BOOOOO my sister is trying to steal my thunder by starting her own food blog!!!!! Well what can I say, she’s the one that inspired me to be more serious with photography. Go check her blog out!

I was walking around the West Village the other day when I found myself in front of Murray’s Cheese. Strange as it may sound, I had never been to Murray’s, though I had heard a lot of great things about it.

To my delight, Murray’s sells much more than cheese (although they have plenty of great cheeses). I treated myself to a container of Siggi’s Skyr, which is an Icelandic yogurt-like product. I got the plain version, which was like the creamiest, richest yogurt you’ve ever eaten, with zero fat. I also got some great pasta — nice fresh potato gnocchi, and some dried orrichiette.

Here’s what I did with the orrichiette — I added the boiled pasta to some cabbage and shitakes in olive oil and butter, with salt, pepper and a hot chile (don’t forget to add some of the pasta cooking water towards the end). The result was rich, buttery and wonderful and the orrichiette was nice and chewy.

Oh, I also picked a brick of parmesan cheese while I was at Murray’s. It is a cheese shop, after all. I didn’t use it on this pasta, however. The flavors were spot on already.

Murray’s Cheese — 254 Bleecker St.

Jess & Garrett were not wowed by Amazing 66 in Chinatown, despite the name of the restaurant. Click the quote for the full write-up.

It didn’t live up to its name — or our memories of meals at Hunan Gourmet and Panda Garden — but we’d still go back.

Secret Suppers falls into a specific category of books for me: I liked it a lot, but I don’t think it’s a particularly good book. Does that make any sense? Jenn Garbee, the author, ate dinner at private supper clubs and underground restaurants in places as diverse as a tiny Brooklyn apartment and a field on a California farm. The food writing is not so great, but the fun of her experiences comes through clearly. All of the “restaurants” are products of people who started out cooking for friends until things got too popular and expensive to cook for free. All of the people have interesting stories to tell, so it almost doesn’t matter that the food is not always great. It’s more about the experience than the food.

Cabbage has been on my mind a lot lately, and I’m not sure why. I recently watched an old episode of the Japanese “Iron Chef,” and also saw this great looking recipe over at the Amateur Gourmet. At the market this morning one of the vendors had these perfect little heads of cabbage — I don’t know if it comes through in the photo, but these are about the size of a large grapefruit.

Cabbage is often associated with poverty, and maybe that’s ok — it’s cheap and versatile. I think kimchee may be my favorite cabbage application, but it’s good in soups, or sauteed in butter, or shredded into a curry.

Tucked away among the ethnic markets and discount stores in Greenpoint is Papacitos, which purports to sell “Mexican street food in Brooklyn.” Papacitos is different than the other restaurants I visited during the Brooklyn Goes Veg! week. It is the only restaurant that I went to that was not exclusively vegetarian, and it was also much busier than any of the other restaurants I went to. I wonder if there is a connection between those two things?

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