Writing With My Mouth Full

Roasted Vegetables, Thai Style

Adapted from The New York Times

Ingredients:
1/4 cup peanut oil
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
1 medium eggplant, diced
1 red pepper, cored, stemmed and julienned
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 pound green beans, trimmed
1 onion, quartered
12 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tomatoes, cut into eighths
1/4 cup red curry paste, or to taste
1 cup coconut milk
Â½ cup crunchy peanut butter
1 tbsp soy sauce
salt and pepper
Thai basil leaves for garnish

1. Heat oven to 450Â°. Place a Dutch oven over medium heat and add all but a tablespoon of the peanut oil. A minute later, add all vegetables except tomatoes; sprinkle with salt and pepper and stir. Put pot in oven and roast, stirring once or twice, for 30 minutes. Add tomatoes, stir, and continue to roast until vegetables are tender and beginning to brown, about 45 minutes to an hour total.
2. Put remaining oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add curry paste and stir; whisk in coconut milk, peanut butter and soy sauce and bring to a simmer. Keep warm.
3. When vegetables are done, stir in coconut milk mixture. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more soy sauce or curry paste if necessary. Garnish with herbs and serve hot or warm.

Kurumazushi

7 East 47th Street 2nd floor between Madison and Fifth Avenues
212/317-2802
$350 for two, with four beers, with tip

Dining in Kurumazushi is no joke and that’s apparent as soon as you walk in the tight second floor space in midtown Manhattan. The entire staff greets you loudly and the attention given doesn’t wane until you leave the building. Our waiter watched us eat like a hawk. A drop spilled from the boy’s teacup and he came running to wipe his tray clean. A dangling piece of mackerel escaped my big bite and he immediately replaced my mat. Our sushi chef at the bar was old but he was also the jolliest and the liveliest Japanese man I’ve ever met. His assistant is surprisingly a young Dominican (!) woman (!) who has been training under his tutelage for about ten years (!).

We opted for the omakase and never regretted a second of it until the $350 bill came at the end of the night. The chef started us off with otoro, then the yellowfin, the clam, the snapper and the mackerel, everything prepared in pairs. When we told him that we were getting full, he asked if we wanted to end our meal with uni. A smile reached my ears; there’s always room for a sea urchin or two. We also asked for miso and nameko mushroom soup to calm our stomachs.

I’ve followed Ruth Reichl to Kurumazushi but I don’t think I will ever return and eat there again unless someone else foots the bill.

Spice Market

13th Street on Ninth Avenue, New York City
212/675-2322
$150 for three, with three drinks, without tip

You walk into Spice market and you immediately think, This place is massive! The place is beautifully decorated, if not a little too dark, and utilizes a lot of wood instead of glass like 66, another Jean-Georges restaurant. Spice Market is bustling. There are staff members constantly running around. Some of them in backless salmon-colored pantsuits and tunics, some in short mini-skirts. The less attractive ones, I noticed, were wearing black sweaters and jeans. Our table was for 8pm and the place was already hoppin’ by the time we got there. The constant traffic is a little disorienting but I do not expect less from a restaurant in the Meatpacking District. In this neighborhood, you go to party, not to eat.

The food is typical Jean-Georges. You are encouraged to order several dishes to share with your group family-style. We started with the black-peppered shrimps with pineapple. The sweet and sour mixed with the spicyness was a good introduction but I ate more pineapple than I did shrimps for $14.50. The lime noodles were served with too much lime and I was cringing at every bite. I like my pasta al dente but I prefer my noodles soft and slippery. The mussels and the chicken wings, I felt, did not belong in the menu even though they were smothered with chili sauce and basil leaves. Good thing I had my Singha to match.

The green papaya was delicious as well as the squid salad. We were finally eating Thai food without the frills. I liked the halibut which was perfectly crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. I also loved the shaved tuna sashimi which came with small tapioca pearls in coconut milk. It tasted clean and pure. The mint tea was a great end to the overwhelming flavors that fought for my attention. By 11pm, nothing else mattered.

I’m satisfied with simplicity. I don’t need the entire production to be impressed.

Perry St.

176 Perry Street on West
212/352-1900
about $150 for two, with two drinks, without tip

Whenever I tried to make a reservation at Perry St., my only option was either 6pm or at 11:30. When I met my dining partner at our table in the back, the restaurant looked very empty at six. Perhaps they were reserving the tables just in case Nicole Kidman or Lenny Kravitz, residents of the Richard Meier building that also houses the restaurant, decide to drop by.

Perry St. is Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s eighth restaurant in Manhattan and it shows. The modernist interior welcomes the sunset glow along the Hudson River; it screams New York City. Diners look like the more affluent version of Spice Market’s fans but are a little older than the people in 66, two more of Jean-Georges’ establishments. The food is more “new American” but still focuses on the simplest Asian fares like red snapper sashimi, crab dumplings and roasted cod. Our fig dessert was served on a warm biscuit with ice cream, a delightful offering that was similar to one I had in London’s The Farm. They do not have a lot of wine available by the glass but a few good Belgian and German beers can be ordered from the bar.

Blue Hill Restaurant

75 Washington Place between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue
212/539.1776
about $150 for two, with two drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

To welcome autumn, Nabi and I had dinner at Blue Hill in the West Village last night. It’s probably the first restaurant in the city that attempts to be an answer to Chez Panisse with all their locally-grown produce offered on the menu. Everything we ate reminded me of that day in Berkeley, but in a more intimate outdoor summer night setting.

So intimate in fact, that a gargantuan roach decided to drop on my bread plate in the middle of my admiring the Berkshire pork. Our very good-looking waiter happened to be right next to me attending to the other table when it happened and I managed to grab and dig my fingernails on his arm to muffle my scream. I stood up and walked away without knocking our wine glasses. Nabi said she watched the waiter gracefully, and quickly, cover the plate with a napkin and walk away with it.

The manager ran to our table after hearing about the incident. He was very thankful that I did not make a scene to scare the rest of the restaurant. They comped everything from our main course on: the soufflÃ©, an extra glass of white for Nabi, two glasses of dessert wine and a pot of mint tea. I think they should have comped the entire meal, but maybe the roach wasn’t large enough.

Sans the Kafka episode, the food was refreshingly divine. We started with the different kinds of tomatoes in watermelon, cucumber and basil jus. We also split the Maine crab salad. Nabi had the wild striped bass which was cooked perfectly. My pork came from a very happy pig indeed, its own juice sweet without help from any kind of sauce.

After an entire conversation that involved mastication and other big vocabulary words not roach-related, we walked out of the restaurant happy and content. Blue Hill remains as one of my favorite New York City restaurants, but I have to subtract two stars because of the roach. I like organic, but not that organic.