Cooking With Fall Produce

In honor of Thanksgiving (and home-cooked meals), I wanted to write about a very special cooking lesson that I recently had the honor of experiencing. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am a diner and not much of a cooker (my specialty is knowing how to heat things up!), but a dear friend had received a home cooking lesson from Home Cooking New York (homecookingny.com) as a gift, and she generously invited me to be a part of it. How could I not accept such a generous and amazing offer?

My friend selected Cooking with Fall Produce as her cooking lesson. The menu was:

Roasted pork tenderloin with apple cranberry compote

Butternut squash and sage risotto

Beets with warm prosciutto dressing

Apple hand pies

We were very lucky to have as our instructor, Jennifer Clair, the founder of Home Cooking New York. She arrived at 1 p.m. and for the next 2.5 hours we were cooking up a storm!!

What I learned:

Red beets: You can eat the greens! Use them to make a great Asian-styled salad.

Pie crust: The secret is making it with 3 sticks of butter. Forget about the fruit filling, the crust is everything! Though to be honest, we sort of made 2-hand pies, as opposed to hand pies . . .

Rice counts when making risotto: Arborio rice was requested.

Chicken broth: Again, no regular old chicken broth would do. Pacific Organic or Imagine was suggested. We went for Pacific Organic.

READ YOUR LABELS when shopping: We didn’t actually make pork tenderloin as my friend mistakenly purchased the center cut (it was placed right next to the tenderloin and the identifying wording was in fine print). So, watch out for grocery store trickery!

And as the sous chef, I was too busy chopping and prepping to take as many pictures as I had actually wanted to. However, below is the finished product—and trust me when I say that the food was delicious!

My only substitution might be the apple cranberry compote. It just seemed a bit boring in comparison to everything else on the menu.

MUST KNOW: For anyone considering the home cooking lesson, you are responsible for purchasing all the groceries for the menu. Home Cooking New York will provide you with a shopping list.

Chelsea Chinese Restaurant (aka Grand Sichuan International)

229 Ninth Avenue

(at the corner of 24th Street)

On a bitterly cold day with threats of a Nor’easter, I am craving soup dumplings. The restaurant, formerly known as Grand Sichuan, has been touted as having the best soup dumplings outside of Chinatown.

Ordered the pork soup dumplings, and it arrived in a steamer almost 20 minutes later. The fact that it took awhile for the dumplings to cook reassured me that these were not some frozen dumplings that were nuked.

It was deliciously satisfying with the soup literally pouring out of the dumpling. So much so that when I bit into one the soup squirted out onto the table (as mortifying and embarrassing as it sounds!) Only criticism would be the need for a larger soup spoon.

While waiting for the soup dumplings, ordered a small bowl of vegetarian hot and sour soup. Very tasty and I would rate it as one of the best hot and sour soups that I’ve ever tasted.

Also, ordered the dan dan noodles with chili sauce.

Helpful Hint #1: The restaurant will make to order. We asked if they could make it mild spicy and they were more than willing to accommodate.

Helpful Hint #2: Remember to mix the dan dan noodles, the ground pork, and vegetables as the sauce is on the bottom of the bowl. Super tasty and the noodles tasted as if they were freshly made.

Helpful Hint #3: Order a small bowl of white rice to sop up the juices and sauces from both the dan dan noodles and soup dumplings.

The restaurant has an extensive menu, which includes American Chinese food and fare from various provinces—Sichuan, Shanghai, and Canton. They also offer a special lunch menu.

Helpful Hint #4: Service is what you would expect from an authentic Old World Chinese restaurant - rude, inattentive, and gruff.

Rafaella Cafe (CLOSED!!!)

178 Ninth Avenue

(between 20th and 21st Streets)

rafaellacafe.com

On a cold, rainy Halloween night, my dining companion was in the mood for a dinner that would be suitable for the fall season. A menu that might include pumpkin . . .

Rafaella’s is a small, comfortable café that reminds you of an old armchair, in which you could settle into for the entire evening.

And most important for that evening, it offered a dinner special—a complete pumpkin meal. For the appetizer, you started with a pumpkin soup, which I thought to be a bit heavy on the cream:

For the entrée, pumpkin ravioli. Really good, but one piece was filling enough for me. Again, thought it was a bit too creamy.

And for dessert, pumpkin cheesecake—which was excellent!

They did show us their entire dessert offering, but, hey, we were committed to sticking with the pumpkin theme.

For my starter, I went with their sangria $5 happy hour special. It was okay, but I’ve tasted better. Plus, perhaps not the best choice to pair with my dinner.

I soon switched to a cabernet (V Bianchi, from Mendoza, Argentina) to better accompany my meal.

My dining companion went for a glass of the chenin blanc (Simonsig, from Stellenbosh, South Africa). She had initially requested a glass of the gruner veltliner (Count Karolyi, from Tolna, Hungary), but sadly they were out.

For my entrée, I ordered the steak au poivre—cooked medium rare—served with mashed potatoes and sautéed broccoli. Delicious! And it was perfect for a cold, rainy autumn night.

Helpful Hint: In this instance, instead of following the saying of “You can never have too much of a good thing,” we probably should have heeded the warning of “Too much of a good thing, is a bad thing.”

Le Grainne Cafe

183 Ninth Avenue

(between 21st and 22nd Streets)

www.legrainnecafe.com

On the weekend before Halloween, went for a Sunday brunch at Le Grainne Cafe, a cozy café that’s off the beaten path in Chelsea where you could fantasize that you’re dining somewhere in Europe.

Have been wanting to go for brunch there for years, but was always put off by the long lines and even longer wait times.

Helpful Hint: Arrive close to 2 p.m., when the brunch crowd has lessened considerably.

Menu offers extensive French bistro fare.

But instead of ordering my usual Croque Madame, we decided to share a bowl of their renowned moules. A bit wary of being experimental, we went for the more traditional marinières style—mussels in white wine, with a shallot, garlic, and fresh herb sauce. Good, but not enough sauce! Since the best part of having mussels is, of course, scooping up the sauce with bread or french fries. Alas, no fries were included with the dish, either.

So we decided to accompany the mussels with a salade de chevre—warm goat cheese croutons, tomatoes, walnuts, and grapes on a mesclun salad. A light and somewhat healthy option.

My dining companion decided to start with a bowl of their French onion soup. She assured me that it tasted as good as it looked.

I declined to sample, as I wanted to save room for dessert—the main attraction!

We topped off the meal with not one, but two (2!) desserts. After watching many of the other customers order crêpes, we knew that we too had to try one as well. We decided to go for the crêpes fruits frais—mixed fresh-cut fruit with strawberry sauce. Deliciously fresh and light!

And it was good that the crêpe was light, because for our other dessert we went for the crème brûlée à la lavande—homemade lavender crème brûlée. And, yes, you can actually taste the lavender!!!

As we were sharing two desserts, we of course had to also order some kind of coffee. I went for the café au lait, which arrived in a lovely bowl.

She ordered the espresso (perhaps it might have even been the double espresso).

It was the perfect ending to a French brunch that could have been enjoyed on a cold, autumn day in Paris.