After eating at Sheep Station, my friends Jess and Garrett recommended that we get a slice of pie at Four and Twenty Blackbirds. They both raved about it, particularly about the salted caramel apple pie. To our dismay we found the shop closed, and we continued on our way. I mentioned it to Donny, and we decided to go there one day. A few days later I was at Prospect Park when I got a text message from Donny: “Pie at black birds?” By the time I got there, though, one of the servers was crossing out the flavors of pie that were no longer available. In fact she was crossing out ALL of the pies, including “and more’ except one: buttermilk chess pie.

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For this week I wanted to eat fish and just so happens Jamie Oliver has a super simple recipe for fish pie. The recipe seems very flexible because he said you can use cheap fish or more fish or less fish or expensive fish maybe add some shrimps or maybe not. While watching the video, he does make it seem very quick and easy but I’m not very good at grating things. Maybe my grater sucks or it’s me but damn took me forever to grate everything. I also found it easier to mix not in the pan but in a bowl. I felt one side had more cheese than the other.

I ended up using catfish because those were the cheapest at my local fish shop. I bought a bag of spinach instead of baby spinach and did he say lemon? I think so. So after all the grating and chopping and mixing it was ready for the mashed potatoes to go on top. I was suppose to have enough mashed potatoes to cover the whole pan but I didn’t, it barely covered the pan with few pieces of spinach sticking out. Oh well can’t do nothing about it.

The results, Mo seem to like it a lot but I thought it needed a little bit more seasoning but overall it was pretty good. The written version of the recipe said to serve it with ketchup and thats what I did. I think that night I ate about 2 people’s worth of fish pie.

And here I go again, back at the Milk Bar. After dinner at Ippudo, which my friend asked me to compare their pork buns with Momofuku’s and in the end I preferred the bun from Momofuku but did like the spicy mayo from Ippudo, I decided to go to the Milk Bar. It was just a quick walk anyways.

I went with Anh and she got the crack pie. I was thinking about the banana cake but then I saw the cinnamon bun pie. Hmm I love cinnamon buns. When I ordered it, the cashier asked if I was going to eat there or to go. I said there. He asked because they needed to heat it up if I was to dine in. After 5 minutes they handed me a warm box. I open it up to find the slice of cinnamon bun pie. Oh nice and warm. YUM. It was pretty good, good cinnamony and would’ve went well with a cup of coffee. I also got a slice of the chocolate malt cake with marshmallow. It was pretty good, I could taste the malt in it.

- Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar 207 2nd Ave New York

Oh Thanksgiving oh Thanksgiving. Why did you have to be over so soon. For the past 2-3 years I have spent my Thanksgiving vacation down in Virginia at my friend’s parent’s place. It felt like an actual vacation. But this year I stayed in NYC and went to a little Thanksgiving dinner my 2 friends were having. It was fun and all but it went by too quickly. Another thing I did different this year was that I made something for Thanksgiving dinner. Since I wasn’t at my friend’s parent’s place I emailed his mom to get her recipes for the apple pie and candied yams. To bring a little bit of what I was missing about Thanksgiving to this dinner.
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Despite growing up in what is nominally the South, I’ve never even considered making a pecan pie. Sure, I’ve eaten my fair share of it; in fact, the grandmother of one of my cousins makes the best pecan pies I’ve ever eaten (sometimes she adds chocolate chips to the pie, which is pretty mind-blowing). When I went to visit my parents recently, a friend of theirs (who happens to live in South Carolina) had given them a huge bag of pecans from the tree in her yard. My mom suggested making a pecan pie with them, and so we went for it.

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