wiener world

May 18, 2011 in jewish and israeli food, new york

{because heaven only knows who will end up here based on that title...}

on sunday i went to the meathook and looked at the cute little sausages waving to me from behind the counter and proceeded to adopt one of each. they so cute.

and then i carried my sausages cross the bridge and up the island and into my little yellow apartment where i cooked them up and ate them.

it was a lot of fun and, for lack of a term that is more privy to our times, it was a sausage fest.

i got six types: ramp, banh mi, bacon cheeseburger, the long dong bud, boerwors, and italian.

and in order from favorite to even more favorite, they were...

tied for second place: all of them except for the long dong bud

first place: the long dong bud

it has jalapenos and cheese in it! and, ok, i think i am not a very good sausage cooker because what i am used to comes frozen in the package and also who has a barbecue in manhattan? but so basically i just threw them all in a pan with some evoo and watched them spit and brown and then was scared that i'd get e coli so i cooked the living daylights out of them and maybe i cooked them too long. the long dong bud had no choice but to be juicy because of the cheese oozing out of it, but the others, i think would have been better, had i had better weeny cooking technique. but still, they were really really good. and silly.

oh, and yeah, i served them with a few mustards:

honey & whiskey

chilli & vodka

ginger & wasabi

meksykanska

beer

amora dijon

-yeh!

recital

May 16, 2011 in jewish and israeli food, music, family

to walk on to a stage

to play music that you absolutely love

for an audience filled with people whom you absolutely love

{in pants that you absolutely love}

is a feeling that, if caught in a jar and sold for any price,

i'd buy a thousand and keep them forever.

i honestly don't think that i've ever put more of myself into anything before. i worked my tookus off, and though i found my limit {it was rather chicken with the head cut off-esque,

seasoned with about ninety different instruments and it involved slurry speech and ogre hands...}

the entire process was insanely awesome.

if i could do it again,

i totes would.

in the end, there were homemade soft pretzels from mum,

marzipan cookies from stoop,

a tits mustard selection,

catching all the breaths i forgot to take these past few months,

and so many of my favorite people under the same roof, i almost exploded.

oh shucks, ima fuggin cry.

--yeh!

all photos are by photogenius donny tsang.

dinner party mustard.

May 07, 2011 in jewish and israeli food

dinner party mustard is a bit difficult.

you run in to the problem of pretty jar vs. pretty taste and the questions of what does this pair well with? and ohmygod, what if somebody doesn't like mustard?

i've found that the prettiest jars most commonly house dijon mustards...

{click for example a & example b}

which, if you ask me, dijon is a gorgeous taste. but some get offended by the horseradish.

i know, what the fuck.

anyways let's save the crime&punishment-sized post on pairings for later. for now i'll just bask in the non-offensiveness of the gem that is brown sugar pecan mustard. with this beauty, you don't have to know what your dinner host is serving {which in this case included a delicious broccoli orecchiette* and prosciutto + melon salad} and you don't have to worry about offending most people.

it stands well enough alone with an intriguing personality, the perfect sesame stick,

and a pristine subtlety that you always wanted in a statement mustard.

also, it was a ladies night so the purple label added a nice touch.

*have you ever heard a british girl pronounce orecchiette? it's life-changing, i recommend it.