Tummy fulfilled: New York style

We have recently been travelling about in the US: Eating in New York.

As is my wont, when I have been away I try and blog about my experiences. I confess, freely, that I haven’t finished where I went last year, but I am trying to get to this year a bit quicker! So here is something about eating in New York. I have specifically chosen this subject as we found some very interesting and different places to eat.

Ricetoriches

Yes, we can have porridge cafes, they can have rice pudding outlets! they have a website so you can check them out for yourself but we did think they were a trifle expensive for a small bowl of rice pudding. That said, they had some amazing flavours and do seasonal flavours too. Their standard range is 18 flavours with 5 per season and 12 different toppings. Sweet? Very!

Pinkberry

Frozen yoghurt with a difference – the pink berries! They have a yummy taste… they have come to the UK now and can be found in Stratford – Westfield – and Selfridges.

 BubbaGump

We ate in their Times Square outlet and were served excellently despite the loud noises from their celebrating a customer’s birthday!

Everything had calories attached so beware the desserts! We had a variety of shrimps of course, but very large shrimps too – and mahi mahi with a cajun shrimp starter and garlic  bread. spicy and nicy.Bubba Gump interior

PS they are now in London!

Eataly

Amazing – a supermarket with a difference – you can buy your Italian food here or you can eat it fresh from the counter. The longest queues being for the ice-cream of course! there are 2 places where you sit and are served – Fish and Vegetarian; otherwise you can perch at stools and eat what you have bought. We tried the Verdura eating area and ate our veggies. Just beware the risotto is made with wheat berries and is very heavy as a result. 

Also now in London I believe.

Hangawi

This is a Korean place in the traditional style – so beware if you have disabilities. You sit on the floor with your feet in a pit. The table is fixed at waist high and thus can’t be removed for you to climb out of easily. I managed to thump down but getting out and getting back on my feet defeated me. In the end, I managed to get my feet up on the floor and then did a very ungainly bum shuffle over to where there were some steps so I could climb back up onto my feet. Good job I was wearing leggings under my skirt! You take your shoes off so make sure your feet don’t smell and you have matching socks on.

They have a very sensible ban on mobile phones. Turn them off completely. The food is all vegan and excellent. Stone rice pots as are especially good as the rice ends up sticky and crisp as it continues to cook in the residual heat. When they ask, do you like it spicy? beware. They add a spice paste to your dish at the table and mix it in for you. 

Booking essential.

Use the ‘packet pastry’ pie!

Puff pastry is one pastry not even Delia smith admits to making herself very often – nor Jamie Oliver – so I feel very justified in going to the supermarket and buying sheets of puff pastry that are already round and don’t even need to be cut!

The issue then comes as to what do I put under the puff pastry. Note that this recipe for a pie is being published as part of a blogtour by Jenny Oliver, the author of Cherry Pie Island – see the pdf attached to this post and also my book review on the 11th March:

Cherry Pie Island

Well for me it has to be fruit. Usually pears or rhubarb. I do love a rhubarb pie especially if it come from our garden.

A very simple pie to make of course as rhubarb cooks very quickly.

Take your sticks of rhubarb – as many as you can buy – usually a kilo works best for the standard pie dish.

Place in the dish with a tablespoonful of sugar scattered over. Raw cane sugar is best as it gives an extra flavour. Add more sugar if you have a sweet tooth but the fruit juice adds some sweetness too.

Add some orange juice (or mixed fruit juice if you don’t have orange) until it is about a quarter full. Bake in the oven at around 180 for 15 mins to start the rhubarb softening.

Remove from the oven and cool for around 15  mins and then add the pastry topping. By now the rhubarb juice will have started coming out and if the dish looks a little wet you can pour some liquid off. It should stay less than 1/3 full of liquid.

Egg wash the pastry. Make small holes with a fork and crimp the edges of the pastry around the pie dish. Don’t seal too hard as the liquid needs room to bubble up.

Scatter some caster sugar – again raw is best and bake in a hot oven (according to the pastry packet but usually around 220 or 200 for a fan oven and bake around 20 mins until the sugar is browning and the pastry looks golden and ‘puffy’!

Serve with clotted cream or vanilla ice-cream

I have included a picture of what it could look like – not mine as I haven’t made one yet this year!

Nb  adding strawberries to rhubarb pie is scrummy.

 

 

 

 

 

THE GRAND REOPENING OF THE DANDELION CAFÉ is available now.

https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/gp/associates/network/build-links/individual/get-html.html?ie=UTF8&asin=B00SBFVRIA&marketplace=amazon&quicklinks=1&subflow=sp_

Not forgetting:

 

 

 

Cherry Pie Island aka Eel Pie Island

“The Grand Reopening of the Dandelion Cafe” by Jenny Oliver

The Cherry Pie Island as used in this book, is a fictional version of the rather well known Eel Pie Island in the River Thames at Twickenham.

Eel Pie Island was earlier called Twickenham Ait and, before that, The Parish Ait. An ait or eyot is a small island. It is especially used to refer to river islands found on the River Thames and its tributaries.

Eel Pie Island is to be found on the ordnance Survey map of 1876 but was known by Dickens when he wrote Nicholas Nickleby in 1838-9. In the 15^th century it was known as Gose Eyte and the Parish Ayte in the 17^th century. This refers to the fact that it was either a nesting island for geese or was being used for geese being fattened for the  table perhaps. It was a popular island for picnics in the 19^th century and was famous for eel pies! Yes, real eels… caught in the Thames and cooked in sauce and then placed in a pie. The traditional recipe was developed by Mrs Beeton and a version is given here.

Based on the original Mrs Beeton’s 1861 Recipe for an Eel Pie.

Ingredients: 450g eels 2 tbsp parsley, chopped 1 shallot, finely chopped freshly-grated nutmeg, to taste salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste juice of 1/2 lemon 100g fish forcemeat 150ml béchamel sauce 200g puff pastry

Begin by preparing the eels. To skin and gut, hold it down by the head on a solid work surface with a towel (an eel is very slippery). With a sharp knife, make an incision around the neck, just below the head. The thick filmy skin will separate. Grip the skin with a pair of pliers, and pull it down the length of the eel to the tail and cut it off. Make a slit down the length of the stomach and pull out the innards. Rinse the eel well under cold running water.

Cut the eels into pieces 5cm long then line the base of your pie dish with the forcemeat. Arrange the eels on top then scatter over the parsley and shallot. Season with the nutmeg, salt and black pepper then sprinkle over the lemon juice.
Cover with the puff pastry then transfer to an oven pre-heated to 180°C and bake for 1 hour. Heat the béchamel sauce in a pan, make a hole in the top of the pie then pour in the sauce and serve.

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-mrs-beeton-eel-pie
Copyright © celtnet

Now eels are still eaten and in my Doyle’s Fish CookBook recipes for them start with a little verse:

Strange the formation of the eely race

That know no sex, yet love the close embrace

Their folded lengths they round each other twine

Twist amorous knots and slimy bodies join.

Apparently this verse comes from another fish cookbook by Theo Roughley.

Doyle gives us  4 recipes for eel but none are a pie.

An eel is any fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes and is a predator.and includes conger and morays as well as the rather less fearsome variety that swims in the Thames – and although they are far from common now they were very common in the Victorian era hence the pies. 

Coming back to the island it was not until 1957 that a bridge was completed. Today, the island has about 50 houses with 120 inhabitants, a couple of boatyards and some small businesses and artists’ studios. It has nature reserves at either end. So as you can see – from both this description and the photos  – that it makes a perfect Cherry Pie Island. It also has a famous recording studio named after it by Pete Townsend and is known for its bands and music too.

The first picture shows the island in the large bend in the Thames and the small amount of habitation and the 2 areas of nature reserve on either end. The bridge to Twickenham can also be seen.

The second photo shows some of the habitations on the island – many of which are owned by artists – note that the whole island is actually private land.

 

 

 

See also the descriptions of the island in: https://littlelondonobservationist.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/exploring-eel-pie-island

So having identified the island we can now move onto the book.

It was a short but cosy read. Opening cafes is a genre that is as popular as opening books shops.  Is this because hidden in so many women is the secret desire to run a cafe and in avid  book readers to run a book shop? I know I wouldn’t mind either… and in fact only last night a friend said I should run a community book shop as I had so many ideas for how to do so..

Taking a run-down cafe /shop and filling it with antiques/upcycled/recycled/vintage  items is very popular too. My brother-in-law’s favourite cafe runs on donated vintage (not necessarily matching) cups and saucers.  And lots of cafes look like they’ve rummaged through a second-hand store for their tables and chairs. So very of the moment in how the cafe was fitted out even though it was done as a cost cutting exercise in the book.

Naming the poor boy ‘River’ was a shame – River Phoenix comes to mind and is so trendy of the pop star/film star variety – where children have names which seem cute when they are little  but are an embarrassment when they grow up.

Looking up the book I find that this is just the first of a series and it does have that feel – that there are plenty more stories of the inhabitants yet to come – which I might just read in due course.

So overall, it was an enjoyable if light reading experience and I give it 3 stars.