Being a food tourist (UK Edition)

For the last couple of weeks, Chris and I have been showing my parents, aunt and uncle around the UK. As you’ll know from my blog, my family loves food. So it was only fitting that food was a central part of being a tourist with me!

We started in Birmingham for our 2nd wedding celebration with friends and family. We were blown away by our amazing caterers – Celebration Caterers– who fed us so well with the creamiest homemade pâté, incredible roast pork with the best crackling I’ve ever had, delicious vegetarian lasagna and much much more.

Homemade pâté with a clarified butter top

Served with rustic bread, mixed green salad and red onion chutney

Our next stop was to the Lake District to the family caravan. I couldn’t believe how lucky we got with weather! Loads of sunshine the first day and barely any drizzle the next. I promised the family that they were in for some of the best fish and chips and Cumberland sausages and they were not disappointed. You can’t really go too wrong with these classics!

Next stop – London!

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THE GREAT ARIZONA PICNIC

As promised, I attended the Great Arizona Picnic yesterday as part of the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. This was one of those great summer events – even though it’s ‘summer’ (weather) here for the majority of the year. But it seemed like everyone was there – families, students, young professionals, retirees, and more. The event was held near Old Town Scottsdale and was expected to have up to 40,000 people attend. It was definitely well attended, but the great thing was that it never seemed too crowded. Lines were very reasonable, and there was always a place to sit. It really did feel like a picnic with lots of people lying out on the grass with blankets. There were 50+ restaurants and vendors at the event with a wide range of products and cuisines. I took lots of pictures to share, but keep in mind this wasn’t a gourmet food festival! There were actually a lot of ‘chain’ restaurants with booths there – from Kona Grill (they brought an entire fish tank!) to Sushi Roku to The Melting Pot. But there were a few artisan places like the Arizona Bread Company, The Gelato Spot and The Lollicake Company. 

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon – eating good comfort food, catching up with an old friend, and people watching 🙂 

CLICK BELOW FOR THE REST OF THE PICTURES! 

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NY TRIP (PART 3) : COMFORT FOODS CONT’D

I find it amusing that this is my third post (there will be one more) about my 7-day trip to New York. Clearly I eat a lot. I’ll admit I went a little overboard. This is what happens when you’re a foodie and you’re deprived of New York. Thank goodness for the good weather while I was there and all the walking to offset it.

As promised, I’m writing about the rest of the comfort foods I enjoyed on my trip. (Please see previous post for comments on comfort food, if you haven’t already) Almost all of the places in this post were favorites of mine when I was living in the city.  And I was absolutely delighted to find that nothing had changed. Quality, ambiance, staff – everything was exactly as I had remembered it. That’s something I adore about New York. When New Yorkers find a good thing, they make sure it sticks around for a long time. There’s a loyalty that seems to be inherent in the city. Once you find your favorite bar or favorite brunch place (what have you), you will be damn sure to go there as frequently as possible.

A quick note on the foods I’m about to share. They’re not in chronological order. And they’re in completely different categories of goodness. So please take each into consideration on its own. If you think about them all at once, the combination isn’t entirely pleasant. 🙂

First up – ZAITZEFF.

This place has great memories for me because it was literally around the corner from where I used to live in the Financial District. It was one of the first places I ate at when I moved to the city. And like all great neighborhood joints, I grew to have a really friendly rapport with the chef whose name I could never remember. Most importantly though, the food was TO-DIE-FOR.

Zaitzeff is a burger joint. It’s a hole in the wall with only a couple large wooden (park-bench-esk) tables. The one downtown seems to cater mainly to professionals who order delivery or only have time for take-out. But this means that the main focus is the quality of the food. Just take a look at what Serious Eats had to say (they agree with me).

This trip I wasn’t able to visit Zaitzeff at a respectable burger-eating-hour, so I went for breakfast. Don’t be mistaken. Their breakfast sandwiches sure beat any Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts sandwich any day. And their secret – what I have never had anywhere else – is the bun. A Portuguese roll. It’s like an English muffin but lighter and with a slight sweetness to it. I had a very simple egg and cheese sandwich but it was SO fluffy and really hit the spot. However, I left a little sad that I didn’t get a chance to have my favorite – the ½ pound Kobe burgers served PERFECTLY medium rare and juicy with caramelized onions, Vermont white cheddar, avocado, lettuce, tomato and bacon. But I borrowed one of the pictures from Serious Eats to share with all of you. I don’t want to go into too much detail about this burger since there’s much to talk about this post, but I do want to emphasize that in addition to the fantastic rolls this place uses grass-fed beef which makes the taste and quality of this burger THAT much better. So if you ever venture into the Financial District or East Village (this one’s open late), I highly recommend!

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My First Homemade Pizza

In celebration of Naples earning the right to label its pizza as “Traditional Specialty Guaranteed” (an EU trademark), I thought I’d give it a shot at making my own. Coincidentally, I’ve also started reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. In the last section I read she went to Naples and gave a delicious description of eating pizza there, and it made my mouth water. Now I set out with the best intentions – thinking oh I’ll make a healthy pizza! I even bought whole wheat pizza dough from Fresh & Easy!

But let’s face it – pizza is not the same without cheese. And cheese isn’t exactly the healthiest thing to eat (if you love it as much as I do). And if you’re gonna make a pizza, I feel like you’re really cheating yourself if you go for fat-free which doesn’t have much flavor. So I splurged on the cheese and went healthy on the dough 🙂

My brother’s instructions (he’s a chef) for preparing the dough was to first knead the dough on a surface dusted with flour. And because I wanted thin crust, he said to pick it up by my finger tips and hold the dough by the edge and kind of rotate it while thinning the edges. Somehow I completely forgot this advice and just went straight for kneading the middle with my knuckles. But I was having too much fun to worry about not eating thin crust – so I just went with it! My main concern was that it would fit perfectly in the round pizza dish I was using.

Anywho – my main objective here is to share my yummy pictures with all of you and hope it’ll inspire some of you to go out and make some pizza for yourself!

Ingredients

• Pizza dough from Fresh & Easy (not sure what other groceries sell it these days)

** You could always be brave and make your own! I found an Alton Brown recipe

• Pizza sauce

** I was feeling a bit lazy and didn’t have a lot of time to put into my pizza sadly, so I cheated and just bought it at Fresh & Easy since it was right next to the dough. But you could easily make a simple marinara, add oregano, let cool and blend.

• Mozzarella cheese of course!

** I added some ‘Habanero cheese’ that was on sale at the store the other day, so added it in for a little kick!

• Mushrooms
• Black olives
• Sweet onions

** At the last minute I decided to caramelize these a little with balsamic vinegar.

• Sausage meat

** Any sausage will do really or any meat you’d like. I browned it in a pan with a little bit of chili flakes before putting it on the pizza.

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