Chicken/birthday, part 2.

So, it was late. I was hungry. I'd had a few Manhattans. So there's only one poorly exposed picture. But, still: fried chicken mountain, people!

Chicken. And, um, a birthday!

It's my birthday. (The big 3-1, if you're counting.) Hence, we are having fried chicken. Yes, that's right. I'm headed to a 10 PM reservation at Momofuku Noodle Bar for their fried chicken dinner.

Full report tomorrow. Maybe. But soon, for sure.

Photo by the ubertalented Kathryn Yu.

Just around the corner. (Sort of.)

On Saturday afternoon, my mom and I paid a visit to the Cooper-Hewitt, where we perused the latest exhibit in the National Design Triennial series (Why Design Now?) and lusted over the Lobmeyr glassware exhibit. I'm still dreaming of the Josephine decanter, which is, temptingly, available for sale in the gift shop. (As a member, I get 10% off, but even that can't justify such an extravagant purchase at the moment. Sigh.)

In any case, a glorious afternoon filled with beautiful design was capped off by a seriously tasty meal at a restaurant that has become something of an Upper East Side institution: Sfoglia. Incredibly, even though it opened in 2006 (spurred by the wild success of their restaurant of the same name on Nantucket), and has been wildly popular ever since, this was my first visit - but definitely not my last.

I started my meal with one of the contorni, a beet and cucumber salad dressed with yogurt and poppy seeds. Mom and I loved this one. The beets were incredibly flavorful, to the point where I'm convinced that they were roasted, then marinated, and finally added to the salad. The yogurt dressing (which I think had a touch of sherry vinegar in it) bound the late-season cucumber to the beets, and the greens added a peppery bite to the proceedings. Despite the messiness of our post-salad smiles (damn poppy seeds), we loved it.

Sfoglia (which means sheet of pasta dough in Italian) offers their pasta dishes in either primi or secondi portion sizes; Mom and I both went for secondi-sized versions and skipped a meat main. My pasta was a penne tossed with braised lamb, plums and eggplant, all topped with whipped ricotta salata. It reminded me a bit of the eggplant and mascarpone pasta I made during Meatless Week, and I especially liked the play of the sweet, meaty plums against the earthy, melty lamb and eggplant. I'm a fan of sweet fruits in savory dishes, and this was no exception. The ricotta added a level of gentle funk to the proceedings.

Dessert was a dish of sorbet made with the Concord grapes I'd forced my mother to sniff down at the Greenmarket that morning. Creamy and lustily fragrant, it didn't go so well with the chocolate chip cookie, but the cookie was pretty good in its own right. And I'm never one to turn down a decent chocolate chip cookie, you know?

No meal so decadent would be complete without a cup of espresso, especially when the people eating are me and Mom - two well-documented coffee fiends. Sfoglia's espresso is up to snuff, and certainly did the trick. I walked the eight blocks home slowly, but contentedly.

Sfoglia
135 East 92nd Street (at Lexington)
212.831.1402

Theatre, cheap and good.

Guys. Do you like theatre? Do you like things that are funny? Do you like things that are unbelievably cheap and still awesomely fun? Well, then, do I have the show for you!

Get your butts in gear and head over to West 54th Street, which is where you'll find Ars Nova, a an organization dedicated to developing new talents in theatre, music and comedy. (My little brother is their new Managing Director!)

Their current production is called Now Circa Then, and it was written by uber-talented playwright Carly Mensch, who's headed out to Hollywood to write for Weeds.Now Circa Then is the story of a two people who meet while working as historical reenactors at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. What follows is a hilarious and smart meditation on the meaning of history to the here and now, especially when you live in one of the most transitory communities on Earth.

And did I mention that tickets are wicked cheap? Only $25 a pop! For theatre! In New York! Get to it. (The show plays on Tuesdays-Saturdays, from now through October 9th.)

In case you're not already convinced (I swear it's good; I wouldn't lie, even for my baby brother), here are some of the reviews that have come in for the show (for links to the full reviews, click here and scroll on down):

Coffee. Coffee! COFFEE!

It's no secret that I absolutely worship a good cup of coffee. As proof, I thought I'd do a little coffee porn retrospective. Think of it as coffee Queenie has known and loved. Or think of it as the sort of thing that gives you a contact high. Whichever you prefer. Either way, enjoy!

The basics: French press, drip, whichever. You brew it, I'll give it a go.

Chez Queenie, 2009.

Hotel Fauchère, Milford, Pennsylvania, June 2009.

Chez Queenie, June 2009.

Café Sabarsky, February 2010.

Cold coffee, a classic summertime choice.

88 Orchard, August 2010.

Joe, August 2010.

Cappuccinos and lattes - milk does make everything better, or at least creamier.

Joe, April 2009.

Joe, December 2009.

Joe, April 2009.

And, finally, the perfect end to any meal: espresso.

Chez Queenie, August 2008.

Camille, Paris, November 2008.

Charlie Trotter's, Chicago, November 2009.

Would you move for a wine store?

My cousin Jason and his wife Abby have been living out in Greenpoint for about a year now, and they are the neighborhood's fiercest ambassadors. Or, at least, the fiercest ones with which I am acquainted. What they do, see, is invite you to their gorgeous, affordable two-bedroom apartment, lure you with delicious meals at local restaurants, and generally make the place irresistible.

Case in point? When they joined me to take a look at a new apartment building going up on the Greenpoint waterfront, they met me at the subway, had brunch with me at Marlow & Sons (see above for our discarded oyster shells), and showed me the most adorable wine store I've ever seen in New York.

Dandelion Wine on Franklin Avenue is drop-dead awesome. The owner, Lily, hand-writes price tags and descriptions for each bottle of wine she sells and hosts wine and cheese nights (FREE wine and cheese nights) every Friday. The shop carries a wide variety of wines, in terms of origin, varietal and price range, from an $11 rose to $100 bottles of vintage Pol Roger (1998, a very, very good year for champagne).

And did I mention the seriously amazing drawings decorating the chalkboard walls? Get your butts over to the Greenpoint Avenue G stop, people, and do it now.

Channeling the past.

This post is my second-round entry for FoodBuzz's Project Food Blog. To cast a vote for me in this round, clickety on over using this link, or click on the widget to the left! Thank you so much for all of your support, my lovelies!

I've known for weeks now that - if I made it to round two - the second week of Project Foodblog would be a tricky one for me. The assignment this week is to make a classic ethnic dish with which we are not familiar, and to blog about the making of it - and the inspiration for it.

That got me thinking about the fact that even though half my heritage is Jewish (the paternal half), I've never made matzoh balls, kugel - or brisket. I mean, BRISKET! Is that crazy, or what? Mostly, I think, it's because my paternal grandmother, Marcia, passed away when I was a little girl, before she had a chance to show me the tricks of the trade. My mother has told me that the real cook in the family was my great-grandmother, Etta Blocker, who apparently worked magic with tough beef and matzoh meal. (That photo is of me with my grandfather, Irv, Marcia's husband. Sadly, I couldn't find any snaps of Marcia amongst my collection.)

And so, when I was brainstorming ideas for an ethnic dish for this challenge, I passed over my usual favorites (Vietnamese - though you should definitely check out my homemade banh mi over here - Thai, Chinese) and turned instead to the cooking of my ancestors.

A bit of research - including conversations with some fellow descendants of Eastern European Jewish folks - led me to the conclusion that every family has their own special version of brisket. My colleague Liz's family, for example, adds cranberries to their braise. Another friend's mom adds a full bottle of red wine to hers. Since I didn't have a family recipe to work from, I decided to turn to a source I trust implicitly - Gourmet - to find a version that suited me: namely, one with lots and lots of vegetables.

And find one I did. The version I settled on includes not only loads of vegetables - chopped onions, chunked carrots and celery, whole cloves of garlic and a hefty supply of crushed tomatoes - but also a bit of cider vinegar. And I love cider vinegar. I also love the thriftiness of the ingredient list, which seems very true to the dish's heritage. Gussying the stew up with a bottle of red would, no doubt, make for a delicious meal, but using tasty, cheap ingredients pays tribute to the frugality from which braises are born.

In a twist of fate, my mom was here this weekend and came along to the Greenmarket to help me find the ingredients for the brisket. We found the most perfect little onions and carrots in every color of the rainbow, not to mention the celery-iest celery known to humankind. We visited the German butcher down the block for the brisket itself, and grabbed a can of San Marzanos at the grocery store.

Like most braises, this one begins with browning. I browned the brisket on both sides, then moved to to a plate to rest. In went the onions, then the rest of the vegetables, followed by a cider vinegar deglazing that produced an aroma fit for a king. Next came the tomatoes, some chicken stock and the meat itself, which I tucked into its bed of vegetables. The whole thing went into a low oven for three hours and emerged, well...

...as a sweet tangle of fork-tender meat and rich vegetable goodness. It is - in a word - delicious. We'll be eating it tonight atop a mound of buttery mashed potatoes tinged with turnip, and topped with a gravy made from brisket trimmings, scallions and - yes, more - butter.

I think Marcia and Etta would be proud.