Fun Playing With Fish in New York

We began playing with New York food in earnest on April 11. The first order of business was shopping - Makinajian Farms for soup chickens and eggs, then Stop and Shop for groceries. But the fish and seafood were among the highlights of our trip.

Our last stop Friday was Northport Fish & Lobster, set in an old shack on Route 25A in Northport. I'd never been there, but my parents had heard good things and wanted to try them. Northport Fish is a locally owned full service fishmonger. No fewer than four locally sourced fishes were available that day, plus many seafood options. We picked up our Gefilte Fish bag, and couldn't resist buying some lunch items also. Mom had ordered 5# of ground fish (whitefish, pike and carp) with onion, plus the heads and skeletons. For our Gefilte Fish recipe, please look here.

It all looked so good! Mom had requested that we get her one of their advertised $5 Lobster Rolls, but what else would make for a quick and easy lunch?

Fresh Montauk Flounder, Fried to Order

This fish was so pristine it took my breath away. Delicious and perfectly cooked!

Lobster Roll

Ok, I saw the kvetching on Yelp about this. There is real lobster in the mix. There is also a lot of mayo. There may be some filler fish. But for $5, it was plentiful and tasty so what's not to like? I'd probably pick something else, but I wouldn't complain, either.

Clam-Stuffed Garlic Bread

I don't think I've ever nibbled such soft and tender clam meat as the morsels generously stuffed into this garlicky bread (same roll as the lobster was stuffed into). These are sold needing to be baked down for about 15 minutes at 350. The clams were so tender and fresh that they maintained deliciousness two days later after being re-heated as leftovers. It was a little too oily when hot, but oh-so-tasty!

Fish Mix - A Tad Under-ground

I took this photo to document how gefilte fish mixture should not look. It needed to either be passed through the grinder again or ground with a finer die (the onions were still in a dice, also). Fortunately, I'd brought my food processor, so it took only a few minutes to correct the texture.

Gefilte Fish

And here's the final product, served up at our Seders Monday and Tuesday nights with garden horseradish. Absolutely delicious!

But there was more fish to savor! Our favorite local purveyor of smoked fish, Bagel Boss would close for Passover early on Monday, so Dad made a fish and bialy run on Sunday to hold us until it was time to burn the Chometz (or otherwise get rid of the bread). There is nothing like Jewish Soul Food!

Bialy with Bagel Boss Cream Cheese,
Belly Lox
Baked Salmon (Kippered Salmon)

Baked (or Kippered) Salmon

Loaded with the proper sustenance, we went to work on playing with food for the Seders!

Fun Playing with Jewish Soul Food for New Year's Day

Ahhh, the bagel. Jewish Soul Food. Despite its Eastern European origin, ubiquitous almost anywhere you go. We knew that we had a couple of packets of Bagel Boss belly lox in our freezer, so we decided to treat ourselves to a luxurious New Year's Day breakfast of bagel, cream cheese and lox. But would the bagel store even be open? Did we really want to schlep out to get them? Academic questions all, once Bob agreed to take a whack at making bagels for the first time. 

The first conundrum - which recipe to use? Internet choices abounded, and every one was a little different than the one before. I didn't have time to consult our shelf of cookbooks - so internet inspiration would have to do. 

The second issue - we didn't want to have to do the entire bread-making process on Saturday morning - could some be done in advance so all that remained for breakfast-making was the final bake (or a fraction thereof)? 

Here are the answers. We began the process during the day on Friday (New Year's Eve):

Bagel dough, consisting of bread (high gluten) flour, water, yeast, malt syrup, sugar, salt



Dough is shaped and rises.

Bagels are boiled in water, about 45 seconds per side. Bob used a chopstick through the hole to flip them. Our plan was to boil them all off, then par-bake half and leave the other half in the fridge to be fully baked the next morning. That way, we could determine in side-by-side fashion which time-saving method was superior.

This was intended to be only partially baked, but wound up fully cooked. Oh darn, guess we have to taste-test them now.

Topped with a schmear of Tempt-tee whipped cream cheese, the fresh bagel made a perfect afternoon nosh to hold us until New Year's Eve dinner, which was planned for 8:30pm.

I topped the other half with Harzler's roll butter. The first experiment had fabulous taste and crumb - but the overall texture seemed a bit too soft for an authentic "New York style" bagel.

Since the first bagel batch wound up fully baked a day early, we set them aside for Sunday, and went off to Restaurant Dante to enjoy New Year's Eve dinner with friends.

Saturday morning (Happy New Year!), we baked off the four bagels that we'd boiled the day before and held overnight in the refrigerator unbaked.

Interestingly, the holes at the center of the bagels closed up a lot, and the final products were a bit smaller than their immediately-baked brethren. Most important, though - the overnight stint in the fridge did something wonderful for the texture, which solidified to a perfect chewy bite. So - boiling then holding seems to win, at least with this recipe.

Bagel Boss Belly Lox (accept no substitutes for Belly Lox)


Sliced Onion

Jewish Soul Food Perfected - home-made bagel, sliced onion, Tempt-tee schmear, belly lox. Fun Playing with New Year's Day food - this, I could get used to. Happy New Year to all!

Fun Playing With Food During Our August 2009 Trip to NY

We've been back from NY for over a week now, but I've had some, uh, issues keeping me busy. The good news is that Nexium works.

Our journey began, as the first one earlier this summer did, at the Fresh Start Diner in Twinsburg Ohio. This time, both of us ordered the Patty Melt, which was a "special" that day. Our only criticism is that we ordered them medium and they came much closer to well done than medium. They were nevertheless delicious:


Grilled Burger Topped with Swiss Cheese and Caramelized Onions Griddled on House-Made Rye



This was mine, sans cheese.



The potatoes were a tad too salty, but freshly made and delicious. And the service was much improved over our first visit!



A very lovely start to the roadtrip.

As per usual, a pizza from Mario's was waiting for us at my parent's house on Long Island - and due to bad weather most of the way, we got there pretty late. These photos are from our last trip:





Thursday morning, we cooked up eggs for breakfast. Our second meal Thursday was a fabulous Chinese dinner at Chengdu 1 in New Jersey, which will be the subject of a separate post.

Friday morning, my dad went to Bagel Boss for bread and Belly Lox. Then, he got back in his car and drove all the way back after I unpacked his bag and saw the label "Nova" on the half pound of lox. We opened it and tasted just to be sure - but it was tasteless Nova - completely unacceptable, especially at $40 a pound!



After another 20-30 minutes of waiting - we finally feasted our eyes on a half pound of Belly Lox.


Bagels and Bialys From Bagel Boss




Garden Tomato


Lox


Jewish Soul Food




Baked Salmon Salad


For Friday dinner, my mom wanted a Shabbos dinner, since my brother, sister-in-law and their two kids were to join us. We wound up one kid short, when Justin got invited to the Jets pre-season game at the last minute and we had plenty to go around!

We started by combining some fabulous ingredients from our garden (red and yellow tomatoes and basil) with freshly made mozzarella from AS Pork Stores, 530A Larkfield Road, E. Northport 11731, 631-266-1540. The last time that we visited NY, we checked out AS Pork for the first time (the store has been there for many, many years, but my family isn't really a pork family). We came away with some magnificent cheese - scamorza - a type of aged provolone.



This time, as indicated, we scored a ball of mozzarella - still warm from the cooking process. And some amazingly tasty and freshly baked fig cookies (sorry - no photo of those). Add a little EVOO, Kosher Salt and fresh ground pepper and plate over 3 types of garden lettuce - and the first course was simply amazing.





Our entree was roasted brisket, and the sides were all vegetables! First - locally grown corn from the farm stand operated by Louis De Lea & Sons Inc. (L Delea & Sons Sod Farms) at their business premises located at 444 Elwood Road, East Northport, NY 11731. It was wonderful. De Lea's farm stand had a nice assortment of house-grown tomatoes, beets, eggplant, zucchini and other vegetables, and some vegetables brought in from other farms (like the sweet and red onions I bought). They also had some local fruits, and local honey from an apiary in Dix Hills. A terrific farm market well deserving of local support!

Our second side was a room temperature salad of garden beets and green beans, cooked simply and seasoned simply with a little kosher salt.





We repeated the dinner on Sunday evening, with a slightly different presentation for the salad course:





I am now completely spoiled by fresh mozzarella cheese - and looking for a Cleveland source, so I don't have to add this to my list of "to bring home" items from NY.

I didn't bring my camera to the Duke Geological Labs Mexican Fiesta on Saturday - which was a shame. Wonderful food was made by all - including our farm-chicken tacos, Kenny's pork mole and rice with meats, and Jean's amazing cornbread. After - Bob and I shared most of a fabulous Bianca pizza at Gino's Pizza, 6132 Springfield Blvd., Flushing, NY 11364-2336.


Peaches from Richter's Orchard (which I wrote about here)

We brought some of these home to Cleveland with us. Yum. And we did better than just peaches - pizza!



Some people claim that Emilio's has the best pizza on Long Island - I don't know if that is true - but I can tell you that the three pies we picked up as we departed Long Island and drove 8+ hours to Cleveland (with the outside temperature over 90 degrees!) were all delicious! It took us almost a week to polish them off - and they'd have gone even faster if I was feeling well! And you have to admire the cockiness (or lack of promotional savvy?) of a pizzeria that doesn't put any of its contact information on the top of the box (or anywhere else that I recall).


Sicilian

This started out as 10 12"x15" slices - but we'd eaten two of them during the drive back to Cleveland by the time I took this photo!





We enjoyed our dinner with ribbons of garden basil atop the pizza and gently simmered garden green beans on the side.





You cannot get pizza like this in Cleveland.

For our two Neopolitan pies, one was plain cheese and one topped with sliced meatball. I didn't succeed in photographing either of them whole, nor did I get a shot of the meatball pie. However, I did photograph the plain cheese.


Out of the fridge and waiting for the toaster oven to heat


Bob added Crystal Hot Sauce and Pepperoni Slices from our freezer to his.


I'm a purist.


This pizza was perfect - it didn't need a thing

Notice the grease on top - I used to mop that off with a napkin. Silly girl!


A perfect crust. You can't get this from no easy-bake pizza conveyor belt oven. Or a pizza cooked in a pan.



While I am not happy having to cope with GERD, at least we now finally have confirmation that this is the problem, and I will get over it. No acid reflux is going to get in the way of playing with my food! Especially food as luscious as this! Next up - our Sichuan dinner at Cedar Grove's Chengdu 1.