Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok. So this isn't about where you can buy great chocolate chip cookies. But it is a recipe if you can decipher it. Found it on the internet. Cheers!

Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Ingredients:

1. 532.35 cm3 gluten
2. 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3. 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4. 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5. 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6. 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7. 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
9. 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10. 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1.
Additionally, add ingredients nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.

Serafina

Sunday brought a large party to Serafina (55th and Broadway ) at 5pm. The dinner had to be early since we had a family (with a 2 yr old) coming in from Pennsylvania and another family (with a 3 yr old and twin 10 month olds) coming from Long Island. Both had to make it back at a reasonable hour to put their respective kids to bed. Ah, the family life. At least the early hour makes it easy to get reservations.

Honestly, with various kids running around, crying, spitting up, etc, everyone walking in and out of the room, and the many conversations with people who haven't seen each other for a long time, it was hard to pay close attention to the food. I do remember a pizza, a fried calamari and a caprese salad that we had to start. The pizza had a nice combination of flavors if I remember right. Unfortunately I don't remember WHICH flavors. The fried calamari was a little mushier than I would have expected and the caprese (all about the freshness of the buffalo mozzarella and the meatiness of the heirloom tomatoes) was good on the mozzarella side and not so great on the tomato side.

I had the risotto with champagne and black truffles. This was probably the most flavorless truffle dish I've ever had. The champagne taste was non-existent and, while there were plenty of truffle shavings, they didn't taste like anything. Very strange. I had to add mucho pepper to flavor the dish. Very disappointing. Some of the other pastas were good: the penne alla vodka and the rigatoni alla bolognese.

Desserts were nice all around. Besides the gelatos, we had a nutella crepe and a chocolate souffle. The chocolate souffle was super rich. I was torn since I don't usually favor chocolate desserts because they're almost always too sweet. However, I do love souffles. This one wasn't "quite" a souffle per se but it was just light enough. Many places will call their chocolate mousse cakes a souffle and this one was in between.

This restaurant is nice for a group around 12 since they have a separate room. Foodwise, I prefer the location on 61st between Madison and Park. The bar scene there is also much more lively.

Landmarc

This past Thursday, I took a visiting friend to Landmarc in the Time Warner Center. It's a restaurant I've gone to many a time since it is convenient, solid and reasonably priced. The menu is the same as at the Tribeca location but is varied. They have a daily pasta dish, oysters and mussels, a selection of grill items (steaks, lamb chop, pork chop), a burger, salads, and various offal (sweetbreads, foie gras, calf's liver and boudin noir). It's a very interesting menu to say the least.

Having eaten earlier in the evening, we skipped appetizers and went straight for entrees. He had the ribeye with peppercorn sauce and I had the special of the day, a seared duck breast over vegetables. The bread service as usual was excellent. We ordered a half bottle of a Barolo to go with our meat courses. At $28 for the half bottle, it was an amazing deal and delicious.

My friend quite enjoyed his steak. It was prepared medium rare as ordered and very juicy. I didn't like my duck as much. It was a bit undersalted and definitely not as good as many of the other items on the menu. With so many interesting options on the menu, it's a shame that the "special" just wasn't.

We finished with an ice cream and a tiramisu. All the desserts are $3 and therefore appropriately sized.

I still consider Landmarc one of the best values in the City. Plus it doesn't hurt that it's only a block away.

Lupa and Clinton Street Baking Company

This weekend, with the kid at a sleepover, we hit Lupa for dinner on Saturday night and Clinton Street Baking Company the next morning for brunch. All this food and so little time to eat it.

Lupa as usual on a Saturday night was packed. Things started off on the wrong foot right away when the host looked right past me and allowed a young blond woman to push to the front and ask for a table. Luckily, she was also told it would be 1.5 hrs. We put ourselves on the wait list for both a table and bar seats. After about an hour, we were seated at the bar, looking over our menus.

I had the octopus to start and the lamb short ribs. Maria started with the special heirloom tomato salad and had a tagliatelle with pork shoulder and porcini ragu. The octopus was solid as usual but the short ribs were too salty and too sweet at the same time. I also didn't quite expect a rack of ribs from Lupa. The winners though were the tomato salad and the tagliatelle; the salad with a perfectly seasoned vinaigrette and the flavorful but not overpowering ragu in the tagliatelle. We skipped dessert anticipating brunch the next day.

Clinton Street Baking Company had the expected wait as well. When we arrived, there were 34 people waiting outside the 32 person restaurant. Ouch. Even though it ended up taking 1.5 hrs to seat us after being told an hour, we did get a nice corner table by the window. They had some interesting muffins behind the counter: ginger pear crumb and raspberry yogurt. But it was the spinach and cheese muffin that really raised our eyebrows. I'll have to try that sometime.

I had a more than generous portion of their maine blueberry pancakes with warm maple butter. Thick fluffy pancakes with blueberries between each layer. A syrup that was a combination of maple and what tasted like butterscotch. Best pancakes I've ever had. Maria had the Spanish Scramble: eggs, chorizo, tomatoes, sauteed onions, scallions, monterey jack, and toast. What's there not to like? More chorizo would have been cool though. Too stuffed to consider dessert :), we took a nice walk through Soho instead.

Tailor

This one's going to be a long one.

This past Thursday, the family ventured to Tailor with a friend visiting from Hong Kong. Tailor is Sam Mason's much anticipated restaurant whose endeavors from concept to opening has been captured in his ongoing blog.

I had the pleasure of experiencing Chef Mason's genius when he was pastry chef at wd-50 a couple of years back. His whimsical approach to desserts led to an interesting conversation with him about how he managed to get cotton candy into a chocolate truffle. And I do remember his lemon curd as one of the best desserts I've ever had.

We arrived at Tailor (525 Broome Street) without a reservation but hopeful about getting a table. The dining room was busy so we were ushered downstairs to the bar area. Neither wd-50 nor Tailor are for the faint of heart and this became evident immediately as we looked over the cocktail menu. After quizzical looks, we asked the waitress for recommendations and ordered the Crumble (brown butter rum, pink clove and scrumpy...whatever that is), the Waylon (bourbon, smoked coke, and preserved lemon) and the Paprika Punch (rum, bell pepper, lemonade and molasses). Wow!

The flavor sure were interesting. The pepper was a little too strong for Maria so she and I swapped the Punch for the Crumble. Not being much of a mixed drink person, the Paprika Punch made for an eyebrow raising experience but didn't change my sensibilities much.

At that point, the hostess notified us that our table was ready. Our drinks were brought upstairs but we had to settle the tab separately. I suppose that since the bar is downstairs that they don't have any way to move the tab but it would be a nice touch.

The dining room has four 4-tops of the left, three 4-tops with a larger table on the right and a community table in the middle. Our table was quite large. I'm not quite sure what was playing but the music was oddly hypnotizing and made some of us quite sleepy. Nevertheless, my excitement over trying this inventive menu kept me wide awake.

On reviewing the menu, I noticed that they had a tasting menu. As far as I'd known, that hadn't been available. The waiter confirmed that they had decided to serve a tasting menu at the last minute. And he emphasized that it was "just a minute ago". Not sure how that's possible if we're eating at 8pm and the menu was pre-printed. The waiter was also a bit confused when I asked if the whole table had to order the tasting menu. He suggested we order some from each side of the menu, that is the Salty and the Sweet. That had nothing to do with my question so I'm not sure what he was talking about.

We ended up ordering the full suite of six savories since we just had to try everything. A server came with what looked like a serving of gelato. Of course it was the butter but my daughter was very confused for a second. The bread service was of two varieties: a green olive bread and a walnut raisin. Both were excellent. The server told us that it came from a bakery just around the corner. I'll have to figure out what that is since the bread was really good.

The amuse bouche arrived at that point. It consisted of plums, cocoa nips, and mustard and beer foam. I did have the server replace my daughter's amuse with one without the foam. Even if I was ok with the alcohol, I don't think she would have liked it. The amuse did have a great balance between the sweet and salty but I'm not a fan of beer so it wasn't a win for me. However, from a strictly textural perspective, the plums, cocoa nips, and foam did provide a nice contrast.

The savory portion of the menu was brought out 3 at a time. First, we had the peanut butter foie gras with chocolate powder and finely diced pear. It's pretty amazing to taste a mousse with the combination of foie gras and peanut butter flavors. It's definitely the most interesting preparation I've had the pleasure of having. This was definitely one of our favorites.

With that came the snapper sashimi with olives, watermelon, and pistachio crusted avocado ice cream. Really interesting combination! The varied flavors and textures really came together to make each bite an experience. This wasn't a favorite but it's hard when there are other excellent dishes to compare to.

Also with the first wave came the peekytoe crab with pineapple, pine nut puree, and a basil sauce. Included was a thin ham "chip". My daughter loves this dish, which surprised me since she's not usually a fan of crab. However, I think the combination with the sweet cooked pineapple and the ham really made a mix. But I think we all wished there was more of the ham to go around.

After clearing out the first set of dishes, we eagerly awaited the next. Bread was offered again and accepted. Oddly enough, one server replaced my friend's utensils while our waiter took my fork off my plate and back onto my mat. Very strange. But onward.

Duck tartar with marjoram pesto and pickeled cherry jam...although I'm not sure where the cherry jam was because I didn't see it or taste it. The waiter also said that there was pork sausage in the tartar. I couldn't tell but I'd think it would be a problem in NYC if a dish had pork but didn't have it listed. This was the one dish that didn't seem to have that sweet element. I love duck so there you go.

Our favorite of the night was the pork belly with miso butterscotch sauce and artichokes. I couldn't really taste the miso but the pork and sauce was so good we had to order another. The artichoke wasn't strong enough to alter the taste of the dish but provided a counter texture to the pork. Our absolute favorite.

Last was the passion fruit poached char with coconut, lime pickle, mushrooms, and what looked like little dumplings. It wasn't the prettiest dish in the world but the sweetness of the sauce with that char, dumplings and mushrooms were excellent.

Finally done with the salty side of the menu, we moved to the sweets. Here we ordered the soft chocolate with sesame ice cream and a spicy mole crisp. This was a great taste combination and my favorite among the desserts even though I'm not usually partial to chocolate. Unfortunately, the chocolate "twist" did look a bit like a you-know-what in the opinion of my 10 yr old. That put her off a bit.

We also had the caramel panna cotta, with crunchy coffee "soil", corn sorbet, and a couple of caramel popcorns. This was the only dish that I felt the balance was way off. I thought the corn sorbet was too strong and overwhelmed the rest of the dish. We ended up leaving the sorbet well enough alone but gobbled up the rest.

And last, we had the blueberry, black olive cake with yogurt sorbet. I ended up eating this by myself. I think the rest of the table was experimented out. I enjoyed the olive cake a lot but the sweetness of the blueberries were stronger...probably why it's in the dessert section.

So ended our meal. My friend and I were satisfied but could have easily eaten more. I'm hoping Chef Mason expands his menu soon. Overall, the food was very much fun but probably not somewhere the family would want to do more than once in a blue moon. I'm inclined to try every time the menu changes. Service however was inconsistent. While our water glasses were never empty and bread was brought regularly, the issue with the tasting menu, the oddity of the silverware (not really a big deal), and the fact that no appearance of the petite fours that I've seen described makes me consider the restaurant still in its early stages. I'll be back to check it out again.

Tisserie

I probably shouldn't even talk about this one since Tisserie isn't a restaurant per se. They have some sandwiches, quiches, pizza, and wraps along with a multitude of desserts. You order your food (savories or sweets) at the counter and bring it to the few smalls tables downstairs or upstairs so no real service except for behind the counter. Everything is pre-cooked and is just heated up.

Elissa had turkey and cheese in a croissant and I had a slice of tomato and goat cheese quiche. The croissandwich, after being heated in an oven was actually quite tasty. I guess you can't go wrong with cheese and butter in a pastry. The quiche was just ok. The filling was nice but the crust was too hard, which means overcooked. Since this is a pastry place, I assume the crust was made from scratch and not a frozen store bought crust. However, overcooking it evens the playing field.

Afterwards, Elissa had a couple of petit fours: the vanilla and chocolate diamond. These were a bit too crumbly but had a nice light flavor. I had guava cream cheese pastry. It had a good mixture of guava with the cream cheese but I did think the guava flavor could have been stronger. Doesn't mean I wouldn't have eaten another one.

We had dinner here and it would probably make sense to have lunch instead since it's earlier in the day and the food is probably fresher. However, it is a cheap option in Union Square.