Fishing in Sheepshead Bay

I opened my eyes when the subway crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. The sky had that blue morning glow tint with the sun rising behind one of the old warehouse buildings. I wondered how many New Yorkers have not seen this sight. I checked my phone and saw that it was only 5:15am. We’ve been on the subway only since 4:50am and yet, we were already halfway towards Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn.

The Dr. had the weekend off and he really wanted to go fishing. The last time I met up with Sean and Jane in Staten Island, she mentioned that she wanted to go fishing for the first time. I told her about our last-minute trip on Friday night, and by 6:30am, the four of us were sitting together in the Brooklyn VI boat ready to fish for bluefish.

We spent the next eight and a half hours on the boat dropping our sinkers and lures and reeling in. In between boat stops to look for the perfect spot to fish–we were following the sea gulls–we would go inside the boat and nap. We bought several beers and a hamburger from the kitchen when it was time to eat lunch.

It was a beautiful day to fish. We had our sunblock on, but it wasn’t too hot to be outside the boat waiting for the fish to bite. Once in a while, someone would scream that they got something and the deckhands will go around the boat announcing that there was one aboard. There was a lot of pep talk and rah-rahs to encourage all of us to keep fishing. Even though it was Jane’s first time to fish, she caught four. The Dr. followed soon and contributed six. Sean had a few bites but none wanted to become dinner. I had one exciting moment, but I panicked that I probably helped the fish unhook itself. Before the day was over, we paid a dollar each for our fish to be cleaned. Everyone ahead of us just wanted their fish filetted. I was so horrified when I saw the deckhands dump the pail of fish heads and bones back in the ocean. These burly men have never heard of fumet! When our turn came, we asked only for our fish to be scaled and gutted out, head and bones intact.

I didn’t have beginners’ luck like Jane, but I had an awesome time hanging out on someone’s boat and thinking of our dinner prospects.

You don’t need a reservation to join the Brooklyn VI boat. Just take the Q subway to Sheepshead Bay, walk towards the water and go to Pier 6. The boat leaves every Saturday at 7am. In July, bluefish is in season, but you can also catch sea bass and porgies. It’s $45 to get on the boat and an extra $5 to rent a rod. You keep all the fish you catch. Each fish is $1 to be cleaned.

Related post/s:
Fishing in Sheepshead Bay photos on Flickr
Fumet recipe for all those fish heads and bones

The New York Public Library Map Room

I’ve wanted to visit the library on 42nd Street ever since the map room was renovated. I finally got a chance to stop by one Saturday. Past the security guard and to your right in Room 117 is the Lionel and Princess Firyal Map Division. The entire library is already quiet, but walking in the map room is a completely different experience. It doesn’t feel stuffy inside even though the room holds some 400,000 maps and at least 16,000 atlases, books, periodicals and CDs about carthography. The New York City collection alone consists of maps from the 16th century. Maps cataloged after 1970 are all accessible via the library’s online CATNYP.

From a Henry Hope Reed book, I got the architectural details of the map room. The doorway is made of blue gray Fermosa marble from Germany while the perimeter of the floor is made of dark cream Hauteville with an inner band of Red Champlain ‘Oriental Variety’ from Vermont. The heavily-trafficked areas of the floor are made up of red Welsh quarry tiles. I have to admit that I didn’t even notice the doorway and the floor until I started reading about the room’s details because as soon as you walk in, the paneling strikes you. Eight patterns repeat in French walnut: satyrs, cherubs, lion heads, dog heads, birds, sphinxes, cornucopia and acanthus. The lowered plastered ceiling hides two east-west beams which allows for the six semi-domes around the edges of the map room. There are PL letters in gold on the domes for, what else, Public Library. The chandeliers are bronze with ornaments of acanthus, bayleaf wreaths with ribbons, bearded lions and carved scrollworks. There are shelves that hold a lot of books, but the long walnut tables dominate. The trestle tables are on pedestals decorated with the arms of the city of New York. The bases end in dolphin heads and rest on blocks of Verde Antique marble. Every little bit of detail is impressive. The librarian allowed me to take photographs as long as I kept my flash off.

The New York Public Library is open everyday except Sunday from 11am to 6pm; Tuesdays and Wednesdays until 7:30pm.

Related post/s:
Map Room photos on Flickr

Himalayan Yak

72-20 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens
718/779.1119
about $40 for two, with one beer, with tip
♥

I was armed only with a Post-It when I dragged the Dr. to Queens to try out some Newari dishes in Jackson Heights. Ubin gave me some recommendations and I scribbled them on said Post-It. We walked in before the busy dinner time and had to adjust to how dark it was inside. There was only a small family sitting in the restaurant, so we felt it was odd to be seated at the long table in the middle of the room. While waiting for our food to come, we found out why: all the bigger tables were reserved for bigger groups. The waitress wasn’t kidding either. When we were finishing our meal, a band started to set up on the makeshift stage. All of a sudden, the restaurant was flooded by other Nepalis. In under ten minutes, almost every table was taken and the place filled with a language we couldn’t understand and with faces distinctly unique.

Ubin had given me a Nepalese recipe last year. Even though I spent several hours making chataamari at home, I still wanted to try and experience the other kinds of food he likes. Preferring that someone else cook them, I badgered him to send me to one the restaurants he frequents.

At the Himalayan Yak, we started with the gyuma, or the Tibetan beef sausages. They looked like blood sausages, but they snapped like crispy hotdogs. The waitress brought out four kinds of condiments, among them an avocado sauce and a very spicy dip the Dr. couldn’t stop eating even though it was “annihilating” his tongue. The chwela, a spicy Newari pork dish served cold, was boney but addicting. You put the knob of bone in your mouth and try to take apart the meat with your tongue, all while absorbing the peppery sauce. My favorite was the sukuti: Nepalese, jerky and perfect with a cold bottle of Taj Mahal. If I was eating it in Nepal, it would be prepared with buffalo meat. The spicy chicken was dry and hard to chew. It was the only thing we didn’t finish. The popular momo, or steamed dumplings, were stuffed with cabbage and helped alleviate the spicyness of the other dishes. I tried to order rice. Well, I ordered “whatever you guys eat with all of this” and was served the tingmo, or steamed white buns. They looked like a wimpy, used towel on my plate. It was too bad that our dishes didn’t have enough sauce because they would have soaked up any leftover juice from our plates.

For my first restaurant experience with Tibetan and Newari dishes, Himalayan Yak was a good introduction. We walked out as soon as the band finished tuning their instruments. We almost regretted going too early and missing out on the real party.

Related post/s:
Nepalese chataamari recipe

Mamoncillo, Quenepa, Ginep

Cameron calls the fruit guy on the corner of Spring and Sixth Avenue our porno fruit guy. He has signs that have adjectives on them like “extra big size cherries”, “beautiful nectarines”, “sweet beautiful pineapple” and my favorite, “all kind sweet apple”.

I’ve bought cherries and bananas from him before. Today I walked by and saw these green little things. I asked him what they were and he told me they were quenepas and that they are “sweet and sawah.” (I love this guy!) This Puerto Rican girl sitting on a stoop came up to tell me they are from Puerto Rico and showed me how to eat them: you take a small bite to crack the leathery green skin, suck the juice, peel off completely and pop the plum in your mouth. You basically suck it until it’s dry. They are a little sweet and a little tart at the same time. After a few of them, you get a cotton-feel in your mouth because of the fuzzy texture of the fruit’s flesh.

They’re known in the Caribbean as mamoncillo, or mamon, which is also an obscene word. (You’re going to have to email me to find out what it means.) This Jamaican girl from work calls them ginep. She said they grow all-year round in Jamaica although this is the first time I’ve seen them in New York City. According to Caribbean folk wisdom, girls learn the art of kissing by eating the sweet flesh of this fruit. (More than just kissing, I bet.) In Ecuador, my friend Vanessa told me, you eat them with salt.

I’ve saved some of the seeds to dry them and I’ll be roasting them over the weekend. Tune in next week for the results!

Update:
So I put the dried seeds on a baking sheet and roasted them while I read The Times on Sunday morning. I remembered to take them out as soon as my mother asked about the funny smell in the kitchen. Thankfully, I didn’t burn them completely. When they were cool enough to handle, I cracked a few using a nutcracker. The quenepa seed meat was surprisingly tender, just like chestnuts. They were a pretty good snack considering they were spat out by co-workers. Now I feel like I have to tell the fruit guy that the little fruits make good tender, nuts.

Ada

208 East 58th Street between Second and Third Avenues
212/371.6060
about $60 for two, without drinks, with tip
♥

It was a new craving. It had to be Indian food but without the heavy curry sauce. It had to be seafood. Because I remember having such a seafood meal at Rasa the last time I was in London, it had to be cooked Keralan style.

On the map, Kerala is on the Malabar coast of India. Historically, they have traded spices with all the merchants of the world. I had a difficult time finding Keralan cuisine in Manhattan, and because I had no means to head over to New Jersey the same night–where they say the good Keralan restaurants are–I ended up at Ada on the east side after finding one seafood dish that involved Kerala on the menu.

The fish came in a thick orange sauce. I had to scrape it off to make sure there is fish under all of it. When I tasted the fish, it was bland. The lemon rice was more flavorful, so I ate an entire bowl to compensate. The goat sausages were better and disappeared easily with the mint-flavored nan.

I’m not quite sure why Ada was empty on a Friday night. The hushed tone made us uncomfortable. The waiters hovered at the bar, perhaps itchy to close for the night. Back in 2001, William Grimes of The New York Times gave Ada two stars, so I was betting my Friday night on that one seafood Keralan dish. Unfortunately, times have changed since then. I’m off to New Jersey to find a better one.