Forking Tasty

David Lebovitz’s Deep Chocolate

The Canadian is having a France fetish this year. She recently dug into David Lebowitz book “The Sweet Life in Paris”, which she loved. It inspired a test kitchen experiment that began with this chocolate delight pulled from the pages of his book. It ended with some mini cake experiments, molten chocolate and tickets to Paris held on Kayak. All in an evenings work. Look for it on a Forking Tasty Supper menu soon.

Best Wings in Brooklyn 2012

Last Saturday Anthony and I were privileged to be invited for our third year to the annual Best Wings in Brooklyn competition hosted at Red Star Bar. This year we took a different approach. We decided to get a little clever with how we showed you each wing we are about to critique. We wanted to give them all an equal chance to shine and to do that we needed to devise a way to put all the contestants on a level playing field. We thought our skewer idea was a pretty cool way to achieve this goal plus, it allowed us to create the awesome frankenwing lead image above.

Check out the run down…

Lil’ Tasties

Now that I’ve been married for a year, the questions about kids have crept back into the Sunday dinner conversation. Little hints pop up here and there like baby carrots in our salad or wine served from sippy cups. You know those subtle Italian and Indian parents, so gentle. Well, unknown to them we have been cultivating our own crop of lil’ tasties. With the help of IKEA, our little guys are pretty grown up and were ready to journey out into the real world for a little adventure. Last week Carmine Carrot, Bruno Broccoli and Sophia Strawberry boarded the Box Express heading off on a world wide tour ultimately landing in Washington DC. They are stopping there to visit their new friends Roman and Vera whom they met earlier in the year. So far they seem to be having a great time and learning a lot about the world. We’ll keep you posted on their adventures and whereabouts from time to time. For now, this is about as close to kids as we are going to get. So take those rubber nipples off the cordial glasses please.

Mid-Week Morsel

It’s been hectic this week to say the least. Between ramping up for this Saturday’s REEL TASTY and next weeks special Vegas dinners there has not been much time to breath let alone eat. Before I jump back into the fray I wanted to share a little home cooked goodness I prepared 2 weeks ago just before the task waves started crashing against my backyard. I came across this tasty gem as I was flipping between MS Word and Photoshop this morning. It’s not my Mother-in-law’s recipe but quite delicious. It reminded me of a quieter time where home cooked delicious food has that ability to mellow you out and focus you on the moment, the bite and the company. If you’re to-do list isn’t 2 miles long maybe it’s a good night to whip something up instead of order in. If you can, I envy you. For now.

Prepping for Columbus Day

This week I was in San Francisco. Amidst the work and regularly planned tasty I was able to squeak in a visit to a place where dreams are made. Perhaps better said, a place where dreams are cased up, aged, hung dry, intensified and then sliced for your eating pleasure. It’s no secret I am obsessed with sausage both wet and dry so it should come as no surprise that a pitstop to one of San Francisco’s best Salame shops was my detour. My new friend Amy took me through Columbus’ entire salumi making process from the chop to the slice. My favorite part had to be the cacciatore and chorizo salumi drying room. The smell inside sent chills from nose to toe. Here we stand below their Finocchiona Gigante, a soft textured, fennel induced artisan speciality. Sliced thin it can substitute for any prosciutto wrapped around a piece of melon. Aside from the smells and tastes I learned an immense amount about salumi making peeking my own curiosity to try it myself. I am not sure hanging meat in the spare room will fly with the Canadian. For now, I’ll have to settle for Amy’s tried and true selections. This Columbus Day you better believe the Anello’s antipasti will be centered around a nice selection of salume so I can show off my new knowledge.

Cookie Control

It was our second visit in two days to an out of the way industrial park on the outskirts of Cambria, California. We meandered our rental car down side streets and through alleys following a well marked trail to the Red Moose Cookie Company where we poked our heads through a screened door to meet Caren. She was just finishing up a batch of pumpkin cookies and dropped what she was doing to give “The Canadian” a huge hug. “Look at you!” she said, enthralled by The Canadian’s beauty. “You’re like a movie star.”, she squealed, keeping “The Canadian” in a tight embrace. From the back came Roger to break the moment. We had never met Caren before but we had met Roger the day before on our first trip to the aluminum sided warehouse with the butter based surprise inside. He picked up right where we left him, bringing…

REEL TASTY Testing

In preparation for our August dinner I started playing around with some New York classics. Last night I took our city’s name sake steak and tried a new cooking method I recently read about. The cast iron gives a nice even heat without any flare ups which usually cause those burnt, charred ends of meat. Although the single portion was a success, I am not sure this will work for 20 guests. To accompany this I worked up a gorgonzola cream sauce. It rather nicely with the medium rare beef eaten slowly in a perfectly chilled air conditioned room. Although, it may be a little heavy for a mid-summer, outdoor dinner. I am thinking about cutting it with some horseradish. If that doesn’t satisfy I might need to start over with a bearnaise base. Rest assured this preparation has another secret twist that I have purposely left absent. You’ll just have to visit the deck to find out how the testing turns out.

Melted Simplicity

In the world of single cuisine food restaurants you have to expect there would be one dedicated to the grilled cheese. You wouldn’t expect it to be 2 blocks from my San Francisco office and you certainly wouldn’t expect it to be good. As a kid growing up the grilled cheese was called mozzarella en carozza. Many times it included tomatoes. Rarely it included sopressata. When it did I was extra psyched. As I moved on to college I continued this understated tradition with an illegal, in dorm, sandwich press and a hunk of Polly-O cheese.

The Piglet as it’s named speaks to the person ordering it as well as the ingredients. The artisan ham melted with the Tillamook sharp cheddar is a distinct and luxurious taste. Add in the thick cut perfectly toasted sourdough and you have heaven in a hand held triangle. As we dive deeper into this single minded restaurant trend, I applaud those who do it well. Those who do it fantastic I don’t have words, except those written on this page. Keep it up. Ohh yeah and the clementine accoutrements is refreshingly clever.

Food Store Tour #1

A few weekends ago I decided to take a gourmet food store tour as I meandered through my weekend errands. That’s a lie. I completely put off the errands so that I could jump from store to store on an eating extravaganza. I loved it and this won’t be the last. In fact, think of this as a first in a series of food store tours that will cover all five boroughs as well as my favorite non-New York cities. For now lets focus on NYC…

Parcel Pork

This came in the mail today. I didn’t order it.

Those of you who know my love of pork can imagine how curious and excited I must have been. Inside the package, which was open 15 seconds after I closed the door, was a seemingly endless array of swine goodness. As I pulled out pig I realized who this perfect package was from. A few days earlier my good friend Barb asked for my address and it had completely slipped my mind until now. Realizing Barb makes a living out of being unique, crafty and extremely dialed in to her clients and friends personalities it makes perfect sense she would send a gift so amazing. First out of the box was…