Old Fashioned Cherry Lime Rickey
Feel like escaping the heat and our nations’ economic lava meltdown? Happen to be in the mood for a Juke Box Saturday night? The experts say that during a recession? Especially during a hot summer day in Brooklyn, craving nostalgic treats is a completely normal phenomena. Even when it offers “all the comforts of home” from another world, one we can escape to! One which we never really knew! Budget friendly and easy on the eyes. Cheery Cherry Red.
Featured often in New York’s Time Out Magazine is Brooklyn’s “Tom’s Restaurant.” Escape the heat and all your troubles. Classic Burgers served, but they also serve up sass with a little lime on the glass in the form of the good ol’ fashioned Cherry Lime Rickey that maybe hep cats like Brando sipped in “On The Waterfront.” Goes down well with anything!
We Scream for Chocolate Egg Creams
When is the last time you even heard of a chocolate egg cream? First they have a disclaimer “Look Ma, no eggs and no cream,” so just what is it that is so quintessentially New York about a classic egg cream? Is it the old time seltzer bottles which are now museum artifacts? Or is it the old black and white movies where lovers are sippin’ sodas and tellin’ lies? Once upon a time during a visit back in 1975, they actually had seltzer on tap for free. You could just whoosh right up to the wall-ensconced taps, lean your glass up against the release tab and get super bubbly fresh seltzer. So club soda or seltzer seems ultra New York historically.
So what is an egg cream? It is a terrific summer dream drink and nothing is cooler. It’s basically always Foxes U-Bet Chocolate syrup, fresh creamy milk and seltzer. There is an elite group of egg cream architects, dedicated to its arts and connoisseurship. I was actually intimidated in my early 20’s! I snuck into a dark corner with my long double bulge chilled 16oz glass with my secret recipe. Often I hung my head in defeat as the perfect near capuchine white bubbly hood was smeared with flat disarray or lost its pristine two tone perfection. Practice like a luncheonette counter duelist preparing for a throwdown eventually gave way to confidence.
Counter Culture Coffee
Direct Trade Certified beans of beauty with a hip name and a clever game.
I attended a Counter Coffee Culture tasting at Dean and Deluca recently, but I only got to try out a few. Here are the specs from Dean and Deluca’s online catalog for “Ndaroini-Nyeri … a Kenyan coffee is intensely flavorful, exquisitely rich, and bound by rules of law that make its purchase complicated to say the least. Our buyers are undeterred, seeking out the most flavorful ’single lots’ at auction directly from the farms that produce them. These pure, unblended coffee beans yield the Ndaroini-Nyeri coffee: bright, intense, with notes of blackcurrant, tropical fruit and dark chocolate. Born of beans directly purchased for a fair price from the farmers who grew them.” Now can you say this three times? Thank goodness you don’t have to….
I found it hard to resist the intelligent process Counter Culture Coffee projects, so I delved a bit deeper on their website to find they are a veritable National
Geographic spread of expansive collaborations. Their team of Coffee People enjoy the cultural exchange of traveling anywhere from the Asia & The Pacific to Africa where locals might be bedecked in a brilliant plumage of feathers and leaves or wrapped in silk and satin head dresses of Sumatra stylings. I would be much too sleepy at first, to pronounce their “Doluk Sanggul” Sumatra coffee, but I would like to try it!
The Triple Phoenix Ice Cream Sundae Recipe
The year of the Ox is already inspiring some sumptuous desserts. There is some exotic phoenix ice cream tea action going on here! This triple decker tea infused beauty has tea imbued throughout the dessert in all possible glorious forms.
The crystal sculptured amber and turquoise designed vessel brings to mind a sugar sculpture from the Food Network concocted by a calligraphy sugar wizard. Feng Shui of earthy yet delicate pu’er tea jelly. The first layer is made of a cave aged tea called pu’er, which has a luxurious plummy, smoky cacao mystical tea flavor blended into a jelly. Once with an Imperial Dian Hong, hand made, yummy Yunnan tea, Greg Glancy, founder of Norbu Tea was kind enough to send me (which added just the slight perfect zing of astringency). I also tried it with some rich ripe pu’er tea. (I will tell you more about Pu’er tea later, also from Norbu Tea out of Texas! I did not take this photo! I made this dessert, however, in a lovely elongated martini glass. The glass did not come in Giancarla’s email with this wonderful recipe. Thank you.
The second layer is an aromatic rose ice cream made of Chinese rose scented spirits (wine called mei qui lu jiu) and Mei Qui rose tea. I also made following the succinct royal orders of Giancarla from Milan. It is simply divine and seems to chase all the worries of last year away like a phoenix. The third layer is a subtle, creamy ecru jasmine cream which echoes it subtle perfume beautifully. There is a buttery layer sugared lightly caramel with a little lolliope of nutty lotus seeds. The feather in the treasure is the exotic cocoa singed, 5 spice dusted fire feather leaf.
Molto Bella! Whomever did you get this recipe from? Giancarla’s coutour tea sundae, she asks. She will never tell! Tailor up a coutour Phoenix Tea Empress Sundae, and you will feel as if a Valentine Venus di Milo, whom arose in an Armani Empress makeover! Thank you Giancarla for sending your recipe. Are you sure you are not friends with Giada and an Emperor?
Leaf… a British Tea Company
Within the United States, there currently exists an array of tea merchants, both online and off. However, this doesn’t stop me from looking abroad as well. I have been known to receive packages from England, France and beyond.
One delicious little company, that I consider to have aced creativity and quality when it comes to tea and related gifts, is Leaf in London. They offer 100% natural, whole leaf, hand packed teas and herbal infusions. Founded in 2005 by a woman named Delphine, a veteran of the food and beverage industries, this small tea company works hard to keep things unique.
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