Reviewing New York Magazine's Cheap Eats 2006

This week’s (July 31-August 7) issue of New York Magazine, which arrived in my mailbox last week, is their annual “Cheap Eats” review.  This year, I was thrilled and pleasantly surprised to see quite a few of my stand-by, Go To restaurants featured.  If you can get your hands on the issue, the food photography is mouth-watering, at least to my eyes, or maybe I was just really, really hungry at the time I was reading the magazine.  

 

As with anything else in New York personal opinions as to what should have made the list will vary widely, and the magazine provides their evaluation criteria in the article.  Caution: this list is not to be read on an empty stomach!  Here are some of my thoughts on their choices (rankings ran from 1-101):

 

Ligurian Style Pasta with Pesto, Potatoes, and Green Beans

Happy Anniversary to the Greenmarkets! As both the New York Times and New York Magazine highlight they turn 30 years old this week. In a way, it is hard to imagine the city without these culinary resources, they’ve become something of an institution. Specials and the latest seasonal produce are highlighted on blogs, and new arrivals are heralded in the Dining In section of the Times on Wednesdays. The market has even published its own cookbook.

There, I’ve picked up wonderful cheeses, delicious handmade sausages, great homemade jams, and lovely freshly-baked bread – for toast of course. Plants and flowers dress up the square and the aroma of lilacs during the spring season makes the trip intoxicating as well. Like lots of folks who visit the market on a regular basis, I have my particular favorite vendors that I search out week after week for their wares.

Festival of French Food - Bastille Day Street Fair in NYC

New York summers and street fairs go together like, well, just about anything you can think of to combine. To the uninitiated, these may sound like great fun: food, crafts, vendors, etc. all in a few city blocks. To those who get to live with them, they are experienced with the same measure of ennui and tolerance of the many themed parades that close down Fifth Avenue several times a year. They shut down bus routes, cause detours, change well-laid plans, and cause mounds of frustration.

There is, however, one special fair that takes place each year on a Sunday in mid-July that draws out the folks who most likely don’t usually brave these spectacles. The Alliance Française in New York holds its Bastille Day celebration in Midtown Manhattan, taking over three blocks on 60^th Street. Local proprietors, restaurants and many things French are featured.

Strawberries with Cream and Balsamic Vinegar or Fragole con Panna all’Aceto Balsamico

The last of the farmers’ market strawberries have come and gone for the season.  Each year, as with asparagus, there is the fervor among the food set, especially those who try to eat as seasonally as possible, to hunt out and obtain, for as many weeks as is feasible, locally grown, tangy-sweet, juicy strawberries.

I become obsessed this time of year, waiting, scoping out the markets, eager to catch the new crop and to buy up as many as I can before they are gone. Fresh, seasonal strawberries make my mouth water, as I take that first sweet tart bite.  I cannot be tempted by the ones “as large as my head” (to quote one of my sisters) that one finds in the grocery stores during the rest of the year.

It has been many years since I was able to enjoy the Italian springtime fragole or fragolone (as the larger ones are called).  The ones from the Greenmarket in New York bring back cherished memories of those warm days and even warmer friendships.  I developed this recipe to capture the English fondness for strawberries with cream along with a particularly Northern Italian use of balsamic vinegar.  It is, of course, best when the berries are in peak season. 

 

Summer Salad of Shrimp, Grapes, Toasted Almonds, Lemon Vinaigrette

It’s hot. It’s bloody hot, but at least it’s dry. After lots of rain this week, it’s now really hot outside, just in time for a holiday weekend. Better yet, I feel as though my apartment traps heat so there’s no real escape.

This is the time of year when it is just excruciating to cook. Anything that causes the temperature to rise inside is to be avoided. Greens wilt. Appetites dwindle. Nothing seems appealing.

On the other hand, this is also the time of year when really great produce is available and loads of wonderful fresh fruit is coming into season. I took advantage of the nice weather to check out the newest edition to the farmers’ markets in town.