Fresh Fish

I love chinatown. Nothing excites my afternoons more than making a trip to chinatown. I get so happy with all the noise and smells and hustle that it makes me feel like a tourist even after 20 years of living here. Today it was to get tilapia which I crusted with herbs and tortilla chips with a gratin of potatoes with shredded beet greens. The fish is so light and tasty and the crunchiness of the tortilla chips and corn flavor give it a nice and subtle boost, and its hard to mess up taters so these were a little creamy and a lot tasty.

Someone had the brilliant idea to paint some of the mail boxes to look like R2D2's and I love it. My only complaint would be that they are the same, it would be so cool if they were different D2 units each unique.

Oh and the Empire State building was awesome with these fairy tale clouds.

Last night I had a snack of fried plantains with sour cream, and refried black bean tacos on blue corn tortillas with a salsa made with tomatillos and serano chiles with pork rinds (the really good ones from the cuchifrito stores). The pork rinds get really soft and really delicious soaking in the salsa and even though this looks gooey and kind of gross the flavor made up for the lack of positive visuals.

I guess I should try to explain what a cuchifrito is - NYC has these little food stores that sell hispanic foods like pasteles and bacalao and pork rinds to name just a few and the slang name for these kinds of stores is "cuchifrito" pronounced - coo-chi-frito, and thats about all I know besides the fact that I enjoy their offerings.