Weekend Cooking!

After eating out practically every night since I’m moved to New York (don’t tell my physician!) I decided to FINALLY cook dinner at home. Someone’s home, not my own. On Saturday, Chris and I went grocery shopping at Whole Foods and Food Emporium in Union Square to make a lobster dinner (he was in the mood for shellfish). I found some interesting recipes online, but the favorite was a lobster and chips recipe from Emeril! I usually don’t like watching Emeril on television because he says Bam! too much, but this recipe looked really easy and sounded GREAT! We had to buy most of the ingredients because Chris didn’t have a lot in his pantry, but now he’s fully stocked for future cooking adventures we’ll have this summer. Here’s our grocery list for the lobster tails:

1. Two lobster tails (we only prepared the tails, even though the original recipe calls for the entire lobster)
2. Ritz crackers
3. Parsley
4. Malt Vinegar
5. Potatoes
6. Lemons

The dish is really easy to make – all you do it crush up the ritz crackers, mix in some chopped up parsley, warmed up butter, and add some lemon juice to make the “crust.” You put the crust on the lobster tails (I cut the shells in half to open the lobsters up) and back at 450 degrees for 25 minutes and you’re done! Here’s what our lobsters looked like before we put it in the oven:

Look at how HUGE the lobster tails were!! Actually, the lobster tails were quite pricey at $20/piece, but they looked pretty fatty, so we decided to splurge (at many points in our grocery shopping, we were tempted to just leave our cart and go out for dinner). While the lobsters were baking, we cut up potatoes to make french fries, I dressed our salad, and we made a sauce for dessert (a berry parfait I thought of while shopping for groceries). We used a basic dressing for our salad – I combined olive oil, lemon juice (leftover from the lobster tails), red wine vinegar (there wasn’t any balsamic in the house), and some salt and pepper. Dinner took a while to prepare because we were working together and prepping everything (cutting, cleaning, frying, baking, etc). Here’s what our table looked like (we opened the wine that I brought back from my visit to Napa Valley):

And a close up of the meal:

The fries were PERFECTLY crisp and slighty chewy on the inside (the perfect browned color, too), and LOOK AT THE CRUST! It was soooo buttery and delicious – who would’ve thought to use Ritz crackers? Thank, you, Emeril! The salad was a nice way to end the meal (European style).

For dessert, we made a berry parfait, which is a really simple but DELICIOUS dessert. Our shopping list for dessert:

1. Cool whip (or you can use ice cream)
2. Frozen raspberries
3. Strawberries
4. Pound cake (I like the frozen kinds for some reason)
5. Lemon

You melt the raspberries and place the extra juice from the bag into a pan to warm up (add sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, and some strawberries) to make a nice sauce to drizzle onto the pound cake/raspberries/cool whip. I cubed up the pound cake to make them into bite-sized pieces, and then when we were ready for dessert, I found some cute glasses and started layering (pound cake, raspberry sauce, cool whip, fresh strawberries/raspberries). A picture of our desserts:

Better than Serendipity’s!! 🙂 The meal was fantastic and cleanup wasn’t too difficult, either (except for a spilled oil incident that ruined Chris’ clothes).

Today, we headed to Tartine for Sunday brunch. They actually have a great deal – $13.95/person, you get juice and coffee/tea, and an assortment of breakfast foods to choose from. I ordered the french toast:

The bacon, which is HUGE, was really meaty and tasty, not like usual bacon strips you find at breakfast joints. Also, they put potatoes in the middle with their homemade hollandaise sauce. I usually don’t like hollandaise sauce because it’s too heavy, but this sauce really complemented the potatoes well (which were just the right amount of chewy/crispy/brown). They were also tossed with some tomatoes and green onions, which mixed really well together. The french toast itself was o-k, but I don’t think the bread was old enough (the toast was too soggy).

Chris ordered the omelet with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, green onions, red pepper, swiss cheese, and ham, which also came with a side of their delicious potatoes:

The omelet was fairly standard and the egg wasn’t too runny (yay!). Overall, the best part of both meals were the potatoes (we were both big fans).

It’s been raining all day (not just regular rain, but MEAN rain…and MEAN WIND) so I’ve been inside doing taxes (they’re due on Tuesday, I still have time). This Wednesday, we are headed to Sushi Yasuda, one of my favorite restaurants in NYC!