This weekend has turned out so wonderfully. This morning we woke up nice and leisurely, 10:00 a.m, nowhere to rush to and no one to rush for, we had the luxury of being able to claim the time for ourselves. This precipitated a slow walk down to Macy’s to see about a watch repair, on the way I called my sister to see if we could come over to visit after lunch, she had invited our mother and our mother’s best friend over for lunch, it was short notice but my sister of course said “yes, I was about to call you to come over” so that was all set.
We had a great late breakfast at the Tick Tock diner, a classic old fashioned diner that still exists in New York. We both had two eggs over easy, sausage and rye toast, easily my favorite breakfast when I am away from home. I have a very specific way of eating my eggs and sausage; first I cut a bit of sausage and cut a piece of the white to eat them together, the whites of the egg are bland so the salty, smoky sausage provides the pep that the egg whites so desperately need, I then take the smallest half of the rye toast and break open the yolk and use that piece to mop up the golden essence of the egg, once I am done soaking up the runny golden yolk, I lift the egg onto the other half of the toast and I eat it as an open-faced sandwich. I do all of this once more time with the second egg, I know that it sounds way too methodical and extremely thought out just for eggs but I have been eating them this way for years and I don’t remember what pushed me to eat them this way faithfully each and every time.
After breakfast we went to Toys-R-Us to get something for our niece and nephew, my hubby picked out two remote controlled helicopters. My hubby picked well because when we got to my sister’s the kids were so excited to see us and the Toys-R-Us bag, my brother-in-law was actually quite happy with the presents as well. My sister has three kids just as I do (ha,ha). We had a great visit, all of us talking and laughing while they were eating a nice lunch of a vegetable frittata and a green salad. My hubby and I were more than happy to join them for dessert, my mother had gone to a wonderful French patisserie near her house and picked out chocolate eclairs, Paris Brest in miniature, the same with the Sainte Honore, bread pudding and a chocolate praline hazelnut cake. These little cakes were the perfect size, small smackerals of refined creamy and luscious puff pastry. We all visited for a few hours and then we came back into the city.
Tonight’s dinner plans were for Thai cuisine; a Thai fusion restaurant downtown on 6th Avenue between 11th and 12th streets. Downtown New York is very different from midtown, the night life begins much later downtown than in midtown and the ambience of downtown is much more laid back and bohemian. Our restaurant was called Kin Shop and it was very good. We started with a dish that I make at home called laab, it’s made with ground pork normally, here we had it with minced duck which we both were very excited about, it was delicious but a little too spicy. Laab is a salad made with sauteed ground meat with garlic, chives, cilantro and mint, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, crushed red pepper flakes and you serve it with lettuce leaves. It is fun to eat and I like to make it at home because I control the spice. We also had fried pork belly and oysters, very flavorful, not too spicy and a good contrast in texture and flavor. We weren’t disappointed with our main courses; I had roasted beef marrow served with toasted flatbread and my husband had sliced breast of duck, medium rare, served with toasted flatbread and a curried sauce. Both dishes were light, very flavorful yet simple. Delicious because of the ingredients not in spite of anything complicated done to them. It was another home run for dinner.
Overall this weekend was a superb getaway with my hubby to celebrate our marriage to each other and the fact that he planned this all as a surprise is testament to how lucky I am with my hubby.
My mother and I have been cooking together for awhile and since I visit with her so often, we have taken the opportunity to experiment with different recipes and it’s been good eating if I do say so myself, lol. I forget what prompted us to search the internet for a recipe for oven roasted sea bass, but I looked and found an excellent recipe on the epicurious website, oven roasted sea bass with ginger and lime. This recipe isn’t just excellent in taste, it’s so easy to prepare with a minimum of ingredients.
laurieanichols 