Category: Shopping List

To the person who finds my pound of shelling peas, which I displaced somewhere between the Greenmarket and home,

It is your lucky day, buddy.  I spent a long time at Migliorelli's stand picking out the smallest, skinniest pods I could find.  Two, three, four, five people came and went while I sifted and culled like a gem dealer in DeBeers country.  If I can't shell them and eat them with the finger-sized baby carrots and delicate white turnips I got, at the very least I hope you appreciate how petits them pois are.   Dagnabbit.

Sincerely yours,
Ganda

Fuck the BBQ Block Party lines!  Instead of listening to an awful blues band and standing on line for hours for expensive BBQ, you can listen to an awful blues band, stand on line and eat free hot dogs over at Broadway Panhandler!  This weekend, they're having their annual Yard Sale, Saturday and Sunday from 11 AM to 5 PM.  They always have jaw-dropping deals on practically every variety, shape, size, and color of All-Clad, Le Creuset and many other last-a-lifetime name brand cookwares, as well as plenty of dirt cheap knick-knacks and gadgets you never knew you needed.  It's also a great place to pick up future housewarming, birthday, Christmas, colleague gifts -- even and especially for your friends who don't cook.  That way, you'll finally have something to cook with when you go over to their houses. 

Broadway Panhandler
477 Broome St. at Wooster
6 to Spring St., N R to Prince St., D F V to Broadway Lafayette
11 AM - 5 PM Saturday and Sunday

While looking after Julie's kitty T-Bone last week, I was reminded what a fabulous tool her pepper mill is.  It's a traditional Turkish brass coffee grinder, which is super easy to refill with peppercorns and effortlessly grinds prodigious amounts of fine pepper in seconds.  The little cup on the bottom is great for collecting all the pepper you need without the sneezy pepper dust factor -- not to mention the fact that it won't leave pepper fairy rings all over your table and counters.  (Bewildered guests will often give the grind lever a couple of turns over their food before realizing that the cap has now collected a tablespoon of pepper.)  Julie has had hers for probably ten years now, and its grinding mechanism still works perfectly. 

I got one similar to the one pictured at left at the bazaar in Istanbul, for what I'm sure was the astronomical tourist's price of $12 (which is about 16,000,000 Turkish lira).  Can't make it to Turkey this year?  eBay often has an assortment of grinders like this one, which is being offered for $19.50. 

At the Union Square Greenmarket, Migliorelli's got perfect golf ball-sized red beets for $2 a bunch (eight per bunch).  I would have taken a picture but I ate them all already.  Sorry.  I roasted them and tossed them in a green salad, with a healthy wedge of fourme d'ambert raw cow's milk blue cheese on the side.  Tomorrow, I'm going to cook the abundant greens down with the last smoked chicken wing from Monday's smoke-out.  Migliorelli also had generous bunches of young dill for $1.  Take advantage of the deals at the Greenmarket while growing season is here.

Migliorelli Farms
North side of the Union Square Greenmarket
Wednesdays and Saturdays
(He might be there Fridays too, I forget.)

More on picking and cooking beets here.

Sometimes curry-caviar-wasabi-ancho-taleggio-cumin chocolate requires too much thinking.  When I need my plain, old-school sweet fix, there's no better place than the West Village's Li-Lac Chocolates.  My favorites are the French Mints -- thin square wafers of smooth, pepperminty confection between the thinnest layers of dark chocolate.  They're like those skinny Andes pillow mints, but 10,000 times better.  Bars of four are $2.25 each, but come on, you want the hefty 1 lb. box for $21.  Believe me, they disappear quickly.

I also love the dark chocolate enrobed syrup-candied ginger and the peanut-shaped peanut butter candies.  Hint hint.

Li-Lac Chocolates
40 8th Ave. at Jane St.

Some naughty Italian named these guys "strozzapreti" ("priest stranglers") because of their twisted up towel shape.  Try them with pesto or even some puttanesca (whore style) sauce, you cheeky monkey.  Murray's Cheese has these and other loose pastas, like frilly orecchiete and triangular trenne, for $5.99/lb.

I used to work with a manorexic raw food enthusiast who pretty much subsisted solely on peaches, avocados, and young coconuts when the summer rolled around.  But you don't have to fit into testicle-constricting size 25 jeans to enjoy the perfect refreshment of a well-chilled young coconut.  Have the vendor hack a hole in the top for sipping on the street, or take one home and cut a lid off the top by stabbing it in a circular shape using the butt end of your heaviest knife (or, better yet, a cleaver).  Drink the slightly sweet, aromatic, richly flavored coconut water inside.  Don't forget to scrape the silky, tender white flesh off the inside (especially the roof) of the coconut for snacking.   I always buy young coconuts imported from Thailand.  You can pick them up from the street stall fruit vendors in Chinatown for a mere $1.50 each.

Sometimes you need an upper, sometimes you need a relaxant, and sometimes you need something in-between.  Wissotzky Nana Tea is actually a black tea with mint -- perfect as a refreshing afternoon pick-me-up.  Fresh Direct's got it for $2.29/box.

I got two quarts of my favorite maple syrup in the mail last week from Buck Hill Farm, a New York maple farm that used to sell at the Greenmarket in Union Square but no longer does.  Their Grade A Dark Amber ($14.50/quart) is the perfect level of sweetness and complex in flavor, without any metallic edge or off flavors.  I do not believe the Grade B hype -- those just taste murky to me, especially in comparison to this fine, richly flavored syrup.  Buck Hill also offers really delicious maple sugar candies and a spreadable "maple butter", which has the texture of creamed honey (but no actual butter).

Last night my roommate and I popped open my bottle of NV Billecart-Salmon Brut Rose and I thought it was fine but it didn't knock my socks off.  Which I would have liked it to because it was a $60 bottle -- not completely outrageous by champagne standards, but a lot of money for me.  It did have a nice berry finish and looked gorgeous in the Cartier flutes, but it had a lemony, mineral quality that I wasn't crazy about.

Grade: B

Price: $60

Will I buy it again?  I don't think so.  I haven't found my dream champagne yet.  The Krug was lovely but a little too smoky for me.  I have to say, I loved those first few sips of Cristal -- I know it's supposed to be overpriced and overhyped, but I still think I liked it best. 

***

Doug and I also went and had dinner at Applewood last night and shared a quite nice bottle of rose wine, Chateau Pourcieux 2003 from Cotes de Provence.  Applewood had it on sale for $19.55 for the Dine In Brooklyn special (only twice the price of retail).  I don't know jack about wine, and I don't pretend to, but I liked it -- it was placid, not sweet but not cottonmouth dry with a nice glycerin-y mouthfeel.  And it comes in a very pretty bottle, making it an excellent gift choice.

Grade: B+

Price: $9.99 at Columbus Circle Wines

Will I buy it again?  Sure.  I think this will make a lovely "looks-like-I-spent-more-on-you-than-I-did" gift for dinner parties or Christmas.  But if you get one, forget you ever read this.