One of my favorite Mexican drinks is horchata—a sweet beverage made from rice, water, milk, sugar and cinnamon. In English, it is often called “rice milk,” and can be found at many inexpensive taco shops in larger cities. It is the perfect accompaniment to a very spicy meal because the milk and rice has a cooling effect and helps sooth sensitive taste buds.

While having dinner at an asian restaurant last week, I came across a pumpkin version on the drink! It was a little less sweet and didn’t have the same cinnamon spice that I was used to in traditional horchata, but it certainly did the job and helped me to work my way through a bowl of very spicy mussels covered in red chilis.

I’m not sure how they made it exactly, but if I had to guess, I would say they juiced fresh pumpkin and used that as the base for the rice milk drink instead of water. Delicious!

 

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Picture 1 from 4: After one bite of this mini sfogliatelle, I realized I should have gotten a larger one!

Sfogliatelle is a delicate Italian pastry that is made from many layers of paper-thin pastry rolled around a sweet ricotta filling. It is baked to a light golden crisp and served with a dusting of powdering sugar. It is divine and makes for a perfect espresso accompaniment.

Ferrara, one of NYC’s oldest coffee shops that is known for it’s baked goods sells these little delights, along with several other traditional Italian treats like pannetone, torrone, pignoli cookies and cannoli.

If ever in the area, they are well worth making a stop for.

 

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Picture 1 from 3: It's best to eat them quickly while they are still hot!

My favorite of all the varieties of street vendors in New York City are the candied nuts sellers. On a cold winter evening, nothing is more comforting than a paper bag of warm candied nuts that have been freshly roasted just minutes before being handed over. They come in either cashew, almond or peanut mixtures and have a crunchy, caramel coating that tastes like butter, vanilla and brown sugar. Delicious, and well worth the $2 price tag.

 

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Picture 1 from 4: This is what the tea balls look like before they are brewed.

This afternoon I stopped at a Chinese herbal pharmacy in Chinatown that specializes in herbal remedies and tea. After smelling several varieties of Chinese teas, I decided to purchase an assortment of “flower teas.” These are teas that are made from jasmine or green tea leaves tied in little bundles that hide blossoms of amaranth, chrysanthemum and/or marigold flowers.

This tea, which is the first of the five varieties that I purchased and brewed, has an oblong-shaped green tea base that blossomed to reveal a small tuft of marigold petals, a string of rising jasmine flowers and a bright pink globe amaranth. The flavor of the tea is quite savory, considering all of its floral components and reminds me of toasted rice and bitter marigold. It’s really lovely in both its visual appeal and taste.

 

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Picture 1 from 15: Next, once the candy has hardened, it is cut into bite-sized pieces. The woman cutting the candy said that this is the hardest step to learn in the candy making process. She said it is easy to break the candy into tiny shards and not into nice slices.

In October, I blogged about a great shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood that hand makes hard candy called Papa Bubble.

The last time I was there, they were just finishing a batch of lollipops, but today I caught them earlier on in the process and photographed several of the steps involved in pulling sugar candy by hand. The candy makers were really fun to watch and chatted with me about where they learned to make candy while myself and several others observed. Pretty cool…

There is nothing better than holiday baking, so when I thought up a new seasonal take on  one of my favorite southern sweets–red velvet cake–I decided they were going to be on my list of desserts to make for Christmas!

Instead of making a basic red velvet layer cake with cream cheese frosting, I am going to bake little cupcakes and spice up the frosting with ground cinnamon.  I may even stack them to look like a Christmas tree!

Here’s a really simple recipe for red velvet cake to try.  And if you’d like to make cupcakes instead, simply line a muffin pan with paper baking cups, fill them about two-thirds full with the batter, and bake them for about 15-20 minutes.  For the cinnamon-flavored frosting, follow the recipe given and add ground cinnamon to taste (about a 1/2 tsp. at a time) after you’ve added the vanilla.

Last night I went out for a burger at a restaurant that prides itself in being something of a modern soda shop. They offer shakes, floats and sodas in a wide-array of flavors and combinations, most of which are pretty uncommon.

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When I saw pickled eggs on an appetizer menu this week, I had to order them. I’d never had them before and am always up for a new food experience. And am I glad that I did because they were delicious!

The eggs were hardboiled and then soaked in pickling liquid until they absorbed a good deal of vinegary flavor and a strangely pink exterior. Because of their pink color, I figured they were pickled in red wine vinegar. But, upon doing some research, I found that pickled eggs that have a pinkish hue are made by following a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch recipe using whole beets to tint the eggs.

I have a good friend who lives in NYC’s Chinatown neighborhood, so inevitably I find myself buying all sorts of different foodstuffs when I go to visit her.  It’s impossible for me to pass block after block of Chinese fruit stands and fish markets without finding something new to pique my interest.  This evening’s surprise, after a dinner of dim sum, happened to be a wooden stick of what looked to be candied apples.

The little skewer pierced through four little crab apples, dipped in a bright red hard candy coating, was way too tempting to pass up.  And once we arrived back at her apartment, we decided to cut into one to see just what lie underneath that shell.

Crab apples they were indeed!  However, they had been pickled!!!  A very startling discovery (that I may not want to have again…), considering the candy apples I grew up eating have always been sweet and juicy, not chewy and tart!

As I perused the shelves of a little gourmet food shop in my neighborhood, I came across a tube of remoulade sauce.  I was appalled.  I did not live in New Orleans, proud home of many a homemade remoulade-smothered dish, to find it neatly packaged in a tube reminiscent of toothpaste!

Of course, I had to try it.  So, of course I slapped down the $4.99 and bought it.

I hate to admit it, but to my surprise it wasn’t that bad.  It tasted like jarred tartar sauce.  I would never use it to substitute any remoulade sauce I’ve ever had before, but if I ever needed a portable and quick squeeze of sauce to don a child’s frozen fish sticks, this would certainly do the trick.