Cucina Testa Rossa

Champagne & Seaweed

Yes, you read that right, Champagne and Seaweed! If you think about it, some of the best pairings with champagne are fried, salty, crunchy food. Fried chicken, popcorn, french fries, and now....seaweed. Its salty, crunchy, earthy umami! 

Jeff Harding, that handsome guy above and wine director at The Waverly Inn in NYC, and I are hosting a cooking and champagne pairing on his IG LIVE this Saturday May 22 at 10am PT! 

If you'd like to cook along, channel your inner mermaid and join us!
Here are the recipes and places to find these savory seaweed. 

• Watermelon Salad with Lime, Mint and Nori - Superfood Seagreens
• Caramelized Onion Wakame Onigiri - The Spruce Eats
• Soft Scrambled Tamago - Food52
• Nori and Sesame Avocado Toast - Food52
• Furikake - Just One Cookbook 
  
  
• Good Eggs - Seaweed
• Strong Arm Farm

Jeff's bougie furikake popcorn ;)

Sea you Saturday! 

Public ~ New York

beet & goat cheese arancini with pesto

I have spent the past year thinking about the most delicious martini I have ever had. A ginger martini infused with freshly grated ginger. It was sublime. So when I first planned this trip to New York, I knew that Public had to be on the itinerary.  After giving our name to a *very* cheerful receptionist and our coats to a *very* cheerful coat check, we beelined for the bar. Thankfully the bartender was not *very* cheerful, just pleasantly engaging. I was giddy with excitement as I awaited my ginger cosmopolitan ~ vodka infused with freshly grated ginger, Cointreau, white cranberry and lime juice, skewered with a chunk of candied ginger. Scott ordered a pomegranate mojito. Mine was better :-)

Paladar ~ New York

Comer, beber y amar, bajo un solo techo ~ Eat, drink and love, all under one roof 

We ate, we drank and we all felt the love.... at Paladar in New York City.

Friday night I ventured east, the Lower East Side specifically, with a friend from the French Culinary Institute, the bread chef from the French Culinary, Amy's Bread and Bouchon Bakery, and the pastry chef at Esca so if nothing else, we were certainly going to eat and drink well.....and I guess the love just comes naturally when sharing good food and adventures with friends.

We found ourselves just south of Houston and east of Bowery at the self-proclaimed "funky yet chic" Paladar. The muy caliente Chef Aaron and his muy guapa sister Marissa Sanchez opened Paladar, which means palate or to taste, in tribute to their Latin roots. Within an hour of our arrival, this Lower East Side denizen every table was full and the bar was 5 to 6 people deep.

Salon du Chocolat dans La Grande Pomme

A chocolate tribute to New Orleans....

Bonjour de Nouvelle York! Greetings from New York, the Big Apple, and the Chocolate Show. Yes, the Chocolate Show...again! But rather than hopping the Metro, I took the Uptown (2) (3) express to 14th Street to the Altman Building for the New York Chocolate Show...... Click below for all my photos...

I {HEART} NY

A nut stand on Broadway and Grand ~ New York City, November 2005

Tabla ~ New York

It was a Danny Meyer week, starting out at Tabla, his Madison Square Park restaurant and Chef Lloyd Cardoz's "New Indian Cuisine". I love Indian food though my delicate constitution (ha!) doesn't allow frequent trips down this culinary path. LuckilyI didn't know before hand otherwise I would have steered clear but by the time I sat down to lunch with my friend Amy, it was way past lunch time, I was freezing and starving, so Indian it was!  A large bowl of spiced popcorn was quickly devoured as we waited impatiently for our lunch. It didn't take long but freezing and starving are not good bedfellows so a huge relief when a steaming bowl of pumpking curry soup was placed in front of me.

Perfectly balanced, not too spicy, pumpkin seeds for a little crunch and the pumpkin was "al dente", sweet and delicious. We then shared a vegetable platter of Saffron Rice, Spiced Pumpkin, Cinnamon Chick Peas, Pumpkin Chutney served with Whole Wheat Nan. A pot of orange-ginger tea to finish and I was ready to take on the Big Apple.

A mosaic ceiling allowing a view from the 2nd floor

_______________
Tabla
Lloyd Cardoz, chef
Danny Meyer, owner
11 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10010
212-889-0667
www.tablany.com

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I made it!  After an  unexpected layover in DC, I finally made it to La Grande Pomme, The Big Apple!  While waiting for my bags in Dulles Airport, I was on the phone whining to my friend Christine when she said, "Call Heidi and stay with her, she lives 15 minutes from the airport!" Alas I was saved from some dreadful airport hotel and arrived at Heidi's two hours later looking like something the proverbial cat dragged in. I was greeting with a warm smile, a hug, and a big glass of wine. There is a God.

From planes.....

...to trains....

....next stop, Penn Station....

...to automobiles....waiting for a taxi at Madison Square Garden!

The Feast of San Gennaro

Little Italy NYC, Feast of San Gennaro, September 2003

I read in The Food Section that this week is the Feast of San Gennaro celebration in NYC! OK, so I'm hopping the ocean but this is too wonderful of an event to leave it out simply due to proximity and I certainly must acknowledge my heritage at least one or twice in my humble little site.

The Feast of San Gennaro, the Patron Saint of Naples, was first feted in 1926 by recent Neapolitan immigrants. It is celebrated every fall in New York City, Little Italy naturally, and lasts for 11 days. These Italians mean serious business when it comes to their Patron Saints, and to their parties. 11 days of pasta and parades, bands and blessings abound. And let us not forget the infamous Cannoli Eating Contest - who can eat the most in 6 minutes! "Jesu Christo Mio!" (jay-zu krees-to mee-o), as my little Italian grandmother would say. Over 1,000,000 people will descend on Mulberry & Grand Streets over these 11 days to celebrate La Dolce Vita. I wish I were one fo them. Mangia bene!

My favorite Italian deli in NYC is DiPalo's just down the street from me when I was in cooking school. I used to buy mozzarella curd there to make mozzarella cheese! And regardless of the line out the door, Lou (DiPalo) would always take the time to explain exactly how to make it, the temperature of the water, which salt was best to use.... much like my butcher, Serge with the blue eyes, here in Paris who, with a line out the door, will describe in painstaking detail the exact way to cook epaule d'agneau (lamb shoulder). So a few European traditions are still alive and well in New York City.

DiPalo's
206 Grand Street
(212) 226-1033

Feast of San Gennaro
September 15-15, 2005
Mulberry & Grand Sts
New York City
(212) 226-6427

Dear New York City...

I took this picture on the morning of September 11, 2003 standing on the corner of Church and Liberty St looking out on Ground Zero.
___________________________________________________

This was published by the New York Times on September 11, 2005 ~ a letter written by Spalding Gray in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001.

Dear New York City... by Spalding Gray

For 34 years I lived with you and came to love you. I came to you because I loved theater and found theater everywhere I looked. I fled New England and came to Manhattan, that island off the coast of America, where human nature was king and everyone exuded character and had big attitude. You gave me a sense of humor because you are so absurd.

When we were kids, my mom hung a poster over our bed. It had a picture of a bumblebee, and under the picture the caption read:

"According to all aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly because its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wingspan. But ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway."

That is still New York City for me.

Reason #4863 – Why I Love Paris

The bus stop billboards! As my friend Scott said: "Now that's cookin'!" ;-)
If we could just get this up....ahem, so to speak....in Times Square...

The human spirit....

"The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart."