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NY Daily News link
Creative cooks use corner store to answer Bodega Challenge
By Rachel Wharton
Published: November 9, 2007
"It's amazing," says Sarah Gentile, "what a bodega can do for you."
She should know: The Greenpoint archivist took top honors for her "Pumpkin Gobble Gobble" in Wednesday night's first-ever Bodega Challenge, a cookoff to find the tastiest Thanksgiving side made from just $20 of corner store ingredients.
The late-night cooking contest, held in the back room of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn bar called Union Pool - kicked off the one-year anniversary of the Brooklyn Kitchen on Lorimer St., the neighborhood's sole kitchenware shop.
Owner Taylor Erkkinen had decided to celebrate her store's first birthday with a return to Williamsburg's culinary roots. Until recently, says Erkkinen of a dearth of local groceries in her nabe, "there was limited access to food after a certain hour."
Locals coming home after work often had to rely on their corner bodegas, she says, "improvising in response to food challenges."
This contest was a chance to see "how creative can people be," she suggests, "if they don't have truffle oil."
Pretty darn creative, it turns out, with entries like bacon-stuffed muffins, corn puddings, carrot and pumpkin soup, turkey shepherd's pie and a casserole made from broccoli, ham, cheese and Cajun spice instant ramen.
For just $15.18, Gentile found the ingredients at Buckley's corner store to make a pumpkin and marshmallow side dish decorated with a turkey made from cranberries (the body), apple slices (the tail feathers) and pistachios (the eyes).
The panel of judges - which included Erkkinen's husband and co-host Harry Rosenblum, the midtownlunch.com blogger Zach Brooks and Camille Becerra, a Greenpoint chef and a star on last season's "Top Chef" - pronounced it delicious, awarding Gentile the grand prize of a vintage casserole dish and a $75 gift certificate to the Brooklyn Kitchen.
But this was a bodega challenge, after all, and some contestants studded their dishes with processed cheese, potato chips and meat products that added plenty of kitsch factor and excess salt, rather than impressive flavor.
"Potato chips, Spam and beer," said Erkkinen, pointing to a table laden with bubbly cheese-topped casseroles, "is like the trifecta of bodega cuisine."
"This is food you want to buy drunk," joked emcee Matthew Carlin, "and food you want to eat drunk."
New York Times link
FOOD STUFF
Keeping Brooklyn in Pots and Pans
By FLORENCE FABRICANT
Published: November 22, 2006
Taylor Erkkinen, a former construction manager, and Harry C. Rosenblum, a lighting designer, like to cook. But in Greenpoint, where they live, and even in nearby Williamsburg, there were no shops selling high-quality cookware and other kitchen necessities.
''We wanted to do some canning and couldn't buy pectin or other stuff,'' Mr. Rosenblum said. ''We decided the neighborhood needed a cookware shop.''
So they opened the Brooklyn Kitchen, a no-frills place that is quite well stocked for now, and will have its racks and shelves filled with many more items as customers' requests are added to the cast-iron skillets, rolling pins, spatulas, baking dishes, cookie cutters, casseroles, electric appliances and assorted gadgets.
The store is set up to give cooking demonstrations:
Block Magazine link
Leave the Kitsch at Home
A Real Kitchen Store in Williamsburg
By CATHY ERWAY
Published: December 20, 2006
A red-faced Harry Rosenblum is wrangling fiercely with a turkey's leg. He grabs onto a bone and, with a pairing knife in his other hand, scrapes the flesh away, gently twisting the bone out of the carcass without disturbing its yellow elastic skin. A crowd of six to eight onlookers lean in over his shoulder to get a look, dodging the occasional microscopic spray of turkey.
While this scene may sound a bit like a high school biology lab, rejoice: the "students" are a motley crew of local Williamsburg friends, neighbors, and drop-in shoppers sipping from cups of wine and munching on small-batch pickles and cranberry relish as they "learn." Yep, it's just a free neighborhood event on how to de-bone a whole turkey.
"Where are you going to get your five-star anise and fresh nutmeg grater?" Taylor Erkkinen asks. Certainly not in Williamsburg, common sense would suggest-until now. Opened in October by the husband and wife team of Rosenblum and Erkkinen, Brooklyn Kitchen glows warmly from its non-retail Lorimer St. block in central Williamsburg. Its anterior gives way to a colorful array of merchandise, mostly cookware items and some specialty foods, such as Erkkinen's choice selection of fine teas. Further into the store, the atmosphere is undeniably that of a family kitchen.
"I didn't like how other kitchen stores in the city gave off this feeling of . . . unapproachable expertise," says Rosenblum. The cheery fully equipped kitchen inside represents the owners' goal: to become a truly neighborhood venue. Their class on de-boning a turkey was the first of what Rosenblum and Erkkinen hope will be many friendly community sessions and tastings, open to all. They also plan to bring more seasoned experts as well as integrate home recipes and family traditions into the agenda.
"We're amateurs, but we both love to cook," Rosenblum explains. "We wanted people to have a place to commune."
Indeed, both owners came into cooking and business owning late in their careers, fueled by their passion for quality neighborhood shopping, and, of course, food. Rosenblum still works in and teaches lighting designing while he operates the Brooklyn Kitchen. Erkkinen hails from a technical field as well: trained in engineering, she appreciates the science of cooking and the tools involved.
Only a few short weeks into the store's opening, Erkkinen and Rosenblum already see signs of their dream coming alive. The week that The New York Times released a story on bread making in the Dining & Wine section introducing a revelatory technique (by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery) of baking bread in a Dutch oven, customers flocked into the Brooklyn Kitchen to buy Dutch ovens. Rosenblum can't remember how many he sold that week. The most memorable part for him was a customer that came back the next day to share with the owners the bread he just baked in his new Dutch oven that he bought from them.
At the end of the turkey de-boning session, students fill their mouths with freshly roasted turkey with sage bread stuffing, and the entire store is filled with the aroma of Thanksgiving. If this sounds all too similar to a snapshot from one of your own holidays, then the Brooklyn Kitchen has succeeded. Now get cookin'!
Not Eating Out in NY link
The Brooklyn Kitchen takes apart de-boning a turkey
Published: November 19th, 2006
For any of you foodies living in or around Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there's finally a place where you can go and everybody knows your name. No, it's not a bar, it's a kitchenware and specialty foods shop called The Brooklyn Kitchen. I had the pleasure of watching the shop's first gathering this evening on "A Different Way to Bird": how to de-bone a turkey, just in time for Thanksgiving. I've noticed in magazines and cooking shows how popular this method has become as an alternative to roasting a whole turkey with bones. It takes a bit of skill with the knife, but after a quick informal session like the one The Brooklyn Kitchen offered, pretty much anyone can give it a go.
Now, de-boning a turkey is not an easy thing for me to explain on a blog post. But I can tell you that owners Harry Rosenblum and Taylor Erkkinen recommend using the leftover bones for a succulent turkey soup, and passed around a recipe for one. (Soon, you can go to their website and probably find these recipes but for now it's under construction.) Also on their menu for the night was a tangy cranberry salsa made with fresh cranberries and cilantro and served with chips, sample wedges of McClure's Pickles, and the finished, deboned turkey was brined in a bath McClure's Pickles brine and stuffed with a bread stuffing from the NYTimes. It was fun to watch Harry wiggle a boneless, whole bird back into its original shape on the counter, as if it had just turned into Gumby. And the turkey tasted great, but I have a feeling that Bob's pickles stole some of the show, and many of the customers bought a jar and got to chat up the humble salesman himself.
After just opening the store two weeks ago, Harry and Taylor tell me that their goal is to keep doing fun cooking sessions like these every month or so. (Check out their blog to find out when.) When the NYTimes article on the bread recipe by Jim Lahey of The Sullivan Street Bakery came out a week ago (the recipe that EVERYONE's been talking about), customers flocked to the store to buy dutch ovens. Many of which, in fact, were candid with Harry that they were buying the dutch ovens (previously an unheard-of appliance for breadmaking) for the first time in order to make that bread recipe. Harry gushes that even one customer came back to his shop the next day to show him the bread that he had made with his purchase and share some of it. That's the story with The Brooklyn Kitchen-it really is a community kitchen.
I'm feeling the not eating out love, and it's a warm and juicy feeling.
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