I planted an herb garden today.

I was planning on going to Home Depot, but decided to support a local business, Gowanus Nursery, which is a three minute walk from my apartment.

The ladies who work there were not to my liking. They were weird. I don’t know how to explain their weirdness, except compare it to the public school librarians I’ve dealt with in my youth. Maybe it’s the lack of proper customer relations. No one ever came up to me and asked me if I needed help and when I went to pay the lady said, “That’s all?” like I was a child trying to buy one stick of gum. Maybe they are just socially awkward and care about plants more than they care about people. Anyway, the nursery was very cute and had lots of interesting plants.

I picked up two basil plants, thyme, sage, dill and rosemary. (Total $26.01 with tax)

I am not a gardener. My mom had a green thumb and plants were her favorite hobby. She managed to grow dozens of orchids in the greenhouse my dad built for her. She could grow cucumbers, tomatoes, figs, blackberries, chives, strawberries, various kinds of mint (which she used to barter with in Chinatown!), Vietnamese basil, and some other Vietnamese herbs that you are hard pressed to find, even in NYC and whose names I don’t even know. Even some Asian vegetables (like bitter melon, which is probably the only ingredient I can’t stand). I would constantly find her outside, bent over in sweatpants and would go up to her and poke her in the butt cheek and say “farmer butt” (I wasn’t a toddler, I was a teenager). She attempted to get me into gardening, but I was always more interested on what was on tv or the Turbo Graphix. So I can tell you the secret code to unlock the Princess for Ordyne but don’t know what the hell a perennial is.

So I have a new backyard. And I spend money weekly on various herbs at the supermarket and I don’t even use all of them up (I don’t know why they sell such large quantities. I mean, I don’t need a pound of dill for $2, can’t you just sell me a large handful for $.50?)

So I’m pretty shitty at gardening mainly because I’m lazy and half-assed. I hope I put them in the right place for enough sunlight. I hope the soil is okay and that I planted them far enough apart. If any knowledgeable gardeners are reading, I’d like your advice.

Also, a bird just shit on my computer screen while I was writing this. Everyone’s a critic.

Lately, brunch has been a big bummer. Don’t get me wrong, I believe it should be one of the most revered meals of the week. You can choose breakfast food, lunch food, or something in between, plus, drinking is actually encouraged. It is more or less a perfect meal.

But lately, restaurants have had a massive amount of suck-age when it comes to this fantastic meal. If waiting 45 minutes for a meal with a blinding hangover headache doesn’t deter you, the fact that once seated, you’ll be given the check before you’re half way through you meal might. I thought at first it was just the trendy neighborhood I live in, where the combination of youth, drinking and disposable incomes translated into long lines and rushed service. Even with a rather large variety of restaurants to choose from, it was a mostly unpleasant experience. Recent forays into the city and and other parts of Brooklyn have unfortunately let me to believe that this is a prevalent phenomenon.

Once you finally get a seat, coffee, and alcoholic beverage of choice, looking at the brunch menu has become a little disappointing as well. It seems like most places are catering to the lower common taste denominator. Biscuits and gravy are good, but should they be so ubiquitous that even the Mexican joint serves them at brunch? And I’m a big fan of eggs Benedict, and admire creativity with the choice of “toppings” served with a poached egg, but how come this often translates into stinginess. Last Sunday I tried a French place in Carroll Gardens, and I won’t go into details, but calling what I had “eggs Benedict” was certainly a misnomer.

A few months ago, I started getting wise. Most brunch items are easy to make at home, and you can linger over your meal, without having someone hovering over you waiting to collect the check. Here are some tips to enjoy a brunch at home.

DRINKS: Of course, bloody Mary’s are the way to go, and most people are really partial to their favorite preparation, so I won’t go into how I prefer mine. Mimosa are also easy to make, as are Screwdrivers. But if you want to switch it up a bit, here are some ideas to try:

• White Port and Seltzer
• Lillet, Seltzer and a splash of Citron
• Faux Sangria, red wine and oj
• White wine, seltzer and a splash of pom juice

THE OVEN: Use the oven, the rule of thumb should be, the more people you serve, the more you should use your oven. Tray pans of potatoes (chunks tossed in spices and roasted are easy and delicious), bacon, sausage evenly cook decent amounts for a crowd. Eggs cooked in toast (or a large hollowed out foccocia), Swedish oven pancakes and french toast “casserole” are other ways that keep you from having to do made-to-order of these brunch staples.

LUNCH ITEMS: I usually like to make at least one lunch salad, sometimes two. A nice green salad with lots of herbs (parsley, mint, tarragon) cut into it. Cantaloupe with green onions, rice vinegar and slivered pepperoni. Non-mayonnaise macaroni salad works too.

The more options the merrier. And the best part about it is that you get to spend quality time with the people you’re brunching with, truly worth the effort.

I went to check out Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in Union Square on Friday after getting my hair did. Instead of me ranting and bitching to you at length, I’ll just say that both experiences were very unpleasant and I didn’t even buy anything at either store. Whole Foods in Manhattan is a total rip-off compared to their Long Island locations (the Union Square olive bar was $9.99 / lb compared to $6.99 / lb at their Jericho location). I highly advise against going to both Union Square supermarkets unless you like dealing with crowds and long lines. Which, surprisingly, a lot of people don’t seem to mind.

I went back to Fairway today and bought that goose fat.

An update on the Fairway olive bar: Correcting my earlier post, their olive selection is more like 25-30 different kinds of olives. The best part is that you get to sample them! No one yells at you! You don’t even have to ask! Just pick away! You can stand there all day and just eat olives! This is a smart idea on their part because unlimited, unsupervised sampling led me to spontaneously buy some atlas olives, which are massive and yield copious amounts of meat.

(Side story: There was this kid at the supermarket, probably around nine or ten years old, fucking around with his dad’s shopping cart. His dad was ignoring him and trying to pick out hams. The kid kept saying, “Dad! Dad! I have a farting car!” and then proceeded to make fart noises with his mouth as he pushed the cart around the meat department. I burst out laughing.)

For dinner I made fresh store bought pumpkin gnocchi and made my own sauce (garlic, button mushrooms, thyme, chicken stock, heavy cream). It would have been a perfect dish had I added bacon. It wasn’t a very Springtime dish (the gnocchi tasted like pumpkin pie), but it was delicious nonetheless. Especially considering I have extremely limited experience cooking Italian.

The restaurant called me (despite them being closed today) and want me to trail again tomorrow, so I’m really psyched about that.

And regarding the Food Network Awards, I have nothing to say. Maybe you do.

I had the oppurtunity to trail at a well-established restaurant in Carroll Gardens last week. They are famous for their beet salad with goat cheese ravioli (which I got to prepare and plate a few times) and slow rendered duck.

They should be famous for their quad pork dish: Pork stuffed with pork sausage, wrapped in caul (technical term for the fat netting they used all the time on the OG Iron Chef) and served with bacon fried rice. Bam!

I think I was looking at the Food Network all wrong. I had expected it to be like a supermarket: One stop shopping. Years ago, it used to be that if my supermarket didn’t have it, then fuck it, I didn’t need it and I’m not gonna go outta my way to get it. I’ve discovered that it’s not that there isn’t better food-based programming out there, it’s that I’ve been searching in the wrong place. If you want fresher, more esoteric ingredients then you are gonna have to go out there and search for them, right? Same with cooking shows.

I’ve been watching more Discovery Health and Discovery Home lately. Not all their cooking shows are great, but at least they are refreshing. These two channels put heavy emphasis on shooting and editing their cooking shows in a heavily food porn-ish way - which is, more often then not, annoying. I guess they figure creative editing will hold viewers attention.

Kylie Kwong: An Australian who does Chinese cooking. Almost all her dishes are lot more complicated and expensive then Ming Tsai’s. Also, she doesn’t explain her ingredients and steps very well - I guess this forces you to buy her books. The show seems to be more about the visuals. I will probably never make any of her dishes, but it’s still fun to watch.

License to Grill: Think a friendlier, black Bobby Flay meets a straight Michael Chiarello. Rob Rainford’s outdoor kitchen setup is nicer than my indoor kitchen (he’s got a fridge outside). He’s all about dry rubs on meat and even made nachos in a cast iron pan on the grill. I don’t really care for this show because I don’t cook large cuts of meat on the grill. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman and grilling is man’s work.

Healthy Decadence: Hosted by Devin Alexender, who reminds me of a less offensive, less hilarious Sarah Silverman. She does fresh, tasty, healthy cooking. So she’s basically Ellie Krieger (who hosts Healthy Appetite on the Food Network), except more personable. Then in contrast, a program about “super-obese” people came and it grossed Matt out so he had to change the channel.

Take Home Chef: This show blows. Curtis Stone is an Australian, B-version amalgamation of Jamie Oliver and Tyler Florence, except with a crappy haircut and bad highlights. He assaults random women in the supermarket and asks them if they will take him home so he can teach them how to a gourmet meal for their husbands (real progressive). He does almost all the cooking himself and the actual cooking poriton of the show is about five minutes. Lame.

Cookin’ in Brooklyn: Chef and host Alan Harding is a Carroll Gardens legend (he owns Schnäck and the Gowanus Yacht Club to name only a couple), so obviously I’m gonna love his show. He does casual, comfort cooking from the viewpoint of a trained chef. Basically, he’ll show you how to the make the best meat loaf and tell you why it’s the best. From the Discovery Home website: “‘I love onions and potatoes as much as I love truffles and foie gras,’ says Harding. His motto is ‘cooking should be fun, not complicated’.” I think one of the reasons I like this this show is because it’s just plain fun. Alan seems like a solid dude that you can grab a beer with. My only complaint is the scripted stuff they make Alan say. Oh, and the super lame theme song.

The Travel Channel not only has Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, but also Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman. I usually detest culinary travel shows, but I’d rather watch this white dude being forced to try aged tiger penis and live grubs in Malaysia than watch Giada eat an omelet and a fruit tart in Seattle.

Also, Mark Bittman has a new cooking show on PBS (WLIW 21 here). I haven’t seen it, but the New York Times gave it a pretty good review.

There’s a bunch more shows I have yet to see, like Chef Marcus Samuelsson (of Aquavit fame) in Inner Chef, so I’ll keep you updated . I opened up my nappy-headed horizons and look at the bounty of new-to-me cooking shows I found.

Star wipe and I’m out!

I made our first meal at our new apartment the other night. I can’t explain the zeal I got from cooking in a new place with a gas stove. Plus, I finally used my new Global paring knife which cuts through things like butter. Delicious, delicious butter.

I picked up some cheese from a shop called Stinky on Smith Street for a roasted beet and goat cheese salad. The frommagier recommended a goat cheese from upstate New York called Lively Run. I got the rose peppercorn flavored one. (You can see the specks in the photo above.) It was fantastic. Some of the best goat cheese I’ve ever had. It tasted fresh and green. And only $3.50 for a log!

The greens I used are watercress, which is totally different than the watercress I am used to eating: Long Island supermarket watercress has smaller, darker leaves and a thicker stalks - which makes it amazing in soups, but awkward in salads. I dressed the salad with fresh lemon juice and olive oil using my new Misto olive oil spritzer (basically a reusable Pam bottle, sans the chemicals).

Continue reading…

• Meyer lemons are available at Dean & DeLuca for $8 a pound. (!)
• Duane Reade sells those delightful Japanese treats that not just otakus love - Pocky.
• The organic market, Park, in Carroll Gardens refrigerates their tomatoes - wtf?!

I have yet to mention my enormous, unrelenting, unfaltering love for seafood. Combine that my new found obsession with French food and you get bouillabaisse - a dish I have eaten three times in last three weeks. Unfortunately, I feel self-conscious about taking photos of it with my crappy point and shoot camera with a flash in the kind of places that serve it. So here’s a photo I “borrowed” from the internet. It’s the best one I could find and it still doesn’t do it justice.

If you are unfamiliar, bouillabaisse is an uber-delicious cornucopia of various fish and shellfish and veg in a seasoned tomato based broth and served with rouille on toasted baguette slices. It’s the French version of the Italian based cioppino (which I’ve made at home a couple of times, despite the high cost). I think the broth in the bouillabaisse is more complex than the cioppino, but I’ve never had cioppino in a restaurant. The important thing is that I can cram as many different kinds of seafoods as possible into my gullet with just one dish.

You must understand that, for me, this is the food equivalent of Jenna Jameson or Pam Anderson or whoever the boys touch themselves to these days.

Matt and I went to Bouillabaisse 126 in Caroll Gardens yesterday for the last night of Dine In Brooklyn (B126 being the only participating restaurant in “Columbia Waterfront“). The restaurant is right next door to Schnäck and it’s backyard can be seen from our new backyard. C’est merveilleux! (That’s French for “fuckin’ awesome”.)

I’m on a mission to try the bouillabaisse at every restaurant in Brooklyn that serves it. Any other suggestions about good French eats in Carroll Gardens would be much appreciated, because there seems to be a wonderfully surprising amount of them.

Seafood, I love you.