Lunch 2023 (!)

I have a recipe for a layer cake that uses unsweetened chestnut purée. It’s a lot or work, so I make it rarely. It’s a génoise with buttercream between the layers: made with Swiss meringue, chestnut purée, chocolate, and butter. The assembled cake is then covered with vanilla buttercream. Picture below.
image

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Great - thank you for the inspriation

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There’s a fishmonger in the nabe that’s been here a really long time. I buy all my seafood from them, mostly fresh sockeye, local fresh blue crab, and steamed Texas gulf shrimp. The other day I was chatting with one of the owners and she mentioned having sushi recently. So of course I had to ask where in the Sam Hill in this godforsaken corner of Pennsylvania was there a sushi joint good enough for a professional fishmonger to eat.

I visited this place today for lunch so I could test it out. Not bad! Never been served a little cup of dry ice with my rolls, though. When I asked the server what it was for, she said, “For looking.”

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:joy:

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I am glad you clarified :sweat_smile: but I am imagining scenarios where someone doesn’t ask, the server doesn’t tell, and some idiot freezes their insides and launches litigation that kills this practice and likely this restaurant.
Was it specified in the menu somewhere that the dry ice was for decoration only?

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Glad she didn’t say “For drinking” …

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IMG_0921

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Whatsa matter, don’t you like uni?

Tostadas with red Argentine shrimp from the freezer, cooked sous-vide 15 min at 140F with a little salt and baking soda, with mayo, onion, cilantro, and avocado.

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Screenshot 2023-01-11 at 5.00.44 PM

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And today we had grilled cheese on sourdough along with a kabocha squash, lacinato kale and Marcella bean soup. And then there was chocolate cake topped with pears and flaked almonds…espresso.


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Floating chocolate cake FTW! :wink:

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Not easy…lighter desserts work better!

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Bagel with cream cheese, capers, tomato, smoked salmon, and red onion.

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We’re on the same page today, although this is technically my second lunch. The first lunch was sautéed spinach and supposedly soft-boiled eggs that turned out to be on the hard side. I was too frustrated and hungry to take a pic.

This is Aldi’s cold-smoked salmon on a toasted local poppyseed bagel bottom with whipped Boar’s Head cream cheese, Inglehoffer cream-style horseradish, sliced shallots, fresh dill, and a few cucumber slices.

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Quesadilla with leftover carnitas from a restaurant meal Thursday. I also added red peppers, almost an entire bag of “Mexican” cheese :scream:, and pickled jalapeños. 'twas so filling there’s a corner left of it.


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The most common shape of byrek (phyllo pastry) is triangle, and the most cotmon fillings are soft cheese, and soft cheese-spinach combo. Only the triangles contain cheese.


Both were just out of the oven from the bakery a few steps away so we decided to eat them straight away.

Restaurants and bakeries were all closed during the first week of the year. We bought some bread and cheese the day before and store them in the mini fridge in the room. Fresh ricotta and mozzarella from a dairy shop nearby. The bakery only stepsfrom my lodging has great breads and phyllopastries. Never found anything like their bread again when we returned to the capital. This bread is super airy and the crust is chewy. There’s very little dense mass inside. Breads were the thing we enjoyed eating the most in Albania. Would never have thought!


Washed down with a super fruity Albanian wine.

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Lunch today was asparagus crepes with Gruyère cheese mornay sauce . Blistered shishito peppers and mini orange and red peppers on the side.
Dessert was passion fruit curd, a couple of amaretti cookies dipped in Alizé liqueur and blackberries joined the party.


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It’s still blowing a gale, has been relentlessly for a week now.


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All I’ve got in the house.

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Frittata with broccoli and goat’s cheese brought back from Lanzarote. Very pungent hard cheese. Should have tasted it before adding more on top. So now the frittata contains more cheese than all other ingredients.

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Smoked sprats from Latvia. I am partial to sardines but like (smoked) sprats almost as much. Polish supermarkets stock them. I really like the plastic ring pull, which requires very effort. It should be the norm by now.

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Rye bread (sourdough of course) I got in Duesseldorf.

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Do you need this in your life?

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Poster: Journalists manipulate us in the interests of the powerful.

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Late lunch on the train out of the city today, with my new favorite train meal: a beautiful quiche from a Brooklyn French bakery. It’s in a wooden ring so it keeps it’s shape, and it’s delicious at room temperature. I pop it out of the ring and eat it out of hand.

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