A Finger in Every Pie

The Bread Bar at Tabla

At first I was at a complete loss as to how to write this post.  You see, our only digital camera is G's video camera.  So I lugged that giant with me in my purse, if you can imagine, out to dinner with four girlfriends last night.  And each time I aimed it at the plush and lovely restaurant setting, the delectable food, the fun drinks, the adorable wait-staff, the delightful friends -- it didn't work.  It stayed dark.  Way too dark.  I called G for a quick consult, and realized that it was basically just too dark in the restaurant to get a real picture.  G said there was probably a setting that we never use that would alleviate the problem, but at that point I was beyond experimentation and into my first passionfruit cosmo (which carries the embarrassing title of Lots of Passion.  Such a name causes a moment of unseemly coyness when ordering from the aforementioned attractive wait-staff).   In any case, I comforted myself with the fact that many a restaurant review is posted without photos -- and this is actually more of a restaurant anecdote than a review. 

So I have no pictures for you tonight.  But I do have a tale.  The Bread Bar is one of my favorite restaurants in New York -- and it's probably G's absolute one hundred percent favorite.  We don't go there often;  we reserve it for the occasional special evening, and so end up having a meal there perhaps twice a year.  But we love the Indian street-food menu.  Chef Floyd Cardoz seasonally rotates and reinvents both the Bread Bar's menu and the more formal yet extraordinarily creative Indian fusion cuisine upstairs at Tabla.  That too has been and still is wonderful, but truthfully we're hooked on the Bread Bar's fruity cocktails, hot cumin-spiced popcorn at the bar, and the ritual of sharing a mix of "small plates", "large plates" and luscious hot Indian-style breads -- nibbling the evening away with spicy food and spicier conversation. 

Last night's adventure was not without bumps in the road.  When I called Adrienne to make sure knew where the restaurant was, she reminded me that we'd been there for a drink late one night a few weeks ago.  "Yeah, it's the one next to that Potter's Field," she said.  "That field with all the rats."  What she's referring to is Madison Park, a nice little green space beautifully refurbished by the city several years ago.  It certainly spent a long time in a state of disrepair, but for several years grassy borders have been maintained and trimmed, paths have been paved, flowers have been planted, benches have been replaced, and many people who are still among the living spend their lunch hours there in good weather.  It's not quite the Jardin du Luxembourg, but it's really a fine little park for the neighborhood.  On our brief sojourn to the Bread Bar several weeks ago, Adrienne made us walk around the perimeter of the park, on the other side of the street.  I wasn't quite sure whether we were avoiding the souls of the undead or the rats that she insisted were rampant in the area.   I have to say that as a descriptor, the whole Potters' Field thing is vastly unfair.  Both Tabla and Eleven Madison Park, another of Danny Meyer's beautiful restaurants, are in the old Metropolitan Life building.  The glorious art-deco architecture of the building exterior has been preserved, and the interiors have been re-created as magnificent, soaring spaces where your senses dine on more than just food and drink.  In fact, they'd both be worth going to even just to look; even if you weren't going to eat and imbibe.  However, refraining from those activities would be rather a shame, and is not recommended. 

Susan and Lourdes were given confusing directions, but arrived in good time.  Some of the ambrosial house cocktails were ordered and served:  the Tablatini, a lemon-grass/pineapple infusion; Lots of Passion; the Kumquat Mojito, and the House Sidecar, made with pear cognac and other sumptuous ingredients.  Each one was extraordinary.  After toasts to birthday girl Marcela had been made, I explained the Bread Bar sharing ethos.  Everyone appeared enthusiastic -- at first.  Then they perused the menu.  "Well, I want this salad just for me."  "No-one else wants this dish?  I really want to try it."  And suddenly it seemed as if we would all be ordering separately.  This simply isn't done at the Bread Bar.  I wrung my hands and gnashed my teeth, but quietly -- not to attract attention or anything.  Suddenly, like a savior on the horizon, our waiter appeared.  As if the previous ten minutes had never even occurred, he explained that all dishes are meant to be shared, and that they're brought out in no particular order, but as each one is ready.   I looked at him and shrugged.  "I tried, Lord knows I've tried," I said.  And so began our many laughs of the evening.  Everyone ordered what appealed to them, but we all ended up eating from all the dishes, just as it should be. 

The first dish to arrive was a lightly spiced roasted beet salad, which was delicious, but perhaps not unlike a beet salad you might make for yourself.   Close on its heels, however, was the dark horse of the evening, a salmon ceviche that provided an arresting combination of flavors and textures.  It had zing, zip, tang, crunch and bite, all in and around silky slices of salmon.  I can't even begin to analyze what was in it other than some shreds of delicious crunchy root vegetable and peanuts, which proved an unexpected but perfect partnership.   Next up was a bowl of Sindi Sai Bhaji, a comforting, gently seasoned puree of vegetables and chickpeas.  Breads appeared, addictive cultural cross-overs:  a cheese-oozing kulcha, and a puffy sourdough naan.  Then plates of tried-and-true favorites came out -- huge, smoky tandoori shrimp with black pepper and coriander;  saag paneer pizza, a crunchy whole-wheat crust covered with a spinach/chickpea mix and topped with goat cheese, and finally the Bread Bar's signature chicken tikka, spiced marinated grilled chicken breast, which is served with a fresh green tangle of watercress and a luscious chutney --  definitely my pick for the best chicken tikka in NYC.  At this point we were well into delving for the dirt on current relationships, and dishing past amours.  We were also well into our second round of large drinks.  We shook our heads at the ghosts of our occasionally unpretty pasts, drank up, and kept nibbling.   Later we shared a delectable plate of tiny cookies, more to have something to put a candle in and sing a Happy Birthday for Marcela since none of us wanted much dessert by this point.  But the little sweets were irresistable: teensy macaroons and brown sugar bars not much bigger than dice, chewy chocolate buttons and chocolate chip bites, and a surprising cardamom oatmeal cookie.

Finally, sated with both comestibles and conversation, we ventured into the night.  It was cold outside, especially for March (we've been getting more snow in this month than during all the rest of the winter).  As I climbed into a cab with Adrienne, I noticed that she didn't say a word about Potters' Field or make any other unsavory references that might cast aspersions on where we'd just spent the evening.  Instead, she waxed appreciative of the marvelous food and drink, and we relived some of our best laughs as we sped uptown.  Such is the power of Girls' Night Out in the right place.

Tabla/The Bread Bar
11 Madison Avenue (at 25th St.)
New York, NY 10010
212-889-0667

Thanks, Jennifer!

I just received my lovely prize books in the mail -- and what a surprise indeed!  There were two!  I had known that I was one of the five lucky recipients for my entry in the Domestic Goddess' Fond Food Memories contest, but I had only thought to receive the coveted title The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen.  I opened the mailing envelope, and there to my surprise was also a copy of Are You Really Going to Eat That? Reflections of a Culinary Thrill Seeker by Robb Walsh.  I know I'm going to enjoy these -- many thanks to Jennifer and to Anchor/Random House.   

Up and Coming to a Blog Near You!

Whereas I notice that other bloggers sometimes take the weekend off, that's often my best time for posting.  During the week can be a bit difficult, what with the day and evening jobs and all.   I'm still finding my way with this baby blog;  I suppose it takes time to slip into the perfect blogging rhythm.

I'm going to have to figure out some time management, as there'll be good bit to post about in the next couple of weeks.  I've been dying to write about one or several of Danny Meyer's beautiful NYC restaurants, since I love them all -- and tomorrow night I'll be out with some wild women at one of my great favorites, the Bread Bar at Tabla, in honor of my friend the lovely Marcela's birthday.  Then my debonair brother-about-town and I have a couple of eating excursions planned.  The-birthday-celebrations-which-never-end are going to necessitate a trip to Chinatown and a visit to the Modern, Danny Meyer's newest creation. 

And then of course there are the cross-blog events.  Debbie from Words to Eat By is hosting Sugar High Friday #6, "Stuck on You", with the enticing theme of Caramel.  Entries are to be posted on Friday, March 18th.  Shortly thereafter, on or before March 21st,  entries for Moira's Comfort Me Competition (details to be found at Who Wants Seconds?) will be posted on participating blogs.  Directly on the heels of these two thrilling events is Is My Blog Burning? #13, entitled My Little Cupcake (or muffin), hosted by Maki at I was just really very hungry.   I think it's reasonable to expect that there will be a plethora of all kinds of lovely little cakes on our fave blogs on or around March 24th.    Sounds like there's going to be lots to cook, eat, and read in our food-blogging futures.  Stay tuned.

Recipes from Dinner for Five

Something like a Lamb Tagine (adapted from Nigella Lawson's Lamb Shank Stew)

4 Tbsp peanut or vegetable oil
3 1/2 to 4 lbs lamb shoulder (thick-cut shoulder chops with bone are fine)
2 onions
6 cloves garlic
Sprinkling of salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp dried red-pepper flakes
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. Turkish Seasoning 
Black pepper
1 tsp honey
1 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp Marsala wine
6 Tbsp red lentils
1/2 lb trimmed and cut carrots (as you like them for stew)
1/2 lb trimmed and cut green beans
2 zucchini, cut into 3/8 inch half-moons

Trim visible fat from the lamb, and cut into large chunks with bone.  Put 2 Tbsp of oil into a very large, wide, heavy-bottomed pan and warm over medium heat. Brown the lamb shoulder in batches and then remove to a dutch oven or other large heavy covered pot.

Peel the onions and garlic and chop fine.   Add the remaining oil to the pan and fry the onion-garlic mix until soft, sprinkling salt over to stop it from sticking.

Stir in the spices and season with some freshly ground pepper. Stir again, adding the honey, soy sauce and Marsala. Pour the sauteed spice/onion mix over the lamb chunks, deglaze the pan with some water or lamb broth if you have it and pour into the dutch oven with everything else.  Add enough additional cold water almost to cover, bring to the boil and then put a lid on the pan, lower the heat and simmer very gently for 1-1 1/2 hours, or until the meat is tender. Add the red lentils and carrots and cook for about 10 minutes longer without the lid.  Add the green beans and cook for another 10 minutes, or until the lentils have softened into the sauce, and the juices have reduced and thickened slightly. Add the zucchini, cook for a couple of minutes, and then turn off the heat and cover the pot.  Leave it alone for 10 minutes, to let the zucchini cook just by the heat of the stew.  Check for seasoning.

This is best made a day ahead.  The green beans and zucchini can be lightly steamed and added on the second day, if preferred -- this keeps them crisper and greener. 

Serves six.

Casbah Chicken

1/4 cup sherry or blood orange vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
Juice of one large or two small lemons plus grated zest (Meyer lemons work well here)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
1 Tbsp. Bed of Roses spice rub
2 tsp. Zatar
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 (4-pound) whole chicken, cut into pieces (giblets, neck and backbone reserved for another use)
chicken broth or water

Combine the vinegar, mustard, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, seasonings, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Put the chicken pieces in a large resealable plastic bag and pour the marinade in; seal the bag and toss to coat. Refrigerate, turning the chicken pieces occasionally, for at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Remove chicken from the bag and arrange the chicken pieces on a large greased baking dish. Roast until the chicken is just cooked through, about 1 hour. If your chicken browns too quickly, cover it with foil for the remaining cooking time. Transfer the chicken to a serving platter. Place the baking dish on a burner over medium-low heat. Whisk some chicken broth or water into the pan drippings, scraping up any browned bits on the bottom of the baking sheet with a wooden spoon and mixing them into the broth and pan drippings. Drizzle the pan drippings over the chicken, if desired, or use them as gravy for couscous, potatoes or rice.

Yogurt Salad

This is an amazingly simple and very refreshing salad.  I do urge you to try it -- it's one of those spur-of-the-moment inventions that turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts.  It makes an excellent lunch with a piece of good bread, and is a perfect accompaniment to kebabs, spicy stews, or casseroles like moussaka. 

3 small seedless kirby cucumbers (or 1 large English hydroponic one), peeled and sliced

2 medium ripe tomatoes, chopped

2 fat scallions, minced

1 cup plain yogurt (full-fat Greek is wonderful, but do what your diet allows)

salt and pepper to taste

Combine the vegetables and the yogurt.  Season to taste, but don't add salt until right before you eat it.  I often take this to work for lunch, but I always carry a separate twist of salt to sprinkle on right before eating -- otherwise the veggies leach out all their liquid, and the salad becomes watery and unappetizing.

Vary this with dill, cumin, mint or any other spices or fresh herbs you think would suit your meal.

Dinner for Five at Eight

For me:  “At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.”
                       - W. Somerset Maugham

For G:  "The best number for a dinner party is two - myself and a damn good head waiter."
                       - Nubar Gulbenkian (British oil tycoon and bon vivant, 1896-1972)

Last night we had friends over for dinner.  Not a big deal in most people’s lives.  But as you may have gathered from these pages, my darling G (whom I’m thinking about re-naming “Notorious G” for this blog – I don’t know, I just like the sound of it) is not one of your more social creatures.  We go where we need to go, do what we need to do…but for the sake of understatement, let’s just say that the word “party”, whether it refers to an event taking place on our turf or on someone else’s, does not strike joy into his heart.  “Dinner” is a fine word, as long as it refers to food that I’ve cooked for our own consumption in the privacy of our home. 

But there was no getting around it.  In the first place, I actually am a rather social creature.  And I do like to cook for people.  In the second place, we went to Nathalie and Josh’s for dinner a few weeks ago, and we were having them back over.  We’d had a good time at their house, and either a good time would be had at ours as well, or I was going to poach, pickle, batter and deep-fry myself in frustration.  It turned out that another friend was in town, the dashing Betty from San Francisco, and I invited her to come too. 

So that made three guests.  Five of us for dinner, in total.  No biggie, you say -- after all, read those food blogs out there.  Everyone’s always chatting about having had 8 people drop by unexpectedly on a work night, which impelled them to whip up such-and-such a little marvel with the stuff they had on hand.  Not to say that I couldn’t handle an impromptu soiree, but this particular one was planned. Truthfully, I was excited about our little dinner party, since it’s a bit of a rarity.  The down side was that we had to clean the house: rather a major undertaking since we’re both pack-rats, not fabulously well-organized, have too much stuff, and don’t love to clean.  Look, I enjoy cooking, okay?  Not everyone can be good at everything. 

I kept going back and forth about what I was going to make.  Nathalie had dropped a broad hint about wanting lamb, something I’m always happy to comply with, since I love lamb.  But Betty had once mentioned, long ago, that she hated lamb and never ate it.  I must have filed that away in the “what to make for a dinner party when Betty comes over” compartment of my brain since I remembered it.  Well, no solution here except to make lamb and something else, the something else being chicken.  Chicken is always the perfect fall-back choice on the multiple entrée menu. 

Although toying with thoughts of an Indian menu, based on Deb’s post of Saag Gosht, I eventually went with a vaguely Moroccan theme – Middle-Eastern food of any kind being one of my favorite things to cook.  I made baba ganoush, ruining my stove burners in the process of properly charring the eggplant, but it did come out with that great smoky taste.  And we had some matbucha, purchased at Fairway – a sort of Moroccan salsa.  A little veg platter, nice olives, and a hunk of Manchego cheese (I know it didn’t really fit in with the theme, but I had it in the house, and Spain is near Morocco) rounded out the pre-dining segment of the evening quite nicely. 

I made a lamb dish loosely based on Nigella’s lamb shank stew, which she seasons with a large quantity of cinnamon, as well as ginger, nutmeg, honey, and Marsala wine, among other things.  It’s a delicious dish, but slightly too sweet for me.  So I cut way back on the cinnamon and honey, added a fair amount of cumin, some delicious and addictive Turkish seasoning from Penzey’s, lots more garlic, a dash of tomato paste and some extra veg – carrots, green beans and zucchini.  I also used lamb shoulder instead of shank, since that was what looked good in the market.  It came out spicy, mellow, and mysterious.  Rich, complex flavors:  just a hint of sweetness, and a slightly smoky bite that heightened the lamb.  Exactly what I wanted for my dinner party. 

As for the spiced chicken, that cut-up bird marinated for 24 hours in Meyer lemon juice and rind, cilantro, garlic, olive oil, Bed of Roses spice blend and some Zatar, and then roasted to crispy goodness in a hot oven (I’ll post recipes separately, since this post is already a bit on the windy side). Couscous and my favorite quick salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, scallions and Greek yogurt completed Round II.   

Dessert was practically a meal in itself.  I had Chocolate Trianon cake in the freezer (thanks Bakerina!).  I had adapted the velvety vanilla ice-cream recipe from Falling Cloudberries via Moira for our ice-cream machine (somehow that didn't get in the photo).   A fruit plate of sliced mangos, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries was quickly assembled.  And I’d stopped off earlier in the day at Beard Papa and picked up a six-pack of cream puffs.  When I spread this sybarite’s buffet in help-yourself fashion on the table, Betty suggested that we pay homage by dancing around the desserts, which we promptly did for several minutes. Marvin Gaye’s "Let’s Get It On" was playing at the time and we rocked on.  The song suddenly took on multiple layers of meaning; it was all about dessert ("...understand me sugar...don't you know how sweet and wonderful life can be?") and yet so much more.  By this time, of course, the wine was kicking in nicely.   G and Josh left the dancing to the women, preferring to catch the incriminating moment on video; blackmail is so much easier that way.   This is why in the photo that begins the post, you see only Betty (red shirt), Nathalie (brown shirt) and myself (wine-colored shirt).  And not the most flattering pics, at that.

Back to Nubar Gulbenkian and Somerset Maugham: No headwaiters were necessary (I flatter myself, I know, but I’m pretty sure that G would rather have me than even the best headwaiter as the other party in a party of two…)  We all ate well, although not particularly wisely, and we all talked a great deal, if not necessarily wisely OR well – but we laughed long and loudly, put away a fair amount of wine (Sancerre, Cotes du Rhone, a nice Cab Sauv, and a delicious Pinot Noir from Oregon’s Willamette Valley) and went to bed feeling good about ourselves and the world.  That’s all I ask, really.