I visited Hinsch’s in Bay Ridge, partly because I heard it was a classic vintage Brooklyn soda fountain with a lot of charm, and because it was time for me to try my first egg cream. The setting was right. Hinsch’s is a timeless neighborhood institution with a long diner counter and anchored spinning stools followed by rows of small booths. They’ve made their own ice cream, chocolates and soda fountain classics for many decades. Burgers, sandwiches, waffles and ice cream are their specialties, and I opted for a tuna melt and chocolate egg cream. Containing neither egg nor cream, I knew that the egg cream belied its gross name. I also knew the egg cream would be nothing like the thick chocolate chip milkshake I wanted it to be. Still, if not at Hinsch’s where? (more…)
Some call them manakish, others call them mini-pizzas. Either way, you can find them in Middle Eastern bakeries and grocery stores throughout Brooklyn. In this simple dish, flatbread is topped with the spice zaatar, which is usually a blend of thyme, sumac and sesame seeds. (Zaatar is also the Arabic word for wild thyme). The bread is then drizzled with olive oil and baked. It’s sometimes folded in half to be eaten on the go. Zaatar is one of the most essential condiments in Middle Eastern cooking. It’s believed by the Lebanese to give strength and clear the mind. On exam days, school children are said to eat a slice of bread with a mixture of zaatar and olive oil. With its tangy, nutty taste, it’s also great on yogurt or eggs or to season meats and vegetables any old time. Manakish is sometimes topped with a combination of tomato and ground meat.
Manakish is best when the bread is fresh and the zaatar and oil is piled on. I haven’t found a place in Brooklyn that makes their own (more…)
I visited Flatbush Avenue on a bustling Saturday afternoon to compare Jamaican beef patties. In American cities, beef patties aren’t as common (yet) as a pizza slice or a taco, but they have become one of the most common and delicious “fast foods” in New York City. How’d that happen? British explorers/invaders brought the “turnover” (like a meat pot pie) on their New World expeditions to the Caribbean. This dish was reinvented in places like Jamaica where its African and indigenous inhabitants integrated their own flavors like curry and Scotch bonnet peppers into the dish, making it the Jamaican beef patty we know today. With the migration of many Jamaicans to New York in the last 50 years, the beef patty has made its way into our city’s street foodscape. But the Jamaican beef patty has appeal to more than just hungry island expatriates looking for a taste of home. It’s an inexpensive, filling snack often made fresh by local bakeries, that provides enough needed sustenance for anyone shopping for electronics, sneakers, hair extensions and clothes along this commercial strip of Flatbush Avenue. While I naturally prefer mom-and-pop restaurants over chains, I thought I’d compare the Jamaican beef patties of Paradise Eats, a restaurant and bakery, and Golden Krust, a Bronx-based family-owned chain of Caribbean bakery/restaurants with 105 stores in 8 states. (more…)
Tea drinking is pretty firmly established after 5,000 years, but I’ve declared 2007 to be my year of tea consumption. I’ve never been a huge tea drinker so there’s lots to learn, but I do have a favorite in genmaicha, a popular but unusual Japanese green tea (”cha”) to which toasted brown rice (”genmai”) grains are added. It’s said to have originated with Japanese peasants who used the rice as filler to stretch their precious tea. Today it’s usually made from sencha, the most common commercial Japanese green tea, that is soothing, fresh and sometimes served with sushi. As the tea steeps it goes from a pale green to a golden color. The rice grains give the tea a nutty aroma and toasty flavor that is sweet, subtle and even better when it’s not too hot. Sometimes popcorn is added during the tea drying process, so it is known as the “popcorn tea.” I’ve taken to having genmaicha in the evenings, but it would be just as nice at lunch or in the afternoon with some cookies. (more…)
One of the perks of writing about food is that people often direct me to their cherished local restaurants, shops and foods to check out. Knowing that I’m a bit fanatical about my pesto, (the pride of Genoa and one of my favorite foods since childhood), a friend turned me onto the pesto from Caputo’s Fine Foods on Court Street. I firmly believe that pesto is best enjoyed when made fresh by my mom, preferably in August. However, my friend qualified his recommendation: “It may not be the best pesto you’ve tasted. But it’s better than any commercially-produced pesto you’ve tasted.” That still sounded pretty good, so I decided to run an informal pesto taste test. I assembled Caputo’s pesto, a store-bought jar pesto and my own homemade pesto I had made and frozen. Here are the stream-of-consciousness results: (more…)
On an appropriately bone-chilling Sunday morning, I visited Brooklyn’s “Little Norway,” located in Bay Ridge. Once a “Big Norway,” this area was home to the largest concentration of Norwegians outside of Norway during the mid-twentieth century. Today, there are fewer people of Norwegian descent, but a small number of shops preserve the neighborhood’s Scandinavian legacy. One noteworthy shop is Mejlander and Mulgannon, a deli and grocery that sells prepared foods, meats, Norwegian cheeses and candies. On my visit, the gentlemen behind the counter were quick to offer suggestions and information on authentic Norwegian foods and their uses. (more…)
One of the most appealing things about the classic Southern Italian pignoli cookie is its simplicity. With just five ingredients, pignoli cookies have a crispy exterior and a moist chewy center, similar to a macaroon. They’re subtly sweet and simply decorated with rich oblong pine nuts on top. Standard to the point of being overlooked, the best examples, like those at Fortunato Brothers, remind me why pignoli cookies have long been the heavy of the Italian holiday cookie plate.
There are several varieties of pine trees around the world that produce the pine nut, although only certain ones are used for the pignoli cookie. The tiny torpedo-shaped nuts that ornament the cookies are high in fat and grow inside pinecones on trees in Northern Italy and Turkey. Their slow growth and labor-intensive extraction process make pine nuts expensive. (more…)
A zuccotto cake is sometimes compared to a Baked Alaska for its typically frozen ingredients and domed shape. But the zuccotto is a Florentine specialty whose name references either the the Duomo of the Florence skyline or the Tuscan name for a cardinal’s skullcap. It’s a molded, layered cake filled with a whipped cream mixture.
Since visiting the down homely stylish Cheeks Bakery this past weekend, I’ve become deeply fond of their pumpkin zuccotto cake. While neither frozen nor domed, it was one of the loveliest and most unusual cakes I’ve tried in a long time. (more…)
I was stomping around my old neighborhood this weekend and visited The Brooklyn Kitchen, a cooking supply store that helps fill a need for quality cooking tools and supplies in North Brooklyn. I unwittingly stopped by after they held a cookie-baking demonstration. [Note: This is a store where the owners offer you cookies and sing along with whatever music (Breeders) they're playing. These are very good people.] So I enjoyed weighing the relative merits of peanut butter cookies made with organic peanut butter, and those made with your standard grocery store variety.
The Brooklyn Kitchen offers a well-curated group of products for all levels of cooks. You can pick up your heavy (literally) hitters like Le Creuset and Emile Henry, and cute gifts like groovy aprons and splashy Mobi sandwich bags. Their solid book titles range from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything to Larousse Gastronomique to Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry’s Grub. Best of all, (more…)
We were warmly welcomed by two generations of Caputos at this good-natured family bakery that’s been on Court Street for over a century, and open almost every day of the year.
The gracious and genial father and son told us how traditionally, in the early days of the bakery, bread was eaten with a meal to supplement the meat offering, which was sometimes scarce. Now customers often purchase their bread independent of a meal.
Caputo’s is probably best known for their pepper and lard bread, country loaves and other Naples-style breads. But they have introduced new products like ciabatta and olive bread to keep up with the times. (They also have a nice selection of cakes, cookies, pastries and drinks). One hard-to-find item Caputo’s makes is scalita. A scalita loaf is about a foot long (more…)