the final share is this week- and then the winter share starts.  Get ready for rutabaga.

Weekend Wrap-Up (August 21-22)

Fried Bananas

The weather wasn't so great in NYC on Sunday, so Tom was a little more prolific in the kitchen. He made a lot of stuff, I took a lot of photos. So let's just get down to it, shall we?

Weekend Evaluation: I know I-tey food when I hear it - it's all them 'eenie' foods (aka 'His name's not Fellini, it's Jake')

I feel like I'm only cooking Italian food right now; kind of boring myself, but you don't want to get in the way of these ingredients.  In the summer I usually cook a lot of mexican too, but this year I'm in a Mediterranean rut - we need to have some sopes or something soon.    I guess I shouldn't complain, the next thing you know we'll only be potatoes, cabbage, and winter squash everyday.

Speaking of which - we did finally make it to the Red Hook carts this weekend, the papusa was pretty good and I got my hands on some chicharron and beef tendon tacos.  I do think I prefer Tortilleria Nixmatel.