Last week, I was lucky enough to take someone’s spot in a meat butchering class held by Pat LaFrieda at The Kitchen, NYC. Pat LaFrieda’s meat is really famous in the New York region and they supply lots of restaurants their beef, lamb and pork. If you’ve had the black label burger from Minetta Tavern, you’ve had Pat LaFrieda’s delicious combination of short rib, skirt steak and brisket. Pat LaFrieda is a third generation meat purveyor and knows everything you’d ever want to know about cows – he was super nice and gave a really in depth tutorial on beef. Some photos from the class:
Pat brought in one of the hind legs of the cow (it was delivered the previous day from South Dakota):
Showing off some marbling:
The final product:
After Pat showed us how to butcher the cow, we sampled some beef tartare and put on our aprons so we could butcher a beef shank. We all set up at our stations with our aprons, gloves and beef shanks:
We had to cut around the bone to remove the meat and then we seasoned it with sage, rosemary, salt and pepper, and tied the shank together with twine:
Tying the beef with twine was actually the most difficult part – Pat taught us how to tie it but it was much more difficult for me than I anticipated….I had to watch him more than four times before I finally got the hang of it or created my own knot that passed as something similar to his.
The bone, after I was through with it:
I cooked the beef shank for our Superbowl party and it was so delicious – we made a lot of cilantro rice and ended up creating our own burrito bowls with homemade salsa, too! It was such a fun class and they’re doing more – I definitely want to sign up for the pork and lamb classes!
By
grace.g.yang
· February 7, 2012
Under:
Asian,
Dinner,
Korean On Saturday night, Hana and Hughie invited us to their home for dinner – Hana spent all day preparing a wonderful Korean meal:
She also made a dish I really love; a Korean seafood pancake, pajeon, which she explained was actually a countryside comfort food that wasn’t big in the city:
We had a lot of fun at dinner and while the boys went off to their secret room to play video games, Hana and I talked about her wedding planning, looked at the table arrangements, and played with her seriously adorable puppy, Ippuni:
I am SUPER SUPER excited to write this post – Georgetown Cupcake is opening a new store in New York next week and they were kind enough to send me cupcakes for my superbowl party! I’ve never been to Georgetown Cupcake but have seen their show on TLC and always love seeing how successful the two sisters have become from making delicious cupcakes. Even their mom is a part of their show (she is so cute, too). They also seem like really great people and I even watched the ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ special when Katherine got married and her sister, Sophie, helped make her beautiful cupcake display at her reception!
Georgetown Cupcake usually has super long lines (well, at least on the show when they’re taping!) The cupcakes are really cute and they use great ingredients – Madagascar bourbon vanilla, Valrohna chocolate, and European sweet cream butter – they sent over two dozen for a special Saturday delivery:
Ken and I had just finished our first personal training session in the morning and when we arrived back home, the two boxes were waiting for us at our front door! I was very excited – look at their beautiful packaging!
When I took them back to the apartment, I opened them right away (Ken said I was very excited because I didn’t even bother taking off my jacket!):
Their packaging is seriously so adorable – they don’t use any preservatives in their cupcakes so they recommend eating them right away or freezing them. We didn’t have to worry about freezing them….we were worried that they wouldn’t last the entire day!
I love the font they use on their boxes:
The almost-too-cute-to-eat cupcakes:
The cupcakes are all topped with Superbowl-themed fondant: some have Manning’s jersey, some have Brady’s jersey, and the last third have footballs that are dusted with gold! The chocolate cupcakes are filled with chocolate ganache and their moist, not too sweet, and seriously wonderful.
I can’t wait until their shop opens in New York!
By
grace.g.yang
· January 26, 2012
Under:
Wedding Remember my top five wedding dress workouts post? Well, I have one more to add to the list and it might be the best. I had been going to Body by Simone for a bit but it started getting tough to get to the location (26th and 11th), especially when it was too cold to bike there. I emailed my friend, Denise, because she used to train with Tracy Anderson (you can actually read her testimonial here), and asked her if the Tracy Anderson Method was really an amazing workout…but she said that she’s doing a new workout, AKT in Motion.
AKT in Motion was started by Anna Kaiser, who is an amazing person that exudes confidence and energy when she dances and is the sweetest dance instructor I’ve ever met. I went to a class with Denise and it was absolutely amazing! Right now, Anna is renting out space in Tribeca while her studio is being built in Soho (which will be finished sometime next year). The Saturday classes are an hour and a half and you do a total body workout – intense cardio, weights, abs and lots of butt work. The class starts with learning a dance routine mixed with jumping jacks, weights, and stretching. By the end of class, you take turns in groups going over the dance you just learned. It’s an empowering class and is also really fun – and you can lost up to 800 calories per class!
Anna just got married (as in, over the weekend) but I was telling her that I would love to do a wedding program for both my engagement photos and my wedding. She was head over heels over the idea (especially when she asked me for my current fitness and eating routine and I explained to her how I don’t work out and I was trying a diet that was really unhealthy) – and immediately told me to sign up for a month of classes. I’m going to attend classes 5 times a week (I just finished my first week!) and I’ll be reporting my progress here. We took measurements and photographs last Wednesday – I’ll post them once I get them from the trainer. I’m really excited to write about my progress here – toning up and getting healthy the right way!
By
grace.g.yang
· January 20, 2012
Under:
Pizza 
On Friday, Seth and I met up for dinner at Nicoletta, a Michael White pizza joint in the East Village. It opened up not too long ago and is much more casual thank Chef White’s other restaurants, Ai Fiori and Marea. Seth and I have been friends since college and I thought he was living in Hong Kong for the past few months because when we were sending emails back and forth, he said he moved to HK (Hell’s Kitchen, NOT Hong Kong). I just assumed he moved to Hong Kong because he was moving up in the fashion world and I thought he was asked to move there for manufacturing or something! At dinner, we were laughing about the confusion and promised to meet up more often.
We were there pretty early and sat next to Michael White’s daughter and his father. The restaurant is named after his daughter (her middle name is Nicoletta, which is such an adorable name) and she was pretty cute the entire night, especially when she went to the kitchen to get some soft-serve gelato from the chefs! Chef White’s dad is from Wisconsin and recommended that we order the Carbonara pizza, which is obviously what we ordered – how can you not order what the owner’s own father was ordering? We started with a small appetizer – the suppli’ (risotto, pimosale cheese and pork ragu):
I couldn’t really taste the risotto, more of the pork ragu, but they had a good crispy texture. For our main course, we initially wanted to split the pizza into two different pizzas (which is what Michael’s dad recommended) but then the waitress said we couldn’t do that…so we decided to order the Carbonara:
The Carbonara pizza comes with roasted cauliflower, green onion, pancetta, cheese and egg yolk drizzled across every piece. The tables all have these pizza holders that are built-in so the servers just bring the trays over and the pizza is perfectly presented at every table. I love carbonara pasta because of the creamy egg yolk that’s added at the end of cooking and the pizza at Nicoletta was just as good in a different presentation – the crust of the pizza was so crispy and slightly salted and the creaminess of the egg yolk really added to the flavor of the pizza. We both really enjoyed the pizza and couldn’t finish because it was also slightly heavy, so I’m glad we shared the pie.
Nicoletta also serves soft-serve gelato and you can add different toppings (50 cents each topping) and they all sounded really good, especially the stone fruit that was macerated in liqueur, but we were so stuffed that we had to pass. They deliver and have all types of pizzas (but you can also make your own pizza if you don’t like any of the toppings). A lot of people think the crust is too heavy, but I think it’s just right. You should try it out and save room for the gelato. We will definitely be back!
