Food Adventures – PA & NYC

I haven’t had a huge amount of time to write my last few recipe posts, so I didn’t include my updates and food adventures like I usually do. I have a backlog to share with you! We took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit my parents the other weekend, and we finally tried the York outpost of the famous Pittsburgh-based Primanti Bros! Their sandwiches stuffed with French fries are legendary, so we had to try them for ourselves. Andrew and I split the pastrami sandwich (I couldn’t get a great photo, but here it is!):

It was . . . pretty good, but I think we both prefer our fries outside, not inside, our sandwich. This seems to have been the month of having other people cook amazing soups for me, and I got to enjoy two delicious ones on this trip! My mom made a whitefish and scallop soup with tomatoes and fennel and the next day a simple and tasty split pea soup:

When we weren’t eating soups and sandwiches over the weekend, we took a few walks. My mom took this sneaky photo on one of them!

We also did a bit of antiquing at the wonderful Antique Marketplace of Lemoyne, though I failed to find anything on this trip, sadly. I maybe should have bought this poster!

Back in Brooklyn, we were invited to a friend’s place for hot pot, which neither Andrew nor I had ever had before. What a fun experience! We cooked greens, tofu, thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and more in pots of spicy savory broth. We had such a fun time spending time with a group of friends, slowly cooking and eating our dinner over several hours.

In other food news, I’ve been continuing my mission to try out new lunch restaurants on Fridays, with mixed results. I’ve had a few experiences that were not worth sharing, but I did think that the salmon bento box at Tanoshi Bento was really tasty.

I was having an intense salad craving one Friday and decided to try the Superfood Salad Bowl from sweetgreen. It was good, but a little salty, and at $14 including tax, I new I could make something better and cheaper! So over the weekend I prepped a bunch of ingredients for my own colorful salads and have been enjoying them all week!

Here’s what goes into them: beet hummus (just blend some cooked beet into any hummus recipe you would normally make), cucumber, purple sweet potato, shredded carrot, avocado, pumpkin seeds, purple daikon, quinoa, and shredded lacinato kale and red cabbage. I’ve been enjoying this lunch so much that I put my Friday food adventure on hold last week because I just wanted a salad again!

We did have a great food adventure over the weekend, though–delicious tacos at Tacos Matamoros in Brooklyn! I got the a chicken taco with guacamole, a crispy tripe taco, and a green chile chicken tamale. The tripe taco was my favorite!

This past weekend was Easter/Passover, and Andrew’s family came to visit us in Brooklyn. We did lots of walking around the city and ate a bunch more delicious food. A few highlights were dim sum at Nom Wah Tea Parlor:

Everything was delicious, but the shrimp-stuffed eggplant was my favorite:

After dim sum we walked along the High Line, which was a little crowded, but so pretty. I hadn’t been up there in several years and I loved seeing the trees beginning to blossom. We walked almost 10 miles that day, so even after our hearty lunch, we were definitely hungry for dinner soon enough! We visited our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Lot 2, and enjoyed fava bean toasts, a mixed chicories salad, chicken under a brick with cauliflower, cheesy polenta, and brownies and rhubarb crumble pie for dessert.

The next day we had nice enough weather for a job in Prospect Park, which was beautiful, green, and not too crowded. We worked up an appetite for brunch, which we ate at Fausto, and which was one of the best brunches I’ve had in New York. We tried the breakfast sandwich with broccoli rabe, serrano sofrito, sausage, fried egg, and ricotta (amazing!), and a host of other delicious dishes, but my absolute favorite was the lemon ricotta pancakes with cranberry compote. I don’t usually go for sweet breakfasts, but I would definitely order these again, wow!

After so much restaurant excitement, I was happy to cook that evening: a lamb and bean chili with butternut squash and poblanos.

It was really wonderful to spend time with family over the holiday weekend, and it really flew by! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend as well — have a great week, and I’ll be back with a new recipe for you next Monday!