Honey & Ricotta: Food

Honey and
Ricotta
food, life, ramblings

Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts

Thursday, 25 October 2018

Mercado Lucas de Galvéz

An overwhelming number of smells, colors, and sounds hit you when you start getting close to Mercado Lucas de Galvéz. The streets around the market are packed with stands piled high with fruits, veggies, tacos, agua fresca, candy, and inside it's a more densely packed extreme. Locals bustle by, bags full, dodging each other, weaving in and out of the covered market and hectic streets. Follow them to find out where to get the best of everything, from limes to tortas to spice mixes.

We visited the market every day when we were in Mérida. It took a couple of visits to not be totally overwhelmed and unable to make a decision beyond "dos tacos por favor", to get my Spanish in good enough shape to talk to the pineapple-genius about which pineapple I wanted, and to figure out when we'd be hungry enough to actually cook a meal in our Airbnb, rather than eating from every taco stand we passed. Eventually we managed a "proper shop", and dinner that night was a triumph of homemade tacos, fresh margaritas, and leftovers for breakfast.

Mercado Lucas de Galvéz, Calle 65A, Centro, 97000, Mérida, Yuc., Mexico

P.S. For more of a glimpse into this amazing place, watch Samin Nosrat's acid episode on her Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat show on Netflix. You miss out on the smells, the noise, and the sense of overwhelm, but you get a sense for just how beautiful all the produce is, and understand why buying citrus fruits in New York is now incredibly underwhelming.

Wednesday, 1 August 2018

Wayan'e

A first trip to Mexico is essentially a challenge to see how many tacos you can eat in a week. So taco eating starts early in the day. And if we weren't at the market, we were at Wayan'e. Aguas frescas helped us recover from the super hot, super short walk, and tacos followed.

Our order: all the breakfast tacos available (which turned out to be the perfect amount—not all on the menu were available). They made our typical Brooklyn bagel breakfasts seem a little underwhelming: freshly pressed, super thin tortillas topped with softly scrambled eggs, fresh greens, rich black beans, a dash of chili, soft onions, a splash of hot sauce (danger! super hot!), and whatever other veggies they had on hand that day. So much work went into every taco, with no fuss, no pretense, no unnecessary fanciness. And yes, you're right, I was jealous of the other people having their breakfast meetings over this breakfast platter.

Wayan'e, 412, Calle 59 408, Centro, Mérida, Yuc., Mexico

Saturday, 26 August 2017

Sardine

Our penultimate night on our trip back home, we unexpectedly managed to get both our families together. Where can you find a table for nine people at short notice for a Friday night in London? I thought we were on to an impossible task, but somehow, by some lucky occurrence, perfectly-located (for us, not for the rest of the world. Its location behind the McDonald's on City Road, is actually a little upsetting) Sardine had space for us all.

On this beautiful summer day, Sardine provided the perfect opportunity to imagine we were all on holiday in the South of France, rather than by City Road. I imagine that on less gorgeous summer days, stepping into tiled, sleek Sardine would be a welcome escape from this typically grey, drizzly city.

As there were so many of us we were on a set-ish menu. Shorter than the normal one, but there were still choices. We started with the prettiest array of appetizers to fight over amongst ourselves. There were plenty for everyone, but we're a greedy lot, so fight we did. Colorful crudités with a garlicy, rich anchoïade (see the photo above!); delicate slices of Jésus Basque salami; salty, satisfying more-ish brandade toast.

We were then split between ajo blanco & melon and chicken liver parfait. If you like chicken liver parfait, that was great. I don't love it, but I did love the bowl of creamy, satisfying chilled gazpacho-y soup, with sweet chunks of melon dotted around the center.

By this point, we'd all fallen in love with Sardine. We were sipping on carafes of the wine 'on tap' (both the white and red were elegant, dangerously drink-able, and a perfect match for the simple yet perfected food) and our loud voices echoed round the space.

Everything continued to get better and better. The options for mains were rabbit Leg, borlotti beans, rocket & mustard, i.e. hearty comfort food, brightened by greens and tangy mustard. Cod, clams & saffron stew, courgette & anchovy toast may not have been beautiful, but was the ideal fish stew: bright, messy, and full of seaside dreams. Girolles, grilled polenta, rainbow chard & crème fraîche was earthy, with a total array of textures: crispy polenta, soft mushrooms, almost crunchy chard, and velvety crème fraîche.

And yes, you better believe that after all that we had dessert. Yes, we were already full, but there'd been a beautiful apricot & brown butter tart sitting on the counter of the open kitchen staring at me all night, so everyone needed a slice. It was perfect. Yes. Totally, utterly, completely perfect.

Sardine, 15 Micawber Street, London, N1 7TB

Wednesday, 9 August 2017

Snapshots from Home

In mid-July we took a week off work and flew back home. Days were filled with long walks (and runs), beautiful food, amazing wine, and so much love, laughter, hugs, and smiles. Being back at home and in our old London stomping grounds fills my heart with so much joy, and inevitably makes me question why we ever moved away. But really I know why, and there's so many opportunities, discoveries, and adventures to be had over in this crazy country too. That doesn't make leaving any easier, that doesn't mean that I miss home any less than I did in our first day in this busy, hectic city, and that doesn't mean that I don't dream of returning one day (not quite) soon (enough).

But for now, we are where we are. We live in the present and make vague future plans, not clinging to them, allowing them to change, and flowing through the weeks that come and go in the blink of an eye.

These are just a few snapshots from some of our most adored UK spaces: home (my home), maman's veggie patch, Broadway Market, Regent's Canal (and the Towpath Café), Pavilion Café, Bar Termini (a new discovery for us), and, of course the space and countryside that shone beautifully on a perfect British summer's day.

Sunday, 30 July 2017

Olmsted

I'm not sure where time goes in this city. Days turn into weeks turn into months. Hence the lack of love this blog gets, and the time it took us to finally eat at Olmsted.

Pete Wells gave this farm-to-table style restaurant in Prospect Heights two of his sought-after golden stars almost a year ago. Since then, there's been a webcam on the restaurant's site so you can see how long the queue is. This, as you can understand, is partly why it took us so long to dare to try to eat there.

B's birthday was finally the time to tackle the line. We got there early. The wait? An hour. It may sound like a while, but it was only 6pm, so really it worked out in our favor. We wandered over to the Bearded Lady for a drink, and came back to take the two vacant seats at the bar.

Two glasses of bubbly were ordered. We spent the next five minutes admiring the beautiful details of the space. From the colorful water glasses, to the menu folded like a letter, to the beautiful light streaming in through the windows.

When you have such high expectations from a place, both as a result of the critics' reviews, the popularity, and friends' recommendations, it can often end up being underwhelming. But Olmsted honestly did live up to the hype. The food was bright, delicate, original, and oh so pretty.

Snap pea sushi used snap peas instead of rice, with thinly sliced fish placed on top, adorned with a slither of lemon, and splattered with a zingy, refreshing dressing.

Fried pickles was a bowl filled with lightly-battered, warm, crunchy, tangy fiddlehead ferns.

If I could have the B.L.T. bowl for lunch every day, I would. Delicate salad leaves, baby tomatoes, and squares of pork belly hid underneath a salty, shattering parmesan frico hat.

Then came the dishes of many parts. First the English Pea Falafel: a pile of falafel balls on pea shoots, fluffy peata bread, bright cardamom labneh, and fresh mint. Perfect early summertime flavors.

The pastrami tray was a stark contrast to the other dishes. Everything was still pretty and delicate, but the flavors took a dramatic change of course with mustard coated pastrami, sweet cornbread, creamy potato salad, and crisp slaw. Who'd have thought that serving American barbecue in adorable portions on a pretty plate would actually work out? There's some sort of magic going on in the Olmsted kitchen.

Be sure to ask if you can have dessert outside. The backyard is a gardener's haven, and home to the most adorable pet quails. On this hot summer's evening, this is perhaps the most romantic place in Brooklyn: fireflies dart through the fairylight-strewn space, couples sip on tea, eat soft-serve cherry ice cream and lavender honey froyo, and hope the night will never end.