Guides

At Big Girls, Small Kitchen, we love to cook at home. To equip ourselves to cook any cuisine in the world in the confines of our small kitchens, we’re sending contributor Lauren Rothman off to visit the Russian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Greek , and Italian supermarkets of New York City. Her shopping expeditions will yield the specialty ingredients we need in order to delve deep into the kinds of cuisines we’re craving at home these days.

Up next, Patel Grocery, an Indian emporium of New York City, located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Here’s Lauren:

As a native New Yorker, I’ve always ranked my favorite neighborhoods according to how good their eats are. For that reason—never mind its handsome brownstones and lush eponymous park that affords a stunning view of Manhattan—Sunset Park, in south Brooklyn, has always topped my list. I love good food, but I love it even more when it’s cheap, and Sunset Park’s grub meets both criteria: un-fancy taco-and-cerveza joints line Fifth Avenue, their cumin-and-grilled-meat aromas wafting out of unpretentious storefronts; walk a little further east, down to Eighth Avenue, and the sights (and smells) change: Chinese lettering advertises the strip’s many noodle and dim sum joints. It’s hard to beat the area’s restaurant options, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: Sunset Park is a great destination for the home cook, too.

“Little Latin America” and “Brooklyn Chinatown” might be the area’s most well-known sub-neighborhoods, but Sunset Park is also home to a sizeable Gujarati Indian population, and when I feel like stirring up some delicate curries I head to Patel Grocery, which opened on Fourth Avenue just steps from the 53rd Street subway station in 1981. Inside a tiny, somewhat haphazard but well-stocked store, owner Ishwer Patel sells all the Indian ingredients a cook dreams of, from the dozens of “pulses” (legumes) that are the main ingredient in Indian dhals and porridges to well-curated ground and whole spices to fresh produce such as gingerroot, curry leaves and bitter melon.

On a recent visit, my shopping list included paneer, the squeaky fresh cheese indispensable for paneer bhurji or saag paneer, or stewed spinach and cheese; black mustard seeds, tamarind paste and curry leaves, which I use in a variety of Indian dishes; some kind of dried legume; and kulfi, or Indian-style ice cream, for dessert. I knew from previous shopping trips that I’d find everything with ease, so I lingered in my favorite aisle of the store, where Patel stocks its pulses and spices. Hoping to score something unusual, I zeroed in on two of the store’s more vibrant legume offerings, opting for a bag of bright-green dried chickpeas (“you cook them just the same,” Ishwer’s wife volunteered) and similarly grassy-colored mung beans, which resembled tiny beads. Browsing the spice selection, I remembered that I needed asafoetida, the funky-tasting dried, ground resin of a perennial herb that in small quantities lends a leek-like flavor to dishes such as the aforementioned saag paneer.

Patel’s prices are low, low, low—before I knew it, my basket was full of $3-per-bag legumes, a $4 chunk of paneer and a 59-cent nub of fresh ginger, and it was time to hop back on the R train and head home.

At Big Girls, Small Kitchen, we love to cook at home. To equip ourselves to cook any cuisine in the world in the confines of our small kitchens, we’re sending contributor Lauren Rothman off to visit the Russian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Greek supermarkets of New York City. Her shopping expeditions will yield the specialty ingredients we need in order to delve deep into the kinds of cuisines we’re craving at home these days.

Up first: Titan Foods, the Greek Emporium of New York City, located in Astoria Queens. Here’s Lauren:

Queens is a food mecca. Though to most people, New York City’s largest borough simply holds the distinction of being one of the most diverse geographic areas on earth-nearly 50 percent of its occupants were born abroad-to me, that means you’ll find Chinese grocery stores hawking pristine bok choy just a stone’s throw from Pakistani shops filled with fragrant spices and, a couple of blocks away, Puerto Rican bodegas serving up soupy rice and beans and crisp-fried tostones. As a Brooklynite, I don’t get to spend much time in Queens, but when I do make it there, I’m taken aback by the abundance.

When I’m looking for Greek ingredients, I head to Astoria. This neighborhood, known for its handsome Tudor-style row houses, was the destination for immigrants arriving from Greece and Cyprus in the 1960s and ‘70s, and the Mediterranean population left its mark in the form of countless restaurants, casual tavernas and bakeries, and a number of well-stocked grocery stores that are a dream for the home cook. (See all of BGSK’s Greek recipes here.)

My Greek supermarket of choice is Titan Foods, a large but not overwhelming full-service grocery that stocks an amazing selection of all the Greek ingredients you’d ever need, from aromatic dried oregano to milky fetas to countless varieties of olives—and much more. Need phyllo for homemade baklava? It’s here, in about nine varieties. Prefer to pick up a prepared spinach pie? In the freezer section. Titan has three grinds of bulgur, from fine to coarse; dried fava beans, both split and whole; and a wealth of dried fruits and jams in flavors like sour cherry, fig and bitter orange.

Meat-lite is my mantra. I don’t eat steak at every meal, and chicken graces our pot no more than once every 10 days. I’m hardly a vegetarian though, and my favorite cooking quiz show (in my head) is to see how little meat I can get away with in what’s otherwise a non-vegetarian meal. Buying meat in smaller quantity keeps your wallet full, while adding a bit of bacon, sausage, or brisket to your healthful, inexpensive meal helps the vegetables go down.

1. Quinoa, Avocado & Apple Salad with Crispy Bacon & Honey-Dijon Vinaigrette. Bacon is the cherry on top of an otherwise virtuous, vegan salad.

2. Chicken Soba Soup with Miso & Spinach.A skimpy piece of chicken to feed two or more? Unheard of, til you bulk out the poultry with vegetables, broth, and noodles.

3. Homemade Baked Beans on Toast. The Brits figured out how to make a meal of beans taste amazing: add bacon!

As it turns out, falafel sandwiches are not beyond the realm of the home cook, not at all. Yes, they involve deep frying-an activity I engage in twice a year and no more. But making a falafel ball is so, so easy. I’m talking a couple of ingredients and a couple of steps. That kind of easy. Ease aside, homemade falafel turn out to be tastier than 95% percent of the falafel out there.

Einat Admony, owner of the falafel joint Taïm-where you can get one of the good 5% of falafel-walked me through making falafel, explaining why simplicity is key, where creativity comes in, and that real falafel can never, ever be baked. Find all the know how over on First We Feast.

Have you ever hosted a dinner party filled with friends whose sheer diversity of eating habits puts biodiversity to shame? What’s a host to do-besides serve gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free stone soup?

Well, she could choose one of these menus, for dinners at which one or more guests has got some special eating needs. They’ll accommodate the special person, but they’ll also delight everyone else. (Though if you want to please some serious carnivore with a veg menu, you could always just sear a couple steaks to your vegan spread. But that’s not really the point.)

Do you have any tried-and-true dinners that please the dietarily restricted and unrestricted alike?

**11 Dietarily Restricted Dinner Parties**

Totally Vegan
Chickpea & Vegetable Pot Pie (made with vegan puff pastry as crust)| Lemony Kale Salad | Chocolate Cranberry Cake

Vegan + Gluten-Free
Old Bay Peanuts | New York Corn Chowder | Shakin’ Hash Browns
Chocolate Bark made with Toasted Pecans & Dried Cherries

Vegetarian
Curried Lentil Soup | Muhammara Grilled Cheese | Peach Crisp

Vegetarian + Gluten-Free
Creamy Habanero & Tomato Soup | Cheesy Butternut Squash Enchiladas | Strawberry Mousse

Good morning. First thing Monday may seem like a strange moment to talk about our favorite hair-of-the-dog order, the Bloody Mary. Or, maybe not. Goodbye, weekend. Hello, week. Cheers!

All this winter, in its #SearchforMary, Stoli vodka has been toasting to that very same Bloody Mary, in all its regional variations-the drink can differ so much from bar to bar, not to mention from city to city. So, I set out to find what we’ve got on offer, Bloody Mary-wise, here in New York.

The Bloody Mary is an exquisitely American drink, less a cocktail and more like a culinary event, each drink creation an original moment to to invent the Bloody anew. With unexpected combinations of salty, briny, and rich, the tomato juice, celery, horseradish, and vodka manifest in tons of different delicious drinks, and I’m known to order them frequently-and to make them myself.

In my mind, there are a few ways a Bloody Mary can stand out. One, the garnish. Some of my favorite Bloody Marys keep it really simple in the drink itself, then pile on the pickles, celery stalks, and lobster claws (!) for a meal-like topping. Two, the booze. Tequila and gin can both create great Bloodys, though nothing holds a candle to the original vodka, which just works. Then three, there’s the balance. With all the strong flavors, you can wind up with too much of one thing: tomato, celery, even ice, but the best of the best balance all these proportionately with the flavor of the booze.

So that you don’t have to traipse all over New York City in your search for a brilliant Bloody, I’ve enlisted my tastebuds, Stoli’s ambassadors, and the collective local knowledge of New York City’s Bloody drinkers to bring you a short round-up of standout Bloody Marys. As with the drink everywhere, there are so many tweaks and variations that at first it’s hard to see what makes each of these particularly New York-y. But take a step back and you’ll see. In New York, creativity’s token city, there’s truly no limit to what our bartenders have done with the famous Bloody Mary, and this round-up highlights a vast array of tweaks.

Read on for a few recipes and check back Wednesday for my take on the New York City Bloody Mary. If I’ve missed your favorite NYC Bloody Mary, please let me know in the comments!

There’s such a victory in making something at home that you always only eat out. For some reason, I’d long relegated the burger to a meal I enjoyed only at restaurants, with favorites around the city, from Shake Shack to Anchored Inn and Five Napkin to our neighborhood’s James. But the classic burger is really easy to make at home-and to make at home really, really well.

With help from burger experts, I put together The Complete Guide to Making Burgers at Home for First We Feast. Find the step-by-step photos and discover what burger principles must be upheld and what elements are yours to play around with over on First We Feast.