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Famous Amy Thomas Quotes

“We window-shopped along Court Street, the closest thing Brooklyn has to Manhattan, perusing the indie clothing boutiques, bookstores, and Italian bakeries, and stopped at Frankies 457 Spuntino, a casual Italian restaurant that every young Brooklynite loves, to pound fresh ricotta, gnocchi, and meatballs. Afterward, I dragged us ten blocks out of the way to hit up Sugar Shop, a modern-retro candy store I loved, to load up on malt balls and gummies. We strolled the magnificent blocks of Victorian homes and green lawns in Ditmas Park, as if suddenly transported from the city's whirl to a faraway college town, perusing the rhubarb, Bibb lettuces, and buckets of fresh clams at the farmers' market, before demolishing fried egg sandwiches on ciabatta at the Farm on Adderly, one of the boroughs now-prolific farm-to-table restaurants. We shared pizza at Franny's: one red, one white, both pockmarked with giant charred blisters from the exceedingly hot brick oven. In a borough known for its temples of pizza worship, before it closed in the summer of 2017, Franny's was right up there, owing to the perfect flavors oozing from each simple ingredient, from the milky mozzarella to the salty-sweet tomato sauce to the briny black olives.”

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Book:Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
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“I obviously love Jack the Horse Tavern in Brooklyn Heights. The smoked trout salad is what lures me back again and again; it's indicative of the offbeat menu that also includes baked eggs, buckwheat pancakes, and a shrimp club sandwich. Everything at the Farm on Adderly is fresh and tasty. This Ditmas Park pioneer keeps it simple and refined: a smoked pollock cake with harissa mayonnaise, french toast with apple compote, and a kale salad with dried cherries and hazelnuts. Yes, please! Tucked away in the north of ever-popular DUMBO, Vinegar Hill House feels like you've actually trekked to Vermont. In the rustic ambiance, you can indulge in fancy cocktails along with the oversized sourdough pancake, tarragon-accented omelet, or eggs Benedict topped with pickled onion. Buttermilk Channel is the ultimate indulgence- pecan pie french toast, Provençal bean stew, a house-cured lox platter. Because of the over-the-top menu and portions, this Carroll Gardens bistro hops all day, every Sunday.”

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Book:Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
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“Four & Twenty is a seasonal bakeshop- it is Brooklyn, after all, where seasonal, local, and sustainable are the altars at which all foodies worship. The sisters aren't opposed to experimenting with off-season or foraged ingredients but prefer following the popular credo that just so happened to also be their grandma's philosophy: "It just feels better," Emily explains. "Local is so much better and tastier." While they constantly develop new recipes- honey rosemary shoofly, chocolate bourbon mint, strawberry kefir lime- there is one fan favorite that the Elsens make year round: the salted caramel apple pie. In a show of romanticism, Andrew and I decided to split a slice. Apple pie takes many forms: chunky fruit or dainty slices, oozing with juices, laden with spices, crumbly tops, and moist middles. Without even taking a bite, I knew this was going to be special. The thinly sliced apple rings- visible from the side but obscured from above by thick, sugar-dusted latticework- were densely stacked. Along with a commitment to seasonal fruit and local ingredients, the sisters are hell-bent on having an all-butter crust. "A good crust is a mark of someone who's paid a lot of attention and who cares about what they're making," Emily insists. They don't use Crisco or lard, no margarine or hot oil- just pure butter with a titch of apple cider vinegar to add a little tang, tenderness, and the right flake. Andrew let me take the first bite. The pie had a perfect amount of give. It was soft and juicy, but not soggy (the downfall of promising slices in lesser hands). Neither sweet nor tart, the salted caramel enrobed the fruit and added a note of savoriness. As promised, the crust was killer.”

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Book:Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
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“Every once in a while at a restaurant, the dish you order looks so good, you don't even know where to begin tackling it. Such are HOME/MADE's scrambles. There are four simple options- my favorite is the smoked salmon, goat cheese, and dill- along with the occasional special or seasonal flavor, and they're served with soft, savory home fries and slabs of grilled walnut bread. Let's break it down: The scramble: Monica, who doesn't even like eggs, created these sublime scrambles with a specific and studied technique. "We whisk the hell out of them," she says, ticking off her methodology on her fingers. "We use cream, not milk. And we keep turning them and turning them until they're fluffy and in one piece, not broken into bits of egg." The toast: While the rave-worthiness of toast usually boils down to the quality of the bread, HOME/MADE takes it a step further. "The flame char is my happiness," the chef explains of her preference for grilling bread instead of toasting it, as 99 percent of restaurants do. That it's walnut bread from Balthazar, one of the city's best French bakeries, doesn't hurt. The home fries, or roasted potatoes as Monica insists on calling them, abiding by chefs' definitions of home fries (small fried chunks of potatoes) versus hash browns (shredded potatoes fried greasy on the griddle) versus roasted potatoes (roasted in the oven instead of fried on the stove top): "My potatoes I've been making for a hundred years," she says with a smile (really, it's been about twenty). The recipe came when she was roasting potatoes early on in her career and thought they were too bland. She didn't want to just keep adding salt so instead she reached for the mustard, which her mom always used on fries. "It just was everything," she says of the tangy, vinegary flavor the French condiment lent to her spuds. Along with the new potatoes, mustard, and herbs de Provence, she uses whole jacket garlic cloves in the roasting pan. It's a simple recipe that's also "a Zen exercise," as the potatoes have to be continuously turned every fifteen minutes to get them hard and crispy on the outside and soft and billowy on the inside.”

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Book:Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
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“You wouldn't know it by their rapid ascension to ice cream dominance, but caution has guided their way. "The goal is to build out an anti-chain chain," Brian explains, fully aware that the charm of Ample Hills is that it's small, independently owned, and has quirks that locals appreciate. Every time they add a new scoop shop, they're mindful of creating at least one flavor that's unique to that location, like It Came Out of Gowanus, "the deepest, darkest, murkiest chocolate ice cream," in Brian's words, that's chock-full of white chocolate pearls, a nod to the waterway's once-prolific bivalves; chocolatey "crack cookies" made with hazelnut paste; and Grand Marnier-laced brownies.”

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Book:Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
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“We even made it to the holy mecca of Brooklyn food fanaticism: Smorgasburg, a collection of food vendors that battle it out for the most outrageously delicious, ridiculously inventive food. We duly ate our heads off, sampling panko-crusted chicken sandwiches topped with pickled cucumbers and daikon, brown butter cookies doused in flies of sea salt, and the coup d'état- gigantic, billowy doughnuts from a Bed-Stuy bakery called Dough, one sweetly flavored with hibiscus, the other a savory, roasted café au last varietal.”

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Book:Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
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