New York City: Cuban and Eataly

Last week I went to New York for a job interview and stayed with my dear friend Alexis and her adorable boyfriend Alfredo. I can't post about New York and leave out the incredible Cuban food!

These two live in the West Village, and when I requested Cuban food, I was in luck! We went to an adorable place right down the street, ordered in Spanish (ok fine, Alfredo did most of the ordering), and enjoyed the delicious flavors! I got my all-time favorites; arroz con pollo, sweet fried plantains, and a mojito (claro!). I loved the black olives in the main dish, and have to say that leftovers the next day were equally as delicious!

The next day after my interview I had some time to explore so I decided to hit up Eataly, a large indoor market with the finest ingredients for Italian dining. The best part of the market is that you can peruse the different sections while enjoying a delicious glass of wine! The presentation of everything is really beautiful and certainly encourages you to buy and eat as much as possible.

One day I will master the formatting of this blog, but for now I just threw all of the photos up to show just a touch of the variety there. Everywhere I turned, I saw something that looked even more delicious than the last section, which made it really difficult to make a decision! I will definitely go back again now that I know where to focus; cheese, desserts, pasta, pizza...basically all of it :)

Rainbow Chopped Salad

Jamie sent me a link to a rainbow chopped salad that looked beautiful so I headed to Whole Foods to get the ingredients to recreate:

Ingredients:

dressing

• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
• 1/2 tablespoon honey
• 1/4 cup hazelnut oil or extra-virgin olive oil (I used olive oil)

salad

• 6 cups chopped romaine hearts
• 4 cups sliced red cabbage
• 1 large Fuji apple, halved, cored, diced
• 1 Asian pear, halved, cored, diced
• 1 mango, peeled, diced, or 2 Fuyu persimmons, peeled, seeded, diced (I used the most deliciously ripe mango!)
• 3/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted, husked, coarsely chopped (This was a fun task! I asked Chris to help peel them once they were toasted)
• 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds (Whole Foods was fresh out of pomegranate seeds so I substituted a clementine :))
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (optional, but definitely makes the salad. Get a good one!)

I definitely recommend trying this out with some combination of the above. It just takes a few minutes to chop everything up but the end result is a beautiful and healthy rainbow salad!