Wild cocktails

I was asked to create some special cocktails for a party that Remodelista is throwing ahead of their annual NYC Market this weekend. To me, special means wild flavours, and the more local, the better.

It has been fun. Brooklyn juniper berries, New Jersey sumac, and New York state hooch (rye, gin and vermouth). Add a lick of Massachusetts maple syrup, and we've got: the Triple Juniper (left), and a Sumac Sour (right).

You can find the juniper cocktail recipe at Gardenista.

Now all I have to do is mix several hundred of them.
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Leo the corgi

Poor Leo the corgi was left outside Key Food on Henry Street last night. According to a cashier he had apparently been out there for over an hour. Everyone was talking about him, and he was petted by almost everyone leaving the store.

Before I arrived, a concerned customer called a number on his tags which turned out to be for his doggy daycare. The daycare said they would contact the owner. His coat was in good shape and very thick - it was a few degrees above freezing.

We waited, and then I left, already late for dinner at home after a cocktail taste test in Brooklyn Heights. A girl who was very upset about him said she would come back and check on him, and when I went back to see if he was still there at 9.30pm, the store was closed and Leo was gone. So someone took him.

I am not sure how you leave a store without noticing your black and white dog outside it. I'd love to know how the story ended.

Update, 3/4/16: I went back to Key Food this evening and spoke to the cashier who was there the evening Leo was left outside the store. The good news is that Leo's owner did come to fetch him.

"Did she seem happy to see him?" I asked. "She was very blase about it," said the cashier, "Like: 'Oh, yeah, I forgot about him.' No big deal."

The cashier was deeply unamused. "These people," (I think she means the 'new people' in the hood), "they want everything. It's like with the kids. But they have no time for them."

So Leo's lady owner shopped, walked right by her conspicuous black and white dog, went home, unpacked and went on with her evening. Didn't miss Leo.

I hope I see Leo in the hood again (if he hasn't gone into hiding).

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Juniper in the hood

A Red Hook stroll on this last Saturday of February 2016. And a happy encounter with an eastern North American juniper, Juniperus virginiana - commonly known as eastern red cedar. The fruit is sweet and seedy, with a distinct hit of gin.

Back home: Store-bought juniper berries on the left, eastern red cedar berries on the right.

I have plans for them. A Remodelista Market is coming up, in March, and I have been asked to make two special cocktails for the pre-market party...

Happy February forager...

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How to steam eggs

I have discovered steamed eggs. It only took about two dozen flops for me to figure out how to do what everyone says is so easy. David Thompson, in his extraordinarily beautiful book, Thai Food, says simply, Steam the eggs for 10 minutes.

But...from cold, or from when the water is already boiling? And what about different size eggs? (I made miso-inflected egg salad from the overcooked, different-sized flops.)

The miso idea came from Nancy Singleton Hachisu's talk at Brooklyn Kitchen some months ago. And then I gilded the yolky lily by adding a vinaigrette before serving. Everyone who came to dinner for those first eggs hummed about them. I served them as a snack, but they may have overshadowed the rest of the meal. Well, maybe not the condensed milk icecream with espresso poured on top.

So.

Miso eggs:

8 Large eggs
1.5 cups pale (yellow) miso

Steam the eggs for 8 minutes: Place them in a single layer in the steamer basket when you see steam squeezing out from under the lid. (Jumbo eggs will need 10 minutes. Medium eggs 7. I just saved you 24 eggs.)

Dunk in cold water and peel.

Coat each egg in a thick layer of pale miso. This is a very sticky process and sometimes it's easier just to pack the eggs in a bowl or container with a lot of miso, making sure there is always miso between one egg and the next, front back and sides.

Leave in the fridge, covered, for up to 24 hours, but they good even after 3 hours.

To serve, bring the miso eggs to room temperature over about half an hour, and scrape off most of the miso (you can reuse this - within a day or two - in a soup or sauce or stew). If you are in a rush you can rinse the miso off.

Slice the eggs in half - a bread knife works best - and serve them with a drizzle of vinaigrette made from:

1 Tbsp makrut* or ordinary lime juice
1 makrut leaf (if you have one), torn up
1 Tbsp fish sauce
2 tsps soy sauce
2 tsp brown or palm sugar
1 tsp 100% sesame oil

Stir very well to dissolve the sugar (add the oil after you've done this). Taste, and adjust to your liking.

* Makrut is ordinarily known as kaffr lime. This is a very offensive word in South Africa. Makrut is the best name. Its juice and the leaf's perfume are intensely aromatic. But it is very hard to find.

Sprinkle the eggs with chopped scallions. Yummy appetizer (or main course, served with what you like, and I like sushi rice)...

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My Tiny Garden

I had no idea till now that our Harlem terrace provided the cover for Lucy Anna Scott's new book, My Tiny Garden. The black diagonal lower left is the bird feeder - it got in the way of a lot of my own photos. But how sweet to see the Harlem birds and scarlet runner beans, months - it feels like years -  after that space has been taken apart.

Lucy and photographer Jon Cardwell visited the Frenchman and me last year, and stayed for dinner (above) on the terrace. Apparently the birds cooperated.

I've been lucky to have had both our New York gardens immortalized in print (the Cobble Hill terrace has featured in several books and magazines). The pleasure I take in these spaces is intense, but of course transitory, subject to the whims of real estate and New York rental life. Lots of heartbreak when they are demolished, but so much joy when we live in them.

I don't know how long we will be in our current space in Carroll Gardens, or how this garden will look at its best. I have seen it only in my head, which is where all garden dreams begin.

We shall see.

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Cookies 'n dinges

Spicebush cookies. Basic pâte sablée: flour, butter, powdered sugar, egg yolks, and the wild card of ground spicebush (Lindera benzoin) berries. Packed for the Brooklyn Bridge Park Walk I led on Saturday.

I was expecting just 15 walkers, but we had 40, thanks to the very warm, spring-like weather. So... the cookies had to be stretched a little! I think I had 34.

Today it rains and later this week we will dip below freezing, again. In the garden I am: thinking about making a discrete bug hotel (boutique size), using all the viburnum trimmings from late last year when I tried to impose some order and encourage a sense of form in the very shaggy corner shrub; considering keeping bees (don't tell the Frenchman, yet - Hi, Vince!);  pondering possums, and whether they will squash my garden or eat snails... there are two that eat cat food two doors down and I think they visit us; wondering when to add my collection of powdered egg shells to the vegetable plot (calcium to raise pH, to supplement the crushed oyster shells already dug in); looking forward to unfurling the beautiful (white!) umbrella from Patio Living, still packed in its very long box; and wondering whether the Zika-tide will prompt Brooklyn parents-to-be to demand city spraying against stripe-legged mosquitoes. I did not christen this Carroll Gardens garden Chez Mosquito for nothing...

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Spring in the hood

Cardoons, courtesy of California. I have one - now I just have to remember what to do with it.

Daffodils are everywhere.

I should add that, while it is February, and typically the c-c-c-c-c-coldest month of the year in New York, today was spring. Warm. 61'F/16'C. No coat required. Consequently my frigid forage walk at Brooklyn Bridge Park wasn't (frigid) and was packed. January, last month, was the hottest month on record. In the world. 

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