CakeHands

This week, SnackHands and Mother of SnackHands have been experimenting with fondant. We made our own using marshmallows, water and powdered sugar, and have been pretty excited with our results. Our first attempt resulted in this cake, which served a dual purpose as our entry in the Threadcakes cake contest (see our full entry here) and as a dessert for a Shakespeare Murder Mystery party:

This cake was all it took for us to become completely obsessed with fondant. Luckily, we didn't have long to wait for our second cake-decorating opportunity to arise. Today was my niece's 11th birthday (Happy Birthday, E!!!). Having learned some things from our first round of working with fondant, this one was a little bit more fun/less stressful to assemble. Here's how it turned out:

I am having so much fun playing around with fondant that if my friends, coworkers, relatives and acquaintances aren't careful, every minor event is going to be an excuse for me to present them with a cake. Got your driver's license renewed? Congratulations! Have a cake. Had to pay $3.75 in library fines? Awww, sounds like you could use a cake. New shoes? Here's a cake to match! Tuesday? Cakeday! You get the general idea.

So. You. Be prepared to eat a lot of cake. (At least until my next culinary obsession takes over.)

BeerHands

In a very fitting first-night-back in Wisconsin, I visited a bar/restaurant near my parents' house with my eldest brother, and we partook in a "tasting flight" of the house brews. Obviously, we had many thoughts and ideas about the flavors before us and, after much discussion, came up with a rough rating/review scale. Ten mini-beers later, here's what we had to say about the beer on tap at Stone Cellar Brewpub:

Adler Brau Ale:

SH: Daytime drinking OR when you're in it for the long haul.

D (my bro): Agree. Needed for hot summer.

Houdini Honey Wheat:

D: Better than I thought. Soft wheat.

SH: I didn't think I liked wheat beer... and I was right!

Marquette Pilsner:

SOLD OUT!

English Six Grain Ale:

D: Brats/Balanced. Weathers the storm.

SH: Started out smooth, then got bitter -- just like a bad marriage.

Pie Eyed India Pale Ale:

D: Fall, Football, Cigars

SH: Just plain bitter.

Tilted Kilt Scottish Ale:

D: Whistling Straits - Burger & Chips Bar.

SH: This one would be good for watching a band at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis. I can't explain why.

Stone Cellar Stout:

D: Solid Stout. Not a fave, but OK.

SH: Tastes exactly like the Vanishing Vanilla Stout, but without the vanilla scent.

Vanishing Vanilla Stout:

D: No sweets in beer!

SH: More vanilla! Make it count! Not as good (nearly) as Young's Double Chocolate Stout.

Brown Ale:

SH: Fall! Football! Go Pack!

D: Solid Brown Ale. Agree, Packers game.

Smoked Porter:

D: Badness.

SH: I would use this to clean fish, as an alternative to Nicotine gum if I was trying to quit smoking, or to get an enemy to leave my party.

Stone Cellar Root Beer:

SH: Delightful! I want to have kids over for Root Beer Floats! Yay summer!

D: Refreshing, light, sweet.

Finally, if we were having a party with only three taps, here are our choice beers:

D's Party gets:

1-Adler Brau Ale

2-English Six Grain Ale

3-Tilted Kilt Scottish Ale

SH's Party gets:

1-Brown Ale

2-Adler Brau Ale

3-Tilted Kilt Scottish Ale

We are considering offering our beer review services to other Wisconsin establishments. If interested, you can contact us right here at SnackHands World Headquarters by emailing snackhands@nyc.rr.com. Be sure to get in touch quickly -- before we become too busy and important.

Restaurant Week, Part 2 (Sort Of)

I had high hopes for the second week of Restaurant... Week. (Officially, the "week" is actually two... in some cases, the special menus continue through the end of summer.) On my list were Morimoto (check!), Blue Smoke (schedule conflict) and Savore (too lazy and too full). What I did manage to do, fancy-new(to me)-restaurant-wise, was impressive, though not as extensive as I'd planned. Oh well, in this city, every week could really be restaurant week, so SnackHands will look forward to more good eating outside the confines of the short list.

ANYWAY,

Morimoto: My friend T and I went here for lunch on Tuesday. It appears that the place has a fixed-price menu all the time, so they weren't really doing anything super-exciting to whet our RW appetites. We went for the regular menu instead and both got the Kobe Beef Bento Box:

The Bento Box was only a couple bucks more than the restaurant week lunch price, and it was quite a bit of food. From the upper left corner going clockwise, we had: vegetable tempura, a few pieces of Kobe beef, miso soup, a mixed-green salad, a couple pieces of a spicy tuna roll and a few pieces of sushi. The sushi was so tender and delicious, and the beef was pretty awesome too. The salad and miso were also good. Two pieces of the veggie tempura were slightly problematic: there was a mushroom stem in there that was impossible to bite through, as well as a piece of asparagus that was stringy and slid out of the tempura batter when you tried to bite into it. As T said, "Iron Chef would totally lose points for this!" Overall, though, I was quite happy with everything - the service, the food (including what I saw on the tables around me) and the amazing... bathroom:

Yes, I'm a spaz and I took this photo of the wall behind the toilet in the bathroom stall. It was one of those things that you see and almost gasp about, but then you remember you're in a bathroom, so you play it cool. And then you shut the door and take a photo and post it on your blog. Don't say I never gave you anything.

Blue Smoke was next on the list and I had a willing eating companion with a weird work schedule. We didn't think we'd make it before closing time, so we opted for a non-RW alternative instead: Cafe Habana.

This is a tiny place in Soho that I actually visited years and years ago for, of all things, a burger. This time around, I went for the Cuban food it's known for. I started with their famous (for good reason) "Grilled Corn Mexican Style" and a margarita on the rocks. For my main course, I had their roast pork with black beans and yellow rice. My dinner-partner-in-crime had the same, and when the plates hit the table, they were a perfect mirror image of each other. If ever there was a time to be the dork who whips out her camera at the table, it was then. But since I already gave you a bathroom photo, you are going to have to use your imagination on this one. Think about a creamy-white oval plate loaded with shredded pork on your left, and yellow rice and black beans horizontally dividing the other half of the plate. This food was incredible. Typically, I skip the rice and beans because I find them to be "eh," but the mixture of these three perfect elements was food heaven. I would have licked my plate if there had been anything left on it to lick. Viva la Cafe Habana!

I will say, it's lucky for Cafe Habana that their food is so exceptional because the service was not. After sitting down, we waited so long for our waitress that my fellow foodie went up to the bar/counter to see about drinks. Seeing this, our server promised she'd be "right there" and, after another five or so minutes, she was. She took our order and disappeared. Our corn showed up first, our drinks showed up a bit later, and our food showed up pretty quickly after that. Despite the fact that there are about 15 tables in the whole place for 2 waitresses, she seemed ridiculously busy and/or preoccupied. And, frankly, I've never heard a person drop more plastic cups during a one-hour-period in my life! I hope it was just an off night for her because I'm dying to go back and have more pork. Maybe I will have to go there in the future only when I'm traveling with some sort of band, because those types seemed to be taken care of without any difficulty. Or maybe I'll just start carrying a trombone case around with me.

It was a blast to explore all these places, and NYC is loaded with approximately 9,082 more that I'm dying to try. How I do that without going broke and gaining a thousand pounds, I'm not sure. But where there's a SnackHands, there's a way.

After all this fancy Restaurant Week-ing, I'm off to Wisconsin. Be prepared for reports from the Heartland, sure to include extensive dissertations on cheese, bratwurst and beer.

Caramel-Coated SnackHands (Or, I Think I'm Gonna Barf!)

I dare you to make a batch of caramel corn and not eat half of it while it's supposed to be cooling. I further dare you to not eat the rest for breakfast the next day. If you can do it, you are a far far stronger person than me.

Caramel corn was one of the things on my summertime cooking "to do" list, which also includes doughnuts and osso bucco with polenta. While searching online for the perfect caramel corn recipe, I got to thinking about all kinds of caramel products and decided I needed to test out wax-paper-wrapped homemade caramels as well. So Monday night commenced the Late (started at about 10 p.m.) Great Caramel Experiment.

For the caramel corn, I used this recipe from Simply Recipes. The recipe was easy to follow and the results (see photos below), completely, ridiculously, dangerously addictive. I have to say, I was most proud of the fact that my eyeballed popcorn measurement wound up filling my kettle exactly. Granted, it was way more popcorn than I needed, but it looked good.

The wax-paper-wrapped caramels were slightly (slightly!) less exciting. I was going for something not-too-chewy and not-too-light, kind of like the caramel you get inside chocolate in the mixed box. I dug around a bit and decided to go with this recipe for fluer de sel caramels from Gourmet magazine via Epicurious. I used regular table salt and added a tsp of vanilla. Compared to what I was after, the results were somewhat "eh." (Not drastic enough to keep me from eating them in rapid succession, however.) My main complaint was the fact that they turned out way too soft, until I put them in the fridge. The flavor was pretty good, but nothing shocking. It definitely improved when I dipped about half the batch in some melted milk/hazelnut chocolate. All in all, nowhere near a cooking failure, but I think I'll keep looking for the perfect caramel recipe.

NYC Restaurant Week, Part 1

Restaurant Week is a new discovery for SnackHands. And SnackHands is very pleased. Firstly, I'm pleased with the concept (normally-too-pricey restaurants offer a three-course meal for teacher-friendly prices) and, secondly, I'm pleased with the fact that the "week" is actually half a month. My reviews thus far:

Lure: This downstairs place in Soho is one I've always wanted to try. From the outside, it has these cool round windows that allow you a tiny glance inside. The interior looks like the inside of a boat -- not like the Love Boat, but like a boat James Bond might spend some time playing cards on. I hit this spot for a Monday-night dinner with my Party Girl In Crime, K. Our server was super-nice, which made our experience a success right from the start. For an appetizer, I had the Tuna Nicoise Tartare. Awesome. I really am beginning to love tartares of all kinds. My main course was a steamed Branzino, a pretty mild fish I'd never heard of before. It was good, despite the fact that it was served with one side of skin still on. A little weird for anyone who's a bit squeamish about "fishy" fish. Dessert was a ultra-rich warm chocolate cake (think lava cake) with a side of caramel ice cream and the best part, popcorn brittle. It was kind of like having a crispy caramel corn in your ice cream. The chocolate cake was almost unnecessary. All in all, this was a great start to my restaurant week. I would definitely go back and pay full price for another night at Lure.

Aquavit: Two friends and I went to this Swedish dream come true for lunch on Friday. It was fabulous, incredible, perfect. The service was extremely attentive (one guy to pour water, one guy to offer you a choice of bread, one guy to fold your napkin and return it to the table if you get up to use the bathroom), and didn't make us feel weird about ordering from the Restaurant Week menu (which was printed right inside the regular lunch menu) or trying more than one kind of bread from the bread service. I had a mixed green salad, Swedish meatballs and a dessert called the Arctic Circle, which was one of the best things I've ever eaten. A billion stars for Aquavit!

Angelo and Maxie's: Boo. About a year ago, I had dinner at Angelo and Maxie's, a steakhouse near Union Square. I ordered a filet mignon, and it was pretty great. I've also had a steak at their more-casual bar next door, which was equally fine. So while I wouldn't list this place on the top of my list of must-go places (nor would I put it in the top 25), it was definitely a reliable option. However, my restaurant-week dinner at Angelo and Maxie's on Friday was probably my last visit. First of all, despite their enormous posted restaurant-week menu out front, they didn't actually bring us that menu. I had to ask for it. I ordered a house salad (okay), a filet mignon (pretty good) and the cheesecake (great). We also ordered a side of hashbrowns which came to the table completely charred and, if I was a server, embarrassing. I'm always afraid of sending food back to a kitchen, for fear of spit and other scary possibilities, but I did think some ketchup would have helped. However, our server didn't return to our table to check on us once. She came back to pour some more wine for us once or twice, but didn't stick around to ask questions like, "Do you need anything else?" I don't know if she felt it was beneath her to work extra-hard for the cheap seats or what, but the negligence completely put me off of a restaurant that I was on the fence about to begin with. Well, her and the burnt hash browns. Who serves burnt food??? I'll tell you who: a restaurant that has lost SnackHands as a customer forever. Farewell, Angelo and Maxie. And good riddance.

On deck for next week (should my bank account and waistband hold out, that is):

Morimoto

Blue Smoke

Savore

Stay tuned for Restaurant Week, Part 2!

SnackHands Eats L.A.

I just returned from a week in L.A. where my dear friends (Shout out to my West Coast Posse! Whut up B, C1, C2 and MC!) showed me the greatest time of my life. I partied on a rooftop, discovered a new band, relaxed on the beach, watched JAWS on a backyard big screen, became addicted to Pinkberry... the list goes on. I am so lucky to have these longtime pals out there. They are awesome, and when my life becomes glamourous enough to go bi-coastal, I will be able to hang out with them more often!

As for the culinary highlights of my trip, here are the Top 5:

1. Best Drink EVER! Dirty martini on the rocks at The Penthouse, a fancy rooftop restaurant/bar atop The Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica. Views of the ocean on three sides. There are nine olives in that glass, people. Nine.

2. Um, cheeseburger ravioli? Are you kidding me??? My friend B made reservations for us at a place called Jiraffe in Santa Monica, where they have "Ravioli Wednesdays," which features a fixed-price three course meal, including wine, for 29 bucks! Typically I am not a huge fan of ravioli, but I have been wanting to revisit it as of late, and this was the perfect reintroduction. This dish was nothing short of genius. Instead of the Hamburger-Helper-esque concoction I was expecting, this really was a unique and delicious take on the cheeseburger. At the bottom of the plate was a thick caramelized onion sauce. It was topped by ground steak (and maybe cheese) filled homemade ravioli, tomatoes, croutons, tiny lettuce leaves and pickled cucumbers (which was a surprise, but also the most cheeseburger-y compliment to the rest of the ingredients). The whole shebang was topped with sesame seeds. I have not been able to stop talking about it, or thinking about it, since. This meal definitely goes in my top 5 of all time. (And don't even get me started on their strawberry cheesecake -- another thing I don't typically like -- which was delicious.)

3. Baked Salmon Roll at SushiDan. This was actually a misorder on my part. I meant to get the Baked Scallop Roll, but when the waiter showed up, I was too hungry to focus. This was basically a california roll topped with baked salmon and something called "Dynamite Sauce." My friend C2 and I shared this roll along with a Las Vegas Roll and a Crazy Danny Roll. Everything was incredible (!) and, quite frankly, I wanted to try two of everything on the menu. During the meal, C2 and I discussed what we would eat every day if money and health weren't an object. I said sushi and a box of Hostess Golden cupcakes for every meal. He said burritos. Later in the day, at another meal, we also agreed that dulce de leche cookies should maybe be added to the list. (See honorable mentions below.)

4. My friend MC lives by this Cuban bakery in Silver Lake (hipster L.A. nabe) called Cafe Tropical. When I visited him a few years back, he introduced me to this place and to their perfect coffee (espresso with milk, really) and enormous eclairs (one of which, combined with an afternoon of driving around, delivered the perfect sugar crash and left me powerless to avoid the couch for a nap). They are also known to have a great guava pie, which I tried this time around. Above, you see their Cuban sandwich. The Cubano, for those of us who want to be serious and legit about things. I took one of these to go and ate it at the baseball game we went to at Dodgers stadium just down the street from Cafe Tropical. I don't know if it was the fact that I was finally trying a sandwich I've wanted to try for a while, the sandwich itself, or the fact that I was eating it at a baseball game on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, but whatever it was, it was 100 percent gratifying. Oh, and the Dodgers won.

5. Have you ever walked into a place starving (and maybe drunk) and had someone hand you a piece of toast immediately? Let me tell you how great that is: it's pretty damn great. This particular toast was made from egg bread that was lovingly baked by B, my California hostess who was also responsible for delivering me to food experiences numbers 1 and 2 above, and for making crumb cake that was devoured within the first three days of my visit. This homemade egg bread was heavenly as bread (slightly crisp crust, moist center, and reminded me of bread made by my mom or grandma or somebody when I was a kid) and divine as toast. SnackHands worships toast.

Honorable Mentions:

Pork sandwich at 4th of July rooftop party, aforementioned dulce de leche cookies, Korean soup so hot you crack an egg into it and it cooks on the spot. And I don't know if the last two are fair, since they were made by me for the JAWS screening in MC's backyard, but I was extremely happy with how they turned out, so they had to be included: salad of proscuitto, praline peacans, blue cheese, raisins, greens and balsalmic vinaigrette, and "Shark Bite Cupcakes." In keeping with the JAWS theme, these were blood-red velvet cupcakes with a flesh-colored peanut butter frosting and white chocolate bone shards/shark teeth.

(And, not pictured: Ahi tuna burger from Malibu Seafood. Awesome fish enjoyed on picnic tables across the Pacific Coast Highway from the ocean.)

Best. Vacation. Ever. (Sorry, Prague!)

Let Them Eat Cake! (Or, My Work Neighbor is a Genius)

Lately, I've been feeling like the Worst Teacher Ever. Partly because it's the end of the school year and I'm burned out. Partly because my desk is a mess. Partly because I only managed to accomplish a handful of the "brilliant" ideas I had for units and activities early in the year (because a girl has to sleep, even if it's only for three or four hours a night). And partly because of projects like this:

This is a Government Cake, the project of a 7th-grader whose Social Studies teacher's classroom is next door to mine. Every year, he assigns the students to bake a cake that represents the U.S. Government. He is a genius.

On two days in May, his students came into school with layer cakes designed to represent the three branches of the goverment. They decorated with M&Ms and Hershey's Kisses to stand for the Amendments to the Constitution. They blended chocolate and vanilla, and explained that this was to show Federalism (the division of power between the state and national governments, a fact I learned during one of the cake presentations).

All I can say is, if my 9th-grade Government teacher had assigned projects like this, rather than showing us taped episodes of Degrassi Junior High (which, to be fair, was one of my favorite memories of 9th-grade), I probably wouldn't be relying on a bunch of 7th-grade girls to explain checks and balances to me.

As I began to look around, I realized that all the teachers I work with are equally brilliant. The 6th-grade Drama teacher not only had her students perform scenes for a rotating audience, but also had them sit as a panel to "talk back" to the audience, who asked a series of unpredictable questions. The performers were eloquent and confident in their answers, a tribute to the preparation they received from their teacher. The Science teacher has them making and testing their own shampoo and body lotion as a science project. Rather than having them write a stiff and probably-plagiarized report about the countries of Europe, the 6th-grade Social Studies teacher had his students create children's books as a culmination to their research.

As a teacher, it's exciting to work with people whose ideas are as inspired and creative and well-prepared as these. But at the same time, it's a bit intimidating. They make me feel unorganized and ineffective, and leave me to wonder if I'm making as big an impact as I think they are. You enter the school year filled with plans for amazing projects and mind-blowing units, but then you get into the brass tacks of answering a thousand questions a day (from "What was our homework?' to "Who invented chocolate chip cookies?") and organizing paperwork, and keeping track of 80 different humans, and your brain is too shot to read a book on the subway ride home, let alone spend three hours in front of the computer writing out detailed lesson plans or scouring the Internet for poems containing symbolism that a 6th-grader can pick up on.

This is not to say I haven't done anything I'm proud of. This year I had students write business letters, most of which received responses. I staged a weekly Open Mic that was filled with their poems and dramatic readings. A lot of kids in my class discovered this year that yes, in fact, they do love to read. And I introduced my Advisory to Gooey Butter Cake, which is a life-changing dessert that they will obsess about for years to come.

Still, as the last day of school nears, I find it difficult not to look around and say, "NEXT year, I'm going to do things so much better." And with some things, I probably will. With others, I'll probably find myself thinking the same thing I am right now. The important thing, I think, is to keep looking for ways to improve. To not relax into "good enough." To take the things that worked and do them again. To take the things that were lame, and make them interesting. Maybe by the time I'm ready to retire, I'll have put all my ideas into action. I have roughly 30 years. That seems about right.