Gotham Gal

A City Farmer, A Chef & A Host

Ben Leventhal asked me to co-chair an event with him for July 24th at our home.  The event was going to take place at 11 homes that evening around the city.  Each home would have a chef from one of the restaurants who signed up for this to come cook in your home, a city farmer (and yes there are many) and a host.  How could I resist?

More important, the event was meant to support two important organizations; Just Food and The Sylvia Center.  Just Food connects with communities to make fresh food more accessible to all NYers.  The Sylvia Center is a garden-to-table program that educates young people to understand good nutrition through healthy eating. 

At our home we were incredibly lucky to have Andrew Carmellini prepare us an amazing meal.  He is also a super nice guy. Here he is with LIz Neumark, who can not be described in one sentence but for this event I will say she is the woman who began The Sylvia Center.

Our city farmer was Karen Washington from La Femilia Verde.  A salt of the earth human being who has taken her passion for good healthy food to her local community in the Bronx.  An advocate for green markets to build healthier neighborhoods.  She is impressive to say the least. 

We had a group of 14 people.  Some people I knew while others just chose which home they would love to go to and ended up at ours.  A really nice group of people.  SO...what did we eat?

 We began with a peach vodka cocktail and some passed starters.  Shots of gazpacho.  I love that.  Just a nice long sip.

Beef tartare crostini.  Not for everyone but I have always been a fan.

Thinly sliced raw fish.  A crudo on crostini.

Our first course used Karen's organic eggs from her farm.  One perfectly cooked sunny side up egg on top of a local eggplant agro-picante with few pieces of shaved Parmigiano and a few bitter greens under the cheese.  Eggs that are fresh like that have an entirely different taste.  Mixed together with a roasted eggplant mixture is a nice summer starter.

We had two pastas for the next course which was served family style.  Sweet corn ravioli with smoked local tomatoes, hen of woods mushrooms and a little bit of truffle.  Wow.  Super sweet kernels of corn stuffed into a thin pasta is pretty spectacular.  Tastes like summer.

The other pasta was a mixture of clams, baby squid, ruby red shrimps and long spiral pastas which really hold the sauce well.  Yum.

Our second round was grilled Block Island swordfish with roasted artichokes, new potatoes and peperonata and a hint of lemon.  Another classic Italian summer dish.

Many don't love quail but I like it.  Roasted quail served with an organic polenta, swiss chard, chanterelles and roasted caramelized black missions figs. 

This dessert was so good that I literally licked the plate clean.  A blueberry compote on a honey upside-down cake with a butter milk cream on top.  The cake was incredibly moist.  I tried to just have a bite but before I knew it I had the whole thing!

All of our wine this evening was donated from Bedell Cellars.  White, red and rose from 2010 and 2011. 

Loved the whole evening.  Big fan of both Just Food and The Sylvia Center.  Glad to see so many people supporting their efforts around healthy eating.  What I really liked is how there were eleven of these exact same type of meals taking place around the city the same night.  Very well organized and efficient which says something about the organization too.  I'd most definitely do something like this again. 

Limor Fried, Adafruit, Woman Entrepreneur

I met Limor at an event for littleBits.  Ayah (the entrepreneur behind littleBIts) and Limor knew each other from the MIT Media Lab.  To me, both of these women are serious bad asses and I mean that as a huge compliment.  They understand the ins and outs of technology like no other and they wear it on their sleeve.  After meeting Limor, I made sure to follow-up with her and connect.  So glad I did. 

Limor grew up in Boston area meaning Alston, Cambridge and Brookline.  Her father is a professor at BU and her mother teaches piano.  Limor, like many young people who are techies, was much more interested in electronics and computers than she was in school.  She lost interest in high school and actually never graduated.  I believe that this happens to kids like LImor because the curriculum in the school system isn't challenging to kids who love tech.  It is an issue that is one of the many issues that need to be resolved in education. 

Because of her ties to BU, they let Limor take classes at BU.  Ended up the classes she enrolled in were all graduate classes and after two years somebody started paying attention and told her that BU wasn't the right place for her, MIT was.  Limor transferred to MIT and it took her 3 more years in the undergraduate program to get her degree.  She had found her spot.  Then LImor continued on to do a masters in the MIT Media lab and that is where she met Ayah.

In the Media Lab she had an advisor who was in between tech and the arts.  It was well suited to her as her classes ended up with a more creative bend as she came from a hacking background.  She was able to do a thesis there on how to build cell phone jammers.  It was fun because she had free reign.  People from Samsung would come to see the product and wonder how they could use it to put Nokia down. This was her first year.

Her second year she was in the futures group.  Thinking of things for the future melding of the computing culture with the artsy group.  Once she had graduated she began to do some consulting.  It did not take long for Limor to figure out it wasn't for her so she applied for the iBeam fellowship.  She wanted to build open source hardware.  She was accepted and the next stop was NYC.

Limor was living in Queens and spent an entire year just working on open source hardware.  It was then that she began to work on her business.  It was that one year space at iBeam that gave her the time to think about either in getting a job or building a business.  No surprises, it ended up being the latter.

Her idea to build Adafruit began at iBeam because she was interested in building electronics.  There was tons of info on line on how to build software but not so much in hardware.  She put ideas up on line and then she would see them be posted other places.  She would write about how to build a mp3 player or a phone jammer.  The thing about hardware is that you have to find the components and parts.  Limor would post a project and people would email her if they could buy the parts from her.  She'd build them to make some money on the side but she knew that if she could produce the parts in quantity then the prices would go down.  The more people she heard from the more she thought she could create a business around this need. 

iBeam helped her with the tools she needed to build a business and so the hobby turned into a real business in 2005.  Slowly and steadily Adafruit started to ramp up.  The first product was a synthesizer that was used in the 80's.  It was easy to recreate and the products used today are much better.  People wanted to build it but they not only needed the parts but to understand the educational component of how to build it.  The point of Adafruit was not only to sell the products but to teach people how to build the products.  Limor knew the for the business to be successful she had to create a desire for people to finish the product.  The synthesizer project was perfect because Dj's wanted it.  Buying it outright was like $2000 and most DJs could not afford to do it so they would come to Adafruit and build it  That is how people started to get excited.  About 1000 synthesizers were built.  Through this project they learned how to make sure people finished the project, became part of the community and came back for more. 

The community element is key too.  They provide a bunch of obscure custom stuff that people get excited about building and talking to others about.  At Adafruit you can find it, build it and find others who are just as excited as you are about hardware. 

BTW, the people that buy the products and build them are not all geeks.  There are lots of kids who are just turned on by the projects.  It is a new mode of education.  The business is also profitable.  Recently Limor joined the Industrial Business Council as an advisor for the New York City Economic Development Council who is interested in strengthening the industrial part of the start-up sector in NYC.  It is already happening with places like MakerBot.

Limor might be under the radar now, but trust me...not for long. 

thinking, cooking and relaxing

no blog post yesterday.  email is seriously piled up.  cooked up a storm over the past four days. 

i have hit summer time and am so damn happy.

today i will clean my email box, write some posts, re-tool my summer schedule (too many calls all over the place that must be compacted) and figure out how i can get "the look".

when i got out here on wednesday night our friends came to pick me up for dinner.  they had the look.  the look you get after being at the beach for an extended period of time.  it is that slightly tan, discheveled look.  you look like you just woke up and you are completely relaxed.  i want that look.  it is a really good look and it is the perfect one to try and keep as long as possible when you re-enter the world in september. 

off for a cup of coffee and to complete the crossword.  it is the start of getting "the look". 

Perla is opened for lunch

We have had a few killer meals this week.  In full transparency we are investors in all of Gabe and Gina Stulmans restaurants but I am pretty good at separating one from the other.  He has managed to hire not only some unbelievable chefs but he has created a family as everyone who works in his restaurants frequent each others places. 

We had dinner at Perla on Monday night and to be honest I ate so much that I had a food coma on Tuesday.  It took me until Wednesday to recover.  On Friday night we sat at the bar of Fedora for dinner.  The meal was amazing but two of the plates we shared were honestly genius.  Sorry there are no pictures.  Squid stuffed with duck confit with the tenacles served tempura style.  The other dish was smoked mussels mixed with a lemon curd and herbs sitting on top of a sliced baguette that got soft from the dish.  Mehti is just brilliant. 

Why stop there?  We went back to  Perla on Sunday afternoon to check out their new lunch menu.  They just opened for lunch this past Friday.  Another brilliant chef, Michael Toscano.  I will say that I held myself in check at lunch only taking a few bites of everything instead of licking my plate like I did on Monday night. 

We began with foie gras pancakes.  Fluffy light flavorful pancakes stuffed with foie gras just in case you didn't get a piece of the small scoop of it on top.  Served with juicy sugary peaches and some maple syrup on the side.  Decadent and just sublime.

I have yet to try their pizzas so why not just one for the table.  Salumi with mozzarella...a classic.  Really really thin crust.  Not too heavy but a light touch.  Delicious.

Emily had proscuitto with soft scrambled eggs and whipped ricotta.  On the side a grill toasted buttery piece of bread.  This might be the lightest dish of the day. 

Crispy deep fried Branzino with a piccata aioli.  Think veal piccata.  The ingredients that go into that sans veal is boiled down to create an aioli.  Add pickled peppers and you have the perfect sandwich. 

The richest was the open faced beef sandwich.  Pulled beef cheeks that are made into a cylinder and then blackened.  Over the top are two sunny side up eggs with a porchini mustard on the side.  Decadent could be one word to describe the dish...and the meal.

I forgot how great it is to be in NYC on the weekends in the summer.  The city is empty and you can basically walk into any place and get a seat.  Grab some lunch seats before they fill up in September!

Girls Who Code

Please meet the next generation of the tech world.  It is these lovely young women sitting in a room in Chelsea learning how to code, think big and become engineers. 

Reshma Saujani, who founded Girls Who Code is showing all of us how to make a difference in kids lives.  She is also running for NYC public advocate.  Her passion for getting girls interested in technology and reaching across the divide is impressive...and she is making a difference doing what she talks about.  In addition to the team is Kristen Titus, the executive director, who is smart, passionate and cares deeply about making a different in others lives. 

The program is to inspire young women, 13-17 learn the skills it takes to be successful in engineering and technology now and in the future. 

There is something reminiscent of MOUSE.  They are actually going to work with MOUSE but there is something exciting and disruptive about Girls Who Code just as MOUSE was in the mid-90's. 

I believe the message to these girls should be to take what they learned and do something with it.  Your knowledge of being able to code makes you special.  You now have a skill that will help you as you move forward in your lives.  Be it working in a large company or starting your own company (after college) that you should follow your heart, follow your passions and be confident in your abilities. The sky is the limit.

If this next group of girls can walk out feeling like they rule then there is no doubt you are looking at the next generation of young women in the tech world. 

 

 

the lower east side (LES) of nyc

Like all urban cities, the landscape has changed tremendously over the past decade.  When we first moved to NYC in the early 80's the lower east side was a place to find bargains.  Heavily dominated by Jewish shop owners particularly Orchard Street right around the corner from Katzs Deli.  There are a few shops left but very few.  The landscape has changed.  We even have Mile End Sandwich Shop now on the Bowery (another transformed neighborhood) which is this generations Katzs Deli. 

Jessica is spending the summer in London.  She is living in Shoreditch.  When I went to school in London that area of London was predominantly Jewish merchants very similar to the LES.  Now it is overcome with hip shops, new restaurants and galleries just like the LES.  Urban renewal. 

I have been in the city (I thought I'd be at the beach) for the last week because we moved back into our apartment, post-flood.  I spent the day with Emily on the LES.  We had lunch and shopped.  Even in the past two years there has been massive change.  You really have to hunt for an empty store front.  It is a good thing for the city and the neighborhood. 

We started with lunch at Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya that is open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night dining.  It is located inside the Thompson LES hotel.  Ten years ago nobody would have put such a beautiful hotel down there.  The menu changes with each meal.  Lunch is small but dinner is quite large.  We had a few rolls to split.

I am a huge fan of the Blue Ribbon house salad.  Carrots, avocado, chopped greens and a ginger dressing. I am also a big fan of the brothers behind Blue Ribbon.  They have quitely created an incredible empire. 

We also tried the deep fried chicken wings with a wasabi honey and chili sauce on the side.  Super crispy.

The ribs are pretty perfect.  Black vinegar and crispy rice on top...just falling off the bone.  Fred and I went back for dinner there the other night after seeing  Beasts of the Southern Wild.  The young heroine is incredible in this film.  We sat outside on the deck at the restaurant.  It is a pretty great spot.

Emily and I walked around and hit up a few stores.  I have always loved this store.  Maryam Nassir Zadeh.  A real eclectic mix of clothes and jewelry. 

We walked by Mission Chinese Food.  One of the hottest restaurant in NYC right now.  A dive.  Maybe a few seats somewhere back there. I think the best thing might be to order for delivery and go pick it up.

So many new places.  Landbrot.  German bakery and bar.  There is also one in the West Village.  The pretzels are killer. 

This store has been around for years but just as the neighborhood has evolved so has their mixture.  Great stuff.

Spiritual America is relatively new.  Nice mixture of young designers.

Stopped across the street for a blueberry mint iced tea.  I have had lunch here before.  Healthy well made food. I particularly love the banquette that wraps around the front window. 

Creatures of Comfort is a big winner.  They have been around for a few years but the mix there is great.  The store is big and airy.  I'm a fan. 

A great day with Emily.  I always love walking around the neighborhoods of NYC.  We did it when we first got here and have not stopped since.  Watching the city change is no different than watching the new businesses emerge in tech space.  A birds eye view of the landscape of NYC at every angle keeps my mind moving. 

 

 

 

Gun Control

Once again we are reading about a terrible random act of violence against innocent people because someone was able to get their hands on the type of guns used to kill people not animals. 

What will it take for the Senate and the President to actually make significant changes so that the next time some upset frustrated person doesn't take their anger out by grabbing a gun? 

You would have thought that after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords that things might have changed but no.  Will it take some random act of violence against a child of a Senator or Congressman? 

Why does the NRA have such strong influence over the Government?  Pure and simple, money and support.  No other civilized country in the world has access to arms like we do. 

I live in an urban area where there is no reason to be carrying a gun.  The thought of that just frightens me.  To believe that people carrying could be our saviors vs the armed forces is beyond scary.  The other day I read about a 3 year old that found his fathers loaded gun, pointed it at his father and it went off and killed him.  There are more stories like that then people saving themselves from some evil person with a gun.

I do understand the right to bear arms.  I do understand the desire to go hunting.  Then why doesn't the industry regulate arms from that point of view.  Do uzi shot guns and semi-automatics really fall under that category? 

My heart bleeds for the family and friends who lost a loved one randomly at the movie theater because someone came in and decided to open fire.  My heart bleeds for the wounds that must have reopened for the Columbine families, the Virginia Tech families, the families at Gabrielle Giffords rally in Arizona.  Need I go on? 

When will the change come?

Sally Minier, Sweet Sallys, Woman Entrepreneur

There is nothing like taking what you have done so well for many years in the corporate world and then jumping ship to do something on your own and succeed at it.  Sallys career is completely in the food world perhaps one that we rarely read about as food is everywhere but I find her path not only impressive but one that I might have loved to do myself.  Her end game these days is taking her baking business to another level.  Sweet Sallys is her love, baking recipes from the Jewish family that she grew up with to even a few gluten free goodies. 

Sally grew up on the Jersey Shore.  She left the shore and went to college outside of Boston at Wellesley.  She loved the academic experience but just so she could experience one year being in a co-ed school where athletics were top she took her junior year and went to Williams.  Not that far from Wellesley but far enough.  I had a friend in college who did the same thing.  I was at an all womens college and my friend chose to spend a year at UCLA instead of going abroad.  It was just the perfect thing for Sally.  She was on athletic teams in high school so at Williams she quickly formed a social network through sporting events.

She graduated Wellesley in 1986.  First stop was Wall Street.  Perfect job at that time.  She spent three years at First Boston as a mortgage financial analyst.   The job had her spend some serious time living in Los Angeles and San Francisco when they needed someone out west.  It was one of those jobs where you were supposed to work there for 2-3 years and then go get your MBA.  I knew many people like that.   Instead of thinking about going to business school, Sally pined for opening an inn in Napa Valley. 

So instead of business school she left First Boston and got a job at Loews Hotels in Los Angeles.  Not surprising that they wanted to put her in the finance department but she firmly resisted.  Sally wanted to learn the ins and outs of the hotel business and asked to be put at the front desk.  One year of that and then she moved into sales and marketing.  She quickly realized that there was no room for real growth there and went to work for All-Suites Property eventually landing at the Ritz Carlton. 

Working in regional sales for the Ritz Carlton in Los Angeles was a serious dream job.  She got to stay in any of the Ritz hotels for $50 a night and certainly being in sales it was important to go check out as many as possible.  As much as she liked Los Angeles she missed the buzz of NYC.  In Los Angeles she found the people she became the closest with were all transplanted east coasters...it was time to go back.

She continued to work for the Ritz Carlton and relocated to the one on Central Park South, the original.  She was put in the marketing department.  It was time to move into something different even though she enjoyed the Ritz.  Sally took a job at Viacom managing their internal conference center.  It was this shift that took her into the food world.  After some time they moved Sally into managing all of their food services and events.  It was an exciting time.  Viacom had just purchased Paramount and they went from 800 people to 25000.  She stayed for five years and believe it or not during that time she got her masters in hospitality at NYU because Viacom paid for it. 

After five years she was lured to Goldman Sachs where she managed their US food service program.  Next lure was Lehman Brothers where she managed their food service programs in the US and India.  Essentially her job was to to manage client dining, catering, lunches and corporate dining.  This was like running your own business.  Sally managed food services around the world dealing with third party vendors and others that would come and go from a special cookie maker to a single coffee supplier.  Bringing in innovative companies to make sure the food was also fresh and creative.  She loved it so much at Lehman she actually thought she could spend the rest of her career there but as we all know that didn't work out.  The markets crashed and Lehman went under. 

Sally was brought along when Barclays took many Lehmans employees as it gave her an ability to leave at one point with a decent severance package.  I have actually met a few entreprenreurs who did the same thing.  She took off two years and started planning on Sweet Sallys although in her head she had been planning the company for ten years. 

The hardest part was finding a kitchen to bake in.  You need one that has the right permits.  She met a guy while she was doing some consulting work and she talked to him about Sweet Sallys.  He said to her that her eyes light up when she talks about it.  Sally said her biggest stumbling block was that she needed access to an approved kitchen to start up her business.  He told her that he owned a catering company in NJ and she could use his kitchen.  Sweet Sallys was born.

Through her networking she had also met a woman at an event for the food industry who had consulted for coffee bars.  She hired her to come work for her.  Sally said she knew all along that the business was going to be an internet business not a brick and mortar business.  She also hired a company to build her a site with a shopping cart and she blasted out to her network that the business was born.  It was December 2009.

Sally says it has been an interesting ride.  You have a concept for a business but it has to evolve and be massaged into becoming a real business.  The business has grown organically as she has reached out to everyone she knows.  Through her restaurant services connections she started to sell to them from the onset so she has been providing sweets for Goldman and UBS and even the Plaza.  It has been all word of mouth.  The internet business is the consumer gift business but the big opportunity is in wholesale.

Sally has bootstrapped the business by herself.  Living through the IPO of Goldman Sachs gave her a cushion.  She refers to that cushion as her Sweet Sallys money.  Even her Mom and sister have come into the kitchen to help her on projects.  Her kitchen in located in Hawthrone, NJ.

Last summer she got a call from a friend who used to be at Lehman about a job that she thought would be perfect for Sally.  Jane Street Capital was looking for someone to run their food program like she had at Goldman and Lehman.  She wondered if Jane Street Capital would hire her and let her also run Sweet Sallys at the same time and they said yes.  She hired two bakers who she meets with three times a week in between going to Wall Street.  It works for right now as it helps her to bring in more capital for the business as it continues to grow. 

Serious energy being able to run two jobs with one being a start-up at once but obviously entrepreneurial.  Check out Sweet Sallys.  I ordered the ruggelah and the brownies.  Great packaging and quite delicious too. 

 

 

 

summer time meal

We are definitely hitting the time of the year where I will be spending hours in the kitchen.  My time to chill. 

We are members of the Amber Wave Farms.  Every Saturday I go and pick up our box of produce for the week and a basket of fresh eggs.  Come the height of August I can go over there myself and just pick tomatoes and cut flowers.  I just LOVE it.  They had these beautiful wood baskets made for their customers this year to bring your goodies back and forth.

Had a few people over for dinner.  This summer I ordered a bunch of meat from Dickinsons Farmstand Meats.  They have a store in Chelsea Market.  The difference in flavor is major.  For starters I toasted up some slices of a baguette.  I took fresh whipped ricotta and mixed it with a little bit of lemon juice, grated lemon rinds and honey and slathered it over the toasts.  On top I put prosciutto or red pepper pieces that I had roasted.  Right before serving I took a super rich balsamic vinegar and dripped it over the top.

The side courses were slices tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.  Instead of pesto I just chopped up tons of basil and let it sit in olive oil for a few hours and then dripped it over the top. 

Zucchini is the veggie of the moment at the farm.  Thinly sliced yellow and green zucchini on a platter covered with shaved Parmesan, chopped basil and olive oil. 

The carrots at Balsam Farm stand, which is my go to place outside of what I get at Amber Farms, they had beautiful carrots.  I just roasted them with some thyme and olive oil.  Super simple.

A typical summer meal.  Fresh, easy and delicious. 

 

 

 

 

 

moving day

we moved back to our apartment yesterday after having a flood this past thanksgiving. 

impressive that we finished so quickly.  i am so happy to be back.  lots of nonsense to deal with today but basically organization. 

taking a rest from blogging today.