Happy, Joy Part Deux: Food and Drinks
And so now we get to the good part: Happy Hour’s food and the drinks, what we made and how we made it. The key word was “easy” because we were having this little shindig on a work night and had about 2-3 hours to prep before our guests arrived. We chose three appetizers–Pancetta Crisps with Pear and Goat Cheese, Portable Caprese, and Kors d’Oeuvres Spinach and Artichoke dip with crackers. All very delicious and deceptively simple. Our three drink options included Cherry-Lime Rickeys, Root ‘n Gingers, and Ginger, Cranberry, Apple Punch.
Continue reading Happy, Joy Part Deux: Food and Drinks…
happy happy joy joy
We love good company and along with the good company, we like a good drink. And what better way to get a group of great ladies together to eat, drink, and be merry, than a little “Happy Hour” at our house?
Let me just give you a bit of history about how we gathered these lovely ladies. One of the things about living in New York is that you realize it’s a small, small world. One person knows someone who another person knows who knows you, which is how we came up with the idea of “Ladies who Brunch.” Lisa and I love brunch and if we could have every meal be brunch we would. We also realized we knew a lot of amazing, ambitious, creative, rad ladies who all knew each other peripherally, so we decided to have a little gathering to bring them all together. And voîla! “Ladies who Brunch!” was born. As much as we love brunch, however, we decided to shake things up and nothing does that quite like a stiff cocktail or ten. Hence the launch of Happy Hour.
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truck hunt!
Sometimes having a food blog gives us an excuse to eat everything in sight… Which is why we’ll take any opportunity to work for our food, meaning if we have to go on a hunt to find the location of a food truck like Calexico, Le Gamin, Van Leeuwen we’ll go a-huntin.’
But now, the Iphone (or as Lisa calls it, the Magic Phone) has made it much easier to find those trucks. There’s an app called Street Eats that will let you know if a truck/cart is out on the streets and where they are. Its not only an app for New Yorkers, but detects in cities like Boston, San Francisco, the growing food truck capital-Los Angeles, and many others.
Now, we’re off to find another form of exercise since the truck hunt wasn’t really “working for our food.”
shared by: Meg Wachter
tikka tikka!
We, Numnum girls, love a little spice in our lives. Something with a kick, a zing, or a zow, which is why when we opened up last month’s Martha Stewart and noticed the Shrimp Tikka Masala and Toasted-Coconut Rice our mouths did a little jump kick to our brain.
Surprisingly this recipe was super easy, for some reason curries always intimidate me but this was uncomplicated and equally tasty. Although, Martha’s recipe calls for a little too much Garam Masala, in my opinion, which is why I would put in less the next time around. And I can assure you, there will be a next time.
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Guest Food Adventure: Jillian Tamaki at Sel de Mer
Jillian Tamaki is one kick-ass illustrator and she happens to be a kick-ass person as well, which in our minds, made her the perfect partner for our newest special guest food adventure! She’s the artist behind the awesome graphic novel Skim and she’s also published a book of collected illustrations called Gilded Lilies. You’ve probably seen her work in The New York Times, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, or The New Yorker, just to name a few. Originally from Calgary, Canada, she currently lives here in Brooklyn, NY, with her talented husband Sam Weber (who also joined us for dinner along with our honorary NumNum partner Joel Speasmaker). Since she’d read about Sel de Mer (347 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn) in New York mag, and had passed it running errands in the neighborhood, she picked this newish Williamsburg seafood spot for our culinary adventure and we, of course, didn’t object. Continue reading Guest Food Adventure: Jillian Tamaki at Sel de Mer…
Rockin’ Bowl: African Chickpea and Spinach Soup
It’s true, we post an awful lot of soups here on NumNum. But I’ve got a confession to make: I’m kind of a lazy cook (fyi, this is Lisa writing. Caroline is far from lazy, and not just when it comes to cooking!). I also tend to be lacking in the cash flow department, especially the closer it gets to payday. So soup is often my go-to dinner, especially on these arctic winter days. Easy and cheap are pretty good selling points, and when you throw delicious on top of all that, well, you really can’t go wrong. For African chickpea and spinach soup, you can even add healthy and vegan to the list. In this case, the majority of the soup’s deliciousness comes from its secret weapon of an ingredient: peanut butter! Who knew?
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Food Adventure: Bark in Brooklyn
If you’re a fan of hot dogs who happens to live in Brooklyn, then Bark is the place for you. Actually, even if you hate hot dogs, I’d bet a white birch beer soda you’d like the ones they serve up here. As former vegetarians, we went for a number of years without eating a hot dog and even when we came back to the meat, hot dogs weren’t anywhere near the top of the list of things we couldn’t wait to taste again (they were completely crowded out by chicken wings, pulled pork, and just about anything involving bacon). But after a bite at Bark, they’re back up there (and the fries! Oh, the fries.)
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J’ai faim!
We’ve been wanting to try something from Ginette Mathiot’s I Know How to Cook ever since we got our hands on this lovely French cookbook, printed in English for the first time ever since its 1932 publication. We decided no dish has that je ne sais quois like a rich and fluffy cheese souffle. And wouldn’t you know it, we’ve got a handful of ramekins that had been begging to be used. Since it was our first foray into the world of souffle, we were more than a bit intimidated but this lil’ recipe was so easy and came out just the way a souffle is supposed to: risen to a golden brown that practically melts in your mouth with every bite. Consider this fair warning though–the main ingredients are butter, cheese, and eggs so if that sounds like a nightmare for your tummy proceed with caution. We decided to balance out the cheese souffle’s richness with a veggie dish: green beans in a tomato sauce. But the joke was on us since that tomato sauce turned out to be more of a gravy, making the combo a decidedly heavy one. But what did we expect from France’s version of Joy of Cooking? It was all tasty nonetheless.
Meet n’ Meat
I haven’t read Cleaving*, the new book by Julie Powell. And to be perfectly honest, I haven’t read Julie & Julia either. But I have seen the movie multiple times, enough to be intrigued by the real person behind Amy Adams’ hideous haircut and annoying celluloid presence. Perhaps you feel the same? I decided to brave the cold to hear Julie Powell read at McNally Jackson last night, and you know what? She seems way cooler in real life. She read a couple NSFV (not safe for vegetarians) passages from Cleaving, one that described her first day as an apprentice at Fleisher’s and one that recounted the drawing of blood from a cow’s neck for consumption in South America. And when she took questions afterward, she swore like a sailor which I found totally endearing. She was also very frank in her ruminations which I suppose shouldn’t be surprising since this latest tome is full of intimate details of her broken marriage and torrid affair. She was also wearing a pair of kind of amazing glittery heels. What I’m trying to say is, I’m a bit relieved that this real life encounter eradicated my negative snap judgement, ’cause both of her books are high on my to-read list, and now I can enjoy them without the baggage of bias. If you’ve got an opinion of them, please, do share!
*Aren’t you wondering who illustrated that beautiful cover? It was our buddy Chris Neal!
Got Milk?: Momofuku Milk Bar
The New York Times’ T Magazine just gave Christina Tosi, the pastry chef behind the Momofuku Empire, a hallowed spot on their Nifty 50 list of America’s up-and-coming talent, so what better time for us to spotlight her stomping grounds? If you’ve heard anything about Momofuku Milk Bar, it probably included the words “crack” and “pie.” It seems to be what the east village bakery (and Tosi herself) is known for. But the day we decided to check it out, we just weren’t in a pie-eating mood (trust me, it’s rare). But even without the pie, the sweet shack’s options are pretty varied, from soft serve and flavored milk to cookies and cake. And the flavors are anything but ordinary.