Sunday, November 22, 2009

Arepa!

When scouring Manhattan a few weeks ago for an interesting place to go to dinner, I ended up not at the trendy new restaurant in Meatpacking... but at the tiny Caracas Arepa Bar in East Village. Becky, I'd never heard of an arepa before- have been seriously missing out. The corn cake is slightly thicker than a tortilla and ten times as crunchy. Normally I'd say the filling is the best part but really, it was the hot cake that tastes like cornbread with the texture of a tortilla (kind of). Sadly, no arepas at home... hoping someone will open a Venezuelan or Colombian restaurant soon!

(L-R)- Pork arepa, chicken and avacado arepa, black bean/white cheese arepa.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Salted Lemons

So I tried a salted lemon last weekend... it was sliced around my plate of braised lamb shank at a Moroccan restaurant called the Sultan's Tent in Toronto. The meat itself was the melt-in-your-mouth variety, with underpinnings of cinnamon and paprika. So I thought a bite of lemon would be a complement. I should have known better... I don't like olives because of their saltiness... what did I think a salted lemon would be? Actually, it was worse than salty- it was sour, salty, pungent in almost a sickening way. Honestly, it was easier to eat pig lung in China...
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The Salted Lemon by Anna Fishman and Becky Ong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.