New York City (October 2024)

The whole idea that started this trip was a simple conversation from a year ago with my cousin on joining her for a dinner. She mentioned that she’s in NYC every year for her husband’s work function and always thought of skipping out on a boring work-related dinner where all the people did was talk shop and enjoy a delectable meal. As this year’s work event got closer, D and I checked in with the cousin and she said that dinner was a go if we wanted. So we booked our flights and hotel stay for NYC for October. We actually went in October of last year for my friend’s business grand opening.

This time we flew out of LAX and took a direct JetBlue flight to Newark. We landed around 7:30 pm and caught a cab into the city, which took about an hour. After dropping our bags at our hotel in Midtown East at the Intercontinental New York Barclay, we walked over to PJ Clarke’s for a much deserved drink and late dinner. This bar/restaurant opened in 1884 and is particularly known for having a good burger. D had the burger and fries while I had classic fish and chips. To drink I had a Smoky Old Fashioned while D had the 1930 (Elijah craig small batch bourbon, lime juice, st. elizabeth allspice dram, simple syrup, angostura bitters, orange peel).

We stopped for a night cap at the hotel bar (we had a $30 credit for each day of our stay).

The following morning I woke up and headed to get bagels for us while D got ready for the day. I went to our normal spot, Ess-a-Bagel, (that we went to the last 2 times) as it was just up the street. By the time I got there (around 10am?) the line was out the door. Luckily it moved relatively smoothly and I got our bagels and a coffee for D (I had a coffee with the hotel room’s Keurig).

This time it was a bit of a disappointment. The bagels themselves and their crumb didn’t seem as chewy as normal (maybe a little dense). I kind of wonder if they’ve grown too much that quality control isn’t as good because they’re so busy.

We wanted to check out Harlem and Sylvia’s (one of the oldest classic southern fare food in the area). To get there, we walked down to Grand Central Station and hopped on a subway to head up to 125th street. I’ve found that every neighborhood in NY has their own feel, from midtown to LES to Chelsea to Brooklyn.

Harlem was very musical – lots of music just everywhere. The two places we had looked up were Sylvia’s but also Red Rooster (Marcus Samuellson’s place that he opened up in 2010). They were actually just down the street from one another. We settled on Sylvia’s and had some yummy food. I had the lunch special which was a fried chicken leg with some collard greens and D had the chicken and waffles. Both were very good.

We also walked over to the Apollo Theater, a classic institution for music, comedy, and other performances.

Cruising part 2 (Naples) (2024 Europe)

Continuation from previous post.

Somehow I missed this port stop when I started on part 3 of the trip so Naples will get its own short post.

I had anticipating and looking forward to this stop because this is where Pizza Napoletana (Neapolitan) pizza originated from. This trip for me was an exploration of the various foods of each region. Naples sits near Mount Vesuvius, famous for the eruption that destroyed the city of Pompeii.

Waking up and stepping out onto the balcony, I could tell it was going to be another hot and humid one. The sky was kind of a hazy red-orange.

We had breakfast and then disembarked and started the trek to Galleria Umberto I, which is a public shopping gallery. Prior to walking through, we stopped at Gran Caffè Gambrinus – a historic coffeehouse founded in 1860. On the way there we walked by the Fontana del Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune) and the Castel Nuovo (“New Castle” or Maschio Angioino).

New pizza dough recipe

So I decided to try a new pizza dough recipe. This was made mostly out of necessity since I hadn’t made the dough the night ahead. I have been using the overnight slow no-knead method for years and it produces a night sour-like dough that D likes. I also haven’t used my new stand mixer for pizza dough and figured this would be a good time to try it out. I tweaked the original recipe a little. I had seen this recipe on one of my FB groups and it looked good – it’s a Martha Stewart recipe (https://www.marthastewart.com/332275/basic-pizza-dough).

Ingredients:

2 tsp active dry yeast
2 Tbsp sugar
(eyeballed) 1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp salt
4 cups AP flour
1.5 cups of warm water

In the bowl I added the warm water with the sugar and yeast and let it bloom for about 5 minutes.
To the bowl I then added the AP flour, salt and olive oil.
Using my stand mixer, I mixed the dough for ~10 minutes (on the low or #2 setting)
This produced a cohesive smooth dough that I placed in an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled (~1.5-2 hours) – this was a very active dough that more than doubled
I punched the dough down and then divided it into 4 equal pieces and formed 2 into balls for the pizza (I saved the other half to make bread another day).
After about 2-3 hours I formed the pizza into a large disc for baking.

PXL_20210102_015822950 PXL_20210102_014439867 PXL_20210102_015832974 PXL_20210102_020302264

What I liked about this recipe is that it provided for a dough with good strength to it when working it. The one I had been making was a little more delicate and harder to stretch into a nice round shape like the above. Overall I thought it was a little light on salt and didn’t create the same depth of flavor as the overnight dough but it works if you have less time.

-StewsCat

Pizza dough comparison

Last month I tried a new pizza dough recipe. A few months before that, I had read in Men’s Health about an easy pizza dough that did not require hours of preparation (I had been using a no-knead dough recipe that required an 18 hour rise (more details below). I am always looking for both more efficient and tasty recipes for pizza dough. My wife enjoys the one I had been making but I am all for tweaking and improving so I decided to try this new (to me) recipe. I was fairly certain I had left the magazine in a spot in my treadmill room but lo and behold it wasn’t there. I resorted to trying to google the same recipe and don’t know if it was the exact one I had read about initially but I went with it.

Quicker pizza dough ingredients:

6 cups AP flour
2 1/4 cups room temperature water (recipe called for cold water)
1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 Tbsp kosher salt

Add 3 cups of flour and 1/2 tsp yeast to 2 1/4 cups of water in a large bowl and combine
In a separate bowl, mix remaining 3 cups of flour with the salt.
I then added in the flour mix to the flour-water combination (from step 1) and kneaded it within the bowl for about 5 minutes.
I let the dough rest – covered – for 30 minutes.
The dough was separated into 4 (relatively) parts and 3 of them saved in saran wrap and frozen for later use.
I split the dough into 2 balls and made pizzas from them.

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Carmel/Monterey (Big Sur Marathon)

Since my marathon recap post was kind of long, I decided to separate out the actual weekend part of marathon weekend. We decided to stay in Carmel because of the locations of the bus pickups to take us to the marathon start. Right in the heart of downtown Carmel was one of the pickup spots. Luckily there are a ton of small hotels, inns, and B&Bs in Carmel. Rather than leaving the dog in a boarding place in Sac, I found a place that allows pets (Carmel is historically and well-known as an extremely dog friendly place).

We made a pit stop in Fairfield to get some lunch on our way down on Friday. The wife found a sandwich spot called Joe’s Buffet . They made a tasty sandwich – I had a combo of pastrami and corned beef.

IMG_20170428_114441 — *Pastrami/Corned Beef*

Once we reached Monterey and stopped to do my packet pickup, we swung by PeterB’s brewpub (right behind the expo area at Portola Hotel). I had the Belly Up Blonde since I wanted to keep it light.

Prior to our trip, I had done some research on dog-friendly restaurants in Carmel. A ton of places have outdoor sitting and allow dogs in their patio areas since so many people have dogs (either visiting or living there). The Inn that we stayed at also provided us with a list of some of the nearby dog friendly restaurants. Our living quarters for the weekend was the Svendsgaard’s Inn. This place ended up being only about 4-5 blocks from the bus pickup. The accomodations were nice and it was a small quaint little place. They had a small grassy area in a courtyard with poop bags available.

That first night in Carmel (I still don’t understand how the official city name is Carmel-By-The-Sea…such a mouthful), we walked over to Bistro Beaujolais for dinner.

Billed as a French restaurant, we ordered with this in mind. I had the French Onion soup, escargots, and sand dabs. My wife had a lemon chicken soup and the Steak Frites. The last time I was in the Monterey area is when I learned about Sand Dabs. I guess they’re a local fish that is wildly popular and served at pretty much every restaurant (doesn’t even matter if it is American, European, Mediterranean, etc). I was surprised and pleased to see that they had a Michigan beer and ordered the Founders Porter.

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StewsCat

Running, baking, cooking, drinking

Tag: Pizza