OLÉ to Molé!
This is the last of our Oaxacan posts, I (Caroline, here) wanted to share with you my experience at a cooking class I took while in Oaxaca. I met 2 wonderful people, Australians nomadically living in Oaxaca who are currently working on a cookbook about Mexican food. I know, it sounds strange but after taking the class, meeting the people, and tasting the food, its not so weird. Travis Harvey and Kerin Ferguson have done their fair share of research, visiting the local farms to learn about the agriculture, getting to know the Mexican people and their food. The class was really fun and we learned everything from the basic tools necessary to a little bit about food chemistry! Continue reading OLÉ to Molé!…
Food Adventure: Oaxaca
This is a special food adventure because I (Caroline, speaking) got to travel all the way to Oaxaca, Mexico to go adventuring. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but, we, numnum girls, LOVE mexican food. Moving to New York from California was hard on our burrito/taco lovin’ mouths because it was so hard to come by, thankfully times have changed.
Oaxaca is known for their chocolates, coffee, and MOLÉ. Oaxaca is an amazing place for food, everything was super tasty and crazy cheap. We had street food most of the time but it ended up being way better than fancy restaurant meals.
Our first meal was at the local, organic market which sets up every Sunday at the ferrocarrîl museo, an old railroad yard. Dining al fresco, underneath the trees with fresh corn, squash, squash blossoms underneath the trees was the perfect welcome. All the tortillas were being freshly made in front of us, blue corn tortillas were soft and slightly crisp. There’s also a vendor from Italy, whose wife is from Korea (after having met in India, then moving to Oaxaca) so they had some pastries, pizzas, a couple of korean items, and a wonderful chai.
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Special Guest Food Adventure: Lana Kim
Summer here in New York is hot and humid, and to any West Coaster like Lana Kim it could feel like hell. The famed Lana from The Lana Show, a funny online videocast where she interviews different musicians from Blonde Redhead to Fat Lip to Girl Talk about their favorite music videos. She’s also the head of music videos at The Directors Bureau and not only that, she’s also in the rockin’ band J-Lep. But best of all, Lana is one of a kind and one of the most amazing people you’ll ever meet. Phew, that’s a whole lot. She came out for a short visit during one of the hottest and most humid days but of course that didn’t stop us from trekking out to Crown Heights for a Food Adventure! Why Crown Heights? Because we had to try Peaches for some good Southern cookin,’ and because we love their sister restaurant, the Smoke Joint.
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Special Guest Food Adventure: Joel Speasmaker at Good Fork
By now, you all know our honorary NumNum’er Joel Speasmaker of Forest Design. He has been on many of our food adventures in addition to taste testing several of our at home eats. So it was only fitting that we ask Joel to his own food adventure, and he chose The Good Fork in Red Hook, Brooklyn. We took Bryn along for the ride, being that its one of her favorite restaurants.
The Good Fork serves high quality, seasonal foods without the snooty attitude. Its actually all about comfort, from the staff, to the atmosphere, and most importantly, to the food.
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nacho, nacho man
Seeing as we’re from California and have an innate love of Mexican food, when we found out about NachosNY, a site dedicated to the quest for the best in our very own NYC, well, we knew we’d stumbled across some kindred spirits. So we joined forces with Lee and Rachel, the team behind NachosNY, and hit up Elote in Williamsburg, to see how their ‘chos fared. Bottom line? They sure are pretty but we’ve had better (cough, Nachos Chulos! cough, cough). The experts agreed. The best part of the dish was probably the guac. And speaking of guac, NachosNY is the mastermind behind this Wednesday’s GUACTACULAR at the Bell House!!! A tastier “cook-off” has never existed and the fact that we’re lucky enough to judge all the entries will probably make this the best Cinco de Mayo ever. Hope you locals got your tix cause the party’s sold out! But back to Elote. The other items on the menu were pretty damn good. Their namesake corn is a must and the ceviche was fresh and tart and tasty. Did we mention the pitchers of margaritas? Two thumbs up. Pair that with their patio and it’s the perfect summer hangout.
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love, philly
A couple weeks ago, we decided to have an impromptu trip down to Philly. We’ve been hearing great things about the food and drinks, and boy did we eat and drink. This trip was one big ole’ food adventure. We ended up coming back to New York with the biggest raw oyster obsession AND a new love for Philly.
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The Art of Eating In: DIY Food adventure with Souther Salazar
Well, our week of eating in is complete and we went out (only figuratively!) with a bang if we do say so ourselves (full recap to come). One thing we realized is that skipping restaurant meals is kinda hard, especially if you have guests in from out of town. Case in point: this past weekend our awesome friend and amazing artist Souther Salazar was visiting New York from L.A. with his super rad girlfriend Monica for the opening of his gallery’s five-year anniversary group exhibition and we couldn’t take them to a single one of our fave Brooklyn restos. No leisurely brunches, no dinners out on the town—it was then that we felt the pain of our pledge. But we’re nothing if not determined. Luckily, Souther was game for a DIY food adventure so instead of having him pick a place to eat, we picked the spot (our kitchen!) and let him choose the menu (we think Cathy Erway would be proud). His first request was a dish he’d discovered on Nate Cooks (Vanderbilt-inspired Sriracha Brussels sprouts), which we were happy to oblige. And when his love for pulled pork sandwiches came to light, we jumped at the chance to break out our long-neglected slow cooker and try out a recipe Kelly had just been raving about (chipotle orange barbecue pork). Topped with some homemade pickled cucumbers and red onions, it was a meal of epic tasty proportions and the most memorable way to wrap up our week of not eating out.
Continue reading The Art of Eating In: DIY Food adventure with Souther Salazar…
The Art of Eating In: San Bei Ji with Green Beans
Since Cathy Erway is the gal who inspired our week of eating in, we decided this would be the perfect time to try one of the recipes from her book. We were having one of our favorite foodie friends over for dinner and a brainstorming sesh (more on that later!), so we wanted something that was relatively quick and easy (didn’t wanna be serving dinner at 10pm), and hearty enough to feed the three of us yet would still yield leftovers for the next day’s lunch (if nothing else, our week of not eating out has been a huge exercise in the art of planning). We decided on San Bei Ji, a Taiwanese dish known as three cup chicken, that Erway made for one of her first dinner parties. The ingredients are pretty simple and the outcome is pretty tasty, especially with a good dollop of Sriracha to top it off.
Continue reading The Art of Eating In: San Bei Ji with Green Beans…
The Art of Eating In: Our week of not eating out
I’m sure you guys know all about Cathy Erway and her supercool blog Not Eating Out in New York. And you probably already know that her blog birthed a book, The Art of Eating In, which is hot off the presses. But did you know that Cathy’s teamed up with the Huffington Post for an awesome seven-day experiment called The Week of Eating In? Well, we’ve read the book and we’ve taken the pledge and we’re gonna tell you all about both right here. It may only be Day 1, but we have a feeling that eating in is WAY harder than Cathy makes it seem. However, we’re pretty sure that the money we’ll save, the waste we won’t be creating, and the delicious dishes we’ll be cooking up will make it worth our while. So, if you want a fascinating insider’s glimpse into the burgeoning DIY food scene, pick up The Art of Eating In, and if you want to save the world and your wallet one meal at a time, take the pledge yourself. Or if you just want to experience both vicariously, come along with us on this little culinary adventure. We’ll be posting ruminations and recipes all week, including one of Cathy’s own. (Curious how we got our week of eating in started? Last night we made 101 Cookbooks Giant Chipotle White Beans so we could eat the leftovers for lunch today and tonight we’ll be scarfing down Martha’s Perfect Macaroni and Cheese. Both keepers. And that’s just the beginning!)
Special Guest Food Adventure: Saelee Oh at Ippudo
Back in January, Saelee told us that she was coming out to install and open her solo show at Jonathan Levine Gallery. Saelee has spent most of her last 2 years traveling around the world to various places and in between trips she’s making amazing paintings and paper cut-outs. Whenver Saelee comes to New York for a visit she always has a list of places she wants to eat and so we had her take her pick and she chose Ippudo. We couldn’t have asked for anything more on that brisk, winter evening. A hot bowl of ramen was exactly what our tummies called for and not even a 2 hour wait was going to stop us from having it.
Continue reading Special Guest Food Adventure: Saelee Oh at Ippudo…