Two weeks ago, I posted about my impending trip to NYC, and asked for your advice and suggestions. Little did I know how overwhelming the response would be! Dozens upon dozens of recommendations for restaurants, stores, bars, sights, etc.

Such a wealth of knowledge could not go uncompiled, so I worked on putting together a little C&Z Readers’ Guide to NYC for your perusal and enjoyement. I hope it is as useful to you — NYers and non-NYers alike — as it will be to me!

[It’s not so easy editing a guide for a city one doesn’t know, so please feel free to tell me if you happen to see anything that’s incorrect in there! And I will work on adding more addresses, websites and phone numbers when I get a chance.]

Now, on to the next topic: the NYC get-together! If you would like a chance to meet fellow C&Z readers and myself, meet us on Sunday 19 at 5pm in the bar area at Otto. It shouldn’t be too crowded at that time, so we should have room to drink, nibble and mingle to our hearts’ content!

When: Sunday 19, 2005
What time: 5pm
Where: the bar area at Otto
Address: One Fifth Avenue, NYC
Phone: 212-995-9559
Confirmation, question? Leave a comment here or email me!

It may have become apparent by now just how much I love sandwiches, and it is always cause for elation to discover a new source for superior sandwich indulgence.

Bellota-Bellota is a store in the 7th that specializes in fine food products from Spain and also operates as an upscale tapas bar. A string of such venues opened a few years ago when the Paris food scene realized with a start that gastronomy did not stop at the Pyrenées — all things Iberian have been riding that trendy wave ever since. The company behind Bellota-Bellota, called Byzance, has a few locations in and around Paris, including a corner inside Lafayette Gourmet, the food area of the Galeries Lafayette department store.

I was there just the other day, it was lunchtime, I was hungry, and their bocadillos (bocadillo simply means “sandwich” in Spanish) looked like the perfect option. A glance at the little menu confirmed the intuition, describing the bocadillo with the following:

“Un pain au naturel farine biologique, cuit au feu de bois comme autrefois. De fines tranches de palette de Pata Negra. L’écrasée de tomates maison à l’huile d’olive Arbequina, fabriquée en Catalogne. Quelques pétales de manchego au lait cru des brebis manchega. Un trait d’huile d’olive.”

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[A Sandwich for Dessert]

“Un Sandwich pour le Dessert” is a project I worked on for Fraîch’Attitude, a Parisian gallery that specializes in Eat Art. Eat Art is an offshoot of ephemeral art that uses food as its primary material: some of the exhibitions are actually edible and are meant to disappear into the visitors’ stomachs, to be recreated the next day.

The gallery just opened a new exhibition yesterday around the theme Picnic, and a couple of months ago I was asked to submit something (“anything! you decide!”) for the exhibition’s catalog, which also serves as a cahier de style — a reflection of current trends and inspirations.

I decided to create visual recipes for four simple dessert sandwiches, easy to make and easy to pack, for a colorful picnic on a nearby patch of grass or on the floorboards of your living-room. (Click on the names to view the recipe.)

– Le Club-sandwich Framboise et Crème de Gianduja: sandwich bread + gianduioso (or nutella) + raspberries = raspberry and gianduioso club-sandwich.

– Le Sandwich Petit Beurre à la Fraise: strawberries + petit suisse + butter cookies = strawberry cookie sandwich.

– Le Petit Pain Amandes et Mirabelles: plums cooked with a little sugar + toasted almonds + a mini loaf of bread = plum and almond mini-bread.

– La Brioche Figue et Citron: lemon curd + a pretty brioche + figs = fig and lemon brioche.

When Pim suggested we food bloggers try and raise some funds for the tsunami relief effort, her idea was that we would jointly create a twelve course menu of Southeast Asian inspiration, complete with recipes, drink pairings and translations. It is not my habit to let the big bad thnigs of the world take up too much space on C&Z (I think of it as a sheltered little place and I don’t think anyone comes here to know about my political opinions), but this is a highly worthy cause and I loved Pim’s idea.

In creating this Menu For Hope and posting it on our blogs today, we would like to invite all of our readers to donate something, however small, to the charity we have chosen to support: Unicef. The media will likely loose all interest in this catastrophe very soon, but of course (and you don’t need me to tell you that) the people who have lost everything can still use our help.

The full menu (with links to all other recipes) can be found here.

I volunteered to create an appetizer, and promptly started to chip my nailpolish with worry. Although I enjoy Asian food very much when I eat out, I know very little about cooking it myself: I have just a tiny bit of humble experience with Japanese cooking, but none whatsoever when it comes to Southeast Asian gastronomy.

I thus make no claim as to the authenticity of my mini summer rolls — can I just call them fusion and run with it? But what I can certainly vouch for is their delicious taste and pretty presentation. Filled with aromatic components (mushrooms, coriander, basil, peanut, shrimp), they have a very clean, very fresh taste, beautifully complemented by the dipping sauce.

They were also a lot of fun to make, if a little tricky because of the rolling skills they required: interestingly enough, my first rolls were almost perfect, but after two or three I started thinking about the technique too much and I suddenly had much more trouble getting them to look right. So my advice to you is: tell that left brain to shut up while you roll!

They will make fabulous finger food (as generally observed, boys will cram them in their mouths in one swift bite, girls in two or three dainty ones), but since they are somewhat time-consuming to prepare, I would avoid making them for too big a party unless a) you’re the fastest roll-roller in the universe or b) you can enroll fellow rollers to help you out. And of course, you could also roll them in larger rice-paper rounds (but that would take out the “mini” in “mini summer rolls”).

As for your donation, click on the button above to get to the Just Giving website that was set up for the occasion (Just Giving is a trusted service for online fund-raising). And remember, give as little or as much as you can afford, every coin helps. Thank you!

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