Monday 25 April 2011

Day 4.1 - Food and drink

(Now updated - see after the jump for more)

Breakfast today was less extravagant, but no less delicious.

First up was pan de bono, a Colombian food. They are what I'd imagine a cheese puff to be, but made with queso fresco (a rennet-set fresh cheese) and tapioca flour. Light and fluffy and very yummy, especially when slathered with butter. I even remembered to take photos.




Also, Carlos had made some rum and raisin cookies, given a milk wash before baking. Or at least that's what he called them. In fact they were the most perfect shortbread you've ever had: light, with the perfect bite and none of the stodge that shortbread often suffers from. There were small bits of rum-soaked fruit, which added to the texture. As they cooled, they became crisper, but no less delicious. It would have been interesting to see what they were like when completely cool, but that would mean not eating them immediately, and I just don't have that kind of self-restraint.



I emerged from the Guggenheim museum in need of a little something (I'd had a cuppa inside, but now needed something more substantial). So from the hotdog cart outside, I bought a cheese pretzel.


(That's my thigh/knee for scale). Not hard-baked crispy like the pretzels we occasionally see in Oz, rather it's a softish dough, served warm. Inside, it's a very dense dough, with a string of processed cheese running through the middle.


Very filling, and not terribly nice. I won't get them again.

Later, on my way back to Lexington Street, after touring the Cooper-Hewitt, I encountered Crumbs, a cupcake bakery, and it's rather overwhelming display of very pretty cupcakes.






The sales assistant's banter was as much part of the performance as the cupcakes themselves. Eager to help, he answered my questions fully. The red velvet cupcake outsells the others 4:1, the plain ones are probably the least sweet, but I ended up going with a blueberry swirl as it has a dollop of fruit inside. Pleasantly, all prices were tax-inclusive, and the cupcakes cost a helluva lot more in calories than cash.


It was good, with a light, moist, even texture, but far too sweet for my palate. That didn't stop me eating every last morsel.

Like all good American institutions, there's an app for that (so you can go peruse their wares if you're interested).


It's Passover here, and Crumbs has a Passover seasonal menu, including a sampler of their flourless cupcakes.


(They point out that these cupcakes are kosher, but not kosher for Passover. To be kosher (suitable) for Passover, they would have to be baked somewhere where flour had never been; other times of the year, they need only be free of flour.) You might also have spotted in the third of the display cabinet photos the chocolate dipped matzo. Machine made matzo wafers are perhaps 7" by 10", and probably taste like the ones I sampled with NoshWalks yesterday. Dipping them in chocolate and covering them with sprinkles would make them more appealing to children's tastes.

Later that evening, at Elaine's to see Mardie and Michael perform, I decided it would be prudent to have something more to eat, if only to help sop up the prosecco (sparkling wine) I was drinking a little too freely. After perusing the bar menu, I chose the "Baked Manicotti" from the entree selection, after determining that manicotti is what we call cannelloni. It was very good, but regrettably not enough to avoid the mild hangover I ended up with the following morning.

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