Knives! Camera! Action!

I was skeptical, to say the least. Bananas don’t usually make their way into cocktails outside of the daiquiri and the Bailey’s Banana Colada at Cyril’s in Amagansett (order it with a “floater” and make sure you have a designated driver). In fact, bananas don’t really make their way into my mouth very often. Which is why I surprised myself by ordering the Smoked-Banana Mezcal margarita at Alex Stupak’s West Village Mexican spot Empellon Taqueria.

Mezcal is an infinitely cooler order than tequila. It just is, I don’t know why. Which is definitely one reason I leaned towards the Fidencio Clásico mezcal drink. I thrive on being “cool.” Regardless of reasoning, this cocktail exceeded my expectation. Smooth and smoky, the banana lent more body than fluffy banana flavor to the drink.

Sipping it with food I didn’t produce any weird clashing tastes. It went with the guacamole (which little Bib Gourmet got a kick out of eating off the little spoon I keep in his diaper bag) and worked with the scallop ceviche with mango and mustard seeds. It washed down the cheese-shishito pepper fundido with flying colors. Banana and mescal, who would have thunk it?

It seems as if I’ve only been eating at markets lately. I do love a good market. Yuji Ramen in the Bowery located Whole Foods introduced me to wacky bowls of noodles and I sucked down oysters Chelsea Market’s Cull & Pistol but it’s the goods I brought home from the Grand Central Market that litter my kitchen counter right now.

Grand Central Market is fantastic, if extraordinarily pricey. There’s a mini-Murray’s Cheese and a stand with fruit and vegetables that are always perfectly ripe. Also, Li-Lac Chocolates.

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Some Like It Raw

The Lobster Place fish market is one of the largest vendors in Manhattan’s popular Chelsea Market. I’ve purchased everything from the ordinary (salmon) to hard-to-find ingredients like snails and sea urchin. The products are always top-notch as if they’ve been plucked from the ocean just a few minutes before. Perhaps they have. The place is magical. Cull & Pistol, the newly opened restaurant next door, has been sprinkled with the same batch of pixie dust.

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My job allows me to do some pretty amazing things. Like tasting about twenty new release wines at a lunch for Georges Duboeuf at Andrew Carmellini’s new French restaurant Lafayette. In the middle of the day. On a Wednesday.

About fifty wine geeks, and me, congregated to taste and eat and talk vino. The crowd was mostly industry folks. Alan Richman made an appearance and so did my new buddy Susin Fair, a/k/a the Samurai Shopper. Everyone left before dessert. Why do people do this? They all missed the tarte tatin (by far the best food item of the day). The second best thing was the Julienas Chateau Des Capitans, a “spicy” wine with “peppery notes intermingling with aromas of dark fruits” according to the tasting notes I was sent home with. It’s a big wine. It’s heady. The tasting notes also say that what we drank is a “barrel sample”—bummer.

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This simple salad is one of my husband’s favorite weeknight quickie dinners. Not that he cooks it, but he requests it often.

I find the best mushrooms at the farmer’s market. Whichever ones are your favorite, go with that but I tend to lean toward a mix of oyster, shiitake and enoki mushrooms for this. No fancy-pants market? No problem. Opt for the mixed mushroom package in the supermarket aisle. Whichever way you go, brush off the dirt with a wet paper towel instead of soaking the mushrooms in water which will bloat them and change their texture.

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This is so much more than a lunch box. It’s the most amazing lunchbox I have ever seen in my entire life. It changes the landscape of lunch. It is way superior to the metal box with thermos Thundercats specimen gathering dust at my parents house.

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