Serious Eats |
- Grilling: Lobster with Lemon-Shallot Butter
- Three Sheep's Milk Cheeses You Must Try
- A. B. Biagi Scooping Awesome Gelato in Nolita
- Ask a Cicerone: What's the Next Big Thing in Beer?
- Video: How the Sausage Pizza is Made at Maria's Pizza in Milwaukee
- First Look: Shareable American Fare at Southpaw Social Club, San Diego
- Send Your NYC Restaurant Questions to 'Ask the Critic'
- TGI Fry-Day: Shrimp Taco at La Lagartija
- Scooped: Roasted Apricot and Almond Ice Cream
- The Food Lab Turbo: Grilled Strip Steak with Creamy Yogurt Sauce and Tomato-Cucumber Salad
- A Sandwich a Day: Mekanek at Toum Lebanese Truck
- 5 Simple Cider Cocktails to Make This Summer
- Los Angeles: The Just Good Burger at Salt's Cure
- We Try the New Peanut Butter and Chocolate Peanut Butter Pop-Tarts
- The Vegetarian Option: Vegetable Curries and More at Brooklyn's Bombay Masala
| Grilling: Lobster with Lemon-Shallot Butter Posted: 12 Jul 2013 10:54 AM PDT [ Photographs: Joshua Bousel ] I've never grilled lobster before, but then again, I never realized how easy it was. I was inspired by Kenji's full-court lobster coverage about a month ago, and wanted in on the action. So I procured four Maine lobsters—graciously donated to the cause—and went at it. Lobster on the grill can be as simple as splitting the crustacean in half and grilling over direct high heat, but since I had about 24 hours from when the live lobsters arrived and when I could grill them, I steamed them first in salt water for two minutes to set the meat. They were then plunged in an ice water bath to arrest the cooking and were stored in the fridge until ready to be grilled. Each lobster was split in two lengthwise, and the claws removed—I wanted to grill the claws separately since they won't cook at exactly the same rate as the rest of the meat. The exposed meat was then brushed with a lemon-shallot butter and grilled cut-side-down until it just started to turn opaque, then flipped and kept cooking until it registered 135°F on an instant read thermometer. Once done, the bodies were transferred to a serving tray and the claws were thrown over the flames and let roast until finished. Four one-and-a-half pound lobsters took just over ten minutes from beginning to end on the grill. These lobsters were really fantastic—the meat was tender and sweet, and with an extra brushing of lemon-shallot butter, they had a nice brightness and richness that accentuated the natural flavor of the lobster. Get The Recipe!Grilled Lobster with Lemon-Shallot Butter » About the author: Joshua Bousel brings you a new, tasty condiment each Wednesday and a recipe for weekend grilling every Friday. He also writes about grilling and barbecue on his blog The Meatwave whenever he can be pulled away from his grill. Get the Recipe!       |
| Three Sheep's Milk Cheeses You Must Try Posted: 12 Jul 2013 10:11 AM PDT [Photograph: @sstiavetti] These days, sheep's milk cheeses dominate my list of favorite dairy treats. For some, they're an acquired taste, but for others like me, they're a staple in our cheese drawer. Maybe it's the luxurious fatty texture—sheep's milk is incredibly rich, despite the fact that ewes don't yield that much milk—or perhaps it's the characteristic grassiness that conjures visions of green pastures and wide-open blue skies. Regardless of your reasoning, the fact remains that when you sink your teeth into a fine specimen of fermented sheep's milk, it can rock your world. Here's a list of my favorite sheep's milk cheeses. There's good variety here, spanning a wide range of personalities and flavor profiles. And, of course, you can't forget the amazing cheese I just discussed a few weeks ago, Brebirousse d'Argental: a perfectly creamy exercise in sheep's milk indulgence. Abbaye de Belloc Bellwether Farms' San Andreas P'tit Basque What are your favorite sheep's milk cheeses? What makes them stand out for you? About the author: Stephanie Stiavetti is a writer and cookbook author in San Francisco. Her food blog, The Culinary Life, is a repository for all things comfort food related, from savory dinners to transcendental desserts. She also publishes a monthly culinary newsletter full of stories, review, and helpful tips. Stephanie's cookbook, Melt: the Art of Macaroni and Cheese, celebrates America's favorite dish by recreating it with specialty cheeses. Available for preorder now.    |
| A. B. Biagi Scooping Awesome Gelato in Nolita Posted: 12 Jul 2013 12:08 PM PDT [Photographs: Robyn Lee] You can find a few gelato makers in Nolita, but none that'll have you racing back. That is, at least compared to what you'll find nearby on the Lower East Side, East Village, or West Village at places like Il Laboratio del Gelato, L'Arte del Gelato, or Il Buco Alimentari. Well, no longer. Enter A. B. Biagi, a cute new shop on Elizabeth street that's doing some pretty impressive stuff. The ice cream, which is made on-site in a tiny kitchen in the back of the scoop shop, comes in classic flavors like pistachio and straciatella, but also less conventional spins like goat cheese-orange-and anise, acai berry, or white chocolate-bergamot. They're all buttery and rich but still very clean—leaner than L'Arte's super-creamy gelato but denser than Il Laboratorio or Il Buco. You can stretch this gelato a little, and if you order a large with three scoops sidled up next to each other, it'll slump gently without falling down. The nutty flavors speak to me most, such as an incredibly rich hazelnut that tasted like little beyond pure hazelnut paste. I think the best pistachio ice cream has a juicy undercurrent with all the roastiness, and A. B. Biagi's meets that mark. It is also an olive drab, not dyed-bright green, a good sign indeed. I've been looking for the perfect scoop of bergamot for some time, and this sorbet may be my favorite. Tart but not too citrusy, full of bergamot oil, and completely clean. Why can't all sorbet be this good? Prices here are high. A one-flavor small (they don't do half scoops with two flavors) runs you $4.80, a medium $6.80, and a princely large $8.80. Compare that to a $4 small at Il Buco or a $4.50 small at L'Arte. A. B. Biagi isn't as pricey as Grom, but it's up there. It's way too early on to call this ice cream shop a Best Of or anything like that, so I'll leave this way: I can't wait to go back. About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.    |
| Ask a Cicerone: What's the Next Big Thing in Beer? Posted: 12 Jul 2013 12:24 PM PDT  VIEW SLIDESHOW: Ask a Cicerone: What's the Next Big Thing in Beer? Editor's Note: Ask a what? A Certified Cicerone® is a beer expert who has passed a particular certification exam administered by the Craft Beer Institute. You can think of them as beer sommeliers: these folks have demonstrated significant beer knowledge and tasting skill, plus professional skills in beer sales and service. There was a time when drinking beer from microbreweries at all was pretty groundbreaking, but these days, the American beer scene is constantly growing and changing, and it can be hard to keep up. Have you tried the latest saison from the newest gypsy nanobrewery? What about beers fermented in a coolship? Beers aged in a wine barrel? Beers brewed with salt? If super-hoppy beers are so last year, what can we expect to see in terms of popular beer styles in the future? What trends will we see in craft brewing in the months and years to come? We asked 10 beer experts for their predictions. Here's what they had to say. So many drinks, so little time. Keep in the loop with our weekly newsletter.    |
| Video: How the Sausage Pizza is Made at Maria's Pizza in Milwaukee Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:02 AM PDT Photographer and writer Michael Berman of Pizzacentric visits Maria's Pizza in Milwaukee and comes away with a great blog post and a video that sheds some light on the pizzamaking process there. (Not that it's a huge secret, since the kitchen is open to one and all who dine there.) Maria's is one of my all-time favorite pizzerias. Nice to see the Pizzacentric treatment of it.    |
| First Look: Shareable American Fare at Southpaw Social Club, San Diego Posted: 12 Jul 2013 11:57 AM PDT  VIEW SLIDESHOW: First Look: Shareable American Fare at Southpaw Social Club, San Diego [Photographs: Erin Jackson] Note: First Looks give previews of new dishes, drinks, and menus we're curious about. Since they are arranged photo shoots and interviews with restaurants, we do not make critical evaluations or recommendations. If you live in San Diego's East Village (or are a fan of the Padres), chances are good that you've eaten (or had drinks) at one of Ty Hauter's Good Time Design venues. The restaurant design and consulting firm owns and operates 11 restaurants and bars in downtown San Diego, and has a virtual monopoly on the area around Petco Park. For deli sandwiches, there's Lucky's Lunch Counter. For brews and sports on the tube, there's Bub's at the Ballpark. For Mexican with a Baja accent, The Blind Burro. And now, for "American social dining," there's Southpaw Social Club, co-helmed by popular local chef and former 'Top Chef' contestant Rich Sweeney. Originally, Sweeney was slated to be a partner and on-site Executive Chef, but the passing of his father took him out of state during the final months of planning. He's now working in tandem with chef Chris Trevisin (formerly of Vintana), splitting his schedule between Southpaw and his other restaurant, R-Gang. Southpaw represents a shift in the company's efforts. Past venues were built around having a bar scene, but the two most recent additions put the food in the spotlight. "Everyone here is making a conscious effort to be very aware of walking that fine line between 'a restaurant that has a really great full bar with killer cocktails' and being 'the bar that happens to have food'. We want to stay on that restaurant side of things," says Sweeney. To that end, cocktail consulting group Blind Tiger was hired to design a line of lemonade-based cocktails, the bar was decked out with three dozen taps of mostly local craft beers, and Rich and Chris developed a menu geared around social dining. "We have some entree-type items...but we want it to be something where everyone's interacting and sharing," says Sweeney. Indeed, some of the dishes, like the Fat Boy Mac ($12), with smoked cheddar cheese sauce, crushed pretzels, Ritz crackers, and pork belly, should involve the help of your entire table to help take them down. Southpaw Social Club815 J Street, San Diego CA 92101 (map); southpawsocialclub.com
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| Send Your NYC Restaurant Questions to 'Ask the Critic' Posted: 12 Jul 2013 08:17 AM PDT [Illustration: Robyn Lee] On this week's Ask the Critic, Carey recommended two of her favorite date night restaurants: Zenkichi in Williamsburg and Buvette in the West VIllage. Have a question of your own you want answered? Email carey@seriouseats.com with the subject line Ask the Critic to submit your question. All emails will be read, but unfortunately not all can be answered. We look forward to hearing from you! Previously on Ask the Critic
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| TGI Fry-Day: Shrimp Taco at La Lagartija Posted: 11 Jul 2013 06:22 AM PDT [Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger] Part of the curse of my job is that I rarely get the chance to return to places I love, because I'm always off to try something new. So even though my post about La Lagartija in 2011 mentioned that it was probably the one taqueria I've "visited more than any other in the past year," I haven't actually been back since then. I know. I'm upset, too. Fortunately, my return reaffirmed my belief that it's one of the best all-around taquerias in Chicago. While I'm fond of most of the taco options, the one that is always impressive is the shrimp taco ($3.50). Plump little shrimp are dunked in a beer batter, fried until delicately crisp, tossed on a soft housemade corn tortilla, and topped with crunchy shredded cabbage. Unlike the other tacos, this one comes with two unique salsas: a creamy caper aioli, and a sweet and spicy habanero ketchup. That's a lot of different components for one taco, but they all combine to make one unbelievable bite. La Lagartija Taqueria132 S Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60607 (map)    |
| Scooped: Roasted Apricot and Almond Ice Cream Posted: 11 Jul 2013 10:52 AM PDT [Photograph: Max Falkowitz] Yes, I'm asking you to turn your oven on in the summer. For ice cream. And yes, it's worth it. Because more than any other stonefruit, a less-than-absolutely-gorgeous apricot is well worth cooking. The intense, dry heat of the oven intensifies its flavor, bringing its sweet-tart jamminess into full view. You can steer clear of the oven, but not for too long. There's a fine line between perfectly roasted into submission and burned, and the latter is irretrievable. This ice cream has one other trick up its sleeve. In addition to folding chunks of toasted almonds into the churned ice cream, try steeping toasted almonds into the cream itself. The effect is a little subtle, but it adds a deep, lasting toasted richness to the ice cream and provides a nice backbone to all that fruit. You'll lose some of your cream in the process—the almonds soak up 1/4 to 1/2 cup—but there's still plenty to give the ice cream an intense buttery flavor and texture. Get the RecipeRoasted Apricot and Almond Ice Cream » About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz. Get the Recipe!    |
| The Food Lab Turbo: Grilled Strip Steak with Creamy Yogurt Sauce and Tomato-Cucumber Salad Posted: 12 Jul 2013 11:01 AM PDT It's time for another round of The Food Lab. Got a suggestion for an upcoming topic? Email Kenji here, and he'll do his best to answer your queries in a future post. Become a fan of The Food Lab on Facebook or follow it on Twitter for play-by-plays on future kitchen tests and recipe experiments. [Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt] Thicker is not always better. I like my milkshakes drinkable through a straw and my friends relatively intelligent. But when you're talking a high-end steak for the grill or cast iron skillet, your steak's got to be at least thick enough to allow you to get a really great, crusty sear without overcooking the center. This means a minimum of an inch and a half, and preferably closer to the two inch range. That's a fat steak, and it comes with its own set of problems; namely portion size. A thick tenderloin steak might come in at a reasonable six to eight ounces, but a New York strip or ribeye in that range can easily tip the scales to over a pound—far too much meat for a single person to eat on a reasonable night of the week (if we're talking unreasonable nights, that's a whole different story). So other than sharing (and who wants to do that), how do you get a steak that's thick enough to cook properly, but not so thick that you can't finish it off in one go? Just split it crosswise. Normally, when you ask a butcher to cut you an eight ounce steak, they adjust the weight by slicing it thicker or thinner. Taste-wise, it's a better approach to cut a thick, one pound steak, and slice it into two chunky pieces. Because the thickness of each half is the same as that of the original, the cooking time and method for them is pretty much exactly the same as you'd use for a full-sized steak on the grill or in a skillet. It just makes the whole thing a bit more manageable. When we're talking thick steaks on the grill, that means starting them over the cooler side until they reach an internal temperature just a few degrees lower than where you'd like them to end up, then finishing them off on the hotter side of the grill to char them. This method, known these days as the "reverse sear," was a method I initially developed as an oven-to-skillet method for Cook's Illustrated back in 2007, but it translates brilliantly to the backyard grill, producing meat that's noticeably more juicy and evenly cooked, with an intensely browned crust. (Read more about grilling steaks in my complete guide here). In the summer, I like to keep things light by serving grilled meats with cool, refreshing, crunchy salads, like this version with cucumbers, parsley, and tomatoes dressed with yogurt (the first batch of tomatoes on the plant that I keep on my deck are finally ripening. I've got to use them fast before the dog sneaks out and eats 'em). The only other real secret is olive oil. Really, really good olive oil. Get The Recipe!Grilled Steak with Creamy Yogurt Sauce and Tomato-Cucumber Salad » Special thanks to our friends at Snake River Farms for providing the meat for this recipe testing. About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook. Get the Recipe!    |
| A Sandwich a Day: Mekanek at Toum Lebanese Truck Posted: 12 Jul 2013 08:09 AM PDT In this great city of ours, one could eat a different sandwich every day of the year—so that's what we'll do. Here's A Sandwich a Day, our daily look at sandwiches around New York. Got a sandwich we should check out? Let us know. —The Mgmt. [Photographs: Max Falkowitz] A Lebanese sandwich has the power to undo all of the wrap's bad reputation. With thin, pliant pita, juicy grilled or spit-roasted meat, briny pickles, and generous helpings of garlic sauce, they're everything that sad corner deli wrap isn't. Toum, a Lebanese food truck that's been making the rounds on 46th Street in Midtown, Prospect Park, Dumbo, and Tribeca, does a damn good rendition, a thin, chewy wrap filled with meat, lettuce, tomato, those telltale Lebanese pickles. Try getting the mekanek, small, tightly packed beef sausages similar to merguez but with a more garlicky, rich flavor profile. They're cooked with a lemony garlic sauce before joining the other fillings, equal parts meaty and bright. The wraps at this truck are large, about 10 inches long, and plenty filling. Toum does all this for $7 to $8 a sandwich, a price point I can really get behind in the increasingly expensive food truck world. Follow them on Twitter or Facebook for location updates. About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.    |
| 5 Simple Cider Cocktails to Make This Summer Posted: 10 Jul 2013 11:45 AM PDT [Photo: Foggy Ridge Cider] You might associate apples with autumn and harvest, but this summer, we think you should be drinking cider cocktails. These drinks are light, tart, and refreshing, slightly fizzy and not too alcoholic—just right for cooling off on a muggy day. Even better: they're super-simple to make, without too much fuss or too many ingredients. Because we're all kinda lazy in the summer, and drinking shouldn't be the thing that takes up all of our available effort. These cocktails can incorporate any of your favorite local hard ciders; if you're looking for recommendations, check out our cider column from Chris Lehault. Snakebite[Photo: Christopher Lehault] A San Francisco startup recently released a bottled version of this cocktail (they call it T.W. Pitchers' Snake Bite), but we think you can handle making a homemade version, tailored to your personal preferences. Choose your favorite lager (or try other beer!) and your favorite cider, then mix them half-and-half in a pint glass (or by the pitcher.) The mix is refreshing and not too sweet. Stone Fence[Photo: Christopher Lehault] If you can pour and you can stir, you are set to make this simple cocktail, which dates all the way back to the colonial era. The easiest version is just hard cider and good rum, though you can also get fancy, doctoring up the cider with a mix of rum, apple brandy, and applejack. Orchard Mimosa[Photo: Christopher Lehault] It's easy to get tired of the brunch classic, but that doesn't mean you should throw out the basic Mimosa formula. In this cider-based variation, fresh orange juice bolsters the fruity flavor of good cider, and a touch of ginger liqueur adds spice. Serve it with a cinnamon-spiced quick bread or an easy crumb cake. Cider Sangria[Photo: Christopher Lehault] Take this recipe for a cider-based spin on white sangria as a basic template: it's based on semi-dry cider, sweetened with a little Grand Marnier and ice cider, which cider makers produce by slowly freezing out a portion of the water in fermented cider. (What remains is rich, sweet, and flavorful.) A little fresh ginger perks up the mixture, and you can add whatever fruit you find at the farmers' market (try apricots and peaches!) Young Buck[Photo: Christopher Lehault] Once you've mastered the easy drinks above, it's time to get just a touch fancier. Making a flavored simple syrup is about as simple as making tea, and it's fine to whip up this hibiscus-flavored version in advance so you have it ready in your fridge. The cocktail gets a rosy color from the hibiscus and a little spice from ginger beer. Have you been making cocktails with cider this summer? What's your favorite combination? Looking for more summer drinks inspiration? Follow us on Pinterest.    |
| Los Angeles: The Just Good Burger at Salt's Cure Posted: 09 Jul 2013 02:12 PM PDT [Photographs: Damon Gambuto] Salt's Cure 7494 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90046 (map); 323-850-7258; saltscure.com Salt's Cure is restaurant of a type here in Los Angeles: young (well-trained chefs), an obsessiveness about locally sourced ingredients, and a butchering fetish. It's a formula that has worked before and (he says hopefully) will continue to. The dynamic duo in this instance are chefs Chris Phelps and Zak Walters. Both come with some burger pedigree. They met at Hungry Cat (home to one of the only burgers worthy of a knife and fork) and they are obsessive about their proteins. As a partnership, Phelps and Walters got a lot of heat [praise?] over their burger at Storefront though I was the minority dissenter when it came to that one. I arrived at Salt's Cure with renewed hope. It had seemed to me that the missteps at Storefront could have been born of the context. Storefront is a deli, not a restaurant space with a proper kitchen that afford a chef some proper space and tools to breath life into their burger dreams. Could it be that the quality components that were on display at Storefront would reconfigure into burger greatness at Salt's Cure? I ordered the surprisingly pricey burger and fries on a recent Sunday with just this thought in my head. Once the sticker shock of the $17 plate of food subsided I allowed myself to take this burger on its merits. As it turned out, there are a number of them, though taken as a whole I'm not so sure they add up to a burger of note. Let's start with the strongest component of this burger: the patty. Great beef, properly cooked will forgive a lot of sins of a burger and the Salt's Cure patty falls into that category. The grass-fed beef portioned into eight ounces was beautifully juicy and ground to a rough coarseness that was near perfect. That said, it was missing one major component that surprised me: salt. That's right, Salt's Cure under seasoned their patty. I think this might be a difference in palate between myself and the chefs as not even their bacon seemed to give off the proper hit of salt for my liking. The bun was a new-school brioche. Certainly these aren't my favorite, but I can't claim that they undermine the burger the way a classic brioche would. The main problem is that this one didn't seem to match the beef in proper ratio. I found it a bit weighted toward the bread. The rest of the toppings felt like a bit of an afterthought especially considering how obsessive this pair of chefs claims to be about their ingredients. I didn't see the lettuce and onion as components chosen for any reason other than the traditions of the burger. Similarly the cheese wasn't a flavor addition of any note and the beef didn't need extra fat. Finally, the much lauded bacon from Salt's Cure is a tasty preparation, but doesn't have a distinct, salty appeal to complement the burger. The flavor just sort of blended into the beef. The fries were probably the most surprising part of the meal. These fresh cut spuds were prepared without the chef's finesse I had expected. They lacked crispness and, again, seasoning. It reminded me of the homemade fries I used to get as a boy that made me think no home pan could ever match the vaunted fryolator. In the final analysis, to call the Salt's Cure burger anything short of good would be willfully overlooking the basic greatness of some of the component parts. The beef and bacon are so fresh, well constructed, and properly cooked that there just those two component parts make the burger a solid sandwich. That said, there's little else to recommend this cheffed up burger and that, considering the potential, seems to be a shame. About the author: Damon is one of our roving burger reporters and food writers. When he's not eating more than is warranted or healthful (and then writing about it) he can be found writing and producing for television and film. You can contact him at seriouslydamon@gmail.com. Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter and Pinterest while you're at it!    |
| We Try the New Peanut Butter and Chocolate Peanut Butter Pop-Tarts Posted: 12 Jul 2013 08:46 AM PDT [Photographs: Robyn Lee] Pop-Tarts are one of those breakfast sweets that every kid wants at some time or another—with their frosted outsides and gooey middles, they are clearly more in dessert territory then Mom and Dad would typically allow. Luckily, we can now buy Pop-Tarts for ourselves, which is why we felt the need to try the newest versions on the shelves. First up, the Peanut Butter Pop-Tart. This is a surprisingly light affair—the outside is simple, just slightly crunchy with an attractive layer of sugar sprinkled across the dough. The inside is equally straightforward, with just a thin line of peanut butter sandwiched between the crusts. The peanut butter has a good, authentic taste, like it was just whipped out of a Skippy container and spread in your Pop-Tart. Once broken in half, it even kind of looks like it could be homemade. For a mass-produced, supermarket product, it definitely earns points for its natural taste and look, especially compared to some of its neon colored counterparts, like Hot Fudge Sundae or Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts. The only thing I was a little disappointed with was the amount of peanut butter. There is a nice sweet-salty thing going on, but had they been a little more liberal with the PB, it would have had a more distinct flavor and a clearer contrast between the crunchiness of the outside and the creaminess of the interior. That being said, some people will probably enjoy its simplicity. It's a little less sweet than the other Pop-Tarts out there, and the lack of artificial color or appearance sort of makes you feel like you're eating something healthy. What the Peanut Butter Pop-Tart is lacking in texture and flavor, the Chocolate Peanut Butter version has in spades. This kind is truly one for the books. It starts out with a chocolate crust, which adds a pleasant shell-like texture. The peanut butter quantity is the same, but because of the added ingredients, the smaller portion works perfectly. If there was anymore, it would be too heavy and overwhelming. Once toasted, the texture of the top layer of chocolate remains pretty much the same, but the dough becomes slightly crisper, and the warm peanut butter tastes extra creamy and indulgent. The mix between crunchy and creamy is as close to perfect as a Pop-Tart can get. NY Editor Max hit the nail on the head when he said, "It's like eating a Reese's for breakfast." It really is, and that means I'd trade it in for oatmeal any day.
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| The Vegetarian Option: Vegetable Curries and More at Brooklyn's Bombay Masala Posted: 11 Jul 2013 03:46 PM PDT Chana aloo paneer. [Photographs: Lauren Rothman] Takeout Indian joints are about as risky as takeout Chinese: you might end up with a delicately-spiced, not-too-greasy meal when you visit one, but more than likely what you'll get is beat-up, overcooked rice/vegetables/what-have-you drowning in orange-colored oil. I suppose it's just the nature of New York City, that in universe of good eating, not every corner spot can possibly be reliable. Luckily for Prospect/Crown Heights dwellers, Bombay Masala, located on bustling Franklin Avenue, is the exception to the rule, offering well-seasoned, subtly flavored curries to eat atop fluffy basmati rice. And happily for vegetarians, over 20 of those curries are meat-free. But it's a nice place for eating in as well as getting take out, with plenty of choices beyond the vegetarian standards. For one there's Chana Aloo Paneer ($8.50, pictured at top), potatoes and chickpeas cooked in a mild, creamy tomato base and topped off with chunks of mild paneer cheese. The firm potatoes and soft chickpeas got a bit of lift from ginger and turmeric, and the cheese had that simultaneously squeaky and melty texture that's common to paneer and its relative queso blanco. Baigan bhurta. Baigan bhurta ($8.25), made from a baked eggplant that's then mashed with fried onions and tomatoes, was incredibly rich and creamy. Sweet greens peas popped in every bite, their freshness temporarily distracting from the lingering heat the eggplant left on the tongue. Onion kulcha. A good Indian meal usually benefits from some form of bread, and Bombay Masala's offerings don't disappoint. Onion Kulcha ($2.75) was soft, stretchy naan flecked with chopped onions and fresh cilantro, perfect for scooping up errant bits of rice and curry. A sad, sad vegetable biryani. The one low point in the meal at Bombay Masala was, unfortunately, pretty darn low. Biryani, at its best, is a delicate dish of fluffy rice flavored with fragrant herbs spices such as nutmeg, cardamom, bay, and saffron, then folded together with a rich meat- or vegetable-based sauce. It was created in the court of the Mughal emperors, and is meant to convey luxury. Bombay Masala's Vegetable Biryani ($10.50) only conveyed ordinariness. The rice both lacked seasoning and was way too sweet with golden raisins (and possibly with added sugar); it contained a bizarre mix of undersalted, undercooked vegetables that included carrot and celery sticks, cauliflower florets, and large pieces of raw and cucumbers and onions, with nary a sauce in sight. All of this is to say: avoid the biryani. Despite its failure with one dish, Bombay Masala is an overall solid choice for vegetarian Indian food. Stick with the delicious curries and well-made breads, and you'll have a satisfying, inexpensive meal.    |
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