Home Made Egg Nog and Food Porn

Lookee what I did!
It's food porn! Isn't that the most luscious thing you've ever seen?

I just finished making my annual batch of egg nog in time for the solstice/Hannukah. Making it was a sensual experience. I may be slightly tipsy right now. But I only had, like, maybe 1/3 cup of the stuff. I love making egg nog. First, there was shopping for the freshest organic ingredients at the Troy Farmer's market. It's important to get only fresh organic eggs, milk, and cream, because it has to last for a while. The ingredients get to sit and deepen for about a week.

Okay this is where I say that you are technically *NOT SUPPOSED* to use raw eggs. Legal disclaimer: Nosher and her dependents and household items and her future progeny DO NOT recommend you eat raw eggs! Don't! Okay?!? Click here for scary USDA warnings about it. They recommend pasteurized eggs when you have to use raw eggs in a recipe. And here it says that "According to a recent USFDA report, between 128,000 and 640,000 Salmonella infections are annually associated with the consumption of S. Enteritidis-contaminated eggs, and the CDC estimates that 75% of all Salmonella outbreaks are due to raw or inadequately cooked Grade A whole shell eggs." Almost 600 people die in America every year from Salmonella infections. So, consider this a major caveat.

I buy all my eggs from Cornell Farms. They are from free range chickens. Dale & Edna Cornell
Cornell Farms
292 Lower Pine Valley Rd.
Hoosick Falls, NY 12090
686-5545
dcornellfarm@aol.com

They carry: "Dried/fresh herbs, vegetables, berries, honey, maple syrup, eggs, cut flowers, crafts."

Then I whip up the eggs (I'm not disclosing my full recipe here, but there are plenty of great egg nog recipes floating around on the web, so you can experiment and put one together). Then I feel warm inside looking at the beautiful yellow color of the yolks.


It's the color of the returning sun. Now I have to go pack up the bottles and ship them off to all the good little girls and boys.

This has been a nog blog (yuk yuk).

The Great Ice Cream Lick-Off

The Capital Region is blessed with several options for ice cream indulgence. At the risk of my street cred, I am going to endorse as one of my favorites the Cold Stone Creamery chain. We went to the one in Stuyvesant Plaza the other night and it was packed. The ice cream itself is of superior quality, and then there is the whole 'add-in' thing, whereby you personalize your ice cream. You can ask for any kind of mix-in (Snickers, Heath bar, M&Ms, nuts, sprinkles, etc.) and the servers then pound it all into a sludgy cold gooey submission on a marble slab. It's part of a larger trend of everyone being their own movie star/dreammaker/barista/iPod music mixer. They give you choices, and I got the peanut butter/chocolate concoction. It was chocolate ice cream with Reese's peanut butter cups plus actual peanut butter mixed in.

Can I just say YUM?!? Intense chocolateyness, plus peanut buttery goodness.

I was torn, though, and in retrospect I think I should have gotten the strawberry cheesecake concoction or the birthday cake one (actual pieces of birthday cake thrown in, with sprinkles!!!) There will just have to be many other samplings.

I might suggest ordering the smallest size, just because of the richness of the ice cream. It must have a high cream content, so a little bit goes a long way. There's another Cold Stone Creamery in Saratoga.

The other option for ice cream is of course the Ben and Jerry's on Lark Street in Albany. And I'm never going to pass up the chance for good old politically correct and intensely delicious ice cream by them. Plus, they use REAL WHIPPED CREAM!!! That is a big bonus in my book. And their fudge sauce isn't too overly sweet. One of the problems is parking, though: where are you gonna park, say, on a Friday night!??! It's not like there's a whole lot of room to double park with your flashers on while your sweetie runs in and contemplates the 20 or so incredibly delicious flavors.

It's problematic.

The institution we have come to love almost in spite of ourselves right here in Troy is The Snowman in Lansingburgh. Here is an article from the Business Review about ice cream with information about the owner of the Snowman, who makes his ice cream from scratch. Add to that all the soft ice cream options your heart could ever desire (vanilla and orange sherbert swirl for creamsicle effect cone, butterscotch or chocolate dipped cones, low-fat sherbert....) and you have a real conundrum. Pencil in about an hour's time just to decide what on earth out of all this sinful goodness you want. Recently I've had Maple Walnut, which was quite good. Their chocolate is okay, but not nearly as chocolately as Cold Stone's. Snowman tends towards the sweeter side of things, whereas I prefer less sugar, more flavor.

However, the Snowman is a social scene. Go on a Friday or Saturday night around 8 pm and you'll see everyone there: old, young, and in between lined up for their cold sugary goodness. It's so nice to see people out enjoying themselves in the Capital Region, where more often than not people are rushing around being workaholics.

The Snowman is on 5th Ave around 114th Street in Lansingburgh.

The article in the Business Review also mentions a place called Moxie's near Emma Willard which I'd love to try.

Happy lickings folks.

Al Baraki: Excellent Lebanese food with heart

Al Baraki is one of the best places to eat in the Capital Region. You may be surprised by that statement, but you shouldn't be: consistently, immigrant and 'ethnic' restaurants in this area outpace more traditional (read: white) eateries for freshness, originality, and heart.

What is heart? Heart is that personal connection to food, that sense of emotional nourishment and connection we get when we eat food prepared with care and love. Too often, that quality is missing from overly corporatized chain restaurants and overbuilt, overly fussy places that try to pass as gourmet, like Provence in Stuyvesant Plaza.

At Al Baraki, you get garlicky, fresh food with great variety and a down-home feeling. Paul and Simone are the proprietors, and the restaurant is situated in what used to be a pizzeria. Apparently, Paul started out selling pizza pie, but was encouraged to prepare foods that reflect his Lebanese heritage. It has been working, and I for one will be going back for more. They had a very successful Lebanese festival recently and they tell me they plan to do it again next year. Also, students, be on the lookout for a promotion in the fall.

Today I had the sampler platter, and usually with these types of platters, I'll like one or two of the samples while the rest are pretty bland. But on the Al Baraki platter, I *loved* everything: the baba ganouj was light and garlicky; the stuffed grape leaf and the makdous (baby eggplant stuffed with walnuts and peppers) were topped with Al Baraki's stupendous, home made garlic mayonnaise (which sometimes you can buy to take home in jars); and the tabbouli was full-bodied with mint and lemon. Another one of their signatures is the homemade turnip pickle. It doesn't sound like much, but it packs a wonderful flavor punch, and they use it as a garnish/side on a lot of their dishes.

They also offer meat dishes such as shawarma (chicken or beef), home made pies (lahm-ajeen, which is ground beef with tomato; or goat cheese pie, which I want to try next); and hot vegetable dishes like mousakaa (this looks like a vegetarian version, with onion, eggplant and chickpeas) or loubieh (green beans cooked with onion and garlic).

Their hours are:
Daily 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Friday 10:30- 9 p.m.
Closed Sunday

telephone: 270-9404

Today it was nice, so I sat at an outdoor table, but they also have seats inside. Go to Al Baraki; it'll make you want to become a regular.

Indian food

The Capital District is a great place to be if you are a vegetarian like me and you love Indian and Middle Eastern food.

If you love Indian food and haven't yet been to Karavalli on Johnson Road in Latham, you must go! The web site doesn't do it justice, because the decor is fresh, cheerful and modern, yet still Indian in style. Their menu is online in case you are skeptical. The service is attentive, and you will find it pleasantly full of patrons-- yet not offensively so.

Tonight I went there with my husband and his mom, and we had: Idly (dome-shaped dumplings served with yummy sauces); garlic naan (goodbye cold viruses and all but my best friends!!); chai masala teas; vegetable korma for my mother-in-law; vegetable Chettinadu for me (an actual cinnamon stick was presented on top); and malai kofta for my husband. Everyone was happy with their meal.

But the piece de resistance, for me was, is, and always will be the lemon pickle. It is hot, it is sour, it tastes of the essence of lemon, and I could actually eat a whole bowl of it. It is lemon as you've never had it before: forget lemonade, forget lemon chiffon pie. Lemon pickle is the only real, true lemon: the Platonic ideal of lemon. It clears the head and the sinuses almost instantly, and transports me to a place where lemon trees grow in abundance (not Latham, New York) and where food is multifaceted, real, and passionate (i.e., some other country besides this one, which is going to hell in a big-box chain restaurant). NB: they have lemon pickle at the affordable and delicious lunch buffet, and you can get as much as you want. Truly, it's heaven!

Other Indian restaurants of note around here are:

• Shalimar, which has two locations, one on Fulton Street in Troy, and one on Central Ave. in Albany- Decent, homey American-style Indian food with an inexpensive lunch buffet. This restaurant is popular with RPI students and profs., and has been a downtown Troy standby for years.

• Latham Biryani, on Route 9, near Newton Plaza- also a homey atmosphere (read: somewhat drab but comfortable) with what some friends of ours claim is slightly spicier food than Shalimar.

• The Sitar- I haven't been here in a while, but it has a slightly jazzier atmosphere than the above two restaurants, but about the same quality of food (basic American-watered-down Indian).

• Thunder Mountain Curry- Not a restaurant, but a mobile eatery you can find often (but not always) at the Troy Farmer's Market and sometimes on Fifteenth Street in front of the RPI campus center building. If Thunder Mountain Curry was a restaurant, they would probably best Karavalli (ohmigod, did I just say that?!?!) even though they are run by gringos. I say this only because their food is less greasy (there is practically no grease, well, okay maybe the pakoras, which are deep fried, have a slight shine, but they are supposed to!), and the chutneys and sauces are a marvel, all home-made.