eating in brooklyn

So, a couple weeks back we were in NYC, doing a veritable walking food tour of the city, armed with suggestions from the trusty Serious Eats and Everybody Likes Sandwiches blogs.  I am not going to review the places we went, since I'm pretty sure Serious Eats has covered every place we went at some point.  I am simply going to tempt you with food photos and hopefully provide at least one idea for a place to stop next time you're in the Big Apple.  


Let's start in Brooklyn!  Bear in mind, I know there are more neighborhoods in each of the NYC boroughs--I'm just listing the places we managed to make it to!


Crown Heights

We stayed with our friend in this neighborhood and had a lovely breakfast at Carribbean restaurant Trini-gul.

a "double" from Trini-gul

I could eat doubles every single morning for breakfast.  The heavily seasoned chickpea stew glues two soft flatbreads together and fills my stomach with a satisfying ball of starch to start off the day right.  Pictured with authentic Brooklyn chain link fence.

Our last meal in New York was a memorable one.  A couple of days before we had passed on eating pastrami at Katz's Deli (the Lower East Side food tour coming soon!) in favor of wrapping up our trip with the pastrami at David's Brisket House & Deli.  I guess I will never (?) know what I missed by skipping Katz's, but I do know I was not disappointed at David's.  

a classic pastrami on rye with mustard from David's Brisket House

My eyes probably grew wide when the fellow assembling sandwiches pulled a huge hunk of fragrant meat from a steam tray and put it on the meat cutter, juice dripping off the edge of the table and onto a strategically-placed towel.  So tender, so fatty, so hard to forget.

Williamsburg

Sunday morning we made it out to the Brooklyn Flea at the East River Waterfront in Williamsburg.  There's also one in Fort Greene on Saturdays.  It was every bit the foodie haven that it had been advertised to be.  

pupusas from the Red Hook Vendors: pork "special" at left and chicken/cheese at right 

Matt, posing dutifully with watermelon juice from the Red Hook Vendors 

a fatty, crunchy (!) roast pork Porchetta sandwich 

for dessert: the "goodwich" from The Good Batch

I wanted so badly to have stroopwafels from The Good Batch, especially the peanut-butter-filled kind.  Somehow, even after we purchased an ice cream sandwich from that very stand, we failed to realize that it was indeed the stroopwafel place.  Oh, well.  They were probably out of them anyway and that would have just made me more crazy.

Not pictured (our camera battery died at dinner) is pizza at Forcella in Williamsburg.  Now, none of us ordered the montanara pictured in the Serious Eats review, but we did have a couple of the fried pizzas, and they were folded up and fried like calzones plus sauce, rather than flat as depicted.  We were confused, but no less satisfied.  

Coming soon: a pictorial food romp through Queens!

tv dinner

So, I've already missed my goal of blogging every day during break.  Last night the internet was out for awhile in the evening, and then I fell asleep on the (very orange) couch.  Oh well.

I had already enjoyed Makiko Itoh's Just Bento and Just Hungry websites, so when Serious Eats posted recipes from her Just Bento Cookbook, I was ready to jump on the chance to try some reliable and fairly simple Japanese recipes.  By the way, I just found out that Makiko lives what must be an amazing life split between Japan, Switzerland, and Southern France.  Wow.

My first foray into Just Bento recipes was Chicken Karaage - Japanese fried chicken.  I typically avoid frying foods at home, but this sounded too great to pass up.  Unfortunately for my health, but fortunately for my taste buds, this frying adventure led to several more fried dishes in the following weeks.

The recipe called for boneless chicken thighs, which I was unable to find, so I struggled with pulling the bones out of a package of thighs.  I do recommend using thighs, despite the hard work.  All the fatty strains liquefied and just made the already juicy dark meat even more succulent.  I opted to leave the skin off this time, but I'm sure my husband would have appreciated the inclusion of the skin.

The chicken karaage was meant to be a bento meal for the following day's lunch, but after our first bite, we couldn't stop eating until it was all gone.  Best TV dinner ever.

Chicken Karaage
from the Just Bento Cookbook by Makiko Itoh via Serious Eats

This recipe was intended for one serving for a bento lunch.  I quadrupled the recipe to use a 1-lb package of chicken thighs and it served two, although it could serve more if you are not as gluttonous as we were!  We dipped our chicken pieces in green onion sauce as we ate them, but I'd be interested to see what the texture would be like if I followed the directions and dipped them right after frying.

1 lb boneless chicken thigh, with or without skin, cut into 3–4 pieces  

4 tsp soy sauce (if you are not making the green onion sauce, increase to 2 tsp) 

4 tbsp sake 

4 tsp peeled and grated fresh ginger 

vegetable oil, for deep-frying 

8 tbsp cornstarch (or enough to cover chicken pieces)
handful green salad leaves or other vegetable

cooked short-grain rice

For the green onion sauce: 

4 tbsp rice vinegar 

4 tbsp soy sauce 

4 tbsp finely chopped green onion
Pinch sugar
A few drops sesame oil  

4 tsp peeled and grated fresh ginger

Combine the chicken, soy sauce, saké, and ginger. Let marinate for at least 10 minutes or overnight. (If you need to leave it marinating for more than 12 hours, omit the soy sauce and add it 10 minutes before cooking, or the salt will draw out too much moisture from the chicken and make it dry.)
 
Remove the chicken pieces from the marinade, drain, and coat in the cornstarch.

Heat 1 inch (2.5cm) of vegetable oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Test the oil temperature by putting a little of the cornstarch-and-marinade coating on the end of a wooden chopstick and dipping it into the oil. If the coating sizzles and turns brown immediately, the oil is hot enough. If the oil starts getting smoky, turn down the heat.

Fry the chicken pieces in the oil, turning once, until a deep golden brown. Drain well on paper towels.

To make the green onion sauce, combine all the ingredients in a small frying pan over medium heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Put the chicken pieces in the pan and toss to coat each piece with the sauce.

Let cool completely before packing into a bento box. Putting a layer of arugula or other salad leaves under the chicken enhances the color of the chicken and provides another texture in the bento.

Note from Serious Eats: You can cook chicken karaage the night before. If I’m making this for dinner, I usually set aside a few pieces for the next day’s bento. Chicken kara-age can be frozen uncooked and marinated, or cooked. To freeze it uncooked and marinated, put the chicken and marinade (excluding the soy sauce) into a freezer bag. Defrost in the refrigerator in a bowl, adding the soy sauce before frying. Cooked frozen pieces can be defrosted in the refrigerator, then crisped up for a few minutes in a toaster oven. I don’t recommend defrosting cooked pieces in a microwave, since this will make the chicken tough.