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Celebrating "Dia de los Muertos" at Dirt Candy

11/7/2016

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The day after Halloween is a tough day. We are all tired from last night's trick or treating, and we need to rest.  You may think that, but what we really need to do is party!  We have to celebrate a holiday called Dia de los Muertos, otherwise known as Day of the Dead.  Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday that celebrates, and honors relatives that have died.  A lot of people on this holiday make altars, and offer bread and flowers to welcome the spirits into their homes.  People dress up and share food with neighbors and paint their faces like a skull.  People often try to feel the presence of their loved ones. This holiday lasts for two days: November 1st and 2nd.

Now you might be wondering, what does this have to do with food. Well, for Day of the Dead, my dad took me out to a special dinner at Dirt Candy where we had a special Day of the Dead themed dinner. This was a special event so you had to get a special ticket for an eight course meal.  Dirt Candy is a vegetarian restaurant owned, and run by Chef Amanda Cohen.

The first course we had was a corn brioche with elote butter.  The brioche was a warm, spongy bread that had a slight taste of lemon zest in it.  The elote butter was a creme fresca, with cilantro oil in it. It did give off a little tang but it was nice.  The butter was creamy and light. The warm spongy bread with the light creamy elote butter went great together.

The next course was beet tacos.  The dish was a beet infused taco, and in it was creamy chipotle, salt roasted beets, and purple cabbage.  I honestly thought that I was not going to like the dish but it was really tasty.  The dish was crunchy, soft, and spicy. It was like a party in my mouth.

This third course was my favorite.  The dish was tostilocos with chipotle, jalapeño, and orange jicama sauce.  I am not kidding when I say this the only thing that was wrong with the dish was that there was not enough sauce!  My dad and I cleaned the plate.  The flavors in this dish popped. It was spicy, crunchy, smooth, and the pickles on the dish made it stand out.  I thought that the chipotle and the jalepeño were really spicy but that the orange jicama sort of cooled it down.  That was the end of the appetizers.

The first entree was a pumpkin ceviche.  Well, if you do not know what ceviche is, it is usually a fish appetizer that is made of raw fish and has lime juice on it.  So, now you can probably guess what this dish was.  It was raw pumpkin with avocado and lime juice. There were sunflower seeds on it with some fresh herbs.  The pumpkin was cut like a carpaccio and was very smooth and thin. When I had it, I could taste a hint of olive oil, and it was seasoned very nicely. I got salt and pepper with a bit of lime or lemon juice on it. Simple but tasty.  I also want to say that I really liked the sunflower seeds. It gave it that balance of crunchy and soft.

The next dish was a sweet pea enchilada.  An enchilada to me is like a burrito, but cut into slices, so this one was no different but I liked it a lot.  It had a very soft outside and a more crunchy inside. It was also a little bit sweet and a little bit sour.  There were also different sauces on the plate that I dipped peas into and it was really good.  I especially liked the sour cream and hummus.  This was a fun dish that I enjoyed, and would love to come back for more.

This third dish was called Pepper.  It was not exactly pepper though. It was beans in a little skillet with pepper “life savers” all around it which I thought was clever.  The beans were in a sauce that was a five pepper sauce.  This dish, specifically the sauce, reminded me of oyster sauce and was very smooth.  I also thought that the salad with the beans and the sauce was stupendous.  I know I said the “life savers” were clever, but they were also really fun to eat.  Overall, I thought this dish was the most fun dish with the “life savers” and the tiny skillet.  


Now, this last dish was my favorite entree, and my third favorite after the tostilocos and the pumpkin semifreddo that you can read about in my next paragraph.  It was the brussels sprout tacos!  The dish was a “make your own” taco which I love when we have taco night at my house.  So, the layout was the brussels sprouts were on a really hot plate that you could not touch like a bibimbap bowl.  To the side of the brussels sprouts were lettuce leaves they were the shell.  Then, the rest of the plate had toppings on it; creme, radish, sour cream, crunchy corn sticks...etc.  I went all out. I took the lettuce leaf put brussel sprouts and all of the toppings on it.  The taco was delicious. It was smooth, spicy, and creamy.  The brussels sprouts were packed with a nice kick, that made me want to eat them all day long.  Just typing this paragraph makes my mouth water.  Before my dad and I went to Dirt Candy he kept saying how much he loved the brussels sprout tacos, so I waited all night long for them and it was well worth it.

Last, but certainly not least was dessert.  It was a pumpkin semifreddo pie with mango and chili.  The semifreddo was like a frozen pumpkin pie with a slab of crust under it which gave it a cool hip style.  I tasted like pumpkin ice cream and the mango and chili was a nice compliment with the pumpkin.  The crust was so good it was hard and flaky just the way I like it.  With the semifreddo we also had a mexican hot chocolate that we shared.  It was very heavy with a little bit of paprika in it and not watery at all. It was perfect.

​
Overall I had a wonderful meal and would love to come back to Dirt Candy with my whole family including the new addition, Josie.    
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The New United States Ambassador to Laos

10/26/2016

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It is not every day that you get to go down to Washington D.C. to see your cousin become a United States Ambassador. Last week, I was really lucky to get to go down to Washington D.C. for a few days for this exact opportunity.  As you may have seen on one of my previous blog posts, I went to Vietnam for a couple of weeks to visit my Cousin Rena and to taste the wonderful Vietnamese cuisine.  Now, she has been appointed the United States Ambassador to Laos, which is a neighboring country to Vietnam, and from what I have heard, has the best South Asian food.

Washington D.C. is far from New York so it was a very long ride, but when we eventually got there we had a family at a Laotian restaurant so we can taste, and get a feel for the cuisine of Laos and to have a party before the ceremony that was the next day. My cousin Rena knows that I love food. She was so nice and she had someone show me all of the different Laotian foods and tell me what was in it.  I made a plate with some different stuff on it. I was honestly not starving but I took a good amount of food.  I got spicy eggplant salad, sticky rice, pork shoulder, and sun dried beef.

I had a little bit of each dish because I was not that hungry, but all of them were satisfying.  Let’s start off with the pork.  I really enjoyed the pork. It was fatty, and had a nice char on it with a lot of really good flavors.  Next, was the eggplant salad. It might have been my favorite one even if I did not have a lot of it.  Considering I do not love eggplant, this dish caught my attention. It was very spicy but in a good way.  The sticky rice was cool. Sticky rice is a glutinous rice and I kind of liked it better than regular white rice.  Lastly, I tried the sun dried beef. It was almost like beef jerky because it was tough but it was better because it had a tang to it.

​The next day we went to go see her get sworn in at The United States Department of State.  It was super cool because inside there were a lot of historic papers.  We even got to see the real Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln!  Her speech was very nice although it was a little weird looking up at the stage thinking this is my cousin and not someone I do not know.  Overall the whole experience was great and the meal was very good. I cannot wait to go to Laos to see my Cousin Rena again and try more amazing food there! 
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Carla Hall's Culinary Kids Week at the NY Botanical Garden

2/22/2015

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Picture
The New York Botanical Garden has a program called the Edible Academy where kids learn more about healthy eating and cooking.  During my February break, The Edible Academy had an event called Culinary Kids Week where kids come to the Botanical Gardens and go to different stations to learn about food and nature. The event was sponsored by Carla Hall who is a famous chef and is a host on The Chew, which is a talk show on ABC. She also was on Top Chef, which is one of my favorite shows. My dad saw an advertisement for the event online and called the Botanical Gardens to ask them if I could cover the event for my blog.  They said yes, and gave us free parking and passes to the event.  They also said I could have an interview with Carla and Toby Adams, who is the Director of the Edible Academy.  On Monday the 16th, we headed to the Botanical Gardens.  That day was probably the coldest day of the year.  So, it was a big pain getting to NYC.  We got to the event, and Toby explained what we were doing that day, and the set-up of the event.  He said that there were five tents that teach you different ways to garden and grow food. At 12:45pm Carla Hall was scheduled to have a demo on how to make a broccoli pesto.

We started out at a tent that teaches you how to compost.  They said if you leave newspapers in a bin that is shut with worms inside, you’ll get compost.  The first step is to put newspapers in a bin with a special type of worms, and after about two months all there will be is compost, and worms.  Then when you want to have an apple, or a banana you could throw the peel, or the core into the compost and it will become compost in a few months.  The guy who ran that station said, “I keep my bin under my bed.”  I thought that was odd because why would you want a bin under your bed when you know it has dirt, and worms in it.  When he finished speaking, a helper at that station helped us make seed balls using seeds and compost. My seed ball was made out of dill, which will eventually turn into a dill plant. My brother made one with cilantro seeds.

After we finished that station, it was time for me to go interview Carla Hall.  Carla was waiting at a picnic table in the back for me.  I asked her some questions and then we had a good conversation about things like food and our favorite restaurants. Here are some questions from the first part of the interview.

Q: What was your first childhood memory of cooking?
A:  “I didn’t cook much as a child, but I remember cooking as a Girl Scout.  I made spaghetti and an apple crumble to get my badge.”

Q:  What was your favorite food as a child?
A:  “I loved oranges.  I can eat a whole bag of oranges.  My grandma had this big garden.  So, I loved cucumbers and vinegar.  That might sound weird, but it’s so good.  I also love my grandmother’s mac and cheese.”

Q:  What made you get  involved with today's event?
A:   “I love kids, I love people discovering things, I love teaching, and to see people get an aha moment.  When I do my cooking demo I’m going to bring people up.”

You can see the full interview with Carla at the video below.
After my interview with Carla, the first station we went to was a station that taught you about healthy eating.  They were giving out free samples of fresh pea hummus. You could have the pea hummus with a carrot or a pita chip.  I tried the pita chip with hummus first.  The pea hummus was sweet, smooth, and went really well with the pita chip.  When I tried the hummus with the carrot though I thought the pita chip was a little too hard, and I preferred the carrot more than I preferred the pita chip. The woman who made the pea hummus was an author who wrote a book called Appetite for Life. Her name is Stacey Antine. The book is about healthy eating and cooking for kids and has easy recipes for parents to make with their kids. We looked at the book and bought a copy because the recipes looked so good. Here is a link to the webpage for the book: http://www.healthbarnusa.com/appetite-for-life/.

She also gave us a copy of the recipe for the pea hummus to share with you on my blog. Here it is:
After we finished our hummus, I made a pea plant, so I could make pea hummus at home.  When we made our pea plant it was really cool how we made the pot.  To make the pea plant you needed:  A strip of a newspaper, a mold, two dried peas, and damp soil.  You took the newspaper curl it into a circle.  Then, you put it into the mold and pressed hard.  You have your pot, voila!  Then you put a scoop of soil into the pot and press two pea seeds in, then cover them and you have your pea plant.

After we finished the pea hummus, I had an interview with Toby Adams who is the Director of the Edible Academy and who helped create this event.

Q:  How did you come up with the idea for this event?
A:  “Right now I supervise the garden and we are only open from April-October, and so we thought it would be a great way to have an event in the middle of while school is out.  During either the Spring break or February break. We decided February break would be best.  What we usually teach about is gardening, and cooking with the plants we grow. We don’t have any plants growing right now because it is so cold out.”

Q:  Why did you invite Carla Hall?
A:  “Carla became one of our friends. We have a close relationship with her co-host Mario Batali.  So, he comes to a lot of our events.  So, during our gardening season he brought Carla with him and we met Carla and she loved our family garden and the Edible Academy.  So, she decided that we were great partners, and now she is our friend.”

Q:  How did you pick the other chefs for this event?
A:  “That is a good question.  We reached out to different organizations that also do food education or associate with food education.  We asked them if they wanted to join us, and they had experience teaching kids about food.  They were from all around the metropolitan New York area, and we thought it would be nice to spread the word.”

Q:  Why is this event for children?
A:  “I call adults big kids, but we usually have events for children, but everyone can learn here.”

Q:  What do you think kids will learn from this?
A:  “Well I hope they learn a little bit more about how they eat every day and where their food comes from.  I hope they make some connections to the gardens and the farms that produce food.  I hope they learn cooking is fun, and that they can be involved with family meals at home, and maybe learn about new foods, and might be inspired to grow foods at home, and have some fresh foods available.”

Q:  Will you have this event more often?
A:  “Well right now this is our slow time. In about five weeks we are gonna open our two acre garden. It’s bigger than this whole tent. Then we have activities every day of the week from April-October.  We do cooking demonstrations every week, three times a week, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.”

After my interview with Toby, we went to our last tent. It was a tent where they teach you about bread.  When I got to the tent they were showing different grains and we had to guess what they were.  I guessed two grains and got them right. They were rice and quinoa.  At the tent I got to make flour.  First, they put in a grain and we mashed it in a stone bowl with a masher.  When your time was up they put the flour in a bag to take home.  After we finished that tent we headed to our seats to watch Carla’s demo.  During the demo, she gave us good tips on how to make a pesto out of broccoli and she was entertained us.  She called up a few people for her demo.  At the end of the demo it looked so yummy.  This was a good experience for me and if you want to do something like this look you should look into some of the other Edible Academy activities at the New York Botanical Garden.
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"Feed Me Fresh": A Mount Kisco Child Care Center Fundraiser

9/21/2014

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I don't know about you guys, but I like farm fresh food. I don't like all that processed food nowadays. There's an event called Feed Me Fresh that raises money for Mount Kisco Child Care Center. The kids at the center get farm fresh food and learn about healthy eating habits. The fundraiser was about raising money to get scholarships for children, so that they can come to MKCCC. The event is only for grown-ups, but I was invited to come this year to write about it. My brother and I have been going to the center for a long time. I've been going since kindergarten and he's been going since he was 9 months old. Over 250 people bought tickets by the afternoon of September 20th, so imagine how many people were there!

When we got there, I saw it was on a farm and there was a big tent set up. When I walked in, it was fall themed. It looked very nice. I looked to see what restaurants were there and I saw some very familiar places. I saw Frannie's Goodie Shop, Ladle of Love, Bellizzi, Little Kabab Station, Little Crepe Street, and some new places. Then I talked with people from the child care center.

I talked with Chris Meyer. the Director of Development. I asked her what was new about the event this year. She said "We have a new Executive Director." She added that the purpose is always "to raise money so that all the kids who want to come can." Parents help organize the event also. Lauren Schwarzfeld said "I was co-chair two years ago. I helped with donations. This year, the Feed Me Fresh kitchen is giving out hors d'oeuvres." Another parent Jennifer Brola said "I came to support the child care center. My son has been coming since 2010."

There were a bunch of local businesses helping out, like my friend Frannie Albanese. "My shop is Frannie's Goodie Shop. Tonight we are serving froninis." A fronini is a frozen yogurt panini filled with your favorite yogurt ice cream or gelato on a warm bun. I asked her why she came out to support Mount Kisco Child Care Center. She said "I came because I think the kids scholarship program is important." After that, I took a little break and interviewed the Executive Director of Mount Kisco Child Care Center, Dawn Meyerski. "I work with a group of women who are like a hurricane. Somebody gets an idea and it spins around and that's what happens. A lot of people work together to make it happen and I trust them. This is really a party for grownups but I wanted the kids in it so I'm showing their pictures and their artwork." Inside the tent, there were pictures of the kids and pictures they made.

Then I walked into the other part of the tent to interview one more person, one of the Wilson sisters. They are both teachers at Mount Kisco Child Care Center. Katelyn Wilson said "I came to support Mount Kisco Child Care Center and to see all the parents and have a good time. I don't think that much changed this year from last year." Then it was time to eat!

We got our plates, napkins, and food and sat at a table. The first dish was from Sunset Cove. They served a roasted salmon on top of a sweet potato puree. The puree was smooth and it felt relaxing to eat it and the salmon tasted like the sea - in a good way. The next place was called LOCAL and they were serving a West African Soup.  The soup tasted like you were in Africa. It had curry, cilantro, tomatoes, pigeon peas, and bell peppers. Those were my favorite dishes. I also interviewed the chef from Sunset Cove and the owner from LOCAL. This is what Tommy Calandrucci, the chef from Sunset Cove said "We wanted to come support the daycare. We own a local business in Tarrytown and we feel it's important to give back to the community." Then I interviewed LOCAL's Adam Strahl. "I want to support Mount Kisco Child Care Center. I like food and children's events. I live in Mount Kisco and have a restaurant in Chappaqua." I had a really enjoyable night and I'm sad I can't come back. It feels special just knowing when I walked out that I was helping the daycare.

Photo credits by Jessica Rappaport (my mom)
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Junior Chefs Academy at the Westchester Wine & Food Weekend

6/22/2014

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PictureWith Chef Jackie Velez
Earlier this month it was Westchester Wine & Food Weekend and there was an event they created for kids to cook with chefs in the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in White Plains. It was their first time doing this event. For my birthday, my dad signed me up for it. When we got there, I have to admit, I was a little nervous. Then we went down to the kitchens (there were two) and they split us up into two groups. When we walked into the kitchen, there were aprons, chef hats, and a bottle of water for each of us. They said one group was going to make the gnocchi and the other group was going to make the tomato sauce. I was in the tomato sauce group. At first, I wasn't that thrilled to be in the tomato sauce group. Along the way, it got better. I actually know how to make gnocchi so I'm going to tell you about that first.

So to make gnocchi, first you get three pounds of russet potatoes. Then you have to boil them and then mash them. They (the chefs) did that beforehand for us. We put it in a big bowl with two cups of all-purpose flour and one pinch of salt. In another bowl, we put an extra large egg and canola oil. Then we rolled it into a big worm shape and cut it into little square pieces. After that, we put it into boiling water. When they floated to the top, we took them out and put them into an ice bath. Last, we put them on a platter with plastic wrap over it and put some canola oil on the gnocchi.

My group though made the tomato sauce. First we peeled Roma tomatoes and took the seeds out. Then we put the tomatoes into a pan with some olive oil. Then we added a cup of shallots (which are like mini-onions) and a quarter cup of garlic. We then let it sit for five minutes. Then we put in tomato paste and stirred it. We then blended it. I didn't tell you the whole recipe though so don't try it at home. When I tried it, it was the most delicious pasta and sauce I've ever tasted.

Other people should send their kids here next year because then they will have their kids be able to help them cook. The best part was eating the gnocchi. It was really soft and light. I asked the chefs questions (like how to know when to take the gnocchi out) and had fun talking to the other students too!

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    My name is Jordan. I am a 12th grader and I love food!

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