Category: Shopping List

Winnie Y. turned me onto this wrinkly little gonad of goat goodness. Chabichou du poitou is a raw milk goat cheese with a complex but not musty flavor and a firm, fudge-like texture. It's the perfect hostess gift for a dinner party held by your judgmental food snob friend (meaning I will accept this offering at my table). Plus, it's just fun to say shabby-shoo doo pwa-too. They're $13.99 from Murray's.

Bouchon Bakery's doughnut wipes the floor with the Doughnut Plant. Seriously. Eggy and moist with a generous squirt of seedless raspberry "jelly" that isn't too sweet, with just a touch of granulated sugar sprinkled over them like fairy dust...I am upset that I never had them before now. I am also upset that they will inevitably contribute to my weight gain because I'll eat them every chance I get. Unfortunately, they're also like $5 each. But as soon as my singing gig is over, I am going for the dairy-filled Boston Cream donut. Evil, evil Thomas Keller. My arteries will follow that pied piper to their triglyceride deaths.

Speaking of which, does anyone know if I can get some tomorrow morning? Or are they only available on the weekends?

Bouchon Bakery
The Time-Warner Mall
Columbus Circle

Doug hosted a rather chic dinner party chez nous last night. The main event was a showing of The Descent, which I took no part of because I don't do horror flicks. Luckily, I could still partake of dinner. The menu theme was the color red, after the bloody fare of the movie.

We had:

• Fennel, red onion, blood orange salad with pomegranate seeds and a red wine vinaigrette
  
• Cream of tomato soup with roasted grape tomato "eyeballs"
  
• Chicken salad with blue cheese on crostini, with roasted red pepper habanero sauce
  
• Homemade beet and goat cheese ravioli with butter, poppy seeds, and red dye
  
• For dessert, red velvet cake of course
  

The palate cleanser was a really lovely surprise: Wine Cellar Sorbets Sauternes sorbet, served with fresh raspberries. The sorbet was a huge hit -- fine, soft and almost slushy, sweet but not cloying, like a grown-up frozen margarita. It apparently has 5% alcohol, so don't try to serve it to your preggers guests. It would be the perfect end to a Valentine's Day dinner, served in a classic wide champagne glass with crunchy cantuccini. Our friend Sammy picked up a pint from Blue Apron Foods in Brooklyn, but the Wine Cellar Sorbets website has a list of other stores that carry their stuff all over the city.

A few years ago, I spent $110 on a bottle of Krug. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it, but by the time midnight rolled around that year, I'd already put back quite a bit of champagne and I have to admit that I didn't enjoy the Krug ten times more than I enjoyed the $12 Korbel. And I was at a big party and feeling kind of stingy with my champagne, thinking that I'd spent $110 and I certainly wasn't going to share it with all of these random people who couldn't appreciate that it was a $110 bottle of champagne. But that doesn't smack of holiday spirit, does it? In the end, I figured out that a fancy bottle of champs is good for a fancy occasion with your honey or a few delicate-palated friends -- it's not for swilling red-faced while you're trying to get your mack on with party acquaintances.

Again, I'm no wine expert -- I can either drink something or I can't. I like 'em dry, cold and fizzy, which is probably not the most high class way to enjoy champagne but I don't care. With that in mind, here's a roundup of cheap sparklers I've talked about (and a few I haven't talked about yet) that taste good enough to drink alone and are cheap enough to share with your New Year's one night stand.

Phillipe Foreau Sparkling Vouvray NV, France -- $25 Berry scented and really delicious. Plus, will always be associated in my mind with the cute man who sold it to me.

Prosecco Sorelle Bronca, Italy -- $13 -- Extra Dry, which means it's a little sweeter than Brut, but not headache sweet. Lighter color, lots of pear scent, so drinkable. Also has very classy label.

Monasteriolo Cava Brut, Spain -- Trader Joe's, $6.99. Dude, it's $6.99. That is, like, 1/4 the price you're going to pay for the renegade car service you're going to flag down at 11:35pm because you can't get across town in your stilettos and mini skirt, you hussy. It's crisp and just minerally enough.

Taltarni Brut Taché, Australia -- I loved this Australian pink bubbly, which seems to be retailing here for about $20. I liked it better than the $65 Billecart-Salmon rosé. It's not overly berry-y or astringent. I bet you can order a case of it at Astor Wines. Way better than that awful Sofia Coppola hipster canned gak.

Raventos i Blanc Cava, Spain -- About $12, widely available, mineral and clean, extra points for having a classy label that makes the bottle look more expensive than it actually is. Dan Barber's not ashamed to put it on the Blue Hill list. And I'm not ashamed of enjoying it immensely.

My flight gets into LGA at 7pm on the 31st, so I may miss the festivities this year, but at least you all will be saving your alcohol money for 2007. Think of me, drink up, and get laid, not necessarily simultaneously.

Capitalism! Baby Jesus! Gifts! Credit Cards!

Check out the Food Section's Gift Guide (with a few contributions by someone we know), as well as their meta Guide to Gift Guides and buy someone's love this holiday season.

I asked Doug to pick up coffee and allspice berries for Thanksgiving, and in the overwhelming nightmare that is pre T-Day Whole Foods, he forgot to get them. Luckily, I figured that Eagle Provisions, the awesome Polish/Euro grocer in my hood, would have allspice berries. When I didn't find coffee there, though, I remembered that there was a little coffee shop somewhere nearby.

Has Beans, a tiny, modest little coffee drink and bean outlet, is on the same block of 17th St. and 5th Ave. in Brooklyn. I picked up 1/4 pound of organic mocha java and a 1/4 pound of decaf house blend, figuring it would be disappointing coffee but probably better than Cafe Bustelo. After all, how good could coffee from some little nondescript shop on some little nondescript, unhip Brooklyn block be?

Well, as it turns out, the organic mocha java was really excellent coffee. I mean, really good. So good that we had to pull back after a sip and talk about how good it was. It's very dark and smooth, with chocolate tones and a slick syrup texture, but none of that sourness I hate in some lighter blends.

Now I know that, like my beloved Peet's coffee, it's roasted on the west coast, in Mt. Shasta, CA. And at $9.50/lb., it's a whole lot cheaper than the $14.99 bags of Peet's I've been picking up at Whole Foods. AND I can pick it up in Brooklyn, at a shop that's practically in walking distance of my house.

Right now I'm working on a bag of Gorilla Coffee's Sumatra Gayoland blend, and it's good too; obvs it's roasted a lot closer to home, and I like that they buy fair trade beans (though I don't really know what that entails). But if you're in my hood, save yourself some bus fare and check out this unassuming little shop on one of the South Slope's great culinary corners.

Has Beans
5th Ave. between 16th and 17th St. in Brooklyn

I'm hosting Thanksgiving in Sunset Park for the first time. The number of attendees keeps expanding, and being the kind of hostess that would be mortified to not have enough food, I'm trying to come up with extra side dishes for each additional guest.

I went to visit my friends the Paffenroths this morning to load up on their gorgeous Jerusalem artichokes. Not sure if I've discussed them here, but Jerusalem artichokes aren't actually from Jerusalem. They get their name from the Italian word for sunflowers, girasole, and they're the tuber of a kind of sunflower (hence their alternative name, sunchokes). Most of the time, they come in the shape of knobby, ginger-like playing jacks, but Alex Paffenroth grows a variety that's slim and cylindrical, easy to clean and handle. His sunchokes are favored by restaurants like Craft and City Bakery.

Raw, they're crisp, sweet and nutty, like jicama or water chestnuts. They're excellent roasted City Bakery style, with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, but this year I'm going to reprise a dish I made for my first New York Thanksgiving -- Jerusalem artichoke gratin. It's chic, rich, and couldn't be simpler -- and it's a great way to take advantage of some unique, seasonal, local produce. Make it the day before or the morning of, before the turkey goes in; reheat on a free rack in the oven while the turkey rests.

Jerusalem artichoke gratin

1 clove garlic
Butter
Jerusalem artichokes (1/3 to 1/2 lb. per person, depending on how many sides you already have)
Heavy cream
Nutmeg
Salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Smash the clove of garlic with the flat side of your knife. Rub the dry gratin dish with the garlic clove. (I have an oval Emile Henry enameled ceramic that's perfect for gratins -- you can also use a pyrex baking dish, Le Creuset, individual ramekins or even a cake pan, but preferably something heavy that conducts heat evenly.) Grease the garlicked dish with butter.

Peel the Jerusalem artichokes if desired. (I'm sure I won't, but I'm not fussy about skin.) Slice the Jerusalem artichokes on the bias into 1/3 inch slices. Toss with salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg (not too much nutmeg -- think 7 gratings of nutmeg for each pound of Jerusalem artichokes). Arrange the slices in the dish so there are as few air pockets as possible.

Pour cream over the Jerusalem artichokes til just covered. (I know it's a lot of cream, but it's Thanksgiving!) Bake in the oven, undisturbed, for 45 minutes? an hour? or so, til Jerusalem artichokes are potato tender but not mushy. Set aside. Just before you're ready to serve, reheat for 15 minutes in a hot oven.

At the Thai temple in North Hollywood I attended every Sunday for many years, there was a dark-skinned southern Thai woman with plump cheek apples who came to the basement food market every week. She'd come with big oiled balls of white dough, which she'd roll out into a rope and cut into pieces about the size of a child's fist and put to rest peacefullly in little cake tins.

Later, she'd throw each ball sort of like a pizza maker would, in a figure 8 motion, then throw it down, spinning the dough until it unfurled into a thin, pliable disc in the air, the dough sometimes wearing so thin that she'd create a gap in the translucence. She'd release each disc into a loose, long rope, then roll the rope into a coil. The coils would then be placed in another flat, small pan. Upon receiving an order, she'd knead the edges out to form a flat circle, 6 inches in diameter, still retaining the whorl from its previous incarnation. One of these flat circles would land onto a hot, greased skillet, where the dough would puff into flaky layers, crisp and golden brown on both sides. After a generous drizzle of condensed milk and a teaspoon of sprinkled sugar, she'd roll each rotee into a cylinder and wrap the bottom half in white waxed paper, the grease from the griddle seeping through.

I still dream of this rotee, the hot, crisp flaky layers giving way to the warm, sweet tang of condensed milk and sugar, wiping the grease on my Sunday school uniform. And they were only $1! The rotee's fleeting glory was unmatched when hot; but once it was cold, it was a lifeless, limp mess. It's one of those many Thai street foods I've never seen on a Stateside menu, because who's going to go to the trouble of making such a thing?

It's been years since I had one; I found a recipe, but I'll probably never match the rotee lady's years of manual experience, knowing precisely how to throw the dough, when the proteins in the dough have rested enough, when the elasticity has reached its breaking point.

But when my friend Jim pointed out these frozen parathas at Pacific Supermarket in Queens, I decided to experiment. I threw a frozen disc in the pan. It puffed and browned like the rotee lady's did. I drizzled with a teaspoon of sticky condensed milk. Not bad, I must say. Of course, it's not the real thing, but these frozen paratha are convenient and good enough for a trip down memory lane.

Frozen paratha, $1.79 for 5 at Pacific Supermarket in Woodside. There are many brands available; I'm sure they can be found at the bigger Chinatown markets.

Feel ambitious? You can try this detailed recipe for Thai-style Roti.

After a 7:15 a.m. yoga class with my friend Sarah, we headed over to her house to eat a little breakfast before work. Sarah introduced me to the wonders of goat gouda, and I'm totally obsessed. Creamy, firm paste with a little tang and very little of the funk people fear in goat curd. We shaved long ribbons of it with a cheese slicer and ate it with toasted, pumpkin seed-encrusted ciabatta rolls from Trader Joe's, fresh raspberries and grapes. Can you imagine? So much better than breaking fast with a stale donut. You can get goat gouda at Murray's for $10.99/lb., but the shrink-wrapped goat gouda from Trader Joe's is only $7.99/lb. and it's just as good.

Conversation with Sarah as we waited for the elevator in her apartment building:

GANDA: It's weird to be at your house at 9 in the morning.

SARAH: Oh, that's right, you've never been here sober right?

GANDA: I think I've arrived at your house sober but I'm not sure I've ever left sober.

A few disclaimers:

• I am no wine expert. I taste a wine and I can either drink it or I can't.
  
• When it comes to trends, food or fashion, I am dyslexic and can't follow. In fact, I'm particularly loathe to follow them because when I try, I reveal what a trendtard I am.
  
• Sometimes I put ice in my wine. Sometimes I put ice in my champagne. Who's gonna stop me?
  

Despite MisShapes and the Times and the fact that summer is almost officially, completely gone for another 9 freaking months, I am recommending you try Il Mimo rosé. My friend Kathy and I shared a chilled bottle of it last night over a plate of Delice de Bourgogne, some Pyrenees Brebis and some Monte Enebro. (These are all serious crowd-pleasing cheeses you should try if you haven't already. Stop laughing at our fancy-pants-ness.)

Il Mimo is made with Nebbiolo grapes, which means something to someone, but doesn't mean much to me. It's the color of raspberry glaze, dry but not powder dry, and absolutely drinkable. Even with a couple cubes of ice. (Oh no she di-int! But yes I di-id.) Added bonus points: it has a really cool label. Minus points for the plastic cork which was difficult to remove and harder to shove back in. But bonus points for being so gulpable that we Asian lightweights were able to finish the bottle ourselves on a Wednesday night, therefore no longer needing the cork.

Astor Wines carries Il Mimo for $11.99/bottle.