Happy New Year to all. 2014 is looking good.
Do you have any New Year traditions? We get Peking Duck and Chinese dumplings and have Champagne. Sometimes we get the duck from the Peking Duck House http://www.pekingduckhousenyc.com/?page_id=274 in Chinatown, NY and sometimes, like this year, we get it locally. This year we had steamed vegetable dumplings, fried pork dumplings, dry sauteed string beans, vegetable lo mein and the Peking Duck. If you don't know, Peking Duck is duck that has been prepared so that almost all of the fat has been rendered out and the skin is crisp. The duck is slices so that some skin and meat or together. You then take a pancake/crepe/ burrito shell and put on some hoisin sauce(Chinese barbecue sauce) add some duck, sliced scallions and sliced cucumbers. fold like a burrito and enjoy. We love it.
The Champagne of the evening was Ruinart NV Rose. It was dry with a beautiful light red color. It opened up with food as apparently rose Champagnes are very food friendly. A very good Champagne but not on top of my list.
Mark Bittman is an excellent food writer for the NY Times. His article today about eating better in 2014 is quite good.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/dining/sustainable-resolutions-for-your-diet.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0 If you follow some of his suggestions, you will eat healthy, good tasting food.
I recently had the opportunity to eat at Fork, a restaurant in Philadelphia.http://www.forkrestaurant.com/
We had a great meal there. We ordered the set menu which was an appetizer, pasta course, main course and dessert. My appetizer was charred octopus.
It was quite tasty. The kitchen kept sending out small dishes of stuff. We had small bagels with some flavored cream cheeses and stuffed small pretzels. The house bread was thick crusted, chewy inside Italian bread that was insanely good. They make the bread at the restaurant.
My pasta dish was chickpea ravioli with raw artichoke slices. Very good. I also tasted the Burnt Grains Pappardelle with wild boar ragu. This too was delicious.
My main course, which I shared with a friend, was Peking Style Whole Muscovy Duck with a number of small dishes. Duck meatballs, a salad with duck bits and other assorted sides. The duck was excellent; the duck meatballs were not good.
My dessert was the Root Beer Float with chocolate mousse and other stuff. It was a not a typical root beer float but a concept dessert. It was OK but too fussy.
We had a Dolcetto d' Alba 2012 Schiavenza. It was medium bodied and fruity with good balance. Enjoyed it. We then had a Montebruno Pinot Noir 2011 from the Eola-Amity Hills ava of the Willamette Valley, Oregon. The wine was light but with good flavor and some terroir. A good basic Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. 2011 was an OK year in Oregon.
The chef at the restaurant Eli Kulp has been getting lots of positive press lately. The food was very good if not great. The dishes were generally flavorful and not over the top. Many chefs these days put lots of ingredients into every dish and the result is a muddled mess. The dishes at fork were precise and the chef know what he wanted to accomplish by way flavor. Having just returned from France, the food a Fork can be in the conversation with the food we had in France. It was by far the best food that I have had in Philly. The prices are not crazy either . The huge meal we had was $70 per person.
Had a chance to see Mandy Patinkin of Homeland recent fame and Taylor Mac http://www.taylormac.net/TaylorMac.net/Home.html in a 2 person show - on The LastTwo People Earth- an Apocalyptic Vaudeville. http://www.classicstage.org/about/archive/lasttwopeople/ No dialogue, just songs - Row, Row, Row, Your Boat, The End of the World (REM), Sondheim, Rogers and Hammerstein, eclectic music. The show was really good. Taylor Mac is a rising star. He was also in the Good Person of Szechwan. The play was directed by Susan Stroman and was presented by the Classic Stage Company at the Abrons Arts Center on the lower east side of NY. One of my few regrets in life is that I did not see the original Evita on Broadway starring a young Mandy Patinkin and a young Patti Lupone. My wife saw it and she never lets me forget it. Oh well.
2014 is here. Enjoy.
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