Filed under Shellfish · Print This Post
The Dr. requested seafood for dinner in exchange for his accompanying me to Roosevelt Island. While preparing for our meal, I entertained him with a smoked salmon appetizer. With a roasted branzino stuffed with lemon slices, I also served cockles in white wine sauce.
Ingredients:
1 bag of cockles, cleaned and scraped off
1 cup dry white wine
2 shallots, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
a handful of flat parsley, chopped
olive oil
1. In a large pot, heat some oil and sauté garlic and shallots. Add the cockles and toss until a majority of them open up. Shake the pot to be sure that all the cockles are getting equal heat. Add white wine and cover for about 3 minutes to let the wine simmer.
2. Drain the cockles into a large bowl, saving the liquid. Discard unopened cockles. Return the liquid to the pot and bring to a boil. Add chopped parsley. Pour this sauce over the cockles and serve immediately.
Related post/s:
How about some steamer clams?
Perhaps the more familiar mussels?
Momofuku serves cockles with ham and eggs
Filed under New York · Print This Post
It took a lot to convince the Dr. to take the tram to Roosevelt Island with me–like a homemade lunch and dinner kind of a promise–but he finally relented one hazy Saturday. From 59th Street and Second Avenue, we boarded the tram using our Unlimited Metrocards. The tram runs on a much slower schedule on weekends, but the ride took less than fifteen minutes.
We stopped by the visitors’ center to pick up a map to help us canvas the surroundings. From there, we walked south through the park and stopped in front of the Renwick Ruins, also known as the smallpox hospital constructed in 1856 when the epidemic was responsible for a lot of deaths in New York City. (James Renwick was its architect, the same architect responsible for St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan.) Because of the highly contagious nature of the disease, the island setting was considered ideal. It was turned into a nursing school residence when they transferred the patients of the hospital to another location. Today it is the city’s only landmarked ruin, covered in ivy, gated to keep trespassers off and lit at night.
We passed the Strecker Lab next to the ruins. It served as the pathology building for the hospital. We continued our walk to the southern tip of the island where there was, surprisingly, a bed of daisies. The Manhattan skyline was hazy from there, so we turned back and walked towards the north where the view of Long Island City in Queens was more pleasant.
A working hospital now stands behind the Roosevelt Island park where we saw a lot of patients on wheelchairs enjoying the view of the Manhattan skyline. The scene was a little eerie to me because, even though they have a nice view of the city, I felt that they were still isolated from the rest of the Big Apple. Residents who are more mobile live in some of the newly-built condos on the island. If not the tram, they take the F subway to get to Manhattan.
An interesting tidbit: Roosevelt Island appears in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as Blackwells Island when Nick and Jay drive into Manhattan via the Queensboro Bridge.
