This post is going to be short and sweet. Honestly, I could care less for football. All I care about are the WINGS!! I don’t even know how to play the damn game. Back in high school, my lacrosse coach would dedicate a day to tag football. All I did was run in one direct to catch the ball. Couldn’t understand downs for the life of me. I’ve given up on learning.

WINGS. WINGS GALORE!!! If I had a deep frier, I’d totally try these out. Maybe I’ll attempt them in my saute pan. In any case, the following recipes are from Chef Floyd Cardoz winner of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters and Executive Chef and Partner of North End Grill in Battery Park. For anyone familiar with the restaurant scene in NYC, Chef Cardoz used to also head up Tabla with Danny Meyer. Legit resume.

Creamy Buffalo Wings
(makes 24 wings)

• 8 teaspoons Tabasco brand Buffalo Style Hot Sauce
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4  cup mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon horseradish
• 1  teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• Vegetable oil or canola oil
• 2 dozen chicken wings
• 1/4 cup Wondra flour or rice flour

You should also check out:

• Cheddar and onion smashed burgers
• Faux cappuccino (coffee with glorified whipping)
• Panko-peppered chicken
• Vicky & William’s delicious dumplings
• Guest appearance: Cooking with Rachel

I could watch this lady forever if there were enough Youtube videos. I went to sleep an hour and a half later last night due to this woman.

(Nigella Lawson’s Sweet & Salty Chocolate Bark)

After watching possibly all of the Youtube videos on her (I’ve probably watched them all at least three times), I decided I’d make her sweet & salty chocolate bark. She uses salted peanuts, but since we didn’t have any peanuts I tweaked her recipe ever so slightly and added the best secret ingredient ever…

Fleur de Sel!! Well, it’s not very secret since there’s been this whole new fad of salty caramel or salty chocolate, and many times they’ll use Fleur de Sel. For those of you unfamiliar with Fleur de Sel, you’re probably wondering, what makes this so much more awesome than my average sea salt? Well, let me tell you…

Translated as “Flower of Salt” from French, it’s hand harvested from the top layer of the salt before the whole thing sinks to the bottom of large salt pans.  Fleur de Sel contains more mineral complexity than table salt and hold less residual moisture (making it less likely to dissolve when sprinkled on moist foods). It’s best used when sprinkled upon serving.

While the traditional Fleur de Sel is harvested from the coast of Brittany in France, mine’s a faux version, having been harvested from the Atlantic. The benefit? A $5 (or more) reduction from the price tag. A jar tinier than this will run for $12 compared to the one which I got for $8.

So this morning, after rummaging through my pantry, I realized that I had a a lot of walnuts. Like… a ton. There were bagfuls and bagfuls. You’d think we’d use them but we don’t. I also found some Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips and some good ol’ Toll House semi sweet chocolate chips.

Chocolate bark isn’t rocket science. As Nigella said in her video, “I am essentially making chocolate out of chocolate.” You literally melt the chocolate + butter, add in the nuts, spread the chocolate gloop over a baking sheet, sprinkle some salt and stick it into the fridge. Takes five minutes. That’s quicker than your average 7.5 minute shower.

The greatest thing about making your own bark is that you can customize how sweet you want the chocolate to be. While the bittersweet chocolate chips I used were 60% cacao, it’s definitely possible to go higher, especially if you can snag some 80% chocolate slabs at your local Whole Foods. However, I blended some semi sweet since I figured most people still like their sugar.

In today’s case, I wrapped the baking sheet with some tin foil and plopped it into the garage where it was probably 40 degrees F. After two hours, the chocolate hardened up beautifully. It takes another two minutes to pop the slab out of the baking sheet, cut into rough squares, and stow them away in a box.

Hello coworkers- you’ll be helping me eat these!

Five Minute Salty & Nutty Dark Chocolate Bark
Inspired by Nigella Lawson

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of bittersweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)
• 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup walnuts (or any other of your favorite nut)
• Sprinkling of Fleur de Sel (if you must, you can use table salt)

Method:

In a saucepan, on low heat, melt all of the chocolate along with the butter. You’ll want to keep an eye on this as you don’t want to overheat the chocolate (which will result in a solidifying mess. If that’s the case, you can add more butter). Stir to make sure the chocolate and butter gently melt into a lovely, thick gloop. Make sure that the pot and the spatula that you use is completely dry. Water particles will separate the chocolate, also resulting in a solidifying mess (and there is no way to correct this one).

After, mix in the cup of walnuts and gently turn the chocolate to fully coat the nuts. After, spread the gloop onto a baking sheet and smooth out with a spatula. Generously sprinkle some Fleur de Sel and stick it into the fridge.

When done, it will look like the photo above. The chocolate should easily slide out of the baking sheet with some prodding from a thin flipper utensil thingy (what are those called again?). Cut into squares and make sure you keep these in a decently cool area so they don’t melt all over.

As a note- the reason why I used butter with the chocolate bark is for easier spreading. You can definitely get away without the butter, but it also provides a silky, rich depth which the chocolate itself cannot. And as Nigella said, these are a treat. Even she wouldn’t eat these everyday!

You should also check out:

• O clementine olive oil ice cream
• Chocolate coffee & pumpkin spice cupcakes
• Blueberry + strawberry muffins (with crumble topping!)
• ICE CREAM!!! (and cupcakes!)
• Strawberry sorbet

(If you look hard enough, you can see the Château de Chillon on the left)

We passed Montreux many times during our trip around Switzerland. It’s located on the edge of Lake Geneva, so many times, we’d catch a glimpse of the rising sun behind the backdrop of hazy mountains and lake with vineyards cascading below us. Those moments were seriously amongst the most beautiful I’ve witnessed.

We didn’t spend much time in Montreux- there’s not much to do here. It’s like a fairytale land. There’s mountains and mountains, a never ending lake, and a medieval château (Château de Chillon). Against all of that, life goes on. There’s a sweeping bridge overlooking all this scenery above the lake, where cars roar by on the highway. And across the lake, the street is littered with restaurants.

We arrived to Montreux around 11am from Davos, which was a long and exhausting ride. We left around 5am from the hotel, boarded a 6am-ish train, and rode through dusk. By the time we got to Montreux, the fog was just about done clearing from the lake. I felt as if I was in some far away land.

From the train station, the walk to the château is roughly 40 minutes. Factor in picture taking, and it’ll take you a good hour. As we were walking, they were laying down these plastic white looking mats on the ground. We found out they were for dry skiing! How awesome is that?

Unfortunately, it was in Montreux where I topped the capacity out of my 2gb memory card. I would later lose my camera with all the photos from the walk to the castle. Such a shame…

Before we started off on this walk, we searched for a place to eat. It took awhile but we ended up settling on this quite upscale bistro, Confiserie Zurcher. By far, the meal I had here was the best on the trip, and perhaps top 3 in all of my European travels.

Zurcher is not completely a “confiserie,” which translates to “sweets shop” in French. There’s a cafe attached to the restaurant where they sell little pastries/sandwiches and supposedly, it doubles as a tea-room. The cafe is actually alot bigger than the restaurant; we were amongst the few that dined in the restaurant part.

The one problem with Montreux is that fewer people speak English. This was most apparent when our server gave us the menu (completely in French) and spoke to us in French (despite our glaringly obvious touristy appearance. I mean, I was carrying a giant backpack…). We asked for him to translate several things, which of course he couldn’t. So, he resulted to drawing.

(That’s supposed to be a deer for venison)

The bread was disappointing. It was dry and hard. There was no butter either. Luckily, their mains are much better.

Roast Beef (CHF 19)

By that price tag, you can conclude that this was NOT a cheap place by any means. And while I had the most delectable venison dish I can ever remember, the same could not be said for the rest of my group. Gurpreet and Antara had a quiche which was a whopping CHF 15 (I doubt any quiche can command a CFH 15 price tag). Diana’s roast beef seemed pretty decent, though CHF 19 is quite a hefty price tag too. I liked the tartar that was served with the roast beef, but cold meat is not really my cup of tea.

Venison with brussel sprouts, pickled cabbage potatoes, and dried apricots (CHF 28)

Now, enter the venison, which was considered a splurge at over $30 for a single dish. But I figured- everything else on the menu was just as expensive, if not even more, so I might as well enjoy myself. When the dish came out, it was ginormous. There were roughly 5 cuts of venison (which for a girl is more than plenty) that came beautifully garnished. If I remember correctly, the vension was cooked in this sweet red wine sauce that made the meat oh so juicy and tender.

For the sides, they successfully intertwined sweet with salty. There were brussel sprouts with bits of fried bacon sprinkled in between, roasted cherries that separated the chestnuts on the pickled red cabbage (which tasted suprisingly sweet) and of course, some jam on top of potato. You know, I could very well be making all of this up since I had NO idea what the menu said and I have a habit of mistaking one food item for another. All I remember was that this dish was THE BOMB, and I could have died happy right then and there.

If for some reason you’re in Montreux (and I doubt it because it’s not exactly the most touristy spot to travel to in Switzerland), I highly recommend you to go to Zurcher and hunt down this dish. It came on the “daily specials” menu, so perhaps you should visit in late November, which is when we did.

Confiserie Zurcher
(Google translated for all the non-French speaking out there)
Avenue du Casino 45
CH-1820 Montreux
Phone +41 (0)21 963 59 63

You should also check out:

• Day 3 in Switzerland | Davos, Sheraton Davos Hotel Walduus
• Day 2 in Switzerland | Zurich, Café Weggen & Henrici Coffee
• Day 1 in Switzerland | Genève, Cafe du Soleil
• Mt. Tammany ( w/ Banana-brownie bread & Turkey burgers!)
• Jersey can be beautiful, if you know where to look (and make green tea ice cream)

Chihuahua: bacon wrapped dog covered with avocadoes and sour cream. don’t be scared ($4.50)

A few weeks ago, the day after Christmas, Mark and I headed into the city to meet my awesome Australian friend Adam. I felt a bit awkward suggesting we meet up at Crif Dogs, given that I was proposing we eat a glorified tube of encased meat on a potato bun for lunch, but he was totally fine with it. (I had a Groupon, of course). Luckily, I proposed noon and nothing earlier because Crif Dogs opens exactly at noon. And exactly at noon on that particular Monday, all the seats (roughly 5 tables + a bar) promptly filled up.

Good Morning: a bacon wrapped dog smothered with melted cheese and a fried egg ($5.00)

Since it was already jammed packed, our orders took awhile to get to us (maybe 15 minutes)? The boys each ordered two dogs, I one, and together we got three Pap’s Pabst (Mark: “go to your blog right now and fix PAP’s blue ribbon… ITS PABST BLUE RIBBON! I DON’T WANT TO DRINK A PAP!!!”) Blue Ribbons (unflavorfully American, as Adam remarked) as well as a large order of waffle fries loaded with cheese.

Morning Jersey: taylor ham wrapped house dog with melted cheese and a fried egg ($5.00)

The three of us ordered some type of breakfast dog- Good Morning or Morning Jersey, the only difference being bacon versus Taylor ham. Both of them came with a fried egg and some good ol’ American cheese. Let me tell you. That dog was righteous. I never knew a hot dog could taste so freakin’ good. It’s the fried egg I tell you.

Spicy Redneck: a house dog, bacon wrapped, with chili, cole slaw, and jalapenos, did somebody say backyard wrestling? ($4.75)

When Mark’s spicy redneck came out, I looked at him hesitantly. If there’s one thing he hates, it’s mayo and anything that resembles mayo. Cole slaw would qualify for that camp. That thing was LOADED with cole slaw, to the point where everything else was completely buried. One bite in, no answer. Two bites in, Mark says, “Hmm… interesting.” INTERESTING?! That’s all I get out of the guy for a hot dog loaded with spicy chili and coleslaw? Eventually he admitted that the cole slaw wasn’t so bad and he could see the reason for it being on the dog (so that he could eat the hot dog in peace without tearing up). However, he noted that next time, he’d just get two of his Jersey Mornings.

Adam’s second dog was a Chihuahua (photo above, first one in the post), which sounds particularly nasty. I mean, bacon, avocado, and sour cream? But yours truly tried the Chihuahua on a very late night after visiting a particular nearby Japanese neighbor that offers cotton candy after your meal (hmm I wonder who that can be?) and it was fantastic! The best thing about all of these bacon wrapped dogs is that the bacon literally becomes one with the dog. The fat from the bacon welds itself onto the hot dog and transform the hot dog into what seems to be a blast of bacon-ness. The crunch also helps.

Large Cheese Fries ($4.00)

Not going to lie- the waffle friess + cheese are a bit disappointing as the cheese seemed to be cheese whiz. Then again, for $4, what should I expect? I’d hold off on the fries and either get an extra hot dog or perhaps the tator tots.

But yeah, a must try for all hot dog lovers out there! Warning: The meal does not come cheap. The Groupon, which I purchased for $10 and offered $20 worth of food, was insufficient to say the least. I had to shell out another $17 something, which means our hot dog meal came out to a whopping $37+ meal. Oy!

MENU
113 St. Marks Pl.
New York, NY 10009
nr. Ave. A  See Map | Subway Directions
212-614-2728

You should also check out:

• Saturday brunch at Locanda Verde
• Bobo in the West Village
• Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill: Brunch
• Five Napkin Burger
• David Burke Townhouse: Brunch for $39

There are a few reasons why it’s so difficult to snag a reservation at Locanda Verde during both brunch and dinner. Due to a bit of mis-communication, I called to reserve a two-top on Friday afternoon for Saturday brunch. The only times they had left were for 10:30am and 1:30pm. So, we settled for the 1:30pm time slot (I had requested a noon reservation).

First, Locanda Verde is operated by none other than Robert De Niro (as well as Ira Drukier and Richard Born of Greenwich Hotel).  He’s invested in roughly 25 restaurants around the world (check out his interview with NYMAG). Then, there’s the chef, Andrew Carmellini. Now here’s an impressive resume- He started off as a sous chef at Le Cirque and eventually became a protege of the famous Daniel Boulud where he became the chef de cuisine at Cafe Boulud. He eventually opened A Voce, earning a Michelin Star. Now, he’s the chef and partner at both Locanda Verde and The Dutch.

Given all that, I’m surprised we snagged a reservation at all considering the last minute planning… And even when we entered at 1pm, we overheard the hostess telling a stray couple that they’d have to wait 45 min for a table. It wasn’t until we were leaving around 3pm that the place began to somewhat clear up.

Soft Scrambled Farm Egg Crostino with leeks, mushrooms and speck  ($17)

Clearly, this was a highly anticipated brunch and I had nothing but high expectations. Leaving, I had mixed emotions about this place. Part of it was my fault- I should have ordered a pasta dish. After all, Carmellini is known for his pasta making skills. Instead, I went with a recommendation from the server and got a very traditional brunch dish- soft scrambled farm egg crostino.

Crostino is a thin piece of crisp toast. The crostino that came in this dish was seriously the size of my fist and sliced under an inch. A bit underwhelming, to say the least. When the dish first came out, my heart dropped. I felt cheated. Here it was- simple scrambled eggs on toast with sides that could be easily replicated elsewhere.

But as I ate, I began to taste the complexities that emerged from such a simple looking dish. First, the scrambled eggs were unlike anything I’ve ever had. Whereas most scrambled eggs are a bit hard and mildly rubbery, these scrambled eggs were like floating puffs of clouds. It reminded me of the time I had tried out Gordon Ramsey’s recipe for scrambled eggs. I remember being appalled at how they turned out- they were slightly runny and completely loose. But that’s apparently how the French do it. It’s just different from the traditional American scrambled eggs, and something that I’m not quite used to. Still, these were delicious.

There’s not much to say about the salad, but the prosciutto was perfectly salted.

Linguine with Clams (~$22 [?, not featured on online menu])

Sabrina ended up getting the linguine with clams, which looked absolutely mouthwatering. I’m not a big fan of clams, so I had a bit of the pasta by itself. To sum it up in two words, it was OVERLY SALTY. Salty to the point where I couldn’t taste the sauce. At least the pasta was cooked perfectly al dente.

Despite the saltiness, Sabrina thought it was still tasty. They were quite generous with the clams at least.

Crispy Garlic Potatoes ($7)

Amongst all of the dishes, the best was a tie between the crispy garlic potatoes and dessert. Before you write off potatoes, let me just say that these were PHENOMENAL. Holy crap. The best potatoes I ever had! They were actually completely crispy on the outside and the inside was super soft. There’s a ton of crushed and slightly burnt garlic which were equally as delicious. I definitely recommend getting these as a side.

I am thinking of potatoes here…

Coconut Semifreddo: mango sorbetto, mint, and lime ($10)

This was one of the top most intricate and delicious desserts I’ve had. By intricate, I mean the pairing of flavors. The only other dessert I’ve had that’s come close to this is at Pichet Ong’s Spot Dessert Bar, where basil ice cream was paired with olive oil cake and white miso semifreddo.

This dessert was executed very well. The mango sorbet was actually subtle compared to the coconut semifreddo (semifreddo is a lighter version of ice cream and made by combining whipped cream and ice cream). What I loved about the semifreddo was the bits of chunky coconut inside the semifreddo. By itself, the semifreddo was a bit too sweet but with the mango sorbet, it was just right. The mint, in the form of a syrup like drizzle, was a refreshing contrast.

I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of their bread because it was super good. There was cheese and butter melted into the bread, which made for a light and airy yet toasted and very flavorful bread.

Overall, it was a decent experience, though slightly disappointing (partially because of all the buzz around the restaurant). Still, the next stop is The Dutch, and hopefully I’ll remember to order something less typical…

MENU
379 Greenwich St.
New York, NY 10013
at N. Moore St.   See Map | Subway Directions
212-925-3797

You should also check out:

• Crif Dogs (take 2)- best hot dogs ever
• Bobo in the West Village
• Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill: Brunch
• Five Napkin Burger
• David Burke Townhouse: Brunch for $39