Posted by Barbara Hanson, May 23, 2008 at 9:30 AM
Editor's note: Please welcome Serious Eats community member BaHa, aka Barbara Hanson, who will be checking in now and again with dispatches about the various little one-of-a-kind food stores and markets in New York. Here is her recipe for A-Z chicken made with spices from Kalustyan's in Murray Hill. --zach
When Kalustyan's was founded in 1944 (sixty-three years after Chester A. Arthur took the presidential oath of office in the same Lexington Avenue building), the focus was on all things Indian, which might still seem true as you first walk inside, and your senses are met by the toasty, familiar smells of curry, Telicherry pepper, and cumin. Look a little further, though, (don’t miss the bin of dried guava, which looks improbably like sliced bologna) and you’ll find the shelves stocked with food from well over forty countries, ranging from Pakistan, Iran, and Lebanon to England, France, and Germany (food, thank goodness, knows no politics). You’ll also discover such hard-to-find items as coconut scrapers and Puck Cream, which is not a sports emollient but a creamed honey from Dubai.
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Posted by Ed Levine, January 19, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Some people count sheep when they can't sleep. I count pasta dishes. There's something about a plate of pasta that's incredibly soothing and satisfying at the same time, and soothing and satisfying thoughts are surefire paths to sleep. The other night I couldn't sleep, and I tried to come up with a list of my most satisfying pastas of the last year. I had a good time putting my little list together, so I thought other people would, too. I asked Adam Platt, restaurant critic at New York magazine, Serious Eats community member Sandro, and Johanne Killeen, co-owner of Al Forno in Providence, Rhode Island, and the coauthor (along with her husband and business partner, George Gerrmon) of the new book, On Top of Spaghetti
. Johanne was kind enough to let us post one of the pasta recipes from the book. After the jump, the responses (and the recipe).
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 12, 2006 at 8:14 AM
How much sugar should be used in the recipe I posted for the incredibly delicious chocolate bouchons you can buy at Bouchon Bakery? One ELE reader correctly notes that some recipes she had seen called for 3/4 cup of sugar, while others called for 1 1/2 cups of sugar. I posed the question to Thomas Keller's office, saying that inquiring eaters and bakers wanted to know. Per Se Director of Operations Eric Lilavois responded by saying that the first printing of the book called for 3/4 cup of sugar in the recipe, but that subsequent printings called for 1 1/2 cups of sugar.
Lilavois then checked with Keller himself, who confirmed that 1 1/2 cups of sugar was in fact correct. So there you have it, straight from the uber-chef's mouth.
When Kalustyan's was founded in 1944 (sixty-three years after Chester A. Arthur took the presidential oath of office in the same Lexington Avenue building), the focus was on all things Indian, which might still seem true as you first walk inside, and your senses are met by the toasty, familiar smells of curry, Telicherry pepper, and cumin. Look a little further, though, (don’t miss the bin of dried guava, which looks improbably like sliced bologna) and you’ll find the shelves stocked with food from well over forty countries, ranging from Pakistan, Iran, and Lebanon to England, France, and Germany (food, thank goodness, knows no politics). You’ll also discover such hard-to-find items as coconut scrapers and Puck Cream, which is not a sports emollient but a creamed honey from Dubai.