January | 2010 | Writing with my mouth full: New York City restaurant reviews, international recipes, travel stories

January 2010
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Hot Sauce Test

Jan 29, ’10

Ever since I started commuting to Connecticut for work, I started doing my grocery shopping at the Grand Central Market in Grand Central Terminal. I’m usually in and out, picking fresh produce for what I’m planning to cook for dinner, but one day I spent a leisurely time inside investigating the other specialty products the different purveyors sell. One thing that jumped at me was the number of hot sauces for sale. They caught my eye because they came in unique packaging and different shades of reds and oranges. With the help of Grand Central Market’s public relations firm, I was able to sample different hot sauces and compare them with what I already had at home.

Check these from left to right and buy your favorite just in time for the Super Bowl:

1. Ass Blaster hot sauce from Southwest Specialty Food
This came in the most amusing packaging. The bottle is inside a replica of the actual outhouse at the company’s Arizona headquarters. It reminded me of a coffin so tasting it actually made me nervous. The Ass Blaster is fierce on the front of your tongue and it stays there for a long time while you’re eating. I’m sure it would blast my aSs if I have plenty of it.

2. Chimay Salsa Habañero
I like Tabasco sauces because of their vinegary taste. This is a little smokier than the yellow kind I already have and love so even though it’s stingy, the spiciness is short-lived and very tolerable.

3. Kaiska bulls habañero in tequila sauce
This is very interesting because it’s chunky and comes with onions. Despite the name, it has no alcohol in it even though it comes from the agave azul plant, the base ingredient for tequila. I use Kaiska as a condiment because there’s a little bit of sweetness to it that’s great as a rice topper.

4. Mazi Piri Piri sauce
Most commonly known as sauce from Portugal, the chiles are actually used a lot in East African stews and is great as marinade. Piri piris, meaning “very yellow” in Gujarati (after the Portuguese colonies in India), look a lot like Thai chili peppers–small in size but very powerful in heat. It’s also very oily. I noticed that when setting up the photo below: its “legs” are longer on the plate. The packaging is quite a bitch to open because it’s sealed with wax. I had to use a bottle stopper to store it but if you use it as a marinade, you’d probably end up using all of it at once anyway.

5. Valentina hot sauce
I associate Valentina hot sauce with tacos especially here in East Harlem. It’s easily the condiment that’s always present on eat-in counters in taquerias. I once sent my friend Anna a bottle of this straight from Mexico City but didn’t pack it well enough that she basically received a glob of hot sauce on her doorstep. This is probably the most tolerable hot sauce for me in this batch because I’ve had enough of it.

6. Louisiana jalapeño hot sauce
This is also very tangy, though not as spiky as the Chimay. The heat goes in the back of your tongue which may seem nothing at first but begins to kick while you’re chewing your food. The good thing about Louisiana is that it never overpowers the food you’re eating.

7. Cholula chipotle sauce
Chipotle is a dried jalapeño pepper that’s also been smoked. It’s mostly used in Tex-Mex cuisines. Though that’s not at the top of my Mexican food list, I like using Cholula when I make Subanik, a Guatemalan stew I learned to make from Francis Ford Coppola’s resort, to mix with the ancho chiles.

Note that on the photo above, the third and fourth dollop have actually been switched. The chunkier and darker one is from Kaiska; the more orange is piri piri. You can buy #1, #4, #7 from Grand Central Market. My friend Corey brought back #2, #3 and #5 from his last business trip to Mexico, though #5 is available in bodegas in most neighborhoods with a large Mexican population. I bought #6 from the New Orleans School of Cooking.

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Convivio

Jan 28, ’10

45 Tudor City Place off East 43rd Street
212/599.5045
$170 for two people, with drinks, without tip
♥ ♥ ♥

While in Colombia, we had a few unfortunate meals that involved pasta. Sure, Italy shares a lot of history with South America–the mass emigration of Italians was between 1876 to 1976 and brought a lot of them to countries like Argentina and then to Colombia–but the “Italian” meals we had didn’t quite involve a loving grandma in the kitchen. At the beach, vegetables were brought in from the nearest big city, about six hours away, so canned sauces were easier to come by. When there were fresh tomatoes, they were used with pasta that came in a box and because most of our meals weren’t cooked individually but in a big batch for the day’s guests, the concept of al dente was nonexistent.

Back in New York, I searched for that pasta lovingly massaged by big hands covered in flour and I found it at Convivio. We had no business spending any more money after our two-week trip, but I couldn’t resist Convivio’s $62 Sunday night prix fixe menu. Unlike most prix fixes in the city, their 4-course menu included a pasta and a dessert without skipping a separate main course. I opted to start with the yellow fin carpaccio drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with finely chopped scallions and pistachios. I wanted to start light before my preferred pasta dish: saffron gnocchetti with crab and uni.

Did you just read that? Saffron gnocchetti with crab and sea urchin! I am not exaggerating here when I tell you that the combination made me roll my eyes back in ecstasy several times. Sea and earth have never smelled and tasted this heavenly together. The pasta was soft; full, yet springy at each bite. It was pasta at its best. At first, I thought the half portion would not be enough, but it was actually the right amount for such a rich dish. It left me wanting some more and yet I was completely satisfied. I think if I had a whole serving, I wouldn’t have cherished each spoonful as much as I did.

I could not say no to the duck breast. Duck is my new lamb. Done perfectly with Swiss chard alla Romana and spaghetti squash, it was the most beautiful wintery dish without being too heavy. Thankfully I was with someone who picked the lamb chops that tasted so carnivorously good with escarole and white beans. The last time I had lamb that tasted like it was just running an hour ago was at Per Se–that’s saying a lot for a most generous option on a prix fixe menu.

For dessert, it was a battle between the vanilla panna cotta with huckleberries and lemon sorbet or a trio of “freshly-spun” gelato (peach, mango, lemon the night of our visit). I am wont to order only one dessert and split it between me and my companions, if I order at all, but both were so irresistible that we shared them during our last few minutes in the restaurant.

If every homecoming meal was Convivio style, I would gladly suffer through a bad meal or two abroad just to remind me that sometimes you don’t have to go too far to enjoy a meal that’s full of heart–grandma or no grandma.

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Day 1: Getting from Bogotá to El Cocuy, Colombia

Jan 25, ’10

Our connecting flight in Fort Lauderdale was delayed a couple of hours because of a snowstorm in the northeast, but we managed to get in Bogotá, Colombia before sunset. Señor Samuel was holding up a piece of paper with our names on it as soon as we exited the El Dorado Airport Customs. He was hired by my friend Evelyn’s aunt to pick us up from the airport and drive us around because we had a few errands to run before catching the 6:30pm bus to El Cocuy. He had planned our routes accordingly to put us back on schedule. Minus the part when he locked us all out of the car by leaving his keys in the ignition, he was a really good driver and guide. [Insert nervous laugh here.]

Our first stop was the bus terminal where Evelyn’s aunt arranged for our bus tickets to El Cocuy. Señor Samuel knew we still had errands to run but because we were pressed for time, he talked to the bus conductor to see where the next stop would be so we could meet the bus there instead of boarding from the main terminal. We tried to ignore that the conductor was holding a bottle of rum and only had one working eye; we wanted him to allow us to be picked up from another stop so we were in our best behavior when the two men reached an agreement and exchanged phone numbers.

Our next stop was at 104 Art Suites Hotel in Bogotá. We weren’t scheduled to check-in until four days later, but I had arranged to drop off our non-hiking luggage in the hotel for safekeeping until we were done with our trek. Then we stopped by the hiking store in the neighborhood. Because gas tanks are not allowed on any flights, I found the closest camping store to make sure they had the tank that would match our stoves. Everything seemed like a match online when I was researching in New York, but unfortunately, the thing that had to connect to the other thing wouldn’t, so we had to leave the store without any camping gas.

We didn’t have the time to try another store or buy a whole new expensive stove system we may never use again, so we decided to just go for it and try to survive with cold food for the next three days. The Dr. had no idea that he was participating in a very Filipino attitude of Bahala Na at the time. We just didn’t have the time to sulk about one mishap.

For the next thirty minutes, Señor Samuel zig-zagged through traffic to meet our bus at the next stop. He dropped us off at a mall so we can buy food to eat in the bus–Go Frisby!–and then walked us to the street where the bus was to stop. As soon as the clock hit 7:30pm, the bus pulled up with two empty seats in front. You’re the guys from the terminal? the driver asked us in Spanish. We said yes and he loaded our backpacks under the bus and led us to our seats. We paid Señor Samuel his fee and thanked him profusely for helping us with everything we had to do in the span of three hours before we boarded the bus, so we were a little touched when he suddenly showed up standing in our aisle: he quickly got on the bus just to make sure we were comfortable in our seats. He wanted to say good-bye one more time and he wanted to let us know that the driver will let us off in El Cocuy twelve hours later.

We left our New York City apartment at 2am that day and almost eighteen hours later, we were on our way to El Cocuy, Colombia, our home away from home for the next three days. The bus ride was uneventful but much more comfortable than our economy seats on the plane from the United States. It made a few stops for the driver to take a break and for the passengers to pee, and only one of them involved gun-toting camouflaged soldiers ordering all the men to get off for inspection. It was only when a rooster that had been sitting in a box on the seat in front of us crowed that we knew we had made it. The sun was starting to rise and it was time to get off.

We were disoriented when we got off the bus. We slept some, but no sleep on a bus can beat sleep on your firm mattress at home. There was some action in the center of town and it was obvious that people had just started their mornings. I opened my Lonely Planet Guide and picked out the editor’s favorite hostel in town. We walked about three blocks uphill and knocked at La Posada Del Molino. A guy let us in after we inquired for vacancy. He pointed to the stage and sound system set up outside the hostel and warned us that it gets loud at night because of the holiday festivities, but we were in no mood to find another hostel. We just wanted to put down our backpacks and catch up on real sleep.

Six hours later, we changed and sat in the courtyard to order some lunch. We were quite disappointed that there was no hot water in the shower as advertised, but we were in no position to complain as we would have to live without showering for the next three days anyway. We were famished and we easily devoured the vegetable soup and the beef plate that came with salad, corn and rice that was served to us by the kitchen staff. It was about sixty degrees, warmer than the temperature in New York City, but there was still a chill in the air. We have been in Colombia for less than 24 hours and we were already up 9,000 feet.

After lunch, we decided to walk around town and take care of the remaining logistics for our hike. We stopped by the Parque Nacional Natural (PNN) El Cocuy Headquarters on Calle 8 No 4-74 to check-in, finalize our route and pick-up a map. We also went to the offices of the two bus companies that run the Bogotá-El Cocuy route, Libertador and Concorde, to check if their buses were running on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The clerks in both offices couldn’t answer our question, so we put a deposit for a temporarily scheduled December 24th departure and planned to hike down the morning of.

With most of our tasks taken care off–there were no camping stores in El Cocuy so we were still sans stove–we walked around town to check out the scene. We visualized our hiking route using the diorama in the park. We paid our respects and visited the town church and we spent a few quiet minutes in the cemetery. We bought a kebab and an arepa-like patty filled with ham and cheese from two street vendors and we drank our first Colombian beer. Most of the locals were wearing the ubiquitous wool shawl; the men completed their looks with fedoras. Time was slower in El Cocuy and we were still trying to pace ourselves down and absorb our new surroundings.

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Tassimo Home Brewing System

Jan 15, ’10

Imagine my delight when I saw a big box on my chair after being out of the office for two weeks. My co-workers gathered around to watch me unpack the Tassimo Home Brewing System from Kraft Foods. I had the public relations agency specifically send me a sample to test at work where coffee connoisseur wannabes can help me evaluate the cute little machine made by Bosch. We already have a Keurig machine set up in the kitchen, so we set the Tassimo up in one of the designers’ cubicle to schedule coffee breaks and tea times during our regular work hours.

The Tassimo was easy to set up. After following the instructions to clean, we started to make our coffees and teas. Throughout the first day of testing, co-workers came up to make their own cups. The following are the pros from several testers:

1. I like that it has a sensor to stop brewing if you move the cup.
2. Convenient. I don’t have to drive to get my coffee in the middle of the day. (We are, after all, testing in a Connecticut office.)
3. Easy clean-up.
4. Making coffee is quicker than going downstairs to the cafeteria!

But for such a compact machine, the Tassimo is pretty loud. It did help with advertising it to the rest of the office because a few of them stopped by to check out the whirring noise that was coming out of the cubicle. The button that starts the quick brewing process looks like a dial, so all the testers kept trying to turn it to skip a step ahead, i.e., to add more water. The designers asked why the buttons couldn’t be separated and labeled clearly.

We were also sent several samples of the beverages: Starbucks, Espresso, milk for latte and cappuccino and Chai. Each came in small pods with a barcode. The Tassimo reads the barcode and magically knows what to do with it. We all loved that when you put the milk pod, it knows to make it frothy for cappuccino, but some worried if they have to waste and throw a pod if the machine deems it unreadable for one reason or another.

For the Starbucks fans in the office, they thought the coffee brewed up nice and strong. For deli coffee fans, they had to re-brew just to add more water to it because it was too black. A couple of people didn’t like the idea that the milk came in the pods. Although convenient, they didn’t like that they could be sitting on a shelf for a long time. For those who like their coffee with only a little milk, they wanted a button to stop the machine from processing the entire milk pod. But what to do with the leftover milk? They deemed a pod a waste if only one user can process the milk at a time.

On Amazon.com, a box of twelve pods is retailing for $21 which means a cup of coffee is less than $2, but there was a also big concern about the waste of plastic that the pods use even if you use your own mug to brew your coffee.

Overall, the Tassimo Home Brewing System is affordable, compact and convenient, but it could use some design tweaks to make it easier for people to operate without having to pour over the manual. You, as the coffee drinker, should just decide whether you like the taste of the coffee and tea it brews.

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Pork Tomatillo Soup

Jan 11, ’10

As much as I would like to take credit for this very satisfying soup, I’m unable to because I recreated it from memory after the Dr. made it this winter. I remember walking in his apartment and saying that his place smelled like Taco Mix, the taco stand in his neighborhood. Apparently, it was the best compliment I could have given because he was trying to make a Mexican soup he saw in Anthony Bourdain’s latest Mexico City episode. He replayed the show for me and all he could figure out was that the soup they were served for breakfast was green. The Dr. imagined a whole pork carnitas taco in soup form, so he went to work and boiled down pork with tomatillos, cilantro and lime juice. The finished product was so good, I could not help but ask for a third serving. When we came back from Colombia and I was lamenting about the cold weather, I made it myself. Funny how sometimes a snapshot from a TV show is enough to inspire you to cook.

Ingredients:
1 medium-sized pork picnic
12 tomatillos, peeled from husks and quartered
2 bunches cilantro, thoroughly washed
2 Scotch bonnet peppers, halved, seeds removed
1 red onion, quartered
3 cloves of garlic, minced
juice from 4 limes
salt

1. In a large stockpot, boil the pork picnic in enough water to keep it submerged. Add a generous amount of salt. When impurities float to the top, remove and discard. Lower the heat down to medium-low.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pot and simmer, covered, for about 2 hours. Using a ladle strainer, try to get as much of the solids and transfer to a food processor. Purée and transfer back to the pot.
3. Cook for another hour or until pork is falling apart. Season with salt and lime juice to taste. It should be a good balance of saltiness and sourness. Serve with rice.

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Recent Posts

Month January 2010

Hot Sauce Test

Convivio

Day 1: Getting from Bogotá to El Cocuy, Colombia

Tassimo Home Brewing System

Pork Tomatillo Soup

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