The Dressler, Ghetto-style

One of our favorite brunch spots in NYC is Dressler’s in Williamsburg. It is an easy walk from our house, beautiful décor, scrumptious food, great service and it has outdoor seating so Scout enjoys it, too.

I almost always order The Dressler: 2 poached eggs, potato galette, smoked salmon, crème fraiche, hollandaise, herbs, home fries & greens. Yum!

I decided to give this a whirl at home, sans creme fraiche & hollandaise, fresh herbs (JZ! I need some cuttings!) & home fries (too hot!). I used frozen potato pancakes (Dr. Praeger’s) and nova from Russ & Daughters, eggs, butter lettuce and some pea sprouts.

My Dressler

The Verdict: eh. But that’s the point of this blog, I’m just learning how to cook. The pancakes were mushy (JustAwesome called them “The Weak Link”), the eggs were overdone. Try, try again. That’s ok. JA also said, “This is pretty damn good, Baby!” And that, my friends, is the whole damn point.

What The Dressler SHOULD look like

(stolen from someone else’s blog)

A Very Large Lunch

Today for lunch I had marinated tofu, shaved spring vegetable salad, whole grain risotto with spinach and asiago, cranberry bean ratatouille, steak & portobellos with breadcrumb salsa, arugula salad with mustard vinaigrette, grilled shrimp in harissa, fresh corn polenta with sautéed cherry tomatoes, grilled zucchini with mint oil, striped bass and tofu (separately) with lemon, white wine and butter sauce, quinoa salad with corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado, chilled asparagus soup, seared fish and tofu (separately) with spicy black beans and mango salsa, chilled tomato soup with shallots, cukes and corn, and warm green beans and new potatoes with sliced eggs and grilled onion.

And a strawberry soup with a digestive cookie for dessert.

For my birthday, JustAwesome got me a class at the Institute of Culinary Education, so I waited until the busiest work week ever (Thanks, MST!) and took Flexitarian Fresh Food Fast with Peter Berley. Peter is in the holy trinity of our home: Berley, Bittman and Oliver. Buy his book. Take his class. Spend an intensive cooking weekend with him on LI. His recipes are really good. He is cute.

Brooklyn Kitchen

I feel like I’ve let my 12 fans down, but the truth is, we just haven’t been cooking that much here in the Feral Casa. We had 2 cousins in (separately) from across the pond, other friends in from out of town. And work. Busy, busy, busy. We made pizza one night. Note to selves: egg can slide right off pizza and into oven. Use less wrist action. With pizza leftovers we made our favorite Jamie Oliver baked pasta with tomatoes and mozzarella dish and a yummy potato and leek omelet. But mostly we’ve been out...

So I took a Homemade Tofu making class last night at Brooklyn Kitchen. I made a soft tofu custard (among other things) that was very simple and delicious. Will try again at home.

If you haven’t been to Brooklyn Kitchen, go. Right now. The classes are very cheap. Sometimes they serve beer. It is a beautiful place, with beautiful supplies. And beautiful meat. If you eat meat.

Other classes we’ve taken there: Pressure Cooker and Ricotta Making with the Salvatore Ricotta Girls. (If you haven’t had this, go. Right now. Try the smoked version. Anne sells it.) Yum and yum.

The Great Scape

I love seasonal veggies and crazy lookin’ scapes excite me. They grow from the tops of garlic plants—a deliciously mild and tasty by-product. They taste fresh and bright. They’re extremely versatile.

I like to make them into pesto and it is not your Momma’s (or step-momma’s) 80’s-style pesto. All you really need are scapes. Forget the basil. Forget the pine nuts, and obviously, forget the garlic. Actually, some people use almonds or pine nuts, but I’m something of a purist. I keep it simple.

Scapes

Olive oil

Parmesan or Pecorino

A little lemon

Sea Salt

Or, you can roast them. Or just cut them up and add to a salad. Or in mashed potatoes. Or...

Dorie Greenspan freezes the pesto until the tomato season. She says they’re “stupendous together”. Mmmm!! Check out her link to see how she stores it and for more details on what scapes are, what to do with them and what they taste like.

Oh man, I wish we were making pizza tonight. What cheese goes with scape?

Fiddlehead ferns. For one.

When left to fend for myself at dinnertime, I usually don’t put in much effort. I order sushi. Or just have potato chips. Or, when I realize I have an opportunity to have meat, steakonaplate (Meaning: Steak. On a plate. No veg. Goes well with an episode of Dexter.)

Tonight JustAwesome is off to a class called Wholesome Grain Salads That Deliver (Peter Berley) at the Natural Gourmet Institute, which will probably be really useful this summer when we want to eat light, healthy and I’m still trying to lose some tonnage. The NGI, by the way, has a Friday Night Dinner, which can be a fun activity with some friends.

Since it is still soft shell crab season (and JA doesn’t love them), I’ll do that tonight. And spare you the gruesome details of how you have to cut off their eyes to kill them. Oops. What makes this night different from all other nights, is that we have some fiddlehead ferns in the fridge that I’m afraid won’t be good if I don’t make them tonight (ok, they might be a little past their prime). And I hate to waste veggies. And so we have: Fiddlehead ferns. For one. Maybe I’ll even make a salad, with some leftover dressing from the Challenge. We'll see...

There are tons of ways to prepare them. I’ll do what I always do. Sauté with garlic & olive oil. Add herbs. Smoke herbs.

Um, someoneawesome didn't charge the camera battery so I took this with my cell. It’s just as well. The ferns look disgusting. Taste yummy.

Back on Track!

The last few days have been a little harder to stay on my Weight Watchers plan than usual.

On Friday night, we had cocktails at Savoy, mixed by our favorite bartender, followed by a fabulous meal at our favorite new restaurant, Torrisi. Torrisi has a prix fixe meal that is such a great deal and positively dreamy. You get EVERYTHING on the menu (but only one main). Check out at the menu, it changes daily. The warm mozzarella in olive oil and milk thistle cream should give you an idea. They make pretty much everything themselves. Get there early.

On Saturday I shoved these things down my throat: leftover pork chop for breakfast, oysters and beer, ice pop, soft shell crabs and a half dozen Trader Joe’s Macarons.

On Sunday we went to a 100th birthday party, for a house, not a person (Happy Birthday, 272!). The food was so yummy — little mac & cheeses in espresso cups (perfectly WW sized!), potato latkes, sliders, cupcakes, etc. Yum, yum and yum.

On Monday we went out again — cocktails, cheese & charcuterie plate, mains, no dessert. Place not good enough to share the links, but you get the idea. 3 days of non-WW’s eating, it is time to get back on track.

Which brings me to my post today…

This is a favorite lunch of mine that is super low in Points. Imitation crab meat salad wrapped in lettuce or nori or wasa bread. I cut up some onion, carrots & celery, sprinkled on some cayenne pepper and added a little Miso Mayo spread that I use because I hate mayo but the dish needs some glue. Satisfying and about 2 Points. It is a lunch that I get excited to eat. I love lunch.

Ramp it up! And, Dressing 2.

For the food snobs out there, I know, enough with the ramps. For everyone else though, they are a new and exciting, seasonal vegetable. Who doesn’t like some variety? As you can see from the link, ramps are wild leeks. They’re really flavorful.

The scene is pizza night, our house. Night number two of the dressing challenge for JustAwesome. We wanted to try a ramp pizza. But what cheese to use? Fortunately we are blessed with an amazing cheesemonger, Saxelby Cheese, a few blocks away at the Essex Street Market. We were steered towards a super stinky cheese called Fromage de Cow. Funky and AMAZING!! (Thank you, Anne!).

The salad was beautiful, though I can’t remember what kind of mix we got (from the Union Square Farmers’ Market). It had flowers and spicy arugula sprouts and whoknowswhatelse; there were at least 8 different types of leaves in it. Delicious. For the dressing, we went with a simple French dressing, posted as a comment by cousin Cath in Thoiry, France, which is about a half hour from Geneva. Cath is able to whip up amazing dressings without a thought. She has a real gift.

This is her recipe. (Thank you, Cath!)

French Dressing

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

lots of black pepper

Shake or whisk well.

Add honey or sugar to sweeten.