Cat Bites and Fruit and Pizza -- Oh My!

I am going to make an attempt to not write this blog like a schizophrenic person but I make no promises as a lot went down today and it actually makes me tired just thinking about it. To start, today I was bit by Princess the pet store cat and it really hurts. Still. I am not happy with Joe the pet store man but what can you expect from a girl-cat? One minute she was purring and licking, then next minute she bit my thumb. Needless to say, she and I are friends off.

Next on the roster was school today. Whole man, what a schmozel. Each of the groups in the class made five different things with fruit. Our group made candied grapefruit peel, poached pineapple, strawberry salad with balsamic and basil, roasted apples and dried pears -- like I said, schmozel. Due to the fact that there are only so many places in which to plug in induction burners in the kitchen (because, I don't know if I've mentioned this but our classroom doesn't have a cook top, it just has induction burners -- which are awesome) our group had to combine with another group (which makes five people in a group...ahem) and it was pretty crowded. Due to the fact that the others in the group were totally not paying attention to the chef's instructions, I made the executive decision to start on one of the recipes separate from the group and really just focus on that recipe and on measuring ingredients and washing dishes and correcting the mistakes that were made because of the not listening instead of standing with the rest of the group and moving at a snail's pace. Therefore, I will share with you how to make candied citrus peel and not how to make the rest of the smorgasbord that was prepared in Kitchen 501 today...

So to begin it is best to cut the top and bottom off the fruit and then quarter the fruit to make it easier to remove the peel from whatever kind of citrus you are using, be it grapefruit, lemon or orange. you want to leave all that pith-y white stuff behind. Then, after you have removed the peel, slice the rind into strips and place it in a pot with enough water to cover it all. Then, bring the water to boil, drain the rinds and fill up the pot and repeat the boiling process three more times. After the last boiling, you remove the rind from the water, empty the water and make a very concentrated simple syrup (about 4 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar...Not diabetic friendly) and bring the syrup to a boil and then add the peel back into the syrup and simmer it until the peels turn translucent and become tender. In the recipe, this was meant to take about three hours, for our group, it took about 45 minutes. As our chef said, 'don't pay attention to the paper, pay attention to the pot'. So then, you let the rinds and syrup cool overnight and then I don't know what to do with them because, obviously, it hasn't been overnight; but I do know that our chef said we could sugar them...

After the fruit marathon at school, Collin picked me up and we did a fair amount of touring about our Chelsea neighbourhood. We went to the Chelsea Market, which is an amazing and very overwhelming (especially when you are hungry and there are strangers getting far too close to you) old brick building that is home to both the Food Network and a lot of other specialty food stores, bakeries, wine shops, butchers, fish mongers, etc. After Chelsea Market made me hungry, Collin and I decided to go out on this lovely New York evening for a real New York slice of pizza in The West Village. Man alive was it busy in the Village this evening. Between the men in skirts (not kilts, actual skirts) and the women wearing bunny rabbit face-masks, it was definitely an eclectic selection of diners who joined us at the very busy Keste pizza on Bleecker Street. A girl in my class recommended the place to me and after a Very long wait, our pizzas were very good. Collin had the pizza with basil, fresh cherry tomatoes, burrata (uber-fresh buffalo mozzarella) and olive oil and I had a pizza with marinara sauce, arugula, mozzarella, prosciutto and olive oil -- his was better though and so I made him share.

We had a little gelato on our way home and though it is a nice night out in New York, we were a little walked-out and also a little crowded out for the evening. However, this weekend the forecast is for pure sunshine and so I can hardly wait to get out there and explore and then come back to our cozy apartment and do a little piping. Stay tuned y'all!